(The Missing) Mirrors and Windowsin the English Classroom : Representation and Diversity in Novels Used in Upper Secondary School

Sammanfattning: This essay aims to investigate representation and diversity in novels used in the English teaching inupper secondary school, and whether teachers take representation into account when choosing whatnovels to work with. A web survey was used to ask 71 teachers of English open questions regardingwhat novels they use in their teaching and why. The results demonstrate that the majority of the usednovels depict normative protagonists and settings, although there is some diversity and representationof different genders, races, ages, abilities and settings. It is also shown in the results that the majorityof the responding teachers do not think about representation when choosing what novels to workwith, while some respondents do indicate that they take aspects of representation into account. Theresults are discussed by drawing on ideas about representation, diversity and an intersectional genderpedagogy from Rudine Sims Bishop and Nina Lykke.