Classics at Primary School: A Tool for Social Justice

Description

This is the first book to provide a practical toolkit, grounded in both current educational practice and pedagogical research, on teaching Latin and ancient Greek at primary school with the aim of empowering primary school age children who do not traditionally get access to Classics in education. Taking the author’s decade of experience in coordinating primary school-level Classics projects in the UK and Belgium as a starting point, this book investigates how we can move towards educational equity by teaching primary school students Latin or ancient Greek. Following an introduction to educational inequity and the role of Classics in this, readers encounter four aspects of teaching Classics at primary school which, together, improve educational equity: widening participation, transformative learning, translanguaging, and community engagement. Through reflections on the author’s personal experiences, practical steps are set out in each chapter to demonstrate how these ancient languages may be taught at primary school in ways that are accessible for every pupil. Each chapter ends with a series of reflection questions to help readers consider future practices. Classics at Primary School: A Tool for Social Justice is designed for all those engaged or interested in teaching Latin or ancient Greek at the primary school level. Both the practical and theoretical components of this book appeal to teachers as well as researchers and policy makers with a background in education and/or Classics. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of figures List of tables Acknowledgements 1 Connecting social justice and classical languages 1.1 The edge of the beginning 1.2 Social inequity and education 1.2.1 Mechanics of social inequity 1.2.2 The role of educational inequity 1.3 Classics and social justice 1.3.1 ‘The glory that was Greece // and the grandeur that was Rome’ 1.3.2 Classics and educational barriers 1.4 Conclusion and reflection tools 2 Raising young heroes – teaching Latin and ancient Greek at primary school 2.1 Classics at primary school in the US and Europe 2.1.1 ‘Latin words are like sticks of dynamite’: Latin in US primary schools 2.1.2 From the UK to Greece: primary school classics projects in Europe 2.2 Introducing the Ancient Greeks – Young Heroes project 2.2.1 From literacy to young heroes: redefining ancient Greek 2.2.2 ‘It was fun and I miss the teachers’: the project’s impact 2.2.3 Aspirations and literacy: research findings 2.3 Good practice 2.3.1 What do you mean by ‘classics’? 2.3.2 Who would teach the course? 2.3.3 What would be the course format? 2.4 Conclusion and reflection tools 3 Six steps to transformative learning through classics at primary school 3.1 Classics and disorientation in the primary classroom 3.1.1 The challenges of multidiversity 3.1.2 Classics and the ‘zone of optimal confusion’ 3.1.3 Example 1: a lack of disorientation 3.1.4 Example 2: finding a balanced disorientation 3.1.5 Example 3: a disorientation of pain 3.2 ‘This pedagogy will be made and remade’ 3.2.1 Step 1: backward design 3.2.2 Step 2: broadening the canon for local teaching 3.2.3 Step 3: deepening learning from 5Fs to 3Ps 3.2.4 Step 4: knowledge co-creation 3.2.5 Step 5: applied assessment 3.2.6 Step 6: courageous conversations 3.3 Conclusion: from disorienting dilemma to transformative learning 3.4 Reflection tools 4 Six ‘how-to’ questions on teaching Latin and ancient Greek language at primary school 4.1 Transformative curriculum-building in action 4.1.1 Question 1: how to design a transformative learning course? 4.1.2 Question 2: how to teach the ancient Greek alphabet? 4.1.3 Question 3: how to teach Latin or ancient Greek grammar? 4.1.4 Question 4: how to integrate pupils’ home languages? 4.1.5 Question 5: how to approach Latin or ancient Greek texts? 4.1.6 Question 6: how to build up linguistic knowledge without rote learning? 4.2 Conclusion: transformative learning through a translanguaging approach 4.3 Reflection tools 5 Community engagement between pupils and policy 5.1 Ripples of community engagement 5.1.1 Engaging with learners and teachers: from transaction to co-creation 5.1.2 Engaging with families and communities: taking classics home 5.1.3 Engaging with the media and policymakers: from pedagogy to practice-based research 5.2 Community resistance to classics and how to respond to it 5.2.1 You’d be better off teaching pupils more [insert national language/s of your country] 5.2.2 You’d be better off teaching them Chinese 5.2.3 It’s just not for these pupils 5.2.4 Pupils will be disappointed when they want to study classics at secondary school and aren’t smart enough 5.3 Conclusion and reflection tools Conclusion Bibliography Index