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Current legislative, policy and cultural efforts to censor and illegalize classroom discussions and curricular representations of LGBTQ+ people reflect longstanding challenges in English education. In an effort to explore what curricular inclusion can (not) accomplish – especially what and how current struggles over inclusion, censorship, illegalization and ultimately representation in English education might (not) contribute to queer and trans liberation – the purpose of this article is to feature the experiences of queer and trans youth as knowers in classroom lessons with LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum.

Drawing from a yearlong literacy ethnography at a Midwestern high school in which the author explored youth and adults reading, writing and talking about sexual and gender diversity, in this article the author focuses on one literacy learning context at the high school, a co-taught sophomore humanities that combined English language arts and social studies.

Engaging theories of epistemic (in) justice, the findings of this article highlight the experiences of queer and trans youth – especially two queer youth of Color, Camden and Imani – as knowers in the context of an LGBTQ+-inclusive classroom curriculum. The author describes epistemic harms with respect to distortions of credibility and homonormative assimilationist requirements and reflects on alternative possibilities that youth gestured toward through their small resistances.

By centering the experiences of LGBTQ+ youth, this article contributes to research about LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum in English teaching. Previous research, when empirical rather than conceptual, has tended to focus on the perspectives of teachers.

This mixed-methods study assesses a pilot library curriculum in a general education English composition course. Case-based learning (CBL), a form of problem-based learning (PBL), was used to scaffold information literacy skills and concepts across sessions. This article explores the approach's impact on student learning and engagement.

Participants were enrolled in four sections of an undergraduate composition course. Two sections were taught with the CBL library curriculum, and two with the standard library curriculum as a control. Pretest/posttest surveys included quantitative and qualitative measures to assess students in several areas of information literacy. Weekly reflections from a subsample of students were analyzed, and the research team conducted structured classroom observations and teaching reflections.

Quantitative survey results did not support the hypotheses that the CBL curriculum would increase students' confidence and skill levels compared to their control section peers. Although there was no significant difference between sections in measured information literacy outcomes, students generally agreed that the case studies used in the CBL curriculum taught skills applicable to their research. Teaching observation data revealed the cohesion of the curriculum across library sessions and increased student engagement in classroom activities. However, some of the case studies could be improved, and some limitations in study design point to the need for further research.

This study addresses a gap in the literature through a mixed-methods assessment of CBL pedagogy using a control group, contributing to an understanding of the role of PBL pedagogies in information literacy curricula.

Non-dominant voices have been further marginalised in the most recent national curriculum in England (DfE, 2014), and those working across the English teaching profession often find the subject framed according to narrow, assessment-driven models and prescribed skill sets. This paper aims to bring together two perspectives on the importance of literacy education that remains rooted in young people’s everyday experiences of place.

Chapman is a newly qualified secondary English teacher. She will share examples taken from her own classroom practice of the ways in which she has responded to stories told by young people about the places in which they live.

Jones is a tutor of initial teacher education (ITE). She suggests that Chapman’s approach provides persuasive exemplification of how engagement with alternatives to a dominant view of literacy should remain a key objective for those working with beginning teachers of English.

For Chapman’s students, urban legends are powerful texts which offer the means to explore what we do when we tell stories, both inside and outside the English classroom. As will be shown, such stories are telling examples of the resources young people can bring to critical literacy learning in current classrooms. In the context of the dominance of a narrow, mandated experience of English as a subject, the imperative becomes even greater to recognise stories such as those shared by Chapman’s students as opportunities for authentic, creative and critical engagement with text.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the interface between high-stakes testing, disciplinary knowledge and teachers’ pedagogy in English. The most prevalent standardized assessment form in the current Australian context is the National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) undertaken each year by students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 in all Australian States and Territories. Understood in the context of the Global Educational Reform Movement (GERM) (Sahlberg, 2011, pp. 100-101) – the NAPLAN tests serve as a bi-partisan governmental response to a perceived need to improve the quality of teachers and schools in Australia.

The authors draw on the key sociological constructs of Pierre Bourdieu (1995) to analyze the ways in which the writing component of the suite of NAPLAN tests serves to legitimize and idealize particular kinds of writing, writers and teachers of writing.

The authors suggest that in the absence of current literacy policy and curriculum instability, this national test shapes the literacy field, influencing the direction of writing practices and pedagogy, and, therefore, subject English itself, in Australian classrooms.

This assessment intervention is considered in the context of the history of writing, and addresses accordingly fundamental questions concerning the changing nature of the writing/writerly field, the impact of assessment on teachers’ conceptions of disciplinarity and pedagogical content knowledge and students’ experiences of writing and thinking in subject English.

This paper aims to introduce the concept of adaptive agency and illustrate its emergence in the field of English teaching in a number of countries using England over the past 30 years as a case study. It examines how the exceptional flexibility of English as school subject has brought many external impositions whilst its teachers have evolved remarkable adaptivity.

It proposes several models of agency and their different modes, focussing finally on adaptive agency as a model that has emerged over a 30-year period. It considers aspects of this development across a number of countries, mostly English speaking ones, but its chief case is that of England. It is principally a theoretical paper drawing on Phenomenology, Critical Realism and later modernist interpretations of Darwinian Theory, but it is grounded by drawing on two recent empirical projects to illustrate English teachers’ current agency. It offers a fresh overview of how agency and accountability have interacted within a matrix of official policy and constraint.

