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…

Our classrooms have not been the same since the COVID-19 pandemic shut down schools and forced us to rethink everything we know about teaching. While much of the public conversation has centered on "learning loss," the author instead found that personal loss and collective trauma have had the strongest impact on defining the differences…

Feedback is indispensable if the potential gains of formative assessment are to be realised in the classroom. Therefore, this explanatory sequential mixed methods study sought to describe the feedback content and process of 1088 Jamaican secondary school teachers in general before exploring the practices of 32 teachers of English. Data analysis…

The recent inclusion of texts by a range of Black British writers in GCSE English Literature syllabuses seems an attempt to rectify historical racial inequities in English curricula. In this paper, I argue that curricular change must move beyond diversity and inclusion initiatives towards anti-racist approaches where we "tell it how it…

During a two-term observational study of my Secondary English Language Arts (ELA) class, I introduced "Surrealism" to the existing curriculum. Jot notes, personal interviews, and a self-study comprised my data strands. The COVID-19 pandemic struck shortly before my scheduled in-person interviews. This uncertainty disrupted my doctoral…

In this study, we examine two teachers' talk about literacy as they describe literacy events and practices throughout multiple contexts. We draw the theoretical framework of discourse and literacy as a social practice to illustrate the potential ways these first-year English teachers talk and have talked about literacy during their time as English…

The last 30 years have witnessed a global 'curricular turn', with curricula increasingly moving from specifying particular content to specifying broad, skill-based 'learning objectives'. This paper explores the implications of this curricular turn through a critical assessment of the current state of secondary school English in Aotearoa New…

This paper reports on an instrumental case study exploring what migrant and refugee-background youth in Australia make of the critical media literacy they learn in school, and what critical media practices they use out of school. It addresses the perennial question of the relationship between school literacy learning and everyday literate lives,…

This study sought to describe secondary English teachers' experiences with text selection. Its first aim was to determine how secondary English teachers perceive the use of young adult literature (YAL) with adolescent students. The study also details factors that influenced teachers' text selections. Finally, the study describes how teachers'…

Reading is fundamental to academic success, but international reading surveys indicate current pedagogy fails a fifth of adolescents, disproportionately from lower-socioeconomic groups. This UK, mixed-method study evaluated the impact of two whole-text reading approaches on comprehension, using standardised tests. Twenty teachers of English and…

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…

The initial and ongoing professional education of teachers to prepare them to support students' literacy development warrants research attention. The importance of meeting the needs of struggling literacy learners in secondary school does not diminish as students move through the years of schooling. This paper reports on data from the 2019…

The 'knowledge turn' in curriculum studies has proved highly influential in the past two decades. But what is meant by knowledge remains both unclear and subject to contestation, particularly in relation to English as a school subject. Two recent books address the knowledge question in very different ways.

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…

Teacher workload is an important policy concern in many education systems around the world, often considered a contributory factor in teacher attrition. One aspect of workload that could be addressed is reducing the amount of written marking and feedback that teachers do. This article reports on the results of an evaluation of FLASH Marking, an…