Literary Praxis. 2011

Literary Praxis
PEDAGOGY, EDUCATION AND PRAXIS

Volume 5
Editorial Board
Stephen Kemmis, Charles Sturt University, Australia
Matts Mattsson, Stockholm Institute of Education, Sweden
Petra Ponte, Leiden University, the Netherlands
Karin Rnnerman, Gteborg University, Sweden
Advisory Board
Jan Ax, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Wilfred Carr, University of Sheffield, UK
Eli Moksnes Furu, Troms University, Norway
Inge Johansson, Stockholm Institute of Education, Sweden
Petri Salo, bo Academy University, Finland
Brigitta Sandstrm, Stockholm Institute of Education, Sweden
Tracey Smith, Charles Sturt University, Australia
The Pedagogy, Education and Praxis Series will foster a conversation of traditions
in which different European and Anglo-American perspectives on pedagogy,
education and praxis are problematised and explored. By opening constructive
dialogue between different theoretical and intellectual traditions, the Series aims, in
part, at recovering and extending the resources of these distinctive traditions for
education in contemporary times. The Series aims to contribute to (1) theoretical
developments in the fields of pedagogy, education and praxis; (2) the development
of praxis in the pedagogical professions; and (3) the development of strategies
capable of resisting and counteracting contemporary tendencies towards the
technologisation, standardisation, bureaucratisation, commodification and demoralisation of education.
Literary Praxis
A Conversational Inquiry into the Teaching
of Literature
Edited By
Piet-Hein van de Ven

Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Brenton Doecke
Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART 1: COMPARATIVELY SPEAKING

1. Opening their Teaching up to Scrutiny ...............................................................3
Piet-Hein van de Ven and Brenton Doecke
2. A Conversational Inquiry ....................................................................................9
PART 2: TEACHING AND REFLECTING
3. Literary Conversations: An Australian Classroom ...........................................23
Prue Gill and Bella Illesca
4. Ill Never Know What it is Like to be Pregnant: Teaching Literature in a
Dutch Secondary School ...................................................................................43
Ramon Groenendijk, Mies Pols and Piet-Hein van de Ven
5. Toward an Understanding of Literature Teaching in Australia:
Hanging On and Letting Go ..............................................................................69
Graham Parr
6. Between Dream and Deed: Constructive and Destructive Frictions
in an Ill-Structured Domain ..............................................................................89
Theo Witte
PART 3: READING AND REREADING
7. If in Doubt, Reach for a Story .........................................................................109
Terry Locke
8. Reflection on Literature Teaching: A Norwegian Perspective .......................123
Laila Aase
9. Texts, Tasks, and Talk.....................................................................................137
Anthony Petrosky
10. Difference in the Classroom: Whose Reading Counts? ..................................151
Anne Turvey and John Yandell
TABLE OF CONTENTS
11. Authenticity was Never Really the Question: Reading, Ethics and the
Historical Interruption of Literature Teaching by English..............................169
Mark Howie
12. Literature Classrooms and their Limits ...........................................................189
Irene Pieper
13. Reading the Word and the World: Teachers and Students Renegotiate
Literature Reading, Teaching and Learning....................................................203
Mary Kooy
PART 4: CONTINUING THE CONVERSATION
14. Literary Praxis: (A Concluding Essay) ...........................................................219
List of Contributors ................................................................................................227
Index .......................................................................................................................231
vi
PART 1: COMPARATIVELY SPEAKING
PIET-HEIN VAN DE VEN AND BRENTON DOECKE
1. OPENING THEIR TEACHING UP TO SCRUTINY
This book arises out of a conversation that began in 1999, when Piet-Hein van de
Ven and Brenton Doecke first met in Amsterdam at a conference of the International Association for the Improvement of Mother Tongue Education (IAIMTE).
IAIMTE is a network established by Gert Rijlaarsdam (the Netherlands) and Ken
Watson (Australia) in a bid to break down the parochialism that inheres within
Mother Tongue (or L-1) education, and to provide a forum for conversations (in
English) across linguistic boundaries.
Piet-Hein brought to his conversation with Brenton extensive experience as a
researcher in another network, namely the International Mother Tongue Education
Network (or IMEN), including a set of protocols for classroom observation, a
strong commitment to collaborative inquiry between academic researchers and
school teachers, and a rigorously theorised approach to comparative research in
L-1 or Mother Tongue education (see Herrlitz, Ongstad and van de Ven, 2007).
Brenton was, at the time, editor of English in Australia, the journal of the Australian
Association for the Teaching of English, and he was heavily engaged in debates
about English curriculum and pedagogy vis--vis attempts by Australian governments
to introduce standards-based reforms (Darling-Hammond, 2004, Jones, 2010). The
upshot of this conversation between us a conversation that has been resumed at
various times over the intervening years, and in places as diverse as Nijmegen,
Amsterdam, Lisbon, Albi and Toronto was a research project involving Prue
Gill and Bella Illesca, two English teachers based in Melbourne, and Ramon
Groenendijk and Mies Pols, two Dutch teachers who worked in een school voor
voortgezet onderwijs (a secondary school) near Nijmegen. The aim was to conduct
a comparative study of the teaching of literature in Australia and Holland, using the
protocols for classroom observation and inquiry developed by IMEN. Prue and
Bella and Ramon and Mies agreed to develop accounts (or cases) of teaching
literature in their respective settings. Bella acted as Prues critical friend in
developing the Australian case, visiting her school over a number of weeks and
engaging in extensive conversations with her before and after each of the lessons
she observed. Piet-Hein played a similar role with Ramon and Mies in preparing
the Dutch case. When they had written their cases, the Dutch and Australian
teachers then read each others writing, engaging in conversations that captured
their sense of the similarities and differences between their pedagogies as teachers
of literature.
Although they were immersed in the immediacy of their day-to-day professional
lives, Prue, Bella, Ramon and Mies still found time to reflect on their professional
P-H. van de Ven and B. Doecke (eds.), Literary Praxis: A Conversational inquiry
into the Teaching of Literature, 38.
2011 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
VAN DE VEN AND DOECKE
practice as teachers of literature, opening their teaching up to scrutiny by others

and interrogating the assumptions behind their pedagogies. They were prepared to
inquire into what their activities could mean for their students and what the value
of a literary education might be within society as a whole, believing that reflection
of this kind is an integral part of their role as teachers. Such professional reflection
cannot be taken for granted. Recently many educational systems have implemented
standards-based reforms and other measures for regulating education, including
accountability mechanisms like the Program for International Student Assessment
(or PISA), administered by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD), as well as standardised testing developed at a national level
(Australia, for example, has recently witnessed the introduction of the National
Assessment Project Literacy and Numeracy [NAPLAN] [see http://www.naplan.
edu.au/). A consequence of these reforms for teachers is that their capacities are
stretched to the limit as they endeavour to meet the performance benchmarks
imposed on them, while trying to maintain an ethical commitment to the welfare of
the young people in their care. It is not only the sheer busy-ness that is imposed
on teachers that closes off the possibility of critical inquiry, but the way standardsbased reforms define a set of educational outcomes (including a certain construction
of literacy) that people are not allowed to question. Standards-based reforms
make it increasingly difficult for teachers to interrogate the meaning of what
they do, both at the level of their capacity to respond to the needs of individual
students (What can I do to help this particular person? Is the curriculum I provide
sufficiently inclusive?) and at the level of thinking about the significance of their
work as it contributes to the complex process by which a society reproduces
itself through its school system (what social good does literature teaching serve?).
The policy language used to describe education increasingly reflects a market
mentality, including talk of inputs and outputs, investment and efficiency, of
serving clients and value-adding, at the expense of attending to the culturally
specific nature of classroom interactions and the personal needs of individual
students. Teachers are required to accept pre-determined educational outcomes,
such as those enshrined in PISA and other forms of standardised testing, as a given,
as though the manner in which these tests construct literacy ability is universally
applicable.
By raising questions about what it means to teach literature, Prue, Bella, Ramon
and Mies have been challenging the new orthodoxy of performance appraisal and
international comparisons which suppose that everything can be reduced to the same
scale of measurement, regardless of specific national contexts (Jones, 2010, p. 14).
They were mindful of the value of comparative research, both as a means of recognising the specific character of their educational traditions, and of making their
habitual practices and assumptions strange by viewing them from the standpoint
of others working in a different cultural setting. The conversations and writing in
which they have engaged might accordingly be read as exploring the possibility of
maintaining a professionally reflexive approach to their own teaching (i.e. a
praxis) at a time when enormous pressures exist to simply do what you are told
without questioning.
4
OPENING THEIR TEACHING UP TO SCRUTINY
***
Each stage of the research project in which these Australian and Dutch teachers
have been engaged has involved complex processes of interpretation and representation of their classroom practices. The protocols developed by the International
Mother Tongue Education Network (IMEN) for classroom observation presuppose
that every observation of teaching and learning implies a particular standpoint or
relationship between the observer and the phenomena that he or she is observing.
There can be no such thing as an objective representation of classrooms, in the
sense of an impartial account that transcends the perspective and values of an
observer.
For all its claims to objectivity, so-called scientific research, involving
statistical data that have been generated through standardised testing, provides only
a partial representation of the relationships that constitute any social setting. Such
objectivity actually has as its heart an interpretive act, involving an explanation of
phenomena that has always-already been constructed as data (Anyon, 2008). This
recognition that all observations are made from a particular perspective is what
gives point to the notion of comparative research as it is conceived by IMEN, and
the opportunity that such research provides for participants to view their own
knowledge and practice reflexively. In addition to this emphasis on the complexity
of interpreting classroom interactions when investigating the situation of mother
tongue educators in a range of settings, IMEN affirms the following principles as
crucial for comparative research on language education (cf. van de Ven, 2001,
Herrlitz & van de Ven, 2007):
That mother-tongue education is a social construction, and a product of strong
national educational traditions and complex policy environments
That those policy environments are shaped by cultural and ideological factors in
tension with globalizing economic and social trends
That the focus of research should be on the complexities of teachers work, and
researchers should avoid evaluative judgments about the professional accomplishment of participants.
IMEN is also committed to ensuring that comparative research on classroom
teachers should be owned by the teachers who participate in its projects and that it
should convey a sense of their voices. Its goal has been to set up a dialogue between
researchers and classroom teachers that in turn becomes a basis for an expanding
dialogue between researchers of L-1 education across a variety of national settings.
At the core of this dialogue are rich accounts of classroom practices that have been
jointly constructed by teachers with critical friends who observe their classrooms
and then engage in discussion and reflection about the interactions they have
witnessed. This is what Prue and Bella and Ramon and Mies have achieved by
sharing their accounts of their work with one another.
But the impulse behind the particular project that we initiated was never to limit
the conversation to Dutch and Australian educators, rich though this conversation
has undoubtedly been. Once the Dutch and Australian teachers had written the
accounts of their professional practice that constitute Part Two of this book, our
aim was to broaden the conversation, and to deepen the reflection by employing
5
strategies to bring in other viewpoints and perspectives, thus introducing other

levels of interpretation. To achieve this aim we made three key editorial decisions:
We invited Prue, Bella, Ramon and Mies to write cases that were open-ended,
prompting readers to reflexively consider their own frames of reference for
making sense of each case, and to articulate differences between these examples
of literature teaching and literature teaching in their own countries
We invited two leading language educators in the Netherlands and Australia to
locate these cases within their national policy frameworks, reflecting on how
those frameworks mediate the conversations and observations presented in each
case. (See the contributions by Theo Witte and Graham Parr in Part Two)
We invited leading academics and educators from a range of national settings
to reflect on the accounts of literature teaching presented by the Dutch and
Australian educators, using these accounts to reflect on the teaching of literature
in their own local settings. (See the contributions by Terry Locke, Laila Aase,
Anthony Petrosky, Mark Howie, Anne Turvey and John Yandell, Irene Pieper,
and Mary Kooy in Part Three).
Consistent with IMEN protocols of classroom observation mentioned earlier, all
contributors to this book have sought to avoid simple evaluative judgments about
the so-called quality of the literature teaching or learning in any one particular
classroom or curriculum setting. Standards-based judgments, in any single country,
assume that one can ignore the rich specificity of local educational settings and
simply apply the same evaluative criteria. In such instances, a logic of sameness
trivialises and tramples on diversity. What meaning can we ascribe then to PISAs
international comparisons, which must downplay vast cultural, social and linguistic
differences between countries and apply the same mechanical criteria in order to
compare the educational performance of one country with respect to others (cf. van
de Ven 2007)? The rhetoric of international comparisons can seem so reasonable,
so ordinary, and yet it is the very ordinariness of teaching and learning that such
comparisons are incapable of reflecting. In contrast, the spirit of international comparative inquiry that characterizes this book has sought to understand and appreciate
the particularities of the different local settings of literature teaching, particularities
that are mediated by language, culture, history, politics, literary texts, etc. By
foregrounding such particularities, we aim to facilitate an international conversation
that is far richer than that reflected in the fetish that is currently made of PISA, and
the kind of panic that is fostered by politicians and media pundits in countries
when their educational performance is not deemed to be as high as that of other
countries.
The aim of this book has not been to capture examples of exemplary or highly
accomplished teaching in either the Netherlands or Australia, as with the recent
focus of standards-based reforms in Western nations. This would be to close down
the conversation about language, about literature and about literature teaching that
we are attempting to facilitate by conducting this inquiry. The aim might more
properly be described as one of investigating the ordinariness of literature teaching
as it is enacted from day to day in literature classrooms in different parts of the
world. This has entailed making the familiar strange and teasing out assumptions
6
OPENING THEIR TEACHING UP TO SCRUTINY
that might otherwise remain hidden or taken for granted. Invariably, the different
contributors to this volume, writing from their different international settings,
provide other levels of interpretation that share the comparative spirit of this
project. All in their own ways attempt to understand the examples of literature
teaching presented and to use these examples as a prompt to reflect on how
teachers teach literature in their own countries.
The contributors to this book are each speculating about whether one can meaningfully speak about literature teaching as essentially the same activity everywhere,
apart from some local variations, as though it unproblematically lends itself to
comparative evaluations without any regard to the social, cultural and educational
traditions that mediate what happens in classrooms around the world. By contrast,
the contributors are asking: how can we understand and appreciate what happens in
everyday literature classrooms within and across international settings? They are
also asking whether we should always value sameness at the expense of cultural
diversity. In the face of a globalised policy agenda, and standards-based reforms
across the world that ignore the diverse intellectual and professional traditions of
literature teaching, not to mention the richly specific nature of teaching as it is
enacted in particular communities, we believe such questions well worth asking.
The contributors to this volume are attempting, in the spirit of the best comparative
research, to learn from each other, asking questions in order to understand, rather
than measuring effects in order to determine what nation is best.
Acknowledgements
A panel of scholars reviewed the chapters in this volume. Our thanks to Regina
Duarte (University of Minho, Portugal), Margaret Gill (formerly Monash University),
Vibeke Hetmar (Pedagogical University, Copenhagen), Larissa McLean Davies
(University of Melbourne), Philip Mead (University of Western Australia), Andr
Mottart (University of Ghent, Belgium), Graham Parr (Monash University), Wayne
Sawyer (University of Western Sydney), and Geert Vandermeersche (University of
Ghent, Belgium) for their work in helping us to bring this collection together.
REFERENCES
Anyon, J. (2008). Theory and educational research: Toward critical social explanation. New York:
Routledge.
Darling-Hammond, L. (2004). Standards, accountability, and school reform. Teachers College Record
106(6), 10471085.
Herrlitz, W., & Van de Ven, P. H. (2007). Comparative research on mother tongue education. In
W. Herrlitz, S. Ongstad, & P. H. Van de Ven (Eds.), Research on mother tongue/L1education in a
comparative perspective: Theoretical and methodological issues (pp. 1342). Amsterdam, New York:
Rodopi.
Jones, K. (2010). The twentieth century is not yet over: Resources for the remaking of educational
practice. Changing English, 17(1), 1316.
Van de Ven, P.-H. (2001). Teachers constructing knowledge on mother-tongue. L-1 Educational Studies
in Language and Literature, 1(2), 179201.

Van de Ven, P. H. (2007). Mother tongue education in an international perspective. In W. Martyniuk
(Eds.), Towards a common European framework of reference for language(s) of school education.
Proceeding of a conference Praag (pp. 131142). Towarzystwo Autorw i Wydawcw Prac
Naukowych Universitas.

Graduate School of Education
Radboud University
Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Brenton Doecke
School of Education
Faculty of Arts and Education
Deakin University, Australia
2. A CONVERSATIONAL INQUIRY
Renske:
Everything comes back to that, yes, the bad view he has on the
world. Of his past, especially. Because in his past, he was used to
being less important and stuff. Thats why he is now well, sad.
Danique: Yes, he thinks the world is bad and that everything goes wrong.
Aike:
Like with that friend of his or something, whats his name The
time they biked home and he would say: nothing wrong? So that
kind of shows that he thinks everybody is that way, in a way.
Everybodys boring and come on, whats that word?
Danique: A little like self-pity (zelfmedelijden)
Aike:
Yes, there is no fun really. Or when he describes that party. Hes
kind of saying that the party was no fun at all either.
Anne Wil: Mariah Carey being played all the time
(Literature Classroom, Nijmegen, the Netherlands)
Fiona:
Liz:
Fiona:
[The writing] shows he knows oddities about her her back door
is described as solid, open. Could be a metaphor for herself?
Vulnerable? She seems like an independent woman, but the man
comes in and she breaks down she becomes a detail in the
house as inanimate and lifeless as the doors and the lightshades.
Nameless. This is just why he only does it once.
He doesnt need to connect with her
He stands, cocky, not hiding unseen. [The] brazenness of his
behaviour!
(Literature Classroom, Melbourne, Australia)

Teachers listen attentively to the classroom conversations in which their students
engage. This often involves delicate judgments about whether to stay silent or
intervene. Should I move the discussion along by asking a question or making a
comment? Or would it be better to allow the conversation to continue, however
awkwardly the students might be expressing their insights? Awkward or not, there
is value in providing opportunities for young people to find the words they need in
order to converse with one another in classroom settings, building on each others
sentences in an effort to jointly construct meaning and reach understanding.
Talk is an especially vital medium for learning in literature classrooms, where
the focus is likely to be on words and what they mean. The snippets of classroom
dialogue above, involving students from secondary schools in the Netherlands and
Australia, each turn on the meaning of particular words. Aike struggles to find the
right word to capture her personal impressions of a characters attitudes and values
( come on, whats that word?), while Fiona ponders the words the author has
chosen to convey a certain tone or mood (her back door is described as solid,
open). These conversations recorded in classrooms at opposite ends of the
world show young people self-consciously selecting words and weighing up their
meaning amongst the range of possible meanings those words might contain. Such
reflexivity is arguably a key disposition that interpretive discussions of this type
are designed to cultivate in literature students.
As editors of this collection, also living at opposite ends of the world, we read
such classroom conversations and appreciate anew how we all live within
language. Indeed, we are reminded how our sense of lifes potential (for both good
and evil) is enhanced when we (teachers, academics and students) can trace the
ways words mediate our exchanges and relationships with one another.
***
This book enacts a conversational inquiry in much the same spirit as the
interpretive discussions in which these young people are engaging. Our focus is on
the teaching of literature in secondary education as it is practised and understood
by teachers and academics in a range of settings around the world. We have invited
educators in the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Canada,
England and the United States to reflect on the value of a literary education within
their respective cultural settings. We have specifically asked them to write essays
about literature teaching, using the word essay as Montaigne first coined the
term, namely as a vehicle by which they could each trial or inquire into aspects of
their practice as teachers of literature or as teacher educators and researchers who
are committed to the value of a literature education (cf. Cohen, 1958/1970). We
have been less interested in assembling a collection of papers that reported on
research on the teaching of literature within their national settings (though such
research constitutes an important reference point for each contribution) than in
conducting an inquiry by bringing these voices together. Our aim has been to
capture the learning that we have all experienced by participating in the conversation
presented in this book. Rather than working toward a set of conclusions, we have
tried to stage a conversation that remains open, one which readers will be able to
take up in their own local settings in their own conversations with colleagues and
other people interested in the teaching of literature.
At the core of the book, as we have indicated in our prefatory remarks, are
conversations between literature teachers from Australia and the Netherlands: Prue,
Bella, Mies and Ramon. The snippets of classroom talk at the start of this chapter
were recorded as part of the classroom-based inquiry originally conducted in both
Australia and the Netherlands, when teachers in each of these settings invited
critical friends to observe their lessons and then talk with them afterwards about
their teaching. The purpose of these visits was to construct richly specific accounts
of literature teaching in each country in order to better understand literature
10
A CONVERSATIONAL INQUIRY
education as a cultural phenomenon. This meant capturing the interpretive practices in

which the students engaged (What books do they read? What do they do in class?
What kind of writing do they produce in response to the texts they read?). It also
meant exploring the teachers professional commitment (Why am I a teacher? Why
do I believe that it is important to teach literature?), the knowledge they bring to
this enterprise (What do I understand by reading? What are the key theoretical
resources on which I draw as a teacher of literature?), as well as the challenges
these teachers face in their day-to-day interactions with the young people in their
classrooms (How can I engage students in reading so-called literary texts when
there are so many other things competing for their attention?).
You can sense the comparative edge to these classroom investigations. We were
not presupposing that literature teaching would mean exactly the same thing in the
Netherlands and Australia. A motivation for this research was to enable participating
teachers and academics to identify and articulate the philosophical frameworks in
which they located their professional practice. When you are speaking to someone
new to you, you sometimes find yourself spelling out things in a way that is
unnecessary when talking to colleagues who share your everyday world. By
becoming conscious of how the same thing might be done differently in another
part of the world, we teachers and academics alike expected to see our everyday
practices differently. Bakhtin (whose understanding of dialogism has shaped this
book in powerful ways) emphasizes that language is not only a resource for jointly
constructing meaning, but a sign of the mystery of otherness, of the borderline
between oneself and the other (Bakhtin, 1981/1987, p. 293). Language pre-exists us,
showing how our lives are bound up with those of others. But by acknowledging
that others share this world and this life with us, we also recognize that they have
their own stories to tell. We need to resist any pretence of imagining that our words
can fully comprehend other people, that they see the world as we see it or that we
can speak on their behalf. We need to listen attentively to what they have to say
and to monitor carefully the way our own values and beliefs frame what we hear.
Such dialogue foregrounds the relationship between you and I between self
and other rather than the first person plural (cf. Cavarero, 2000, p. 36).
So although the literature conversations between the young people at the start
of this chapter share many features in common, further inquiry will show how
these exchanges are mediated by contrasting traditions and structures, revealing
differences beyond those perceived commonalities. We feel that is timely to affirm
such differences, when education in vastly different countries is being reduced
to a standard measure of performance through the so-called PISA tests. This new
orthodoxy, in the form of a globalised policy agenda that increasingly holds
sway across Europe and other Western countries (Jones, 2010, p. 14), conflicts
with national traditions of education and educational reform. Comparative research
of the kind enacted in this book takes on a new importance because of the way it
resists the assumption that this orthodoxy can be inscribed on blank and receptive
national surfaces (Jones, 2010, p. 14). By contrast, the conversations presented in
this book affirm the specificity of local settings as something that cannot be simply
comprehended by the generalising logic of standards-based reforms.
11
Within a globalising world where English has assumed the status of a lingua
franca, it is important to remind ourselves that the conversation between Aike and
her peers occurred in Dutch. The very act of translating this exchange into English
occurs at the borderline between oneself and the other, between the worlds of
imagination and valuing named respectively by Dutch and English. And even in
acknowledging this linguistic difference, we are mindful of how inadequate such
labels are to capture the richly specific character of languages as they are spoken
and lived in particular locations around the world. At least for six of the contributors
to this book, their reflexivity as literary educators is underlined by the fact that they
are writing in English, and thus facing the challenge of expressing in a foreign
language the nuances of thinking available to them in their own native languages.
Yet it is also important to acknowledge that the status of English as a lingua franca
does not get around the fact that there are many varieties of English, not simply the
dialects that might be heard in so-called English speaking countries, but Dutch
English, German English, Norwegian English. In editing the chapters in this book,
we have tried to preserve a sense of those contrasting intonations and thus to
foreground the complex ways in which language is mediating our inquiry and our
exchanges with one another. We want to present contributors as each speaking out
of distinct linguistic traditions and cultural settings, even while we strive to ensure
that all the chapters are written in accessible English that will bring readers into the
conversation being enacted here.
***
A key impulse behind the inquiry out of which this book has emerged has been to
present writing in a style that conveys a sense of the complexities of classroom
settings and of a literature education. Yet we know that words can never capture
those complexities. Derrida taught us this years ago, when he paradoxically declared
that there is nothing outside of the text (Derrida, 1974/76, p. 158). Bella Illesca,
an experienced teacher who acted as Prue Gills critical friend, attempts to convey
a sense of the day-to-day world of the school where Prue works by casting her
writing in the present tense and the first person singular:
As I walk through the school grounds to meet Prue for our first meeting, it
comes as no surprise to me that what I see and hear is very much governed by
what was conspicuously absent from the government school, where I last
worked as an English teacher
But Bellas writing is infused with other purposes than simply to capture the hereand-now. She is attempting to foreground her standpoint as an observer, and the
values or ideology that she brings to the situation into which she is entering and
that shape her thoughts and feelings about what is going on there (cf. Smith, 1987).
The fact that her formative experience as a teacher was in a government school
means that she finds herself in conflict with the privilege she encounters in an allgirls private school, where parents pay several thousand dollars a year for their
daughters to attend. This also mediates her reactions to the way literature is taught
12
in those settings. She is, at least, acknowledging this possibility, as she reflexively
monitors the way her experience and values might frame (MacLachlan and Reid,
1994) her reading of the classroom settings that she is about to observe. Does the
elite nature of the surroundings mean that literature itself is nothing more than the
preserve of a cultural elite? Or will it be possible to detect signs of an alternative
discourse, opening up dimensions of imagination and insight that point beyond the
ideological world evoked by the notion of an all-girls private school?
Even an ostensibly matter-of-fact account of entering a school turns out to be
shaped by the values of the observer. Not only Bellas writing, but the writing of
all the contributors to this volume, might be said to sparkle with ideology (Bakhtin,
1981/1987, p. 277). As Bakhtin remarks, the meaning of any utterance can only be
grasped against the background of the views, values and beliefs reflected in the
standpoints of other speakers (p. 281). The words which the contributors to this
volume use to inquire into the teaching of literature into what it means to teach
literature within the context of their respective cultures, policy settings and traditions
of curriculum and pedagogy do not neutrally reflect the objects or activities they
name. This is another way of saying that their essays do not simply describe what
is, but emerge out of their critical engagement with the teaching of literature as a
cultural practice, as an enactment of the very conditions of its possibility. And this
moment of critical engagement is shaped by all that they bring to it, reflecting a
play between past and future. The past is inescapable their work as educators is
powerfully mediated by their biographies as students and teachers of literature, and
the traditions of curriculum and pedagogy in which they work. They are, however,
confronted by a present that is increasingly shaped by standards-based reforms and
other forms of control, such as those embodied in the PISA tests, opening up the
prospect of the need to change their practice in order to achieve the educational
outcomes that such reforms mandate. The future emerges at the intersection between
the traditions in which they have been educated and current policy developments,
raising questions about the continuing salience of the education which they have
received as educators (Marx, 1969). Their continuing professional learning and
experience occur at this intersection, embodying their struggle to negotiate a
pathway in the policy environment that is forming around them.
Conceived thus, the challenge of representing professional practice is more than
a matter of providing concrete accounts of circumstances within particular classrooms, as though reality could ever be captured by a naturalistic accumulation of
detail. Yet there are still good reasons why anyone who is describing the teaching
and learning that occur in classrooms would wish to foreground the specific
character of the situation being described. To take the trouble to record the details
you encounter when you walk into a classroom is paradoxically to acknowledge
the impossibility of capturing all the things presented to you. It is to foreground the
irreducible nature of the particularities that constitute the here-and-now. This is a
life-affirming recognition that reality is always richer than any set of categories
that you might bring to an analysis of it.
The impulse behind our own writing and the writing of the contributors to this
volume can be differentiated from attempts to capture the truth or the reality of
13
the classroom exchanges described. Our aim might, instead, be said to move
beyond the here and now, beyond representing what is, in order to arrive at a
mode of analysis that might begin to do justice to the process of literature teaching
to literary praxis within the context of a world that has been swept up by
significant social and economic change. This is to acknowledge the way the present
is always constituted by a play between past and future, between our sense of what
might be and our existing practices and beliefs, between what we intend and what
(on reflection) we feel that we have actually achieved, between what we feel we
ought to do and what government policy tell us to do.
***
The contributors to this volume use language as a primary means by which to

understand the complexities of teaching literature. This approach contrasts with
recent claims about the value of multi-media for depicting classroom settings. The
writing team that produced English in Urban Classrooms, for example, argue that
a multimodal approach to meaning-making provides a fuller, richer and more
accurate sense of what language is, and what it is not that what constitutes
English is not to be found in language alone, but exists in many modes (Kress
et al., 2005, p. 2). What we quarrel with here is not the notion that (say) visual
representations of classrooms can enhance our appreciation of the transactions that
occur within them, or that English teaching is a cultural activity that is inextricably
embedded in the social relationships and routines enacted in the physical space of
classrooms, but that somehow a multimedia approach yields a more accurate
sense (our italics) of what constitutes English teaching.
This privileging of a multimodal approach betrays a positivist logic that elides
the question of how language and other semiotic modes mediate our engagement
with the world. The notion that the complexities of classrooms can be captured by
employing an array of technology, as though an observer can get closer to the
reality of classrooms by resorting to audio-visual recording, rather than writing
about what he or she encounters, side steps the issue that such representations of
classrooms remain interpretive acts that require acknowledging the voices and
perspectives of those who may see a classroom differently. This is most obviously
the case when it comes to comparing a practitioners standpoint with the researchers
gaze (cf. Kincheloe, 2003, p. 9). In this respect, it is a tell-tale sign that the teachers
who participated in the research project on which English in Urban Classrooms is
based were the objects of the researchers inquiry. The book comprises accounts of
classrooms from the point of view of academic observers, repressing the possibility
of alternative readings, most notably those of the teachers whose classrooms were
being observed (cf. Par, 2005).
But to foreground the mediating role of language is hardly to privilege it as
giving special access to the reality of the classroom settings which Prue, Bella,
Mies and Ramon encounter every day, in comparison with other semiotic tools at
their disposal. Rather, it is to acknowledge their Bestaan, to use a Dutch word.
Unlike the English word Being or Existence, Bestaan embraces a notion of the
14
world in which you find yourself, of the relationships that pre-exist you and extend
beyond your immediate apprehension (the same might be said about the German
word, Dasein). And to enter this world is to enter the language that you find
there, naming the world and acting upon it. Yet to accept this insight is also to
acknowledge that language cannot give you direct access to the world or reveal the
world in all its fullness. For to use language is always to engage in an interpretive
act that is this-sided, subjective rather than objective. Not that you should
give up on trying to say anything meaningful about the world. As Terry Eagleton
remarks, being on the inside of a language is a way of being outside it as well
it is a way of being among things in the world. Eagleton thereby captures the
complex manner in which language functions as a medium of our experience. His
point is that to be inside a language is not to be shut off from reality, but to
recognise language as an indispensable means by which to access the world around
us (Eagleton, 2007, pp. 6869). Language is more than simply one semiotic mode
amongst others, as though you can choose to use language in preference to visual
or other means of representation (and vice versa). You do not choose French or
German or Dutch as your native tongue. Your language is there, an inescapable
condition for engaging with the world.
We have already noted in the Preface how Bella Illesca, who is herself a former
secondary English teacher, and Piet-Hein van de Ven have respectively played the
role of critical friends for the Australian and Dutch teachers. As their chapter
reveals, Ramon and Mies could also be said to have played the role of critical
friends for each other, offering each other insights about their teaching, in addition
to the commentary that Piet-Hein provided. The dialogue that Bella and Piet-Hein
have each sustained with the teachers whose classrooms they observed with Prue,
Ramon, and Mies comprises email exchanges before and after the actual observations took place, the transcripts of conversations recorded at the schools, and
finally a jointly written account that tries to capture the dynamic of teaching and
learning in their classrooms. As part of these exchanges, the teachers and their
critical friends also focused on the oral communication and writing in which the
students engaged, thus acknowledging yet another layer of meaning-making that is
crucial for understanding the nature of the exchanges that occur in classrooms. Our
point, however, is that the teachers and their critical friends were reflexively using
language at each phase of their work together, grappling with words and their
meaning, with conflicting interpretations of their work as teachers of literature. The
differences between their standpoints generates a multilayered account of their
teaching, a far richer account of literature teaching as a meaning-making activity
than that which might be achieved by the kind of multi-modal account we have just
been considering.
***
Our emphasis on the linguistically mediated nature of this inquiry into the teaching
of literature is before all else apparent in the writing in this volume. Both the
collaborative writing that the teachers have produced in dialogue with their critical
15
friends and the essays written by commentators reflect an ongoing inquiry into the
teaching of literature. The authors do more than report on research on the teaching
of literature. They continue this research through the very act of writing.
By choosing to use the word essay to describe the kind of writing presented
here, we mean something far removed from the formulaic writing produced by
students in Anglophone countries in order to demonstrate pre-existing knowledge
or skills (cf. Teese, 2000, Clyne, 2005). Montaigne first used the term to characterise
a text that embodies a trial or attempt to tease out the significance of an experience
or idea a significance that can only be realised by writing about it. Rather than
simply positing the teaching of literature as an object of analysis, these essays
emerge out of the conversations enacted in literature classrooms and fold back into
them, part of a continuing dialogue about culture as we enact it from day to day.
Any inquiry worthy of the name combines a reflexive awareness that continually
returns to the very conditions of knowing, that continually asks what it means to
know and experience this world.
The theoretical resources on which this study draws conceptualise writing as
mediating inquiry. This is to suspend any preconceptions with respect to the content
of life or experience. It also means resisting any attempt to prescribe the form that
writing should take when it is being used for the purposes of inquiry. Another
reason why we have chosen the word essay to characterise the writing presented
in this volume is that the form of an essay cannot be prescribed in advance, at least
when it names the kind of trials or explorations in which Montaigne engages. An
essay might combine narrative and argument, as well as providing space for the
kind of heteroglossia or combination of voices that Bakhtin valued so highly
(Bakhtin, 1981/1987). It is also a form of writing that is not hindered by the
borders between academic disciplines.
But clearly we are investing the word essay with other meanings than those
which Montaigne may have intended when he first used this term, meanings that
derive from the work of more recent theorists. If we were to specify the characteristic
features of the writing that Prue, Bella, Mies and Ramon have generated in their
efforts to understand their professional practice as teachers of literature, we would
start by noting its investigative character. But while this matches the spirit of
Montaignes efforts to explore life as it presented itself to him, their writing is also
driven by an impulse that is akin to the writing of people like Frigga Haug or
Dorothy Smith. It might be described as writing without guarantees (to borrow a
phrase from Stuart Hall [Hall, 1996, p. 25]). Although Prue, Bella, Mies and Ramon
are all committed teachers of literature, their commitment does not preclude the
possibility of interrogating the assumptions underpinning their work. Indeed, such
a critically reflexive stance might be said to be integral to their professional
commitment. They are all prepared to suspend any belief in the value of literature
and literature teaching and to begin again at the beginning (cf. Benjamin, 1973,
p. 97), interrogating the meaning of their work and exposing the assumptions
behind their teaching to critical scrutiny. Rather than taking literature as a given,
they probe the very foundations of their work, in a way which is similar to the kind
of inquiry that Frigga Haug performs through her concept of Memory work
16
(Errinerungsarbeit) (Haug, 1990) and more recently her attempts to investigate

the nature of education through the writing and reading of autobiographical
narratives that reconstruct experiences of learning (Haug, 2003).
An equally salient frame of reference for understanding the writing of both the
teachers and academics who have contributed to this volume is provided by
Dorothy Smiths notion of writing the social, expounded in her book with the same
title, as well as other studies (see Smith, 2005, 1999/2004, 1987). Bella Illescas
account of walking into the school where Prue Gill works brings to mind Smiths
arguments about the need to develop a style of writing that registers your entry into
a site, whereby as a sociologist you situate yourself within the social relations you
are about to explore (Smith, 1999/2004, p. 8). There is, as Smith observes no
Archimedean point from which a positionless account can be written; writing the
social is always from where people are (ibid). Crucially and this applies not only
to Bellas standpoint but to the approaches of other people who have participated in
this inquiry Smith understands writing as a process of discovering dimensions of
the social that come into view, as we progressively discover the lineaments of
social relations in which our own lives are embedded (ibid). Although Mies,
Ramon, and Prue all begin with the institutional settings in which they work, their
dialogue with their critical friends takes them beyond the immediacy of the day-today, enabling them to acknowledge the way traditions of curriculum and pedagogy,
mandated policies, as well as the social relationships in which their pupils participate,
shape what they do in their classrooms. They have begun, in short, to think
relationally, to understand how the here-and-now presented to them is the product
of a wider network of relationships, not all of them visible to an observer. The
same can be said about the essays written by the other contributors to this book. All
have been engaged in a process of discovery that has taken them beyond the habitual
practices and assumptions that constitute their everyday lives. They have all been
engaged in a process of inquiry that has enabled them to view their existing
knowledge and work reflexively. Smiths understanding of writing the social
again seems pertinent.
Writing the social profits from the dialogue between what we mean to say
and what we discover we have said, and, of course, the work of rewriting to
embrace what we find we have said that is beyond or other than our
intentions. (Smith, 1999/2004, p. 9)
Dorothy Smiths words serve to capture the joint inquiry that is enacted in this
volume, including the iterative process that we have experienced as we have sought
to refine our writing through our dialogue with ourselves and with each other. Each
draft of the essays in this book has been a process of discovering what we have
said and then seeking to build on the insights that have become available to us.
***
Rather than supposing that representing classroom practice involves aspiring to

some kind of objectivity that captures what is, we see ourselves as performing
17
an alternative task: of constructing accounts of teaching that explore the differences

between our intentions as teachers and researchers and what we actually achieve,
between our individual aims and the meaning of the whole process as we collectively
enact it.
As Douglas Barnes shows with respect to lesson planning and curriculum development, the difference between our intentions and our actions does not necessarily
signal a failure on the part of teachers, but the discovery of richer dimensions of
language and learning than they may have originally envisaged (Barnes, 1976/1992,
p. 14). The difference between intention and enactment opens up a space for
imagination and play, for thinking otherwise, for entertaining possibilities that
exceed the present moment. The interactions that occur within classrooms always
have the potential to go beyond the designs of teachers and policy makers. As
Barnes remarks, a curriculum made only of teachers intentions would be an insubstantial thing from which nobody would learn much. For a curriculum to be
meaningful, it has to be enacted by pupils as well as teachers, forming part of an
ongoing conversation between them as they all participate in the social life of the
classroom (p. 14). To imagine that schooling should be solely directed towards
achieving outcomes that have been specified in advance that it is always a matter
of measuring what individual students can do, rather than what they are potentially
capable of achieving by participating in the social relationships that constitute any
classroom is a radically impoverished view of education.
The cases written by Prue, Bella, Mies and Ramon, all reflect a cycle of planning,
implementation and evaluation that forms a context for practitioner inquiry. These
teachers are doing more than weighing up the effectiveness of otherwise of their
teaching strategies. Such a concern has its place within the world of educational
practice teachers are always seeking out ways to refine their teaching, to expand
their repertoire of strategies in order to enhance the learning of their students. But
the trouble with reflection when it focuses narrowly on effective teaching is that
it precludes any questioning of the meaning of what we do and whether the learning
outcomes that we are trying to achieve have any validity. This is especially the case
with standardised testing, and the dreadful practice of teaching to the test that is
occurring in countries like the United States, England and Australia. Such tests
purportedly measure literacy achievement, but what they really do is construct
culturally loaded versions of literacy that devalue the literacies and cultures of whole
communities.
By contrast, the teachers involved in this project are weighing up their approaches
with respect to how they contribute to their ongoing conversations with the
students in their classrooms. They obviously have a sense of what they would like
their students to learn: Prue is endeavouring to enable her students to engage in
a close reading of the text; Mies is encouraging her students to empathise with
the main character of a novel; and Ramon is committed to exploring the potential
of literary-theoretical frameworks for enhancing his students reading. These are
dimensions of reading which, as teachers of literature, they believe are important if
students are to meaningfully engage with the texts presented to them. Yet the type
of engagement they are envisioning goes beyond any notion of reading as a
18
technical skill, locating it within multiple contexts beyond the classroom, including
the lives of their students, the communities in which they live, and the larger
society in which they will eventually take their places. They conceive of reading, in
short, as a socio-cultural practice that should be the subject of continuing inquiry
and reflection. For them, engaging with texts requires readers to draw on the personal,
social, historical and ethical dimensions of their lives, constructing readings that go
beyond the surface level of the words on the page and their dictionary meanings.
As Bakhtin remarks, speakers do not find their words out of a dictionary, but in
other peoples mouths, in other peoples contexts, serving other peoples intentions
(Bakhtin, p. 294). Out of those living situations, people take words and attempt to
make them own. Mies, Ramon and Prue all conceptualise their classrooms as
dialogical environments, both with regard to the way their students engage with the
shifting meanings of literary texts as they might be constructed within classroom
contexts (i.e. with respect to the complex interplay between texts and contexts that
has been a focus of contemporary literary theory) and as a way of reading the
classroom itself and all that occurs within it. They thereby speak back to the reductive
and superficial way that standarised testing constructs teaching and learning within
classroom settings. This is why they have participated in the inquiry enacted in this
volume. As teachers of literature, they see such inquiry such praxis as integral
to their work.
And we hope Dear Reader that you too will find that the conversation they
have to offer you is worthwhile, that by engaging in this conversation you too can
enact a critical praxis, reflecting on the assumptions that shape your own work as
teachers as literature, and the histories, traditions, cultures and policies that currently
mediate your professional practice. We hopen dat dit boek bijdraagt tot reflectie
over het eigen literatuuronderwijs en tot een hernieuwde discussie over het waartoe
van literatuuronderwijs, een discussie die in Nederland te lang is uitgebleven (Van
de Ven, 2004).
REFERENCES
Bakhtin, M. M. (1981/1987). The dialogic imagination: Four essays (M. Holquist, Ed., C. Emerson &
M. Holquist, Trans.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Barnes, D. (1976/1992). From communication to curriculum (2nd ed.). With an Afterword by Kathryn
Mitchell Pierce. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers.
Benjamin, B. (1973). Understanding Brecht (A. Bostok, Trans., Introd. S. Mitchell). London: NLB.
Cavarero, A. (2000). Relating narratives: Storytelling and selfhood (With an Introd. P. A. Kottman,
Trans.). London and New York: Routledge.
Clyne, M. (2005). Writing, testing, culture. In B. Doecke & G. Parr (Eds.), Writing=Learning. Kent
Town: Wakefield Press/AATE.
Cohen, J. M. (19581970). Introduction. In M. de Montaigne (Ed.), Essays (M. Cohen, Trans.).
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Derrida, J. (1974/1976). Of grammatology (G. C. Spivak, Trans.). Baltimore and London: The Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Eagleton, T. (2007). How to read a poem. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Hall, S. (1996). The problem of ideology: Marxism without guarantees. In D. Morley & K-H. Chen
(Eds.), Stuart Hall: Critical dialogues in cultural studies. London: Routledge.
Haug, F. (1990). Errinergungsarbeit. Hamburg: Argument-Verlag.
19

