Re-narrating grammar instruction: addressing teachers’ narrative understanding of language use

This study examines teaching about grammar and language use in secondary schools through a narrative lens. The author analyses narrative episodes in interviews with three secondary English language arts teachers in the USA to identify patterns in stories of teaching about language use. Findings show teachers with vastly different life experiences teaching in different contexts orient to the same dominant school language narrative that requires students to accommodate the prejudicial expectations for language use held by a wider society. The author argues the maintenance of traditional school language teaching, despite more than 60 years of research in educational linguistics showing its ineffectiveness, stems from the strength of this dominant school language narrative. Ultimately, the author proposes an adoption of narrative methods in working with teachers to actively re-write the dominant school language narrative; foregrounding a critical approach with the goal of addressing social inequities through language use.