Title: “Feeling panicky when we get it wrong”: Creating safe spaces for encountering difficult knowledge in English classrooms.
Submitted by:
Jennie Darcy
Abstract:
This paper considers the affordances and tensions of ‘difficult knowledge’ pertaining to the study of literature, ‘generated through encounters in classrooms that are unsettling and even confronting’ (McLean Davies, 2022, p. 121). This emerged as a thematic focus from data collected with a group of regional Victorian English teachers participating in a PhD research project in 2022.
The study of literary fiction has traditionally formed the foundation of English teaching praxis and continues to dominate student experience. However, a ‘complexity that is at the heart of our subject: the relationship between text and knowledge’(Roberts, 2019, p. 215), continues to generate questions around the purposes of teaching texts. By engaging with a diverse array of experiences related to the human condition, teachers employ a range of literary texts to prompt reflection, discussion and debate (Rivera & Flynn, 2022, p. 154). However, enmeshed within these stories of resilience and hardship, is material that may trigger sensitive and confronting emotional responses.
From the data collected it is evident that there are tensions around what constitutes English teaching work, alongside what constitutes legitimate knowledge(McLean Davies & Buzacott, 2022, p. 378). Whilst these teachers discuss the benefits of exposing students to exigent ideas, they also report challenges ‘regarding their own affective responses of discomfort’(McLean Davies & Buzacott, 2022, p. 378) as they seek to facilitate safe classroom spaces to enable the exploration of the darker elements of the human condition. Alongside this, a desire to promote inclusivity is enmeshed with hesitancy around causing offense in a politically charged modern context. In the wake of the Pandemic, these teachers also report concerns for student mental health, questioning their capacity to manage both their own and students’ emotional distress.
This research raises questions about the limits of English teachers’ professional expertise and their boundaries of responsibility, thereby prompting considerations for greater professional support and training for English teachers.
References
McLean Davies, L. (2022). Teachers' Conceptions of Literary Knowledge. In L. McLean Davies, B. Doecke, P. Mead, W. Sawyer, & L. Yates (Eds.), Literary Knowing and the Making of English Teachers : The Role of Literature in Shaping English Teachers' Professional Knowledge and Identities. McLean, Davies, Larissa, et al. Literary Knowing and the Making of English Teachers : The Role of Literature in Shaping English Teachers' Professional Knowledge and Identities, Taylor & Francis Group, 2022.
McLean Davies, L., & Buzacott, L. (2022). Rethinking literature, knowledge and justice: selecting ‘difficult’ stories for study in school english. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 30(3), 367-381.
Rivera, K., & Flynn, E. (2022). Don't avoid controversial literature: Your students' psychological health depends on it. Education, 142(3), 153-156.
Roberts, R. (2019). English - the torch of life: reflections on the Newbolt Report from an ITE perspective. English in Education, 53(3), 211-222.