ABSTRACT
Language has been central to education since the ancient Greeks, but contemporary knowledge about the issues concerning schools is a great deal more uncertain than sometimes is supposed. Reasons are well set out by Colin Harrison in his review of recent research in literacy for the Key Stage 3 strategy team working in England: complexity of the issues, fragmentation of the field and the absence of a unitary theory. ‘The problem in a complex domain,’ he adds ‘… is that you cannot advance knowledge if you oversimplify … you need to pay the price of accepting that there may not be simple answers to complex questions’ (Harrison, 2002: 7). So, while it is a start to recognise that language is important to many aspects of your teaching, you need to use your judgement in developing ways of working and treat cautiously the claims for certainty advanced for various methods.
