'Big fans', 'experts', and those 'in need of a challenge': teacher attitudes to 'manga and anime kids' in the secondary English classroom

Manga and anime may no longer be the ‘new kids’ in wider media culture but they are relatively new texts for study in the secondary English classroom. Manga and anime support teachers in their work towards inclusive classroom practices and build multimodal literacies but the cartoony face of the medium belies a depth of analysis required and layers of sensitivity needed in navigating these texts with students. How do English teachers respond to the emergence of manga and anime texts, translated and dubbed in English, when these texts become part of their classroom curriculum and culture? This paper uses a case study of two metropolitan high schools to explore how unexpected text choices brought about deeper insights for these English teachers in the ways they perceived their students’ identities, as readers and consumers of manga and anime texts, within a Quality Teaching and learning environment (NSW DET, 2003; Prumm & Patruno, 2016).