Teaching Literature: Text and Dialogue in the English Classroom - Paperback

by Ben Knights (Editor)

This book comprises reflections by experienced scholar teachers on the principles and practice of higher education English teaching. In approaching the subject from different angles it aims to spark insights and to foster imaginative teaching. In the era of audit, and the Teaching Excellence Framework it invites teachers to return to the sources of their own teaching knowledge. The shift from a student-centred to a research-centred paradigm has particular implications for a discipline which prides itself on its teaching, and has always had teaching and dialogue at its heart. One which also talks across the tertiary / secondary border to the cognate (though different) subject called 'English' in school. The argument which informs this book, and which is developed in the individual chapters, is that the future of the subject relies not alone upon fostering communities of 'research excellence', but on re-awakening and reviving its pedagogic traditions.

Author Biography

Ben Knights is Emeritus Professor of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Teesside, UK. Until 2011 he was Director of the UK national English Subject Centre (HEA). A graduate of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, his books include Writing Masculinities: Male Narratives in Twentieth-Century Fiction (Palgrave), From Reader to Reader: Theory, Text and Practice in the Study Group, The Listening Reader: Fiction and Poetry for Counsellors and Psychotherapists, and (as editor) Masculinities in Text and Teaching (Palgrave).