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This essay considers the relative merits of critical writing and writing in role as a means of enabling and assessing students' responses to literary texts. Drawing largely on the author's experience of teaching "Frankenstein," it argues that the distinction between critical and creative writing is not as absolute as is sometimes supposed, and that so-called 'creative' tasks can be a very effective way of generating critical insight. It explores the significant limitations and limiting potential of the critical essay as a form, and argues that creative tasks such as writing in role afford far greater opportunities for school students to write fully and successfully as themselves. It links the longevity and pervasiveness of the critical essay as a mode of assessment within the English school system to its 'exam-friendliness', and makes the case for an alternative and more equitable approach that would allow for young people to be judged on their true potential as thinkers and writers.

Abstract Wilson disease (WD) is caused by biallelic pathogenic variants in adenosine triphosphatase copper‐transporting beta (ATP7B); however, genetic testing identifies only one or no pathogenic ATP7B variant in a number of patients with WD. Synonymous single‐nucleotide sequence variants have been recognized as pathogenic in individual families. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the prevalence and disease mechanism of the synonymous variant c.2292C>T (p.Phe764=) in WD. A cohort of 280 patients with WD heterozygous for a single ATP7B variant was investigated for the presence of c.2292C>T (p.Phe764=). In this cohort of otherwise genetically unexplained WD, the allele frequency of c.2292C>T (p.Phe764=) was 2.5% (14 of 560) compared to 7.1 × 10−6 in the general population (2 of 280,964 in the Genome Aggregation Database; p < 10−5; Fisher exact test). In an independent United Kingdom (UK) cohort, 2 patients with WD homozygous for p.Phe764= were identified. RNA analysis of ATP7B transcripts from patients homozygous or heterozygous for c.2292C>T and control fibroblasts showed that this variant caused high expression of an ATP7B transcript variant lacking exon 8. Conclusion: The synonymous ATP7B variant c.2292C>T (p.Phe764=) causes abnormal messenger RNA processing of ATP7B transcripts and is associated with WD in compound heterozygotes and homozygotes.

This is a collection of thoughts about and for Anne Turvey, written by current members of the English Education Team at the Institute of Education. To that extent, we are all her intellectual and professional heirs, although we stand in a variety of relations to her, and know her variously as PGCE and MA tutor, colleague, mentor and friend. It was one of Anne's superpowers to be able to blur the edges of such roles, often to collapse them altogether and her ability to fuse the social and the academic is a strong theme. The writers are all women and Anne's role as a crucial audience for our conversation, ideas and writing, is very clear. Prompted by the kind of stories Anne loved and championed through her work, each of us includes some of her memorable 'sayings' that carry so much enthusiasm for probing the comedy and curiosity of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes as its starting-point four moments that occurred in the course of a year of teaching A-level English Literature in an inner-London sixth-form college. It argues that these moments represented forms of learning and experience that were valuable, but that fell outside the prevailing version of what (English) lessons are for. It uses these moments to challenge the current prescriptive and reductive models of what learning looks like, focussing on the relationship between knowledge and interpretation (with specific reference to Shakespeare), on the social dimension of learning, and on the relationship between learning and time. It concludes that the best lessons are potentially open-ended, unpredictable and unrepeatable.