The status of literature: English teaching and the condition of literature teaching in schools

Although the curriculum subject of English is continually reviewed and revised in all English speaking countries, the status of literature is rarely questioned i.e. that it is of high cultural value and all students should be taught about it. The concerns of any review, in any country, are typically about what counts as literature, especially in terms of national heritage and then how much of the curriculum should it occupy. This article reports on three inter-related pieces of research that examine the views of in-service, and pre-service, English teachers about their experiences of teaching literature and their perceptions of its ‘status’ and significance at official level and in the actual classroom; it draws attention to how England compares to some other English speaking countries and draws attention to the need to learn from the negative outcomes of political policy in England. The findings suggest that the nature of engagement with literature for teachers and their students has been distorted by official rhetorics and assessment regimes and that English teachers are deeply concerned to reverse this pattern.

Teaching literature in the grammar grades and high school,

Bibliography: p. [324]-326.

The impact of mindfulness on the wellbeing and performance of educators: A systematic review of the empirical literature

Given the potentially demanding nature of teaching, efforts are underway to develop practices that can improve the wellbeing of educators, including interventions based on mindfulness meditation. We performed systematic review of empirical studies featuring analyses of mindfulness in teaching contexts. Databases were reviewed from the start of records to January 2016. Eligibility criteria included empirical analyses of mindfulness and wellbeing outcomes acquired in relation to practice. A total of 19 papers met the eligibility criteria and were included in the systematic review, consisting of a total 1,981 participants. Studies were principally examined for outcomes such as burnout, anxiety, depression and stress, as well as more positive wellbeing measures (e.g., life satisfaction). The systematic review revealed that mindfulness was generally associated with positive outcomes in relation to most measures. However, the quality of the studies was inconsistent, and so further research is needed, particularly involving high-quality randomised control trials.

A Literatura como Experiência no Ensino Secundário: Ensaio sobre a Cegueira na Escola

Esta tese centra-se na questão da relevância da literatura enquanto matéria curricular no Ensino Secundário. Tendo em conta a finalidade educativa de formar leitores autónomos e voluntários de literatura ao longo da vida, e procurando dar resposta à questão de fundo «de que forma valerá a pena que a literatura permaneça no currículo do Ensino Secundário?», defendo que a literatura seja didactizada enquanto experiência estética – em conformidade com a teoria transaccional de Louise Rosenblatt. Proponho, nesse sentido, um conjunto de princípios metodológicos assentes na leitura efectiva dos textos, enfatizando a importância do carácter pessoal dessa(s) leitura(s) e da natureza democrática da discussão interpretativa. Nesta perspectiva, o romance Ensaio sobre a Cegueira, de José Saramago, é apresentado enquanto texto literário cuja experiência de leitura em contexto escolar poderá ser particularmente adequada no último ano do Ensino Secundário.

Os contributos do texto literário para o ensino-aprendizagem de PLE: elaboração de uma proposta de didatização de um conto de Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen

Dissertação de mestrado em Português Língua Não Materna (PLNM) – Português Língua Estrangeira (PLE) e Língua Segunda (PL2)

A la recerca del lloc de la literatura infantil i juvenil en el curriculum escolar

La Reforma del sistema educatiu, innovadora en alguns aspectes, ha assignat algun espai a la Literatura Infantil i Juvenil (d'ara endavant, LIJ) en els dissenys curriculars. Pero ho ha fet d'una manera implícita, tacita, gairebé en complicitat amb el professor que vulgui recórrerhi en les seves activitats d'aula. Com que no es tracta d'un contingut, ni d'un objectiu d'aprenentatge en ella mateixa, la seva presencia esta diluida en les previsions curriculars. Pero hi éso. En aquestes pagines intentaré de presentar un conjunt de raons i referencies que avalin l'efectivitat de la utilització de la LIJ en l'ambit escolar, que supera la del seu ús com a mer recurs didactic.

