What forces shape us? Exploring English teachers’ knowledge and implications for practice: An international perspective
Submitted by:
Larissa McLean Davies
Abstract:
Interest in teacher quality, and teachers’ disciplinary knowledge, particularly within a secondary education context, continues to draw international attention (Ramsey 2000; Watson, 2005). Within this field of debate, English disciplinary knowledge remains a key area of contention (Eagleton 2013). The development of National Curricula in the United Kingdom and Australia, reflects a policy intention to reaffirm the value of literature in subject English, and can be understood as a response to the instability of the English disciplinary field (Mead 2011). These documents presuppose a particular kind of literary education, yet what constitutes literary study internationally, at a tertiary level , and what knowledge teachers draw on in order to meaningful engage students in classrooms, is not necessarily reflected in the rendering of knowledge presented in curriculum and policy documents. In response to these issues, this paper reports on a qualitative, international study that explores English teachers’ understandings of knowledge, particularly with regard to how this relates to their classroom practices. It is concerned with the ways in which English teachers negotiate national curriculum and assessment imperatives, and the kinds of literary knowledges they draw on when working with students from diverse backgrounds, who are negotiating gendered, cultural and geographical identifies through textual study in the secondary years of schooling.
The participants in this project were sixteen mid-career secondary English teachers in different geographical and social contexts in England and Australia. Semi-structured interview questions focussed on participants’ views on what constitutes literary knowledge, and on the personal and institutional experiences that initially shaped and then reshaped these understandings. In conversation, participants discussed the ways their understandings of the value and purpose of literature in English inform their approaches to designing/working with the English curriculum within their respective institutional contexts.
This paper will explore the ways in which the participants’ experiences of texts and literature in their own literary educations and through their teaching experiences impact on their conceptions of the purposes of English, and what constitutes valuable knowledge for students. Analysis draws attention to the ways in which participants negotiate mandated curriculum from the standpoint of their own knowledge, and their experiences as teachers of English. Drawing on the conceptual framework of ‘literary sociability’, appropriated from the field of literary studies (McLean Davies, Doecke & Mead 2013; Rubin 2012), this paper explores the implications of these negotiations for questions about disciplinary knowledge in the field of English education.
Accordingly, analysis of the data from this project provides foundational evidence and insights into the current understanding of literary knowledge by a sample of English teachers in diverse contexts and what this means for their practice in the United Kingdom and Australia. In this way, this project is not only important for the field of English teaching, but for the broader scholarly discourse that addresses the scope and role of school curricula in the 21st century (e.g. Yates and Collins 2010; Yates and Grumet 2011).
References:
Eagleton, T. (2013). How to Teach Literature. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.
McLean Davies, L., Doecke, B., and Mead, P. (2013). Reading the local and global: Teaching literature in secondary schools in Australia, Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education, 20:3, 224-40.
Mead, P. (2011). What we have to work with: Teaching Australian literature in the contemporary context. In B. Doecke, L. McLean Davies & P. Mead (Eds.), Teaching Australian literature (pp. 52-69). Kent Town, SA: Wakefield.
Ramsey, G. (2000). Quality Matters: Report of the Review of Teacher Education, NSW, Sydney: Government of NSW.
Rubin, J. (2012). Literary community, cultural hierarchy, and twentieth- century readers. In P. Kirkpatrick & R. Dixon (Eds.), Republics of Letters. Sydney: Sydney UP
Watson, L. (2005). Quality teaching and school leadership : A scan of research findings - Final report, University of Canberra: Lifelong Learning Network.
Yates, L., & Collins, C. (2010). The absence of knowledge in Australian curriculum reforms, European Journal of Education, 45:1, 89-102
Yates, L. & Grumet, M. (Eds.) (2011). Curriculum in Today’s World: Configuring Knowledge, Identities, Work and Politics. World Yearbook of Education. London: Routledge.