Haug, F. (2003). Lernverhaeltnisse: Selbstbewegungen und Selbstblockierungen. Hamburg: Argument
Verlag.
Herrlitiz, W., Ongstad, S., & van de Ven, P.-H. (2007). Research on mother tongue education in a
comparative international perspective: Theoretical and methodological issues. Amsterdam and
New York: Rodopi.
Jones, K. (2010). The twentieth century is not yet over: Resources for the remaking of educational
practice. Changing English, 17(1), 1316.
Kincheloe, J. (2003). Teachers as researchers: Qualitative inquiry as a path to empowerment (2nd ed.).
London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Kress, G., Jewitt, C., Bourne, J., Franks, A., Hardcastle, J., Jones, K. (2005). English in urban
classrooms: A multimodal perspective on teaching and learning. London and New York:
RoutledgeFalmer.
MacLachlan, G., & Reid, I. (1994). Framing and interpretation. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Marx, K. (1969). Theses on Feuerbach. In K. Marx & F. Engels, et al. Selected works (pp. 1315).
Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Par, A. (2005). Review of English in urban classrooms: A multimodal perspective on teaching and
learning. Changing English, 12(2), 350358.
Smith, D. (1987). The everyday world as problematic: A feminist sociology. Boston: Northeastern
University Press.
Smith, D. (1999/2004). Writing the social: Critique, theory, and investigations. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press.
Smith, D. (2005). Institutional ethnography: A sociology for people. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.
Teese, R. (2000). Academic success and social power. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Van de Ven, P. H. (2004). Vontooid verleden tijd een beschouwing over cultuur en communicatie
met een knipoog naar het nieuwe leren uit 1580. Moer, 4, 112123.

Radboud University
Brenton Doecke
School of Education
20
PART 2: TEACHING AND REFLECTING
PRUE GILL AND BELLA ILLESCA
3. LITERARY CONVERSATIONS
An Australian Classroom
This essay arises from an ongoing discussion about the teaching of Literature
which followed after a critical friend, Bella Illesca, spent a series of consecutive
lessons observing the action in Prue Gills year 12 Literature class. By examining,
interpreting and exploring the events of the classroom as students discussed the
short stories of contemporary Australian writer, Beverley Farmer, we were led to
articulate our aims as teachers, our puzzles, and our concerns in ways that helped
each of us think afresh about teaching. We collected transcripts of class discussions,
our own observational accounts of the classes, and further email reflections and
discussions between students. Then we reflected on this material in further taped
conversations together, trying to identify the matches and mismatches between the
planned curriculum and the curriculum that was actually implemented, as Prue
interacted with her students in the course of the lessons (cf. Barnes, 1976).
In writing this account, you might say that we are writing interpretations of
interpretations, or having a continuing conversation about what it means to teach
literature. We are also affirming an approach to the teaching of literature which
runs against the grain of the English teaching that is currently being championed by
many commentators and decision makers in Australia. The account slips between
journal entries, conversation, class transcripts, email discussions, student written
work, and reflections looking back, some years later (the initial classroom observations and dialogue between us commenced in 2004). Some sections are written by
Prue, others by Bella. We felt that it was important to preserve a sense of our
individual voices, in the dialogical spirit in which this inquiry has been conducted.
FROM PRUES JOURNAL: ON BEING OBSERVED
It is the idea of a conversational inquiry that wins me over. Would I be prepared

to have a critical friend come to observe my year 12 Literature classes over an
extended period of time? And would I then be prepared to participate in an ongoing conversation about those classes, conversations which would have a public
dimension, a version being published, and hopefully taken up in a whole range
of different circles? It is a daunting prospect, but also compelling. For years Ive
attended conferences, participated in workshops, listened to international speakers,
been a member of reading groups, completed short courses and post-graduate
work. All of these activities draw on outside expertise to help us think about our
GILL AND ILLESCA
own pedagogical practice, but they are not located in ones daily world. The idea of
sharing ones own classroom experiences in an intimate way, of thinking through
ones role with purpose and rigor is, for me, both difficult to agree to and impossible
to refuse. I see it as a way of pinning down my interior world, of undertaking to
make it available to myself in new ways, and to others, of having it enriched by the
thinking of another.
Professional learning is very much at the heart of educational discussion here in
Australia, and that is good. We all know, intuitively as well as through research,
that teacher engagement and enthusiasm for their discipline and their classroom
work is a positive influence on student engagement and intellectual development. We
know that an inquiring teacher is likely to be a good teacher. In the state of Victoria
in which I work, teachers must now account for at least 100 hours of professional
learning every 5 years this is a requirement of our on-going registration. A
significant aspect of the discussion is how to make this learning rich, and much
more deeply integrated than the filling out of logs and records and the ticking of
boxes will ever be able to register.
I have already been involved, through the Association for the Teaching of
English, in many conversations about teaching practice. I have been involved in the
group moderating of student work both in my workplaces and at the statewide level
as part of Year 12 assessment. I know that a conversation about student work leads
to much professional learning. And, like most teachers, I am constantly involved in
snatched exchanges with other teachers about what is going on in my own classroom.
This proposal to converse with an observer is an opportunity to do something similar,
but in a different, much more extended way, and directly related to my own classroom. It would be, I am told, a sustained, thoughtful observation of what happens
in the classroom, followed by reflection, note taking and discussion.
And yet, there is something so intimate about the classroom, this public/private
space, that at a deep and irrational level, the idea of an observer, even a critical
friend, is unnerving. This lurking desire to be left alone goes against all I value, as
both teacher and professional. I believe that talking about what happens in the
classroom is an excellent way of making sense of it; I know that my head holds
only one version of the class, which will be different from the eighteen other versions
in the room; I believe that, as Shulman puts it, reflection and analysis are essential
for the scholarship of teaching (Shulman, 2000), and I know that this often comes last
in departmental meeting agendas. I also believe in accountability, in my obligation to
accept scrutiny. And I love team teaching. But I know too, that the unspoken pact
one makes with a class is one thing, and the face one presents to the observer is
another.
It is Bella who will observe. I know Bella through the English Teachers
Association I admire her work, her politics, her brave resolve to challenge certain
conventions in schools. This paradoxically makes it both easier and more testing.
I take a deep breath, knowing that it is a good thing to do.
I think about what I am teaching at the moment, about what to warn Bella to
expect. This is a group of year 12 students, at the beginning of their final semester
of schooling. Ours is a relatively elite private girls school, and parents pay substantial
24
LITERARY CONVERSATIONS
fees for their daughters to attend. There are 16 students in the class, most of them
turning 17 years of age during the year. As with all year 12 subjects other than
English, Literature is elected. In other words, all who are here in the class have
chosen to be here. This does not mean, of course, that they are confident of what
theyve undertaken, and some have little background in literary analysis.
One of the features of the year 12 Literature course, as it is mandated by the
state, is the underlying premise that meaning is derived from a relationship between
the text itself and the reader in other words, there is an acknowledgement that the
truth of the text is inevitably negotiated rather than given. There is an expectation
that students will build confidence and skill in developing an interpretation of their
own which is based on sound analysis. So unlike some Literature courses taught,
students are not receiving an orthodoxy about the meaning of the studied texts,
rather they are asked to speak in their own voice, of their own response. They need
to be prepared to be questioned on this response, to draw on the text to give
evidence for why they read the text as they do, to convince us that their view is
plausible. In doing so, they need to have taken into account the views of others, not
only their classmates, but those who have published critical reviews or essays about
the texts. My aim, in these classes, is to help the students build their analytical and
interpretive skills, and right now we are in the very early stages in our study of
Farmers Collected Stories (Farmer, 1996). I tell Bella in email correspondence
with her prior to her visit:
At this stage I am trying to get students to approach a discussion of the
stories via a close examination of short passages to increase their
confidence in moving from the particular to the general the approach they
need to demonstrate in the passage analysis task in the end of year exam.
Students have chosen a story from the collection and their task is to read it,
to identify a passage for discussion and to use that passage as the basis for
a discussion of the whole story. The students will work in pairs or threes, and
they are to make a class presentation.
My prediction is that this will be quite difficult for them, that they will not
find a great deal to say via the passage, and that Ill have to move them along
quite a bit. Ill be interested to see whether they draw on language and
stylistic features of the writing in their discussion, as well as ideas.
I imagine that my role will be to ask the questions that help them move from
passage, to story, to work as a whole.
What I dont tell Bella yet, though it will clearly emerge as she spends time with us
in the classroom, is that my teaching focus at this time is on talk. Students might
spend a whole class talking, with almost no formal note taking or quiet work
happening at all. Thinking about it now, I can see that I want to develop the same
sense of conversational inquiry in the classroom, that Bella and I will be using
ourselves. I want to get students to make their own thinking process visible not
only to the rest of us in the class, but to themselves. I am asking them what do you
25
GILL AND ILLESCA
think is happening here? what makes you think that? where in the text can you
locate this idea of yours? I want them to be able to work out how it is that they are
drawing conclusions, and to be prepared to test those conclusions.
In a staff discussion group at the school where I work, we have been talking
about the work of Ron Ritchhart and others stemming from the Ground Zero project
at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (Ritchhart, 2002), and I have given
my students a reading which might help us have a discussion about this idea of
thinking. I add something of this in my comment to Bella:
Im also going to ask the students to reflect on what is happening in the
classroom. Last class I gave them an extract from Ron Ritchharts Intellectual
Character: What It Is, Why It Matters and How to Get It and Im hoping that
they can use the framework of intellectual dispositions to help them think
about the classroom process. Where do they see these in action?
I also mention to the students that an observer will come to the next class. It makes
them as self-conscious as it makes me, and I understand that already something of
the atmosphere of the room will alter, although I cannot quite predict how.
FROM BELLAS JOURNAL: THE LENS OF THE OBSERVER
As I walk through the school grounds to meet Prue for our first meeting, it comes
as no surprise to me that what I see and hear is very much governed by what was
conspicuously absent from the government school where I last worked as an English
teacher: students with laptops, a caf style school cafeteria with an adjoining
bookshop, art show postcards for an on campus art show exhibition and colourful
consumer products around the school and in classrooms. I even walk past an area
where professional photographers and artists are setting up, and I feel that there is
something exciting and exclusive about it all. At a glance, what strikes me about
the students who I see here compared to the students that I taught at my old school
is an almost intangible sense of place and social cohesion; it is in the way they talk,
the way they walk, in their gazes, in how they make use of the schools physical
resources and in how they wear their uniforms. In fact, the school prospectus
markets the school in precisely this way. The caption on the front cover reads, i
want to be and goes on to tell us that at this school every child is encouraged to be
free, be inspired, be surprised, be empowered, be involved, be creative,
be bolder, be connected and be at home, be with us always. This school
prospectus, the school website, the faade of the school these are the
externalization of particular values and interests that proclaim a nurturing of each
individual (signified by the i in lower case), and ultimately leading to an
affirmation of the right of a certain I to exist and name the world.
Whilst I try to mentally disentangle myself from the seductiveness of this
seemingly civilized world of lively chatter and pleasant activity, I think about my
students in a coeducational government school on the urban fringe and I wonder to
myself, what about responsibility, responsiveness and commitment to justice? In
this moment, from where I am standing there is nothing mysterious or natural
26
about authority (Said, 1978:19) and I cant help but think to myself that social
engineering does exist and I tell myself that I must try to not let my personal views
about the deliberate erosion of public education by successive governments here in
Australia cloud my classroom observations and experiences here with Prue. Still,
when faced with stately trees, grounds and turn of the century buildings, I cant
help but remember the damp portable classrooms or the mottled, uneven dustbowl
that was the sports field at my previous school.
I make a note of these things at this point not as a way of re-hashing the
important ongoing concern about educational inequality in Australia, but as a way
of reflecting on the question of representation i.e. how the way in which what we
see and hear is shaped by our habitualised discursive practices and the ideologies
that inhere within us and around us (Reid, Kamler, Simpson & Maclean, 1996). We
all refer to and rely on that untidy thing called memory, previous knowledge and
experiences, to understand ourselves in relation to others and make sense of the
past, present and future. I am no different. (And, to illustrate a point I remind
myself to tell the reader that I have spent some time working in a private girls
school not far from this school.) And I think that to give an account of a classroom
that doesnt see the observers and the selves in it as social beings who are the
product of the ideological networks and normative relationships in which they
operate is to provide the reader with a false representation of the life of the
classroom, one that ignores the importance of the personal dimension in the public
lives of people (Doecke, 2001). Research of the kind that abstracts the personal
from the classroom seems to be what our current government is intent on pursuing.
It seems that to meet the accountability measures that the government is imposing
on us we need to estrange ourselves from ourselves and from the lives of our
students. As the government sees it, student data from standardized tests are all we
need to show whether we are performing effectively
I am pleased that it is Prue whose classes I will be observing. I know Prue
through the Association for the Teaching of English and I have admired her critical
stance and views on issues in education over the years. She also has extensive
teaching experience in both government and private schools in Australia and I am
looking forward to sharing and exchanging ideas. This idea of talking for the sake
of talking about education feels a little different: no workshop activities to structure
our thinking or outside experts to talk to us about how teaching happens and should
be done. We are two colleagues who share a passion for English teaching and we
have this unique opportunity to talk to each other about what we know and do,
from a unique perspective the inside of a classroom. It is a privilege to be
allowed into another teachers classroom.
THE FIRST CLASS PRUES VIEW
Things do not happen as I expect, and later I talk about this with Bella. The class
filters into the room in desultory fashion, the only group whove not photocopied
their chosen passages for the rest of the class is the group scheduled to start. I run
out of the room, do the photocopying and leave Bella to witness the skylarking and
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GILL AND ILLESCA
play that goes on between students not yet harnessed for action. It is not as if such a
beginning is unusual, but with an observer present, I am aiming to give a different
impression. The students themselves are not up for charade. Bellas presence spurs
me to stop and think about whether the ragged beginnings characteristic of my
classes are purposeful, and therefore professional, or happenstance, and therefore
unprofessional. How might they be seen by others? Strict boundaries are so naturalised in schools that we become nervous of blurring them, but I like it when I do.
Students bring their recess talk with them into class. They flick in and out of
personal chat as they prepare for the days lesson. I see such informality as a way
of learning about each other, and hence contributing to our ability to have a
conversation about an idea or a text or a piece of writing. One of the things I say to
students at the beginning of the year, when they are new and fresh, is that my first
aim is that they enjoy walking through the door. I picture them thinking, as the bell
goes for the end of the class before, Oh good, its Literature now and that is
certainly what I am thinking myself. On this day it takes ten minutes to set up the
class, which is 75 minutes long. In the context of the institution, this can make me
uneasy, though its not difficult to justify the fluidity as a relinquishing of authority.
And so we move into the content of the class. We sit with our chairs in a circle,
text in hand, and a pencil for annotations or jottings. It is the students who lead the
talk. Each group will start their discussion of Farmers writing by the reading of a
passage to which we will pay close attention. Once the discussion of the passages
begins, the students are immediately focused and very reflective in their comments
about Farmers writing. Im pleased by their attentiveness, but, as I predicted, they
are more comfortable making general rather than particular comments (this and
subsequent excerpts from conversations in class were recorded by Bella in her
observation notes, August, 2004):
Theres heaps of dialogue.
She often uses Greek language as well
and she uses Greek-English like you hev and womans never paint
their hairs here.
Thats cute. And, and what about you mek fool!
The first passage we discuss comes from a story called Pumpkin and it reveals the
emerging tensions in the marriage between a rather intellectual young Australian
teacher, Barbara, and Andoni, her Greek husband. They are staying together in
Andonis family home in a Greek mainland coastal village. This is their first trip to
Greece together, and so each is seeing the other in a new context, and inevitably,
each is feeling destabilized by what they see. Andoni is shocked to find that
Barbara dyes her hair even though, she promptly tells him, his sisters do too. One
of the students has just used the term good woman in her comment, and I question
her about this what might Farmer be saying?
Bec:
Prue:
28
That [for Andoni] its what people think that matters. Not what
you do its what seems that matters.
What might Farmer think about this attitude?
Jo:
Would Farmer be angry because of his lack of honesty? You

cant judge a person because of dyed hair! Theres a sense of
where two principles are juxtaposed
Natasha:
The principle of being a good woman
Clare:
The principle of being the woman who is seen to be a good
woman
Laura:
The Greek is automatically a good woman. Barbara has to
assimilate to become good.
Stephanie:
Her honesty and goodness [versus] keeping up appearances
Prue:
For her, the openness is a virtue. For him its
Prue/ Natasha: A shame (Natasha and Prue finish the same sentence).
I question continually: what in this passage makes you say that? Where can you
locate your idea? How do you think Farmer positions us here? Why might she be
doing that? Gradually, as the students respond to this prodding, they shift in focus
and start to point to detail in the writing.
We move on to discuss a dark story about a serial rapist A Woman with
Black Hair. The students presenting this story have chosen the very opening
passage to discuss. It is the view of a sleeping household that a rapist has as
he slips through an unlocked door. It is a cold and detailed observation. As we
first read we have no idea that it is a predators view that we are reading,
although any reader would be struck by the clinical detail in the account. But for
each of us as we talk together now, we have the knowledge of hindsight, and it
colours the way we attend to tone and atmosphere. The observations are more
detailed:
Fiona:
Cara:
Prue:
Kim:
Farmer paints a picture in colours. Very striking and disturbing;

red velvet and quilt, ink all foreshadow blood the
childrens essays and poem tell us shes a teacher but he hasnt
made a connection. Shes just a woman with black hair.
The tone is very detached. Its unsettling
How do you locate unsettling?
Through detachment [He is] not emotionally engaged with this
at all
I want to ask the question one more time where, in this passage, can you pin
down the way Farmer uses language to unsettle? I want even closer attention.
I want them to use their own language with more particularity, to look for ease
or eloquence, patterning or rhythm, sarcasm or grace, resonance, ambiguity,
image, or figurative language. Their evidence lies in how they read, and I am
asking them to make the interpretive nature of their reading visible. This is
challenging, because if such processes are to become visible to us, we must
inevitably confront values and prejudices which are naturalised in our thinking.
Perkins refers to this as making thinking visible, and he talks of the many ways
we can use the language of thinking with students: we can ask them to
hypothesise, to reason, to suggest, to imagine, to give evidence, to counter an
argument (Perkins, 2003).
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GILL AND ILLESCA
The students talk about this passage continues:

Claire:
Fiona:
Cara:
Natasha:
Bree:
Bec:
Weird she uses brackets like that. Whats the purpose?

Unnecessary information
Like a side note in the first person. Makes it more intimate
dont you think?
Do words in brackets give a different view into his psyche?
Maybe its the narrator?
I think its like a monologue I think its like a play. Like stage
directions to set the mood
There is an exploratory aspect to this talk. Four questions are asked, but these
questions are directed to each other, not to me. Cara, Natasha and Bree are testing
out an idea in their questions openly hypothesising. Fiona and Bec are asserting,
but not as though they have the only answer to the questions being asked, simply as
though they are confident in offering an interpretation.
I comment now that it is clear that the rapist has been watching the woman, and
someone takes this point further:
Fiona:
Liz:
Fiona:
Nameless. This is just why he only does it once
He stands, cocky, not hiding unseen The brazenness of his
behaviour!
Students are also beginning to draw some conclusions about the perspective
Farmer brings to her work. I dont agree with these conclusions, but Ill wait for
them to test them out for themselves. They say:
Farmer is anti-men
The only time men are OK is when they take on a womans role
Shes annoying, so bleak just because she came from a traditional
background.
One student implores of Farmer:
Men are not all that evil get on with your life.
Later, their thinking will become more complex. Later I will push them further:
what is the implication of your interpretation? have you a theory about what
Farmer is doing in this story? what conclusions are you beginning to draw
about Farmers writing? I want them to be talking about language and meaning.
Later too, I will talk to them, about the feminist notion that the power of all men is
reinforced by the fact that some men rape. It is a challenging idea, but thinking
about it in relation to this story, rather than in relation to their own personal world,
30
provides a safe context for discussion. I do not push them to accept or reject the
idea. I simply want them to know that it is an idea, and if they are studying literature
like this, it is one worth grappling with. We can also talk about whether such an
idea might be dated now, superseded. Similarly, Farmers stories (Inheritance,
Melpo, Ismini) give the opportunity to talk about the Freudian notion of
ambivalence towards the mother, and idealization of the father by the daughter. By
introducing students to theory in the context of their reading, I am hoping to tantalise
them, to think of themselves as able to participate in the to and fro of analytical
discourse.
I find that the conversation I have with Bella after the class is thoroughly
invigorating. I realize that this conversation does, for me, what I am hoping that the
classroom discussion will do for the students. I am forced to pin down my thinking,
to articulate thoughts which generally float un-embodied. I am putting ideas
together in a fresh way. I think again about the process of writing and reflection
and how easy it is for such activities to slip off the agenda for teachers. And I think
about how little we help students reflect before they write how regularly we
throw topics and tasks at them, like exercises, and simply expect them to get on
with it. We underestimate the idea that thinking is hard and takes practice and that
it is something that we ought to do with others. The things I say as I talk to Bella,
my own surprising words, lead me to conclude that what might pass for intuitive
behaviour on my part is actually more mindful than I have admitted to myself.
At the end of this first class, I ask the students to make some observations about
the discussion themselves. They have done their short reading on intellectual
character (Ritchhart, 2002) and Im thinking that this might help them reflect on
their learning, although Im wary of the neat categories that Ritchhart delineates
between intellectual dispositions. Because the class ends in a rush, I email the
students, asking them to post their responses on a discussion list for others to read:
1. Could you think back over the discussion we had in class today, and jot down a
note about a moment when you saw one of the dispositions of intellectual
character (curiosity, open-mindedness, metacognition, truth/understanding
seeking, strategic thinking, scepticism) at play. You might need to refer back to
the reading I gave you.
2. Thinking about your own approach to learning, with which of these dispositions
do you most identify, or alternatively, which do you think best describes your
style? Justify your response.
Their individual responses are a little self-conscious, lacking the playfulness
they use when writing for each other. They make me wish that Id asked a different
question: is Ritchharts theory helpful for you as a learner, for understanding
what intelligence might look like? Nevertheless, reading one after another, they are
interestingly different and open up the possibility of a conversation. One student,
reflecting on the long discussion we had teasing out our responses to Andoni, the
husband in the story Pumpkin, says:
Mostly, I saw the disposition to be truth-seeking and understanding that
is, we all tried to work out the importance of using copper instead of
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GILL AND ILLESCA
bronze, or the importance of the aside in the brackets in the A Woman with
Black Hair passage. I think during the Woman with Black Hair passage we
each tried to pinpoint why it made us feel the way it did But its very
difficult to pinpoint specific actions or thoughts because many of the things
we discussed in class can be classified in several ways.
Another student takes the same moment in the discussion but uses it in a different
way:
I thought there was some strategic thinking involved when we discussed why
Farmer used copper to describe Andoni. Some people used chemistry
knowledge about the properties of copper to theorize about this image.
Maybe there were signs of metacognition when everyone gave their own
opinions as to whether the descriptions within the brackets were Farmers or
psycho stalking mans thoughts. People explored how the section made them
personally feel; looked into their own minds.
For a third student, a different disposition is at play.
During the discussion many people were obviously thinking critically about
Farmers work, and looking beyond what Farmer had written, especially
about the imagery used in Pumpkin and the narrative style of A Woman
with Black Hair. I think that people were generally open minded and willing
to accept and discuss other peoples ideas to try to understand both the
meaning Farmer had intended and what the stories meant to us.
Later, we discuss the differences expressed in the reflections, and conclude that it
is very difficult to neatly identify intellectual qualities at play. But we decide to
keep working with the ideas. The second question seems easier for students to
respond to, and they are quite eloquent when writing about a sense of their own
learning styles. The following extracts are glimpses into their much longer
comments. I am interested by the emphasis on scepticism we are using the term,
as Ritchhart does, in its Socratic sense, referring to one who is unwilling to believe
without questioning:
I think that my main approach is using curiosity, scepticism, and truth
seeking? I love to collect details, string them together and then argue about
them (usually changing my mind about them halfway through). I think
everyone uses scepticism we dont just accept things at face value but try to
find out more. Unfortunately Im not very good at metacognition and
sometimes I abandon logic for emotion and intuition.
I definitely have a curious nature, but this is mostly due to the fact that I seem
to be sceptical of almost everything. Despite this, however, I am moderately
open-minded when it comes to certain aspects of my learning (e.g. new
study/memory method) Overall I believe all I really want to do is find the
truth, in whatever Im doing. That is usually why Im so curious and ask too
many questions!!
32
I think I am naturally very sceptical about most things, but I am also very
interested in understanding what I am learning, as I really dont like just
accepting things just because thats the way they are. I think that being
metacognitive would be very valuable, but I dont think this is really a skill
that I possess, although I think Lit is a subject that really makes you do this.
I think I am fairly open-minded, although its very hard to really know of
course.
This is a good point, I think to myself, and take note of it. We should talk about it
further. How can we recognise our own blind spots? Can we help each other
become more aware of the assumptions beneath the conclusions we draw? Another
student raises similar questions about the difficulty of self analysis:
I think I use a lot of strategic thinking and truth seeking in my work,
especially when doing subjects like Literature and History where you need to
examine writing critically and question work very carefully. I find that there
is a lot of open mindedness required to properly do the tasks set, such as
passage analysis. However, something like metacognition is difficult, because
I think it requires you to examine yourself in a way that may be difficult.
Reflecting on your way of thinking I believe is something easier to do when
you can be more objective.
And this final extract focuses on the interplay of the dispositions:
I believe we display all of these characteristics at various times they are
aspects of human nature so its a hard question to work out which best
describe us. I reckon Im quite a mixture of these qualities some more that
others sometimes but fairly evenly distributed. Ive got a good dose of the
bad qualities too, like procrastination, not caring, grumpiness, lack of
motivation we cant forget these either because i think its harder to
overcome these things than to develop the others. When I get over boredom
and closed-mindedness, it automatically leads to the good intellectual
qualities we have been discussing.
These personal reflections made public, journal style, serve several purposes. The
comments draw on a shared pedagogical language which we can use through the
rest of the year, and thus add a dimension to the discussions between us all in the
literature classroom. They also affirm the value of including student talk in my
own thinking about teaching and learning. Both the theory and the students
response to it reinforce the potential of collaborative learning.
ENSUING CLASSES
And so a pattern develops of Bella coming into the class over a full two weeks.
Each class is 75 minutes long. After each class we write and then we talk. I am
unnerved by some of the observations she makes, heartened by others. I stop feeling
as though there is a watcher in the room and start to relax into conversation after
conversation about our classrooms, what else we might do, what we wished wed
33
GILL AND ILLESCA
done. We share our different worlds of teaching, we clarify for ourselves and each
other the sort of teaching relationships that interest us, our purpose in teaching, our
pleasure, our frustration. It seems a luxury to be so mindful.
Talking our way, group by group, through passages from Farmers stories takes
up several of the classes Bella observes. We become more skilled at making
particular observations about a passage, thinking of the significance of the passage
for the story as a whole, and making linking or interpretive comments about
Farmers writing across the stories. These steps become a framework for student
note-taking. Students begin to make assertions:
Farmer is exploring the cycles of life birth, mortality, ageing, acceptance
of death.
Farmers writing has a honesty about it, she includes confronting detail
about the ageing body for example, that is ordinarily left out.
Farmer creates strong women.
Farmer explores notions of masculinity.
I ask them to think about the underlying values implicit in the writing, the view of
the world that is being challenged or endorsed in the stories, how these values
might reflect the context within which Farmer is writing.
Fortunately for us, Beverly Farmer is both generous and lives only a half days
travel from our school. She kindly accepts our invitation to come and talk to the
class about her writing. Students anticipate the event in a range of ways:
Maybe we should ask Beverly what was on her mind when she wrote this?
I said, like yeah, hello. Men are not all this evil.
I have an issue with the way everything is so different, alienating.
Oh my god. Im worried about her safety this afternoon.
What was going through her head? She drives me mad. Life isnt that bad.
Oh my god, I love her. I want to read more of her stuff.
After a rather shy afternoon tea together, we sit around in a circle, and listen to
some readings. Farmer answers question after question from the students, in a quiet
and honest and gentle way. She tells them about her own student experiences, in
particular about her close, but nave relationship with her European French teacher.
She draws them in with her funny stories against herself and paints a picture of a
young woman with whom they can all identify. The students are in awe. They find
that she is not a rabid, man hating feminist at all. This is arresting for them, some
comment that they need to rethink their hasty conclusions, that they might read her
work differently now.
REVIEW OF A REVIEW TASK
Then we move on to a task designated by the state curriculum authority as part of

the school assessed coursework. The task asks that the students reflect on their
interpretations and evaluate others interpretations by responding to a critical
analysis or review of the work they are studying. We colloquially refer to this as a
34
review of a review. I remind students of the way that academic debate works: one
argues with something that has been said or alternatively, inserts some new idea
where there is a space/gap in an existing interpretation. Either way, I tell the
students, you must show that you have an angle on the article to which you are
responding. You dont need to focus on every aspect of that article, but you need to
take an idea from the article, and write in response to it. The academic debate that
occurs about literature is ongoing. Imagine that youre inserting yourself into a
public discussion about Farmers work.
I have earlier emailed the students the links to three quite challenging articles,
and have asked them to glance through each one. The first is The Fiction of Beverly
Farmer by Lyn Jacobs (Australian Literary Studies, May 1990), the second is
Dramatising the Self: Beverley Farmers Fiction by Xavier Pons (Australian
Literary Studies 17, 1996), and the third is Brenda Walkers Fingers of the hand of
motherhood: Mothers and Sons in Beverley Farmers Fiction (Southerly No 3/58,
1998).
Now I give some strategies for reading an academic article:
read the introduction and the conclusion, and aim to identify the argument the
author is taking
read the first sentence of each paragraph and get an overview of the terrain of
the article
scan each paragraph and highlight a point that strikes a chord
finally, approach from beginning to end.
I group students into three, with each group working on a different article. This
will be a slowish process. I assume that the students will read the articles differently,
that each will latch on to different aspects of the article, and that by sharing their
readings, theyll help each other come to an understanding of the writers perspective.
I am hoping that once each group reports back to the whole class, their view of
Farmers work will expand. A reading across the articles will help each student to
clarify the particularity of the single article they choose to review for their assessment task.
ONE STUDENT MAKES SENSE OF THE TASK
Each time I prepare students to complete this assessment task, no matter what text
we are studying, I am struck by how good it is. It is an academic apprenticeship
of a kind, but even for those who dont think of themselves as academic, being
encouraged to question or quibble with the views of another writer is empowering.
Furthermore, the task raises the students awareness about different ways of reading,
and gives new ways of thinking about the writing they are studying. I think about
the student guide publishing industry, which is competitive here in Australia.
Such guides give potted summaries, lists of themes, analysis of key characters, and a
single perspective on the text. Because of their stated purpose (your exam preparation guide), the views are comfortingly authoritative. This task, on the other hand,
asks students to think for themselves, often making them uncomfortable in the
process.
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GILL AND ILLESCA
It certainly enlarges their view, as one student shows when she summarises Lyn
Jacobs view of the context in which Farmer writes. This leads to a comment of her
own about Jacobs use of intertextuality, a point she may not have arrived at on her
own:
One of the major writing techniques explored by Jacobs is Farmers use of
texts within texts the use of well known stories to shed light on aspects of
her own story. It is interesting to note that Jacobs too refers to numerous
texts and authors throughout her discussion, achieving a similar effect.
Jacobs begins by placing Farmer into literary context, noting she has often
been reviewed in tandem with other women writers like Helen Garner and
Olga Masters. As the discussion develops, Jacobs compares Farmer at
various times to Patrick White, Vance Palmer and Hal Porter, authors who
have obviously shaped the way Jacobs responds to Farmers writing. Jacobs
also draws on her literary knowledge and cites other texts to lend credibility
to her arguments she considers how David Malouf and White have
previously dealt with the idea of the prowler, and closes with a quote from
Eliot about home.
Another student writes of a gap in Jacobs analysis, and adds something of her
own to Jacobs reading:
Jacobs fails to deal with the physical deterioration of the body over time, a
common subject of Farmers stories. In Milk Yiayias health deteriorates
over the course of the story as shes emotionally affected by her friends
illness and by the closing passages, shes described as a listless stranger,
her cheeks pale and yellow, and her white bun loose in wisps. Farmer presents
an even older woman in Melpo a once strong mother now bedridden, her
children rubbing rosewater on her whimpering throat, the loose, spotted
skin of her forearms. Perhaps the most graphic description of a destroyed
body is in Inheritance, where cancer and old age combine to form a sagging
belly grinning with crooked lips above frail shaking legs, slack knees. All
of these women are affected by time and change in the most physical way, as
Farmer demonstrates the transience of life and the unstoppable cycle of
birth, life and death.
Yes, this student is saying, what Jacobs writes seems plausible, and we could
take her point further.
DIALOGICAL INQUIRY
Bella and I return, in our last discussions, to think about the planned curriculum
compared with the curriculum as we see it implemented in these 7 or 8 hours of
classes. The planned curriculum is outlined in the Year 12 Literature course, and it
occurs to me that even the students would agree that these aims direct our study in
quite overt ways. The course should enable students to:
develop an enjoyment of literature through reading widely, imaginatively,
critically and independently;
36
gain an understanding of the variety of human experience;