Didàctica de la llengua i la literatura. Experiències d'innovació docent a la Universitat. Presentació

Totes les universitats de l'Estat Espanyol es troben immerses en el procés d'implantació dels nous estudis de grau i postgrau adaptats a l'Espai Europeu d'Educació Superior (EEES). Aquest procés ¿conegut popularment amb el nom de Pla Bolonya¿ ha suscitat un amplíssim debat, centrat fonamentalment en el paper que ha derepresentar la universitat en la societat tecnològica i globalitzada del segle XXI. Nombroses veus d'experts en àmbits molt diversos han posat de relleu les dificultats que comporta definir i tirar endavant el Pla Bolonya i han alertat dels perills que comporta la seva aplicació, sobretot per la supeditació als dictats del mercat (mercantilització) i pel que alguns han anomenat la "pèrdua de les humanitats". Serveixin com a exempled'aquests posicionaments les paraules de N. López Calera en una publicació recent sobre la innovació a la universitat: "El Plan Bolonia ha evitado que se hiciera una filosofía de las universidades y, en últimainstancia, de la educación y de la cultura. Ha limitado las perspectivas a lo que la universidad "tiene que ser" de acuerdo con las exigencias del desarrollo económico y el progreso tecnológico de las sociedades de nuestro tiempo. La universidad no debe ser una cuestión de estrategias de productividad y rentabilidad" ...

Reflexionem amb en Frato. Una experiència de desenvolupament de competències transversals als estudis de Mestre d'Educació Infantil

Reflexionem amb en Frato és un projecte d'innovació que s'ha portat a terme a la Facultat de Formació del Professorat de la Universitat de Barcelona, en l'assignatura de Didàctica de la llengua IIdels estudis de Mestre en l'especialitat d'Educació Infantil, durant quatre cursos lectius en horari de matí i tarda. La tasca forma part d'un projecte del grup d'innovació docent consolidat de la Universitat de Barcelona GIDC-DLL, al qual pertanyen les dues professores. La innovació té la voluntat d'iniciar la transformació de l'ensenyament i aprenentatge a la universitat en el marc de l'Espai Europeu d'Educació Superior com a context general i, més específicament, dins la matèria de Didàctica de la llengua II delsestudis de Mestre en l'especialitat d'Educació Infantil. El projecte neix arran de la publicació del llibreFrato: 40 anys amb ulls d'infant, de Francesco Tonucci, a partir del qual es planteja una seqüènciaformativa competencial per als estudiants fàcilment transferible i amb valoracions molts positives.

Competències i avaluació d'activitats per a l'aprenentatge de didàctica de la llengua i la literatura

L'experiència d'innovació que es presenta en aquest article tracta del disseny i l'aplicació a l'aulad'activitats d'aprenentatge, implicades en l'ensenyament d'assignatures de didàctica de la llengua i laliteratura, en el marc de l'avaluació de competències pròpies de l'àrea. S'analitza i es reflexiona sobrediversos models d'avaluació i en alguns formats interactius en línia que presenta la plataforma virtual Moodle, amb l'objectiu d'afavorir l'autoregulació dels aprenentatges.

Hipertextos fragmentados: Una propuesta para trabajar la competencia lectoliteraria en la formación inicial de docentes

El canon para la formación literaria y la educación literaria en primaria son algunos de los contenidos principales de la asignatura 'Didáctica de la literatura infantil y juvenil" que se imparte en el grado de Educación Primaria de la Universitat de Barcelona. La propuesta de innovación educativa que presentamos consiste en el diseño e implementación de una secuencia formativa dirigida a estos alumnos para ampliar el intertexto lector mediante la lectura y análisis de un corpus de minificciones hipertextuales (Zavala, 2007; Landow, 2009) relacionadas con la literatura de base folklórica y de autor del canon de educación primaria de primeras lenguas. El corpus elegido pertenece al libro Catàleg de monstres (2012) de Masó, minificciones que apelan a la intertextualidad mediante la combinación de múltiples recursos literarios. Palabras clave: Formación inicial de maestros, competencia lectoliteraria, minificción, literatura infantil y juvenil. ENGLISH SUMMARY Fragmented Hypertexts: a proposal to develop literacy competence in initial teacher training Literary canon for primary children and literature education are some of the main contents of the subject 'Teaching of Children's Literature' taught in the Primary Education degree at the University of Barcelona. The proposed educational innovation we present is the design of a teaching sequence targeted to these students to expand their reader intertextuality by reading and analysing hypertext mini fictions (Zavala, 2007; Landow, 2009) related to basic folk literature from the primary school literary canon. The corpus chosen is from the book Catàleg de monstres (2012), written by Masó, selected mini fictions constantly appealing to intertextuality through the combination of multiple literarcy resources. Key words: Folk literature, teacher training of primary education, hypertext mini fictions, literary competence.

