Investigating experience through grammar: from personal to cultural perspectives on the evolution of school knowledge

Grammar provides us, as teachers, with a remarkable opportunity for investigating our pedagogical and social environments. This is an opportunity that falls not only to the teacher of language, but to any teacher in any school subject or discipline who is seeking to get close to the evidence and methods of that particular subject. Such evidence ‘from the grammar’ is all the more remarkable for being so typically overlooked! In a profession in constant need of material which can be renewed and updated, in a profession which is preparing people to be reflective and critical contributors to worldwide academic debates, it stuns me that the most direct source of critical data should be set aside due to anxiety or prejudice about constitutes ‘knowledge about grammar’. Grammar is the deep, habitual order in our meaning making; it is not a rule system for linguistic discrimination.