develop a critical awareness of cultures past and present, as they are represented
in literature;
read closely and engage in detailed critical analysis of the key literary features;
develop interpretive skills by hypothesising about and drawing inferences from
texts;
extend their understanding of the different ways literary texts are constructed;
reflect on their interpretations and evaluate others interpretations;
develop the capacity to write confident analytical and creative responses to
texts.
But as Bella and I talk about what we want to happen in the classroom we are
using a different language. We want our students to read with greater awareness of
the way we frame texts ourselves, we want them to develop their conceptions of
the relationship between language and ideas, to confidently express their ways of
seeing, to think in increasingly abstract ways, to be open to challenge, to understand
the value of evidence and argument. We want them to marvel at the way people
use language to help us see anew and to experience unknown worlds in intimate
ways. We want them to step into the shoes of the other.
Texts become reference points for students to think critically about their own
world, how they might change it, the life they might lead.
School curriculum is insufficiently informed, it seems to me, by the idea that
democracies must be continually reinvented rather than taken for granted, or unquestioned. My aim is that everyone develops a voice in the class, everyone knows
that others will be attentive to their views. I hope to engender an attitude to authority
that is respectful, but questioning. I do not wish to be the central voice in the
classroom. There are some issues on which we may collectively agree there are
others on which we will remain divided and in this way we can consciously model
values of democracy through classroom process. Gunther Kress (1995) in Writing
the Future: English and the Making of a Culture of Innovation, argues for an
English classroom that is not only deconstructive, but reconstructive. He suggests
that the classroom can give students a conception of what it is to be a citizen of
democracy, because at one and the same moment it can encourage them to consider
their voice simply as one of many, and yet foster their agency as individuals (1995)
(cf. Knight 2004; Grossman, Wineberg and Woolworth, 2000). Like Grossman et
al., I want the classroom to be a space where meaningful social interaction
broadens peoples sense of self beyond the me and I into the we and us
(2000:8).
These are the conclusions I arrive at with Bella as we talk about why we teach.
I realize they are not aims that I could have easily articulated without our long
discussions. I think about how to characterise what it is that I am learning as I write
this long account, and I am struck by an old clich about the difference between
having the experience and understanding the experience. The fact is that it is our conversation that has enabled me to think, and Im hoping that this is what the students
experience too. Talk, writing, and talking about writing, are not ends in themselves
but also a way of helping us to construct our futures both public and private.
37
GILL AND ILLESCA
A FINAL REFLECTION FROM BELLA
As I sit in Prues classroom with her students, I am reminded of Ian Reids

description of the Workshop approach to the teaching of Literature, as distinct
from teaching the literary canon (or what Reid calls the Gallery approach). Here
is how Reid describes it:
Imagine, if you will a room for making. As soon as you enter this one you
can see and hear that its quite different from the Gallery. Its messy and
noisy, because lots of people are busily at work. Theres argument, joking,
gossip; theres activity on all sides. One talkative group seems to be either
dismantling something or piecing it together; another is intently mixing
ingredients, several individuals here and there are bent absorbedly over benches,
machines, easels, desks a multi-media experiment seems to be underway
in one corner. A few are silently preoccupied with their reading or is it their
writing? And if there are curators here, its hard to distinguish them from the
rest (Reid, 1984:13).
Prues lessons are very much reminiscent of this kind of integrative and
interactive (Reid, 1984:13) approach. Reid describes it as combining the world of
play with the world of work; of literary utterances with ordinary uses of language;
of verbal communication with other media of cultural expression; of reading with
writing; and of cultural products with their means of production. (Reid, 1984:3).
When you enter Prues classroom, what is immediately evident is that exploratory
talk (Barnes, 1976) is at the heart of her pedagogy. Through their conversations,
students are encouraged to think and create their own meaning from the texts they
are studying. The task that Prue sets her students during the first lesson which
I observe makes this a possibility:
Students in pairs or threes were allocated a story to read and discuss together.
Then they were to do a class presentation of the story, based on an analysis of
a passage that they were asked to attend to in great detail. The aim is to get
them thinking about the detail, the story as a whole, and then to make links
with other stories in order to make broader, interpretive statements about
Farmers writing. (Prue Gill, Reflections on Literature class, 9 August, 2004)
During this activity, Prues voice is present, but it doesnt dominate conversations.
What she says sometimes blends in with the students voices, affirming their
responses in an understated manner: I love that idea Lucy about the !, yes,
I feel like Gemma . At other times her voice is clearly guiding and challenging
her students to clarify: go further , Lisa is saying that how does it make you
think about this argument? Can I go back to how do you think it works to
draw attention to ?, Where do you see that ?, Are you saying she dispels
?. Barnes reminds us that students ability to play an active part in the
formulation of knowledge is partly controlled by the intentions and expectations
they bring to the lesson, and partly by the patterns of communication set up by the
teacher (Barnes, 1976:115116). I see this kind of productive interaction happening
in Prues teaching.
38
Prue does not rely on a formula to shape the conversations that are happening in
her lessons, but there is still a strong sense of her intentions mediating the activities
that take place. Prue arranges the chairs in a circle, invites her students to lead the
discussions in their small groups, seats herself amongst the students and moves
around occasionally joining in the conversation. Arguably, the re-arranging of classroom furniture displaces the more familiar, traditional and commonly accepted
classroom social order. Prue has dislodged herself and her students from their
traditional roles as teacher and student, giving her students the space to try out
ideas and develop their own analytical skills through conversations with her and
each other. What is also deliberate and self-conscious about Prues pedagogy is her
commitment to working with her students in a way that stretches beyond the single
lesson, beyond the mandated English literature curriculum and beyond the examination at the end of the year. For Prue the teaching of literature is about connecting
with the lives of others. She encourages her students to reflect on the important
questions about self, other, politics, values, context, understanding (Prue Gill,
Reflections of Fridays class, 8 August, 2004). Or, as she has observes, in an article
that we have written together:
I think my greatest responsibility as a teacher is to help students develop a
consciousness of the values, the responsibilities, the behaviours underpinning
a democratic process. I want them to understand the fragility of democracy,
the way in which it must be consciously helped and shaped if it is to avoid
being co-opted, becoming illusory (Doecke, Gill, Illesca and Van de Ven
(2009:22)
We are aware that our position in society is a highly mediated one. What constitutes
the real world from the steps of Prues school is very different from the reality
experienced by students elsewhere. But Prue is critically aware of the ideological
work that she is performing, indeed that we all do as teachers when we teach
whether working in an elite private school or in a down trodden government
school.
Giving students access to understandings of language that see words and meaning
as dynamic and constantly changing helps shape their thinking about the world around
them in the present and into the future. Through her classroom practices and her
reflections Prue demonstrates that she encourages her students to work with language,
that she wants them to think beyond the confines of established language forms and
structures. In this sense, language is understood as a lived event (Bakhtin, quoted
in Gardiner [1992: 191]). Through the conversations that take place in these
lessons we can see that when students speak, they borrow words from each other
and from elsewhere: the words they utter are both theirs and not theirs showing
how they are always involved in some kind of productive struggle with language and
meaning (Bakhtin, 1984). In the students written and oral exchanges with Prue
and each other, their choice of words and intonations provide the reader with a
glimpse into their material lives, as well as showing us how their individual lives
are intertwined with the lives of others from other times and places. Prues words
and practices show us that she sees her students as complex and contradictory
39
GILL AND ILLESCA
individuals whose words are split in productive dialogue between themselves and
others, between the individual and the social: I live in a world of others words
(Bakhtin 1986:143).
Here is what Prue had to say in reflections which she sent to me:
One way in which I feel that my students have benefited from my interest in
literary theory is that they begin to feel validated and empowered because of
the way their view of the world is both developed and acknowledged. This
does not happen quickly, but over time. Many of my year 12 Literature students
have not done literature before, and in the beginning they are swamped by a
feeling that this is a hard subject, it is a bit mysterious, theyre not sure what
theyre meant to be doing when they do a passage analysis from one of the
texts theyre studying, for example. They feel theyre on unstable territory, as if
I have some secret which Im not quite revealing about what I want when I ask
for a theory about what the author of the text might be doing (consciously
and unconsciously) in this moment in the text. (Prue Gill, Reflections after
Classroom Observation, Tuesday 10 August, 2004)
Prue tells us that she does not think that there should be anything secretive or
mysterious about language and literature, and that to this end she encourages her
students to interrogate accepted discursive norms and to think of themselves as
authors who also have something of worth to contribute to the public debate. In the
current climate, including reforms in Australian education such as the national curriculum and nation wide mandated literacy and numeracy assessment (The National
Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy [NAPLAN]), these are potentially
dangerous things to say and dangerous acts for students and teachers to perform.
However, I find that Prues critically reflexive stance offers me hope and dares me
to believe that teaching of this kind, as an act of praxis and resistance, is the best
way to respond to a political machinery that is shutting down the conversation
about language and literature and is instead intent on creating a common culture by
establishing canons of taste and value and forming, transmitting and reproducing
certain perceptions and judgments (Said, 1978: 1920).
REFERENCES
Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays (M. Holquist, Ed., C. Emerson & M. Holquist,
Trans.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Bakhtin, M. (1984). The hero, and the position of the author with regard to the hero, in Dostoyevskys
Art. In M. Bakhtin (Ed.), Problems of Dostoyeskys poetics (C. Emerson & M. Holquist, Trans., Ed.).
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays (W. McGee, Trans. & Ed., Emerson and Holquist,
Eds.). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Barnes, D. (1976). From Communication to Curriculum. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Doecke, B. (2001). Public and personal domains: Professional standards for teachers of English in
Australia. L1 Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 1(2), 163177.
Doecke, B., Gill, P., Illesca, B., & Van de Ven, P.-H. (2009). The literature classroom: Spaces for dialogue.
L1 Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 9(1), 533.
Farmer, B. (1996). Collected stories. Queensland: University of Queensland Press.
40
Gardiner, M. (1992). The dialogics of critique: M.M. Bakhtin and the theory of ideology. New York:
Routledge, Chapman and Hall.
Grossman, P., Wineburg, S., & Woolworth, S. (2000). What makes a teacher community different from
a gathering of teachers? An occasional paper. In Centre for the study of teaching and policy. University
of Washington.
Knight, T. (2004). The classroom: Democracy and citizenship. Curriculum Perspectives, 3(24).
Kress, G. R. (1995). Writing the future: English and the making of a culture of innovation. Sheffield:
National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE).
Jacobs, L. (1990). The fiction of Beverley Farmer. Australian Literary Studies, 14(3).
Perkins, D. (2003). Making thinking visible. New Horizons for Learning. Retrieved from
http://www.newhorizons.org/
Pons, X. (1995). Dramatising the self: Beverley Farmers fiction. Australian Literary Studies, 17(2).
Reid, I. (1984). The making of literature. Norwood: AATE.
Reid, J., Kamler, B., Simpson, A., & Maclean, R. (1996). Do you see what I see? Reading a different
classroom scene. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 9(1), 87108.
Ritchhart, R. (2002). Intellectual character: What it is, why it matters and how to get it. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Said, E. W. (1978 rpt. 1995). Orientalism: Western conceptions of the orient. Ringwood: Penguin.
Shulman, L. (2000). Inventing the future in opening lines: Approaches to the scholarship of teaching
and learning Carnegie Foundation for the advancement of teaching e library. Retrieved from
http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/elibrary/inventing-future-opening-lines-approaches-scholarshipteaching-and-learning
Walker, B. (1998). Fingers of the hand of motherhood: Mothers and sons in Beverley Farmers fiction.
Southerly, 58(3).
41
RAMON GROENENDIJK, MIES POLS AND

PIET-HEIN VAN DE VEN
4. ILL NEVER KNOW WHAT IT IS LIKE

TO BE PREGNANT
Teaching Literature in a Dutch Secondary School
INTRODUCTION
The statement in the title was uttered by Ren, a fourteen-year-old in one of Mies
classes. It will serve as our title, because it represents an important goal as well as a
problem for Mies and Ramon: how to get students to look at the world from
different perspectives by teaching them about literature. While reading Blauw is
Bitter (Blue is Bitter) (Bracke, 2006.) Ren tries to put himself in the position of
the protagonist, a girl his age. The fact that a boy is trying to empathize with a girl
is unusual in itself (see Van de Ven, 2005), even though his statement seems to be
one of powerlessness, conscious powerlessness. Perhaps Ren struggles with his
reading of the novel. We will assume that identification and recognition of personal
experiences can grant access to a text, so the text can be used for further personal
development (Malmgren, 1986). The question arises what it is that Ren will learn
from reading Blauw is Bitter. It is impossible for him to identify with the story, yet
in realizing this he may be provided with a key to further personal development.
We will not go into this now, later perhaps, for this text is not entirely finished.
Or rather, our conversation about literature and literary education is not finished.
This text is merely a snapshot of our ongoing conversation that is our research. The
object of this study is us, the way we teach literature, our ideas about literature and
literary education, as well as our conversation about all this. In short, through our
conversation we study ourselves. Bakhtin (1986, p. 161) writes: a subject as such
cannot be perceived and recognized as a thing, for as a subject it cannot, while
remaining a subject, become voiceless, and, consequently, cognition of it can only
be dialogic (emphasis in original). Through our dialogue, we are each constructing
an understanding of literature and literary education. As Bakhtin remarks: After
all, our thought itself philosophical, scientific, and artistic is born and shaped in
the process of interaction and struggle with others thought, and this cannot but be
reflected in the forms that verbally express our thought as well (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 92).
This essay is more or less a snapshot. We write this text in order to better understand our thinking, to try and organize our search for a definition of what we think
literary education might be. Apart from this conceptualizing function, our writing
also has a communicative function. We write in order for readers to respond. We hope
GROENENDIJK ET AL
that they will be able to offer us new insights to incorporate into our conversation
after all, learning, including our own professional learning, is a social activity
(Vygotsky, 1986).
At the time of writing this, we have already been talking for quite some time.
We are not exactly certain when it all started, but we can at least provide some
relevant data. In 2005, Ramon was a student teacher under Piet-Heins supervision.
For his university studies, he researched his own methods for teaching literature (cf.
Van Veen and Van de Ven, 2008). Ramon continued his research when he became
a teacher and was joined by others from his school, like Mies, who has now been
Ramons colleague for five years (Pols and Groenendijk, 2009). Mies was a teacher in
the late sixties and early seventies, and after that she taught at the University of
Pretoria for eighteen years. Five years ago she returned to the Netherlands and
became a teacher once again.
The school has had a partnership with the university where Piet-Hein works,
involving support for classroom based inquiry by teachers into their own professional
practice. Piet-Hein was invited by Mies and Ramon to become acquainted with the
study. Piet-Hein then invited Mies and Ramon to contribute their findings to a mini
conference about literary education that was held late 2008. At the conference,
Ramon and Mies met Mary Kooy, contact with whom is ongoing. In the meantime,
Ramon has developed his research into a PhD, which is supervised by Mary and
Piet-Hein.
So we share a common ground that provides a certain symmetry to our
relationship which is reflected in the conversation we have been enjoying. At the
same time, however, the relationship between PhD student and supervisor, and
between the experienced teacher Mies and the relative novice Ramon have their
asymmetrical dimensions as well. We try to deal with the paradoxes or contradictions that this situation creates as they emerge. Still, despite our differences in
status and experience we see the conversation as an open ended dialogue (Bakhtin,
1986, p. 155), a dialogue with an endless chain of comments, questions, counter
questions, replies, assessments and discriminations. This dialogue has no ending,
no conclusion, no right answer to any of the questions we have asked ourselves.
This dialogue is, as Nystrand et al. (1997, p. 8) present it:
Continually structured by tension, even conflict, between the conversant,
between self and other, as one voice refracts another. It is precisely this
tension this relationship between self and other, this juxtaposition of relative
perspectives and struggle among voices that for Bakhtin gives shape to all
discourse and hence lies at the heart of understanding as a dynamic, sociocognitive event.
CONTEXT
In the Netherlands, historical (Van de Ven, 1996) and empirical research (Janssen
& Rijlaarsdam, 2007) of literary education knows four paradigms: Cultural literacy,
Aesthetic Awareness, Social Awareness, and Personal Development. In the exam
curriculum for secondary education, these four paradigms are combined to form
44
ILL NEVER KNOW WHAT IT IS
three subdomains of literature: history, literary analysis, and the development of

literary competence on the part of the reader.
Study books for literary education typically cover literary history, explain literary
concepts, and provide trial exercises that invite the student to focus and reflect on
their reading experience.
The Netherlands do not have a national curriculum, hence in practice, the exam
requirements function as such. These requirements are broad to the extent that
teachers are free to design their literary classes as they see fit. They are obliged to
take into account that every student has to read 812 literary works, including
classics written before 1880. The student compiles a list of books that he or she
will read, which then has to be approved by the teacher. The student does most of
this reading outside the classroom, as part of homework. Students have to hand in a
report on the books they have read, and the form that this response takes is
determined by the teacher and the department.
In past years, a public discussion has taken place in the Netherlands about the
book list, at times flaring up, at times falling silent. Demand for teaching a recognized
literary canon is getting stronger, arguments for which derive from the fact that the
Netherlands have become more multiracial, and are experiencing other effects of
globalization. The demand for historical knowledge, including knowledge of literature, reflects a concern about losing the Dutch identity whatever that may be.
At the same time, the teaching of literature is losing ground to a focus on
linguistic competence and fluency, which is considered more important, because it
is more explicitly focused on equipping students with skills they need as citizens in
a 21st century society. The latter type of education is concerned with economic
growth rather than a transfer of culture.
Ramon and Mies work at a secondary school in a small town in the south of the
Netherlands. Their school offers pre-vocational, general as well as pre-university
education. It tries to incorporate a pedagogic approach in which activity and independence are central didactics in every school subject and it functions as a training
school for the university where Piet-Hein works. Since 2008, training schools can
offer teachers extra time to do research in school. Mies and Ramon have been
using that time in order to participate in this project.
Mies and Ramon are part of a department of Dutch that gives individual teachers
the freedom they need to design their own teaching methods. This freedom implies
a great deal of responsibility. As part of their collaboration with one another, Mies
and Ramon justify their teaching practice and their choices of goals and approaches
in light of their teaching. Piet-Hein has been asked to join in as a conversation
partner from the training institute, and in turn, he has asked both to collaborate in
producing this publication.
METHODS
Our conversation about literary education is a type of hermeneutic research. Mies

and Ramon discuss their visions of literary education, they examine their classes,
and the goals they intend to reach and the problems they encounter during those
45
GROENENDIJK ET AL
classes. The conversations between the three of us are based on numerous sources,
such as videos of classroom teaching, observations among ourselves during classes,
student texts (such as Reader Response Logs) (Kooy, 1996), transcriptions of our
conversations and our e-mail communication. So in this chapter Ramon and Mies
reflect on their lessons, but also on our foregoing reflections.
In our conversations, we look at data from a personal viewpoint as well as in
relation to theoretical concepts, so that they form a recursive data analysis. We
reconsider our statements, confirm interpretations and put them up for discussion
again. Then perhaps we choose a new approach. It is for this reason, too, that this text
is only a snapshot. We are merely documenting the current moment from which we
are continuing to engage in renewed conversations. This moment is part of our ongoing reflections on our experiences both as teachers of literature and researchers
into the teaching of literature.
The design of this contribution is as follows. In the next section, Ramon will
present several short fragments from the transcriptions of one of his lessons. He
will then reflect upon these by focusing on the discrepancy he encountered between
his initial goal and the actual realization of the lesson. To do this, he will use
quotations taken from our conversations that prove to be valuable for his reflection.
In the section that follows, Mies will reflect on her own teaching. Her reflection
focuses also on the relation between her goals and her realization. Finally, PietHein will reflect on both previous contributions.
RAMON: OVER INTENTIE EN REALISATIE ON INTENTION AND REALIZATION
De liefde voor literatuur is bij mij bijgebracht door mijn leraar Nederlands.
Die heeft mij geholpen met mijn smaakontwikkeling, door bijvoorbeeld Vestdijk,
Nescio en Hermans aan te raden en daar raakte ik helemaal verzot op. Daarom
ben ik Nederlands gaan studeren en uiteindelijk ook literatuurwetenschappen.
Kijk, ik ben erg beschermd opgevoed en heb wat betreft levenswijsheden nog
weinig meegemaakt. Maar ik heb wel gemerkt, dat je juist door veel te lezen
je wereldbeeld kunt verbreden. Dus daarom heb ik zoiets van, ik wil die
leerlingen ook in laten zien dat lezen heel erg waardevol kan zijn, dat het je
heel erg kan verrijken.
A love of literature has been instilled in me by my Dutch teacher. He has
helped me to acquire a certain taste by recommending writers such as Vestdijk,
Nescio and Hermans, whom I came to absolutely love. It is why I decided to
study Dutch and, eventually, Literature studies. You see, I have had a very
protected upbringing, so I do not have an awful lot of worldly wisdom. What
I have noticed, however, is that it is possible to broaden your world view by
reading literature. And that is why Im like, I want to show those children
that reading can be invaluable, that it can be enriching. (Conversation 8 April
2009)
As a teacher, I have been shaped by my own education. I notice it in my teaching
methods. Dutch and Literature studies have provided me with many different
46
approaches for analysing and grasping texts better. The various courses I completed
taught me different ways to analyse a story, based on various literary theories that
have been prevalent in literature studies over the years. Apart from an historical
approach, I was taught how to look at a novel from a structural-analytical perspective.
Reception theory, also called the reader-response theory, as well as sociological
approaches and intertextual analyses were also a feature of my university education.
From the knowledge I have gained from these ideas, I believe that combining these
different approaches when reading and analysing a text is most rewarding. I want
to pass this capacity on to my students. I want to make sure that by the end of their
secondary school education they are able to read a book in different ways and that
they are able to use different approaches.
I tried to explain these insights to a group of fourth-year students (1516 years
old) in pre-university education. In the preparation sheet for my lesson, I wrote
down that my goal was to introduce students to different approaches to literature.
I wanted to give them some insight into the opportunities that a multiform approach
to literature has to offer. I wanted students to be aware of the way they read a book
and that their approach to reading it correlates with what they are asked to get out
of the book.
RAMONS LESSON
My students and I read a short story: Fam, by Thomas van Aalten. The protagonist,
who is around thirty years old, describes how he and his homosexual brother have
to empty the home they grew up in, because his mother is placed in a mental
hospital. The story is comprised mostly of flashbacks to the protagonists youth.
It turns out that since an early age he has been left to fend for himself and has
been emotionally neglected. The story displays an existential outlook on life. The
protagonist does not have the slightest idea of where his life is going.
The reason I picked this story is that I for one think it is beautiful, and I feel that
the register which is used could appeal to the young people in my classroom.
Although the existential questions in the story may be too challenging for them, the
fact that the protagonists youth is a central theme in the story could incite their
interest. The protagonist looks back on his high school years and his family, and
those are things that students in form 4 of secondary education can connect with.
I split the class into five groups of five students each. Each group is given a
different reading instruction:
Group 1:
Group 2:
While reading the story, pay attention to the way in which the author
wrote the story. Write down from what perspective the story is
written and what effect it has on you, as a reader. So: who describes
the events and how does this influence your way of reading the
story? Also write down the characters who are in the story and
whether the author tells you anything about their characters.
While reading the story, pay attention to the way the author presents
the world to you. What moral values (what is good and what is bad?)
can you distil from the way the characters act? Are there certain
47
GROENENDIJK ET AL
Group 3:
Group 4:
Group 5:
values that are attached to certain types of behavior? Does the

author call some groups of people good and others bad? It is also
worthwhile to have a look at the family bonds. How is family looked
upon in this story? What can you deduce from this?
While reading the story, try to write down what the story does to you
as a reader. How do you feel about the actions of the protagonist?
How do you feel about what he thinks? Could you compare yourself
to the protagonist? Do you think you could live in the same house? Is
the world these people live in similar to your own world? Where
would you rather live? How do you think other readers may interpret
this story? Why? Are there things the author could have done
differently?
Below you will find some information on the author of this story
(Thomas van Aalten) biographical information While reading the
story, pay attention to elements you could connect with information
about the authors life. Be careful! You can never assume that the
author is the protagonist! The protaganist is always just a character
in a story. Still: could you explain why Van Aalten decided to write
this story? Are there any elements in the story that can be traced
back to the authors life? Do you think Van Aalten is writing from
personal experience?
While you are reading, pay attention to the time and space in the
story. Try to find out how these elements contribute to what you think
Van Aalten is trying to say. When is this story situated? What events,
objects, names or other clues are given that are typical of the time in
which it is set? ( ) Where is the story situated? How can you tell?
Are there any spaces that have special meaning to Van Aalten? Why
do think so? Do external factors (the weather, day and night, sounds,
etc.) have special meaning in the story? Why?
Every instruction ended with: write down your findings and discuss them with
your group members. Eventually, together you should be able to put into words
what you have learnt from reading the story in this specific way.
Every instruction represents a certain approach to literature:
Group 1:
Group 2:
Group 3:
Group 4:
Group 5:
text-oriented approach, structural analysis

sociological analysis of world view, social repertoire of a text
reader-oriented approach, reader response
author-oriented approach, biography and work
text-oriented approach, structural analysis
The students have been introduced to these approaches in foregoing lessons.

When the groups of students had finished their inquiries, new groups were
formed that contained one expert from each of these initial groups. These expert
groups were asked to discuss the answers they had reached in their former groups.
Fragment 1 below is an excerpt from the conversation of one these expert
groups.
48
fragment 1: group work

Renske:
Danique:
Yes, he thinks the world is bad and that everything goes wrong.
Aike:
time they biked home and he would say: nothing wrong? So that kind
of shows that he thinks everybody is that way, in a way. Everybodys
boring and come on, whats that word?
Danique:
A little like self-pity. (zelfmedelijden)
Aike:
Anne Wil:
Mariah Carey being played all the time
Danique:
And that holiday on Cyprus. Yeah, outside theres like this war going
on.
Anne Wil:
(laughing): Yeah, pieces of soldiers flying around! Yes, I mean if you
talk about it like that, I dont think you really care that much.
Renske:
He was living in a mist or something.
Danique:
Yes, he really thought the entire world was a bad place.
After the group work I discussed the students answers and their different
approaches. I tried to bring these together and to distil them into an understanding
that we could all share (fragment 2).
fragment 2: class discussion
Teacher:
Alright, I am going to ask you a few questions. To see how we can
enhance the connections between the different approaches to the
story even more. We have noticed that the main character has a
certain outlook on life. Who could tell me how he sees the world?
Aike:
Bad.
Teacher:
Bad, explain.
Aike:
Hes completely negative. Nothings fun really. The holidays, that
party, it was all equally boring.
Teacher:
Everything is stupid and it doesnt amount to anything? () If we
look at time and space. Where is this story situated?
Deniece:
In the city.
Teacher:
In the city. Which city?
Danique:
I think a big city or at the outskirts of a big city. Because he is near
an airport. And an industrial area.
Teacher:
Very good. There is even mention of a prison tower nearby.
Paul:
The Bijlmer1!
(Laughter)
Teacher:
Well, thats an excellent remark, Paul! Airplanes, prison towers, lots
of apartment buildings, it might just be the Bijlmer. That gives us a
chance to make a connection with the author, Thomas van Aalten, he
49
GROENENDIJK ET AL
Danique:
Teacher:
also lives in Amsterdam. So we have this big city, airplanes, apartment

buildings, but the author also talks about this small room in the attic
He had bad memories about that.
It is dusty, everything is crooked, it is a very desolate place. All very
discomforting. You could say that this room in the attic represents
his youth, more or less. ()
So what am I trying to say? When you read a book at some point,
you will notice that your goal in reading requires a certain reading
strategy. And being the smart people you are, you will have to
gradually develop in order to be able to apply these different ways of
reading, different ways of approaching literature. Basically you
already do a lot of these things automatically: when reading books
for school, you pay attention to certain things. And realizing that can
give you a lot of advantages. And actually, that is what wanted to
share with you today.
RAMONS REFLECTION
In one of the conversations with Mies and Piet-Hein I mentioned I was hoping and
expecting that the students would see that there are different approaches, and that
you gain more insight into a story when you put these perspectives together.
Actually, I dont think I reached what I was hoping for. Why was that?
It was especially hard for me to apply my idea in practice. Piet-Hein noticed that
in the transcript of the lesson, I was focused on the structural analysis of the story.
In hindsight I agree with him, even though I did not work it out as such in my
lesson plan. It proved to be very difficult to incorporate different approaches to
literature into one lesson, which was one of the reasons finding a suitable text proved
to be so hard. In the end it turned out that I had not been able to implement all
approaches into the reading instructions that I gave to each group. I did not see a way
to incorporate the historical approach, for example. Practice was getting in the way
of the theory.
By giving each group specific reading instructions, I tried to make the students
approach the story from a different perspective. Since the text is fairly recent, not
too much room is left for a historical approach. Two out of five reading instructions
are structural analytical, partly because literary concepts are an important aspect of
the examination.
In fragment 1, the students are especially preoccupied with understanding the
protagonist. In their original groups, all have paid attention to specific elements, as
the reading instructions required. Now, they are sharing their findings, as experts
in approaching a text in a specific way. In an exploratory manner, they try to form
an image of the protagonist. However, I feel they get stuck at this point. Apparently,
they are still at the level Witte (2008) calls the level of recognition or identification,
where the reader tries to identify with the protagonist. But in this case the students
do not understand the protagonist and cannot get past that point. So the story remains
obscure for them. The teachers who participated in Wittes research determined
50
that the level of literary competence in form 4 of secondary education students is

