Bullock (1975)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Foreword, Membership, Contents, Introduction

Part 1 Attitudes and standards
Chapter 1 Attitudes to the teaching of English
Chapter 2 Standards of reading
Chapter 3 Monitoring

Part 2 Language in the early years
Chapter 4 Language and learning
Chapter 5 Language in the early years

Part 3 Reading
Chapter 6 The reading process
Chapter 7 Reading in the early years
Chapter 8 Reading: the later stages
Chapter 9 Literature

Part 4 Language in the middle and secondary years
Chapter 10 Oral language
Chapter 11 Written language
Chapter 12 Language across the curriculum

Part 5 Organisation
Chapter 13 The primary and middle years
Chapter 14 Continuity between schools
Chapter 15 The secondary school
Chapter 16 LEA advisory services

Part 6 Reading and language difficulties
Chapter 17 Screening, diagnosis and recording
Chapter 18 Children with reading difficulties
Chapter 19 Adult literacy
Chapter 20 Children from families of overseas origin

Part 7 Resources
Chapter 21 Books
Chapter 22 Technological aids and broadcasting

Part 8 Teacher education and training
Chapter 23 Initial training
Chapter 24 In-service education

Part 9 The survey
Chapter 25: I Introduction
Chapter 25: II Primary commentary
Chapter 25: III Secondary commentary
Chapter 25: IV The questionnaire forms (not online)
Chapter 25: V Technical notes (not online)

Part 10 Sumary of conclusions and recommendations
Chapter 26 Conclusions and recommendations

Appendix A Witnesses and sources of evidence
Appendix B Visits made
Glossary
Index

Report of the Committee of Enquiry appointed by the Secretary of State for Education and Science under the Chairmanship of Sir Alan Bullock FBA

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1975
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

Chapter 12 Language across the curriculum
[pages 188 - 193]

12.1 In the two preceding chapters we have made several references to the role of language in other areas of the curriculum than English. It became clear to us in the early days of the inquiry that we could not do justice to the first term of reference if we did not direct our remarks to all teachers, whatever their subject. Indeed, we believe that the suggestions made in these chapters for improving the teaching of language could result in more effective teaching of subjects that lie right outside the terms of reference. For a proper appreciation of this concept the three chapters should be read as one. In this chapter we state a generalised case for the development of a school policy which might give effect to it.

12.2 It has been claimed that at no time in the life of an average person does he successfully achieve a more complex learning task than when he learns to speak, a task which is substantially completed before he is five years old. It has also been suggested that during the period from early infancy to five years old a child makes more rapid progress in learning about his environment than in any subsequent five year span. The two processes cannot be independent. The effort a child needs to apply in learning language must derive from the satisfaction of evolving from helplessness to self-possession. Conversely, that very evolution must owe a great deal to the developing power of language as its instrument. What we advocate here is no more than that this interlocking of the means and the end should be maintained, if possible, throughout the years of schooling. To achieve this we must convince the teacher of history or of science, for example, that he has to understand the process by which his pupils take possession of the historical or scientific information that is offered them; and that such an understanding involves his paying particular attention to the part language plays in learning. The pupils' engagement with the subject may rely upon a linguistic process that his teaching procedures actually discourage.

12.3 The primary school teacher responsible for the whole or most of the schoolwork of his class already has it in his power to establish a language policy across the curriculum. Whether or not he is taking that opportunity will depend upon the extent to which the various uses of language permeate all the other learning activities, or to which, on the other hand, language learning is regarded as a separate activity. The distinction is a crucial one, and a great deal follows from it. For language to play its full role as a means of learning, the teacher must create in the classroom an environment which encourages a wide range of language uses. The effectiveness of this context for the purpose can be judged by the answers to a number of questions. For example, how often does a child share his personal interests and learning discoveries with others in the class? How far is the teacher able to enter such conversations without robbing the children of verbal initiative? Are the children accustomed to read to one another what they have written, and just as readily listen? Are they accustomed to solving cooperatively in talk the practical problems that arise when they work together? How much opportunity is there for the kind of talk by which children make sense in their own terms of the information offered by teacher or by book? What varieties of writing - story, personal record, comment, report, speculation, etc - are produced in the course of a day? Over a longer span, what varieties occur in the output of a single child? These are straws in the wind. What they indicate is the degree to which learning and the acquisition of language are interlocked. We have argued elsewhere, and particularly in connection with reading, the need for a consensus among the staff of a primary school on matters of language learning. The individual teacher is in a position to devise a language policy across the various aspects of the curriculum, but there remains the need for a general policy to give expression to the aim and ensure consistency throughout the years of primary schooling.

