Acts of sexual violence and rape, as well as the ensuing treatment of survivors and those who perpetuate the crimes, are pervasive in canonical texts that populate mandated reading lists in secondary English classrooms. Given the outsized role the literary canon places in English curriculum, we believe English teachers must develop practices that…

Students in the English Language Arts classroom have access to more author commentary than ever. While following authors on social media may deepen students' engagement with their assigned reading, it also threatens to subdue students' own interpretations of the authors' texts. This essay explains how educators can introduce basic aspects of…

This narrative inquiry explores the author's attempt to teach Henry James's novella "The Turn of the Screw" in a high school English class, making the celebration of confusion -- in the tradition of John Dewey -- the cornerstone of the experience. The students' interpretive discourse is analysed, prompting reflection on promising…

Helping students recognize the value of humanistic inquiry can be challenging, especially in required courses. This essay presents a solution: an assignment in which students were asked to pitch one of the required readings to Netflix for adaptation. Through close readings of student responses and an analysis of the "so what" component…

This autobiographical essay explores the significance that Marxist literary theory has had for me as an English educator. Marxist literary theorists have produced increasingly refined understandings of the formal complexities of literary works, but the reach of such criticism has been limited because they have failed to conceive it as part of a…

Purpose: This paper aims to examine how evangelical teachers' religious identities influence their interpretation and teaching of texts in high school English Language Arts classrooms. Further, this paper examines how evangelical teachers make choices about how to balance the demands of their religious and teacher identities as they interact with…

In this study, we explore discussions of literature in a high school English Language Arts (ELA) classroom, examining how students read rhetorically. Reading rhetorically considers the ethical effects of narrative content as it is mediated through character dialogue and action, narrator discourse, and the author's organization: a narrative as a…

Culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris, 2012) has emerged as an essential way to value the evolution of culture among diverse learners. Discussions around teaching in a culturally sustaining manner in the English language arts classroom, specifically when teaching literary analysis, often address the need to incorporate multicultural literature so…

While social values outside of academia are changing from nationalism to globalization, much of English studies remains entrenched in nationalist discourses. Editor Bruce McComiskey and his contributors argue that English studies must shift from a national (petrified, zombified) to a global (cosmopolitan, planetary) orientation in order to remain…

"The Teaching Archive" shows us a series of major literary thinkers in a place we seldom remember them inhabiting: the classroom. Rachel Sagner Buurma and Laura Heffernan open up "the teaching archive"--the syllabuses, course descriptions, lecture notes, and class assignments--of critics and scholars including T. S. Eliot,…

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…

For educators committed to promoting social equity, the question of how to address dialect hegemony is increasingly important. While linguists have long accepted the concept of dialect equality, educators have struggled with the issue, sparking a history of controversy and debate underscoring larger social issues of diversity and equity. For…

Purpose: This study aims to investigate how, through text-based classroom talk, youth collaboratively draw on and remix discourses and practices from multiple socially indexed traditions. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on data from a year-long social design experiment, this study uses qualitative coding and traces discoursal markers of…

Recent reforms to Initial Teacher Education in England are a continuation of a decades-long political project, aiming to change the whole social complex around teachers' professional education. But the most recent frameworks present some new inflections to the construction of learning, pedagogical relationships and difference. Positivist versions…

This article reviews Margaret Meek Spencer's body of work in relation to the various policies that she critiqued from the Bullock Report in 1974 to the National Literacy Strategy in 2004. She analysed increasingly conservative moves to promote a dominant, elitist version of school literacy. A Critical Realist perspective aligns with Margaret Meek…