level 2: reading and recognizing. Students at this level are assigned the following
characteristics:
Limited literary competence; can read and understand very elementary literary
works.
Some judgment of character with which the inner life of more or less familiar
people in more or less familiar situations can be understood.
Simple genres (crime, problem, war).
Texts with many long but structured sentences; mostly literal, but at times
metaphorical language.
Texts with a simple perspective, a storyline with a closed ending and few open
spaces, chronological timeline with few leaps in time.
Texts with an emphasis on actions, but also, to a certain degree, thoughts,
descriptions, and dialogue.
Concrete meaning with unambiguous theme and very concrete and explicit
motives.
Well-rounded characters that experience a logical development.
When I look at Van Aaltens story, the characteristics in italics above may indicate
areas where problems would arise for my students. Van Aaltens protagonist is
thirty. He has reached a certain point in his life where he does not know which way
to go. He is not a more or less familiar person. Oftentimes, he uses abstract
imagery in his speech. At one point in the story the image of an elevator is used,
where the elevator appears to remain stationary while the building is moving past
it: it is symbolic of the protagonists situation, who feels as though life is passing
him by. For a reader at level 2, this image would be too complicated because it is so
abstract. The story has an open ending and leaves a lot of room for different interpretations. Furthermore, Van Aalten uses flashbacks, so the storyline is not chronological. When you add the fact that the existential theme of the story is never made
explicit, but can only be deduced from the remarks and actions of the protagonist,
I find myself thinking that perhaps the story was too difficult after all.
The approaches specified in my reading instructions are not covered very well in
the group discussions. The students talk about their reading experience and about
their own world view, but the concepts I presented them do not really provide a
framework for them to engage with the novel. They do not seem to be able to draw
on their experiences to understand the main character, but seem to struggle to
understand a persona that is apparently far (perhaps too far) removed from them.
Still, Mies noted that in my instructions for group 3 I did try to encourage them to
compare the protagonist to themselves.
The second fragment shows an exchange between me and some students. My
teacher text (Malmgren & Van de Ven, 1994) is directive: I want the students to
hear my interpretation of the text, I want them to understand the message. Initially
I had intended to have the groups present their findings, but I was afraid that the
students would come up with these short presentations that only listed some bullet
points, and then I would not have known if my lesson had conveyed a message at
all! Eventually, I opted for a class conversation to discuss the answers of the
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different groups, so that I would have a chance of summarising all the different
approaches. Unfortunately, the focus of the lesson thus moves from a dominant
student text when they are working in groups to a dominant teacher text in the class
discussion. I try to keep the discussion exploratory: I want to show the students
how to think freely about literature when they are exploring a text. In demonstrating this
process, I want them to understand that all they have to do is think about the text.
They can come up with different interpretations, as long as they can ground these
in evidence. However, since I am operating at an intellectual level they have not
yet reached, I find that I become frustrated: they are not yet ready to read a story in
the way that I read it. Although I wish it were not so, my reading of the text will
probably be regarded by the students as the norm, purely because I am the teacher.
During the conversations with Piet-Hein and Mies I realized that I am very
directive in the class discussion. I leave room for interpretation by the students, but
it is my interpretation that remains the dominant one, especially when I try to connect
the loose ends. Piet-Hein wondered if the class discussion could be described as a
teachers lecture with various roles (Ehlich & Rehbein, 1986): sometimes a student
is allowed to join in, but I remain the dominant character. I personally think I was
slightly more open to the students input, but I do recognize that I am the one who
keeps bringing up new elements, not the students.
When I compare my classes to Mies, I think the text is more dominant in mine.
I want to provide students with tools with which they can get more out of a text. In
the discussion with Piet-Hein and Mies after my lesson, it occurred to me that I hold
a view of aesthetic awareness that is somewhat different from theirs. It is not that
I believe in lart pour lart, as Piet-Hein and Mies initially characterized my view
on literature. For me, the aesthetics of a text go deeper than that. I interpret lart
pour lart as the appreciation of a work of art, a story in this case, which focuses on
the way it is constructed and written. But a book could very well be beautiful
because of the message or its view of the world or the emotional idea of it. The
most important thing is that I give the students the tools with which they can distill
this beauty from a book.
RAMONS GOALS
And that is what I consider the core of my method for teaching literature: providing
the students with tools. I think that is why I put the focus on textual analysis, be it
consciously or not. A structural analysis of a story gives the students the tools that
are most practical for literary analysis. In my lesson, I also try to provide tools relating
to other aspects of my definition of aesthetics: on the world view conveyed by the
text and the readers experience or emotion. This is in line with my view on literature
in general. I see a text as a product of an author who has a certain message that he
or she tried to convey in a certain way at a certain time. I think it is impossible
to fully capture that message, so what I try to do with my students is to distill the
authors possible message. It is not the message I am after, as though a text only
has one meaning. I merely look for messages that can be substantiated.
My goal of providing tools for the students to improve their reading skills stems
from my dissatisfaction with the reading portfolio in which students are expected
52
to write down what they have read and how they feel about what they have read.
It is my experience that these portfolios mostly consist of reading experiences
with rather minimalistic argumentation. The conversation with Piet-Hein and Mies
strengthens this idea. Piet-Hein pointed out that the reading file does not provide
any tools; it does not give the students anything to work with, which is why most
of the time the students stick to parroting the text. I could not agree more. The
negative image I hold was consolidated even more when I talked to my students of
5 vwo. I asked them how they had benefited from their literature classes. They
could only think of the lessons about literary history (Middle Ages, Renaissance,
Enlightenment, Romanticism). To them, the reading file is just there, just something
they have to do, which is interesting: they do not regard it as part of their literary
education. Or, to put it differently: literary history can be learnt, but reading and
reflecting on literature apparently cannot.
Piet-Hein once characterized me as a teacher of literature who wants to educate
his students right up to the end of their final year to become pragmatic readers
(Appleyard, 1990): a reader who has developed an extensive interpretive repertoire
on which he or she can draw in order to identify important elements in a text. The
reader can choose the right tools when reading a book. I agree. I realized that for
me those tools are the core of my way of teaching literature. The tools are meant to
help students to better understand a text and could eventually lead to a more enjoyable
reading experience.
Still, I do not achieve this in the lesson I discussed. The students seem emotionally
detached from the text and this may be the reason they are stuck. Piet-Hein and
Mies wondered if perhaps I should put more emphasis on emotion and empathy.
As far as that is concerned, I can learn a lot from Mies. The conversation with her
and Piet-Hein has given me a clear view of the strong social engagement that is
present in her way of treating literature. Students get involved in a text more easily,
which may help them to find different interpretations faster and more effectively.
If I have an opportunity to do my lesson on the five approaches to literature again,
I will keep this in mind. At the end of the lesson, I will put much more emphasis on
the reading experience.
MIES: OVER IDENTIFICATIE EN WERELDBEELD
ON IDENTIFICATION AND WORLD VIEW
Het doel van kunst is door het aenhooren en lezen mededoogen en schrick
uit te wercken, op dat het treurspel zijn einde en ooghmerck moght treffen,
het welck is deze beide hartstoghten in het gemoedt der menschen maetigen,
en manieren, daenschouwers van gebreken zuiveren, en leeren de rampen
der weerelt zachtzinniger en gelijckmoediger verduuren.
(Uit: Voorbericht van J. van den Vondel, bij diens treurspel Jephta of
Offerbelofte uit 1659).
The goal of art is to induce compassion and fear by listening and reading, so
that the tragedy may reach its ending and aim, which is to temper both these
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emotions in the peoples minds and release the spectators of their shortcomings, and teach them to endure the disasters of the world with more
mildness and equanimity.
(Taken from: Preface by J. van den Vondel, to his tragedy Jephta or Promise
of Sacrifice, 1659)
Weten hoe je moet leven door een boek te lezen: een ideaal van een bevlogen
docent? Zestien jaar lang gaf ik in Pretoria aan masterstudenten college over
Vondel. Hij laat in zn treurspel Jeptha zien hoe een vader zich kan vergissen
door ongewild zn dochter op te offeren aan zn eigenbelang. Jeptha is n
van de richters van het volk van Isral. In de strijd tegen de Ammonieten doet
hij aan God een zogenaamde offerbelofte: uiteindelijk moet hij zn dochter
offeren. De toeschouwer volgt de handeling met schrik en voelt mededogen
voor de arme dochter Ifis. De vaders die dit zien of lezen nemen zich voor om
nooit hun dochter kwaad te berokkenen en dat is wat ik denk dat Vondel met
zijn Bijbelse tragedie wil bewerken. Identificatie met de dader: heel modern
eigenlijk.
To know how to live by reading a book: an inspired teachers ideal? For
sixteen years, I have taught master students in Pretoria about Vondel. In his
tragedy Jephta he shows how a father makes a mistake by unwillingly
sacrificing his daughter for his own self-interest. Jephta is one of the judges
of the people of Israel. In his battle with the Ammonites he promises God to
make a sacrifice: he will eventually have to sacrifice his daughter. The
audience is filled with fear and feels for his poor daughter Ifis. Fathers who
see or read this swear they will never harm their daughters, which is what
I think Vondel wants to achieve with his biblical tragedy. Identifying with the
perpetrator: how modern.
I want my students (2nd grade, 1314 years old) to identify with the protagonist in
youth novels as well. Many researchers believe that in the first three years of their
secondary education, students like to read to escape reality. They are focused on plot
and storyline, identify with the characters, and quite vividly imagine the fictional
world that is described. Most of the time, these readers do not connect the text they
read to elements of their own lives in order to gain new insights (cf. Appleyard,
1990; Witte, 2008).
I wanted to study whether this was true, and, if so, if it could be changed by
choosing certain books, presenting engaging lessons and using a new didactic lesson
plan. Since teachers are now being encouraged to conduct research at our school,
I was able to free myself of the burdens of the strict curriculum and focus on this
issue for six full weeks.
In my classes, I cannot help but emphasize the social context in books and
stories, because it is exactly my goal to engage in a discussion of social topics by
means of youth novels. I recognize that I am not so much interested in whether the
students like the book, but rather that they identify with the main character. During
the moment, at least, in which they engage with the text, the miserable situations
54
that many of their peers are in should not seem light years away. I tell them What
would you do were you in her situation? and You should consider yourself lucky
with the life youre leading!
Sometimes I should curb my enthusiasm, something that has dawned on me
through our conversations. Piet-Hein once said:
You want to set an example on how to think freely. And your students have to
follow that example. You want them to adopt your approach to reading, but
at the same time you might say that your style is limiting because it is your
style, not theirs. You read Sold or Blauw is Bitter and you ask your students
to realize how lucky they are. You recognize the emotions of the students, you
involve them. But you will not let them break free from that message. This is a
typical dilemma for teachers: on the one hand, you want to enable your
students to grow both personally and intellectually, in reading books for
example, you want to show them every possible angle but at the same time,
as a teacher, you have a standard. You have an ideal: I want them to get to
this point. You can go via any route you like, but you have to end up here.
There is this tension. And that is when you start using persuasive techniques
which change the conversation into a one-way street. After all, the lesson
ends after fifty minutes and you have to make sure that your message has
come across (Conversation 21 October 2009).
In one of our earlier conversations, Piet-Hein mentioned something similar: You
have a story to tell, and sometimes you involve your students (Conversation 8
April 2009).
Still, I like to think that I sometimes do manage to realize a far-reaching
identification with the protagonist, even though I see that I direct or shape the
students reflections. This was the case when I read to the class the passage about
Linas first sexual experience with a customer. The assignment I gave the students
was: imagine you were the protagonist, what would you think or wish to tell your
mother? Please finish this: Mama, if you could see me now
One of the students responses was written in English, in verse, like Lakshimi
does in Sold (see below):
If you could see me now, mum
You will see how lonely I am
How dirty and embarrassed
But I know you will understand it
And know that I do this for you
I push myself not to cry
But its hard mum, not to cry
They hurt me, Im broken
I wish I was home, but I remember
That I do this for you.
(Lilian van Kempen, 14)
Today, many writers of youth novels discuss current themes to bring conflicts and
wars closer to youngsters, like is done in Blauw is Bitter. Schoolbooks like Dutch
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Nieuw Nederlands (New Dutch) contain excerpts from such books. Unfortunately
reading a single fragment, however poignant, and then writing down the answers to
the questions that accompany the text, does not induce fear and compassion. For
this to happen it is vital to read the entire book, preferably in class and out loud.
And after that an in-depth discussion should follow, similar to what happens in book
clubs outside of school. It is not just the Dutch-speaking region that pays attention
to the misery of young children who live in a world of prostitution. Mary Kooy and
her bookclub at a school in Toronto read Sold.
BLAUW IS BITTER
In Blauw is Bitter, the nave Phillipino girl Lina lives a fairly happy life in a small
village until one day Max shows up in a Mercedes. He gives out sodas and Linas dad
is given a handful of 500peso-notes in exchange for his daughter. Unsuspectingly,
Lina goes with him. Lina is abused by Max; she is forced to sleep with men for 30
pesos. Enter Jim, an American soldier who seems to care about Linas fate. Lina
hopes to escape her pimp, but Jim turns out to be a psychopath who seeks revenge
for a disappointment in love. Lina is beaten up horribly. She has to have an abortion
because she is impregnated by a customer. She saves money to buy her freedom,
but when she finds out her baby sister is sold as well, she uses the money to buy
her out. Lina then maims herself with a shard of glass and cuts off almost all of her
hair. In doing so, she gets her pimp to fire her. She goes to Sergio, a local admirer,
and together with his blind father they live a woeful life.
Of course, Dirk Bracke exaggerates the situation in his book. On his website, he
explains to students that he deliberately added certain situations:
I added Galo to the story, because otherwise it may have seemed that
I suggested that it is only girls who are subjected to prostitution, which is
definitely not the case. Furthermore, Galo and Inez gave me a chance to emphasize that some customers (who are afraid of being infected with HIV) want
younger children still. The younger they have entered the trade, the less chance
of Aids, seems to be the idea.
Student Anna writes the following in her Reader Response Log: I did not know
that boys can also be prostituted, how awful!
Bracke, who is Belgian, continues:
And then Lina has to deal with an unexpected (unwanted) pregnancy. It is
also no accident that one of Linas customers is from Belgium. It might as
well have been a Swiss, a German, an Arab, a Japanese or whatever. But by
explicitly opting for a Belgian customer I wanted to show that child prostitution
is not that far away at all. In fact, one of the hardest things about writing this
book, was to not cross that line of what could be talked about with young
people and what could not. During my research I often encountered issues
that made me think: how is this possible, these people are sick, this is madness.
Those things have not made it into the book
56
Right now, the book is in its sixth print and was translated into German and Danish.
We have also talked about this in our conversations. Piet-Hein said, for example:
Is Lina really as nave as the writer portrays her? Did she really have no idea
what was out there? Had there never been any other girls that were recruited?
Is there no talk in the village about girls being recruited? (Conversation 4
March 2009)
Because there were only enough books for half of the class, I filmed myself while
reading the book. I gave the students the DVD so they could listen to it in the
Christmas break. This is an excellent tool for dyslexic children, by the way. I noticed
that reading the book aloud connected us: it probably reminds the students of being
read to in bed when they were younger. It is very important to me that my lessons
exude trust and intimacy: because I assume they will be willing to show their more
intimate feelings and their gut reactions (conversation 4 March 2009). The text
was supported by a powerpoint presentation that was projected on a smartboard. It
displayed images of children who live on a garbage dump (Smokey Mountain), but
also of young hookers wearing numbers on their outfits who strike sexy poses for
the tourists. Right after the reading, in the circle of trust that was created, I continue
to talk about the miserable life of the protagonist, Lina. I ask the students to write
down everything that comes to mind.
I wanted students to note the similarities between Sold the book that Mary Kooy
used in a book club in Toronto, and Blauw is Bitter, so I asked a very artistic
student to read Sold at home. I knew she also wrote English poems, so the fact that
it was partly in verse greatly appealed to her. Miriam wrote about both books:
Youre trying
trying to reach them
but it seems impossible
you are yelling
screaming
crying
But it seems like
youre invisible
youre just a piece
of their gallery
Its just a waste of time
How long would it take?
How long, before theyre done with you?
When you arent good enough anymore
and theyll dump you
like some old trash
Youre just a priceless work of art
and you know
but you cannot help it
Youre just a thing for them
and one day
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theyll trade you

for someone better
But then
then it is too late
then, you are already lost.
It is striking to see that Miriams words are aimed directly at both novels protagonists: you are just a priceless work of art. Both protagonists are beautiful girls
and that is their fate, being beautiful they lose their identity in the eyes of the men
who use them.
READER RESPONSE LOGS
The powerpoint presentation I had made to accompany Blauw is Bitter was distributed as a handout, as a variation on the Reader Response Logs (Kooy, 1996).
These RRLs give the students something to hold on to during our discussions, and
they give the teacher a chance to monitor the development of students individually
in the process. I have noticed that the students really imagined they were the fictitious
character Lina: because her father also sold her baby sister, she uses the money she
had saved to buy herself out to pay her sister Theresas pimp. She cuts her face
with a shard of glass. Danielle van der Steen writes: I was almost crying. Danielle
Dekkers writes: How awful to do something like that to yourself. I am speechless.
I am very quiet and I almost feel tears rising. On the father, who sold both his
daughters, Davy says: Nice dad . Ren writes: To be informed that your little
sister is a hooker as well. I would start wondering what Gods plan was with me.
Like Jephta in Vondels tragedy, the father sacrifices his own daughters for his
own good. But can their situations really be compared? The biblical father actually
sacrifices his daughter on an altar. And perhaps western fathers and daughters/sons
cannot imagine what the situation in the Philippines is like. Piet-Hein wondered:
to what extent is it possible to ask questions about the fathers motives and
choices? What do we know about the status and honor of a Philippine father
who loses his cockfight? Honor as a man, status as head of the family? Did
the father have much room to act any differently? What options does he have?
(Conversation 21 October 2009)
The students remarks above show that I have not been entirely successful in
unlocking the full context for them. The Philippine father had lost all his money in
a cockfight and thus sells his daughters one by one. Because the students identify
with Lina, they expect her father to act in the way a western father would. Max
says: I was speechless, it was just too awful. It really is a bad thing the father sells
yet another daughter.
I feel I have explained the situation in Manila quite extensively. About that,
Renza writes: You learn more about the situation over there so you can identify
much more. Kelsey indicates: It is pretty intense, but you do stop and think about
it and It had a lot of impact on us.
58
Another situation that was discussed in class is the episode where Lina finds out
she is pregnant from one of her customers. Sex club owner Max orders her to have
an abortion. A student whose name is Floor completely identifies with this complex
emotion, and she uses the first person as she writes: I feel guilty towards the baby
in my belly. Should I keep it or not? Lieke also writes in the first person: Max
wants it gone, but I dont. It is mine. Kelsey: I think its totally awful!. Brigitte
writes in verse: The child is mine, but it looks like a crime. And Ren, a boy,
writes: I will never know what it is like to be pregnant. Anyway, it seems horrible
to have to murder your own child when you dont want to. It burdens you with
guilt.
The above quotations prove that at least the 14year-old girls imagine what it
would be like to experience unwanted pregnancy and have to undergo an abortion.
Whether Ren manages to do the same, remains a mystery. My intention to have
the students identify with the protagonist of a youth novel has at least worked
with the girls, and the boys were definitely highly involved. One of the girls
mentioned in her reflection file that it does not hurt to talk about this every now
and then to find out how boys feel about abortions and the like. Identification and
empathy is a means to an end here. I care about teaching them to put things into
perspective:
Yes, but you see, if you were that Lina from Blauw is Bitter or that suicide
bomber from Treacherous friends whose only goal in life is to blow himself
up think about how easy your life at this school is. What do you have to
complain about? Look at your human existence from a different perspective
for once! (Transcription lesson MP).
When students talk about the book with their classmates, their teacher being their
coach, knowledge is built; it is a process of independent to interdependent reading
(Mary Kooy via e-mail to Mies).
THE PLACEMAT METHOD
The next didactic tool I used after all the RRLs were completely filled out, was the
placemat method. Students were divided into groups and each group was given a
large sheet of paper. They were asked to put their own ideas in the corners and their
joint conclusions in the middle. Sergio, the poor wretch, was discussed first and
then we looked at Linas emotional development. I noticed the students were
very conscientiously brainstorming about Linas range of emotions: from nave to
desperate to her eventual brave decision to take matters into her own hands.
After filling out the placemats students embarked on a group expedition. Based
on the Reading Response Logs and the placemats, group members went for a chat
with other groups and came back to report to their original group. Anna writes:
The group expedition was interesting because our group had created a
placemat that was very different from that of other groups. It was the same for
the turning point and if you discuss it, you sometimes end up with a different
turning point.
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Annas final remark deals with yet another assignment, based on my dealing with
Vondels Jephta in previous methods: find the moment of agnitio. Anna calls it a
turning point. In one of our first conversations, I initially said:
The group expedition was fun, but did not actually provide the students with
new insights. Perhaps a group discussion would have been more useful,
although that would be highly challening as far as the seating is concerned
(notes based on converation 2 September 2009).
According to literature on the subject, group expeditions are mostly used to unite
experts (members of another group who were given a different assignment). What
happened during this group expedition? Studying the video of this lesson with
Ramon, it turns out the students have found different turning points. One group
concludes: When she was in love with Jim and then it turns out he was using her
and she had to sleep with a lot of strangers in the meantime. Another group says:
When Lina finds out that Theresa is in prostitution. Point blank, another group
says: Maim face, cut off hair, which was the right answer.
It is interesting to note that the peer-to-peer interaction in the ever changing
groups provides so much food for thought for the students. Kelsey tells Max: That
isnt a turning point at all, thats a summary. Immediately, Max formulates a new
turning point. Thus it appears that students can teach each other a lot without the
teachers help. Students are discussing the definition of a turning point and as they
go along they learn that the protagonist in a novel can have a gradual insight into
his or her situation, or even a sudden agnitio (an epiphany about their own situation,
after which they turn their life around). They also learned that the secondary characters (father, Sergio, sister) are rather flat at times and their motives unfathomable.
All in all, this can be considered quite an achievement for second graders!
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, I would like to share a note from my most diligent student:

You start looking at things differently. First, you have this opinion on something and then you read the book and it changes.
Marieke says:
When you just read a book, you think: okay, so I read it and I write about it
and then I put it aside. But if you really delve deep into the story you empathize
more and think about it and you will remember it and then it will no longer
be just another book. This day, for example, will stick to my mind (Piet-Hein
and Mary Kooy visting the class) and I will think about this subject often.
Thank you for this special day.
This comment aptly illustrates something that other students mentioned as well in
their discussion of this teaching method involving the RRLs and the placemat idea.
They feel they have thoroughly absorbed the subject matter and had meaningful
discussions about it. They point out that they have learned how to listen during a
60
discussion (it was especially the boys who felt they had learnt to listen to the girls).
They felt very priviliged compared to other children in this world. They also
commented that they learnt a lot from the lessons and greatly enjoyed them. One of
the guiding lines this enterprise was based on was Piet-Heins observation that, in
the literary discourse, personal social repertoire is often ignored, and because of
this the opportunity to encourage students to reflect on their own attitudes and beliefs,
their upbringing, dogmas and (lack of) freedom in short, a critical scrutiny of their
own world view is also ignored (Van de Ven 2007a, p. 194). A teacher, a book,
should allow students to verstaanbaar werkelijkheid ontvreemden to comprehensibly thieve reality. Here, Piet-Hein paraphrases a beautiful line from a poem
by the Dutch poet Bernlef.
In the class discussions, the studentscomfortable situation, growing up in a middle
class society in a rural environment, was compared to the situation of a thirteenyear-old girl in Manila. Bassou said: We have many opportunities, but sometimes
we just dont feel like learning, while Lina (the main character of the book) would
happily live our lives.
In conclusion, in order to create a rich contextual environment and break free
from the strictly separated domains that exist within Dutch as a subject, I had
the students write a letter addressed to the head of charities at Zwijsen College, in
which they suggest donating money to Terre des Hommes, an organisation that
saves children from their pimps. The class also designed a flyer to be handed out
during the geranium campaign. (The geranium campaign is held at our school every
year, when first and second-year students sell geraniums to raise money for charity.)
In the flyer, Kelsey wrote: we have all talked about it together and we were asked
to write down questions and ideas. There was also a professor from Toronto named
Mary Kooy who had come here to hear how we dealt with these kinds of things in
the Netherlands. It had a lot of impact on us. For Blauw is Bitter the students were
free to pick a charity for which they would then raise money themselves. The letter
Marieke wrote strongly conveys her involvement. (Notes taken from a conversation
between PH, RG en MP, 2 September 2009.)
This letter fills me with a deep sense of satisfaction:
Dear Mrs van den Oever,
Fat people in tiny knickers! Girls and boys aged six to fifteen raped! Removed
from their homes! Sold by their fathers! Beat up without pity! Self-harm to
escape!
I have read about all this in a book we had to read in our Dutch classes:
Blauw is Bitter. As I was reading the book I thought about throwing it away.
I thought: How can you write about this! But if you read on and things get
even worse, you realize that this is really happening! You get ashamed of
yourself! And wish you could save those children today! Thank god there is a
charity that helps these children: Terre des Hommes.
Now I want to ask you, since I heard that you are looking for charities for the
geranium campaign, if you could please send some money to this charity!
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GROENENDIJK ET AL
That way the children can be taken away from those horrible conditions so
they at least have a chance to live a normal life!
Yours Sincerely,
Marieke Meijer (2vwo)
I have reached my goal, schrick en mededoogen bewercken to induce compassion
and fear. And what is more, I have incited an actual willingness to get up and do
something against social evils. They will be peddling geraniums to help Linas!
Literature adds to the social development of students. It teaches them to critically scrutinize society and strive for a better world. I want to show students how
the world works by means of texts. (Notes from conversation, 2 September 2009.)
I am a teacher who wants to develop social awareness with my students. Mariekes
letter makes me feel that I have succeeded in doing so.
PIET-HEIN: REFLECTING ON REFLECTIONS
My purpose here is not to have the last word, but to reflect on the learning that we
have been experiencing together. Parts of this reflection are taken from our conversations, but I add some more reflection in this section. In research about teachers,
teachers are typically positioned as the object of the inquiry; they are not seen as
playing any active role in seeking answers to questions that they themselves have
formulated (Furu, 2008; Van de Ven, 2007b). I feel it is important to note that I did
not initiate the collaboration that I have enjoyed with Mies and Ramon by presenting
my questions to them. Instead, I tried to understand the questions that they asked
about their professional practice as teachers of literature, and to complement their
work as a co-investigator. In doing so, I came up with my own questions, but not in
a way that displaced theirs. Thus, I hoped to create a context in which knowledge was
being (and continues to be) developed, in which ideas about change ripen and have
a chance of being tested. Newell, Tallman and Letcher (2009, p. 92) say that the
process of teachers reflecting on and struggling with the development of their own
pedagogical knowledge and personal identities has to be studied within the framework
of both their individual development as well as within the social contexts of their
classrooms, their academic departments, and other contexts which mediate change.
I agree with this view, although it poses challenges for me as an academic. Mies
and Ramon openly discuss their teaching methods, and they welcome my comments,
although there are moments when I think they are being polite and that they could
question what I am saying more vigorously. Yet overall I do not feel that they are
simply accepting what I say and treating my word as final. There is, without doubt,
a certain degree of inequality since my teaching at the university is not the object
of our conversations in the way that their school teaching is. Nevertheless, I am
learning just as Mies and Ramon are, and our conversations are quite valuable
as a means of exploring the challenges and dilemmas of teaching. The fact that
I am free to walk in and out of their classrooms be it in reality or by means of a
video-recording genuinely fills me with gratitude. The mere fact that Miriam, one
of Miess students, offered me a complete stranger spontaneously to read her
62
collection of poems that were at times very personal, shows the impact of Mies
teaching, and of the trust in me that Mies has developed during my class visits.
Our conversations fascinate me. Re-reading the transcripts, I see our work as a research cycle in which knowledge is constructed through collaboration (Rnnermann,
Furu & Salo, 2008). In my reflections on our research cycle I try to contribute to
the construction of our knowledge about literary education. I regard our collaboration
as exploring something Newell et al. call the other contexts that mediate professional practice (see above). We have ourselves tried to relocate the professional
practice of Ramon and Mies within a new context, a context where teachers and
reseachers come together, and through reflecting on theory and practice they
try to bridge the gap that has traditionally existed between the two. The gap is
one between two discourses that have developed separately throughout the centuries because of the division of learning and living, research and education (cf.
Thavenius 1981). In our discussions, we try to generate a joint discourse on literary
education, in which personal experiences and perspectives are linked with more
theoretical notions.
I reflect on our collaboration, and on Ramon and Mies reflections. Langer
(1995, p. 6) differentiates between objective experience and subjective experience.
By objective experience she means: a discursive way of reasoning that occurs
when people treat meaning as if it were an object to be viewed and held apart,
scrutinized with a keen and distant eye. Subjective experience, on the other hand,
occurs when we look within ourselves for meaning and understanding, when we
bring new experiences and ideas closer to ourselves in ways that let us see them
from the inside. Langer argues both should be combined, since together, they invite
a fuller and more complex understanding (ibid., p. 7). I see my own reflections as
a combination of an objective and subjective experience. I enter Mies and Ramons
classrooms, and I share their teaching experiences, and engage in my (and their)
professional learning through my conversations with them. This is subjective experience, involving both an emerging awareness of the values and beliefs that frame
Mies and Ramons practice and a heightened sense of the values and beliefs that
mediate my work as a teacher and researcher. But at the same time I try to read their
professional practice in relation to my knowledge about the teaching of literature
which I also try to share with them in our interaction. And it is in interaction that the
social aspect of learning (Vygotsky, 1986) is present, taking form in other discussion
partners, be it in private conversation or in a public form.
What strikes me about the reflections of both Ramon and Mies is how their lives
are bound up with their day-to-day teaching. To borrow from Langer, their reflections
are a function of their personal and cultural experiences, their relationship to their
current experience, to what they know, to how they feel, and to what they are
after (Langer, 1995, p. 9). Mies as well as Ramon combine subjective with objective
experiences. But there are some personal accents.
RAMON
Ramons subjective experience is characterized by a certain disappointment. He

feels he has not reached his goal in the lesson, and he is especially frustrated that
63
GROENENDIJK ET AL
he is unable to give the students what he so badly wants them to be able to use: a
broad repertoire for reading literature. He says that this is why he finds himself
dominating during the class discussion which he organises. With his teacher text,
he tries to employ the power of persuasion to put the students on what he believes
is the right track after all. Unfortunately, such tactics barely ever work (Malmgren
&Van de Ven, 1994). Ramon objectifies his experience by questioning his lesson
plan, by reading his students comments against Wittes developmental stages (2008),
by evaluating his own contribution to the class discussion. He uses the concept of
teachers lecture with various roles (Ehlich & Rehbein, 1986) as a sensitizing
concept in the analysis of his lesson (Malmgren & Van de Ven, 1994). However,
Ramon takes it further. He speculates on how his own ideas on literature should
be characterized. He states that aesthetic awareness is highly important to him,
describing aesthetics as a very broad concept. But this aesthetic awareness is not
all there is. He wants to provide students with handles that take them from an
analysis of a texts literary repertoire the aesthetic awareness to an analysis of a
texts social repetoire social awareness (McCormick & Waller, 1987) eventually
leading to personal development in each student. Ramon seeks to combine different
approaches to literary education. As a foundation for combining these dimensions,
he takes literary analysis, because of a didactic belief that students should have
something to hold on to before they can start analysing. To me it is unclear if he
allows students to enjoy a text, and even its aesthetic dimension, before analysis. To
Ramon it is yet unclear how emotion, empathy and involvement should be incorporated in this format concepts that Mies uses quite well in her classes. For him,
this is an area that still needs to be explored.
MIES
Mies also reflects on the connection between her intended lesson and the results
that she actually achieves. Like Ramon, she turns to the students comments to determine whether she has reached her goal. She is very positive. Using quotes from
Reader Response Logs, she shows how the students empathize with especially Linas
situation. Their emotional involvement is very important here. However, based on
our conversations, she concludes that her teacher text might be too dominant as
well. Still, all three of us feel the students responses have an authentic quality that
does not simply echo the teacher text. Perhaps the dominance of the teacher text
does not have a negative influence here, although we perhaps did not listen to
possible silent voices that could not identify with her message. Ramon tries to
combine different approaches, while in Mies class, social awareness is the key.
It seems that in both lessons their personal biographies play an important role in the
development of their views about the value of a literary education. Ramon mentions
the importance of his university education, a positive experience he wants his
students to enjoy as well. Mies remembers her life in South Africa, and she uses
this experience to point out to her students how fortunate they are. However, Mies
notices that she finds it hard to go past the point of empathy. The students show no
understanding for the Philippine culture, and so they cannot relate the empathy they
64
feel for Lina with the culture in which she lives. Their social awareness is based
on subjective experience, but an objective counterpart is lacking. Indeed, we are
presented with an interesting translation problem. In Dutch, there is belevend
lezen (experiencing what one reads), which is what Mies and her students do.
Taking it one step further, one can have a reading experience and subsequently
reflect upon it in writing. Earlier, I referred to the work of my late colleague and
friend Lars-Gran Malmgren. In his research in Sweden he distinguishes between
upplevelse lsning reading for the experience and lsning som erfarenhet
reading leading to learning. Experience, identifying important aspects of a text, and
interpretation facilitate each other. Perhaps upplevelse and erfarenhet relate to
each other in the same way subjective and objective do. I would love to ask him.
In Dutch, erfarenhet is not quite covered by the term ervarend lezen. We do use
ervaren (experience) in terms of a persons skills: he is an experienced (player,
teacher, manager, violinist ). In English, experience can be a skill as well as a
discovery of something new. It may be the reason that Langers concept pair is so
interesting to me: they may be the equivalents of upplevelse and erfarenhet
respectively.
CONCLUSION
Mies and Ramon have much in common. Both deliberately use group exercises and
student interaction as teaching methods, from a Vygotskyan perspective on learning
through interaction, from social talk to inner speech. Neither of the two throw their
students in at the deep end, but rather give them scaffolds by means of reading
instructions (Ramon), reader response logs, and placemats (Mies). Ramons focus
in the reading instructions lies in applying different approaches to literature, with
Mies it is agnitio and the exploration of this ancient concept as beautifully modelled
by Vondel. Mies especially wants her students to work with the term in their
responses to Blauw is Bitter. Where Ramon is caught between the different paradigms
that has been depicted in the second paragraph of this chapter (context), Mies choose
for the paradigm of Social Awareness. Ramons resolve to combine an aesthetic
approach with Mies socially critical approach is very interesting to me. What is at
issue here is the relationship between the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of
literature and literary education.
I adopt the following standpoint with respect to these issues: a texts literary
repertoire constructs its social repertoire, and language shapes the world view
expressed in the text. Literature is not an imitation of reality, but constructs a reality
more or less derived from actual reality. I want to point out something that Bracke
mentions on his website: I could only write down that which was not too repulsive.
That construction is created by means of literary, aesthetic procedures. The construction can focus on what is and can give a sharp and revealing presentation of
that, but it can also focus on what can be or could have been. Reading a text
from an aesthetic point of view can emphasize the way a world view is shaped, but
also what world view is presented. The literary procedure of agnitio while reading
Blauw is Bitter evokes strong emotions in the students, emotions that bring to mind
65
GROENENDIJK ET AL
a hostile world because of the empathy they have for Lina. It is a world that is against
the storys protagonist. Perhaps, however, this agnitio obscures a more objective
experience in which a father is judged against a Philippine society, which may not
justify his acts, but might explain them.
Analysing the way the father figure is positioned in this story may help in doing
this. In fact, it is what Ramon tries to do by focusing on the way the main character
of his story is portrayed. Unfortunately, he is unable to bridge the gap between the
students and the story, because the literary repertoire does not elicit any emotions.
Could it be that Ramons problem can be reduced to a wrong choice of text?
For the moment, my reflection leads to a recognition of the fact that in our
research cycle the construction of new knowledge, of new knowing, is based on a
transformation of understandings (Nystrand et al. 1997) and fed by conscious and
conscientious reflection, and by a fight between existing and plausible new ideas.
The outcome of such a process may lead to a change of my (our) ideas about myself,
ourselves and our (own) positioning in the discourse on literary education we are
like Ren, who tries to see things from a different angle. It is unsure whether we have
succeeded, or whether we can. Our chapter is a snapshot of an ongoing cyclic process
of thinking, reading and discussing literary education and the texts we produce
about it.
NOTES
1
The Bijlmer is a notorious neighbourhood in Amsterdam.
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Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Bracke, D. (2006). Blauw is bitter. Leuven: Davidsfonds.
Ehlich, K., & Rehbein, J. (1986). Munster und institutionen. Untersuchungen zur schulischen
kommunikation. Tbingen: Narr.
Furu, E. M. (2008). Teachers regaining their power: Professional development through action learning.
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Kooy, M. (1996). Reading response logs. Inviting students to explore novels, short stories, plays, poetry,
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Langer, J. (1995). Envisioning literature: Literary understanding and literature instruction. New York:
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Malmgren, L. G. (1986). Den konstiga konsten. Om litteraturlsning och litteraturpedagogik. Lund:
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Malmgren, L. G., & van de Ven, P. H. (1994). Democracy, space, refugees, environment, love A case
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reading literature in comprehensive school ( 1113). Occasional Papers in Mother Tongue Education
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McCormick, K., & Waller, G. (1987). Text, reader, ideology. Poetics, 16(1), 193208.
Newell, G., Tallman, L., & Letcher, M. (2009). A longitudinal study of consequential transitions in the
teaching of literature. Research in the Teaching of English, 44(1), 89126.
Nystrand, M., Gamoran, A., Kachur, R., & Prendergast, C. (1997). Opening dialogue. Understanding
the dynamics of language and learning in the English classroom. New York, London: Teachers
College, Columbia University.
Pols, M., & Groenendijk, R. (2009). Lezen en leven: Het nut van matschappelijke bewustwording bij
het lezen van boeken. Levende Talen Magazine, 96(3), 1215.
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school and university in a Nordic light. Rotterdam, Tapei: Sense.
Thavenius, J. (1981). Modersml och fadersarv. Svenskmnets traditioner i historien och nuet. Stockholm:
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Van de Ven, P. H. (1996). Moedertaalonderwijs. Interpretaties in retoriek en praktijk, heden en
verleden, binnen- en buitenland. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff.
Van de Ven, P. H. (2005). Planet Isis: The gender specific reception of a youth book. L1 Educational
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Van de Ven, P. H. (2007a). Literaire competentie: Een beschouwing. In D. Schram & A. Raukema
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GRAHAM PARR
5. TOWARD AN UNDERSTANDING OF LITERATURE

TEACHING IN AUSTRALIA
Hanging On and Letting Go
The most important thing as far as I can tell is knowing how to let go. And
here fiction can be a teacher We must learn to let go, remember that it
is the singular unverifiability of the literary from which we are attempting to
discern collectivities. (Spivak, 2003, p. 34)
INTRODUCTION
In conceptualising this collection of essays in Chapter 1, Brenton and Piet-Hein

begin with student voices, fragments of conversation from two secondary school
literature classrooms. These student voices and conversations are embedded within
conversations between literature teachers generated at opposite ends of the world,
Australia and the Netherlands. These diverse professional conversations, in turn,
are part of a larger international conversation about literature teaching. I imagine an
organic network of research conversations reaching out across the world, building
from and linking back to the two original literature teachers conversations, in
what I see as a Bakhtinian chain of utterances (Morson & Emerson, 1990). My
contribution to that chain is informed by my background as a teacher educator and
a past teacher of literature in secondary schools. I have written extensively on policy
issues relating to neoliberal reform and the teaching of literature in Australia, and
Ive just published a book, Inquiry-based professional learning: Speaking back to
standards-based reforms, which investigates the professional learning of a small
group of literature teachers over a period of 14 months in a school in Melbourne,
Australia.
In this chapter, one of my aims is to examine Prues teaching of a senior literature
class, and to inquire into Prue and Bellas deeply reflexive account of their conversation together. Methodologically, my approach draws on the institutional ethnographic work of Dorothy Smith (e.g., 2005). Smith typically examines richly specific
accounts of individuals and groups working and learning in institutional settings,
and in the process she traces some bigger picture policy contexts, never losing
sight of the specificities of the accounts she is examining. My larger aim here is to
locate Prue and Bellas detailed and nuanced account of Prues teaching within the
bigger picture policy context in which we are all working in Australia.
PARR
THE LUXURY OF PROFESSIONAL CONVERSATION?
Prue observes early on in her chapter that she values the opportunity to participate
in her professional conversations with Bella, both the spoken and written dimensions.
She feels these conversations have enabled them to share our different worlds of
teaching, [to] clarify for ourselves and each other the sort of teaching relationships
that interest us, our purpose in teaching, our pleasure, our frustration. Clearly, she
appreciates the opportunity, and the word she initially uses to describe her sense of
engagement is mindful: It seems a luxury to be so mindful. Interestingly, for one
particular literature teacher in Australia, the opportunity to set aside a professional
space and time to be so mindful of her practice and her professional identity feels
like a luxury.
The implication is that the professional dialogue that Prue and Bella are engaged
in, this work, is something Prue as an Australian literature teacher rarely has time
for. I read this, and I wonder: is this a common experience? During my own fourteen
years as a teacher of English and literature in secondary schools in Australia (and
for a single year in the US), I recall an ongoing dilemma: the exhilaration of being
engaged in a rich professional conversation, actively involved in literary praxis as
Brenton and Piet-Hein have described it. I knew that this was crucial to my work as
a teacher of literature, and yet I remember feeling there was never enough time
for it. While I enjoyed moments of professional learning, or perhaps even extended
periods of professional learning in association with a particular project, it was
always a struggle to find time for this aspect of my work.
Almost twenty years ago, sociologist, feminist and educator Frigga Haug (1992)
asked about the nature of professional work in contemporary western societies. In
that study, she explores the ways in which individuals, collectives and organisations
understand and experience work on a day to day basis. She wonders, Is the time
spent learning also work? Is the search for solutions, trying things out, work, or
does it prevent work being carried out? Decades ago, Australian researchers were
explaining and illustrating how professional conversations and professional development (as it was then called) can be and should be central to English and literature
teachers work (e.g., Reid, 1984; Boomer et al., 1992; Thomson, 1992). Focused
professional conversation, they argued, should most definitely not be considered
time away from the real work of teaching. It was something literature teachers
should fight to hang on to, even at the cost of letting go some of the everyday
imperatives of institutional, administrative, pedagogical, assessment and various
relational demands of their work. One might pose the same questions of literature
teachers in Australia in 2010. Is the time spent in professional dialogue with colleagues
a fundamental part of being a literature teacher? Or does it take away from the
time required to prepare for the next literature class, for the real work of literature
teaching? Is it a luxury? An indulgence, perhaps?
Across the world, governments and education authorities are demonstrating a
greater preparedness in the twenty-first century to support professional development,
sometimes with quite generous funding (see Darling-Hammond et al., 2009; Doecke,
Parr, et al., 2008). But often this pd must be of a fairly circumscribed kind, one
which is narrowly targeted towards enhancing centrally prescribed student learning
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LITERATURE TEACHING IN AUSTRALIA
outcomes. In my own state of Victoria, the government expects, indeed requires,

