STEPHEN TCHUDI

The field of English education includes research and practice related to both the teaching and
learning of English/language arts and the preparation of English teachers. As befits a broad and
comprehensive subject matter, the field of English education includes a wide range of topics and
lines of research. Under the umbrella of English education, one might find research on rhetoric
and the teaching of writing, on the literature curriculum and different approaches to the teaching
of literature, as well as a range of topics related to communication, visual literacy, drama,
journalism, and language more broadly. In fact, one of the persistent challenges facing the field
of English has been the difficulty of self-definition, as Peter Elbow (1990) plaintively inquires in
the title of his book, What is English? Others have asked, equally plaintively, what important
topics might not be considered the province of English teachers. This lack of self-definition leads
to what Robert Protherough termed "a pervasive uncertainty about the nature of the discipline"
(p. 1).

The sheer scope of the subject matter and its blurry definition have its roots in the history of the
subject matter. In a definitive history of the field, Arthur Applebee demonstrated the various
ways in which the subject has been defined over time, from its first emergence as a major school
subject in the 1890s. While earlier battles focused more on the relative centrality of classical
versus vernacular texts, more recent skirmishes have tackled the role of literature–and the type of
literature–in the English classroom. One of the enduring themes in the history of English
education has been the search for a way to unify the subject.

In addition to breadth and lack of clear definition, English education is characterized by a

multiplicity of theoretical perspectives regarding the subject. Different versions of English to be
found in classrooms might include a basic skills approach, an approach that privileges cultural
heritage, a personal growth approach, an apprenticeship into the discipline, and an approach that
advocates critical or transformative literacy. Each of these versions implies a different set of
assumptions regarding the goals for teaching English, posits a different curriculum, and
advocates distinctive approaches to teaching.

Preparation of English Teachers

These features of the subject matter pose challenges to the preparation of English teachers. The
sheer breadth of the subject raises questions about how to assure that prospective teachers
develop a deep understanding of the field. The existence of multiple, and often competing,
versions of English suggests that pre-service teachers will encounter quite different practices
during their own experiences in schools. Finally, the inherent complexity of the subject, with its
separate domains and subcomponents, offers teachers greater autonomy in developing
curriculum. For beginning teachers, however, such autonomy can be daunting as they struggle to
decide what exactly to teach.

One critical question concerning the preparation of English teachers has to do with how well
prepared they are within the subject matter itself. According to a national survey conducted by
Applebee in the early 1990s, approximately 95 percent of English teachers received degrees in
English or a related major. However, Richard Ingersoll's 1998 study of out-of-field teaching
found that nearly one-fourth of teachers who teach English have neither a major nor a minor in
English or related fields. While a major in English does not guarantee the depth of subject matter
knowledge required for teaching, the fact that people without English majors are teaching the
subject is certainly cause for concern.

English teachers in the United States receive their professional preparation in a wide variety of
programs, from undergraduate programs lasting four or five years, to fifth-year programs in
which teachers have one year of professional preparation following completion of an
undergraduate degree, to alternative route programs. In the early twenty-first century, research
has only begun to chart how differences among programs affect the quality of teacher
preparation. Michael Andrew's 1990 study, for example, found that graduates of five-year
programs reported greater satisfaction with both their teacher preparation and chosen career and
were more likely to remain in teaching than graduates of four-year programs. However, much
more work needs to explore how structural differences among preparation programs affect the
quality of their graduates.

Relatively few studies have looked systematically at teacher education within the field of
English. Studies on the preparation of English teachers have focused primarily on teachers'
knowledge and beliefs about the subject matter, and on how teachers develop their
understandings of how to teach English. A growing body of research suggests that what English
teachers know and believe about literature influences both their curricular and instructional
choices. How teachers choose to teach a literary text reflects their own understanding of
literature and its interpretation. Similarly, teachers' knowledge of the complexity of the writing
process affects their approaches to the teaching of writing. The teaching of writing requires
knowledge of how the demands of writing vary depending upon the nature of the task, audience,
and genre, among other factors. Lack of this knowledge among teachers may help explain why
writing instruction too often reduces the writing process to a lock-step series of discrete stages.

Another body of research has focused on the development of pedagogical content knowledge–the
knowledge of how to teach English to a wide range of students. A number of studies have looked
at how teachers transform their knowledge of the subject, per se, to knowledge of how to teach
the subject to diverse learners. In looking at this transformation, a number of studies have
focused on the importance of subject-specific methods courses. This line of research suggests
that prospective teachers begin the task of rethinking their subject matter from a pedagogical
perspective within the context of English methods courses. Such courses often require
prospective teachers to confront their implicit assumptions about the subject matter, through
assignments such as literacy autobiographies or the examination of personal metaphors for
teaching. Methods courses also provide opportunities to learn more about how students learn to
read and write, and some of the predictable struggles they may face. The potential of methods
classes to shape prospective teachers' classroom practice is mediated by their experiences in
actual classrooms. When they do not have opportunities to observe or try out the practices they
are studying in methods classes, they may begin to doubt their feasibility.

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Learning to teach English takes longer than the brief period allotted for teacher education.
Research conducted by Pamela Grossman and colleagues in 2001 suggests that new teachers are
still in the process of learning to teach when they enter the classroom. Given the importance of
the first few years of teaching, many districts provide support to beginning teachers through
mentoring programs. This also suggests the need for more longitudinal studies of learning to
teach, that span teacher education and the first few years of teaching.

