Teaching fiction in the age of measurability: Teachers’ perspectives on the hows and whats in Swedish L1 classrooms

Abstract

Studies have shown a slow but steady change in reading habits among students in Swedish upper secondary schools. The frequency with which they read fiction on a daily basis has decreased and reading comprehension has declined. Consequently, Swedish politicians and school authorities have taken measures to reverse these trends. Fiction reading has traditionally been a part of the Swedish subject, but whereas the course syllabi in the upper secondary school stipulate that fiction be taught, they pay little attention to how. This study examines how teachers describe the process of literary education. In doing so, it suggests that monitoring students is central to teachers' didactic decisions, and that both teachers and students regard printed books more highly than both audiobooks and e-books. The data was collected using two focus groups interviews with upper secondary school teachers of Swedish, seven female and five male, age 28 to 61. The analysis was grounded in a phenomenographic examination of experience, allowing themes to emerge through iterative coding. The findings show that the teachers' view on literary education is associated with instrumentality and teacher-centered activities-the discussions circled around practical aspects, with no mention of teaching objectives, approaches, or literary experience.

Planning for progression? Norwegian L1 teachers’ conception of literature teaching and literary competence throughout lower secondary education

“…There has been a multitude of studies on literature education published the last couple of decades, in Scandinavia as well as internationally. Some focus broadly on L1 paradigms and discourses (Elf & Kaspersen, 2012;Krogh, 2012;Saywer & Van de Ven, 2016;Scholes, 1998;Westbury, 2000), others more specifically on literature instruction, discussing its purpose (Fialho, 2019;Wintersparv et al, 2019;Zabka, 2016), theoretical framework (Abraham, 2016;Witte et al, 2012;Yimwilay, 2015), curriculum (Gourvennec et al, 2020;Witte & Samihaian, 2013), textbooks (Rørbech & Skyggebjerg, 2020), pedagogical praxis (Fialho et al, 2012;Gourvennec, 2017;Sønneland, 2019;Van de Ven & Doecke, 2011a), or effect (Koek et al, 2019;Schrijvers et al 2019). We will return to some of these perspectives and specific studies below, in the section on theoretical framework.…”

“…International research has shown that there is no consensus about the aims of literary education (Fialho, 2019;Wintersparv et al, 2019), and teachers working at the same school having entirely different views on the aims and function of literature teaching is seen as "typical" (Witte, 2011, p. 100). Such findings can be seen as a natural consequence of what Saywer and van de Ven (2006) call L1 education's polyparadigmatic characteristics, where it is supposed to fulfil a variety of objectives and aims, which allows for several concurrent, competing, and interleaved ideas about what L1 education is and should be.…”

“…professional conversations are considered a "luxury" (Parr, 2011, p. 70). It may come as no surprise, then, that in a Scandinavian context, teachers use different objectives as points of departure for literature instruction (Wintersparv et al, 2019), and that their justifications for literary education tend to be vague and obscure, resting on everyday discourses rather than scholarly and theoretical knowledge (Penne, 2012). Furthermore, studies by Tengberg (2011) and Fatheddine (2018) indicate that teachers' didactical practices deviate from curricular intentions.…”

The Role of Aesthetics in Swedish Literature Studies: A Survey beyond Measurability of the Teaching of Literature

“…The development toward instrumentality and measurability is accompanied by ideology critique at the expense of aesthetics (Miller, 2002), which resembles Weber's (1958) claim that scholarly progress has removed the sense of sacredness and ultimate meaning. The instrumental teaching approach is supported by results from a recent study on literature studies (Wintersparv et al, 2019). The study formed the first part of a larger project, in which the current survey aims to further explore the findings, which support those from other Swedish surveys (Ewald, 2007;Johansson, 2014;Lundström et al, 2011), representing a reading mode far from one involving the aesthetics and the Reading Experience, which, De-Malach and Poyas (2018) maintain, is a dominant criterion for a text's appropriateness for teaching.…”

“…Thus, the answer to the negative development why students' reading habits may be sought in a range of factors, of which this study aims to examine the part represented by L1 teachers in Swedish upper secondary schools. In a study by Wintersparv et al (2019) the results suggested that monitoring of students was central to teachers' didactic decision, that there was a hierarchy among both teachers and students with regard to the modality of the text, that instrumentality characteristic of literature studies, that the teaching of literary devices was a norm among the participants, and that literature studies was sometimes made a means to ends in other school subjects. Drawing from these results, I wanted to investigate the teachers' intentions and their aim in teaching literature, as well as their approaches.…”