teachers to learn, as Prue points out, and this learning should be consistent with the
governments published set of professional learning principles (DE&T, 2005). These
principles are suspicious of professional conversations that might be a luxury or
a self-indulgence for the individual teacher. The finger-wagging warning that
accompanies Principle 1 is typical of the patronising tone underpinning this policy
document: Professional learning is focused on student outcomes (not just individual
teacher needs) [emphasis added] (DE&T, 2005, p. 14). Actually, as I explain below,
this government is willing to fund some richly open-ended, inquiry-based professional learning projects involving partnerships between networks of schools and
universities, and yet the language of this policy document appears to show that they
are unwilling to let go their imagined control of teachers professional learning. They
are unwilling to trust to the uncertainties of rich professional learning dynamics.
In many ways, this chapter documents and inquires into a very different understanding of literature teachers professional learning practices as enacted in not just
Prue and Bellas conversation, but also in literature teaching conversations across
Australia. It is an understanding that identifies some powerful connections with
traditional notions of literature teaching, researching and professional development. It
draws attention to some fresh and lively classroom approaches and some contemporary professional learning practices that both draw on and challenge some of
those traditions. The one thing that is absent from this understanding is claims of
certainty with respect to literature classroom practices or literature teachers professional conversations.
In referring to the mindfulness prompted by her conversations with Bella, Prue
speaks almost wistfully. Literature teachers from within Australia may read her
account and yearn for such a positive professional learning experience, an experience
that does not lead to greater certainty but that inspires her to want to engage in
further inquiry and further collaborative reflection. Readers from outside Australia
may wonder whether such an experience is widely experienced as a luxury in
Australian literature teachers lives. Perhaps they presume there is a correlation
between the privilege and affluence of Prues school setting and the richness of her
professional dialogue. Bellas perspective is telling, here. Her account of walking
through the school grounds is moving and provocative as she observes the stately
trees, grounds and turn-of-the-century buildings and contrasts these with the damp
portable classrooms and the mottled, uneven dustbowl that was the sports field at
the school where she previously taught. From Prues perspective, though, despite
the wealth oozing from the materiality of her school setting, she experiences this
professional conversation as a luxury.
ENCOURAGING EVIDENCE ACROSS THE NATION, AND YET
Recent research studies have shown that across Australia such luxury in terms of
professional learning may be more common than one might first imagine. Over the
last ten years there have been some exciting practitioner inquiry projects for collaborative groups of English and literature teachers. In 20012, the STELLA project
71
PARR
brought together teachers of English, literacy and literature from across the country
to develop a set of national professional standards for their discipline, and the process
prompted rich and varied professional learning conversations. The experiences of
these teachers have been well documented: many of them speak about their involvement in language which is close to Prues notion of mindful engagement (cf.
Doecke & Gill, 2001; Doecke, 2006; Hayes, 2007). More recently, Doecke, Green
et al. (2007) highlighted the valuable work of Australian practitioner researchers in
the area of English and literature teaching who collaborate over extended periods
of time to develop accounts of their professional practice vis--vis constructions of
their work from other standpoints (Doecke et al., 2007, p. 4). My own research
investigating the professional learning of a small team of literature teachers
documents the everyday minutiae of ongoing collaborative dialogic inquiry and
records the teachers enthusiasm for this dimension of their work (Parr, 2010,
2007, 2004, 2003). Also, a three-year long government-funded project in my own
state of Victoria drew together multiple teams of professional learning leaders from
under-funded state schools, engaged in rich and ongoing professional learning conversations, often focused on improving literacy and student well-being in their
respective schools (Monash Professional Learning Research Group [MPLRG],
2008, 2009, 2010).
There is strong evidence at the national level, too. A federal government funded
project, published in 2008, mapped the professional learning of all teachers in all
sectors and disciplines across Australia English and literature teaching groups were
well represented in the research. The report of this project recognizes that rich teacher
professional learning is no longer experienced as an add-on to teachers professional
practices in Australian educational settings (Doecke et al., 2008). It also observes
that teacher professional learning in Australia is now more likely to be embedded
within teachers day-to-day professional practices and institutional lives, and that
practitioner inquiry is becoming a significant part of the learning of teachers in all
manner of teaching contexts. There is abundant and particular evidence of this in
state (public) schools, in private (independent) schools (such as the one where Prue
was teaching), in colleges of Technical and Further Education (TAFEs), and in
partnerships across and between schools from different schooling systems.
I have no reason to doubt that Prues experience of dialogic inquiry with literature
teaching colleagues within her privileged school setting is a luxury for her, but
importantly it is not a luxury that is given to her, or that any individual or group
necessarily inherits. It is not given, and it is not a given for all English or literature
teachers who work at Prues school either. Although Prue mentions a staff discussion
group at the school where [she] work[s], it would be wrong to assume that all
English and literature teachers who work at that school proactively participate in,
and so help to generate, the same professional learning luxuries. As one reads
Prue and Bellas account one cannot set aside ones awareness of the privilege of
schools like Prues. There is plenty of research to remind us of the scandalous
and immoral inequity in funding for different schools and school systems in
Australia (e.g., Connell, 2006; Teese, 2000, 2003). Often the impoverished funding
for particular schools has a direct impact on the energy and capacity of teachers to
72
engage in rich professional dialogue (Reid, 2005). When Bella tells us that she
comes to her conversation with Prue having worked in a very different school, we
cannot fail to be disconcerted. In some respects Bellas school seems to have a very
different professional culture, one mediated by lack of funding, limited resources
and often low professional morale. And yet, Bella, like other literature teachers around
Australia, is not obliged to operate as if she were in an institutional vacuum. In
fact, she knows Prue through their active membership and participation in the same
English teaching association over many years.
Perhaps it says something distinctive about literature teaching collectives that
rich professional dialogue is neither the preserve of those who teach in economically
privileged settings, nor is economic privilege any guarantee of such conversations.
What we can learn from Bella and Prues conversation is that literature teachers
from a wide range of schools and school systems in Australia can and do engage in
such dialogue. We see how professional dialogue can be genuinely exciting and even
inspiring, as much for the culture of teaching and learning in a particular institution
as for the individuals within it. I have the highest admiration of Prue and of Bella
as literature teachers, as colleagues and as interlocutors in a professional conversation,
and I do enjoy reading their professional writing, in the different forums that they
have written (see for example, Illesca, 2003, 2005, 2007; Gill, 2005, 2008; Doecke,
Gill et al., 2009). However, my interest in their individual insights, in their dialogue,
and the knowledge that they generate through their dialogue, goes beyond a sense
of wonder at what each of them as individuals or as a team is able to achieve here.
AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE TEACHING AS A COLLECTIVE?
I am particularly interested in this chapter to examine the historical and professional

contexts within which Prue and Bellas dialogue and Prues work with her students
are located. And I want to explore the social, philosophical and policy frameworks in
which one might understand Prues work as a literature teacher in a particular school
and as a member of a broad, but loose collective of Australian literature teachers.
I use the term collective, here, partly in the terms gestured at in the epigraph to
this chapter. In the book from which the epigraph is drawn, Spivak is talking about
a collective understanding of what constitutes a literary text. She appreciates the value
of a shared understanding or belief, but she emphasizes that any shared understanding
must be acknowledged as unstable and provisional. She advocates letting go of the
need for certainty in any sense of a collective. Another writer whose theorization of
collectives I find helpful is the German Marxist philosopher, Siegfried Kracauer,
who talks about a collective as distinguished partly by a shared willingness of a
group to work together and to have key beliefs in common. But willingness is not
enough. Kracauer talks about a shared identity that emerges over time, one which
is distinguished by collaborative ownership of the knowledge and practices that a
group generates amongst themselves (Kracauer, 1929/1998, p. 106). He is saying
that a genuine social collective, the sort of collective worth hanging on to, does not
follow along uniformly in response to a directive from outside or from within the
group. Like Spivaks notion of a collective, Kracauers is dynamic, full of tensions
and contradictions, and always already subject to change or even dissolution.
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As I attempt to trace out the bigger picture policy context in which Prue operates
as a teacher of literature in Australia, I should remind international readers that
Australia is a federation, and that educational systems in different Australian jurisdictions have historically had a fair degree of autonomy within this federation. States
and territories have always published, funded and managed their own curriculums;
until recently they have controlled their own assessment practices and professional
accountability regimes. With governments increased enthusiasm for standards-based
reforms (clearly a world-wide phenomenon), neo-liberal policies have sought to
exercise more control and certainty with respect to educational outcomes and the
professional practices that are seen to deliver these outcomes. The prospect of a
newly instituted national curriculum in Australia in 2012 may offer politicians and
media pundits a tantalising prospect of greater uniformity and sameness across the
country, especially when combined with a new national testing regime, and a single
set of national professional standards for teacher registration and teacher performance.
However, this push for nationalising and standardizing educational practice is unlikely
to lead to the sort of certainties that the politicians and media pundits appear to
desire (Reid, 2010).
For this reason alone, it would be folly for me to attempt to summarize what
Australian literature teaching essentially entails, or what Australian literature teachers
all look like and sound like. I will go on to show that any collective called Australian
literature teaching, before or after the implementation of a new national curriculum
and standards-based reforms, can be seen to share some dimensions of a common
professional culture. However, I will also argue that the present cultures and practices
of literature teaching in Australia, like their history, are characterised by rich diversity,
ongoing tensions and an always-already propensity for change.
NEGOTIATING CHALLENGING POLITICAL AND PROFESSIONAL LANDSCAPES
In the opening paragraphs of Prue and Bellas chapter, they allude to some of the
acute tensions that characterise literature teaching in Australia and the English
speaking world. These tensions are the direct result of politicians, and media mouthpieces for these politicians, seeing the English and literature curriculum in Australia
as their business. Prue goes on to speak as an individual with a distinctive and
eloquent voice of her own, but she is also keen to speak in the first person plural as
part of a collective not just herself and Bella, but a national collective whose
members see themselves as the English and literature teaching profession in
Australia.
Sometimes, it sounds as if she is speaking from the barricades, advocating a
view of the teaching of literature which runs against the grain of the English
teaching that is currently being championed by many commentators and decision
makers in Australia. She echoes the frustration of English and literature teachers
who feel that they are being treated like political pawns, manipulated by their political
masters to achieve government objectives, and yet they are also supposedly the
potential saviours of the human race (as in rhetoric about the teacher being the most
important factor in a childs education). Over the last three decades, the very same
people who accuse English and literature teachers of not fulfilling their professional
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duties, the same people who have called for teachers to be disciplined and for
teacher autonomy to be curtailed, have at the same time tried to argue that when
this happens the full potential of the teaching profession will be realised (e.g.,
Kemp, 1996; Caldwell & Hayward, 1998; NITL, 2005; Rudd & Gillard, 2008).
Later in the chapter, Prue makes it clear that she sees her professional identity as
located within a strong collective of English teaching professional associations at
state and national levels. And she goes on to confidently invoke the sense of a
collective of literature teachers: We all know that teacher engagement and
enthusiasm for their discipline and their classroom work is a positive influence on
student engagement and intellectual development and We know that an inquiring
teacher is likely to be a good teacher [emphasis added]. Notwithstanding any
power that might come from teachers speaking and acting as a collective, English
and literature teachers in Australia have traditionally been seen as easy pickings by
politicians for, on the one hand, political points scoring about crises in literacy
education (cf. Doecke, Howie & Sawyer, 2006; Green, 1998) but also, when the
occasions demands, crowing in hyperbolic terms about Australias performance
in international literacy tests (cf. Freebody, 2007). And yet it would be a mistake to
imagine a collective of Australian literature teachers and educators speaking as one
voice, acting with one mind, against a single political or even ideological foe. The
situation is a very complex one, full of many voices, ranging from passionate pleas
to bring back the classics (cf. Mitchell & Parry, 2005) to claims about the importance
of postcolonial literature within the secondary English curriculum (e.g., McLean
Davies, 2008).
In Australia, literature teaching is currently a site of a particularly acrimonious
intellectual and ideological struggle among those who see themselves as part of the
teaching profession, and those who see themselves more peripherally related to
the discipline of literature education or literary studies. John Frow, a professor of
an English department in an Australian university, declares that literary studies is
in disarray as perhaps never before, setting this against an ironic backdrop of
Oprahs book clubs and what he calls the caf culture of upmarket bookshops.
Frow believes that Australians still hold on to a belief in the literary whether it
takes the form of the classic texts of Oprahs book clubs (an American popular
culture institution that has well and truly colonised multi-national book supermarkets) or the public displays of customers in trendy bookshops as they knowingly
browse the latest offerings while literary studies struggles to theorise the conditions
for making such discriminations and to justify its existence as a discipline (Frow,
2001; cf also Frow, 2005). In the meantime, young people (and some not-so-young
people) get their pleasures from You Tube and other multimodal texts. Debates
within the English teaching profession are grappling with the uncertain relationship
of literature to broader notions of English and or literacy curriculums, and the history
of literature teaching in Australia is punctuated by stoushes over how to respond to
the heterogeneous mix of high brow and low brow texts and cultural practices.
Then there are the self-justifying claims that Professor Frow gives for literature
study, offering a richer perspective on literature than what he refers to as the merely
untutored practice of reading (Frow, 2001, p. 14).
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Over the past few years there are signs that secondary English teachers,
particularly those engaged in forms of practitioner inquiry or ongoing professional
learning conversations, have embraced the opportunity to revisit the theoretical foundations for the teaching of literature and to reaffirm the place of literature within an
English curriculum. Teachers like Prue have not been overwhelmed by a sense of
disarray, but have quietly got on with the business of exploring the complexities
of texts within classroom settings, and inviting their students to develop a heightened
sense of framing and interpretation (MacLachlan & Reid, 1994). Or, at least, the
very best teachers have seized this opportunity for I am not suggesting that there
isnt also abundant evidence of the perpetuation of more traditional practices in
classrooms. How could it be otherwise?
If we look at the writing of some other leading exponents of the teaching of
literature in Australian secondary schools (Howie, 2006, 2008; Bellis, 2004, 2006;
Bellis, Parr & Doecke, 2009; McClenaghan, 2006; McLenaghan & Doecke, 2010,
2011), we get glimpses into classrooms where the contrasting regimes of value (to
borrow Frows term) provide a focus for discussion. The writing of these teachers
is populated with students at work in classrooms. They may be engaged in the
imaginative play of interpreting literary texts; they may be exploring the multiple
ways in which those texts can be read. They may be seeking to connect with a
particular reading offered by a peer or a teacher, or they may be challenging this
reading. In this respect, the moment of theory (e.g., Culler, 1983; Eagleton, 1985)
as it was experienced in Australia in the 1980s has undoubtedly constituted a
significant intervention in the way English teachers think about curriculum and
pedagogy, generating rich debates and rich curriculum resources (cf. Reid, 1984;
Mellor & Patterson, 1991). Prue is one of many teachers who have self-consciously
used theory (in one form or another) as a resource for opening up texts for new
readings and new understandings.
One of the pleasures I derive from writing about Prue and Bellas chapter is in
bearing witness to the way literature teachers such as Prue can negotiate competing
and contradictory demands of the highly regulated professional spaces in which they
work. Like teacher educators working in universities, teachers working in schools
can not, as it were, step outside the intellectual and ideological struggle that constitutes their industrial and professional worlds. Day by day, they are grappling and
coming to terms with different curriculum imperatives (at the state level and at the
school level), and they are responding to edicts handed out by regulatory authorities
that relate to their ongoing accreditation as teachers. They are reading texts, assessing
work, engaging in some level of collaborative work with colleagues in a professional
association (which may itself be ridden with ideological and industrial tensions),
interacting with parents. And they are attempting to get to know the interests and
needs of students in their classrooms. Invariably, they must navigate and to some
extent muddle through the multiple contradictions and tensions in their professional
lives (Parr & Doecke, forthcoming). Literature teachers in Australia are not just
dealing with contradictions; as Haug puts it, they are living the contradictions
(Haug, 1987). And this state of living contradictions enters into their professional
practice, their professional identity and their very being. It is not surprising, therefore,
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to see contradictions and tensions evident in the way teachers describe and enact
their classroom practice. How does a literature teacher promote rich dialogic
classroom practices, with space and time for imaginative play and intellectual risk
taking, and then turn around and deal with imperatives associated with high stakes
exams, for example, or professional standards, or some other neoliberal agenda?
STUDENT VOICES AND TEACHER INTENTIONS: A CLOSE STUDY
OF PRUES LITERATURE CLASSROOM
Prue and Bella invoke Mikhail Bakhtin and Ian Reid and the rich polyphony of
voices that constitute Prues literature classroom, illustrating the imaginative play
of ideas in her students talk (and in some of the students written exchanges).
These are the voices that are not just acknowledged, but valued, as students are
given spaces to flick in and out of personal chat. Prue stresses the importance of
the exploratory aspect of her students talk in contradistinction to any urgency to
pin down meaning, or even stake out the themes for study of a particular text, at
this early stage of their connecting with the text and with each other. It is very clear
that Prue sees such informality as a way of learning about each other, and hence
contributing to our ability to have a conversation about an idea or a text or a piece
of writing. She explains how she often begins study of a new text through close
engagement with particular passages in that text. I sense that these students are
engaging in dialogue with each other and with the text, appropriating words from
each other as they try to make sense of the whole and jointly construct interpretations
of Farmers stories. Prues presence in these classroom conversations is not at all a
dominating one. It is mostly the case that the students lead the talk, and even
when Prue offers a new theoretical frame to the students, which she appreciates is
challenging, she still does not push [the students] to accept or reject the idea.
It may be surprising for a reader to observe a literature teacher who appears to
be saying so little in these discussions, then to see that same teacher write in such
demonstrative and forthright prose about her pedagogical purposes in these conversations. Speaking about her intentions in these early lessons, Prue writes:
I want them to be talking about language and meaning I want to ask the
question one more time I want even closer attention. I want them to use
their own language with more particularity I am asking them to make the
interpretive nature of their reading visible.
Its possible to interpret these words and the fragments of classroom dialogue we
read from the early stages of studying a new text in many different ways. I want to
explore what I see as three inter-related dimensions of Prues teaching, each of
which plays with notions of holding on and letting go.
Firstly, and perhaps most obviously, Prues pressing list of wants in the quote
above might be seen as in tension with her approach of allowing the students to
lead the talk. She might appear to be letting go of teacherly control of classroom
discussion or literary interpretation. And at one level, I suppose, she is. It would seem
Prue is drawing on Dixons (1967) personal growth models of English pedagogy,
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and some reader response theories of literature pedagogy (e.g., Fish, 1980, 1995)
which emphasise the importance of the teacher encouraging students, at least
initially, to make meaning in and with texts in terms of their own personal and social
worlds, in and outside school. And there is a strong flavour of James Brittons
philosophy of the teacher making time to value and appreciate the knowledge and
expressive language that students bring to their study of texts (Britton, 1970).
And yet Prues is not a romanticised interpretation of Brittons or Dixons or Fishs
ideas. When she says she wants her students to hold onto their language but to use
their own language with more particularity, Prue is drawing on the Bakhtinian (1981)
notion of all language being half someone elses. She values her students own
language, and yet she is also working to enable that language to draw more richly
on a range of other literary discourses that might inform their language. This is tricky
territory and there are tensions involved in juggling these competing intentions.
Secondly, Prue consciously models a sort of letting go of the need to conform
to any particular ideology or any sense of a correct way of interpreting a text. She
expresses this in terms of the value of opening up and connecting with others ideas.
This raises interesting questions about the moral agenda or the values communicated
in and through her literature teaching. Back in the 1980s, Terry Eagleton was
writing in very uncertain ways about the positive potential of a moral technology
of literature teaching. It was a technology that might be part of a broader moral
agenda for schooling, and yet he acknowledged that: the workings of the particular
moral technology known as literature are a good deal more subtle and elusive
than the simple communication of a range of particular moral values, such as
authority is good or evil (Eagleton, 19856, p. 98). Robert Scholes is highly
suspicious of such an agenda, noting the connections between the contradictory values
inherent in any literary text and the complicated relationship between the values
seemingly inherent in a literary text and the values seemingly communicated in
and through a literature classes. He points out that a particular literary text being
studied in a class may provide a vision of moral or virtuous behaviour, but because
virtue itself is seen in social and political terms, different literary texts become
means to different virtuous ends (Scholes, 1999, p. 22). Gyatri Spivak is just as dismissive of cause-and-effect understandings of the teaching and learning of literature
and the production of moral citizens, stating simply the literary is not a blueprint
to be followed in unmediated social action (Spivak, 2003, p. 23).
Nevertheless, some contributors to Australian literary conversations such as Ian
Hunter (1988, 1997) continue to conceptualise literature teaching as a powerful
tool of governmental policy, and these arguments are persuasive to some (e.g.,
Goddard, 2009). Hunter sees literature teaching as a governmental apparatus to
achieve a certain humanisation of the population (Hunter, 1988 p. 3). For Hunter,
the literature teacher should be an ethical exemplar who subtly but purposefully,
through uniform moral training (p. 102) of students oral language and written
expression, produces the sort of moral citizen that a public education system, and
the government that funds it, wants to produce. Interestingly, Prue might be seen as
advocating the teacher as a sort of moral exemplar, but in a very different way from
that which informs Hunters views. She sees her role as one of building democratic
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classrooms, of developing and sustaining democratic processes. However, she places

some considerable importance on the teacher modelling intellectual humility and
openness to others ideas, which is a far cry from Hunters crude advocacy of moral
certainty and his lack of reflexivity with respect to questions of morality and culture.
Thirdly, there is a sense in which Prue is not necessarily letting go at all. Rather,
by ensuring that multiple voices of her classroom (and the text) are heard, she is a
significant presence in the weaving of what John Yandell (2007) calls the discursive
fabric of the individual lesson (p. 258). The fabric doesnt just weave itself. It is
woven according to a particular and well thought-out agenda, or series of agendas,
and it involves the literature teacher reading not just the text but the classroom, and
the social worlds in that classroom. She is responding to what she reads as the
particular social, literary, aesthetic, intellectual and emotional needs of her particular
students at this particular time in relation to this particular literary text. Later, when
students have tested out ideas, when they have developed some genuine momentum
in their exploratory talk with each other, when they have struggled and grappled
with some of the challenging resources and secondary readings the teacher provides,
then there will come a time when Prue will take a much more explicit and dominant
role in the dynamic.
In fact, I see elements of all three of these dimensions in Prues language and in
her practice, even when she talks about slip[ping] into her more authoritative
teacherly voice. Bakhtinian scholar, Gary Morson (2004) draws a distinction between
a testable authoritative voice, which is expressive, which almost demands attention, but which also looks forward to a response, an alternative view, further
dialogue. He contrasts this with the notion of an authoritarian voice which seeks
to establish and maintain dominance, and to avoid all dialogue, if possible. In another
place, Prue writes that she believes her students are not looking for agreement
with each other; theyre looking for a conversation with each other, a discussion
(Doecke et al., 2009, p. 16). In the conversations (face-to-face in the classroom and
online) that Prue and Bella present in their chapter, I do not see the students
looking for agreement with each other or with their teacher. I see them looking for a
conversation with the class, with their teacher and with the text. But I want to
emphasise that this does not mean harmonizing the tensions and the contradictions
in this classroom or in Prues practice.
One of the moments of acute contradiction, in my interpretation of Prues teaching,
is the moment where she is beginning the study of a new text, the collection of
short stories by Australian author Beverley Farmer. It is interesting to observe that
the genesis of this activity is an exam that the students will complete at the end-ofyear high stakes exam. (The exam is high stakes for these Year 12 students because
their performance on it, as well as their exams for the others subjects they are
studying usually three or four subjects will determine whether and where they
will attend university, and which particular course they will qualify for.) Bella and
Prue tell us that the activity is closely related to the main task in their end of year
literature exam, and one might imagine a dour, serious classroom in a privileged
girls college where heads are bowed over the task determined to make every
rehearsal for the final exam performance count. And yet what we read is a messy
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beginning, with some students not having done what they had been required to do
in preparation for the class, the teacher out of the room and some students apparently
skylarking.
When the time seems right, Prue begins, taking up an informal position with
respect to her students, chairs in a circle, text in hand, and a pencil for annotations
and jottings. In this seemingly informal setting, Prue chooses to appropriate this
perhaps most formal of tasks, an exam reading practice, because from the outset
she wants her students to learn to value the pleasures of working closely with texts,
with ideas and with language. At this stage, the contradictions are in rich interplay
with each other, and one wonders (as perhaps Prues students wonder) where this is
heading. Prue chooses not merely to rehearse an exam reading practice as if to
affirm the naturalness of exam reading practices. Rather, she takes the fundamental
idea of the task and re-imagines it. She reworks it so that it becomes an opportunity
for students to get to know each other, to test out ideas, to speak aloud what might
in other classrooms remain as written jottings in the margin of the text (Thats
cute, Weird!, Shes [ie. the author]is so annoying and Get on with your life!),
as well as to engage in some insightful and sometimes quite sophisticated close
readings of the text.
In reflecting on moments like this in Prues classroom, Bella quotes Ian Reids
(1984) description of what he calls a workshop model of a literature classroom.
This model is characterised by argument, joking, gossip activity on all sides.
There is a sense in the conversations that Prue quotes early in her chapter of
students both dismantling the text as well as piecing it together in the richest
traditions of literature pedagogy. The overall picture is one which involves combinations of imaginative and analytical engagement with a text, both deriving and
creating meaning in the one space and time, the one richly social conversation. As
Terry Locke observes in his chapter, the long shadow of Bakhtin stretches across
the writings of the Australian and Dutch teachers; and if it is a shadow then its
impact is visible here in the presentation of conversations such as these with Prues
students. As I read each students words in the early conversations in the chapter,
in the act of speaking they seem to be sharing half the meaning of these words with
the words of the students who spoke before them. They are actively involved in
meaning making, and this involves struggling (yes, sometimes awkwardly) to make
each word their own. The conversation is flexible and yet focused, as students
attempt to achieve some level of distinctiveness in their interpretation, even as they
anticipate future conversations including the rather more regulated and less dialogic
conversation that is their end of year literature exam.
And so the understandings of the students develop in often rich and social ways.
There is a sense that individuals in the group are generating and sharing some
collective knowledge of the text with others in the class, and yet the collective that
is the class provides space and potential for some diversity and argument in their
readings. Another way of making sense of this is Honneths (2005) notion of the
social and affective antecedent act of recognition. In the context of a literature
classroom this notion constitutes the combination of activities and utterances when
students and teacher come into contact with one another as public and social readers
80
of the text, at the very time that they are coming into personal contact with the text
in various ways (see also Sumara, 1996). I read the sorts of student conversations
that Prue and Bella present from Prues classroom as rich examples of this notion
of recognition. For Honneth such dynamic acts of recognition must come before
cognition in the personal and social sense of meaning making. In that act of literally
hanging on to the text as Prue and her students sit in a circle, it seems important
for students and teacher to recognise the text, as Prue says, as a reference point
in the potentially risky act of connecting with each other and with the text.
Despite Prues avowals, and her account of the ways in which her students seem
not to lose their sense of community or their lively dialogic potential (Bakhtin,
1981), it remains a disturbing question in my head as I read further into the chapter
what impact the impending end of year exam practices and discourses have on this
particular literature classroom. At the time when the sense of the collective might
be at its strongest, how does anticipation of the discourse of exams, how does the
anticipation of the language one will be required to speak in that space, diminish
the rich polyphony of voices in the classroom? As Prue and her students journey
toward the always anticipated end of year exam, and Prue becomes more authoritative (by her own judgement) in her contributions to the students online
dialogue, how much is Prue forgetting the recognition that enlivened the sociality
of her classroom (Honneth, 2005, p. 128). How much is she compromising something of the liveliness of Reids workshop model? How much of the rich heteroglossia of voices in her classroom (Yandell, 2007; cf. Bakhtin, 1981) is being lost
to the more contrived or managed dialogue that is required in the end of year high
stakes exam?
I pose these questions not to criticise Prues practice but to draw attention to
concerns that arise when one thinks about literature classrooms and the effect on
students literature classroom experiences of looming exam regimes. How else is it
possible for a literature teacher to help students make the transition from a multivoiced, richly dialogic classroom, to the much less dialogic space of a high stakes
exam, where students will attempt to perform their literary understandings, their
close readings of texts, according to the required exam practices, and so stake out
their place on the competitive ladder of university entrance scores? Prues account
of the lively dialogic interactions between her students, with only occasional (if
authoritative) interventions by her, in the lead up to their final exams, is compelling.
The students dialogue in those later engaging and lively literary discussions would
suggest that they have not completely forgotten the antecedent acts of recognition
that preceded this cognition. I am left wondering, though, whether to affirm this
cognition as a triumph over the effects of high stakes exams or whether to express
concern as to how much richer the students learning may have been without the
constraining influence of those exams.
LITERATURE TEACHING IN AUSTRALIA: LOOKING AHEAD
When Spivak (2003) comments on the unverifiability of the literary from which
we are attempting to discern collectivities (p. 34), she is speaking from within the
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discipline of literary studies as it is sometimes practised in universities. Her concern is

a little different from Frows concerns in Australia, although they are both responses
to worthwhile questions such as: what is literature? what is literary studies? and
what does it mean to study literature? Amidst an almost overwhelming profusion
of different perspectives on these questions, Spivak says there is an unhelpful
tendency in academic circles to want to discipline the discipline of literary studies,
so that there can be certainty, so that one can verify a text as literature (or not)
and so that the discipline of literary studies can be definitively located, pinned down
and verified where otherwise it remains elusive, problematic and ambiguous. She
believes these tendencies of academics to pursue certainty and to pin down truths
are leading ineluctably to the death of the discipline of literary studies. The
fundamentals of her argument, while complex and multi-levelled, might be translocated into a framework for describing and understanding literature teaching and
learning in Australian secondary schools.
In my sketch of the bigger picture policy and research context for literature
teaching in Australia, I have tried to show a rich diversity of views, ideologies and
understandings of literature teaching. I have indicated that there has been a history
of articulate voices speaking from and on behalf of Australian literature teachers
and literature teaching groups. And I have provided some evidence of a rich culture
of practitioner researchers in Australia, such as Prue and Bella. Their professional
learning and professional writing enliven both their own practice and the practices
of others who access and engage with this writing (in or through live professional
conversations).
But still there remains, in recent Australian history, no shortage of significant
public figures who see literature teaching and literature teachers in Australia as
their business. They tend to speak as if the diverse literature teaching profession
were a simple collective. It would seem that some in Australia perform their interest
in literature and literary high culture in the caf culture of upmarket bookshops
and others do it by denigrating English teachers in public pronouncements in the
popular press. Our former Prime Minister John Howard felt it was his business to
discipline the English teaching profession for the gobbledegook they talked, and
he threatened to cut off education funding to any state that encouraged its teachers
who had the audacity to use their own professional language in communicating
about and reflecting on their professional practice. Its fair to say that Howard was
suspicious of all intellectual discourse, and yet he wanted to see greater prominence
given to literature teaching in Australia (cf. Lewis & Saluszinsky, 2006), as he
believed that it had the potential to help produce a more moral and patriotic
national citizenry. He was not alone in this thinking, as has become evident in the
last four years, with a change of federal government in Australia (from a right wing
Liberal neoliberal government to a supposedly left-wing Labor government that
is still to all intents and purposes demonstrably neoliberal), the change in government
producing no perceivable difference in beliefs about and policy for literature
teaching.
Literature teaching in secondary schools in Australia is entering an interesting
period, as we move closer to a national curriculum. Although at the time of writing
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we have only seen drafts of the English curriculum, already two matters seem very
clear:
(1) The conception of language, which supposedly underpins the whole national
curriculum, all but rejects what Raymond Williams (1977/2001) calls the
sociality of language. The English language, we are told in the rationale for
this curriculum, is always dynamic and evolving, and yet the language at the
heart of this curriculum is glibly recognised as the common language of
Australians (ACARA, 2010). This is a rationale that gives meaning to George
Orwells notion of double-speak. And so it is that the so-called Language
strand of the new Australian curriculum will be made up of dedicated (i.e.,
year level by year level), highly prescriptive and content-heavy lists of language
rules, structures and conventions that students (irrespective of their sociocultural and linguistic backgrounds, irrespective of their interests and needs)
will be taught;
and
(2) The Literature strand, we are told, will be constructed on the basis of an understanding that what counts as literary texts (and literary practices) is dynamic
and evolving. And yet, the rationale for the curriculum explains, some (unidentified) group has verified that some subset of texts and practices has been
recognised as having personal, social, cultural and aesthetic value and potential
for enriching students lives and scope of experience (ACARA, 2010). And
these are the ones that literature teachers will teach.
Suffice it to say that, from what we have seen in this new Australian curriculum,
there is much evidence of hanging on to allusions of certainty (such as what
constitutes a literary text or a literary practice) and hanging on to beliefs in the
moral technology of this curriculum. There is evidence of the curriculum hanging
on to some centrally governed control of curriculum and of students learning. Indeed,
there seems to be a palpable fear running through the draft curriculum of letting go,
of allowing approaches to literature teaching that respect the professional judgements
of literature teachers such as Prue, and the literature teaching profession, more
broadly. One wonders whether there will be room for Honneths rich antecedent
acts of recognition in the futures orientation (ACARA, 2010) that this curriculum
trumpets in its preamble. Will there be space for teachers to read their classroom
and their texts, to encourage imaginative students engagement and play with texts
in the process of meaning making? Will the positive developments in literature
teachers professional learning practices, of which Prue and Bellas conversation is
just one example, become more of a luxury than they are even now?
I confess to harbouring serious concerns with respect to these questions. But
perhaps I should listen to Gyatri Spivak and let go some of these concerns. Perhaps,
I should look instead to the rich heritage of literature teachers in this country living
multiple contradictions and, as I said earlier, quietly getting on with the business of
exploring the complexities of texts within their classrooms. This is clearly a heritage
worth hanging on to. In my more optimistic moments, I do look forward to a future
where teachers, policy makers and students can talk about literature teaching,
83
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curriculum and professional learning in Australia with the same dialogic spirit that
characterizes Prue and Bellas conversations and the conversations in Prues
classroom. Id like to look back in five years time and affirm this continuing spirit
in the loose collective of Australian literature teachers that Prue identifies with.
Id like to be able to reflect on these five years and say, as Prues students say
about her class: I think that people were generally open minded and willing to accept
and [challenge] other peoples ideas. This is surely the spirit, the collective of
literature teaching in Australia that is worth holding on to.
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Graham Parr
Faculty of Education
Monash University
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THEO WITTE
6. BETWEEN DREAM AND DEED

