Research on students’ literary reading processes: why, how and what to learn from process data
Submitted by:
Irene Pieper
Abstract:
Despite the variety of approaches to research on literature education one aim regularly is to broaden the knowledge base that allows for understanding what is going on in class and for developing teaching. Key issues concern the question how to best assist learners of different age groups to understand literary texts and experience them as meaningful. Thus, knowledge about reading processes of learners in different stages of their school career is needed. The workshop focusses upon data from a research project that is currently carried out at the Technical University of Dresden (Dorothee Wieser and Marie Lessing-Sattari) and the University of Hildesheim (Irene Pieper and Bianca Strutz). In the project ‚LiMet’ on literary understanding and metaphor we look both at the reading processes of students and at the concepts and aims of teachers. We adapted the think-aloud-method to learn about students’ approaches to metaphor in poems and collected data from students in grade 6 and 9 (higher and middle academic track in German secondary school). Our analysis is based on a coding system which has been revised several times and on a sequential analysis of a limited number of cases. The workshop will provide opportunities to work with some think-aloud-data and the coding system. We’ll reflect on options of data analysis and discuss potentials and limits of the approach.