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UK funding (£729,819): Speaking Citizens: The Politics of Speech Education 1850-Present Ukri17 Feb 2020 UK Research and Innovation, United Kingdom
Overview
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Speaking Citizens: The Politics of Speech Education 1850-Present
| Abstract | Speaking skills in Britain are under sustained threat. Changes to the National Curriculum in 2014 and the removal of the speaking component from the GCSE in English in 2013 have side-lined oral skills in British state schools. Social media and digital technologies are contributing to a marked decline in the ability to communicate face-to-face. As a result, we risk producing what some fear will be "a generation unable to speak in public" (1). This poses a threat to tomorrow's workers in an age of automation in which 'soft skills' will become increasingly valued. It also poses a crisis of citizenship. The loss of encouragement of and space for individuals' spoken contributions threatens social cohesion at a moment in which ordinary people's voices need to be heard more than ever before. To confront these crises it is vital that speaking skills are placed back at the heart of British state education and championed as a fundamental element of confident democracies. Speaking Citizens brings together a team of researchers who aim to do this by working with educational partners and policymakers to provide the evidence needed to make the political case for speaking skills' role in strengthening citizenship. Under the label 'oracy', speaking has become one of the most eagerly debated concepts in contemporary educational theory. Yet there is a pressing need for the humanities to provide critical perspective on and historical context for this pedagogy. Our team comprises of four specialists ideally placed to do this. Hester Barron (Co-I) is Senior Lecturer in History at Sussex and an expert in educational history. Stephen Coleman (Co-I) is Professor of Political Communication at Leeds and leading theorist of participatory democracy. Arlene Holmes-Henderson (PDRA) is an educational consultant and fellow on the AHRC's 'Advocating Classics Education' project at King's College London. Tom F. Wright (PI) is Senior Lecturer in English at Sussex and an expert in the cultural history of rhetoric. Our team will be completed by a PDRA specialising in late Twentieth Century migration, race and education. Over three years, we will complete overlapping case studies that interrogate ideas about speech and citizenship from the advent of compulsory education (c.1850) to the present. Ranging from community groups in present-day Leeds, back through 1960s radical educational thinkers, 1920s London primary schools, to late-Victorian women's elocution, we will use diverse new archives to reconstruct the political history of speech education. By looking at contemporary real-life speech situations we will also explore how the dynamics of political talk in non-formal adult contexts might transform school-based approaches. The outputs from these investigations will consist of a collection of open access essays (Oracy Across The Disciplines), four peer-reviewed research articles, and a monograph (Speaking Citizens: The History and Future of An Idea). Moreover, thanks to several years of network-building with partners including the English Speaking Union, Oracy Cambridge and Voice 21, we also have a clear impact and dissemination strategy. In the first two years, the team will work with partner teachers at dialogue events at Sussex and a conference hosted by the Faculty of Education at Cambridge bringing together educators with academics to discuss our findings. By the start of year three, we will have developed these into teaching resources to be rolled out over the final year as a series of pedagogy workshops in partner schools; and two policy presentations at the Department for Education and Home Office. The project will end with a session of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Oracy hosted at the House of Commons. Through these outputs and pathways, we will make a major intervention into educationa debates, enabling a more evidence-based case for the integration of speaking skills with citizenship education |
| Category | Research Grant |
| Reference | AH/T004290/1 |
| Status | Closed |
| Funded period start | 17/02/2020 |
| Funded period end | 31/12/2023 |
| Funded value | £729,819.00 |
| Source | https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FT004290%2F1 |
Participating Organisations
| University of Sussex | |
| ESRC | |
| English Association | |
| Voice 21 | |
| English Speaking Union | |
| All Party Parliamentary Group on Drones | |
| UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE | |
| Oracy Cambridge |
The filing refers to a past date, and does not necessarily reflect the current state. The current state is available on the following page: University OF Sussex, Brighton.
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