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This paper aims to suggest a new way for structuring English teacher preparation within traditional university programs, challenging the age-old use of formal lesson plan reflections and introducing critical narratives as course texts to better understand pre-service teacher experiences. Through this reimagined English methods curriculum, the authors establish increased cohesion between practice and theory, facilitate the development of teacher reflective practice and establish methods for apprehending the emotional experience of pre-service educators.

This study of 18 pre-service English language arts students considers how teacher education programs could better emphasize socio-emotional elements of teaching by asking students to produce and engage with critical narratives that require more than just an appraisal of learning outcomes of direct instruction, but merge critical inquiry, ethical teaching considerations, self-reflection and perceptions of practice.

The findings indicate that when compared with traditional lesson plan reflections, critical narrative reflections of field experiences increase student focus on emotional aspects of teaching, provide a more nuanced lens into emotional experiences and establish a more complex conception of the teaching practice.

This curricular design challenges the prevailing ways that English pre-service educators are understood and taught through a reimagined understanding and application of narrative writing as course texts.

In The Great Derangement, the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh examines the present inability to understand and represent the scale and violence of the environmental crisis. The book is a passionate awakening call for collective action to drive change, with Ghosh clearly identifying the limits of the present framework of values, which inhibits politicians, industrialists and economists from moving towards a truly sustainable civilization. In the Anthropocene, non-human and post-human factors are raising questions about the concept of a silent Nature that can be domesticated for human advantage and the perspective of continuous progress – both of which have dominated the modern age. Nevertheless, the detailed scientific analysis of the violation of the planet’s limited capacities continues to be refuted, triggering irrational, short-term utilitarian behaviours which are preventing the fundamental changes required for the transition to sustainable development. Artists, philosophers and writers can play an invaluable role in reframing our ways of thinking, filling the gap between scientific knowledge and emotional perception. Pioneering artistic experiments are appearing all over the world, from both well-established and emerging artists, and through collective processes, and this cultural movement is setting the scene for a new wave of eco-entrepreneurs driven by the altruistic mission of saving the planet. As has happened in many previous crises, it is again in the hands of artists to redefine how we perceive ourselves and so to support the emergence of new ideas, new learning, and finally to shape society and the economy around a renewed sense of the future for humankind on Earth.