for academics
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Different ways of descending into the crypt: methodologies and methods for researching creative writing
For all creative writers who wish to explore writing processes further, using established research.
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Why teach creative writing? Examining the challenges of its pedagogies
One of the purposes of teaching creative writing is ‘to heal’, in other words, creative writing is taught as a form of therapy, maybe more than is openly stated. Many teachers set therapeutic tasks so the author can learn and grow from the experience of writing about it.
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Lockdown lessons: Teaching and working during the Covid-19 crisis
Some of the lessons I learnt during the Covid lockdown, about staying sane, being mindful and engaging with technology
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Finding a new path: Building affective online learning spaces for creative writing and arts practice
On Covid-19 related research, for the British Educational Research Association.
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8 Ways To Teach spelling, punctuation and grammar
For many, teaching Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG) is daunting. The stakes are high, and the weighting on SPaG in exams has raised anxieties. Here are some tried and tested approaches.
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Teaching 1984 in the surveillance culture of schools
Teaching Orwell’s “1984” as a set text in an examination-obsessed and heavily surveilled school system.
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Mindfulness and Creative Writing
How mindfulness can be used by creative writers to develop their practice and pedagogy
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The Teachers’ Standards and English Teaching
Some interesting ideas about educating English teachers in relation to Teaching Standards set in 2012… However, these standards are less emphasized now than when I wrote this article.
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Riding the Reciprocal Teaching Bus. A teacher’s reflections on nurturing collaborative learning in a school culture obsessed by results
My interactions with the teaching strategy known as Reciprocal Teaching (or Reciprocal Reading), which involves students learning to read collaboratively in small groups.
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Aesthetic literacy and autobiography
How I became ‘aesthetically literate’, and used other artistic work to educate and heal myself. ‘Aesthetic literacy’ may even be more important than other forms of literacy because of its therapeutic dimensions.
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Dreaming of a Better World
A creative writing and reading project, carried out at Deptford Green school, which put the principles of Reciprocal Teaching into practice.
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The Creative Writing Teacher’s Toolkit
There are certain pedagogical strategies, such as encouraging freewriting, using prompts and fostering flow which can significantly help learners to write creatively.
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But sir, I lied – The value of autobiographical discourse in the classroom
The benefits of teachers using their own autobiographical writing in the classroom. The blurring of truth and fiction in autobiographical writing can provide students with the cloak of fiction when writing about their own lives
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Aesthetic Learning, Creative Writing and English Teaching
‘Aesthetic learning’ can be helpful for English teachers, because we are all ‘aesthetic learners’: we learn to appreciate the qualities of the worlds we inhabit, whether actual or virtual.