Activeness versus challenge

The findings suggested that there was a disparity between the teachers and the pupils regarding the notion of

activeness (as opposed to passivity) and activity – a distinction drawn from Activity theory (Engestrom,

Miettinen & Punamaki 1999:21). The pupils’ activeness was particularly important to the teachers. A key finding (Teacher interviews, Lesson observations) was one of keeping the pupils engaged with swift changes of focus delivered through multisensory approaches. The teachers perceived maintaining the pupils’ attention, engagement, enthusiasm and motivation as a key goal, given the abstract and inherently challenging nature of grammatical terminology. For example: ‘That’s what my class need, they need straightforward instructions and lots of changes’, otherwise they ‘wouldn’t take any of it in’ (T1,2:1).

The findings suggested that pupils also valued activeness and in the Pupil questionnaire (e.g. doing a

practical activity was the third most preferred approach to learning grammatical terminology). They valued the

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wanted to be challenged through an activity and, in fact, there was more evidence of this being important in the comments they made than the notion of activeness, particularly in the pupil interviews (see 5.2.4).

But the pupils also intimated that there could be too much challenge. This seemed to be related to the activeness that was created which led to multiple grammar-related tasks or contextualised tasks rooted in real language use, giving the pupils too much to think about at the same time. Some pupils talked about this being ‘confusing’ and suggested instead that they did ‘only one thing at once’:

I prefer a separate activity.…because you can concentrate on it more because on the other one I find it, when we did the paragraph I find it quite hard because we had to like look and get evidence from the book and do all the relatives and drop-in clauses and stuff like that. (PG1,2:1)

Therefore, this suggested that the pupils’ preference for challenge needed to be restricted. This was reminiscent of Vygotsky’s ZPD through which he maintained that although ‘in collaboration the child can always do more than he can independently…he cannot do infinitely more’ (1987:209). Rather, the child ‘is restricted to limits which are determined by the state of his development and his intellectual potential’ (ibid). Consequently, as the previous pupil intimated: ‘the only “good learning” is that which is in advance of development’ (Vygotsky 1978:89).

Perhaps as a result, evidence of impact and meaning did not emerge as a strong theme in the findings (only by its absence). Pupils did not talk extensively or in detail about this, either spontaneously or in response to research questions. This was not particularly strongly evidenced within the teaching and sometimes the teachers’ comments seemed to fall short of this next step in the process. For example: ‘If you haven’t got many adjectives, can you see where you can put some more in?’ rather than perhaps asking whether any

more are needed and, if so, why?

The teachers seemed passionate about literature and enabling pupils to become confident readers and writers. However, while there was evidence of quality children’s literature being contextualised in a meaning- oriented manner (e.g. drama devices of visualisation to create images based on Kensuke’s Kingdom), this focused on the construction of semantic meaning rather than the contribution that syntactic devices might make to achieving particular effects. There was less evidence of the applied use of grammar through the consideration of linguistic meaning, in spite of the use of authentic texts in which to contextualise it. Therefore, it could be inferred that the Programme of Study for grammar and SPAG had shifted the teachers’ attention (consciously or unconsciously) away from the interpretation of meaning through a grammatical lens onto a different conceptualisation of grammar. Instead of seeing grammar as a resource for shaping meaning (Halliday and Matthiessen 2014), it seemed to have a content-specific focus dominated by the identification of grammatical terminology, albeit in the context of texts. Indeed, one teacher described grammar ‘as the new driver’ of the English curriculum. Watson and Newman (2017:383) ask whether this reveals that teachers are reflecting a focus on metalanguage and text rather than cognition (psychology) and meaning in a social context. Thus, the findings seemed to suggest a collision of prescriptive and descriptive principles and approaches i.e. even though grammar teaching was contextualised in a text, the approach tended to be somewhat decontextualised.

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Myhill (2005:82) raises the question of what we mean by contextualised approaches to writing. She argues, there has been ‘little genuine discussion or consideration of what “in context” means’ and that lesson observations suggested that “in context” may simply mean “not decontextualized”. This seemed to be bound up in notions of “practise and apply” and of ‘fitting everything in’, no doubt exacerbated by the expectations of the National Curriculum (DfE 2013a) and the SPaG test (DfE 2013b). The result seemed to be a fragmented and formulaic approach to writing in which the pupils attempted to demonstrate their ability to use the target grammatical devices. Within the study’s findings, it ultimately seemed to be the case that within multilayered or cumulative independent tasks, the greatest challenge occurred when a task to practise a grammatical feature was positioned alongside a task requiring its application.

Final assertion 9: Contextualised grammar teaching was perceived positively and was motivational. However, there seemed to be a disconnect between the teaching of grammatical terminology as skills (prescriptive approach) and the use of it to explore meaning and effect in texts (descriptive approach) but a practical synthesis of the two in a single contextualised activity posed too great a challenge, with meaning and effect being compromised.