12.4 By his training and experience, the primary school teacher is likely to conceive of his task in terms of integrated rather than subject-oriented work. In the secondary school, however, it is traditional practice to move more or less directly into a programme of specialist teaching and a subject timetable. Clearly it is here that the proposals to be made in this chapter principally apply. A primary school teacher may happen to be unaware of new conceptions of the role of language, but he would not generally regard them as matters outside his concern. However, they are certainly regarded in this way by secondary school teachers of most subjects. The move from an integrated to a specialist curriculum constitutes in itself a considerably increased demand upon the linguistic powers of the pupil, but the most obvious demand, that for a wider and more specialised vocabulary, is not the principal difficulty. In general, a curriculum subject, philosophically speaking, is a distinctive mode of analysis. While many teachers recognise that their aim is to initiate a student in a particular mode of analysis, they rarely recognise the linguistic implications of doing so. They do not recognise, in short, that the mental processes they seek to foster are the outcome of a development that originates in speech. A person's impulse to talk over a problem that his thinking has failed to solve is a natural one; what he is doing is to regress to an earlier, simpler form of problem solving situation. Every teacher has known occasions when a child has solved his difficulties in the act of explaining what they are. Face to face speech is a very direct embodiment of the relationship between the speakers. If the relationship is one that gives the speaker confidence he will be understood, it acts as a powerful incentive to him to complete the train of thought he has begun. It has even been claimed that goodwill is enough in a listener, without understanding.

12.5 When we consider the working day in a secondary school the neglect of pupil talk as a valuable means of learning stands out sharply. To bring about a change will take time and persistence. Where pupil talk has been accorded little status in teaching methods, it is not surprising that when the opportunity does occur it tends to be filled by pointless chatter. But the cycle can be broken, as experience has amply shown. There is no need to repeat here the points we have made earlier in this section about the role of exploratory talk in the classroom. For such talk to nourish, the context must be as informal and relaxed as possible, and this is most likely to occur in small groups and in a well organised and controlled classroom. Once the practice has been established in such groups there is no reason why the exploratory talk should not succeed in due course with the whole class and the teacher together. The principle to be recognised, however, is that good 'class discussion' cannot be had simply on demand; it must be built up on work in small groups, and continue to be supported by it.

12.6 If the value of expressive talk is commonly overlooked in many subject areas, expressive writing often finds no place at all. In a recent research study (1) it was found that the teachers of a number of subjects did not encourage such writing, and this can be taken to mean that the children were often being asked to run before they could walk. They were being required to report conclusions in writing, their own or other people's, but not to produce the kind of writing that most effectively helps them to arrive at conclusions. The following passage (2) will illustrate the point. Asked to give an account of how to set up a wormery, a thirteen year old wrote:

'I fetched a bucket of soil and a cup. A jar of sand and some chalk. I fetched a wormery glass which you can see through. I made layers of soil then sand and then powdered chalk. I continued like that. Then I put some water in it. I have marked with biro where the water ran. Then I placed four worms in the wormery. They did not stir when they were on top of the soil but later they will. I put the wormery into a dark cupboard which is closed.'

We believe that expressive writing shares some of the virtues of expressive talk in helping a pupil to find his way into a subject. Moreover, it is an important stage on the way to a range of differentiated kinds of writing. To quote from the language policy document prepared by a secondary school we visited:

'As well as providing opportunities for purposeful oral work within a given context, other subject areas might consider how they can enlist the personal involvement and interest of children in any writing required of them.'

12.7 There is a sequence of ways, fairly obvious in themselves, in which children gather information. They can be listed in ascending order of difficulty as follows:

finding out from observation and first-hand experience;

finding out from someone who will explain and discuss;

finding out by listening to a spoken monologue, for example a radio talk;

finding out by reading.

12.8 Furthermore, just as different tasks call upon different reading skills so also they demand a variety of modes of recording. Note making and other forms of record keeping associated with a pupil's reading can be valuable ways not simply of learning, but of 'learning to learn'. In the past attempts at teaching the art of learning have too often consisted in a few stereotyped methods of study, so generalised as to be of little value when applied in a real context. Subject teachers who know both the particular demands of their subjects and the individual needs of their pupils have an important contribution to make in this area.

12.9 This brief survey of language across the curriculum would not be complete if we failed to take account of the teacher's own language. There is no doubt that a well-prepared, extensive presentation by the teacher is sometimes the best way of handling a topic, particularly in the introductory stages of a course of study. It is likely to begin with the circulation of some material in the form of evidence, or data upon which conclusions can be based. The teacher marks out an area of concern and allows for a variety of approaches to it, and he does this through open-ended questions which elicit from his pupils the ideas and experiences upon which to work. The presentation is thus newly developed on each successive occasion. What the teacher is shaping by his probing is something to which both he and his pupils contribute. It may at the conclusion be an incomplete and modified version of what he intended, but it will be a truer representation of the understanding the group has reached than could have been derived from any direct exposition. In the course of working upon new concepts the teacher is bound to introduce new terms, but he can make good use of the pupils' own views and experiences to help them assimilate these. It is what the pupils do in following up the presentation that realises its value, and this is best achieved by the teacher's interaction with individuals and small groups. Getting children to talk to them is an art that most teachers acquire without giving the matter any thought. When it becomes evident to a teacher that his professional teaching relationship requires mutuality rather than distance, he is likely to find little difficulty in making the adjustment. The problem is that of reconciling this relationship with his role as a keeper of the peace, for he cannot avoid his responsibility for maintaining in the group an atmosphere in which learning may go on. There exist the two distinct roles of teaching and control, and the constant aim should be to develop the first to a point where it encompasses the second.

