Gary is Departmental Lecturer in English Education. He is a Curriculum Tutor and General Tutor for the PGCE course and supervises students for the MSc in Learning and Teaching.
He was Head of English at Impington Village College, Cambridge before undertaking doctoral research and gaining a PhD at the Institute of Education in London. Before taking up a full-time lectureship at OUDE, he continued to teach A Level and IB English part-time, whilst working in a variety of other roles – as the editor of Teaching English (the magazine of the National Association for the Teaching of English); as a Curriculum Tutor at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; as a provider of teacher INSET for A Level and IB English Literature; and as a curriculum developer and consultant for the International Baccalaureate Organisation and other exam boards.
His doctoral research investigated conceptions of English as a discipline, focusing on students’ and lecturers’ attitudes to the subject, and their approaches to teaching and learning, at A Level and in HE. He continues to be interested in the history and theory of English as a discipline, and the ways in which tensions resulting from this history manifest themselves in attitudes and approaches of teachers and students in post-16 classrooms in schools and universities. He has a particular interest in the teaching of poetry, and of English in the sixth form.
