ABSTRACT

General context These, for me and many other English teachers, are the tricky subjects. As I hope I have demonstrated, building on my own and colleagues’ pedagogical experiences, there are many and diverse links between English and the humanities, arts and other languages – indeed, in many ways, the subject may be defi ned by its relationship to them. The challenge lies now in seeking, exploring and developing approaches that relate to some of the remaining subjects on the usual secondary school curriculum. I am of course aware that this curriculum itself is constantly changing – both expanding and contracting in various directions, including the interdisciplinary turn vindicated here – and there are some subjects that receive little if any attention from me in this book. Nevertheless, I hope that, by attending to the subjects I have explored, English teachers with characteristically resourceful adaptability may be able to forge yet more links across the curriculum and see our subject from even more perspectives in so doing. Certainly a book purporting to support an interdisciplinary conception of the subject English that failed to acknowledge its relationship to mathematics, science or physical education would be sadly defi cient. In primary schools, of course, the practical development of such links is bread and butter to teachers, and, again, there is a great deal to be learned from their experiences.