How do teachers build efficacy in teaching identity and belonging through English Literature? A study of English and North American secondary literatu

Amid current socio-political contexts where questions regarding inclusive education are bound up in anti-CRT debates, my project asks: what does it mean to teach themes of identity and belonging in English literature?

What influences teachers' sense of efficacy regarding the text choices they make and the discursive practices they use to teach about such themes?

My proposed project investigates what efficacy looks like for teachers of English literature in England and the US navigating national literary traditions and contemporary political discourses around what should be taught in literature classrooms and how literature should be taught. Research studies that investigate inclusive English literature teaching are not new.

Yet, most of these studies have tended to home in on single classroom sites.

There are few examples of transnational research projects that study broader samples in terms of participant numbers and geographical contexts.

My project will fill this gap in education research by placing British and American schools in an unprecedented conversation with one another about identity and belonging.

I will conduct qualitative research through semi-structured interviews with/ lesson observations of English teachers in schools where I have connections in: London (UK), and New Orleans (US). Where English literature as a discipline is concerned, England and the US have historical points of convergence.

Where contemporary socio-political stakes around teaching about identity and belonging are concerned, England and the US also share overlaps.

These parallels merit discussion when considering the possibilities of inclusive English literature teaching in a post- 'Black Spring' context (Kelley, 2022).

My aim is to identify strategies that confident English teachers use compared to those who are less confident in teaching about identity and belonging, so that I can co-create build training materials to support British and American teachers to build such confidence.