From personal growth (1966) to personal growth and social agency (2016) – proposing an invigorated model for the 21st century

The Personal Growth (PG) model, as outlined by John Dixon in 1967 and developed from his contribution to the Dartmouth Seminar, is unquestionably still recognisable to English teachers, remaining aligned to their philosophy of teaching English. This chapter traces a key element in the history of PG and explores present continuities traceable to Dartmouth in 1966, and defines an invigorated PG model to embrace twenty-first-century life and to take English forward into the future. Dixon himself never offered a concise definition; however, one historically significant attempt to do this (perhaps the first?) was produced in the Cox Report, the document that defined the first National Curriculum in English (NCE) in England in 1989. In focusing on a key historical moment, the UK’s Cox Report in 1989, almost half way between 1966 and the time of writing, this chapter addresses the continuities and developments stemming from Dixon, being indicative of how subject English has expanded and changed over those 50 years. This analysis of Cox is followed by a briefer commentary on the most recent NCE, in 2013, as an example of official policies that have demonstrated increasing discontinuity with PG, leading to a complete disjunction.