Selected Representations of Teachers and Teaching in Twentieth-century Anglo-Irish Fiction and Memoir: Some Literary-critical and Pedagogical Explorations

This paper has two complementary objectives. After providing some theoretical perspectives on fiction generally, and on the teaching of fiction more specifically, it firstly evaluates, from a literary-critical perspective, a reasonably representative selection of the portrayal of teachers and teaching in some twentieth-century Anglo-Irish fiction and memoir. That initial, literary-critical evaluation of the texts, while focusing on aspects of both form and theme, seeks also to uncover the fascinating spectrum of models of teaching represented, some benign, but many quite dark and even, to a degree, sinister. The second half of the paper then suggests a range of pedagogical strategies which could be used, in the sixth-form classroom, to explore the richness and complexities of those portraits and of the contexts against which they are written. That in-depth pedagogical exploration is closely informed by the specifications for AS and A-level English teaching provided by two representative Examination Boards – the Council for Curriculum Examinations and Assessment (CCEA), which is based in Northern Ireland, and the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) – and the exploration thus is linked closely to the demands and contexts for sixth-form English teaching both in Northern Ireland and in the UK as a whole.