Unweaving the Rainbow: poetry teaching in the secondary school I.

The Poetry Research Project 1998 continues work begun in 1982 which analysed the practice of secondary school teachers when teaching poetry and their attitudes towards it. Then some 170 teachers in a single Local Education Authority (LEA) completed a lengthy questionnaire and a number were interviewed. The information gained by this means highlighted both good practice and a number of problem areas which teachers encountered. Sixteen years after that first survey, and following considerable change in the teaching of English and of poetry as a result of such initiatives as the National Curriculum, the survey was repeated with a group of over one hundred teachers from the same LEA. This, the first of two papers, reports mainly on teachers' attitudes to poetry, particularly the reading, writing and discussion of poetry and upon their concerns. The second paper, to be published in the Oxford Review of Education, March 2000, considers the effects of the National Curriculum, of SATs and of changes in examinations at 16+. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]