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…

Purpose: This paper describes oral language as a multi-faceted and unconstrained phenomenon, including its social purpose in societies and the implications of this for education. It provides a critique of the concepts of oral language which have come to dominate literacy and language education policy across the Organisation of Economic…

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…

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…

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…

English teachers select texts for the edifying qualities they possess: a good poem, novel or film can act both as a window looking out over different lives and as a powerful mirror for reflection. When teachers reflect on their professional practice, however, they generally look to education theory, to research or to action learning strategies.…

Today's students are inundated with popular culture and pop culture texts in their daily lives. One such form of pop culture is that of music. This medium is one that teachers must use as a way to connect to students and build a bridge to the curriculum. This article will discuss uses of music in the classroom from capturing students' attention…

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 paper has two complementary objectives. After providing some theoretical perspectives on fiction generally, and on the teaching of fiction more specifically, it firstly evaluates, from a literary-critical perspective, a reasonably representative selection of the portrayal of teachers and teaching in some twentieth-century Anglo-Irish fiction…

Literary criticism of children's literature asserts a one-directional view of power with the adult writer constructing the child reader. Using "aetonormativity"-- adult perceptions of normality -- this paper explores what happens when children co-construct publishable fiction. Our analysis of drama and creative writing workshops shows…

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to provide a detailed account of pre-service teachers' viewpoints on the use of tableaux as pedagogy to analyse short stories in secondary schools based on their exposure to the use of tableaux and their active participation in the process of tableau creation. Design/methodology/approach: The study adopted a…

This article takes as its starting-point four moments that occurred in the course of a year of teaching A-level English Literature in an inner-London sixth-form college. It argues that these moments represented forms of learning and experience that were valuable, but that fell outside the prevailing version of what (English) lessons are for. It…