This paper explores the effects of poststructuralism on the work of two English teachers and writers of classroom texts. It traces aspects of their theoretical and practical engagement with poststructuralism from an initial acceptance of what appeared to promise the possibility of a truly critical practice through ideology critique to a stance that endeavors to include a consideration of the emergence of English pedagogy as well as theories about language and meaning.

QuestionsIn considering questions asked about texts in secondary school English classrooms, the following might be read as unremarkable examples of the literal and inferential questions typically found after stories, extracts and poems in English text books for students.What is the name of the (main) character? What kind ofperson, do you think, the (main) character is?However, it seemed to us, teaching in English classrooms in Australia and the UK in the late sixties and early seventies, that the second question represented an exciting advance in thinking about the way we asked our students to engage with texts. Such a question avoided the superficial 'surface-sifting for right answers' that literal questioning seemed to produce and could, at the best of times we felt, encourage an active, sustained engagement with texts, which not only involved students in close reading but also allowed for their role in the meaning-making process to be acknowledged. It appeared to enable students to bring their own experience to bear on the text and to contribute what Britton (1983) calls the child's unparalleled 'directness of perception and emotional response'. As teachers, we saw in this the possibility of a democratic, individualising venture which would create an inclusive environment in which the responses of all students could be valued. Through personal engagement with texts, preferably those which they had chosen themselves, our students, we argued, would experience increased pleasure and enjoyment in reading and perceive the world of literary texts to be relevant to their lives. Growth model EnglishIn pedagogical terms it might be argued that we were rejecting, what increasingly in progressive English teaching circles, were perceived as the arid and elitist practices of heritage model English and its New Critical approaches to texts and embracing an amalgam of personal growth pedagogy and reader response theory made popular by such writers as Britton (1970), Dixon (1975), Moffett (1968) andRosenblatt (1970).In many classrooms, literal questions and analytical essays were being replaced by opportunities for students to demonstrate their responses to texts in more personal ways: it was argued, for example, that comprehension could be expressed (and assessed) through empathic