Research

Edited by Dennis Yeo, Ann Ang & Suzanne S. Choo

Written by education practitioners, researchers and specialists, The World, The Text and The Classroom: Teaching Literature in Singapore Secondary Schools gives voice to the Literature teacher and spotlights innovative strategies, bringing together text, world and student. Blending both educational theory and pedagogical practice, this collection of 19 papers seek to address three questions: “What innovative pedagogies can be used to develop student voice and engagement with the world beyond the Literature classroom?”, “How can we make Literature accessible and relevant to the students of the digital age?” and “How can we expand our students’ understanding of the world and the human condition through the literary texts that we teach?”. Recent innovations in pedagogical approaches, including the new directions of the 2019 Literature in English Syllabus make it necessary to take stock of the possibilities of the Literature classroom. This, coupled with evolving global mind-sets and attitudes, set the context within which teachers now go about the complex task of teaching Literature in the Singapore classroom. The product of the real experiences of teachers from a range of schools and classroom contexts in Singapore, this book will prove a practical and valuable resource that will inform the teaching and learning in the classroom.

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By Suzanne S. Choo

Teaching Ethics through Literature provides in-depth understanding of a new and exciting shift in the fields of English education, Literature, Language Arts, and Literacy through exploring their connections with ethics. The book pioneers an approach to integrating ethics in the teaching of literature. This has become increasingly relevant and necessary in our globally connected age. A key feature of the book is its integration of theory and practice. It begins with a historical survey of the emergence of the ethical turn in Literature education and grounds this on the ideas of influential Ethical Philosophers and Literature scholars. Most importantly, it provides insights into how teachers can engage students in ethical concerns and apply practices of Ethical Criticism using rich on-the-ground case studies of high school Literature teachers in Australia, Singapore and the United States.

Link: https://www.routledge.com/Teaching-Ethics-through-Literature-The-Significance-of-Ethical-Criticism/Choo/p/book/9780367262266

Edited by Chin Ee Loh, Suzanne Choo and Catherine Beavis

The continual rise of English as a global lingua franca has meant that English literature, both as a discipline and as a tool in ESL and EFL classrooms, is being used in varied ways outside the inner circle of English. This edited collection provides an overview of English literature education in the Asia-Pacific in global times, bringing to international attention a rich understanding of the trends, issues and challenges specific to nations within the Asia-Pacific region. Comprising contributions from Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam, the collection addresses the diversity of learners in different national, cultural and teaching contexts. In doing so, it provides insights into historical and current trends in literature education, foregrounds specific issues and challenges in policymaking and implementation, presents practical matters concerning text selection, use of literature in the language classroom, innovative practices in literature education, and raises pressing and important questions about the nature, purpose and importance of literature education in global times.

Link: https://www.routledge.com/Literature-Education-in-the-Asia-Pacific-Policies-Practices-and-Perspectives/Loh-Choo-Beavis/p/book/9780367272791

by Suzanne S. Choo

The purpose of this book is restore the centrality of pedagogy in governing the ways literary texts are received, experienced, and interpreted by students in the classroom. Utilizing a method of pedagogical criticism, it provides an account of core approaches to teaching literature that have emerged across history and the conceptual values informing these approaches. More importantly, Reading the World discusses how these values have been shaped by broader global forces and key movements in the discipline of English Literature. To varying degrees, these approaches are aimed at cultivating a hospitable imagination so that students may more fully engage with multiple others in the world. Given the reality of an increasingly interconnected twenty-first century, literature pedagogy plays a vital role in schools by demonstrating how world, global, and cosmopolitan approaches to teaching literature can facilitate the prioritization of the other, challenge us to think about how we can be accountable to multiple others in the world, and push us to continually problematize the boundaries of our openness towards the other.

​This book won the 2014 AESA (American Educational Studies Association) Critics Choice Award.

Link: https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/22313