Beyond the ‘glass bead game’: a critical investigation into the theorising acts of teachers of Literature in English Secondary schools.

In this submission I investigate the ways in which Secondary English teachers theorise the concepts of Literature, writer, and reader as they plan and teach literary texts to students in Key Stage 3. At degree level, the disciplinary codes, rules and conventions of literary study are deconstructed in formal courses on Literary Theory; I argue that an increased focus on these modes of operation at school level would help teachers and their students gain confidence in understanding the utility and implications of and alternatives to particular reading positions. It would also help both teachers and students re-appraise and validate their roles as stewards and contributory actors to the discipline, to rebalance the asymmetric relations of epistemological power. This research contributes new empirical findings to the literature on the disciplinary identity of school literary study, the ways in which knowledge is framed and authorised within it, and the status of teachers and their students as theorists. Via a sequence of semi-structured interviews, I explore the theorising trajectories of 4 experienced English teachers as they plan, teach and review a scheme of learning on a literary text at Key Stage 3. Using a Critical Pedagogy lens, I examine the participants’ acts of disciplinary framing, their conceptions of disciplinary power, authority and influence, and how they induct students into critical identities and dispositions. I conclude that epistemological awareness of the constructed nature of disciplinary codes and conventions can help teachers move towards a more inclusive version of school literary study, one which acknowledges the contextual contingency of any response and shows knowledge and meaning to be the products of ongoing discourses, including those which students bring into and create within the classroom. I present recommendations for practice in the form of a new framework for school literary study in its compulsory phase, and a call for an increased emphasis on epistemological questions as professional development for teachers of Literature across the sector.