Literature Manuals in Times of New Mediacy in Sweden
Submitted by:
Maria Löfgren
Abstract:
This study addresses whether the technology of the book and closely associated forms of representation, such as fiction and storytelling, have become alien in the new image dominated and digital media ecology (Kress, 2000). Or framed differently, the book might have deviated from immediacy (transparent) to hypermediacy (opaque) (Bolter & Grusin, 1999).
In support of our premise, we explore a large Swedish professional development program for teachers called the Reading Lift, where we examine the educational function of the four most referred to literary didactic theory and method developers in the program: Judith Langer, Aidan Chambers, Louise M. Rosenblatt, and Rita Felski, but also the relationship between literary didactics, fiction and the concept of literacy as a multiple social practice (Street, 1984). On a global scale, the latter has become increasingly influential both in relation to education in general and as concerns L1. Research questions are: (1) What is the educational function of literature didactics in the Reading Lift and (2) How does literature didactics and literature resonate with the literacy concept? Method applied is qualitative content analysis (Assarroudi et al., 2018), in a first phase by immersing with the data more intuitively, and in a second by coding according an analytical framework. For our analysis Rosenblatt’s (1938/1995) theoretical distinction between efferent and aesthetic plays a key role.
Results show a strong domination of manual and strategy-based approaches, primarily promoting efferent reading stances. More holistic and hermeneutic literary didactic approaches in support of aesthetic reading, are less common. Further, there is a strong alliance between material adhering to the literacy concept and the manual and strategy-based methods. Also, in the literacy discourse, literary works have become not just texts amongst others, and alien, but are also framed as hypermediacy. We therefore suggest a shift in paradigms of education, from the more holistic, pleasure-based and hermeneutic discourse of literature pedagogy, rooted in print culture, to a more systematic, but also fragmented approach literature didactics, based in new mediacy.
Keywords: Literature didactics, L1, Literacy, Digitalization, Hypermediacy
References:
Assarroudi, A., Heshmati Nabavi, F., Armat, M. R., Ebadi, A., & Vaismoradi, M. (2018). Directed qualitative content analysis: the description and elaboration of its underpinning methods and data analysis process. Journal of Research in Nursing, 23(1), 42–55. https://doi.org/10.1177/1744987117741667
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Kress, G. (2000). Multimodality. In B. Cope & M. Kalantzis (Eds.), Multiliteracies: Literacy learning and the design of social futures (pp. 182–202). Routledge.
Rosenblatt. (1995/1972). The reader, the text, the poem: the transactional theory of the literary work. Southern Illinois University Press.
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Street, B. V. (1984). Literacy in theory and practice (Vol. 9). Cambridge University Press.