Investigating the Practice Architectures of Grammar Pedagogy Across the Primary Years

This thesis presents an investigation of the practices of primary school teachers when teaching grammar. The study specifically focuses on both the practices and conditions of practice with respect to grammar documented in the Australian Curriculum: English as Sentences and clause-level grammar and Word-level grammar (Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2015a). After decades of curriculum based on genre and functional approaches to language with less emphasis on traditional grammar teaching, primary teachers in 21st century Australian classrooms are now formally required to incorporate into their teaching programs grammar at sentence and word level, together with a focus on text cohesion. This change in curriculum, which effectively took place with the release of the Australian Curriculum: English in 2010, and its gradual implementation in the different states and territories (ACARA, n.d.-a), has brought numerous challenges requiring an investigation of contemporary classroom practices.

To explore the social realities of educational practice, research was conducted in two city and two regional primary schools. It employed critical participatory action research (CPAR) methodology (Carr & Kemmis, 1986, 2009). CPAR provided a way of enabling teacher change, which facilitated the evolution of participating teachers’ grammar knowledge and classroom practices. Teachers’ voicing their experiences in collaborative environments was instrumental in discerning conditions which impact contemporary grammar teaching practices. Bringing attention to the situatedness of grammar teaching experienced in classroom lessons, findings for this study were drawn from multiple data sources and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, n.d.; 2019). Five key themes were identified concerning teachers’ beliefs, confidence, and knowledge about grammar as well as teachers’ approaches to grammar teaching and teacher change. These themes were then interpreted through a practice theory lens. This research used the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008; Kemmis, Wilkinson, et al., 2014) to investigate how the conditions for pedagogical practice, or practice architectures consisting of cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements, influence grammar teaching practices in primary classrooms.

This study adds fresh insights on grammar teaching practices within contemporary Australian primary classrooms. It acknowledges not only the varied approaches which teachers implement in their practices across diverse teaching contexts but the intricate interplay of historical and contemporary site-based conditions that shape present-day grammar teaching methods. This research underscores the complexity of grammar teaching in a modern world and the need for on-going support for primary teachers. Grammar teaching has had a chequered history in educational practice, which highlights the practical significance of this study for understanding what is needed for creating effective grammar teaching practices in present-day classrooms. Although there has been an updated Version 9.0 of the Australian Curriculum: English, released in 2022, the curriculum continues to include the teaching of grammar at sentence and word level (ACARA, 2023). Therefore, this study has the potential to inform national educational policies, teacher education programs and ongoing teacher professional learning.