Constructive and Destructive Frictions
in an Ill-Structured Domain
INTRODUCTION
What are teachers trying to accomplish when reading literary texts with adolescents
in the classroom, and what is the result? Teachers often unwittingly achieve very
different objectives than what they intend. Janssen (1998) found that almost 90%
of teachers of Dutch regard awakening an interest in literature and reading pleasure
as the most important goals of literature teaching. However, that study also revealed
that over half of fifteen-year-old students (grade 10) have problems reading and
understanding literary texts. This lack of success has a devastating impact on student
motivation and reading pleasure. And of course it is also disappointing for teachers.
Research into teacher competences highlights the fact that many teachers have
difficulty matching their objectives and choices of text with the interests and reading
level of their students (Witte, 2008; Kyriakides, Creemers & Antoniou, 2009). This
is not a uniquely Dutch problem. Appleyard (1994), who teaches English at Boston
College in the United States, expresses the friction between himself and his
students as follows:
I wanted them to think about how books and poems were structured and how
they worked, what values they implied, how they reflected or criticized the
culture in which they were produced. The students seemed to want to discover
messages about the meaning of their lives, to find interesting characters they
could identify with in their fantasies, or to use the ideas of the author to
bolster their own beliefs and prejudices. This discrepancy began to puzzle me
more and more. (Appleyard, 1994, p. 1)
Students in upper secondary classes (grades 1012) not only have to read what they
experienced as very different books, but they have also to do so in a way that perhaps
differs from what they can and would like to do (Witte, 2008). In other words,
there is friction between the perceived curriculum, or what teachers want, and the
operational curriculum, or what actually happens in the classroom. Moreover, the
curriculum can lead to unintended learning outcomes the experiential curriculum
(Goodlad, 1979). These frictions mean that teachers often cannot do full justice to
the texts that they would like to tackle in class and consequently find it increasingly
WITTE
difficult to realise their ideals. In the Netherlands, the following verse is often cited
to express this tension between ideal and reality:
Want tussen droom en daad / staan wetten in de weg en praktische bezwaren /
en ook weemoedigheid, die niemand kan verklaren, / en die des avonds komt,
wanneer men slapen gaat. (For between dream and deed / laws and practicalities
remain / and melancholy, which none can explain, / which comes in the
evening, when one goes to sleep.) (Willem Elsschot, 18821960)
Many teachers blame these problems on the fact that their students are not very
well-read or on an overfull programme (the laws and practicalities). They are
consequently disappointed at the difficulty of realising their ideals (and might be
said to slip into melancholy). But a closer look will reveal that many problems arise
out of the inability of teachers to reach students with a text and to distance themselves from their own attitude, biography and literary baggage. The case studies of
Ramon and Mies, two teachers of Dutch literature, reflect this problem. Before
I comment on them, I will first examine the literary development of adolescents in
the context of literature teaching in the Netherlands.
DUTCH CONTEXT
The governments agenda swings from liberation and decentralization to centralized

and detailed regulatory requirements. Since the introduction of the Dutch Constitution
in 1815 freedom of expression and religion has been one of the main democratic
pillars of the Dutch state. This humanist principle also underpins the Dutch educational system in which individuals are free to found their own schools, with the
government having primarily a facilitating role. Schools and teachers are to a degree
autonomous. To a degree, because there are of course rules attached to setting up a
school and exams are increasingly regulated by the government.
Dutch Delta
There is no national exam for the teaching of literature. The National Curriculum
(Rijksleerplan) of 1970 sets out the exam requirement in very general terms:
The final examination tests the knowledge and understanding of literature.
() the theory and history of literature need only be included in the examination inasmuch as the elements addressed relate to the work read by the
candidate. (National Curriculum, 1970).
Teachers themselves could decide which objectives they wished to pursue, how
many and which texts they wished to use, and how much time they wished to devote
to literature. This freedom has to this day prompted discussions about the aims and
content of literature teaching.
Research into teacher attitudes and classroom practice shows that literature
teaching has assumed many forms since the 1970s. Studies conducted before 1997
highlighted the fact that the teaching of literature had many possible objectives,
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BETWEEN DREAM AND DEED
reflecting the many different views on the purpose and function of reading literature
(Braaksma & Bonset, 2009). The teaching of literature is therefore one of the illstructured domains (Spiro, Feltovich, Jacobson & Coulson, 1991). Well-structured
domains are subjects whose objectives and structure most researchers are in agreement about, whereas ill-structured domains are characterized by an unsystematic
structure and a multiplicity of visions. As a result, students may be ill-equipped to
consistently apply and develop the knowledge they have acquired. Moreover, students
can be taken by surprise if a change of teacher results in a completely different
programme. In the Netherlands, there are in a manner of speaking just as many
curricula for the teaching of literature as there are teachers.
Janssen (1998) was the first to document the delta of Dutch literature teaching.
She describes four prototypical approaches or currents: (1) cultural education,
(2) literary-aesthetic education, (3) social education and (4) individual development.
She also notes that these approaches are sometimes difficult to distinguish in practice
because many teachers adopt an eclectic approach. At the time of the National
Curriculum, literature teaching was dominated by the cultural approach, and the
1970s and 80s saw a greater focus on the student as teachers sought new pathways.
This search raised questions about text choice, objectives and testing, and the cultural
approach came under pressure from the literary-aesthetic, social and reader-centred
view of literature. The literary-aesthetic, text-based approach became especially
popular because it gave teachers the tools to operationalize the difficult-to-grasp
interpretation process. Verboord (2005) embroidered on Janssens study. He distilled
the four approaches to two underlying dimensions: the culture-centred (combining
types 1 and 2) and student-centred approaches (combining types 3 and 4). Like
Janssen, he concluded that in practice these differences were gradual rather than
categorical. Moreover, his empirical data revealed a trend towards a more studentcentred approach between 1975 and 2000. This trend was probably linked to educational innovations in 1997 that advocated a more student-centred curriculum. Nevertheless, the discussion about the aims and content of literature teaching continues.
Alongside the debate about a culture-centred or student-centred approach,
the composition of the reading list has come up for discussion. Students in the
Netherlands compile their own book lists and read the books at home rather than at
school. In the examination year, teachers test whether the students have satisfied the
requirements. This examination usually takes the form of an interview. Depending
on the type of school, the exam formally requires students to read an average of
four works of recognized literary quality each year for a period of two or three
years. Some schools, however, feel that four books are not enough and prescribe
five or six books a year. Another point for discussion relates to what recognized
literary quality actually means. Many teachers are unfamiliar with popular genres
and question the literary quality of, say, adolescent novels and literary thrillers.
They insist that students place works from the literary canon on their list.
Recently there has been a discussion about which stages students pass through
in their literary development at school. Witte (2008) investigated pedagogical content
knowledge (Shulman, 1986) among teachers of literature with regard to the
relationship between the student as reader, text complexity and task complexity at
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WITTE
different levels of literary competence for students aged 15 to 18 years. Teachers

identify six levels that correspond to different kinds of reading: (1) experiential
reading, (2) identifying reading, (3) reflective reading, (4) interpretive reading,
(5) literate reading and (6) intellectual reading (level 6). The kind of reading is
determined above all by the readers attitude to literature and his or her reasons for
reading. Students with little reading experience and a negative attitude have a
nihilistic, pragmatic view of literature: they have to study it because it is part of the
curriculum. In subsequent stages, students discover that reading literature has different
functions and satisfies different needs. You can, for instance, (1) read for pleasure,
(2) recognize your own experience and thereby find self-affirmation, (3) expand
your horizons, (4) discover deeper meanings and aesthetic enjoyment, (5) immerse
yourself in literature, culture and history, and (6) nourish your intellect. The levels
correspond to levels in models of developmental psychology.1 This means that the
instrument is supported by both theory of classroom practice and development
theory.
Developing literary competence is a cumulative process, with each level laying
the foundation for the next. The levels can be seen as repertoires of operations, or
types of reading, which a student can employ flexibly. Flexibility is thus a feature
of a higher level of literary competence. Students at level 1 can use only one type
of reading, while students at a higher level can employ different ways of reading.
Dutch Canal
The government has intervened on several occasions to more effectively channel
these currents in the Dutch delta. The learning-to-learn paradigm became the
focus of curriculum design in Dutch education in the 1990s. The year 1997 saw the
introduction of the major educational innovation known as the study house. The
study house is a metaphor for a pedagogical approach that focuses on student activity
and independence. This innovation has entailed some changes in classroom management, curriculum planning and cooperation among school departments. In the classroom, the teachers role changed from that of mere instructor to a combination of
instructor and coach (Bonset & Rijlaarsdam, 2004). Meanwhile, detailed learning
outcomes (eindtermen) and exam programmes have been implemented to regulate
the process.
The new quality agenda for secondary education was launched in July 2008. In
it, the government and the education sector set out their policy priorities for the years
to come, together with the actions necessary to achieve them. One priority has
implications for the mother-tongue curriculum, namely the Delta plan for mathematics and language: to achieve a marked improvement in childrens language and
numeracy skills. (The Delta plan refers to a governmental plan in the 1960s to
protect the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta in the southwest of the Netherlands from the
sea.)
For mathematics and mother-tongue this priority resulted in a more detailed and
regulated curriculum, the continuous, longitudinal learning path (doorlopende
leerlijn), inspired by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.
92
This learning path defines four standards or levels of language skills (including
literature) and mathematics (grades 6 to 12). The four levels for the literary domain
are an adaptation of Wittes study of different reading stages. They have a cumulative
structure, and take into account the cognitive, social and emotional development of
adolescents. (See Appendix A.)
LITERARY DEVELOPMENT
Literary development is a socialization process that is stimulated firstly by the family

and later also by primary education, the public library, peers and secondary education.
Literary competence does not develop spontaneously. Instead, students are initiated
into literature within the institutional environment of education. In an educational
context, the dividing line between development and learning is a problematic
one that touches on one of the oldest disputes in the social sciences, namely the
controversy between nature and nurture. In Germany, Graf (1995), Schn (1995)
and others have used reading biographies to conduct retrospective research into the
literary socialization of children aged 2 to 18 years. Garbe (2002) summarized some
of the findings of this research. Within the literary socialization process, she distinguishes between intrinsic and extrinsic development factors and two critical
development stages primary and secondary literary initiation. Primary literary
initiation occurs within the family, and secondary literary initiation during the second
stage of secondary education. Intrinsic development factors are highly dependent
on age and aptitude (nature), while extrinsic factors depend on the environment
(nurture).
Adolescent literary development cannot be viewed separately from intrinsic factors
such as the cognitive and social-emotional development that adolescents undergo
between the ages of 12 and 18 (Witte, 2008). In order to understand literary texts,
readers must at times be able to independently construct entire representations and
lines of reasoning, as in the case of unanswered questions or when establishing links
between different storylines, perspectives or action sequences. In order to understand
the experiences and values of a novels characters, especially those who are far
removed from their own experience, readers must be able to dissociate themselves
and to bring together the perspectives of different characters (Andringa, 1996). We
know from theories of development psychology that students in this age group can
vary immensely in this respect (Kohlberg, 1969; Loevinger, 1976; Selman, 1980).
Reading is an interactive process in which characteristics of the reader, the text
and the context influence one another. As well as internal socialization factors,
there are external factors that play a major role in the literary development process.
Students at school acquire literary experiences in a particular way: they often read
texts that they have not chosen themselves and they communicate about their reading
experiences and interpretations with their teacher and classmates in accordance with
certain rules and conventions. In other words, there is an interpretive community
(Fish, 1980). In a different context, students would read very different texts and would
reflect on their reading experiences in a very different way. Many adolescents would
probably not read any books at all, let alone a literary novel or a book of poetry, if
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WITTE
they didnt have to do so for school. Students are initiated into literature for adults
at school by subject specialists who grant them access to the broad spectrum of
literature and who teach them to read differently, in particular with greater distance.
The teaching of literature influences the way in which readers engage with literature
once they have left school. As such, it can be seen as the most institutionalized
intervention in the process of literary socialization.
Teachers have a key part to play in this community. Beach and Marshall (1990)
conceive of the interaction between teacher, students and text as a triangle that shows
the dual relationships between these three constituents (Figure 1):
context
Figure 1. Teacher-text-student interaction in an educational context.
The teacher interacts with both students and the text. The teacher knows the text
and approaches it from his or her own experience as a reader and teacher. The teacher
also knows the students. He or she will take both the text and students into account
when dealing with the text and may try to bridge any gaps that exist between them.
Students also have their own reading of the text. In addition, they interact with the
teacher and the teachers interpretation of the text. The text also has a dual relationship in that both the students and the teacher have their own reading of the text.
Ultimately, it is the sociocultural context of literature teaching the Dutch context
in the case of Ramon and Mies that helps shape the interaction between these
three actors.
CONSTRUCTIVE AND DESTRUCTIVE FRICTIONS
I will discuss the cases of Ramon and Mies in which they reflect on their views of
literary education and their control of the learning process. Since the learning-tolearn paradigm was introduced in the Dutch curriculum, teachers are looking for a
new balance between student and teacher controlled regulation activities. Bonset
94
Table 1. Interplays between three levels of teacher regulation and three levels of student
regulation of learning processes (Vermunt & Verloop, 1999: 270)
Degree of student
regulation of
learning
High
Intermediate
Low
Degree of teacher regulation of learning

Strong
Destructive friction
Congruence
Shared
Congruence
Constructive friction
Loose
Congruence
Constructive friction
and Rijlaarsdam (2004) defined three degrees of student/teacher regulation. (1) In

independent working the teacher determines the activities and the manner in which
this must be carried out. The learning is teacher-controlled. (2) In independent
learning the teacher encourages students to make the learning decisions. Generally,
these decisions fall into two categories: the what and the how of learning. When
students can make choices in both respects themselves, we can establish there is
shared control. (3) Self-regulated learning gives the teacher only general control
over the final objective. It is left to the students to decide what this objective requires
and how to achieve it: the learning is student-controlled. Vermunt and Verloop
(1999) studied different ways in which student regulation and teacher regulation of
learning influence one another. Table 1 presents possible interplays between student
regulation and teacher regulation of learning processes.
Teaching and learning strategies are congruent on one diagonal. For example,
if students are not very good at regulating their own learning (low degree) and the
teacher does it for them (strong degree), teaching and learning strategies are balanced
for that moment. The majority of cells (six out of nine) represent friction between
teaching and learning. Some of these are destructive in nature, for example when
students who are capable of self-regulated learning (high degree) have a teacher
who prescribes in detail how they should learn (strong degree). This combination
frustrates student regulation and can lead to demotivation. Others are constructive,
in the sense that they challenge students to try new ways of learning and thinking.
For example a student with a low degree of regulation needs the helping hand and
control of the teacher (shared degree). These constructive cells reflect Vygotskys
zone of proximal development in which teachers mediate the literary socialization
of their students. Thus teachers play a key role in interaction. In my discussion,
I will therefore be guided primarily by the interaction models developed by Vermunt
and Verloop (1999) and by Beach and Marshall (1990). I will also refer to my own
research into the literary development of adolescents in upper secondary classes.
Before commenting on Ramon and Miess lessons, I will summarize their views on
literature teaching, their classroom practice and their results.
Ramon: Between Theory and Practice
Ramon is guided in his lesson plan by his own biography as a student and as a
student of literary theory. Because he himself learned so much from literature as a
student, more than anything else he would like to expand his students world view.
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Table 2. Ramon case study: summary of teacher and student activities

Teacher
instructs and forms five expert groups
supervises group work
instructs and forms new groups bringing
together the five expertises
leads whole-class discussion, asks questions
summarizes lesson objective
Students
read the story individually and answer
questions
discuss their answers in their expert
group and jointly come up with
conclusions
each student reports on the findings of his
or her expert group to four other experts
answer questions
?
But he opts for a literary-academic objective: during his studies of literary theory,
he learned that a multiform approach to the text yields the best results. He therefore
wants to equip students with tools to help them approach texts in different ways.
The lesson was intended for a 4 VWO class (pre-university education, 1516 years,
grade 10). An important criterion in the choice of text was that it should allow a
multiform approach. It was clear that Ramon himself had to like the story. Although
he regarded the existential theme as too difficult for this target group, he believed
that Thomas van Aaltens story would tie in with the milieu of his students because
the language is not difficult and the main character tells a lot about his youth through
flashbacks.
Ramon designed several group tasks so that students could explore a structural
and analytical, sociological, reader-centred or author-centred text approach. Once
students discussed the task in their expert group, the four areas of expertise were
combined to form new groups in which students could exchange answers and try to
reach conclusions about the results of the different approaches. The teacher rounded
off the lesson through a structured discussion in which he summarized the essence
of the subject matter. The main teacher and student activities are summarized in
Table 2.
The evaluation shows that Ramon was dissatisfied with how the lesson went and
with the disappointing results. He attributed this among other things to having
overestimated the students reading level, to the complexity of the text and to too
much teacher direction, which gave students insufficient opportunity to construct
knowledge themselves. I will try to expand on his analysis and to explain his
interaction with the class from the perspective of the models referred to above.
Comments
Ramons disappointment shows that there is tension between the perceived and
operational curricula. The differences between the teachers academic objectives and
student initial levels on the one hand, and text complexity and student reading levels
on the other, led to destructive frictions. In just a short space of time, inexperienced
readers of literature with little knowledge of the world were expected to arrive
independently at the same discoveries, on the basis of a fairly complex story, some
open questions and unstructured discussions, that their teacher, a well-educated and
96
adult student, had taken an entire course of study to achieve. The students were also
given tools for approaching texts in a structural-analytical, sociological, readercentred and author-centred way. What these tools were, what they equip students
with and how they should be used was not made explicit in this lesson. Moreover,
the transcript shows that the teacher did not approach the text in a pluriform way
but primarily from a structural analytical framework.
The way the lesson was organized reinforced destructive frictions. The teacher
opted for a low level of teacher regulation while student self-regulation was very
low for this complex task. Students probably did not know what was expected of
them. Fragments 1 and 2 reveal many hesitant, uncertain utterances from both the
students and the teacher, which suggests that the interpretive community of this
lesson was not made clear enough for the participants. Over and above that, there
was no opportunity to discuss comprehension and interpretation problems, as a
result of which the reading of the participants varied enormously. In other words,
interaction in the teacher-text-student triangle was not optimal.
The choice of text and the lesson objectives lay far beyond the zone of proximal
development of grade 10 students, which led to destructive frictions. Fragment 1
shows that the students were focused on the protagonists behaviour rather than the
text approach. For many 15year-olds, a precondition for reading a text is that they
can identify with the characters and situations depicted: to borrow the terms of
developmental psychology, they are not yet able to enter into the world of adults,
who are far removed from the experience of young adolescents in social and psychological respects (Loevinger, 1976). The literary competence of these students corresponds to level 2 (see Appendix). This means that they had little experience of
literature and didnt know how to handle literary processes such as filling the blanks
(Iser, 1978, p 167) and open endings. They find it difficult to see through the
unreliable perspective of a first-person narrator. They are not yet able to distance
themselves and to identify implicit messages. They are not far enough advanced in
their intellectual development to penetrate independently to the psychological and
philosophical layers of a text. In short, readers with a low literary competence find
it extremely difficult to understand and interpret Thomas van Aaltens fairly
complex story, let alone be concerned with aesthetic awareness and a multiform
approach to the text. Such objectives require a metaposition that is asking far too
much of students in grade 10. We know from studies of student literary
development that this level is achieved by only 5% of the pre-university students in
grade 12 (Witte, 2008). The teachers attempt to summarize his intentions once
again at the end of the lesson was probably just a drop in the ocean.
Although the students made no explicit evaluative utterances and we can therefore
only speculate on the experiential curriculum, the cited lesson fragments together
with the teachers own evaluation show that the learning gains were low. An unintended result of this lesson may have been that students discovered that they
derived little satisfaction from reading a literary text judged good by the teacher,
that they themselves were unable to identify with the main character and that they
hadnt properly understood what the teacher meant by different reading objectives
and appropriate ways of reading. I can imagine that this disappointing experience
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would make Ramon melancholy, causing him to look back with nostalgia on his
own experiences as a school and university student.
Mies: Lessons with a Message
Like Ramon, Mies was inspired by her own biography. Her lessons were imbued with
a certain political message. As she herself said, lessons should above all be engaging
lessons that spur students to critically reflect on the world and their own position in it.
In her lesson series, she wanted to investigate whether the students could make the
transition, by means of activating teaching methods and a politically-themed book,
from experiental reading to a more identifying and reflective kind of reading.
The lessons were intended for a 2 VWO class (pre-university education,
1314 years, grade 8). Mies preferred to choose books for young people that were
permeated with political and social problems in such a way that students could understand the message. Whether or not students liked the book was of lesser importance.
What mattered most to Mies was that students could identify with someone else, could
put themselves in someone elses shoes and learn to empathize with the problems of
young people their own age who lived in wretched conditions and could realize
how well off they are in the Netherlands.
The teacher did her utmost to ensure that all students had a mental picture of the
text. She read the entire text aloud, supported the text with a PowerPoint presentation
and handout, and discussed certain themes as she read. She also made a video
recording of the lessons so that absent students could catch up. The students kept a
reading response log (RRL). Once the text had been read, they were given questions
about the character development of the characters, which they exchanged in groups.
This approach led to a context-rich learning environment in which students learned
to discuss in a natural way, as well as to undertake action themselves and write an
argumentative letter to aid agencies. Table 3 presents a summary of the teacher and
student activities.
Table 3. Mies case study: summary of teacher and student activities
Teacher
reads the story out loud and supports this with
PowerPoint presentation and handout
explains and provides additional information
discusses certain themes and assigns reflection
tasks (Mama, if you could see me now)
makes video recording and places it on DVD
assigns various identification tasks and
instructs groups
guides and coaches groups
leads exchanges
relates the text to the here and now and
activates students
98
Students
listen
ask questions, discuss
do reflection tasks in their reading logs
watch the DVD (in the case of absent
students)
(individually) carry out tasks
(in groups) exchange answers and together
draw conclusions (placemat method)
(whole class) exchange placemats (group
trip)
write letter to organization
Mies looked back on a successful series of lessons and was surprised at its effect
on her class. She attributed this success to reading aloud a story with a political theme
and to the many types of interaction with and between students. The emotional
stimuli guaranteed student involvement, motivating them to write an argumentative
letter to an aid agency. Her main point of criticism was that she was unsuccessful
when it came to teaching students to place events and the behaviour of characters
into a social context, in this case Philippine society and culture. I will now try to
explain Miess experiences on the basis of my own interpretive framework.
Comments
The series of lessons went largely according to plan. I believe that there was a high
level of congruence between teacher and students, as well as constructive friction
in the development of an identifying and reflective way of reading. Student involvement and the willingness to take action on the part of some students even exceeded
the teachers expectations. Student independence in the group tasks was also greater
than expected. But there were some slight disappointments too. Although boys felt
engaged with the subject of child prostitution, their reaction was less emotional
than that of the girls. This friction between boys and girls did have a constructive
spin-off, however. The boys were interested in how the girls felt and were better
listeners during group discussions than what Mies was accustomed to. This is a
good example of successful peer mediation. Also disappointing was the fact that
students failed to reflect seriously on the cultural-social context. Students were very
involved in the experiences of the main character and were not able to abstract from
them and to place the events into the sociocultural context of the Philippines. Nor
were they able to enter into the world of the father who, against his will, sold his
daughter to a pimp. But this is not a case of destructive friction because the students
did not experience frustration. There is a danger of destructive friction, however, in
Miess self-commentary (about curbing her enthusiasm) and in Piet-Heins observation that Mies used persuasive techniques suggesting that constant proselytising
can irritate students if they dont understand or share the teachers message.
Miess teacher regulation was so strong that it was almost impossible for her
students to escape the objectives. In the interactional triangle teacher-text-student,
the teacher controlled both the reading and interpretation processes. She chose a
gripping book for young people and read it right through. She explained certain
passages, illustrated the text using PowerPoint and discussed certain themes and
events on several occasions. She used video recordings and handouts so that students
who had been absent from lessons could catch up. She also stimulated the emotional
perception and identification of students through illustrations (PowerPoint), penetrating processing tasks (Mama, if you could see me now) and discussions. This
fitted in with her pedagogical care for a safe classroom environment in which students
could freely express and develop their personal opinion. In addition, students made
personal notes about their experiences in RRL and reflected in groups on the
protagonists character development (agnitio) using a structured task (placemat
method). These shared, tightly orchestrated activities facilitate (a) the development
of a mental picture of the text, (b) the standardization of the interpretive community
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and (c) the personal involvement of the students in the lesson objectives, with an
appeal made to their compassion and human responsibility. This series of lessons
thereby offered a context-rich environment for conducting discussions and writing
an argument.
This pedagogical experiment shows that interesting results are produced by a
text that appeals to students, in combination with a variety of teaching techniques
and a highly directive teacher. Most of Miess students were probably at the
conformist, egocentric stage of development (Kohlberg 1969; Loevinger 1976). A
characteristic of this stage is that students have difficulties abstracting from their own
milieu and they reject any behaviour that deviates from that of their own group. We
therefore see from their utterances that they interpret and judge the dramatic events
from the perspective of their own experience, as if the main character is a friend.
With regard to identification possibilities, the teachers choice of story was an
excellent one, especially for girls. As the above activities show, student development
towards an emotional, identifying kind of reading (see Appendix, level 2) was carefully mediated by the teacher. However, the reflective type of reading that the teacher
intended (Appendix, level 3) appears to lie outside the zone of proximal development
of many 13 and 14year-olds. Despite the teachers strong mediation, the students
were not yet open to the fathers world and to a society that tolerates behaviour
regarded as reprehensible by Western standards. The fact that Western tourists help
to preserve this system will have escaped many students.
CONCLUSION
What happened in these case studies is typical of the teaching of literature in the
Netherlands. Two teachers working at a school have entirely different views on the
aims and function of literature teaching. Ramon, who strives for aesthetic awareness,
represents an literary-academic approach, while Mies, who strives for social awareness, is a proponent of the student-centred approach. Of interest in this context is
the discussion that each of them had with Piet-Hein about the extent to which
teachers may persuade their students. This discussion is part and parcel of the
humanist tradition of Dutch education in which not only the teacher has autonomy,
but where student autonomy is also an objective. Since the learning-to-learn paradigm
(study house) was introduced in 1997, the discussion about student independence
has stepped up once more. This perhaps explains Ramons decision to limit his
directions to students to enable them to discover for themselves what the different
approaches to a text can deliver. In the case of Mies, my impression is that she is
apologizing for her decision to give strong direction to the learning process in an
unorthodox way. With Vermunt and Verloops interaction model (Table 1), I have
sought to show that the success of varying degrees of direction depends in part on
the level of student independence and literary competence. These case studies also
show that teacher mediation is essential in the zone of proximal development.
The influence of intrinsic development factors on the reception and processing
of literary texts is often underestimated in the teaching of literature. Nor does the
cognitive and social-emotional development of students play a significant role in
100
Mies, Ramon and Piet-Heins discussions. Both case studies showed that if the
lesson objectives lie beyond the zone of proximal development, destructive frictions
arise because too much is demanded of students, which prevents self-regulation
from taking place. Both case studies also showed the importance of taking account
of student interests and reading levels when choosing texts and learning activities.
It struck me in the case studies that both teachers were focused on the one lesson
or series of lessons, paying little attention to the development process that students
must pass through in the longer term. We know from development studies that it is
critical for student motivation and progression for them to understand the development expected of them over a particular period (Meece, 1997; Schunk, 2000). Lack
of continuity is disastrous for student literary development (Witte, 2008).
Developing literary competence is a cumulative process, with each level laying
the foundation for the next (Witte, 2008). We can interpret these levels as repertoires
of actions, ways of reading that a student can deploy flexibly. Flexibility is thus a
feature of a higher level of literary competence. If we link different aspects of literary
awareness to Wittes development levels (2008), we see the following sequence:
personal awareness (levels 1 and 2), social awareness (level 3), aesthetic awareness
(level 4), cultural awareness (level 5) and academic awareness (level 6). Ideally,
both teachers should be able to teach all these aspects of literary awareness.
The recently introduced continuous learning path with its four reference levels
(see Appendix) offers Dutch literature teachers a framework for identifying different
development stages in their students and for structuring the literary development
process in the longer term. But it is uncertain to what extent the introduction of these
levels in the Netherlands will produce a well-structured curriculum. It will require
teachers to put their personal views into perspective and to adopt a pluriform
approach to texts in their teaching (personal, social, aesthetic, cultural and academic)
so that secondary students can extend their repertoires step by step. Innovation
studies by Van de Ven (1996) and Van den Berg and Ros (1999) show, however, that
teachers find it very difficult to alter their teaching and to adopt a pluriform approach.
As we have observed with Ramon and Mies, they often cling to their own academic
training and their experiences as a student. Between dream and deed.
NOTES
1
It is primarily in research literature from the Anglophone world that we encounter theories on the
stages of literary development. Kreft (1977), Applebee (1978), Thomson (1987) and Appleyard
(1994) investigated the literary development of various groups of subjects. All these development
theories converge into five to six almost identical development stages. There are also strong parallels
with the stages in psychological (Kohlberg, 1969; Loevinger, 1976) and aesthetic development
models (Housen, 1983; Parsons, 1987; Gardner, 1990).
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University of Groningen, the Netherlands
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104
Level 1 (age 1112)

Experiential reading
Competences Understand able to

identify basic structure elements
(e.g. changes in time, place, person)
summarize key fragments
Interpret able to
relate the story to their own world
recognize different feelings of
characters
give re-creative response (e.g.
drawing)
Evaluate able to
give personal (subjective) response
express their own anti- or sympathy
for characters and their experiences
use emotive criteria (e.g. exciting,
sad, stupid)
Aims
Understand able to
identify genre (e.g. war,
romantic, thriller, fantasy)
summarize story (chronological
order)
recognize metaphorical language
describe situations, intrigues, and
feelings and thoughts of
characters
describe development of main
character
Interpret able to
identify with characters and
events
typify characters, inner and outer
determine the main topic of the
story
Evaluate able to
give personal (subjective)
response
use also realistic criteria
support ones findings with
references to the text
exchange reading experience with
peers
motivate his/her interests
Level 2 (age 1415)

Identifying reading
Understand able to
identify narrative techniques (e.g.
tense, characterizing, atmosphere)
notice different storylines
recognize important figures of
speech
establish causal links (incidents,
behaviour)
notice explicit motifs and goals of
characters
Interpret able to
dominate implicit motifs and
goals of characters
give meaning to symbols
give an outline of the message
or central idea of the text
explain effects of the use of basic
narrative techniques
Evaluate able to
use emotive, realistic, moral and
cognitive criteria
explain new insights (about the
world, live, literature)
discuss with peers:
their interpretation of the text
quality or value of the text
Level 3 (age 1617)

Critical and reflective reading
APPENDIX A | FORMAL CURRICULUM THE NETHERLANDS

Level 4 (age 1718)
Interpretive and esthetical
reading
Understand able to
recognize irony
distinguish different layers of
meaning (e.g. historical,
sociological, philosophical, inter
textual)
notice stylistic and structural
details
Interpret able to
identify oneself emphatically
with different characters
formulate overall theme
relate text to historical cultural
context
Evaluate able to
use (emotive, realistic, moral,
cognitive) structural and
esthetical criteria
compare different texts (content,
structure, style)
evaluate the critics of peers and
expert readers
motivate their interest in some
authors
WITTE
Criteria for
text selection
social, psychological and moral

issues in the text
motivate their interest in
particular issues and themes
describe their literary
development and motivate their
literary taste
relatively simple childrens
relatively simple young adult
relatively complex young adult
literature: simple structure, exciting literature or simple adult
literature or not complex adult
or dramatic story, high tempo
literature: clear (explicit)
literature: structure can be
structure, dramatic storyline,
complex; literary procedures like
sometimes tension can be
shifts in time or changes of
interrupted by descriptions and
perspective tend to be clear;
thoughts (inner monologues).
deeper layer of meaning
Poetry and songs have a narrative alongside the concrete one. Text
structure and are expressive
deals with personal or social
(emotional) or humoristic.
issues.
Appendix A (Continued)
relatively complex adult

literature: literary style,
complex techniques (e.g.
unreliable perspective, implicit
shifts of time and changes of
perspective), metaphorical style,
non contemporary language
3 old canonical texts (published
before 1880).
105
PART 3: READING AND REREADING
TERRY LOCKE
7. IF IN DOUBT, REACH FOR A STORY
I am aware that many of my contemporaries maintain that nations are never

their own masters here below, and that they necessarily obey some insurmountable and unintelligent power, arising from anterior events, from their
race, or from the soil and climate of their country. Such principles are false
and cowardly; such principles can never produce aught but feeble men and
pusillanimous nations. Providence has not created mankind entirely independent
or entirely free. It is true, that around every man a fatal circle is traced,
beyond which he cannot pass; but within the wide verge of that circle he is
powerful and free; as it is with men, so with communities. The nations of our
time cannot prevent the condition of man from becoming equal; but it depends
upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to servitude
or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or wretchedness. (de
Tocqueville, 1956, p. 317).
The aristocratic Frenchman, Alexis De Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America
in 1835 out of a sense that the writing was on the wall that democratic ideology
with its principle of equality was an inexorable historical force. His book, however,
was not a celebration of democracy as he experienced and analysed it in his travels
in the United States, but rather the expression of profound dismay that the principle
of equality can lead to the tyranny of a majority that is at odds with individual
freedom, equality and social justice. In our own time, we can see the global marketplace enshrined as an insurmountable and unintelligent power whose workings
must be accepted, regardless of their capacity to destroy communities, environments
and livelihoods. What would de Tocqueville have thought of the bail-out of the
American banking system?
I am privileged to be invited to join in this conversation. I am a teacher-educator
and researcher who also spent 12 years as a secondary classroom teacher and in a
more remote life as a university lecturer in an English department plying the trade
of literary critic. Recently, I led a two-year project on teaching literature in the
multicultural classroom and in the course of the project was able to spend time
observing four wonderful secondary teachers at work in diverse classrooms (Locke,
Cawkwell, Silailai, Cleary, de Beer, Harris, Lumby, Riley, Sturgess and Thumath,
2008). The relative privilege of the students taught by Prue, Ramon and Mies
remind me of a 20minute car trip I undertook from Sandy Harriss classroom in
Mangere College (a decile 1 school in Auckland)1 to Janet Sturgesss classroom in
Botany Downs Secondary College (a decile 10 school, also in Auckland). At the start
of Sandys lesson with her Year 11 class,2 she gave out pencils and paper and used
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one of the pencils as a reward to be given to a well-performing student at the

end of the lesson. In Janets Year 9 class, the students were well equipped with
bulging pencil-cases, filled to the brim with writing/calculating paraphernalia. In
New Zealand, a country that once prided itself on its egalitarianism, the income
gap between families of unqualified and qualified parents has more than doubled
over 25 years (Anon., 2008, p. 2; see also Cotterell et al., 2008). For many of its
citizens, de Tocquevilles fatal circle is being drawn very tightly indeed.
Altruism is a hallmark of the professional teacher; it is as true for Prue, Bella,
Ramon and Mies as it is for teachers in the New Zealand project. Prue recognizes
the fragility of democracy but still wants to help students develop a consciousness
of the values, the responsibilities, the behaviours underpinning a democratic process.
Ramon rejects an empty aestheticism which disconnects the literary text from the
world and grapples with how to develop an aesthetic with an ethical face. Mies
agenda is somewhat more straightforward: to use literary study to sensitise her
students to the plight of others and to the extent of their own privilege. One of the
New Zealands projects teachers, David Riley, wrote the following in his reflective
profile:
The media represents South Auckland and Otara in particular ways and I want
students to be able to be aware of that and question it and reject it if necessary.
Representations can be very powerful, they can influence how we see the
world, they can promote ideas. I want students to be able to look at advertisements for a White Sunday Loan and be able to question it. It may help their
families in some way.
Behind this sentiment is a recognition of the ways in which loan sharks target
poor Pacific Island families in South Auckland by manipulating a perceived tendency
to spend extravagantly for White Sunday, a special day focused on children.3
How might literary study in the context of L1 subjects further an altruistic
agenda that seeks to foster democratic ideals and address issues of social injustice?
And is this an appropriate aim? To begin addressing this question I turn to the nature
of dialogic inquiry and conversation.
TALKING THE TALK
The long shadow of Bakhtin stretches across the writings of these Australian and
Dutch teachers. It is Bella who refers specifically to Bakhtin in her commentary on
Prues teaching, referring approvingly to Prues view of her students as complex
and contradictory individuals whose words are split in productive dialogue between
themselves and others, between the individual and the social. She then quotes
Bakhtin: I live in a world of others words (Bakhtin 1986, p. 143). Piet-Hein quotes
Bakhtin in discussing the way he and Ramon and Mies are each constructing an
understanding of literature and literary education: After all, our thought itself
philosophical, scientific, and artistic is born and shaped in the process of interaction and struggle with others thought, and this cannot but be reflected in the
forms that verbally express our thought as well (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 92).
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IF IN DOUBT, REACH FOR A STORY
Before moving to some considerations of the realm of classroom talk (or

discourse), let me discuss the pertinence of Bakhtin to an English teacher desirous
of fostering democratic ideals and to the dilemma of the one and the many that de
Tocqueville refers to (i.e. can e pluribus unum be achieved without the one being
tyrannical, oppressive, stultifying and conformist?). I add two more quotations to
the mix.
Moreover, any speaker is himself a respondent to a greater or lesser degree.
He is not, after all, the first speaker, the one who disturbs the eternal silence
of the universe. And he presupposes not only the existence of the language
system he is using, but also the existence of preceding utterances his own
and others with which his given utterance enters into one kind of relation
or another (builds on them, polemicizes with them, or simply presumes that
they are already known to the listener). Any utterance is a link in a very
complexly organized chain of other utterances (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 69).
The word in language is half someone elses. It becomes ones own only
when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when
he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive
intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in a
neutral and impersonal language but rather it exists in other peoples mouths,
in other peoples contexts, serving other peoples intentions: it is from there
that one must take the word, and make it ones own (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 294).
Literary study influenced by such thinking:
Views the literary text as a special kind of text or utterance, whose maker is
entering into (intertextual) dialogue with a complex history of preceding utterances
as well as with anticipated texts/utterances in response (what Bakhtin calls
addressivity);
Views the production of and response to literary texts as replete with the
presence of the other and as rhetorically situated;
Views literary texts and indeed all utterances as replete with the traces of the
intentionalities of others. We learn our language by assimilating the voices of
others, and we speak back to our community of peers through re-externalized
modes of discourse (Honeycutt, 1994, pp. 67). The sense of texts as reflecting
myriad voices (as multivocal), Bakhtin termed heteroglossia.
Invites students into dialogue with the voices in texts (author and characters),
voices or discursive positions implicit in texts (via what Fairclough terms
manifest or constitutive intertextuality [1992, p. 85]), and voices responding
to texts (academic critics, reviewers, teachers and fellow students).
Views literary production, literary criticism and literary study as praxial. Based
in a neo-Aristotelian, tri-partite philosophy of knowledge, Regelski (1998)
writes that: Praxis is governed by the kind of doing called phronesis an
ethical [and situated] knowledge of and for achieving right results judged in
terms of actual benefits for ones self or for others (p. 28). In a rhetorical view
of language production, the focus is on the social effects of our discursive acts,
and has its philosophical counterpart in pragmatism.
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While Bakhtin always emphasised individual agency, he also viewed the

individual language-user and the other as mutually implicated. Like Whitmans
self, the Bakhtinian individual contains multitudes, not as a tyrannous majority but
as a reminder of the responsibilities Prue refers to in her enunciation of democratic
teaching.
Talk of various kinds is the crucial determinant of what is learnt in classrooms.
I tell my pre-service teachers that their primary responsibility as an English teacher
is to manage a conversation around a text and that textual meaning (what students
make of a text) depends on the character and quality of that conversation. Talk
looms large in these Dutch and Australian classrooms. Prue tells us that her focus
is on talk and that talk, writing, and talking about writing are a way of helping
us to construct our futures - both public and private. By fostering talk, each pupil
might be helped to find their voice (a concept that poststructuralist approaches to
literary study call into question but which wont lie down and die). This whole
project, of course, is about conversation, and Im aware that my own chapter is a
response to two chapters and informed by a number of writers whose words keep
infiltrating my thinking processes Bakhtin himself and Brian Boyd, whom Ill
bring in later.
Group learning processes based on structured talk around a task are a staple of
teacher education in New Zealand, which, of course, is no guarantee that they are
happening successfully in the classroom. Group work figured largely in the classrooms of the secondary English teacher-researchers in the Literature in the multicultural classroom project in New Zealand. For two of these teachers, working
with predominantly Maori and Pasifika students, group processes were emphasised
on the basis of their suiting the cultural learning styles of students (high on orality
and low on individualism). One of the findings of the study was that social interaction was certainly a motivating factor for these supposedly disadvantaged students,
especially when coupled with the novelty of sharing their responses with others
through the kind of electronic shared space Prue used with her privileged students
(Locke, 2009, p. 17, cf. Williams, Hedrick & Tuschinski, 2008). For one of the
teachers (Sandy), a main focus of one of her interventions was the encouragement
of wide, personal reading. Consequently, the interactive brief for her students was
to share their personal responses to a range of texts with their peers. She and I have
discussed our view that there is too much emphasis on a particular kind of close
reading in New Zealand English classrooms, often synonymous with the drilled
preparation of examination answers for this or that achievement standard in
reading (see Locke, 2008). Sandys aim for her students was enjoyment.
In a recent book, Terry Eagleton laments that quite a few teachers of literature
nowadays do not practise literary criticism, since they were never taught to do
so (2007, p. 1). What is striking about the group processes enacted, certainly by
Ramon and Prue, is the extent to which they are shaped by literary criticism, which
I define simply as the theory and practice of how to read and evaluate literature. As
Piet-Hein tells us, Ramon emphasizes the importance of his university education,
which involved sustained engagement with literary texts within a literary-theoretical
framework. Ramon himself suggests the influence of a range of reading
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approaches, and sets out to have these reflected in the tasks he sets for the five
initial groups, each governed by a different critical orientation. His overall aim,
however, is what I have referred to as critical eclecticism, the awareness that
different approaches to reading and writing produce different results, that classroom
teachers are seldom pure in the application of a particular approach or theory, and
that adopting an approach knowingly and critically for a particular purpose is part of
a teachers improvisatory repertoire (Locke, 2005). (In Bakhtinian terms, we can
also foster dialogue among different theories or discourses of literary reading in
our classrooms.) His use of expert groups, in a way, can be seen as designed to
bring a range of literary critical approaches into a dialogic space via a student voice,
with a view to producing greater insight.
His own evaluation is that his strategy has not been particularly successful, and
on the basis of a borrowed taxonomy of literary reading comes to the conclusion
that his chosen text has been too difficult for his students. I have to confess to a
prejudice against these kinds of taxonomy, since I have seen many instances where
they (i.e. progressions of learning) operate as normative frames leading to the
dumbing down or labelling of students. I think that Ramon is too hard on himself.
As I read his account, he has been at pains to provide scaffolding to his students in
their initial groups. What I did wonder at was the timeframe that this learning took
place in (too short?) and whether there could have been more deliberate teacher
modelling of the kind of dialogue students were expected to engage in. I was also
left wondering if Ramon was reluctant to engage in modelling for fear of displaying
even more what he terms a dominant teacher text. At this point in this section on
talk, I am aware that a number of topics have entered the arena: activity design, the
scaffolding of learning (and therefore talk) and now teacher voice and its role in
classroom discourse.
Lets turn to Prue. When we first meet her she is setting a close reading task for
her students, which focuses on what I would call literary texture, even though they
are invited to relate a selected passage to the story as a whole. In part, the voice she
is wanting them to develop is one that will operate effectively in the rhetorical space
of a high-stakes examination that demands of students the ability to articulate a
position and defend it with reasoning and evidence. As I read the task, with its
focus on language and stylistic features, it is quite in keeping with a New Critical
approach, even though this is not stated. There appears to be less scaffolding in the
task design that Ramon uses, which in one sense gives the students place to roam
a kind of grounded theory approach to literary reading where a particular kind of
patterning is not predetermined. The key thing here, however, is the role Prue adopts
once the groups begin reporting back. She is a particular kind of questioner, drawing
students out, demanding clarification and evidence, and contributing to the patternmaking process. The teacher is an improviser in all of this, but it is not random
(Cazden, 2001). Rather she is governed by a view of what close literary reading
entails, as per the following statement which could easily be recast as a set of unit
objectives:
I want even closer attention. I want them to use their own language with more
particularity, to look for ease or eloquence, patterning or rhythm, sarcasm or
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grace, resonance, ambiguity, image, or figurative language. Their evidence

