Teachers' Conceptualisations of the Intuitive and the Intentional in Poetry Composition.

The status of poetry both in the writing curriculum and in wider popular culture is best described as mixed (Wilson, 2009). In spite of a strong post-war tradition of enthusiasm for the teaching of poetry writing, it is currently felt to be marginalised in the writing curriculum (Dymoke, 2007; Ofsted, 2007). This paper reports on the beliefs, attitudes and values revealed by a small-scale questionnaire survey of teachers of poetry writing. It finds that teachers of poetry writing adhere to a personal growth model of English teaching. Furthermore, there is evidence that teachers believe that intuition is central to the composing process of poetry. However, there is also evidence in their responses of the need for explicit teaching of design processes in poetry composition. It would appear that teachers reconcile the apparent conflict in their adherence to a model of teaching poetry writing which requires both inspiration and shaping by using a very subtle blend of different kinds of teaching prompts in the classroom. On this evidence, teachers' knowledge about pedagogy goes beyond what they know as readers to help children become writers of poetry. I argue that teachers demonstrate flexible thinking in their poetry writing pedagogy and this is evidence both of the wariness they feel towards the performative culture they work within and a celebration of practice which remains outside of formal scrutiny.