Cultural memory in English teaching: a critical autobiographical inquiry

Abstract

Purpose Contemporary standards-based reforms to teaching and teacher education are characterised by appeals to technical orientations to teacher professionalism. In addition, the standardisation agenda has targeted literacy education as a focus for interventions. This has highlighted an incongruence between standardised approaches to literacy and pedagogies and practices in subject English that have developed over time, and which represent disciplinary ways of knowing. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses the occasion of the author’s transition from classroom English teacher to teacher educator to inquire into the pedagogies and practices around teaching with texts that form part of her professional identity. The purpose of this study is to introduce cultural memory as an approach to interpreting narratives about educational experience and the development of English pedagogies over time. Findings The paper argues that standards-based reforms tell “official stories” (Malcolm and Zukas, 2009) about teacher professionalism that displace knowledge of past practices and the ethical and intellectual investments they represent. This is characterised by a marked “presentism” (Green and Cormack, 2015) in contemporary education policy. By contrast, critical autobiographical inquiry practised as cultural memory produces situated accounts of the role of professional memory in the on-going “project” (Green 2002/2014) of English teaching. Originality/value The paper presents new work in the area of teacher professional identity drawing on the interdisciplinary methods of cultural memory studies.

A Statistical Study of English Teaching Methods Incorporating Children’s Memory Characteristics

“…Literature [12] found that interleaved practice was more effective than closed practice learning in a study of 60 English language learners and that the development of working memory (WM) practice program enabled systematic form-centered speaking practice with examples of blocked English grammatical categories. Literature [13] introduces cultural memory as an explanatory educational experience to narrate the changes in EFL over time, and by finding the relationship between categorical memory strategies and vocabulary levels through memory rules, the efficiency of memorizing words will be increased, which will lead to the expansion of vocabulary. Literature [14] completed the design of an interactive practice platform for mobile teaching of English in open API universities through feedback elite teaching optimization algorithms, and this kind of English pedagogy effectively enhances the plasticity of students in English learning so that students can comfortably cope with the difficult problems in the English test questions.…”

“…Fang Zhao, Mingxia Li and Cheng Feng. Applied Mathematics and Nonlinear Sciences, 9(1) (2024)[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] …”