Devising and Implementing Whole School Literacy across the Curriculum (LAC) strategies in the 11 to 19 Secondary School Curriculum

Abstract

This chapter discusses and outlines the research upon which Chapters 4–6 of the project are based. One of the perceived barriers to an LBP approach to literacy is the perceived gap in many teachers’ knowledge about language, depending upon their own education history touched upon in Chapter 1 and discussed further in this chapter. A challenge in undertaking the research upon which this project is based, was how to develop teachers’ own metalinguistic awareness and that of their pupils’ and students’ at the same time. The approach taken, was to locate and situate developing teachers’ knowledge about language in the context of their own current assessment and curriculum goals, objectives and practices. It discusses how such curriculum intervention was made possible by changes to assessment and curriculum practices in the UK, together with changes to school inspection protocols. Taken together, such recent initiatives have brought the issue of literacy to the fore in secondary education in England in ways that are unprecedented. The chapter draws upon the research undertaken to discuss how teachers’ own metalinguistic awareness is bound up with their own autobiographies and experiences of schooling. Secondary school teachers are expert in the discursive practices that characterise their disciplines, which all too often remain assumed and implicit. It shows that teachers’ implicit knowledge about language can be brought to the surface remarkably quickly, particularly when focused and targeted at their own subject discipline.