Towards Inquiry-Based Literary History Teaching in Danish Upper Secondary Education

Submitted by: Christian Smidt Alenkjær
Abstract: This paper presents a PhD project which will explore a new way of understanding the subject knowledge of literary history teaching in L1. This new way combines inquiry-based literature teaching, the manuscripts of Hans Christian Andersen and their digital accessibility. The project is a qualitative and multiple case study and is connected to the publication of The Fairy Tales and Stories of Hans Christian Andersen – the Digital Manuscript Edition, abbreviated EHDM in Danish (H.C. Andersens Eventyr og Historier – den digitale manuskriptudgave). The background for the project is previous research which has indicated that literary history teaching in upper secondary education faces significant challenges in Denmark and internationally (Davies et al. 2017; Beck 2019). The research questions are:
1. Theoretically, what characterizes an inquiry-based approach to teaching H.C. Andersen's fairy tale manuscripts, which also incorporates the digitization of the manuscripts in the teaching?
2. What happens when implementing a designed learning material based on the theoretical understanding of inquiry-based literature teaching in the classroom practice?
3. What kind of subject knowledge does this new way of literary history teaching in upper secondary education bring into play compared to the subject knowledge of literary history teaching that does not use the developed learning material?

The theoretical framework of the project is practice theory (Kemmis et al. 2014). The hypothesis is that the three components can transform the practice architecture of the subject and enable a new kind of subject knowledge. Methodologically, Design-Based Research is applied: Learning material, based on inquiry-based literature teaching and EHDM, is designed to bring this new kind of subject knowledge into play in the classroom. The paper presentation focuses on whether the tested learning material transformed the practice architecture of the subject.

References:

Beck, S. (2019). Læs Andersen! København: U Press.

McLean Davies, L., Martin, S. K. and Buzacott, L. (2017). “Worldly Reading: Teaching Australian. Literature in the Twenty-first Century.” English in Australia 52 (3), (pp. 21–30).

Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. (2014). Changing practices, changing education. Singapore: Springer.