English literature teachers’ pedagogical choices at upper secondary level: narratives of Mauritian teachers.

Abstract

Teacher decision-making is of particular significance in a world increasingly influenced by productivity and accountability mechanisms that simultaneously delineate and constrain teachers’ roles in education. Investigating how teachers make pedagogical choices and how they account for these within their teaching contexts offers a means to explore the dynamic factors that influence the way they teach, and to identify potential relationships between subject specificities and signature pedagogies. Given that English literature is often called upon to reinvent itself in terms of its focus and relevance to contemporary learners, teachers of this subject confront the need to reconcile pedagogical objectives with overarching normalising contextual mechanisms. While there is a rich body of literature on the processes guiding decision making, there is limited empirical research on pedagogical choices in the teaching of English literature. This study explored the pedagogical choices of eight English literature teachers at upper secondary level in the Republic of Mauritius. A qualitative approach was used to identify the different pedagogical approaches and strategies and explore the various factors influencing these choices through an interpretivist paradigm. Narrative inquiry provided deep insight into the pedagogical choices and the rationales teachers ascribe to them. The research participants were co-constructors of knowledge and their voices and experiences were foregrounded through the generation of rich, thick data. Individual interviews, classroom observations, vignette discussions, instructional resources and the researcher’s log provided a nuanced perspective on the phenomenon of pedagogical choice. A grounded approach was adopted for data analysis, with the first level being the production of narratives based on the different data sources, while the second consisted of a cross-case comparative analysis of themes across the eight narratives. The findings indicate that pedagogical choices at the level of planning, instruction and assessment are made in complex interactions amongst intrinsic, curricular, school and external influences. Furthermore, choice in the classroom marks the intersections between teacher beliefs, teacher knowledge, teacher efficacy and teacher agency in relation to the demands of their profession. Pedagogical choices not only impacted on the learning context, but also revealed the school climate and the systemic affordances or restrictions that teachers face, as well as their reactions. Factors such as personal beliefs about the subject as well as pedagogy, subject content and pedagogical content knowledge, experience, a supportive administrative system and leadership could encourage some teachers to venture out of their comfort zone and take pedagogical “risks”. Making pedagogical choices could be also construed as statements of intent, and could reveal ideological and pedagogical positionings which could equally be nuanced by power dynamics. These impact at different levels and moments on the pedagogical choices teachers make, bringing forth elements of hope, anxiety and risk. The thesis proposes that pedagogical choices and stances exist within a continuum. Given these dynamic interactions, trends such as a pedagogy of compliance, a pedagogy of resistance and a pedagogy of compromise can be defined. The findings suggest that teachers could find themselves at different points across the continuum at different points in time and that such positionings are often negotiated through their understanding of freedoms and ‘unfreedoms’ in making pedagogical choices. Few studies have considered the construction of freedom of pedagogical choice and the way it is experienced by teachers and used for a variety of purposes. This study thus contributes to a deeper understanding of how pedagogical choices are made in the classroom and the active role teachers play in the process. Given these findings, it is important for teachers to become more mindful of the conditions under which they make specific pedagogical choices, and the way these become part of their repertoire of pedagogical moves.