Student teachers beliefs about the integration of literary studies and literature didactics through a cooperating seminar
Submitted by:
Felix Zühlsdorf
Abstract:
The two-phase-system of German teacher education does not provide sufficient preconditions to integrate different areas of professional knowledge such as content knowledge (CK) or pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) (Cortina/ Thames 2013).
Consequently, the Department of German Literature at the University of Jena has introduced a seminar concept designed for student teachers to connect literary studies and literature didactics by allowing for two lecturers from those areas to teach together. The aim is to develop Topic-Specific professional knowledge to show that there are specific didactic concepts to teach certain topics and structures (Gess-Newsome 2015).
The qualitative study investigates the ability of future teachers to see the necessity of integrating these two domains having attended such a seminar.
The study is designed as a pre-post-study using guided interviews as a form of semi-structured interview.
The framework of themes to be explored consists of two elements:
1. What do students think that CK and PCK, as taught at university, can achieve in their formation as L1-teachers?
2. Ball (2000) identified analysing tasks as “opportunities to learn content that are situated in the contexts in which subject matter is used”. As a result, students analyse tasks from textbooks on literary text to see if they are able to identify the importance of using criteria from both domains.
Students’ statements from before (t1) and after the seminar (t2) are analysed using qualitative content analysis to see if there is any development. An initial pilot of t1 (n=30) shows that the way students see CK and PCK in teacher education affects their expectations of such a seminar. In relation to the analysis of tasks, it was observed that student teachers focus on the methods used in class and see the demands of tasks but are not able to identify whether the tasks fit the special text. If the aim of the seminar is to emphasize the importance of content knowledge, student teachers should learn to see the connection between tasks and content.
The presentation will cover the results of t2 to demonstrate this development.
Ball, Deborah L. (2000): Bridging Practices. Intertwining content and pedagogy in teaching and learning to teach. In: Journal of Teacher Education 51 (3), p. 241-247.
Cortina, Kai S.; Thames, Mark Hoover (2013): Teacher Education in Germany. In: Mareike Kunter, Jürgen Baumert, Werner Blum, Uta Klusmann, Stefan Krauss und Michael Neubrand (ed.): Cognitive activation in the mathematics classroom and professional competence of teachers. Results from the COACTIV project. New York: Springer (Mathematics teacher education, 8), p. 49–62.
Gess-Newsome, Julie (2015): A Model of teacher professional knowledge and skill including PCK. Results of the thinking from the PCK Summit. In: Amanda Berry, Patricia Friedrichsen und John Loughran (ed.): Re-examining pedagogical content knowledge in science education. New York: Routledge (Teaching and learning in science series), p. 28–42.
Keywords: teacher education, teaching literature, pedagogical content knowledge, tasks