At a time when knowledge is being 're-valued' as central to curriculum concerns, subject English is being called to account. Literary Knowing and the Making of English Teachers puts long-standing debates about knowledge and knowing in English in dialogue with an investigation of how English teachers are made in the 21st century.
This book explores, for the first time, the role of literature in shaping English teachers’ professional knowledge and identities by examining the impacts, in particular, of their own school teaching in their ‘making’. The voices of early career English teachers feature throughout the work, in a series of vignettes providing reflective accounts of their professional learning. The authors bring a range of disciplinary expertise and standpoints to explore the complexity of knowledge and knowing in English. They ask: How do English teachers negotiate competing curriculum demands? How do they understand literary knowledge in a neoliberal context? What is core English knowledge for students, and what role should literature play in the contemporary curriculum? Drawing on a major longitudinal research project, they bring to light what English teachers see as central to their work, the ways they connect teaching with their disciplinary training, and how their understandings of literary practice are contested and reimagined in the classroom.
This innovative work is essential reading for scholars and postgraduate students in the fields of teacher education, English education, literary studies and curriculum studies.
Author(s): Larissa McLean Davies, Brenton Doecke, Philip Mead, Wayne Sawyer, Lyn Yates
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 254
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Glossary of key terms / abbreviations
1. Knowledge, making and English teachers
2. Autobiographies of the question
3. Literary knowledge debates
4. Curriculum and knowledge questions: Is English peculiar?
Vignettes no. 1 and 2 – Katya and Scott
5. Shifting relationships between subject and discipline: English in Australia
6. Literary knowledge in the wider field: Reflections from literary studies academics, teacher educators
and curriculum authorities
Vignettes no. 3 and 4 – Janet and Clare
7. Teachers’ conceptions of literary knowledge
8. Literary sociability: Making meaning in English classrooms
Vignettes no. 5 and 6 – Craig and Amaris
9. Knowledge proxies: Text selection and assessment
10. Literature and literacy: The ever-varying constants
Vignettes no. 7 and 8 – Rebecca and Leo
11. Knowing and making: Classroom curriculum and pedagogy
12.
Crossing institutional boundaries: Negotiating a professional identity as an English teacher
13. Narratives, insights and next steps for questions of literary knowledge and English
teaching
Index