lies in how they read, and I am asking them to make the interpretive nature of
their reading visible.
Where Ramon builds scaffolding into his written instructions, Prue tends to display
it via her own questioning and modelling behaviour. However, she does employ
written scaffolding also, as in her review of a review task with her excellent set of
strategies for reading an academic article.
In the New Zealand context, beginning teachers are often presented with the
binary of sage-on-the-stage versus guide-at-the-side and told that their aim is the
latter. The dilemma for the teacher, then, is the status of their own voice and their
expertise based on their professional content knowledge. Mies has few misgivings
about adding her own voice to the fray. We see it in the way she literally uses her
own voice to orient her young, adolescent students to Blue is Bitter, by offering
them a DVD of her own reading of the book accompanied by a PowerPoint of poor
and exploited young people. You would have to say that she establishes a very
strong presence by so doing. Yet it is also clear that her design of dialogic spaces
(the placemat which retains spaces for individual voices while featuring the collective
viewpoint of the group; the group expedition) encourages students to learn from
one another.
Finally, in this section on talk, we come to the most obvious topic of all, the
importance of the language in which the talk is couched. In lamenting the supposed
disappearance of literary criticism, Eagleton (2007) was in part lamenting the
disappearance of a particular kind of metalanguage. This sense of Eagletons was
actually borne out by what we observed in our New Zealand project on Literature
in the multicultural classroom. Teachers in our project (especially primary
teachers) were surprisingly insecure in their metalinguistic terminological grasp (see
Locke, 2010a). This is not evident among these Dutch and Australian teachers,
regardless of the differing approaches they bring to literary study. All implicitly
assume a connection between metalanguage and metacognition. Prue is the teacher
who most overtly encourages her (albeit older) students to think about their own
thinking (via Ritchharts theories), and she models a metalanguage for analysing
Farmers texts in her own talk.
BRINGING THE AUTHOR BACK TO LIFE
Much of Theory, since Roland Barthess 1968 announcement of the death of

the author, has sought or professed to downplay the individual using the
rhetorical strategy of referring not to authors but to texts, as if they were selfcreated or the product only of systems of cultural production (Boyd, 2009,
p. 348).
Early in Prue and Bellas chapter, we find the following passage:
One of the features of the year 12 Literature study, as it is mandated by
the state, is the underlying premise that meaning is derived from a relationship between the text itself and the reader in other words, there is an
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acknowledgement that the truth of the text is inevitably negotiated rather

than given.
This passage would appear to bear out Roland Barthes (in)famous assertion that
the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author (1977, p. 148).
The use of the word text, commonplace enough in curriculum parlance, separates
work from authorship. Yet what is striking about these three teachers is the extent
to which the author is made present as a participant in the dialogue of meaningmaking that occurs in and beyond these classrooms.
Operating out of a New Critical discourse, Brooks and Warren have the following
to say about meaning-making. While they are referring to the reading of poetry,
their argument can be extended to literary prose fiction:
The meaning is the special import of the dramatisation of a situation. In sum,
a poem, being a kind of drama that embodies a human situation, implies an
attitude toward that situation In short, poems do not so much state themes
as test ideas and attitudes by putting those ideas and attitudes into dramatic
situations, by dramatising human concerns and interests (1976, p. 267) [Their
italics].
However, the New Critics had their own version of the death of the author, embedded
in the doctrine of the intentional fallacy, which argued that the meaning of a work
should be based on internal evidence and that preoccupation with the author or
his/her intention was a distraction (Wimsatt & Beardsley, 1946).
When Prue is questioning her students on their response to Pumpkin, she asks:
What might Farmer think about this attitude? (i.e. the character Andonis view
that its what people think that matters). The modality (might) is interesting
here. The question suggests to me that from Prues perspective: authors voices are
important and their attitudes to their characters matter; while we cant be sure what
authors attitudes are, we can interpret these on the basis of internal evidence. (An
example of this is where Prue accepts a students view that Farmer uses language
to unsettle but asks her for internal evidence to support her interpretation of the
authors intention.) Later, we see the students building on these interpretations to
begin fleshing out speculative biographies of Farmer (which Prue doesnt agree
with). These speculations are not the only prompt for Prue to bring the flesh-andblood Beverley Farmer into the dialogic precinct. It is clear that there are such
things as underlying values implicit in the writing which are Farmers but which
might [my italics] reflect the context within which Farmer is writing. Prue uses
the expression view of the world rather than discourse, indicating to me that
there is little evidence of a critical literacy discourse at work here. Indeed, the word
might suggests that while writers have a relationship to their context, Farmer and
her stories are more than mere products of systems of cultural production (Boyd,
2009, p. 348). Engaging with Farmer herself has far-reaching consequences for
these students reading of her work: some comment that they need to rethink their
hasty conclusions, that they might read her work differently now.
One of Ramons initial groups is also asked to focus on the author of Fam
(Thomas van Aalten). The possibility of a connection between the story and the
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authors life is raised, as is the desirability of attempting to ascertain authorial

intention (why Van Aalten decided to write this story). In the class discussion
that ensues, an overt connection is made between the authors living situation and
the setting of the story. Later Ramon puts the author at the centre of his view of
literature:
I see a text as a product of an author who has a certain message that he wrote
down in a certain way in a certain time. I think it is impossible to fully extract
that message, so what I try to do with my students, is to distil the authors
possible message.
Mies is similarly author-focused. She tells us she has taught students about Vondel
before she names his work. She does not hesitate to speculate about authorial
intention (which is what I think Vondel wants to achieve with his biblical tragedy).
Where Prue brings Farmer into the space of classroom, Mies enters into the space
created by Brackes website (author of Blue is Bitter). Mies major aim as a teacher
of literature, however, is the fostering of empathy. It is to this subject I now turn,
via a diversion into evocriticism.
EVOCRITICISM AND THE ESSENCE OF EMPATHY
In a number of publications, I have identified various paradigms of L1 textual

study (e.g., Locke, 2007a): Cultural Heritage, Personal Growth (or Progressive
English), Rhetorical or Textual Competence and Critical Literacy. The first of
these tends to be associated with the New Criticism and, as I have indicated, while
hallowing genius eschews a focus on authorial intention. The Personal Growth
model finds a critical fellow in reader response criticism (e.g. Rosenblatt, 1989;
Iser, 1978). According to Rosenblatt The finding of meanings involves both the
authors text and what the reader brings to it (1978, p. 11), but the focus is very
much on literary response as a reader-text transaction. Proponents of Critical Literacy
have tended to associate its development with Poststructural literary critical
theories (a case in point is Morgan, 1992). Such theories, however, dispute the legitimacy of terms such as authorship, individuality and creative genius. Potentially,
the Rhetorical/Textual Competence model might focus on the literary author as
implementing a range of textual strategies in relation to content, purpose and
audience pitch. However, this model tends to be reflected in L1 classrooms as either a
narrow focus on skills or a focus on genre as defined (and, I would argue, skewed)
by the Australian Genre School. In either case, the emphasis is often student
writing rather than reading and often on non-literary rather than literary texts. In
the light of all this, the compelling question I am left with is why three exemplary
L1 teachers of literature focus on the author in the way that they have, despite the
strictures of widely circulated schools of literary criticism.
One answer to this question can, I argue, be found in a recent approach to literary
criticism which, influenced by recent discoveries in cognitive neuroscience and
evolutionary psychology, has mounted a frontal assault on the tenets of postmodernism and poststructuralism (Carroll, 1995; Boyd, 2001, 2009). In what follows,
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I draw on Brian Boyds compelling book On the Origin of Stories (2009). The
book is in two sections, the first of which provides an evolutionary account of
story-telling, art and creativity, while the second applies evocritical literary
theory in a close analysis of Homers Odyssey and Dr Seusss Horton Finds a Who.
Viewing art as a behaviour, Boyd suggests that: we can view art as a kind of
cognitive play, the set of activities designed to engage human attention through
their appeal to our preference for inferentially rich and therefore patterned information (2009, p. 85).
Boyd proposes four functions of art as Darwinian adaptation:
1. to refine and retune our minds in modes central to human cognition sight,
sound, and sociality which it can do piecemeal through its capacity to motivate
us to participate again and again in these high-intensity workouts;
2. to raise the status of gifted artists;
3. to improve the coordination and cooperation of communities, in our very social
species; and
4. to foster creativity on an individual and social level (2009, p. 381).
Storytelling, according to Boyd, appeals to our social intelligence. It arises
out of our intense interest in monitoring one another and out of our evolved
capacity to understand one another through theory of mind (p. 382), a unique
human capability to read one another, and therefore social events, in a far finergrained way than any other species (p. 141). By way of emphasizing the current
disjunct between academic literary study and science, Boyd makes the point that
thousands of papers have been published on theory of mind since 1978, all of
which have been virtually ignored in literary studies, despite the fact that trying to
understand why others do what they do matters so much in both human life and
literature (p. 141).
Boyd offers and illustrates an approach to literary study that employs four levels
of explanation:
1. the universal or specieswide, the features of human nature represented or appealed
to in literature;
2. the local, in time, place, or culture, which may modify human behavior and
interests in more or less substantial ways;
3. the individual powers, interests, and experience of storytellers or their
audiences;
4. And the particular features of this or that story or audience situation (2009, p. 383).
In respect of particular stories, a problem-solving model is used which allows
readers to analyse choices inferred behind a work of art aimed at solving particular
problems, the first of which is to capture attention.
We interpret the actions of others in terms of their intentions. Telling a
story is itself a complex action. So long as a storyteller holds our interest, we
will infer significance both from the story world from characters and events
and from the storytellers intentions in recounting these events in just this
way (2009, p. 383).
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Boyd has effectively turned the intentional fallacy on its head, drawing on theory
of mind to justify and analyse a whole range of inferences, including authorial
intention.
What strikes me is that Boyds approach (which Ive offered very sketchily
here) is that it offers a better account of the practices that our Dutch and Australian
teachers are engaging in with their students than we find in the kinds of literary
criticism L1 teachers of literature are customarily exposed to. I have already drawn
attention to their author focus. Another focus relates to the issue of attention. The
topic itself has been getting its share of attention in the last decade in relation to
literacies research. For example, Lankshear and Knobel (2001), draw on Goldhabers
(1997) theory of an attention economy, noting that being able to participate in the
attention economy involves knowing how to pay and receive attention (Conceptions
and theory of an emerging attention economy, p. 8). It may be that attention
economy proponents are actually repackaging something essential about human
sociality, but which is taking a particular form in the digital age and its range of
mediated practices. As mentioned above, Boyd argues that in relation to his fourth
level of explanation (features of stories and audience situation), the first problem of
a story-teller is to capture attention:
They may choose from among many different kinds of audience, but whichever audiences they seek, they will attempt to appeal through both common
human predispositions and the fine-tunings of local culture (2009, p. 383).
As I tell my pre-service teachers (usually in relation to classroom management
issues), the attention economy operates in classrooms in all sorts of ways. These
Dutch and Australian teachers use a number of strategies, for example, to distribute
attention (for example, group-based learning and turn-taking during whole-class
discussion). When we see Ramon struggling with his (self-perceived) propensity to
engage in dominant teacher text, it could be seen as a struggle with his own
entitlement for attention. With Prue and Mies, the struggle is less evident, largely
because they are more assured in their own attention entitlement or strategies for
distributing attention. In terms of story-telling, it appears that Mies comes closest
(on the basis of these accounts) to being a classroom story-teller in her own right.
She not only enacts Brackes book on DVD; she complements it with a visual story
in the form of a powerpoint presentation and then moves immediately (once her
circle of trust is achieved) to talk about the miserable life of the protagonist
Lina.
In general, all of these teachers can be seen as serving their authors need to
capture attention. As all of us know, an authors attention-seeking devices are not
always self-evident to student readers, especially without the metalanguage that
helps direct attention to this or that linguistic or rhetorical strategy. When Prue
comments: I want even closer attention, she is referring to precisely this kind of
attention:
But for each of us as we talk together now, we have the knowledge of hindsight,
and it colours the way we attend to tone and atmosphere [my italics].
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Each of these teachers has a unique repertoire of foci, that is, aspects of
a literary text that they choose to draw their students attention to in their
meaning-making acts. As noted before, Prue focuses (in the lesson we have a
glimpse into) on texture. Mies focuses on the key structural concept of turning
point.
Stories, though, are made up of events, structured in particular ways (narrative),
located in particular settings and peopled with characters, each with their own
predicaments, struggles, choices, rewards and failures. I want to conclude this essay
with a discussion of empathy, in part because of the particular take on empathy that
evocriticism provides and because it is key focus for Prue, Mies and Ramon. Citing
Hobson, 2004 (p. 54), Boyd (2009) notes that, Being affected by others is a design
feature of human beings. He continues: Through mirror neurons and other systems
we are wired for emotional contagion. We half imitate what we see others doing,
although an inhibiting mechanism stops us from actually moving while we simulate.
We automatically have empathy for others. We know how they feel because we
literally feel what they are feeling (p. 163). In his extended discussion of The
Odyssey, Boyd discusses at length the way the swineherd Eumaios receives
Odysseus in the latters guise of an aged beggar. He notes that Eumaios reception
goes beyond the duty of hospitality to strangers (xenia) but arises from a compassion
so imbued as to have become utterly spontaneous founded on innate human
empathy (p. 298). In terms of evolution, We not only learn to infer others
intentions, but in social species that benefit from cooperation we also evolve to
empathize with or emotionally react against others purposes. And without this
capacity, stories would be impossible (p. 403).
Mies begins her chapter section by quoting approvingly van den Vondels
assertion that the goal of art is to induce compassion and fear by listening and
reading. Her central goal is to have her early adolescent students identify with
the protagonists of selected novels. Her students display empathy in their responses,
from Miriams poem to Rens touching comment that I will never know what it
is like to be pregnant. Anyway, it seems horrible to have to murder your own child
when you dont want to. It burdens you with guilt. Ruefully, Ramon confesses
that in this regard, he doesnt quite foot it with Mies, and wonders if he should
put more emphasis on emotion and empathy. For all her concentration on
building analytical and interpretive skills, and despite the fact that her catalogue
of intellectual dispositions omits compassion/empathy, Prue avowedly wants her
students to step into the shoes of the other. Texts become reference points for
students to think critically about their own world, how they might change it, the
life they might lead.
Providence, de Tocqueville said, has not created mankind entirely independent
or entirely free. It is true, that around every man a fatal circle is traced, beyond
which he cannot pass; but within the wide verge of that circle he is powerful and
free (1956, p. 317). All of the teachers and students on show here are socially
circumscribed in all sorts of ways. Though Ren is male, he connects with the
emotions and situation of a fictional character half a world away. Though Marieke
is initially outraged, even disgusted by the subject matter of Blue is Bitter, she
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reviews her position, examines her conscience, and acts to bring about change. Yet
through a complex process of identification undertaken as responders to stories,
and as a result of wonderfully orchestrated dialogic processes, the fatal circle for
each has been enlarged.
NOTES
1
2
3
1. In New Zealand the decile system is a way of indicating the socio-economic status (SES) of a
schools community. For Decile 1 read poor.
Equivalent to Australian Year 10, i.e. 15 to 16-year-olds.
As this teacher explained further in an email, Many families buy new outfits for their children for
the day. A finance company was advertising what it called White Sunday loans in our local
newspaper, the Manukau Courier i.e. they will give a family money to purchase new clothes, food,
etc, to celebrate White Sunday, but of course with the usual high interest in fine print. I feel those
finance companies are unethical in their advertising, and talked about it with the students, how they
will use Pacific symbols like hibiscus flowers, pictures of Polynesian families looking happy, etc
and play on pressure parents may have to spend more than they should. Comparing to others is a big
thing for many Samoan families, not wanting to look less than someone else, or seen to be
contributing less than others puts a lot of pressure on families (D. Riley, personal communication,
October 31, 2008).
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(Eds.), Speech genres and other late essays: M.M. Bakhtin (pp. 60101). Austin, TX: University of
Texas Press.
Barthes, R. (1977). Imagemusictext. Glasgow: Fontana/Collins.
Boyd, B. (2001). The origin of stories: Horton hears a who. Philosophy and Literature, 25(2), 197214.
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Press of Harvard University Press.
Brooks, C., & Warren, R. P. (1976). Understanding poetry (4th ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston.
Carroll, J. (1995). Evolution and literary theory. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press.
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NH: Heinemann..
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de Tocqueville, A. (1956). Democracy in America (R. Heffner, Ed.). New York: Mentor.
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Department of English. Retrieved April 10, 2010, from http://www.public.iastate.edu/~honeyl/bakhtin/
thesis.html
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attention.html
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Locke, T. (2008). English in a surveillance regime: Tightening the noose in New Zealand. Changing
English: Studies in Culture & Education, 15(3), 293310.
Locke, T. (2009). The disappearance of enjoyment: How literature went wandering in the literacy woods
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Re-visioning English in education (pp. 123138). Putney, NSW: Phoenix Education.
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Terry Locke
Faculty of Education
University of Waikato
121
LAILA AASE
8. REFLECTION ON LITERATURE TEACHING

