"A Lot of Them Write How They Speak": Policy, Pedagogy and the Policing of 'Nonstandard' English

Autor/inn/en	Snell, Julia; Cushing, Ian
Titel	"A Lot of Them Write How They Speak": Policy, Pedagogy and the Policing of 'Nonstandard' English
Quelle	In: Literacy, 56 (2022) 3, S.199-211 (13 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Snell, Julia) ORCID (Cushing, Ian)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1741-4350
DOI	10.1111/lit.12298
Schlagwörter	Foreign Countries; Nonstandard Dialects; English; Language Usage; Educational Policy; Writing (Composition); Speech Communication; Equal Education; Elementary School Students; Writing Assignments; Classroom Communication; Academic Achievement; Learning Processes; United Kingdom (England) + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Ausland; English language; Englisch; Sprachgebrauch; Politics of education; Bildungspolitik; Schreibübung; Klassengespräch; Schulleistung; Learning process; Lernprozess
Abstract	International studies of talk-intensive (or 'dialogic') pedagogies have demonstrated that children who experience academically challenging classroom discussion ('dialogue') make greater progress than their peers who have not had this experience. In England, gains in achievement have been greatest for pupils from less privileged socio-economic backgrounds, thus underlining the importance of dialogue to social mobility. However, policy prescriptions on 'standard English' run counter to the principles of dialogic teaching by privileging 'correct' forms of expression over emerging ideas. In this article, we argue that schools can be coerced by macro-level policy into creating meso-level policies which police nonstandardised forms in the classroom with the assumption that this will improve literacy rates. We draw upon a corpus of Ofsted reports as well as data collected in primary schools--pupil writing and focus groups, video-recorded literacy lessons and teacher interviews--to demonstrate that features of spoken dialect grammar occur infrequently in pupil writing, yet the narrative that spoken dialect is a 'problem' within education is driving policy/practice that is detrimental to classroom talk and pupil learning. We argue that this must be addressed urgently if we are to exploit the full potential of talk for learning and for addressing educational inequities. (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01