Exploring dialogic teaching of GCSE English Literature within increasingly regulated school environments

Dialogic pedagogy is well-established in English education research; however, it is typically enacted within highly regulated, assessment-driven classroom environments. This article offers a practice-led, autoethnographic account of teaching GCSE English Literature in a hyper-regulated secondary school context. It examines how institutional norms of surveillance and compliance shape students’ willingness to interpret. Drawing on classroom episodes, including changes to seating arrangements and exploration of patriarchal power in Romeo and Juliet, this study reframes current dialogic teaching as a method enacted under conditions of constraint. It explores how classroom conditions mediate whether context functions as sanctioned knowledge within a regulated school system, or as an independent critical lens, freely explored by each student. While grounded in the terminology of GCSE assessment in the UK, the analysis contributes to international conversations about teaching literature dialogically within increasingly regulated school environments.