How the History of Grammar Teaching Impacts Today’s Language Ideologies

• In Event: Historical Accounts Shaping Current Literacy Practices

Abstract

We work from a theory of change that suggests making invisible norms visible facilitates their undoing. Further, laying bare the historical origins of those norms removes their mystique, reducing their hold on the imagination for how things should be. In this study we articulate the historical mechanisms that led to today’s grammar instruction in schools. Showing the history of grammar teaching destabilizes normative thinking and opens possibilities for an inclusive grammar of the future.

Authors

• Mike Metz, University of Missouri

• Kelly Leavitt, University of Missouri-Columbia