Assessing Literature and Reading Education in German-speaking Lower Secondary Schools via a Mixed-Methods Design: Teacher priorities and objectives, student motivations, and classroom practices
Submitted by:
Andrea Bertschi-Kaufmann
Abstract:
Following the 2000 PISA study, curriculum development in reading and literature education has seen considerable shifts in Swiss and German schools: reading has come to be assessed and conceptualized in terms of its cognitive dimensions and in terms of reading skills. Additionally, a turn towards outcome orientation can be observed in the education systems of the German-speaking countries and beyond. (Pieper 2015). However, common concepts of literary education cannot easily accommodate these shifts.
Teachers’ objectives and priorities are not well researched for the different types of secondary schools. Also, there is little understanding of how they relate to students’ perceptions and motivations, as well as to actual classroom practices.
Those interconnections are in the focus of our binational Swiss and German research project TAMoLi – Texts, Activities and Motivations in Literature Education. We use a mixed-methods design (Ivankova et al. 2006) to assess the perspectives of teachers and students (60 classes from five German-speaking cantons of Switzerland and 60 classes from Lower Saxony/Germany, approximately 1200 students per country, 8th grade). The design includes questionnaires (based on a model of paradigms in literature education; Witte & Sâmihăian, 2013), standardised assessment tests, reading protocols, video recordings, and interviews.
We use questionnaires to gather information about teachers’ objectives and priorities in their teaching of literature and reading, their choice of texts, their teaching activities, and their perception of students’ motivation. Additionally, the teachers are requested to track their use of texts in the classroom over a period of 5 months. On the side of the students, we assess self-concept in reading, reading motivation, and reading for leisure via questionnaire. Based on our quantitative data, we select a sub-sample of 9 teachers for a qualitative in-depth video study plus interview.
Quantitative data collection will be complete in January (Switzerland) and March (Germany) 2017, qualitative data collection in June 2017.
Our paper is going to present first results, related to the quantitative study. The scope and limits for comparing our data on an international scale will be discussed.
References:
Ivankova, N. V., Creswell, J., & Stick, S. (2006). Using Mixed-Methods Sequential Explanatory Design: From Theory To Practice. Field Methods, 18, 3–20.
Pieper, Irene (2015): Literature and the Curriculum. In: The Routledge International Handbook of the Arts and Education/M. Fleming, L. Bresler, John O’Toole (ed.s). London, New York: Routledge, 194-202.
Witte, T., & Sâmihăian, F. (2013). Is Europe Open to a Student-Oriented Framework for Literature? A Comparative Analysis of the Formal Literature Curriculum in Six European Countries. L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, (13), 1–22.
Project Team: Andrea Bertschi-Kaufmann, Katrin Boehme, Nora Kernen, Steffen Siebenhuener, Cornelia Stress (CH)
Irene Pieper, Simone Depner, Sascha Fennekold, Maren Reder, Renate Soellner, Jana Zegenhagen (D)