(Re)Searching the Experienced Curriculum: Navigating the 'Why' and 'How' of Peripheral and Personal Moments in Secondary Students’ Literary Encounters

Submitted by: Allayne Horton
Abstract: Existing qualitative research on the experienced curriculum of literary education is often documented through positivist paradigms, obscuring marginal discourses and entanglements that emerge immanently among students and between students and texts (Martin & Kamberelis, 2013; Taylor, 2016). As such, student responses to literary texts with ‘ethical invitations’ (Gregory, 2010; Choo, 2021) often draw on data from classroom discourse in lesson observations, student writing, and focus groups that privilege plenary talk or the clarity of dominant student voices. Given the uncertainty surrounding the extent of discomfort and transformative effects experienced in these literary encounters (Dressel, 2005; Nah, forthcoming), and the tendency of students to respond self-consciously (Bedford, 2015; Mohamud, 2020; Moore & Begoray, 2017; Nah, 2023; Thein et. al. 2012, 2015; Yandell, 2013), we argue that new approaches are needed to attune to the personal or peripheral moments in classrooms. In this collaborative paper, informed by our PhD projects in Singapore and Australia, we attune to “micro or minor perspectives and understandings” (Springgay & Freedman, 2012, p. 9) by drawing on discursive and affective analytics (Wetherell 2012; 2013) to amplify data from private talk and textual marginalia that is peripheral and excessive to classroom foci. By attending to these private or subdued responses that have evaded much of the existing research alongside more public or accessible talk, this alternative (re)searching of student voices and perspectives aims to create a more representative and dynamic understanding of the experienced curriculum concerning literary texts that invite encounters with difference and discrimination.

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