English through the looking glass, retrospect and prospect (PDF)

The papers in this eBook address a range of the key ideas, concerns and perspectives offered during the 15 IFTE conference. The eBook includes papers reporting on empirical, exploratory and theoretical research studies, along with curriculum and policy analyses and historical curriculum inquiries. While a number of papers explore the formative influences on English teaching that have had some international impact, other papers address a number of the "e;common ground"e; challenges of teaching the English subjects in countries where English is the medium of instruction and the English subjects occupy a central role in the school curriculum. One of the noticeable dimensions of the 15 IFTE conference was the recurring recognition and reinterpretation of the historical legacies of the 1966 Dartmouth Seminar: the seminal works, discourses, ideas and pedagogical approaches that took hold in the succeeding decades and have proven remarkably resilient across distinctive international settings to the present day. In the field of English education, substantial research and scholarship has attended rigorously to the historicity of the subject, detailing the lineage of influence on its formation and the theories, philosophies, ideologies, values and practice that have shaped, sustained, transformed, threatened or disrupted its identity. The suite of papers in this eBook offers readers thought-provoking scholarship on the state of English education and English teaching in an age of rapid reform and heightened regulation at the curricular and professional levels. While these papers examine the history, forces and conditions impacting on English teachers, teaching and learning in diverse local contexts, taken together, they also underline the considerable "e;common ground"e; being navigated and traversed by English educators internationally.