Introduction: Rethinking and Reviving Subject English: The Murder and the Murmur. Part 1. The murder: Politics, policy and practice. 1. English is shit! A post-modern murder mystery. Kirstie Harrington. 2. Where has oracy gone? The curious case of the erosion of speaking and listening in GCSE English. Nic Worgan & Georgina Garbett. 3. Is the English curriculum really suitable for all? Salya Akhtar. 4. Rethinking, reimagining English in the post-16 sector: COVID-19 and the future of English. Joanne Bowser-Angermann & Elizabeth Draper. 5. Against the clock: ‘Time for Literacy Hour, children’ – A critique of English policy in primary schools. Louise Wheatcroft. 6. "A little bit of Jekyll, a little Mr. Hyde": Secondary English teachers speak of the tensions between their perception of English teaching and the systems they are required to serve. Debbie Haynes. Part 2. Notes from the struggle: Engagement and re-openings. 7. Zainab. Heather James. 8. ‘Smallness, narrowness and servility’: Resisting English at university over 30 years. Michael Jopling and Harvey Jopling. 9. Home education and English: The ticking time bomb of future need? Mel Carter. 10. Making creative spaces - constraints and aspirations: The English curriculum From Key Stage One to Key Stage Three. Steph Perks, Jennifer Wells and Victoria Wright. 11. Old books for hungry children: Negotiating definitions of cultural capital to support ‘disadvantaged’ children in primary school reading. Shaun Allen-Dooley. 12. In your own write; for English wherever I may find her: De-territorialising writing. Pete Bennett and Howard Scott. Part 3. The murmur: Optimism, re-imaginings and ways to rethink English. 13. The tentative: A modest proposal for a great leap forward. Shaun Passey . 14. Possibilities for teaching English literature in posthuman times. Louise Lambert. 15. Dissenting voices: Finding agency, authenticity and autonomy in the ‘luxuriant now’. Chris Waugh. 16. English and the Lefebvrian ‘moment’. Rob Smith. 17. Interrogating the listening practices of Mr Oxford Don: teacher education, culturally sustaining pedagogies and raciolinguistic ideologies. Ian Cushing. Afterword: Resources of Hope. Pete Bennett, Louise Lambert and Rob Smith
