Where teachers were once limited to traditional textbooks, informational texts, novels, and materials passed along by others, today the online marketplace is wide open, flush with copious materials that teachers might choose, often at little or no cost. But practically nothing is known about what these supplemental instructional materials actually…

Purpose: Faced with increasing systemic constraints and pressures, secondary school English teachers often implement transactional approaches to pedagogy and curriculum aimed at improving student results on external exams, which are then used to rank schools. Despite the pressure to teach this way, teachers acknowledge the power of literature,…

In this narrative inquiry, the author dramatises the tensions and discoveries that emerged in a literature course for pre-service and in-service teachers in an English education graduate programme. The students' resistance to the instructor's choice of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" as a central text led to reflection on responsible and…

This dissertation uses practitioner inquiry (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, 2009), narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 1990; Rolling & Bey, 2016; Schaafsma & Vinz, 2011; Toliver, 2020a), composite character counter storytelling (Baker-Bell, 2020), and critical discourse analysis (Bloome et al., 2008; Bloome & Power-Carter,…

Phonics continues to be one of the most controversial literacy instruction topics debated in the USA, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Given the importance placed on phonics in early literacy learning and the role that teacher beliefs play in the types of code-related literacy children encounter, the purpose of this two phase mixed-methods study…

In evaluating some of Heaney's prose writings about the art of poetry -- what I have called his 'Poetics' -- the paper explores how those ideas could enhance the teaching of poetry in the upper post-primary schools. The paper is divided into four closely interconnected sections. The first section evaluates Heaney's thoughts about the potential…

What role might storytelling play both as a component of the English curriculum and as a way of re-envisioning what we do as English teachers? The following story asks questions about storytelling in the English classroom, its fit with current theory and practice, and its role in a contemporary world. Live Bodies is a fiction. None of the…

The author analyzed an attempt to increase authenticity of writing in a middle school English language arts classroom. Drawing on a grounded theory of authenticity developed based on stated needs of a diverse group of students, the author and classroom teacher designed curriculum that sought to help students choose a valued topic, emphasize…

This paper theoretically demonstrates the potential of textual space in making an important contribution to school ethos and cultural pedagogy. It demonstrates how culturally-inclusive (representational) textual space can be expanded throughout the school and could contribute to social justice and decolonisation efforts beyond the English…

This study analyzed some student-centered strategies used in three secondary classrooms in a large, urban high school in US. The researcher, who was teaching a graduate methods course at the local university, conducted classroom observations and follow-up interviews with three teachers enrolled in the class. The teachers learned about different…

The teaching of grammar has been strongly debated for decades, often with reference to an alleged decline in the 1960s. This article takes a historical perspective on grammar, or knowledge about language, within English Education. In the eighteenth century, Adam Smith's "Lectures in Rhetoric and Belles-lettres" offered a discernibly…

Project-based learning (PBL) grounds instruction in authentic learning experiences where students engage in real-world explorations that culminate in a final product or performance. We report on a mixed methods study with 43 ninth-grade English language arts (ELA) teachers (22 PBL and 21 comparison) and 1,671 students exploring the feasibility of…

Curriculum reform is often described as being dependent on teachers' advancement of reform principles. Many studies report the reasons for whether teachers engage with a new curriculum, and these reasons have focused on internal, personal influences including disconnections between curriculum and teachers' beliefs and practices. This study…

This study estimates the per-student cost of Kentucky's Targeted Intervention (TI) program. The program seeks to help high school students who score below the ACT benchmarks in the 11th grade become college ready when graduating high school. The study uses the ingredients approach to cost analysis and a resource cost model (RCM) to organize data…

In her scholarship of the past five decades, Sylvia Wynter has woven a critique of education in Caribbean, European, African, and American societies. In addition, her work demonstrates how education globally structures a particular cultural, historical, and onto-epistemic anti-Black/anti-Indigenous worldview. In Wynter's most neglected piece of…