Bethan Marshall

King's College London | KCL · Department of Education and Professional Studies

The article analyses in detail two lessons that were part of a larger research project on English teaching in Canada, England and Scotland. It considers whether the two English lessons are by their nature both dialogic and formative in practice. The research undertaken was carried out using arts-based criticism. It found that Eaglestone’s notion of...

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Reading Perspectives and Practices focuses on the experiences of reading from a young age to maturity and the different ways reading is encountered: in other words, the processes involved as well as the outcomes. The international group of experts, within both teaching and academia, focuses on reading in school: how is it...

This article considers teacher agency in teachers of English in Ontario (Canada) and England, based on interviews with and lesson observations of teachers in three high schools in Ontario and four in England. Our research looks at the way policy impacts on their practice. We found a greater sense of agency amongst teachers in Ontario that may have...

Introduces a collection of current research in the teaching of reading

p>Resumo: Em seu amplamente divulgado artigo “Por dentro da caixa-preta”, Black e Wiliam demonstraram que melhorar a qualidade da avaliação formativa eleva o desempenho dos estudantes. Agora, eles e seus colegas reportam os resultados de um projeto que se seguiu ao primeiro com o intuito de ajudar professores a mudarem suas práticas e os estudantes...

Studies of comparative classroom practice in the teaching of secondary English are limited, especially when it comes to exploration of the day-to-day practice of English teachers in the secondary classroom. This book presents a case study analysis of secondary classroom practice in three countries: Canada, England and Scotland. Each country has had...

English as a subject used to be assessed using course-based or portfolio assessments but now it is increasingly examined through terminal tests. Canada is an exception to this rule. This paper compares the way English is assessed in England and Canada and looks to the ways in which the kind of assessment undertaken affects the practices of English...

This article looks at the changes made to examinations in England over recent decades and asks about the politics behind the changes. It considers how increasingly centralised the assessment regime has become, moving from a system where teachers could have a say in how pupils are assessed to a regime dominated by government approved tests. It consi...

In England, in the autumn of 2015, a new national curriculum will be introduced in English. It is devoid of all mention of anything digital. There is no talk of film, television, computers, iPads, or phones. There is nothing that might link us to the twenty-first century technology at all. It is true that the majority of secondary schools do not ha...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to consider the dynamics of submitting arts-based research in a climate that is dominated, in the UK, by the social sciences. Design/methodology/approach – It begins by taking a view on arts-based research, considering mainly Eisner and Dewey but exploring the possibilities of other forms such as baroque res...

This article takes a personal view of the contribution made by Pete Medway to King's College London.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on one UK secondary school English teacher and use his practice as a vehicle for exploring the classroom realities of dialogic assessment. Dialogic assessment, a term first proposed by Alexander (2004), is a position which seeks to synthesise the potentially powerful positions of both dialogic teachi...

This article considers a conundrum in research methodology; the fact that, in the main, you have to use a social science-based research methodology if you want to look at what goes on in a classroom. This article proposes an alternative arts-based research method instead based on the work of Eisner, and before him Dewey, where one can use the more...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to consider the dynamics of submitting arts-based research in a climate that is dominated, in the UK, by the social sciences. Design/methodology/approach – It begins by taking a view on arts-based research, considering mainly Eisner and Dewey but exploring the possibilities of other forms such as baroque res...

Before going into higher education at King’s College London I taught in London 11–18, mixed comprehensives for nine years. When I started at King’s I combined the job with work as an English advisory teacher.

This paper examines the King's Oxfordshire Assessment Project, which took place in the UK and explored the use of coursework as a means of terminal assessment. In particular, it considers the findings of the six English teachers who were involved. In a standards-based curriculum all six teachers supported 100% coursework. The paper looks at how, in...

Summative assessments that are integrated within the daily pedagogy of teachers are problematic. Some argue that they cannot both be helpful to pedagogy and yield results that are comparable across and between schools. Others claim that there is enough evidence to show that these targets can be achieved. The project described in this paper explored...

The national curriculum for English is about to be rewritten again, having only been looked at four years ago. According to the chair of the expert group on the new national curriculum this is because the curricula of the past had become too baggy. Although he was not specifically looking at the English curriculum this too is being examined. This a...

This paper describes some of the findings of a project which set out to explore and develop teachers’ understanding and practices in their summative assessments. The focus was on those summative assessments that are used on a regular basis within schools for guiding the progress of pupils and for internal accountability. The project combined both i...

This article looks at the controversial starting of testing, its boycott, the subsequent years of protest and, in October 2008, the apparent end of key stage examining in England. It considers a possible alternative to the tests based on a project carried out at King's College London based on portfolio assessment.