12.10 The notions we have been discussing here are gradually gaining currency, and we are encouraged by what has been achieved in the comparatively short time since their inception. The documentation has grown considerably in the last six years and now covers principles and practice, teaching and organisation. One of the earliest initiatives came from the London Association for the Teaching of English, which organised a series of conferences leading to the publication in 1969 of a discussion document (4), A language policy across the curriculum. A number of schools responded to the suggestions this contained, and there followed valuable contacts with other subject associations, notably the Association of Teachers of Mathematics. The topic was taken up by the National Association for the Teaching of English, which invited teachers of all subjects to its 1971 annual conference (5) and devoted the programme to a series of working groups on various aspects of language across the curriculum. A teacher of mathematics afterwards reported:

'as children talk or write ... in a mathematics lesson, or in the playground when they are sorting out the rules of a game of marbles, they are "doing mathematics". It is not just that language is used in mathematics: rather, it is that the language that is used is the mathematics. It was perhaps on this account that I did not feel myself too much of an eavesdropper when I went to Reading for the NATE conference: the discussions were directly relevant to my own concerns.'

'How might further developments take place? There was a strong feeling that local follow-up was essential, perhaps in Teachers' Centres. Objectives should be much more restricted, for example "Reading" or "Projects" or "Discussion", and it will be necessary to consider the practical problems of small group work in the classroom. We all felt that other subject Associations should become involved'.

12.11 We have chosen these developments to illustrate the growth of interest in the notion of language across the curriculum, but it cannot be inferred from this that it has taken root in large numbers of schools. Despite such initiatives, and similar ones at local level, there are still comparatively few schools which have introduced it as a policy. This is understandable, for it cannot be pretended that a policy of this kind is easy to establish. The need is not obvious to every teacher, and the head of the school can best influence others if he is himself informed and convinced. This, however, is only the beginning, and the head cannot achieve alone the introduction and maintenance of the policy. We have considered various ways in which it might take effect, but to endorse any one would be to produce a prescription that would not suit the circumstances of every school. One possibility is for the responsibility to lie with a senior member of staff, experienced and appropriately qualified, whose status is at least equal to that of the heads of department with whom he will be working so closely. The advantage of such an appointment is that the teacher concerned would be able to concentrate his efforts upon the policy and carry the weight to enable him to persuade and exercise influence. The difficulty might be that it would not be easy to argue for another post to be added to the senior level of the school management structure. In some schools it would be possible for the function to be taken on by a member of the staff already occupying a senior post, for example, a director of studies or curriculum coordinator where he was qualified for the role.

12.12 Whatever form it took it would be important to establish a proper working relationship with the head of English department, whose own contribution to the policy must clearly be a considerable one. It could, of course, be argued that the head of department and his English specialist colleagues are in an ideal position to take on the responsibility themselves, and this is another possibility to be considered. The virtues are obvious, but we have argued elsewhere that English departments - and particularly the teachers in charge of them - are hard-pressed. To expect them to add this important task to their existing commitments would be asking a great deal. Moreover, it is conceivable that in some schools such an arrangement might make it harder for the concept to win acceptance among the staff. One approach might be to place the responsibility with a committee composed of heads of department, with the head teacher and the head of English giving a strong lead. This has the advantage of continuous consultation and collective responsibility, but it could be countered that it takes an individual hand to give real leadership. Clearly a great deal depends upon the circumstances of each school, not least its size and its present administrative structure. We strongly recommend that whatever the means chosen to implement it a policy for language across the curriculum should be adopted by every secondary school. We are convinced that the benefits would be out of all proportion to the effort it would demand, considerable though this would undoubtedly be.

References

1. The Development of Writing Abilities 11 to 18 Writing Research Unit. Schools Council: 1974.

2. Reproduced in Language Across The Curriculum English in Education, Vol. 5, No. 2: 1971.

3. Barnes D et al Language, the Learner, and the School revised edition. Penguin Education: 1971.

4. Reproduced in D Barnes et al. op. cit.

5. Reported in Language Across the Curriculum. op. cit.

6. See From Information to Understanding University of London Institute of Education: 1973.