What happens when GCSE English resit teachers treat text choice as an act of artistry
This session draws on two case studies from Further Education classrooms in which teachers used song lyrics as the core text for teaching GCSE English Language resit students. It examines how both teachers reconciled the demands of a high-stakes, exam-driven curriculum with an arts-based pedagogy, and argues that the aesthetic text is not a detour from exam preparation but a more effective route into it.
In this webinar you will:
- Examine Eisner’s four elements of artistry and what they offer a curriculum currently framed around technical doing
- Consider text curation as the central act of teacher artistry, whether student-led or teacher-led
- Question the orthodoxy of vocational contextualisation in post-16 English
Before the webinar, please explore:
- Education Sciences article: Beyond “Technical Doing”: Reimagining Artistry in the English Curriculum
After the webinar, you’ll receive the recording of the webinar; a list of suggested further reading; and a series of reflection questions/writing prompts to support you in linking the content of the webinar back in to your practice.
Speaker
Dr Michael Daniel Smith is an Academic Tutor at the University of Sunderland and Co-Founder of Markus Tech, an assessment platform for post-16 English and maths. His research examines assessment and curriculum in the Further Adult, Vocational and Education sector, including a forthcoming Routledge monograph on starting point assessment.
