Several people commented on the fact that the group was small enough to facilitate discussion and foster an environment of safety. Similarly, the importance of an explicit confidentially contract between members was mentioned. The option of asking open-ended questions to support reflection on the poems was universally seen as useful. Several people mentioned the importance of questions referring to the senses:


I was interested in the questions about hearing and smelling things those are not normal poetry questions but they evoked feelings (Diana)


The questions helped me to get me going; I read and skimmed through them. The questions about the senses were particularly helpful (Gulcan)


For some people taking part in the reading group, the poems evoked deep feelings about their personal experiences of education, and facilitated reflection on their current practice:


The poems poked a stick at things I thought I had sorted…. We are here to serve the students they are not just “the learners … they are individual people with stress and individual lives (Kerry)


Similarly, Dilan made a direct connection between her work in the classroom and the poems. Commenting on the poem “Afternoon in School” she said:


Tuesdays are totally different to Monday afternoon. Monday they are drained, you need to push them. The atmosphere is different. I saw that I said “Oh yeah, the afternoon does make a difference! It was the language in the poem that reminded me…


Diana reported that reading the poems had made her reconsider some of her teaching tactics and had affected how she taught speech-writing to students. There are clear links between the “fixing faults” end of Hatton and Smith's hierarchy in her comments:


I tried rap with them on Wednesday and they found it funny that a fat short white middle aged woman was interested in rap and a lot wanted to participate and show their skills and those that didn't were interested. And that's exactly what I want


Interestingly, not all of the students were conscious that they had reflected (see Bill's comment below). This further raises questions of how students learn to think about reflection in a competency based PGCE where there is an emphasis on assessed reflection:


We didn't really discuss reflection… there were not many observations on our own teaching practice or links to wider principles But the group was… invigorating. (Bill)


Conclusion and implications for future practice The poetry used in this research was drawn from recent, established and respected Anglo- European poets. There are, however, a great range of poets and poetry to choose from and the availability of live performance of poetry online along with the central repository of the Poetry Archive (


www.poetryarchive.org) offers many opportunities for teachers to tailor the styles and forms of poetry students might engage with.


As this research was small in scale, further work would be necessary to explore some of the issues raised. However, there is evidence that collectively reading and discussing poetry in a small group setting can offer students fresh insights into their experiences of teaching.


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