Dr Mike Presdee

It is with great sadness that I have to report that Dr Mike Presdee has died after a brave battle with cancer. Mike was a neighbour and a friend. He was also an esteemed academic around the world for his work in Cultural Criminology. Even though his work was not essentially in my own field, it became a great influence on my research, particularly my Doctoral work into children's literature and poetry. His work around the concept of Carnival provided a brilliant way to analyse children's relationship with certain forms of literature and to begin to understand their responses.

Of course, Mike was once a very good school teacher himself and he always had plenty of lively and stimulating things to say about education in its present form. He was from the working class and, for me, this had greatly influenced his approach to his research and to academe. He leaves a huge legacy of exciting and original scholarship behind which will continue to inform others work in his field and beyond for decades to come.

Mike was good to talk to and his and his wife Gill's dinner parties were always filled with great food (that he had cooked to perfection), conversation and laughter. Mike will be missed by many, both locally and world-wide

A week to go...

As thoughts of holidays begin to emerge, I'm also beginning to think about writing 'Literacy on the Left' when I get back -when and how to begin the process...

I'm also considering preparing another paper for publication on working class student teachers from some research I have been doing in my University. The concept of 'aspiration agents' in the family has cropped up from my data. I've used this term to mean those in the family (usually Mothers) who encourage their children to engage in the curriculum at school, but more than this too - to convince their children of the merits of particular cultural investments that may not be common within the context of that family. Is 'aspiration' the right word? Is it loaded with values? I used it at the UKLA conference on Sunday morning and it was receieved favourably by the 7 delegates that were able to get out of bed after a night of drinking and dancing.

Greetings from Greenwich

This must be the most well-attended UKLA conference to which I have been. It's packed out. Robin Alexander's Key Note speech was very good. He was talking about his experiences of working with politicians and how he noticed a clear split between the private and public discourse that went on. Meetings, he said, were always constructive with 'give and take' on both sides. Yet, the reports in the media from the same ministers were completely different, not reflecting the meetings at all.

Alexander provided us with what he saw as the 'discourses of power':

Discourse of dichotomy - a gross reduction by Ministers to binaries in education - traditional/progressive, real books/phonics

Discourse of Derision - headlines about 'weirdy beardies' taking over schools and universities for example.

Discourse of Myth - the idea, for example, that before New Labour the world of education was in chaos

Discourse of meaningless - the crazy government documents that can often say nothing

My paper in tomorrow...

John Agard wins CLPE Poetry Prize 2009

Last night I attended The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education's Poetry Awards. John Agard was the winner with his superb poem 'The Young Inferno' Regular readers of my blog will know I was one of the three judges with Jackie Kay.

I'll be judging next year's with John Agard

Over the next four days I will be in Greenwich for the UKLA conference. I was giving my paper on the Friday (peach of a spot) but have been moved to Sunday (prune of a spot) to accommodate a delegate that needs to fly home on Sunday. I agreed for the 'love of the association', but demanded a Key note speech next year in return...! We'll see.

I hope to blog from Greenwich on any exciting papers and events that may occur.

Mobile Phones Means High Test Scores

Professor David Crystal speaking at Canterbury Christ Church University last week told the audience that the earlier children start using mobile phones and texting, the higher their test scores at school. Prof. Crystal was citing research that had found this to be the case.

All I can say is "I'M ON THE TRAIN!"

I have not seen this research, but I would suspect there may be other variables at play - perhaps socio-cultural and economic issues too that make a difference. Prof. Crystal described how in order for children to use the discourses of text which omit letters etc., children need to know something about the spelling of the words in the first place to know where to leave letters out.

On another issue, Prof. Crystal also described as "acceptable" notions about language taught in a way that promotes 'appropriateness' as a leading principle. So there is no real right or wrong about how language is used - dialect and so so - but it is the appropriateness of its use in contexts that matters. This is a strongly contested point. In certain contexts certain forms of language must be used. I'm thinking of the work of Fairclough (1992). He writes: "In no actual speech community do all members always behave in accordance with a shared sense of which language varieties are appropriate for which contexts and purposes. Yet such a perfectly ordered world is set up as an ideal by those who wish to impose their own social order upon society in the realm of language (1992:34)

Fairclough's argument is that if one teaches children that one form of talk is better within prestigious and powerful contexts like schools, universities and other formal arenas for discussion it makes children's own habitual ways of talking rather marginal and irrelevant. I discuss all this in my second article in The Curriculum Journal that critiques Neil Mercer's Ground Rules for talk perspectives.

Food for thought,