Literary Knowing and the Making of English Teachers

The Role of Literature in Shaping English Teachers’ Professional Knowledge and Identities

Larissa McLean Davies, Brenton Doecke, Philip Mead, Wayne Sawyer, Lyn Yates

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780367618636
• eBook ISBN: 9781000640847
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

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.

Table of contents

• 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