Provides an explicit critique of existing poetry teaching practices which illustrates how adolescents, particularly boys, develop antipathy to this genre. Describes the theory and practice of "responsive teaching." Reports selected findings from a three-year action research investigation examining how keen readers of pre-twentieth-century poetry…

This paper examines the debate about the English literature canon in schools. It evaluates the importance of the canon in a 21st-century curriculum and considers its relevance to adolescent readers saturated in early 21st-century culture who have disparate identities and diverse backgrounds. The implications for teaching and learning of the…