Curriculum decisions about teaching literature in high school

• Main Author: Reed, Brenda
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-2004
• Subjects: Curricula; Curriculum development; Language arts; Secondary education; Teaching
• ISBN: 0612923444; 9780612923447

In Ontario the Ministry of Education's Trillium List of approved textbooks does not specify the literature required for study in Ontario's high-school English classrooms. Within this freedom-of-literary-choice context this study investigates which literary texts are studied in Grades 10 and 11 in two Ontario District School Boards and inquires into how and why this literature was selected for classroom study. The purpose of the research is to gain insights into the types of support that may best assist English teachers in the literature selection aspect of their curriculum planning work. The survey in this research project is modeled on the work of Altmann, Johnston and Mackey (1998) who conducted a similar survey in Edmonton in the mid-1990s, and the narrative inquiry approach to the project is based on the work of Clandinin and Connelly (1990, 1999, 2000) who have written extensively on using narrative inquiry to understand the experiences of teachers. The findings indicate that English teachers spend a considerable amount of time deciding on the literature they will bring in to their classrooms and that their decisions are based on multiple influences, including the previous classroom experiences of English teachers with particular texts. The survey data indicates that the literature taught in the high-school curriculum in eastern Ontario is similar to that taught in both the United States (Applebee, 1993) and in Alberta (Altmann et al.), and that the new anthologies listed on The Trillium List are widely used for the selection of short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)