This article examines the way in which the history of English in schools has contributed to differing philosophies of that subject amongst English teachers. It analyses the current philosophies using, as its database, a novel research instrument called the Rough Guide to English Teachers.

This paper explores the relationship between the subject philosophy of English teachers and their assessment practices. The research is contextualised within the wider debate about the validity and reliability of course work-based assessment in English. It examines the history of that debate and then looks at ways in which practitioners and exam bo...

This article explores the nature of knowledge in English. Using assessment practices as one way of understanding what constitutes knowledge in English, this article asks whether the subject is being subtly changed and whether it is changing in a direction that is profitable. Drawing on the work of Dewey and Eisner, it seeks to understand English as...

This book makes a major contribution to the creation of a professional knowledge base for teachers by building on previous work associated with ‘formative assessment’ or ‘assessment for learning’ which has a strong evidence base, and is now being promoted nationally and internationally. However, it adds an important new dimension by reporting the c...

This article considers the uses and benefits of schools television programmes aimed at developing literacy. It begins to examine the wider implications of the uses of film and television narrative on the teaching of reading. The research looks at the practice of two primary schools in west London in which a schools television programme formed a cen...

Learning how to learn is an essential preparation for lifelong learning. This book offers a set of in-service resources to help teachers develop new classroom practices informed by sound research. It builds on previous work associated with ‘formative assessment’ or ‘assessment for learning’. However, it adds an important new dimension by taking acc...

Using video recordings of lessons and interviews with teachers, this article explores the way in which teachers enact Assessment for Learning (AfL) practices in their classrooms. Starting with the hypothesis that AfL is built on an underlying pedagogic principle that foregrounds the promotion of pupil autonomy, we analyse the ways in which teachers...

‘Learning how to learn in classrooms, schools and networks’ brought together experts from three different fields – assessment for learning, school improvement and network learning – in order to find out how elements from each field might be integrated to develop pupils as independent learners. In particular we were interested in whether assessment...

‘Learning how to Learn – in classrooms, schools and networks’ is a four-year, multi-site project funded under the Economic and Social Research Council Teaching and Learning Research Programme and concerned with the development of formative assessment practice. This article describes how analysis of a large double-scale questionnaire administered ac...

Research in the area of assessment for learning (AfL) has largely focused on generic approaches and strategies, applicable to teaching and learning in all subject areas. In this article, we address the issue of subject-specific approaches. We examine two lessons, one English and one mathematics, and we discuss the form of assessment for learning in...

Incl. abstract and bibl. references 'Inside the Black Box' (Phi Delta Kappan, October 1998) summarized research evidence that showed that improving the quality of teachers' day-to-day classroom assessment could have substantial impact on students' learning. Here we report on one study that has attempted to put this into practice with 24 secondary s...

This article examines how the principles of formative assessment might be applied to the curriculum subject of English. It takes as its starting point the problematic nature of progression in the subject and suggests that it may be better to understand progression as heading towards a horizon rather than a clearly defined goal. The article argues t...

The this paper has two foci. The first is to present an account of how we developed formative assessment practices with a group of 36 teachers. This is then complemented by a reflection on the productive and positive experience of these teachers, in the light of learning principles, of changes in the roles of teachers and pupils in the task of lear...

Much has been made in recent years of the different views teachers of English hold of their subject, but little work has been done on how these views are formed, or indeed how they may change over time. This paper, based on a longitudinal study conducted over two years, tracks one cohort of student English teachers, through their one-year post grad...

The conflict between progressive educational ideas and the prescriptive patterns of learning now fashionable is examined. The teacher training document Initial Teacher Training National Curriculum for Primary English is discussed. Its reduction of complex ideas about the English curriculum to the lowest common denominator is deplored as a recipe fo...

In this paper we examine the issues and difficulties that arise when teachers attempt to develop and implement a system of summative assessment by teachers rather than by externally constructed tests. There has been much recent controversy over coursework-based examinations with concerns centring on the issue of plagiarism. In mathematics, teachers...

Assessing English is not easy. Other subjects appear to have clear right and wrong answers that make the business of assessment seem straightforward. Whether this is actually so, or indeed should be so, is not the remit of this paper. What it is possible to say, however, is that student teachers of English recognise that the process of assessment i...

The project aimed to link research conducted across organisational levels – in classrooms, in schools and across networks. This paper provides an overview of the project at the end of the funding period. Although analysis had focused particularly on the separate levels, and some across level analysis remains to be done, several cross-cutting themes...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of London, 1999.