The teaching of literature

Irene Pieper

Pädagogische Hochschule Heidelberg

Symposion Deutschdidaktik

Strasbourg, 17/10/06

Aspects• Literary education and the notion of „literarische

Bildung“• Curriculum developments and central purposes of

literary education• Primary and secondary education: From learning with

literature to learning about literature?• Canon and criteria of text selection• Reading literature, reading literacy and competences• Reading literature, assessment and „literarische

Bildung“

Literarische Bildung

Participation in cultural life

Personal development and enrichment within society

Notionof elite

CULTURE – culture

Canon

diverse cultural forms

Teaching literature

cultural techniquesreadingcontentformliterary historymedia

?!

Domain of social

subjectivity

meaningfulness

Curriculum developments since the late 1970s

• Conception of language: pragmatics; communication

• Diversification in literary studies• Conception of text: literary texts, pragmatic

texts; other media• Focus on learning / the learner• Shift: encourage students to read / reading

for personal enrichment in context

Primary and secondary education: From learning with literature to

learning about literature?• Primary school: learning to read, arts,

ethics

• Secondary education: traces of literary studies

• Adequate reception of literary texts?

Canon and criteria of text selection

• Critique of the notion of canon

• Exemplary texts

• Criteria: students‘ interests; introduction to different genres / to literary history; themes; pluralism; pragmatic reasons..

Reading literature, reading literacy and competences

• Reading literacy – literary competences?

• Progression in interpreting literary texts?

• Scaling?

• Concepts of competences – theoretical framework / branch of literary studies

Reading literature, assessment and literarische Bildung

• Problems of assessment

• Exemplary texts

• Context knowledge

• Tension between general aims of education and operationalisation of competences, evaluation

Outlook

• Double route: reading literacy – culture of reading

• LE and foreign languages in dialogue

• Cross-cultural perspectives

Key Questions

• How can the specific educational benefit of dealing with literature be laid down in a European framework?

• How can literature be addressed within an LE-framework so as to acknowledge different national traditions?

• How can literature be addressed within an LE-framework so that both cultural memory and the present cultural diversity are reflected?