Exploring pedagogical choice design through writing Interactive Fiction

Drawing upon data gathered as part of a PhD research project exploring the affordances of Interactive Fiction in secondary school English lessons at an inner-city secondary academy in England, this paper responds to the following question: How can producing works of Interactive Fiction (IF) enhance a teacher’s understanding of the role played by choice in the L1 English classroom? Writing from a New Materialist perspective, I map a “line of flight” that emerged from the introduction of IF into my practice, focusing on the ways in which IF affected my understanding of choice and pedagogical choice design. Passages from works of IF written during the research are used to support the mapping of this line of flight, as are data relating to the classroom-usage of IF. In mapping this line of flight, I identify several choice types and explore their pedagogical significance. For example, I consider the significance of focus choices, tangle choices, meta-narrative choices, language choices and task choices. To conclude, I discuss how these choice types can support teachers to reflect upon and develop their teaching practice.