Navigating the terrain of contemporary English education

Abstract

This paper was prepared for use-in an Undergraduate Secondary English Curriculum course. It was constructed with a view to introduce these stiJdents - pre-seNiee English teachers - to the discursive knowledges. and practices, or 'models', that have come to inform and continue to constitute Subject English, and to alert these students to the 'slippery' propo$ition of attempting to define the subject. Given recent 'attacks'in the press·on contemporary English teaching practices and syllabus documents, as marked out by tails to bring "mumbo jumbo' teaching to [an] end" (Slattery, 2005), it seems timely to (re)visit the complex phenomenon that is Subject English and the multifarious practices that haye come - ane( cOntinuE! - to constitute it.