Constructing the subject : literature, teachers and curriculum change

Literature, the reading and study of texts, has for a century occupied a central place within subject English, as English itself has within schools. Yet recent years have seen a state of crisis, as cultural studies movements and ideological shifts have challenged and undermined long standing assumptions about the nature of literary study and the value of the subject in the curriculum. This study takes the instance of the specialist subject senior Literature as a case in point for exploring the processes of curriculum change. It considers the ways in which the subject was reread and reconstructed by teachers in the context of externally driven change, and the ways in which teachers felt they were required themselves to change.