Changing Classroom Practice Through the English National Literacy Strategy: A Micro-Interactional Perspective

Abstract

How and why is national policy translated into interactions between teachers and pupils? This article examines the enactment of the English National Literacy Strategy (NLS) in a case study of two literacy lessons, which are drawn from a yearlong ethnographic study of the NLS in one school. Although the teacher taught directly from and adhered closely to the prescribed materials, curricular contents were recontextualized into habitual classroom interactional genres, and the open questions that constituted the primary aim of the lesson were suppressed. In explaining these enactment patterns, the author supplements analysis of teacher knowledge and policy support with consideration of conditions of teacher engagement with the policy and the durability of interactional genres, rooted in pupil collusion and habitus.