Mary Hilton
Position/Status
Teaching Officer Primary English
E-mail Address: mh278@cam.ac.uk
Phone: 01223 767553
Qualifications
MA, MSc
Membership of Professional Bodies/Associations
Architects Registration Council of the United Kingdom
National Association for the Teaching of English
History of Education Society
British Film Institute: Working Party on Moving Image in the Primary School
Profile
Mary Hilton is a University Teaching Officer in Primary Literacy and Literature in the Faculty of Education at Cambridge University. She originally trained and practised as an architect and taught art history before taking the primary PGCE in 1982. She then worked for twelve years in Primary schools, studying in detail the ways young children respond to creative tasks, particularly those in the visual and language arts. She holds an MA in Education and an MSc in Research Methods. She is co-convenor of the MPhil in Arts, Culture and Education.
Mary Hilton researches and publishes in the area of children's literature, popular culture, and children's writing and engagement with moving image texts. She is a consistent critic of the government's standards agenda, particularly of the practices and anxieties created by the annual NC tests for 7 and 10 year old children, and the resulting narrowing of the primary curriculum.
Research Topics
- Literacy and Literature in the Primary Phase
- Media texts for children and the impact of new technologies
- Government policy on literacy particularly testing and assessment
- Cultural history of education: domestic practices, women's educational texts, the Froebelian kindergarten movement, pictorial representations of children, and social constructions of childhood from 1700 to the present.
Academic Area/Links
Sociocultural Research Group (convenor)
Current Research Projects
- History and Philosophy of the Progressive tradition in Education (with Christine Doddington).
- Literacy Teaching and Teachers Expectations (with Isobel Urquhart)
- Cultures, Texts, Practices; Education in the Long Eighteenth Century (edited volume with Jill Shefrin of Toronto University).
Course Involvement
- Primary PGCE English
- Undergraduate BA in Education, SSTL, Children and Literature
- MPhil in Arts Culture and Education (Co-convenor with Pam Burnard)
Publications
Edited books:
Mary Hilton ed., Potent Fictions: Children's Literacy and the Challenge of Popular Culture (Routledge 1996).
Introduction, Chapter 1: Marketing Makebelieve: the toy and media industry for children
M. Hilton, M. Styles and V. Watson eds., Opening the Nursery Door: Reading, Writing and Childhood 1600-1900 (Routledge, 1997), Introduction.
M. Hilton and Pam Hirsch (eds) Practical Visionaries: Women, Education and Social Progress 1790-1930 (Pearson, 2000), Introduction and Chapter 1, 'Child of Reason': Anna Barbauld and the origins of progressive pedagogy
Articles:
Bridging the Gap: spoken language of home and school; Primary English Magazine 1997.
Teaching the Popular: some further thoughts on how and why; Magazine of the CPLE Language Matters 1998.
English Tests: Rapidly rising standards or are they?; Primary English Magazine 2001
Peer reviewed articles:
N.A.T.E. journal English in Education Vol.31 No 1, 1997
Mary Hilton and Holly Anderson, Speaking Subjects: the development of a conceptual framework for the teaching and learning of spoken language
N.A.T.E. journal English in Education Vol 32 No 3 1998
Raising Literacy Standards : the true story
UKRA journal Reading, Literacy and Language Vol 35 No 1 2001
Are the Key Stage Two Reading Tests becoming easier each year?
N.A.T.E. journal English in Education Vol 35 No 1 2001
Writing Process and Progress: Where do we go from here?
History of Education Society Journal Summer 2001
Revisioning Romanticism: towards a women's history of progressive ideas.
Invited Papers
Writing Women's History Cheltenham College of Higher Education (2001)
Catharine Macaulay and moral necessity Homerton College Eighteenth Century Seminar Texts, Culture, and Society (Winter 2002).
'A Pure and Rational Piety': the educational works of Sarah Fielding and Hester Mulso Chapone Cambridge 18th Century 'Restoration to Reform' Seminar (Lent 2003).
Schemes of Salvation: Malthus and the didactic texts of Mary Sherwood and Jane Marcet Oxford Nineteenth and Twentieth Century British History Seminar (Winter 2003)
The role of the 'familiar conversation' text in disseminating ideology London Institute of Education, History of Education Seminar (Winter 2003).
Forthcoming:
'Reflective creativity: reforming the arts curriculum for the information age'
in Pam Burnard and Sarah Hennessy (eds) Reflective Practices in Arts Education
(Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers).
'The measuring of standards in primary English since 1996, the PIRLS Report and the NC tests: issues of validity and accountability'
British Educational Research Journal (forthcoming 2006/7)
'Damaging confusions in England's KS2 reading tests: a response to Anne Kispal'
Literacy (April 2006)
Women and the Shaping of the Nation's Young: Education and Public Doctrine in Britain 1750-1850
(Ashgate Publishers, forthcoming 2006/7).