Teachers’ epistemic beliefs about literature and literature education
Submitted by:
Marie Lessing-Sattari
Abstract:
Teachers’ epistemic beliefs are related to teachers’ professional behaviour and practice as they serve as filters or guides for the perception and interpretation of information plus experience and thereby may influence decision-making processes in education. We assume that epistemic beliefs are organized in integrated systems, are implicit and explicit. They are activated by context demands and have individual as well as collective values, shared by teachers as stakeholders in a specific profession-based and organizationally framed space of experience (cf. Fives/Buehl 2012). In our research project Literary Understanding and Metaphor (LiMet) we have carried out interviews with teachers that are analyzed from the theoretical background just sketched. We aim at the identification of domain specific personal epistemologies, e.g. object-related poetological beliefs and beliefs about teaching and learning in the field of literature education in lower secondary education.
The purpose of the submitted paper is to present results of our research on beliefs about literature and literature education in interview data. The problem-centered interview focusses on metaphor as an exemplary literary phenomenon as well as a common subject in literature education and stimulates a decision-making and preparation process. Interview data of sixteen teachers, teaching German language and literature in a sixth or ninth grade (‘Gymnasium’ [higher academic track] and middle schools) have been collected. The assumptions about beliefs mentioned above led us to the documentary method as method for investigation. Framed by the sociology of knowledge this method offers an approach to investigate implicit and explicit as well as individual and socially shared orientations and beliefs (cf. Bohnsack et al. 2010). In the paper presentation we differentiate components of belief systems about literature and literature education. We aim at presenting characteristic combinations together with underlying orientations (i.e. pedagogical or content/object-related orientation) and relate these insights to spaces of experience with regard to different forms of schooling and grades.
The paper is part of the project Literary Understanding and Metaphor (LiMet), funded by the German Research Foundation (WI 4237/2-1), TU Dresden and University of Hildesheim/Germany, Dorothee Wieser, Irene Pieper, Bianca Strutz, Marie Lessing-Sattari.
Bohnsack, Ralf et al. (Hg.) (2010): Qualitative analysis and documentary method in international education research. Opladen: Barbara Budrich.
Fives, Helenrose; Buehl, Michelle M. (2012): Spring Cleaning for the “Messy” Construct of Teachers’ Beliefs. What are they? Which have been examined? What can they tell us? In: Karen R. Harris et al. (Hg.): Educational Psychology Handbook. Vol. 2 Individual differences and cultural and contextual factors. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, S. 471-499.