Professional Development
Perhaps the best-known professional development opportunities for English teachers are the
workshops offered by the National Writing Project (NWP) and its affiliates. The NWP is a
national network that began in 1974 at the University of California, Berkeley. Its goal is the
improvement of the teaching of writing and the quality of student writing. The NWP has served
more than 2 million teachers, across all grades and subjects, since it first came into existence.
Some of the basic tenets of the NWP model include the need for writing teachers to become
writers themselves; the importance of teacher knowledge and expertise in the teaching of
writing; and the value of teachers teaching other teachers. Although relatively little systematic
research has investigated the influence of teachers' participation in NWP activities on classroom
practice, teachers are generally enthusiastic about their experiences and value the sense of
community and professionalism engendered by the writing project activities.

No equivalent large-scale professional development model exists for the teaching of literature or
language. The closest equivalents are teachers' book clubs, in which teachers read literature,
including memoirs, fiction, and other genres, as way of learning both about their students or
about literature and how to teach it. However, these are primarily local innovations. Other
models that exist are summer institutes for teachers, run by organizations such as the National
Endowment for the Humanities and the Bread Loaf School of English, in which teachers have
the opportunity to learn more about the subject matter.

The most common form of professional development for English teachers, however, continues to
be the district in-service day. By their very structure, in-service days are generally dedicated to
technical issues important to the district, such as learning new assessment schemes, writing
objectives for student learning, or implementing a new curriculum or textbook series. Because
district in-service programs are designed to appeal to a broad spectrum of teachers, they are
generally unlikely to address subject-specific concerns.

If English teachers are to benefit from the growing body of knowledge about effective
professional development, those responsible for teacher learning will need to invest more
strategically in school-based structures that support ongoing teacher learning, collegial
interaction, and experimentation. Critiques of the NWP have suggested that without strong
support at the school site and without opportunities to get ongoing help in developing new
practices, teachers find it difficult to implement the ideas they encountered in summer
workshops. Another body of work suggests that departments may be the locus for professional
community and provide the impetus and opportunity for continued learning.

3
Conclusion
English continues to be a contested field of study. Although recent debates have focused on what
literature should be taught in schools, others have questioned whether literature should even
continue to occupy the center of the subject. The range of literacy required of students, from
print literacy to visual and technological literacy, has again expanded the scope of the English
curriculum. Such expansions to the curriculum inevitably pose challenges for the education of
teachers, as both teacher education and professional development must prepare teachers to
incorporate new content and skills into their teaching. Given the features of the subject matter
that make such redefinitions inevitable, prospective English teachers will need opportunities to
grapple with the multiple purposes envisioned for the teaching of English and to explore ways of
bringing coherence to students' experiences in English classes.

See also: LANGUAGE ARTS, TEACHING OF; MENTORING; TEACHER EDUCATION.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
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APPLEBEE, ARTHUR N. 1974. Tradition and Reform in the Teaching of English: A

History. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

APPLEBEE, ARTHUR N. 1986. "Problems in Process Approaches: Toward a

Reconceptualization of Process Instruction." In The Teaching of Writing. Eighty-Fifth Yearbook
of the National Society for the Study of Education, ed. Anthony Petrosky and David
Bartholomae. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

APPLEBEE, ARTHUR N. 1993. Literature in the Secondary School: Studies of Curriculum and
Instruction in the United States. NCTE Research Report 25. Urbana, IL: National Council of
Teachers of English.

BARNES, DOUGLAS; BARNES, DOROTHY; and CLARKE, STEPHEN. 1984. Versions of

English. London: Heinemann.

CLIFT, RENEE. 1991. "Learning to Teach English-Maybe: A Study of Knowledge

Development." Journal of Teacher Education 42:357–372.

DIXON, JOHN. 1969. Growth through English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

ELBOW, PETER. 1990. What is English? Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

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FLORIO-RUANE, SUSAN. 1994. "The Future Teachers' Autobiography Club: Preparing
Educators to Support Literacy Learning in Culturally Diverse Classrooms." English
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GOMEZ, MARY LOUISE. 1990. "The National Writing Project: Staff Development in the
Teaching of Composition." In On Literacy and its Teaching, ed. Gail E. Hawisher and Anna O.
Soter. Albany: State University of New York Press.

GRAFF, GERALD. 1992. Beyond the Culture Wars. New York: Norton.

GROSSMAN, PAMELA L. 1990. The Making of a Teacher. New York: Teachers College Press.

GROSSMAN, PAMELA L., et al. 2000. "Transitions into Teaching: Learning to Teach Writing
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GROSSMAN, PAMELA L. 2001. "Research on the Teaching of Literature: Finding a Place."

In Handbook of Research on Teaching, 4th edition, ed. Virginia Richardson. New York:
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GROSSMAN, PAMELA L.; VALENCIA, SHEILA W.; and HAMEL, FREDERICK. 1997.
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GROSSMAN, PAMELA L.; WINEBURG, SAM; and WOOLWORTH, STEPHEN. 2001.

"Toward a Theory of Teacher Community." Teachers College Record 103:942–1012.

INGERSOLL, RICHARD. 1998. "The Problem of Out-of-Field Teaching." Phi Delta

Kappan 79:773–776.

MILLER, BARBARA; LORD, BRIAN; and DORNEY, JUDITH. 1994. Staff Development for
Teachers: A Study of Configurations and Costs in Four Districts. Newton, MA: Educational
Development Center.

PROTHEROUGH, ROBERT. 1989. Students of English. London: Routledge.

RITCHIE, JOY, and WILSON, DAVID. 1993. "Dual Apprenticeships: Subverting and
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SCHOLES, ROBERT. 1998. The Rise and Fall of English. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.

WILLINSKY, JOHN. 1991. The Triumph of Literature/The Fate of Literacy: English in the
Secondary School Curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press.

INTERNET RESOURCE
NATIONAL WRITING PROJECT. 2002. <http://writingproject.org>.

PAMELA L. GROSSMAN

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