Literary text choices of teachers of Year 11 English

Abstract

t is of interest to know why secondary English teachers select the literary texts they do at Year 11, the first year of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). It is also of interest to know whether these texts meet the needs and interests of the students. There is very little research that sits at the nexus of student, teacher, and text. There is a general trend in international research that indicates that teachers tend to select one text to teach within their classrooms and tend to make conservative choices when high stakes assessment is involved. This is of interest when best practice in New Zealand suggests that students and teachers co-construct learning in an interactive and dialogic environment. The first part of the research required English teachers in the Auckland and Northland regions to complete an online questionnaire about what literary texts they selected, and why they selected them. This was followed up by interviews of three teachers. The purpose of the interviews was to get an in depth understanding of why the literary texts were selected. Focus group interviews of the students in the English teachers' Year 11 classes occurred also. This was to understand what the students thought of the texts and whether they considered the texts to meet their needs and interests. The key factors within the texts were examined in terms of what was perceived to be of interest to both the teachers and the students. The findings indicated that firstly, there was a conservative approach to text selection, and while some texts were more contemporary, the contemporary texts were conservative in terms of content. Secondly, there was a mismatch between teachers' perceptions of students as non-readers and students describing themselves as readers whose interests and needs went beyond the literary texts in the classroom. Thirdly, because teachers held the view that students were non-readers, they tended to select texts on the basis of encouraging students to read. The teachers focussed on what they themselves perceived as high interest factors in the texts rather than scaffolding the learning or allowing students to choose what texts they were interested in themselves. The findings indicated that while the interviewed teachers were extremely passionate about teaching, they tended to select texts based on assumptions of students' interests, reading levels, and their own preference for texts. There was no indication that students were asked what they were interested in regarding literary texts.