READING TAKES YOU PLACES: A narrative exploration into Intermediate Phase English teachers' experiences with and orientations towards literature teaching

Gerber, Candice

READING TAKES YOU PLACES: A narrative exploration into Intermediate Phase English teachers' experiences with and orientations towards literature teaching

Master Thesis

2021

Abstract

The aim of this narrative study is to explore the development of five Intermediate Phase English teachers' literate habitus and its influence on their conceptions of literacy, and approaches to literature teaching and texts. Literate habitus (Gennrich & Janks, 2013) captures how a teacher's social background, personal, and professional experiences can play a role in how they negotiate literacy, texts and teaching. Drawing on new literacy studies and a sociocultural approach to literacy pedagogy, links are drawn between the development of each teacher's literate habitus, the conceptions they hold of literacy as autonomous, ideological, or some mix thereof (Gee, 2015), and their approaches to the teaching of texts. Luke and Freebody's four resources model (1999) was used to describe pedagogical choices advocated in the teachers' descriptions of their teaching. Practices involving critical and culturally sustaining pedagogies (Hall, 1998; Luke & Freebody, 1999; Hall, Janks, 2010; Clark & Fleming, 2019), were also traced. Data was collected in the form of semi-structured narrative interviews with five Intermediate Phase English teachers from a variety of backgrounds, teacher education and teaching experiences. Analysis of their narratives through a combination of thematic and discourse analysis, shows the connections between each teacher's literate habitus, their conceptions of literacy, and their described approach to literature teaching. Furthermore, the analysis revealed that the ways in which each teacher negotiated their own habitus, by either accepting, or attempting to adjust or disrupt it, had an influence how they perceived themselves as successful literature teachers. Notably, the Black participants in the study made the largest conscious effort to disrupt their habitus, as they were intent on providing their learners with access to literature learning that was more racially inclusive than their own narrated schooling experiences. Additionally, common factors influencing literature teaching were identified across the interviews, including the use of reading aloud and activities encouraging learner ownership, text relatability, and curricular and institutional limitations on teacher agency. How each teacher chose to negotiate these factors differed, largely in alignment with their literate habitus and conceptions of literacy. This study shows, therefore, that the ways in which a teacher's literate habitus is formed, entrenched, adjusted, or disrupted through their varying experiences plays a role in determining their conceptions of and approaches to literature teaching and texts, so much so that it influences the ways in which they negotiate the factors that exist in their classrooms, such as their perceptions of effective practices, the relatability of the text itself, or the restrictions placed upon their agency as a teacher.

Keywords

Education

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