ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some developments that are transforming teachers’ perceptions of what school curriculum English is or can be. The task teachers face in defining their position as a teacher of English is similar to that which has been faced by those responsible for defining and redefining a National Curriculum for English since the late 1980s. Whilst learning about and through textual construction is at the heart of the model of critical literacy proposed by West and Dickey, their definition of English begins by identifying ‘the processes of language’ as its primary concern. Academic studies have long drawn attention to differences such as those between American Standard English and English Standard English to explode the myth that there is one Standard English that should be developed and used for global communication, and they have demonstrated the systematic, rule-governed character of all dialects.
