The Rhetoric of Teaching: Understanding the Dynamics of Holocaust Narratives in an English Classroom

This volume examines the nature and influence of oral teacher narratives in a single instructional unit. The analyses focus on narrative data that the author generated during a 6-week thematic unit that was taught by a third year teacher in a public middle school. The topic of the Holocaust was chosen because it was well suited for the exploration of oral narrative; the author examines how one teacher rhetorically shaped 'knowing about the Holocaust' in her language arts classroom. Because teaching is analyzed through a rhetorical lens, the book is situated at the intersection of classroom discourse studies, rhetoric and composition, and sociolinguistic approaches to narrative.