The Linum project. Configurations and reconfigurations of teaching literature with digital tools.
Submitted by:
Eleonora Acerra
Abstract:
Linum (Reading, speaking and writing with Children's Literature and digital tools) is a three-year research and development project aimed at developing and distributing digital tools for teaching and learning literature at the primary school.
While the first two years have been dedicated to the preliminary studies and to the actual conception of the program, the second period has been devoted to a large scale experimentation, involving 55 French classes, testing the prototypes across three different districts (Créteil, Lille and Montpellier) and in several technological configurations (in classes equipped with one PC for each pupil or less, in "mobile classes" and in classes equipped both with PC and tablets).
The purpose of the observation was to describe and analyse the effective literary teaching practices [Doucey-Perrin - Acerra, 2018] led by the usage of the Linum resource, while defining the possible benefits and limitations of such a tool for the literary course.
Data were collected through a digital capture of users' actions on the machine and qualitatively processed in order to re-establish the class atmospheres and their contexts, as well as the interaction between teachers' demands and pupils' responses, which appear to be separated events in the raw flow. In fact, the platform consists of a double interface, with different access and features for teachers and learners. On the one side, teachers can plan, edit and address activities and lessons to their students (to groups, or to singular individuals), then follow their progression in a dedicated space. On the other side, students can access, read or study the embedded digital books, thus realising the planned exercises and activities [Denizot, 2015; Vigner, 1984]- through spaces and functionalities that have been developed in accordance with the most recent research evidences to accompany the process of comprehension and interpretation, and to support the readers' personal implication [Ahr, Joole, 2013; Langlade, Rouxel, 2004; Dufays, 2007; 2010; Giasson-Lachance, J., Escoyez, 2013; Grossmann, Tauveron, 1999].
This contribution is aimed at presenting and discussing some of the results of the research, with a particular focus on two major issues that may have conditioned the usages and that may be considered in further projects.
As an experimental editorial content, the program is the result of a negotiation between the scientific teams and the developers. On the other side, as a didactic tool, its usage depends on teachers' choices, which of course hinge upon a negotiation with the machine. On both sides, these negotiations, approaches and decisions appear to be determined by specific representations, stereotypes and concerns about what literary education should be and how the digital medium should be implemented.
Thus, in a first phase, we will describe how the e-publishers of the project understood, interpreted and managed to translate in digital tools some theoretical preconisation of the didactics and literary research, by comparing the final product to the scientific recommendations. Secondly, we will consider how a sample of teachers seized the resource and its features by juxtaposing the raw data concerning their actions to their statements about their choices and intentions.
The interpretation of data will outline a landscape of representations of teaching literature and the possible reconfigurations driven by a renewal of practices through digital tools.
Bibliography
Ahr, S., Joole, P. (dir.) (2013). Carnet/journal de lecteur/lecture : quels usages pour quels enjeux, de l'école à l'université ?. (Vol. Diptyique 25). Namur : Presses universitaires de Namur.
Langlade, G. et Rouxel, A. (s.d.) (2004). Le sujet lecteur: lecture subjective et enseignement de la littérature : actes du colloque " Sujets lecteurs et enseignement de la littérature ". Rennes Presses universitaires de Rennes.
Denizot, N. (2015). "L'exercice dans l'enseignement de la littérature". In C. Masseron, J.-M. Privat et Y. Reuter (dir.), Littérature, linguistique et didactique du français. Les travaux Pratiques d'André Petitjean. Villeneuve d'Ascq : Presses du Septentrion, p. 107-115.
Dufays, J.-L. (dir.) (2007). Enseigner et apprendre la littérature aujourd'hui, pour quoi faire ? Sens, utilité, évaluation. Louvain : Presses universitaires de Louvain.
Dufays, J.-L., (2010). Stéréotype et lecture : essai sur la réception littéraire. Bruxelles : Peter Lang.
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Grossmann, F. et Tauveron, C. (dir.) (1999). Comprendre et interpréter les textes à l'école : la lecture à la jonction du cognitif et du culturel. Paris: Institut national de recherche pédagogique.
Lebrun , M., Lacelle et N. Boutin, J.-F. (2012). La littératie médiatique multimodale: de nouvelles approches en lecture-écriture à l'école et hors de l'école. Montréal: Presses universitaire du Québec.
Perrin-Doucey A., Acerra, E. (2017). " Penser la lecture littéraire par et pour le numérique : conception, activités et usages en question ". Reperes 56. Lyon: Ife.
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Biographical notes:
Eleonora Acerra is a PhD candidate from the University of Montpellier (France), where she works under the supervision of Professor Brigitte Louichon. Her main research interest is the study of the deployment of hypermedia contents in the narrative environment of the mobile devices and their receptions, considered through a selection of digital children’s books. Her research is part of the Linum projet (Literature numérique), which aims to develop digital educational contents for studying literature in primary schools.
Agnès Perrin-Doucey is a researcher in literature at the University of Montpellier. Her research activities are centered on the didactics of the literature, literary reading and the training of the young reader. She questions the literary corpuses for the youth and the methods of their reading towards the development of relationship between ipseity-otherness. Her works thus meet the didactics of the literary reading, the digital media, the moral and civic education and the role of literature. Since 2014, she is responsible of the project LINUM.