Research for Teachers

When I first became Head of Department, one of the first things I decided to do was audit our English curriculum from Middle School through High School. At the time, I was mostly focused on alignment. I wanted to see the progression of skills, genres, and assessment types across year levels.

What I did not expect was what I noticed when I looked at the texts themselves.

Nearly every core text we taught came from the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom.

Some texts explored cultures outside of those countries. We taught novels set in Afghanistan, Africa, or Asia. But even then, many of those stories were still written through Western perspectives by Western authors.

I remember sitting with the curriculum documents spread across my desk and realizing that, despite working in an international school with students from all over the world, our literary perspectives were surprisingly narrow.

That realization forced me to confront a difficult question:

• Whose stories were we prioritizing?

• And perhaps more importantly:

• Whose voices were missing?

At first, I think I viewed diversity in literature somewhat superficially. If a novel explored another culture or included diverse characters, I considered that sufficient. But over time, I began realizing that representation is not only about setting or character identity. Authorship matters too.

Who gets to tell stories matters?

Research on culturally responsive teaching suggests that students engage more deeply when learning connects meaningfully to their cultural identities and lived experiences (Ladson-Billings, 1995). Literature is not simply academic content. It also shapes belonging, identity, and students’ understanding of whose experiences are valued within schools.

I also began thinking more carefully about the difference between exposure and authenticity. A story about a culture is not necessarily the same as a story emerging from within that culture. That distinction does not mean authors cannot write outside their own experiences. But it does mean that curriculum design requires intentional reflection about perspective, power, and whose voices dominate literary spaces.

The more I explored this issue, the more I realized how deeply Western literary canons continue to shape international education. In many schools, including my own at the time, texts from the UK and North America were often treated as the “default” center of literary study, while texts from other regions functioned as occasional additions or thematic supplements.

This was not the result of malicious intent. Much of it emerged from familiarity, teacher comfort, resource availability, and longstanding traditions about what counts as “important” literature.

But curriculum choices are never neutral.

Research on multicultural and culturally responsive curriculum suggests that students’ engagement and sense of belonging are strengthened when schools intentionally include diverse cultural perspectives and challenge dominant narratives within traditional curricula (Aronson & Laughter, 2016).

As a department, we began having more intentional conversations about our text selection.

We asked difficult questions:

• Which voices dominate our curriculum?
• Which regions and perspectives are consistently missing?
• Are we diversifying only settings while maintaining largely Western authorship?
• Are diverse texts central to learning or simply occasional additions?

The process was not simple.

Diversifying curriculum meaningfully requires more than replacing one novel with another. Teachers need time to read new texts, evaluate literary quality, redesign units, build assessment materials, and develop confidence teaching unfamiliar cultural contexts. There are also tensions between maintaining canonical works and expanding representation.

I do not think the goal is to eliminate traditionally studied literature altogether. Shakespeare, Orwell, and Fitzgerald still offer rich opportunities for analysis and discussion. But I no longer believe they should dominate the literary landscape students encounter throughout their schooling.

Students deserve literature that reflects the complexity of the world they actually live in.

They deserve stories written from multiple perspectives, voices, and cultural traditions. They deserve opportunities to see themselves reflected in literature and opportunities to encounter experiences far beyond their own.

Most importantly, they deserve curricula that are intentionally constructed rather than inherited uncritically.

That curriculum audit changed the way I think about literary study. It reminded me that every text selection communicates something about whose voices are valued, whose experiences are centered, and whose stories are considered worthy of study.

And those messages matter far more than we sometimes realize.

References

Aronson, B., & Laughter, J. (2016). The theory and practice of culturally relevant education: A synthesis of research across content areas. Review of Educational Research, 86(1), 163–206. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654315582066

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312032003465