Fiktiivisen kirjallisuuden maailmasta monikulttuuriseen Suomeen. Ennakointikertomus kirjallisuudenopetuksen ja monikulttuurisuuskasvatuksen välineenä

From the world of fiction literature into multi-cultural Finland. Anticipatory story as an educational tool in teaching of literature and multiculturalism The research clarifies the relationship between reading fiction literature and multicultural value education in basic education. The research focuses on the subject didactics of mother tongue and literature and on the literature teaching in particular. The objective is to develop a method that is easily transferable into a teaching context so as to intensify the educational discussion based on fiction literature. In essence, understanding fiction literature and the ethical and moral thinking resemble one another, because both of them aim at empathizing with the thinking of a person or with a situation foreign to oneself. For this reason fiction literature is ideally suited for the discussion on ethical and moral values within a subject entity in the basic education. The empirical unit of the research consists of two parts. The first part explains how youth novels published in the years 1993 – 2007 describe multiculturalism in Finnish society. Books on multiculturalism are still few in number within youth literature, and people with a foreign background are mainly minor or background characters in such literary works. Nevertheless, youth novels serve well as a starting point for an educational discussion about multicultural issues. More often than not characters in youth novels are stereotypes and even opposite to each other. The juxtaposing makes a young reader question the stereotypes associated with immigrants. Besides the stereotype, reference to a prototype or a model is possible. The second part tests the usefulness of an anticipatory story based on a fictive text for an educational discussion about multicultural issues. The empirical material was collected from the eighth-grade teaching groups in basic education as follows: one teaching group was an immigrant group, the second one a group of Finns with experience of immigrants while the third group of students had hardly any experience of immigrants. The anticipatory stories were written on the basis of extracts from youth novels with multicultural themes. The material collected for a total of 120 anticipatory stories was analysed by using meaning cue analysis. Using the meaning cue analysis, the anticipatory stories were divided into three groups: stories with predominantly positive meaning cues of interculturalism, ambivalent stories with both positive and negative meaning cues of interculturalism and the stories with predominantly negative meaning cues of interculturalism. The meaning cues produced by girls and boys differ from one another, in particular, by the negative meaning cues of interculturalism. For girls, the predominant meaning cue is fear whereas for boys, it is that of violence. It would also seem that the students, in particular, boys with little experience of immigrants produce more negative meaning cues of interculturalism than do immigrants or Finnish students with experience of immigrants. Further still, it seems that active reading of fiction literature affects the meaning cues of interculturalism in an ambivalent direction. In the way of youth novels this is understandable, because youth novels in general are made up of opposite characters and meaning cues. The less the student takes an interest in reading, the more he used meaning cues from outside the parent text for his anticipatory story. No doubt it would be possible to use fiction literature in the literature education to a much higher extent than it is being used today whereby the literature could be used in basic education for reviewing subject entities or study contents of other study subjects. By way of an anticipatory story and the meaning cue analysis, it is possible to intensify the educational discussions based on fiction literature. However, using fiction literature in the literature education requires consideration of the specific genre of fiction literature.

