Hitherto, student responses to ethically oriented pedagogies in Literature classrooms have rarely been studied in non-western, multicultural contexts, and often assume monolingual text selections in English. As an Outer Circle English-using society, Singapore presents a multicultural Asian context worth studying where students connect aesthetic…

This essay examines a half-term of Year 9 work on "An Inspector Calls," with a particular focus on group discussion, writing in role and class reading of the text. I argue that extensive talking before writing is an invaluable way to elicit pupil insight; I then argue that this is necessarily a collaborative endeavour. I then go on to…

Audiobooks have been growing in popularity over the last decade. Although researchers have increasingly recognised the value of audiobooks as rich multimodal texts that support literacy engagement in classrooms, there have been few detailed pictures of classroom practice related to audiobooks. In this practitioner narrative, a secondary English…

This article is an exploration of two podcast composition projects carried out in English literature classes at a private, not for profit secondary school in Catalunya. Despite a growing body of research that indicates the richness of meaning making offered by multimodality, written texts remain central in many formal educational settings. Factors…

This article draws upon Roland Barthes' theory of "myth" to unpack how "student progress" is conceptualised and measured in the curriculum and assessment of GCSE English in secondary schools in England. Using case studies of three Year 11 students, I critique aspects of the government's Progress 8 accountability measure, their…

The 'knowledge turn' in curriculum studies has proved highly influential in the past two decades. But what is meant by knowledge remains both unclear and subject to contestation, particularly in relation to English as a school subject. Two recent books address the knowledge question in very different ways.

This essay examines learners' understanding of how they use role. It draws upon a semi-structured interview with five Year 7 students, which took place after their first lesson exploring "Darkwood Manor," a gothic sequence of drama. Considering the elements which shape how they adopt roles in the classroom, I interrogate the students'…

In this paper, we report data from the first national survey of secondary Shakespeare teaching in the UK, conducted online in 2017-18 with a sample of 211 teachers distributed throughout Wales, England, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. In this article, we outline the pedagogical practices which are dominant. Specifically, we examine the group of…

This essay uses storytelling as a mode of inquiry to explore how students with languages other than English and with diasporic experiences and identities negotiate a pathway for themselves in a relentlessly Anglophone environment. I share a story that provides a small window into the everyday work of an English teacher in a large, linguistically…

This essay explores the teaching and learning of Black British literature in UK secondary schools with reference to texts that now appear on GCSE English Literature specifications. It seeks to reveal some of the issues that may arise when teaching texts that deal with race and racism while emphasising the role of racial literacy in facilitating…

This paper tells a story of one student teacher's experiences as she considers the choice of fiction texts studied by young secondary learners of English, and how those texts are taught. Based on a series of interviews carried out in the South-West of England and Wales, the narrative provides a perspective on the limitations of current curricula…

This article discusses two schemes for teaching writing in schools. One uses analysis of model texts into techniques and devices then application of these by students to their written compositions and one uses a process approach that includes pre-writing and exploring, drafting, sharing and discussing, revising and celebrating to exploit students'…

How does a beginning teacher go about constructing a teacherly identity in a pandemic? How does one reconcile what might be with what is, as dictated by the rhetoric of a neoliberal government, which prizes the individual mind over the collective one, the product over the process, and results over relationships? This essay explores these questions…

This essay considers the relative merits of critical writing and writing in role as a means of enabling and assessing students' responses to literary texts. Drawing largely on the author's experience of teaching "Frankenstein," it argues that the distinction between critical and creative writing is not as absolute as is sometimes…

Our starting point is provided by two accounts of observed lessons. The two lessons happened, at more or less the same time, in the same English department in an East London secondary school. Both lessons, observed by the second- and third-named authors, involved the shared reading of the same novel. We are interested in the difference between…