Teacher Trainees’ Explicit Knowledge of Grammar and Primary Curriculum Requirements in England
We focus on a specific first language situation, the literacy curriculum in England, and considers underlying tensions between grammar teaching to young children, applied linguistics and the planning of teacher education. It explores the experiences of trainee primary school teachers undertaking the one-year Post-graduate Certificate of Education program (PGCE), in the Faculty of Education of an English university. We report our investigation of how trainees respond to the grammatical component of the National Literacy Strategy and discuss the implications for applied linguists in teacher education.
In 1998, the National Literacy Strategy Framework, NLS, (DfEE, 1998) for primary schools specified what to teach in a daily literacy hour, part of which is devoted to word level (phonics/spelling) or sentence level work (syntax and punctuation). Trainees are in a demanding situation, having to acquire explicit grammatical knowledge very quickly, with little time to internalize a thorough understanding, before explaining it to children during teaching practice. The trainees are not language specialists, but generalists, with degrees in a range of subjects, who train to teach the whole primary national curriculum. It is important to note that we, the authors, are teacher educators as much as applied linguists. We are responsible for the English component in the teacher education curriculum, but also for matters of pedagogy.
We begin with a brief review of the challenge facing primary trainees and how this challenge has arisen, followed by a description of four case studies that we conducted in 2001-02. The purpose of these case-studies is to investigate how trainees shared their knowledge of grammar with their pupils during teaching practice.
