Between The Cultures - How German teacher training students integrate academic and school cultures of interpreting literary texts
Submitted by:
Marco Magirius
Abstract:
keywords: beliefs of teacher training students, literary theory, pedagogical content beliefs, mixed methods
In my presentation I want to give empirical insights on the beliefs of German teacher training students about the characteristics of the process of interpreting literary texts and their concepts of literary education.
Enrolled at a university students are confronted with a diversity of methods and positions in part differing clearly from school practices of interpretation. In order to forge their own concept of literature education in school they integrate those different cultures of interpreting literary texts. I am interested in their according beliefs at the end of their studies and I am going to show how their attempts of integration do not lead to viable bridges between those cultures but rather to subjectively blurred reductions from academic positions. Those reductions seem neither appropriate to the specific qualities of literary texts, e.g. ambiguity, nor are likely to induce literary learning. Before any tailor-made intervention can be planned, I had to collect and analyse data on those beliefs. This was done within the scope of my mixed methods PhD. thesis.
I began by adapting resp. constructing questionnaires to ask 467 students about their beliefs on the characteristics of interpreting literature, employing i.a. latent class analyses, and pedagogical content beliefs in literature education, i.e. cognitive constructivism versus direct-transmission view of learning (Staub & Stern 2002). Subsequently I used these results to choose 22 students for 60 minute guided interviews, examined mainly with qualitative content analysis. I acquired reasons for their decisions when filling in the questionnaire and remarks on differences between school and university interpretations, for example regarding the role of the author's intention, the reader's subjectivity or criteria for appropriateness of interpretations (Hermerén 1983). Furthermore I asked them to evaluate 5 worksheets for use in class, which were systematically constructed along the oppositions: usage of poetic versus discursive language and overly objective versus overly subjective approaches to the literary text.
Hermerén, G. (1983). Interpretation: Types and Criteria. Grazer Philosophische Studien, 19, 131-161. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/18756735-90000195
Staub, F. C. & Stern, E. (2002). The nature of teachers’ pedagogical content beliefs matters for students’ achievement gains: Quasi-experimental evidence from elementary mathematics. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94, 344-355. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.94.2.344
Zabka, Th. (2012). Analyserituale und Lehrerüberzeugungen. Theoretische Untersuchung vermuteter Zusammenhänge. (=Rituals of text analysis and teachers' beliefs. Theoretical inquiry of suspected interrelationships.) In: Pieper, I. & Wieser, D. (ed.): Fachliches Wissen und literarisches Verstehen. Studien zu einer brisanten Relation (S. 35–52). Peter Lang.