Research: Affecting Social Class Literacy: Classed Emotions in Preservice Teachers’ Lives, Literature Analysis, and Future Teaching

In the field of English education, views of working-class individuals matter not only in terms of teacher beliefs about their students but also for literature instruction that reflects classed lives in texts like A Raisin in the Sun and The Great Gatsby . Without an explicit, critical discourse on social class (Jones & Vagle, 2013), dominant views of working-class people remain intact, especially in the middle-class institution of schooling (Vagle & Jones, 2012). This study examines the effects of implementing a social class literacy (SCL) curriculum featuring classed feelings in a young adult literature course designed for English language arts preservice teachers. Findings show preservice teachers capably applying SCL to literary interpretations and to their lives and how doing so affected their ideas about future teaching.