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Purpose This study aims to explore how teachers changed literature instruction in English language arts (ELA) classrooms following personal loss, and identifies factors influencing those changes. The author argues teachers regulated their responses to literature according to emotional rules they perceived to be associated with the teaching profession. Understanding teachers’ responses helps educators, teacher educators and educational researchers consider what conditions and supports may be required for teachers and students to share emotions related to loss in authentic ways in ELA classrooms. Design/methodology/approach To examine changes teachers made in literature instruction following personal loss, the author conducted a thematic analysis of 80 questionnaire responses. Findings The author found teachers changed literature instruction related to three areas: teachers’ relationship to students, teachers’ instruction surrounding texts and teachers’ reader responses. Responses highlighted how teachers adhered to emotional rules, including a perception of teachers as authorities and caretakers of children. Teachers considered literature instruction to require maintaining focus on texts, and avoided emotional response unless it aided textual comprehension. Originality/value Scholars have argued for literature instruction inclusive of both loss experiences and also emotional response, with particular focus on students’ loss experiences. This study focuses on teachers’ experiences and responses to literature following loss, highlighting factors that influence, and at times inhibit, teachers’ authentic sharing of experiences and emotions. The author argues teachers require support to bring loss experiences into literature instruction as they navigate emotional response within the relational dynamics of the classroom.

Writing studies scholarship has long understood the need for context-based studies of student writing. Few studies, however, have closely examined how students use intertextual relationships in the context of learning to compose argumentative essays. Drawing on a 17-day argumentative writing unit in a ninth-grade humanities classroom, this article uses the concept of "intertextual trace" to explore how students make intertextual connections in their writing and negotiate the social dynamics of classroom learning. Intertextual analysis of students' final essays revealed overlapping tracings and resonances across multiple resources, showing how and the ways in which students create arguments and respond to exigencies within a classroom setting. Analysis of thematic, structural, and lexical tracings also showed students making intertextual connections through repeating, reordering, responding to, and extending the texts offered by their teacher and peers. In so doing, students served as curators-shaping ideas, curricular offerings, and language into final argumentative essays-who were able to develop agency in and through their writing.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report findings from a study of preservice teacher (PST) beliefs about teaching English language arts (ELA). Design/methodology/approach A survey was administered to 56 preservice secondary ELA teachers at three universities to measure their beliefs about curriculum, authority and competition in schools. This study explores the beliefs of 17 of these PSTs who participated in an additional interview following up on six of the survey responses. Findings Although the survey forced a choice between various levels of agreeing and disagreeing, interview responses revealed that PSTs wrestled with tensions in what they believed about instructional and curricular choices. When describing situations that influenced their beliefs, they referenced situations from field placements, coursework and their own experiences as students. These tensions reflected the PSTs’ internally conflicting beliefs across their perceived binaries of teaching English. Originality/value This study suggests that these beliefs are formed in part by experiences in teacher preparation programs, particularly in field placements. However, even though PSTs recognized their internally conflicting beliefs, they understood them and their subsequent actions as dichotomous, rather than on a continuum. This study has implications for teacher educators; by understanding PSTs’ tendencies to understand their beliefs in binaries, teacher educators can provide reflective opportunities for PSTs to problematize these dichotomies and look for teaching identities and practices that are more nuanced.