This book investigates the dynamic relationship between masculinity fiction and teaching
answering one central question. How are male teachers influenced by fictional narratives in the
construction of masculinities within education? It achieves this in three major steps: by
describing a methodological system of narrative analysis that is able to account for the
influence of a fictional text alongside a reading of interview data by focusing on a specific
cohort of male teachers in order to measure the influence of a fictional text and the literary
tropes they contain both widening and restricting perceptions of teachers and teaching. The
book demonstrates how fictional narratives and their encompassing ideologies can become a
powerful force in the shaping of male teachers professional identities. The book focuses on a
collection of 22 fictional narratives drawn from the teacher text genre. Each text describes
the world of teachers and teaching from differing perspectives in differing forms including
literary texts dramatic works such as plays or musicals feature films and television and
radio series. The teacher text is a popular and prolific genre. As part of the analysis the
book pilots an innovative methodological process hat reconciles the structural and textual
differences between fictional texts and interview data in an effort to find points of
commonality and mutual influence. Stories of Men and Teaching reveals how teaching
professionals utilise tropes found in fictional texts in chaotic and unstructured ways to
manage points of professional intensity as they arise. Key features such as legacy fear
belonging reparation and violence are identified as themes that occupy male teachers most when
considering their own identity and professional performance and each is also represented in
the fictional teacher text canon.
