ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how to think about curriculum theory and English teaching together, how to bring those fields into a productive dialogue, however difficult that ultimately proves to be. The author recently revisited a paper he published in 1990, addressed to 'programming' or teacher planning what he might now want to describe as curriculum redesign. It is written in the midst of his early English teacher education work, conducted over the best part of a decade, which as it happens coincided with his graduate studies. There are two key questions the author has been asking ever since he began his academic career over three decades ago now; the first is: what to teach in subject English? and the second is: how best to teach subject English?. The chapter argues that it is productive and timely to think of English teaching differently, as much more than procedure or indeed 'instruction' rather, as curriculum work and, moreover, more profoundly, as curriculum inquiry.
