Stubborn Pilgrimage: Resistance and Transformation on Ontario English Teaching 1960-1993

How have English teachers responded to the pressing demands for educational change as the world has moved from the sixties into the nineties? How have they dealt with the issues of feminism, equity, mainstreaming, multiculturalism and non-elitist de... Read more

How have English teachers responded to the pressing demands for educational change as the world has moved from the sixties into the nineties? How have they dealt with the issues of feminism, equity, mainstreaming, multiculturalism and non-elitist definitions of literacy itself? Stubborn Pilgrimage examines the particular case of Ontario English teachers, detailing their pattern of resistance and reform.

In part, this pattern may be unique to Ontario. By 1960 the province''s English teachers already had an indigenous pedagogy - the Diltz Literary Method - and a long tradition of producing their own textbooks, teaching materials and curricula. Thus they had much of their own to conserve. Yet by 1990, according to Don Gutteridge''s analysis, a virtual transformation had taken place in both English pedagogy and curriculum - changes that are illustrated in Ian Underhill''s exemplary teaching-unit. On the other hand, the Ontario case, involving as it does the response to pressures and notions common to much of the English-speaking world, may well represent some general features of educational reform wherever a strong local tradition is challenged simultaneously from abroad and within.

Stubborn Pilgrimmage is an intensive analysis of teaching methods in a period of profound transformation. Less