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The British government's current educational policy for England draws on E.D. Hirsch's writings on 'cultural literacy'. This paper aims to uncover the roots of Hirsch's influential views through a genealogical critique. Hirsch admired the Scottish Enlightenment educator Hugh Blair as a model architect of a hegemonic culture to unite disparate members of a nation. Following Hirsch, the government Department for Education in England called for 'shared appreciation of cultural reference points' and 'a common stock of knowledge on which all can draw and trade'. Consequently, the literature curriculum in England increasingly disenfranchises a significant component of the population in terms of both gender and cultural heritage. Recent 'culture wars' have highlighted the legacy of colonialism and have led educators to decolonise the curriculum and prioritise social justice. Continuing racism within civil society demonstrates the need for a general recognition that cultures are desirably diverse and internally plural.

Human aging results in a progressive decline in the active force generation capability of skeletal muscle. While many factors related to the changes of morphological and structural properties in muscle fibers and the extracellular matrix (ECM) have been considered as possible reasons for causing age-related force reduction, it is still not fully understood why the decrease in force generation under eccentric contraction (lengthening) is much less than that under concentric contraction (shortening). Biomechanically, it was observed that connective tissues (endomysium) stiffen as ages, and the volume ratio of connective tissues exhibits an age-related increase. However, limited skeletal muscle models take into account the microstructural characteristics as well as the volume fraction of tissue material. This study aims to provide a numerical investigation in which the muscle fibers and the ECM are explicitly represented to allow quantitative assessment of the age-related force reduction mechanism. To this end, a fiber-level honeycomb-like microstructure is constructed and modeled by a pixel-based Reproducing Kernel Particle Method (RKPM), which allows modeling of smooth transition in biomaterial properties across material interfaces. The numerical investigation reveals that the increased stiffness of the passive materials of muscle tissue reduces the force generation capability under concentric contraction while maintains the force generation capability under eccentric contraction. The proposed RKPM microscopic model provides effective means for the cellular-scale numerical investigation of skeletal muscle physiology. NOVELTY STATEMENT: A cellular-scale honeycomb-like microstructural muscle model constructed from a histological cross-sectional image of muscle is employed to study the causal relations between age-associated microstructural changes and age-related force loss using Reproducing Kernel Particle Method (RKPM). The employed RKPM offers an effective means for modeling biological materials based on pixel points in the medical images and allow modeling of smooth transition in the material properties across interfaces. The proposed microstructure-informed muscle model enables quantitative evaluation on how cellular-scale compositions contribute to muscle functionality and explain differences in age-related force changes during concentric, isometric and eccentric contractions.

This note reports the results of a Delphi panel priority setting exercise for English education research. An initial item-generating survey of 75 English education academics and teachers worldwide was conducted; a thematic analysis of responses generated 31 potential priorities for future research. An adapted Delphi panel consisting of 44 English education experts was invited to take part in two rounds of ranking; four major priorities were identified at the end of the second round. These were as follows: social justice in English education; race in English education; translating research into and out of the classroom; and the nature of the subject of English.

The teaching of grammar has been strongly debated for decades, often with reference to an alleged decline in the 1960s. This article takes a historical perspective on grammar, or knowledge about language, within English Education. In the eighteenth century, Adam Smith's "Lectures in Rhetoric and Belles-lettres" offered a discernibly modern combination of English language and literature. In the nineteenth century, however, university English courses were divided between belles-lettres and philology, while the conditions of elementary schooling favoured "factual" instruction in grammatical "correctness" based on an ideology rooted in the emergence of Standard English. In the twentieth century, the Newbolt Report and Blue Books questioned grammar teaching, but grammatical analysis remained part of public examinations until the 1960s. The last fifty years have seen major advances in linguistic education, but curriculum and assessment procedures continue to conceptualise grammar as the prescriptive teaching of "correct" forms of language.

This paper introduces the meshfree Reproducing Kernel Particle Method (RKPM) for 3D image-based modeling of skeletal muscles. This approach allows for construction of simulation model based on pixel data obtained from medical images. The material properties and muscle fiber direction obtained from Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) are input at each pixel point. The reproducing kernel (RK) approximation allows a representation of material heterogeneity with smooth transition. A multiphase multichannel level set based segmentation framework is adopted for individual muscle segmentation using Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) and DTI. The application of the proposed methods for modeling the human lower leg is demonstrated.

Ofsted's 2017 review of the Reception year curriculum, Bold Beginnings, asserts that reading is the core purpose of the Reception year, and advocates 'systematic synthetic phonics' as the teaching method. This article challenges this precept by reference to recent research into the nature of reading, the way children learn in the Reception class of a primary school, and the actual practice of early years teachers.

John Dixon's book "Growth through English" (1967) is both an account of the four-week Anglo-American seminar on the teaching of English held in Dartmouth, New Hampshire, in 1966 and a seminal text in English studies. Fifty years later, its holding concept of "growth" remains significant to the identity of the profession (Goodwyn 2012). Over the last half century, Dixon's ideas have generated considerable debate. Early (1968) suggested that Dixon had merely "freshened familiar ideas" from 1930s progressive education, while Tarpey (2017) argued in the last issue of this journal that many readers had misinterpreted the radical import of Dixon's account. Brass (2016) offers a historically contextualised account both of the conference and of its global influence during the succeeding half-century. Dixon revised the book in 1975 under the subtitle "set in the perspective of the seventies" and offered in 2009 a reflection on the times in which it was written. In this conversation with John Hodgson, he speaks of the early influences that formed him as an English teacher and led him to Dartmouth. He also reflects on the ways in which his experience of collaborative teaching with Leslie Stratta and Simon Clements led to publication of the classroom texts "Reflections" and "Things Being Various", and the formative influence of this work on his account of the conference. He describes some of what was omitted (partly through modesty) from "Growth through English".

This article reflects on the values and practices of a revolutionary A level (senior secondary) course that achieved a high degree of validity and reliability in assessing the study of English literature. John Hodgson and Bill Greenwell were involved in its teaching and assessment from an early stage, and Greenwell's comments on an early draft of the article have been incorporated. The practice of literary response enshrined in the course was based on a striking application of "personal response" to literature, gave students opportunities to show capability in studying and writing a range of literary styles and genres, and engaged teachers regionally and nationally in a developed professional community of practice. It remains a touchstone of quality as well as of innovation in English curriculum and assessment. [This article was written with Bill Greenwell.]

This article discusses the use of assessment by teachers to replace external marking. It shows how professional participation and moderation can provide reliability in summative assessment, even in public examinations for older students. It draws on historical experiences of assessment for A-level English literature.