Radical Romantic Pedagogy: an exploration of the tradition and viability of a synthesis of Romantic and radical visions of education, focusing on the teaching of English at secondary level in England.

Abstract

In this thesis I explore aspects of the tradition of radical Romanticism in a pedagogical context, with the focus on the teaching of English in secondary (11-18 age range) schools in England. I draw on my personal professional history as English school-teacher and teacher educator in this project, alongside more theoretical considerations, aiming towards a creative synthesis between Romantic and critical paradigms. In so doing I look first at the general contexts of such relationships, introducing some of the principal figures in the debate, in Section One. I go on to look more closely, in Section Two, at the nature of experience in education through the lens of slippery but crucial ideas of immersion, criticality and wonder, culminating in some illustrative descriptions of English classroom activity. For Section Three this leads into an exploration of the nature of creativity in education – a concept much used currently, but in need of more careful, critically purposeful and painstaking theorising. Following this discussion, I look in Section Four at aspects of the Secondary English curriculum in more detail, both theoretically and practically, before making a specific study in Section Five of interdisciplinary possibilities – a key area, by definition suggesting the forging of connections in theory and practice and thus tending to bring to the fore both unifying possibilities and challenging disjunctions. In the sense that my project here is to do with developing pedagogy, I explore next, in Section Six, some of the issues in the context of initial teacher education (ITE), currently my own sphere of professional activity. Section Seven represents something of a poetic interlude, if (I hope) an illuminating one. Section Eight is essentially an attempt to tie together the various strands of my study and look towards future possibilities, including the tentative conclusions presented in Section Nine.