Värdefull litteratur : Fyra gymnasielärare om samhällsuppdragets etik i förhållande till litteraturen i klassrummet

The ethical aspects of the Swedish Curriculum for the non-compulsory school system, Lpf94, will form the basis of the research in this essay. The ethical aspects constitute fundamental values and goals as well as common tasks that must be carried out by every teacher. Since the school debate focuses a lot on this perspective, which is often mentioned together with the words problematic and contradictory, it will consequently also be the focus of this essay. Here these features are treated in relation to literature in all its forms used by teachers in class, which also represents a part of the school debate. Together ethics and literature form a perspective that lacks research. The goal is to investigate the ethical awareness of teachers in relation to the literature, and find out which ethical decisions are made by teachers and in what ways the ethical aspects of the curriculum is fulfilled. A qualitative method has been used in order to gain results: four upper secondary school teachers/senior high school teachers have been interviewed. The results are presented in interview transcripts which have been analyzed and interpreted in the light of recent studies and research and pedagogical-didactical literature. Accordingly I have been able to draw the conclusions that the ethical features in teaching is not explicit and that there seldom seems to be any conscious ethical reflections in relation to the literature. The ethical aspects are rather invisible and unconscious. However, it is clear that the interviews raise the awareness of the ethical perspective and thus emphasize the growing and developing function of the dialogue. Finally the results have been interpreted from the point of view of the ethical tasks of the teacher in order to make the ethics visible.I detta examensarbete ligger fokus på de etiska aspekterna av samhällsuppdraget i förhållande till den litteratur som lärare använder sig av i klassrumsundervisningen. Eftersom en stor del av skoldebatten handlar om samhällsuppdraget och dess värdegrund utgör också detta perspektiv utgångspunkten för denna undersökning. Målet är att undersöka vilka etiska avvägningar lärare gör i valet av litteratur och på vilket sätt samhällsuppdragets etik blir synlig i lärares arbete. Därmed framkommer också till viss del i vilken omfattning värdegrundsarbetet sker. Genom en kvalitativ undersökningsmetod i form av samtal har fyra gymnasielärare intervjuats. Erhållna resultat har presenterats i form av intervjutranskript som analyserats och tolkats med hjälp av aktuell forskning och pedagogisk-didaktisk litteratur. De slutsatser som kan dras utifrån resultaten är att etiken i lärarnas arbete inte är explicit och att det oftast inte finns en medveten etisk reflektion utifrån litteraturen. Etiken är snarare osynlig och tämligen omedveten. Dock medvetandegörs den under samtalen vilket framhåller dialogens betydelse för utveckling. Vidare framkommer att etiken aldrig är ett mål i sig, utan fungerar mer som medel för att nå andra mål i klassrummet. Slutligen, för att synliggöra etiken, har resultaten tolkats utifrån de etiska krav i samhällsuppdraget som ställs på lärare.

A função mediadora do planejamento na aula de leitura de textos literários

This dissertation sutdies the mediative function in the planning of literary text reading classes of Portuguese. Its main central focus proposes that planning favors the pedagogical reading work of literary texts in the teaching of Portuguese, for they are regarded as one of the mediative elements the teaching-learning process. It also allows for its subjects to rethink the practice, theorizing it. As a theoretical basis the studies on participative planning are used, especially the studies concerning dialogic planning. The language/literature teaching perspective adopted in this work is guided by the socio-interactive conception of language, in a way that reading is seen as a comprehensive and interactive activity. Given the research process, the analysis of the reading process involved the Reader s Response, once that this theory considers the role of the reader and her/his interaction with the text. The study is grounded upon the following research question: which role(s) does the pedagogical planning play as a mediator of the reading teaching-learning process? The main objective of this dissertation is to investigate the pedagogical planning activity as a mediative instrument in the practice of reading in the Portuguese classes. The study is constituted of three stages, the third being emphasized (2002/2005) in which the direction of the participative action-research was used, as a way of acknowledging the pedagogical role in the teaching plan, as an instrument capable of rendering reorganization in the teaching-learning process of reading classes. We have as participants teachers of Portuguese in the elementary school (Ensino Fundamental, 3º ciclo), besides other segments of public schools, in the city of Pau dos Ferros RN, in which the previous studies were developed. The results point to the relevance in the role of the teacher, as a more experienced reader, in developing of pedagogical strategies that may come to favor the teaching of reading, having in the pedagogical sphere an instrument of theoretical reflection and sistematization of activities to be implemented in the classroom. The conclusions highlight the class plan as the mediative instrument to be incorporated and internalized into the teaching practice, amplifying and modifying the teacher s intervention forms, favoring, thus, her/his pedagogical mediation