ChatGPT and generative AI technologies have infiltrated our learning spaces, and, as a result, schools may be changed forever. While some educators may seek to ban the use of chatbots, motivated by a fear of the rampant plagiarism the technology might invite, I, however, write this dissertation with the intent of finding uses for AI as a…

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 qualitative Action Research study explores a group of lower secondary pupils' use of social semiotic resources and traditional and digital tools to develop an understanding of "Romeo and Juliet" at a private trilingual school in Barcelona. Forming part of a wider study undertaken by an English language and literature teacher, it…

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 considers what happens in the English classroom when teaching the same lesson to two classes considered to be of different levels of 'ability'. It explores what happens during a discussion about the fate of Eva Smith in "An Inspector Calls" when students' reading of a text diverges. I consider what teachers do when students'…

This article interrogates the role of retrieval practices in an urban, multicultural London classroom. With the advent of cognitive science-based approaches in recent years, retrieval has become a central tenet for testing foundational knowledge in English literature. I consider the implications of retrieval for classroom discourses concerning…

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…

This study investigates the interpretive approaches of three English teachers working in different grade levels with the same poem, Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer." The researcher sought to learn what the teachers identified as most valuable about studying poetry in school, what interpretive approaches they employed…

This article explores how, in English classes in secondary schools, students can perfect moral concepts such as love, honesty, and happiness. As the philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch explains, people can perfect, or refine, moral concepts by paying attention to reality and altering their concepts in line with what is real. For Murdoch, the…

Reading is one of the crucial aspects of the learning process. The learning efficiency depends on the motivation and involvement of students. The paper aims to determine whether the developed online course enhances student motivation and engagement in contemporary American literature. For this purpose, questionnaires were used. The sample…

Despite ongoing attempts to disrupt the white cis-hetero-masculine nature of the literary canon the secondary school English curriculum remains tethered to its lineage. In conversation with feminist new materialist scholars who argue that the stories we read and write have material affects on who we are becoming, this paper argues that in order to…

Our paper seeks to investigate how mediation using emerging technologies can increase student engagement within the context of teaching English Literature in Singapore. Through a discussion of our ongoing project to create an adaptation of Shakespeare's "Pericles, Prince of Tyre" as an animated game in virtual reality, we focus upon the…

Set against the backcloth of increasing recognition and attention to literature in foreign language education (FLE) globally, this article reports part of a large-scale study of 1,190 secondary-level learners' views of the benefits of literature, as instantiated by short stories (ShS) and poems and songs (PS) in their English-as-a-foreign-language…

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…

There is a growing consensus that the study of literature in English secondary schools is suffering a crisis: a fixation with knowledge and facts, a loss of creativity, and a denigration of students' own experience, to name a few. This article argues that this is, in part, a result of the conception of culture embedded in the current National…