Adaptive agency has become a necessary aspect of teacher expertise. Such a mode of working creates great emotional strains and tensions, leading to many teachers leaving the profession. However, many English teachers whilst feeling controlled in the matrix of power and the panopticon of surveillance, remain resilient and positive about the future of the subject.

This is to some extent a personal and reflexive account of a lived history, supported by research and other evidence.

Adaptive agency enables teachers to conceptualise the frustrations of the role but to celebrate how they expertly use their agency where they can. It makes their work and struggle more comprehensible. In providing the concept of harmonious practice, it offers the hope of a return to more satisfying professional lives.

This paper offers an original concept, adaptive agency, and discusses other valuable conceptualisations of agency and accountability. It combines a unique individual perspective with a fresh overview of the past three decades as experienced by English teachers in England.

This study considers the structure of PISA penetration into education policy through a comparative analysis of Japan and Norway. Many studies on PISA’s impact tend to emphasize the character of PISA result as a norm, such as the concept of “governance by comparison.” This study regards PISA as a norm of educational contents and analyzes the structure of PISA penetration into educational contents policy, with respect to the national curriculum. In describing the situations around PISA in the two countries, the background of the acceptance of PISA, the nature of national curriculum in education policy and its character, and the structure of PISA penetration with the focus being on how PISA is integrated into the national curriculum are analyzed through related documents and literatures. As a result of comparative analysis, three common features are found. First of all, PISA penetration occurred in the context of “PISA Shock” since the importance of PISA itself was recognized. Second, the system of management by objectives was included in the educational system and PISA penetrated into that system as objectives. Third, in relation with this second point, PISA as a norm of educational contents was integrated into existing educational goals or subjects. These features are evident only in the comparison of two countries, so a deeper analysis of PISA penetration will be needed in a future study.

Whilst English remains the language of global commerce, the role and outcomes of English language provision in English-medium higher education institutions in the Arab Gulf countries remains central to any discussion on graduate profile and the employability of graduates in the global marketplace. This paper describes the findings of research into English workplace communication skills amongst a sample of Bahrain employers and students at Bahrain Polytechnic. Using a mixed methods approach, data was gathered through telephone interviews, student workplace simulations and employer focus groups. Findings show that generic employability skills, channelled through English as a second or additional language, are highly valued by Bahrain’s employers. In particular, students need to market themselves as confident, knowledgeable individuals during the recruitment process and after recruitment, continuing to operate successfully in the sociolinguistic culture of their company. Consequently, it is concluded that English language training in higher education programmes needs to move from purely linguistic and degree-related content areas to a broader remit of English for communication purposes that covers both specialised discourse fields and broader generic employability skills and competencies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of national identity, as imparted to students by the Western Australia Education Department, in the early part of the twentieth century. By specifically examining The School Paper, as a part of a broader investigation into the teaching of English, this paper interrogates the role “school papers” played in the formation of the citizen subject.

This paper draws on all available editions of Western Australia’s Education Department school reader, The School Paper, between 1909 and 1911, and on the Department’s Education Circular publication between the years 1899 and 1911. These are read within the context of the prevailing education philosophy, internationally and domestically, and the extent to which it was shaped by Australia’s cultural heritage and the desire to establish a national identity in the years post-federation.

The School Paper featured stories, poems, songs and articles that complimented the goals of the new education. Used in supplement to a revised curriculum weighted towards English classics, The School Paper, provided an important site for citizenship training. This publication pursued dual projects of constructing a specific Australian identity while defining a British imperial identity from which it is informed.

This research builds on scholarship on the role of school readers in other states in the construction of national identity and the formation of the citizen subject. It is the first research conducted into Western Australia’s school paper, the school reader, and provides a new lens through which to view how the processes of national/imperial identities are carried out and influenced by state-sanctioned study of English.

In Tanzania, in-service training was implemented to facilitate teachers understanding and implementation of the competency-based curriculum in the English language. This study aims to evaluate whether or not the in-service training was effectively planned to achieve its goals.

The study used a narrative research design that focuses on analysing the story of a particular event, object or programme as it occurred in a specific social context. Thirty-two purposefully selected respondents were interviewed, and data were analysed using the thematic approach.

The study found strengths and weaknesses in the in-service training planning process. The strength included coherence between the need for in-service training and country priority. Moreover, collective participation was promoted since all trainees were English language teachers. Perceived weaknesses included a lack of coherence between training objectives and teachers’ actual needs. Equally, collective participation was limited because trainees taught mixed grades with varied work environments and experiences. Besides, heads of schools were not involved in training planning. Even those tasked with a lead role in cascading training to untrained teachers lacked the confidence and competence to do so.

The study contributes to the body of knowledge by uncovering weaknesses associated with in-service planning in Tanzania. The study calls upon the future planners of in-service training to consider the elements of effective in-service training during the planning and ensure that the views of all stakeholders at the macro and micro levels are assessed for quality programme implementation and better results.