A Norwegian Perspective
INTRODUCTION
I want to get students to make their own thinking process visible not only to
the rest of us in the class, but to themselves. I am asking them what do you
think is happening here? what makes you think that? where in the text can
you locate this idea of yours ?I want them to be able to work out how it is
that they are drawing conclusions, and to be prepared to test those conclusions.
Prues explanation of her method of conversational inquiry in her literature class
seems to me to encompass a number of important goals for literature reading in
school. She grants the students the right to have personal interpretations, yet she
wants them to be able to justify their assumptions and interpretations by locating
them within the text itself. Finally, she wants them to understand their own choices
and their own thinking. Making meaning of texts thus becomes a cognitive and
meta-cognitive activity, beneficial not only for investigating one particular literary
text, but for developing a capacity to understand oneself, as well as others. To me
this is one of the core justifications for the importance of literature in school,
although not the only one.
This essay represents an attempt to investigate literature teaching in school by
interacting with reports from three teachers in two different countries and reactions
to these reports. My reflection is thus a third round of reflection. In the process of
writing this essay I have wondered if I really have new points to add or new
perspectives to offer. Piet-Hein van de Ven and Bella Illesca certainly have
contributed with wise comments on what they have seen in these three classrooms
and I have been inspired by their thinking. Having taught didactics of literature and
language in teacher education at the university for more than 30 years I have spent
a lot of time thinking about literature teaching and learning, and a lot of time
observing literature teaching in classrooms, mainly in secondary and upper secondary
school in Norway. Reading the reports from Prue, Ramon and Mies I can relate to
all their approaches and dilemmas. I cannot, however, completely avoid being
affected by my personal ideas and biases and also by my Norwegian context and
I may surely misinterpret what I read. I think the most obvious fallacy is to take
for granted that we agree upon all aspects of the issue. Still one of my basic
assumptions before even starting this essay has been that in spite of national
differences of curricula and traditions, literature teachers share a belief in the value
AASE
of literary texts. This means that we claim literary texts to be especially valuable
for young people in their growth into mature human beings in society. I really do
think that this is a common rationale that underpins our argumentation for literature
in school.
LEGITIMIZING LITERATURE IN SCHOOL
Before getting involved in the reports of Prue, Ramon and Mies I would like to
reflect on the different ways of understanding the value of literature as part of
school knowledge and activities. Surely there are many paradigms for legitimizing
literature, and we see this clearly in comparing curricula historically and nationally.
Traditionally in my country literature has been considered a very important part of
the subject of Norwegian on all levels of school, and it still is, but the justifications
have changed over time. Historically there has been a strong tradition for reading
national literature for the purpose of creating a common cultural national identity.
This must be understood as a result of nation building in a small country getting its
independence first from Denmark in 1814, and later from Sweden in 1905. The
national legitimating of literature, however, has become unfashionable and is rarely
argued for these days, although it may still underpin argumentation for a national
literary canon. Literature has also been considered the means of enhancing a more
general Bildung: the potential for acting according to cultural values, and understanding and taking responsibility for the choices one makes when interacting with
other people.
Today we find a number of different ways of legitimizing literature, also amongst
teachers. There is definitely a new emphasis on literacy, especially after tests like
PISA in 2000. We are concerned about boys reading habits and competencies, and
we are disappointed that Norwegian students do not score higher in the tests after
2000. In fact they score lower. The result is that reading projects are flourishing all
over the country, especially in primary and lower secondary school. Often, however,
the aims seem to be more focused on quantities of books and fluency of reading
than on literary competencies. When asked why the students should read literature,
teachers tend to either focus on the importance of literacy in general or to express a
desire for their students to become fond of reading. The literacy purpose often is
expressed in instrumental and utilitarian terms, the aesthetic value of the text not
really taken into account.
In my work I have found that the variety in the ways teachers express the
purpose and aims of literature is striking. Often teachers just want their students to
have a nice reading experience or to develop a love for literature. Because teachers
often love literature themselves, they would like others to experience books as an
important dimension in their lives. So they often put a lot of effort into finding texts
their students might like or in choosing texts where the students might recognize
something from their own lives. This way they want to make the students realise
how literature may have a personal relevance for them by giving them something
they can recognise. The purpose seems to be having a nice experience in the
literature class, an experience that hopefully could lead to further reading. The way
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REFLECTION ON LITERATURE TEACHING
they express their goals of experience, however, sometimes seems to entail only a
moment of entertainment not a more lasting impact on our lives. Teaching literature
to students who do not read unless they have to may well make teachers minimize
their goals in the hope of providing situations that their students at least enjoy. In
compulsory levels reading just for enjoyment may well be argued for taking into
account that reading without the aspect of subjective experience (Langer, 1995)
cannot provide a full understanding of literature. Enjoying a text is thus seen as prerequisite for a more complex experience of text on an existential or intellectual level.
In upper secondary school we find that literature is argued for in more varied
ways, and here the argument of protecting cultural heritage is more common. The
canon authors should be read because this is part of what an educated person knows.
This corresponds to Klafkis notion of material Bildung (Klafki, 2001). Still we
may see examples of Klafkis notion of formal Bildung expressed in general terms
of the role of literature in enhancing identity building or general formation of
character, and sometimes we even see examples of argumentation that correspond
to Klafkis notion of categorial Bildung where cultural representations are given an
important role in enhancing thinking and understanding. When asked questions on
how they see the purpose of the subject of Norwegian as a whole, teachers seem to
have internalized the overall aims expressed in curriculum about equality and
democracy and how mastering language is a prerequisite for participating in
society. Reading literature, especially the classic texts from our national heritage,
does not always fit into this purpose.
WHAT KIND OF KNOWLEDGE IS LITERARY COMPETENCES?
There is a dilemma in literature reading in school because students should have the
opportunity to be involved in the experience of literature and at the same time they
must learn to experience literature. Providing just one of these two goals means
deceiving students. Being able to provide both, however, is not always easy. We
cannot predict personal experiences, and if we just teach literary terms and analytic
strategies the justifications of literature in school are undermined. In dealing with
this we at least need to know what we are aiming at. What are the knowledge and
skills we want our students to develop?
As a whole the various school subjects create a mosaic of knowledge forms that
separately as well as taken as a whole are considered valuable in education. The
knowledge forms may be named (after Aristotle) epistemic knowledge and technical
knowledge and phronetic knowledge. Council of Europe has formulated this as
knowledge of, knowledge how and existential knowledge (CFR, 2001). Each school
subject encompasses all these knowledge forms, but the emphasis will often be on
one of them. In literature teaching and learning there are elements of all these three
knowledge forms. The epistemic knowledge includes knowledge about texts, how
they are constructed, how tropes and figures create certain effects, how metaphors
may open up for new ways of understanding, etc. History of literature may open up
for deeper understanding of the connection between text and context. This kind of
knowledge surely is a prerequisite for reading literary texts on an advanced level,
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in other words a prerequisite for the second knowledge form: the technical knowledge, knowledge how. Not just reading literature, but learning to read literature is
certainly one of the aims in literature classrooms. We want the learners to experience
literature, but at the same time we want them to develop their repertoire for making
meaning of texts. In reading the report from Ramons literature class I got the
impression that this was one of his main concerns: he wants his students to be able
to approach literature with a broad register of reading strategies. This is because he
thinks a choice of strategies will help them to read with more insight and to analyse
literary texts better. Ramon is probably right in his assumption on a general
basis: a broad range of tools for approaching texts in various ways may help them
approaching a text. He loves literature himself and has some assumptions on how
his students might benefit from being introduced to his strategies. Ramon is disappointed in what he has accomplished in this particular project. And he no doubt
has astutely identified the causes for this failure to realise his aims, just as all
reflective teachers think about the differences between their intentions and what
they actually manage to accomplish. I shall come back to this later on.
The third knowledge form mentioned above is the phronetic knowledge which
we have learnt from Aristotle has to do with the ability to make judgement and to
understand a situation not completely identical with another situation. It is often
named practical wisdom. Unlike practical knowledge or skills (techne) the purpose
is not creating a product of any kind, but still it plays a role in creating things. Wise
judgement requires abilities to see things from a perspective different from ones
own, exercising a flexibility of thought that is quite different from applying rules to
any situation. This in fact is also what Bildung is about: to be able to see an issue
from the point of the other and to act according to values not just beneficial for
oneself. Wise judgement is uncertain knowledge that we probably only acquire
through experience and by interacting with others. It is important to emphasise
that, although other knowledge forms support phronesis, it cannot be taught and
learnt in the same ways as other knowledge forms, certainly not from rules and
directions. Ability to interpret and judge people and situations is crucial in reading
literature, as it is in life. A literature teacher would have to consider how to develop
this kind of knowledge in the classroom. Many of us assume that investigating
literature through dialogue in the class is a good approach.
Being teachers of literature, we may well overestimate what literature does or
the potential it has for contributing to personal development. We have in fact few
possibilities of measuring the effects of reading literature on an individual learner.
Still we firmly believe that reading and interpreting literature provide specific
opportunities for enhancing an understanding of the world and human conditions.
So how do we argue for this? One argument is connected to the action of interpretation itself. We interpret the world constantly in all our experiences every day.
The assumption is that interpreting literature provides a general model for interpretation. So exploring a literary text gives the opportunity to think about various
reasons for actions, for how people act and think and react to others. The clue is
that we may do this independently of our personal experiences. It concerns somebody
else: fictive persons in a fictive world. Still it may tell us something about ourselves:
126
Soi-mme comme un autre (Ricoeur, 1990). If reading literature is crucial for the
Bildung-process it has to do with what we may call cultural encounters. Reading is
experiencing other people, thoughts and milieus. Hopefully these encounters make
us more open and flexible in our ways of perceiving the world. So the question is:
are we able enhance this in a literature class? And what are the optimal conditions
for exploring the other without succumbing to personal prejudice? In my opinion
the teacher plays the most important role in this process. Being well aware of all
the pitfalls concerning dominant teachers who direct students into their own
interpretation or official ways of reading texts, I still claim that the teacher is an
indispensable person in the literature classroom, not only as a facilitator for reading
literary works, but as a listener, communicator and a person who challenges and
explores students interpretations. I also firmly believe in literary dialogue in a
class where plural voices are heard and responded to by others.
Expanding a repertoire for thinking and emotions is perhaps our most powerful
argument for reading literature in school, and we link it closely to the notion of
Bildung, which entails a broad repertoire of knowledge, values and self-insight.
But we have other arguments, as well, one of them linked to the value of art in
general. I shall not try to explain why we value art in general, and especially
literature, so highly in our culture. It is a fact that we do, and this is also a reason
why we teach it. By exploring a literary text, we explore at the same time what
language can do, and maybe we also explore the limits of language. We realise the
ambiguity of language and the fact that language has potential for plural interpretations. Poetic language often provides examples of how the poet explores the
limits of what language can do. In exploring the text students will also be part of
this act of exploration. To me the uncertainty of this activity has a value in itself. In
other subjects students are supposed to produce work where the outcome is more
predictable as right/wrong, weak/strong, based upon standards of achievement for a
certain age group. I may be wrong in this generalisation, my point is merely to
emphasise a trait in literary interpretation: the value of not always being able to
fully understand a text and to be able to accept that not everything can be explained
in everyday language.
To be able to enhance literature classes that are characterised by exploration and
inquiry, we need students to be willing to get involved in the reading, emotionally
and intellectually. We do not always see that happening, so teachers often put a lot
of effort into the process of helping students to be involved, either by contextualising
the text or raising questions concerning characters or plot. Mies seems to me to be
a teacher who believes in emotional involvement as a prerequisite for literature
reading. I am greatly intrigued by her objective of making her students identify
with the protagonist in the story. She seems to be an experienced as well as a
successful teacher of literature and I wonder if this is her clue. Mies herself links
her approach to the age group she is teaching and I can see that this is her way
of enhancing a personal involvement with the text. I wonder if the emphasis on
identification is especially important for this age group or if it can work for all texts
and all students? I see in the reflective accounts that Ramon and Mies have given
of their teaching dilemmas that many teachers of literature face.
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THE DILEMMAS OF RAMON AND MIES
To me it has been very interesting to read the reports from Ramon and Mies
because they exemplify two different ways of dealing with dilemmas of teaching
literature. These are dilemmas which I certainly recognise from my own experiences.
They have to do with how and when to lead learners in their reading process and
when to give them room for their own judgements and approaches. I suppose none
of us have clear answers to these questions, at least not on a general basis, but
examples like this help us reflect on options and possibilities, and I am indebted to
Ramon and Mies for providing me with an opportunity to engage in reflection of
this kind. In fact I admire how they are putting themselves in such a vulnerable
position by letting us into their classrooms.
Ramon and Mies seem to me to be very able literature teachers with enthusiasm
and knowledge. They are both more than able to articulate goals for their lessons.
They are reflecting upon their function as teachers in a way I could wish was
generally common in my setting. Ramon has an underlying assumption that a broad
range of reading strategies will help his students to understand a text more broadly
and more deeply. He sees these approaches as tools for interpretation. In order
to make the learners see the different choices of approaching a text, he gives the
groups different tasks that are examples of a specific approach. Each group discuss
their tasks first, then they split up into new groups, consisting of one representative
from the original groups, and in the end there is a classroom discussion. In this way
Ramon hopes to enable his students to explore the complexities of literary interpretation, and the fact that we might read the same text differently, depending on
the standpoint we bring to it.
Ramon has put a lot of thought into these lessons, but in the end he feels rather
disappointed with the result. The students do not quite get his points and he thinks
their discussions about the content are superficial. In fact they do not seem to
understand the character of the protagonist in the short story. They do not really see
the points in the various approaches either. In his afterthought analysis Ramon
identifies two issues, one concerning the task and the other concerning the choice
of text: he has expected too much and he has given his students too little time, and
he thinks perhaps the adult narrator is too far removed from the students life and
experiences even if he looks back on his high school years.
I shall not claim that Ramon is wrong. Having not read this Dutch short story
and not knowing his 15 year old students there is certainly a need for me to
approach his report with a good portion of humility. My outsider reflections might,
however, still be of interest, which by the way is the whole idea behind this essay.
I think even if Ramon on a general basis may be right in his assumptions about
giving his students analytical tools for interpretation, his two observations on what
he thinks went wrong perhaps suggest that there may have been a possibility of
approaching this in a different order. He expresses his personal reasons for
choosing this particular text in a very convincing way:
I for one think it is beautiful, and I feel that the register which is used could
appeal to the young people in my classroom. Although the existential questions
128
in the story may be too challenging for them, the fact that the protagonists
youth is a central theme in the story could incite their interest. The protagonist
looks back on his high school years and his family, and those are things that
students in form 4 of secondary education (1516 years old) can connect.
Let us first have a closer look at the students discussion about the protagonist. In
Fragment 1 one student presents his perception of the protagonist as being negative
or discontented, and the rest of the group just follow his line of thinking and support
his point of view. There are just no more ideas about this question in the student
group, and thus they make no progress in their investigation of the protagonist. For
this to happen, it seems to me that they possibly needed more ideas or more help.
In Fragment 2 in the class discussion Ramon asks the question who could tell me
how he sees the world? And again the students come up with the same judgement:
he is completely negative. As far as I can see Ramon does not challenge this, he
just accepts what the student says. There may have been an opportunity here to
investigate this further with the whole class. This would have involved going back
to the text, in order to look at specific passages to see if this is the whole truth, to
wonder about why they perceive the protagonist in the way that they do, etc.
Ramon thinks this short story is beautiful. I do not know if he conveys this to his
students or not, but he might have also considered this option as a basis for an
analysis of the text that might have moved everyone beyond the students negative
reaction to the protagonist. I wonder perhaps whether he might consider offering
them something of his own emotional involvement, not because they should feel or
think in the same way, but to show them another possible way of reading the text.
Still, his dilemma is a common one for teachers of literature. We choose a text that
we think has special merit or potential for discussion, and then we find that students
react to it negatively, and it is not always easy to unsettle their initial judgments. It
can also take great presence of mind not to feel slightly affronted by students lack
of enthusiasm for a text that we hold dear.
To me it seems that what this group of students first and foremost need is to
develop their register of interpretation. The example from Fragment 1, where the
students just jump upon one idea and thus quickly decide upon an answer, tells us
that the students are inexperienced readers who need to develop their interpretation
strategies as such, not only their strategies for analysing a literary text. So what
I mean by suggesting that Ramon perhaps should reconsider the progression and
order of his work on literary competences is that the work on interpretation should
probably come first. To be able to make meaning of a literary text, students need to
learn how to investigate something that is not settled as the truth. They need to
develop a sense of afterthought by questioning their own ideas, to ask questions
like: Is this the only way of understanding the protagonist? Is there anything in the
text that points at other ways of understanding his personality? Why do we judge
him in the way we do? These interpretative strategies imply that they constantly go
back to the text and see if there is subtle information they have ignored or if they
need to read between the lines. In my opinion we often take these competences for
granted and forget that this must be taught and can be learnt. In my experience
we may teach a literary tool by showing students that they have already used it.
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That way it becomes more a practical tool than an abstract concept. I do not know
if this could work in Ramons case though. The repertoire of strategies he is
offering are advanced literary strategies reflecting different traditions in literary
studies. I think I understand what Ramon is trying to achieve here, but I am not
surprised that the young and fairly inexperienced readers in his class found this
task daunting
Ramon provides us with only two small glimpses of student dialogue, and so I am
hesitant to speculate about how these students are really thinking. My own preference
is to set up interaction with the whole class, as this gives teachers a golden chance
to challenge their students and to help them to develop more investigative approaches to the text. I am fully aware of the pitfalls in this approach. We all know how
literature teachers tend to impose their interpretations on their students and thus
give the impression that there exists a correct interpretation. The strategies that
Ramon adopts show that he is very conscious of this problem, even to the point of
allowing his students to persist with their negativity, rather than challenging it. I still
want to advocate for strong teacher involvement in literary dialogue because I think
this is one of the best opportunities for teachers to enhance literary competences.
The very fact that the classroom provides possibilities for many voices to be heard
is one argument for this. Students listen to peer interpretations, and the teacher, by
learning how the students read the text, will learn something about what they need
to work on and how he or she may introduce new ideas or hypothesis in a fruitful
way. The teacher may there and then make the students go back to selected
passages in the text and make them reread it for possible new information or open
spaces of interpretation (Iser, 1978). At this moment there may also be an opportunity
to introduce alternative ways of interpreting passages in the text. This last option of
course represents one of the pitfalls for a literature teacher; the danger of taking
over interpretation is certainly there. On the other hand being a teacher also requires
awareness of emerging possibilities for enhancing students capacities to engage in
literary texts. I believe that, as difficult as this challenge can be, teachers can do
this without repudiating students assumptions and interpretations.
Ramon thinks perhaps his choice of text was an obstacle for the students. The
protagonist being so much older than the students may have hindered them in being
able to relate to him and his life. There surely are texts that 15 year olds would find
difficult to relate to, and Ramon points to a very common problem for literature
teachers: Should we offer students literature they can identify with, or should we
try to provide encounters with the unknown. Thomas Ziehe advocates for the latter.
He claims that school must offer students good enough strangeness (Ziehe, 1995,
2004) and he is convinced that we should not support the students in their demands
for school content that they like and find personally relevant, This, of course, does
not mean that any text can be presented to any student group. The teacher constantly
reflects on what to read in class bearing in mind that the text somehow must be
possible to read and engage a particular age group, as well as providing some
challenges for them. Sometimes we succeed in our choices and sometimes we do
not. Despite Ramons disappointment about the course of the lesson, he is aware of
this dilemma, and this suggests that eventually he will find ways to enhance his
130
students appreciation of literature. 15 year olds may well read literature about grown
ups in fact, I believe that for many reasons they should. Being able to understand
the mind of people who are not exactly their sort is part of the Bildung project that
we think literature provides.
Ramon realises that maybe he does not emphasise emotions and involvement
enough in his class. He thinks Mies approach may tell him something he needs to
know. He might be right. The strategies he wants his students to master seem to be
somehow detached from the content and aesthetics of the story. Yet although Mies
manages to get her students involved in the characters in the novel they are reading,
I still feel compelled to record some reservations about this alternative approach.
Why do I feel an urge to question her accomplishments? Mies is obviously an
experienced and successful literature teacher. Her aim is to make her students
identify with the protagonist, Lina, a young Philippino girl forced into prostitution,
betrayed first by her father and later by other people she trusts. Mies obtains what
she aims for: most of her students express strong feelings for Lina, and at least the
girls show that they can identify with the horrors of her fate. Mies students feel a
strong urge to take action because they realise that the novel describes a reality in
the world. Lina is not just a fictional character, she represents an example of the
fate of many young girls in the third world, and the students react by wanting to
support the organisation Terre des Hommes, an organisation that works for children
who are caught in prostitution.
So why do I still want to question some aspects of this approach to teaching
literature? Miess literature teaching leads to empathy and practical actions. Is this
not something we want from reading literature? Mies expresses very clearly her
objectives for reading literature:
I cannot help but emphasise the social context in books and stories, because it
is exactly my goal to engage into a discussion of social topics by means of
youth novels.
I think my question marks are twofold: on the one hand it is connected to the
impact of identification with the protagonist, on the other to the literary text as
an art form. Why do we want the 14 year old students to identify with a young
prostitute in the Philippines? Is it really true that they can do that? What they can
do is become upset and horrified by Linas fate, but they can only do this from
their secure positions in a middle class setting in the Netherlands. My feeling is
that they are not really confronted with new thoughts and new insights in human
conditions. There is a sense in which they merely feel affirmed in values and
thoughts they already have. Am I wrong in thinking that identifying with Lina is
just not possible for these youngsters? Mies aim of identification helps her in the
process of getting her students involved in the text, which we sometimes see is a
missing dimension in literature classrooms, but I am not sure whether it really helps
them to scrutinize their own judgements and broaden the possibilities of understanding. Mies herself expresses her doubts about whether the students are capable
of understanding the actions of a father who sacrifices his daughter for his own
needs: The students remarks above show that I have not been entirely successful
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in unlocking the full context for them. To address this, she gives her students
background information about Manila. But I think it would have been extraordinary
if she could have managed to make them understand the values and habits in a
society so remote from their lives. Her students try to imagine unwanted pregnancy
and forced abortion in an unfamiliar culture, and they feel that they have learnt
something about a foreign society. My remark may seem unfair, taking into account
that her students are so young and also because Mies obtains something in her
literature class that we all are aiming at: engagement and involvement with the text.
Still I am left wondering about the nature of identification. Piet-Heins references to
Langer (1995) differentiating between objective experience and subjective
experience might be a fruitful way of approaching this problem. The subjective
experience in this case comes through identification and is closely connected to the
text, but the objective experience is not connected to the text but to a reality in the
world.
My second question mark concerns the literary text as such, as I am not really
sure why this awareness of Linas situation should have to go via a literary text. In
fact I shall claim that not taking the aesthetic value of a text seriously in literature
classes undermines our argumentation for the importance of literature in school.
Could the same kind of engagement be obtained by reading a report about young
prostitutes in the Philippines? This bring us back to a big question, namely why
literary texts should be given a privileged place in a school curriculum. Should
social awareness be the ultimate goal, or is this narrowing the purpose of reading
literature? Is there anything particular that makes reading literature different from
reading any other text? For Mies, identification with the protagonist in a narrative
appears to be a crucial way of enhancing social awareness and empathy, and this is
a view that, in my experience, many teachers of literature share. They feel that
narrative provides an opportunity for involvement that is not so easily obtained by
reading other prose, such as newspaper articles or journalistic reports. But I am still
left weighing up the value of identification against the need for detachment and
judgment. There is no doubt that appreciating a literary text is dependent on a
reader being willing to be captured by the content and the language of the text.
This does not preclude judgment of a different kind. Judith Langers two concepts
of literary experiences are undoubtedly indebted to Louise Rosenblatt. Rosenblatt
points out how the reader moves between aesthetic and efferent stances in the
reading process (Rosenblatt, 1938, 1978). She describes the aesthetic stance as an
involvement of a sensual kind, being absorbed in the language of the text and the
feelings it creates. The efferent stance is pointing away from the text to the
readers experiences and knowledge of the world. Rosenblatt describes this as an
ever changing movement from efferent to aesthetic and vice versa. Thus the
reader is able to get emotionally involved in the text and still mobilise knowledge
and experience from his or her own life. This movement to and fro, however,
both concerns understanding the text. Rosenblatt claims that the most important
part of reading literature is the emotional involvement. If this is true, we may
well discuss how this can be staged in a classroom. Mies shows us her answer to
this question.
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CONTEXTS OF TEACHING LITERATURE
Bella Illescas comments on the privileged setting of Prues school and Prues
students are something I also have reflected on. The contrast between her class and
many of the classes I visit is striking. Prues small group of students in a private
school where all students have chosen literature provides a very different context
from the obligatory literature lessons with about 28 students I normally see. It also
contrasts markedly with the classrooms in which Ramon and Mies teach. In my
school context the conditions for teaching literature vary more than one should
think by just looking at the curriculum. Sylvi Pennes research on literature reading
in two lower secondary schools in Oslo, one typically middle class in Oslos central
west end area and the other in a working class environment in a suburb shows that
the students have two different approaches to literature (Penne, 2006). The middle
class students approach literature as part of a general strategy for academic success,
the suburban students lack this strategy of looking ahead and planning for the
future. They encounter each text without any notion of this being important in the
sense that it is part of a cultural heritage in which everyone shares. The motivation
for getting involved in the text is thus not something the teacher can rely on a
priori, so to speak.
Yet although Prue may be in a privileged situation with respect to the values and
expectations that her students bring to class, this still does not explain the quality of
the literary dialogue that she is able to facilitate, and I wish to affirm this aspect of
her work. Her students are in their last year of upper secondary school, but they are
not necessarily experienced readers: it is a bit mysterious, theyre not sure what
theyre meant to be doing. I think one of her secrets might be that she little by
little demonstrates in collaboration with her students what it means to reflect on
passages in the text, which of course is theorising. The crucial point in her teaching
is negotiation and dialogue opening up for variety of interpretations, a multitude of
voices that has a value in itself, but she still wants more. She is aiming towards
making her students know more about language, what language can do and what
the limits of language might be. She has a constant project going on, namely to try
to make her students move from the particular to the general. I am sure Prue
sometimes fails in her intentions like we all do at times, but I think her sense of
process is something we could learn from. In her report she constantly reflects on
process. She realise that there are challenges that her students need to encounter,
but as she frequently remarks, this is for later, not yet.
I think of how my student teachers might conceivably benefit from Prue when
they are teaching their literature classes. They would be teaching very different
student groups: heterogeneous classes in lower secondary school, classes in upper
secondary school aiming mostly at university or classes of students who are engaged
in vocational training. In vocational education literature has not traditionally had a
very prominent place. Earlier the subject of Norwegian consisted to a great degree
of purely functional tasks, such as filling in forms, writing applications and reports.
This changed, however, from 1994 with a new curriculum aimed at more equal
general education for all students claiming equal Bildung aims in all strands of
upper secondary education. This means that students in vocational training have the
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same curriculum for the subject of Norwegian over two years that students who
aspire to further studies experience in their first year of upper secondary school (age
group 16). This again means reading literature and interpreting. The idea is that all
students should have possibilities to build on a general education and perhaps
combine practical and academic education later on in life. Possibilities are available
for students in vocational training to do additional courses for entering colleges or
university, and some students choose this path.
The ideology of equal opportunities for all students, however, is not unproblematic. Since 1994 the percentage of students, especially boys, falling out of school
has gone up to a degree that is worrying educators, as well as politicians. The blame
is often put on the new ideology of education and the emphasis on more theoretical
work. In this picture the subject of Norwegian becomes an example of a theoretical
subject. Vocational training has traditionally had a utilitarian character and the
students there would expect, even more than other students, that what they learn in
school should be of use later on. One of my student teachers quoted a student
claiming that a short story was something he never would need in life: If I ever
find the need for short stories, I would know my life has gone to hell. He even
asked his parents if this was true, and they confirmed his assumption that short
stories were something that he would never need.
Earlier this year the leader of the conservative party claimed that the vocational
students should not be burdened with analysing 18th century poetry. She probably
did not mean this literally, and had she known the curriculum she would have
known that they hardly read 18th century poetry during their two years of vocational
training. What she probably meant was to advocate for a more utilitarian content in
the subject of Norwegian, possibly to make the subject more like the subject as it
was taught before 1994. The idea of poetry being a burden and not an asset is
interesting though. To me it shows that it is not generally acknowledged what role
literature should play in school. This politician might think reading and analysing
poetry represent a domain for a special group, such as typically middle class
students. Prues reflections on what we want students to achieve through reading
points to a much wider understanding of the significance of literature:
we want them to develop their conceptions of the relationship between
language and ideas, to confidently express their ways of seeing, to think in
increasingly abstract ways, to be open to challenge, to understand the value
of evidence and argument. We want them to marvel at the way people use
language to help us see anew and to experience unknown worlds in intimate
ways. We want them to step into the shoes of others.
Surely this is something we want for all young people, not just for selected groups,
because they are all going to be grown ups participating in all areas of life. Recently
one of my students, discussing vocational training, pointed out that her students
would not just live their lives at work, but in all kinds of social and cultural settings
as fathers and mothers, friends, neighbours, politicians etc. Their need for Bildung
and competencies would not be very different from any other student. We may
of course sometimes wonder if reading literature is the only or the best way to
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enhance Bildung. Even a literature teacher may admit that there are other ways.
Still most of us believe there is a potential for self insight and cultural understanding
in the literary text providing more than just information or even reflection. We
think that good literature might have the power to provide experiences, emotionally
as well as intellectually. And even more important: The combination of reading
good literature and interaction in the classroom provides unique situations for
understanding oneself and others in a number of different social situations. School
is not just an arena for learning for the future or the world outside school. It is a
scene for real social interaction and fruitful conflicts. Reading literature in school
thus represents unique reading situations different from reading outside school
exactly because it is done in a community of interpretation and interaction.
Teaching literature in school surely is dependent on a number of factors: students
age and background, social settings, organisation of classes and schools and
underlying educational ideology. One or two hours a week surely represent a
completely different context for enhancing literary competencies than 5 or 6 lessons a
week. The examples we have seen here from the Netherlands and Australia clearly
illustrate these differences.
REFERENCES
CFR. (2001). Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment.
Council of Europe/Cambridge University Press.
Iser, W. (1975). Die Appellstruktur der Texte- Unbestimmtheit als Wikungsbedienung literarischer
Prosa. In I. R Warning (Ed.), Rezeptionsshetik. Mnchen.
Iser, W. (1978). The act of reading. London and Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Langer, J. (1995). Envisioning literature. Literary understanding and literature instruction. New York
Teachers College, Columbia University.
Klafki, W. (2001). Dannelsesteori og didaktikk nye studier. rhus, Forlaget Klim.
Penne, S. (2006). Profesjonsfaget norsk I en endringstid. konstruere mening, selvforstelse og identitet
gjennom sprk og tekster. Oslo, Det Utdanningesvitenskapelige fakultet, Universitetet i Oslo.
Ricoeur, P. (1990). Soi-meme comme un autre. Paris: Seuil.
Rosenblatt, L. (1938). Literature as exploration. New York: Appleton-Century.
Rosenblatt, L. (1978). The reader, the text, the poem. The transactional theory of the literary work.
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Ziehe, T. (1995). Good enough strangeness in education. In Aittola, T. u.a. (Eds.), Confronting strangeness.
Towards a reflexive modernization of the School. Jyvskyl, Finland.
Ziehe, T. (2004). er af intensitet I et hav af rutine. Kbenhavn: Politisk revy.
Laila Aase
University of Bergen
Norway
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ANTHONY PETROSKY
9. TEXTS, TASKS, AND TALK
SITUATING THESE READINGS & THIS WRITING
The subject of this chapter is, of course, the teaching vignettes as theyre represented
in the descriptions and class dialogues provided by the teachers and their critical
friends, but, somewhat paradoxically, its also about the ways in which its possible
to read these representations in writing without the writer disappearing. The methodology of asserting my presence in writing about these representations of teaching
and learning is a situated action, yet it is easy to lose sight of that, to slip into
discourse (for both me the writer and for you the reader) that would like to appear
truthful or iron-clad, even though in addition to my writing always being situated,
it also is inevitable that what I write, like what the teachers wrote, will become
what others make of it, what they say I said. At these intersections with multiple
writers and readers, we always have difference.
The tension for me is to create a commentary on these vignettes that moves
back-and-forth among my frameworks for understanding them and the vignettes
represented through the descriptions, class discourse, and critical commentary. To
locate this writing, my thoughts turn immediately to the ways in which my observations of teaching and teachers occur. There is that in my looking in on these
vignettes, so I begin there momentarily, but there is more, of course, since my
comments on the vignettes are framed by my experiences with classroom talk,
texts, and tasks in urban school districts in the US marked heavily by poverty,
class, race, and the external manipulations of accountability systems. I feel, too,
that my readings of these vignettes are constrained by the practices and discourses
of commentary and coaching that Ive grown accustomed to over the years, no matter
what I write to acknowledge those constraints, and by the constraints inherent in
such a cross-cultural study.
To begin, then, I should say that when I observe, I always read the texts that will
be used in the class. If possible, I like to read the texts the class studied prior to my
visit and review lesson plans and student writing from those studies. Most of my
work with both beginning teachers and seasoned master teachers has to do with
inquiry learning with texts. For the past ten years, my practice in schools has focused
on the design and implementation of curricula that engages students in interpretive
or inquiry studies through discussions and writings. This type of learning almost
always moves students through sequences of tasks that make use of student talk in
groups of two to three, writing, and interpretive discussions prompted by either
student or teacher questions for which there are multiple possible responses that can
be argued from the text. In these lessons, students learn to use the text to substantiate
PETROSKY
their responses, they learn to up-take from and build on others comments in
discussions, and they learn that the text is a linguistic artifact whose construction
by an author is a legitimate subject for inquiry.
For students to engage in these kinds of inquiry study, the texts have to offer
opportunities for them, for instance, to argue multiple different interpretations that
can be warranted with references to the text or to a particular lens or perspective
they bring to it. I mention this because not having read the texts in these vignettes,
its difficult for me to know whether they offer opportunities for this kind of
inquiry teaching and learning, except when the teachers tell me they do or as I see
such opportunities presented to students in the tasks from which they study, so I feel a
bit at sea, if only because my vision, so to speak, has been tuned to consider texts
from these perspectives and to look for these types of inquiry discussions in the
classes I observe. After reading the chapters by Prue and Bella and Ramon and Mies
and Piet-Hein, I have this odd sense of being caught in reflecting surfaces, missing
my usual tethers to my own readings of the texts under discussion and my usual
fine-grained sense of the arcs of teaching and learning in which the vignettes sit.
When I observe teaching, it has become critical for me to meet with teachers
before observations and again after lessons to debrief. In these meetings, we talk about
where the lesson or lessons sit in an arc of lessons or a unit. This conversation
always touches on the teachers goals or intended learning for the students and how
those also are nested in overarching goals for the unit or arc of lessons. Generally,
single visit observations are not as informative as observing three or four times in a
row with the same class. If student work and learning is sequenced and scaffolded,
then it takes that sequence of observations to see the work and learning unfold. Most
lessons that focus students on cognitively challenging work with texts involves
multiple lessons, especially if it invites them to do so with a novel or a set of texts,
so observing, say, week long arcs of lessons makes teaching and learning much more
visible than observing single lessons, even if those single lessons are contextualized
in pre- and post-lesson conversations with the teacher. In fact, I prefer to view tapes of
three or four sequenced lessons than to actually visit only once, if thats the choice.
Even though these vignettes present class dialogue and summaries of lessons
that are in fact arcs of lessons, Im not certain that I could accurately represent the
arcs here in these vignettes, since I am accustomed to seeing teaching and learning
through different lenses. Perhaps its a matter of gain size. My observations and
comments on them grow out of a fine-grained picture of teaching and learning that
I establish in the ways Ive been discussing. When, for example, my teacher preparation students produce transcripts of talk in their classrooms for discussions in our
seminar, I ask for at least 20 minutes of transcribed sequential talk. For my commentaries here though, the grain size is larger than that to which I am accustomed, so I
feel less certain about the larger pictures of teaching and learning from which Im
writing. As youll see, I feel more comfortable speaking to the representation of
general teaching approaches than I do about the types of comments made by the
teachers and students about the texts, although I overreach when the momentum of
the readings engages me. Its at those moments that Im most vulnerable to disappearing as the writer of the reading.
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TEXTS, TASKS, AND TALK
Finally, I should mention that my obsessions with inquiry teaching and learning;
with texts that offer opportunities for multiple inquiries; with sequences of tasks
that build on each other and reach across multiple texts, and with fine-grained
understandings of teachers and students attempts to establish dialogic discussions
are very much connected to a research literature (Applebee, 1996; Nystrand &
Gamoran, 1991, 1997) that compels me to believe that students and teachers
benefit from these kinds of engagements. Yet, on the other hand, the students and
teachers in the large urban districts in which Ive worked over the past 10 years
have little if any experience with these engagements. Education in the US has for
the last decade been driven by a system of rewards and punishments that privilege
the types of recognition, identification, and memorization skills that appear on
high-stakes multiple choice achievement tests. In public education, many teachers
teach to the tests, administrators even demand it, and generally, the public, like the
politicians who put this system into place, believes that these tests are indicators of
student learning even though there is ample evidence that they narrowly constrain
teaching and learning to low-level skills more likely to produce boredom and
disengagement than learning and engagement.
When, for instance, I think of the freedom that all of the teachers in these
vignettes have to choose texts and approaches to their teaching, seemingly unconstrained by rigid curricula requirements, standardized tests, and scripted lessons,
I am both heartened that it is possible for them and disheartened at what has
happened in our urban public education in the US, especially to the poor and under
privileged who dont do well on these standardized tests or who have given up and
leave our urban schools at the rate of 3040 percent a year. As I comment on these
vignettes, these issues are inescapably at the back of my mind and continually
surfacing.
THE PRUE & BELLA VIGNETTE
My readings of the chapter from Prue and Bella came on the heels of my reading in
the May 2010 English Journal. Its a themed issue focused on Collaboration and
Social Interaction. An article by Mary Kendrick, a teacher at Davidson IB Middle
School in Davidson, North Carolina, entitled Using Student Collaboration to
Foster Progressive Discourse caught my attention, so there was a point in my
readings of these vignettes where I moved back-and-forth between the Prue and
Bella vignette and the Kendrick piece.
Prue opens her introduction to her class by telling us that her tack is to ask the
students to use short passages from a story to discuss the whole story. This kind of
significant passage analysis is a strategy theyll need to demonstrate in the end of
the year exam. She predicts this will be difficult for them, and shes going to be
particularly attentive to whether they draw on language and stylistic features of
the writing in their discussion, as well as ideas. She imagines that her role will be
to ask questions that help them to move from passage, to story, to work as a whole.
After giving us this glimpse into the task she sets, she goes on to say that her
real focus is on talk. Ill let Prue speak for herself.
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What I dont tell Bella yet, though it will clearly emerge as she spends time
with us in the classroom, is that my teaching focus at this time is on talk.
Students might spend a whole class talking, with almost no formal note
taking or quiet work happening at all. Thinking about it now, I can see that
I want to develop the same sense of conversational inquiry in the classroom,
that Bella and I will be using ourselves. I want to get students to make their
own thinking process visible not only to the rest of us in the class, but to
themselves. I am asking them what do you think is happening here? what
makes you think that? where in the text can you locate this idea of yours?
I want them to be able to work out how it is that they are drawing
conclusions, and to be prepared to test those conclusions.
Mary Kendrick begins her essay in the English Journal by summarizing two scenes
of student collaboration, although they do not include transcribed student talk, in
her classes that are ten years apart. The first scene from 1998 involves her ninthgrade students working in small groups to study To Kill A Mockingbird, the most
taught novel in the US, through the lens of different themes friendship, family,
growing up, injustice, prejudice to produce posters that they share with the class,
then watch the movie then take the test. In the second scene from 2008, her tenthgrade students are again working in small groups to study Siddhartha in a
semester-long unit that explores the relationships between culture and identity.
She asks her students to use double-side journal entries to begin their conversations
(noting passages that catch their attention and their responses to them), take notes
as they talk, and then identify three ideas that emerged from your discussion and
write them on the sticky notes. The notes are posted on a butcher paper for the
whole class to see, and she then sends them off to work in their groups to prepare
the notes. Each note needs (1) a quote, question, or connection that could lead to a
literary analysis; (2) a thought or question about the culture portrayed in the book;
and (3) a real-life connection that could be explored through research (Kendrick,
2010, p. 86).
(I would like to pause for a moment to mention how I am writing. Think of my
chapter as a slow train moving from one spur track to another then another. As I read
these chapters and the Kendrick article, I took notes in my journal that represent
my exploration of these works more as a montage rather than a linear argument.
That said, I will argue and draw conclusions, as I am about to, but my writing will
be like a montage, so you might expect some dissonance, especially as I compare
what I read here to what I know from my experiences as I mentioned earlier in
urban schools in the states.)
As I reread my notes, it seems important for me to say that Prue and Bella and
Kendricks are defining for me what could be meant by authentic conversations, a
term I generally dislike and distrust but not here. Prue would like her students to
have conversations about the Farmer story to make their thinking visible that are
similar to her conversations with Bella to make their thinking visible. She has
goals, to be sure, and they are caught in the tensions between exam preparation and
making students thinking visible, but she knows that. Kendrick characterizes the
differences in her two vignettes as having to do with her goals and the kinds of talk
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in which the students engage. In 1998, her goal was to prepare her students to write
a thematic analysis for the exam, and she structured their talk with her questions,
although, according to her, they did have conversations in a give-and-take, citing
text, and building interpretations. In 2008, her goal was to stimulate further thinking,
further inquiry, and given her focus on students talk with each other in their small
and in the large group, shes structured the tasks and the pedagogy to allow her
students to make their thinking visible by talking among themselves and by building
on each others comments. As a part of this, like Prue, she describes her students
moving back-and-forth among their ideas and the text, speculating, testing, inquiring,
interpreting. Prues comment leads me to think that her students make the same
sorts of moves, and Prue writes about them in similar terms. After one of their
discussion turns, Prue says:
Later, their thinking will become more complex. Later I will push them
further: what is the implication of your interpretation? have you a
theory about what Farmer is doing in this story? what conclusions are
you beginning to draw about Farmers writing? I want them to be talking
about language and meaning.
Kendrick and Prue say that they structure their tasks and their teaching approaches
so that their students talk with each other, referencing the text, working towards
understandings of various sorts, but also working towards seeing their own thinking in
action, so to speak. I identify with these moves, and especially with Prues comments.
Like Prue, I set up my small groups with only two to three students. This makes
them inescapably accountable to each other and the task. Like Prue, and like
Kendrick, I value tasks that invite students to move back-and-forth among ideas,
multiple sources, and their own thinking that up-takes and builds on voiced comments
as they track them in notes and on charts. This is to say that Prues (and Bellas)
comments on their goals and approaches to classroom talk resonate with me and
my goals and approaches with my students. I was struck to read Prues focus on
asking students to identify and explain significant moments in the text because this
is an approach I often take, and generally I make it specific to the big concepts
were studying. I might, for instance, ask students to identify the significant
moments in the text that they think reveal the way the female characters are
positioned in relation to male characters when we study the big concept of gender
construction and the ways authors create gender in texts.
THE RAMON VIGNETTE
Three of Ramon Groenendijks students, working in a small group, studying Fam

by Thomas van Aalten, have what seems to me to be a quite interesting turn in which
they talk about the authors perspective and take up and build on each others points
in an evolving give-and-take focused on the main character. It reminds me of the
kinds of talk I hear from my students at the beginning of their discussions of a text
when theyre sorting out and grappling with characters and events to get them
straight, so to speak, to reach a common understanding about them before turning
to literary analysis or interpretive tasks. Here is that turn.
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PETROSKY
Renske:
Danique:
Aike:
Danique:
Aike:
Anne Wil:
Danique:
Anne Wil:
Renske:
Danique:
Yes, he thinks the world is bad and that everything goes wrong.
time they biked home and he would say: nothing wrong? So that
kind of shows that he thinks everybody is that way, in a way.
Everybodys boring and come on, whats that word?
A little like self-pity. (zelfmedelijden)
Mariah Carey being played all the time
And that holiday on Cyprus. Yeah, outside theres like this war
going on.
(laughing): Yeah, pieces of soldiers flying around! Yes, I mean if
you talk about it like that, I dont think you really care that much.
He was living in a mist or something.
Yes, he really thought the entire world was a bad place.
Since you have read this chapter, you know that Ramons student groups are
working from carefully focused, well-structured interpretive tasks he sets for them
as a part of his goal to have them learn different approaches or perspectives. He
believes you gain more insight into the story when you put these perspectives
together. Each group has a different task. Because he wants them to make
connections among the different tasks, he steps into this groups conversation and
towards the end, he leads them to think about the main character in terms of the
authors background. Its worth reading this turn because its a demonstration of
how a teacher can fairly easily take over and redirect talk by valuing one response
and using it as an occasion to promote a point of view.
Teacher:
Aike:
Teacher:
Aike:
Teacher:
Deniece:
Teacher:
Danique:
Teacher:
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Alright, I am going to ask you a few questions. To see how we

can enhance the connections between the different approaches to
the story even more. We have noticed that the main character has
a certain outlook on life. Who could tell me how he sees the
world?
Bad.
Bad, explain.
Hes completely negative. Nothings fun really. The holidays, that
party, it was all equally boring.
Everything is stupid and it doesnt amount to anything? () If we
look at time and space. Where is this story situated?
In the city.
In the city. Which city?
I think a big city or at the outskirts of a big city. Because he is
near an airport. And an industrial area.
Very good. There is even mention of a prison tower nearby.
Paul:
(Laughter)
Teacher:
Danique:
Teacher:
The Bijlmer !
Well, thats an excellent remark, Paul! Airplanes, prison towers,
lots of apartment buildings, it might just be the Bijlmer. That
gives us a chance to make a connection with the author, Thomas
van Aalten, he also lives in Amsterdam. So we have this big city,
airplanes, apartment buildings, but the author also talks about this
small room in the attic
He had bad memories about that.
It is dusty, everything is crooked, it is a very desolate place. All very
discomforting. You could say that this room in the attic represents
his youth, more or less. () So what am I trying to say? When
you read a book at some point, you will notice that your goal in
reading requires a certain reading strategy. And being the smart
people you are, you will have to gradually develop in order to be
able to apply these different ways of reading, different ways of
approaching literature. Basically you already do a lot of these things
automatically: when reading books for school, you pay attention
to certain things. And realizing that can give you a lot of advantages.
And actually, that is what wanted to share with you today.
By the end of this turn, Ramon is talking more than any of the students and hes
doing so to help them see a connection that he thinks is important for them to
make. Of the first turn, the one in which the students are focused on the main
character, Ramon writes:
the students are especially preoccupied with understanding the protagonist.
In their original groups, all have paid attention to specific elements, as the
reading instructions required. Now, they are sharing their findings, as
experts in approaching a text in a specific way. In an exploratory manner,
they try to form an image of the protagonist. However, I feel they get stuck at
this point. Apparently, they are still at the level Witte (2008) calls the level of
recognition or identification. They do not understand the protagonist and
cannot get past that point.
While it seems to me that Ramon has a point, the students did stay close to a
discussion focused solely on the main character, and one could argue that this is
how they understand their task: to pay attention to the way in which the author
wrote the story what perspective the story was written and what effect it has on
you, as a reader who describes the events and how does that influence your way
of reading the story . I would suggest, as well, that they arent stuck on a level
of recognition or identification. They are doing what most leaderless groups do
when they first begin such a task. They are sorting out their understandings of the
main character who has caught their attention because of his attitude, and they do
create an image of him that seems to me to be an interpretation.
My reading of Ramons goals for his students puts him in a different instructional
space from Prue and Bella and Kendrick. He says that I want to show the students
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how to think freely about literature when they are exploring a text However,
since I am operating at an intellectual level they have not yet reached, I find that
I become frustrated: they are not yet ready to read a story in the way that I read it,
and later on he says, The most important thing is that I give the students the tools
with which they can distil this beauty from a book and that is what I consider
the core of my method for teaching literature: providing the students with tools.
Ramons narrative, like his goals for his students, is largely about whether his
students got the perspectives he wanted them to and whether they see the differences
in them. He structures tasks for students to focus their discussions on analyses of
the text from different perspectives. He is, as he says, text and task oriented. It
seems somewhat ironic to me (and to Ramon, I think) that he would like them to
think freely as long as they follow his lead.
My journal responses to Ramons narrative are testy. Perhaps, and unfortunately,
my reading of his chapter comes on the heels of reading Kendrick and Prue and
Bella, but he sounds to me very much like students in courses I have taught at the
university who imagine that teaching literature is about getting students to love
literature as they do, and to appreciate its beauty as they do, although his tasks
represent him as a teacher who would like his students to learn to use analytic and
linguistic tools to understand texts. I am taken with the careful focus of his tasks
that direct students to read from different perspectives. I think I could use them
with some changes to the overall structure of the lessons that would allow me to
deal in comprehension and significance discussions for the students before they
take on these tasks. And I would ask each student in the group to compose a quick
write in response to the task before the group begins its discussion of it. Like
Ramon, my assignments for those types of courses are well-structured, often asking
students to read through different lenses (e.g., feminist, Marxist, New Critical, and
so on) to analyse literature to see how it works from these perspectives, to see the
methods the author uses to develop characters, scenes, and evocations. I think of
these studies on perspectives as situated work with a critical cognitive strategy.
I always begin my students with comprehension discussions of the texts were
reading, so that students together in groups of two to three can write and talk to sort
out and understand the characters, events, and unfolding plots or themes of the
selections before going on to work on moments that strike them as significant or on
literary analysis and interpretive tasks such as those that Ramon has created. I write
out the comprehension tasks, much like Ramon writes out his tasks for his students,
and ask them to write before they talk among themselves and to write to track their
conversations, so that they can later chart them to share with the whole group.
Conversation is the engine it is the means by which they make their thinking
visible, but it is also the means by which they socialize their intelligence.
A SITUATING INTERLUDE
Before going on to discuss my response to Mies, and since Ive already begun to
do this, Id like to take a few pages to situate my thoughts. Ill frame them with a
quotation from Michael Oakeshott, an English philosopher, from his essay, The
Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind.
144
As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about

ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a
conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more
articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in
public and within each of ourselves. Of course there is argument and inquiry
and information, but wherever these are profitable they are to be recognized
as passages in this conversation Conversation is not an enterprise designed
to yield an extrinsic profit, a contest where a winner gets a prize, nor is it an
activity of exegesis; it is an unrehearsed intellectual adventure Education,
properly speaking, is an initiation into the skill and partnership of this
conversation in which we learn to recognize the voices, to distinguish the
proper occasions for utterance, and in which we acquire intellectual and
moral habits appropriate to conversation. And it is this conversation which, in
the end, gives place and character to every human activity and utterance.
(Oakeshott, 1991, p. 490491)
To me, Oakshott is saying that conversations are at the heart of our humanity, of
our intellects and emotions, and that they evolve, veer off, and teach us in unrehearsed
ways. Unlike most learning in school, they dont result in prizes or scores on
accountability measures, nor are they simply for explications. In schooling, such
conversations over texts can occur, as they do for Prues and Ramons students, by
inviting students to jump right in, to talk among themselves about the questions and
issues that surface from their readings or that are presented them by the teacher.
Discussions can occur almost spontaneously, as they seem to do for Prues students, if
we can make a certain set of assumptions about the students participating in them.
We have to assume, I think, that the students understand the text theyre
discussing, that they share a common sense of characters and events and plots, that
they are comfortable voicing their misunderstandings and disagreements, that they
know the social-linguistic routines for speaking and arguing from texts, and that
they are in, in effect, familiar and comfortable with self monitoring.
I believe that this is the case for Prues (and Ramons) students. They are in a
privileged place socially and intellectually as Bella points out. They appear to
behave in their discussions as though they know and trust that the text will make
sense and that theyll make sense in their talk. Heres an except in which Prues
students demonstrate their familiarity and comfort with tone, Farmers use of
brackets in the text, and issues having to do with Farmers stance towards male and
female characters.
Fiona:
Cara:
Prue:
Kim:
Farmer paints a picture in colours. Very striking and disturbing;

red velvet and quilt, ink all foreshadow blood. Childrens
essays and poem tell us shes a teacher but he hasnt made a
connection. Shes just a woman with black hair.
The tone is very detached. Its unsettling.
How do you locate unsettling?
Through detachment. [He is] not emotionally engaged with this
at all.
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There appears to be a section of the conversation thats excluded. Prue tells us that
the students continue.
Claire:
Fiona:
Cara:
Natasha:
Bree:
Bec:
Weird she uses brackets like that. Whats the purpose?

Unnecessary information.
Like a side note in the first person. Makes it more intimate
dont you think?
Do words in brackets give a different view into his psyche?
Maybe its the narrator?
I think its like a monologue. I think its like a play. Like stage
directions to set the mood.
There is an exploratory aspect to this talk, Prue tells us. She goes on to say that
four questions are asked, but these questions are directed to each other, not to me.
Cara, Natasha and Bree are testing out an idea in their questions openly hypothesising. Fiona and Bec are asserting, but not as though they have the only answer
to the questions being asked, simply as though they are confident in offering an
interpretation.
I comment now that it is clear that the rapist has been watching the woman, and
someone takes this point further:
Fiona:
Liz:
Fiona:
Nameless. This is just why he only does it once.
He stands, cocky, not hiding unseen. The brazenness of his
behaviour!
Prue tells us that:

Students are also beginning to draw some conclusions about the perspective
Farmer brings to her work. I dont agree with these conclusions, but Ill wait
for them to test them out for themselves. They say:
Farmer is anti-men
The only time men are OK is when they take on a womans role life
Shes annoying, so bleak just because she came from a traditional
background.
Its important to understand that these conversations began with students reading
excerpts from the text that caught their attention. Unlike Ramon, Prue doesnt give
them carefully structured tasks to respond to. They take-up ideas from each other
and they build on them. Prues presence in the conversation doesnt seem to override their ideas (as Ramons does in that one turn I quoted); they dont, that is, take
146
her word as the final one and dont appear to be in the least looking to her for the
right response.
As I read these students comments and Prues and Bellas, I thought about the
students in the large urban districts in the US where, as I continue to mention, my
work has been situated for the past ten years. I thought about the ways in which it
is possible for students to comprehend the characters and plot and events as they
pursue their own interpretive interests. I thought about how Prues (and Ramons)
students experiences are unlike those of all but select classes of college bound
students in districts where I have been working. Its difficult to explain here in the
contexts of these privileged situations what happens when students arent familiar
with and practiced at the social and linguistic conventions that allow them to make
sense of the text and to have conversations among themselves, especially when
they have years of experience from which theyve learned that the teacher has the
right answers or that because they couldnt remember or recognize details valued
by test-makers, their comprehension, figured more like an on-off switch than the
results of engagement with a text and others, is poor.
It doesnt make sense for me to go on with this line of thinking, to site the
statistics, or locate the students with which Im familiar, but it should be clear that I
think Prues and Ramons students can have these conversations, whether theyre
student-generated, as Prues appear to be, or tasks generated, as Ramons appear to
be, in situations that to an outsider such as I am seem quite privileged in the
sense that the set of assumptions I mentioned earlier are in play. The teachers with
whom I work are accustomed to giving students much more support, or scaffolding
(McConachie & Petrosky, 2010), than Prue does hers, and their tasks look more
like Ramons than Prues open-ended request for a discussion, and they initially,
necessarily proceed from tasks often conducted by groups of 2 or 3 students in
conversations that we refer to as comprehension building.
We would all like our students to be able to have meaningful conversations
among themselves in which they take up and build on each others ideas, in which
they acquire, as Oakshott describes it, intellectual and moral habits, but for students
unfamiliar with and unpractised in the social, literary, and linguistics conventions that
underpin such conversations, they benefit from carefully sequenced and scaffolded
learning that leads to challenging tasks (like those Ramon created) until they can
break free of those scaffolds once they have internalized the routines. Yet I cant
relinquish the belief that privilege matters, that schooling that has been dominated
by test preparation, recitations and drills in the service of memory and recognition
and identification rather than in the service of analyses and interpretations conducted
through talk and writing, like the ones we see here in these examples, always already
situates students in a dramatically different space with learning from and about
texts no matter whether they have opportunities to move away from those drills.
THE MIES VIGNETTE
Although Ramon imagines that he might benefit from Mies reader response approach
to teaching literature, I dont think he would; I think it would take him away from
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PETROSKY
his valuable work with teaching students to understand texts from multiple perspectives into a space where texts receive less attention as texts, as linguistic
artifacts. The reader response approach that Mies takes, inflected by her desires to
have students identify with a young sold-into-prostitution protagonist offers
students a series of lessons that teach them that literature and reading is about
connecting the text they read to elements of their own lives in order to gain new
insights. In my classes, she says, I cannot help but emphasize the social context
in books and stories, because it is exactly my goal to engage into a discussion of
social topics by means of youth novels. I recognize that I am not so much interested
in whether the students like the book, but rather that they identify with the main
character.
The dichotomy Mies uses here students liking the book versus their identification
with the main character to become involved with social topics seems to miss the
possibilities of literature studies that Ramon and Prue create for their students. It
doesnt include, for example, the kinds of teaching and learning through multiple
perspectives that Ramon values and develops for his students, nor does it include
the dialogic habits of working with texts, moving among interpretations and their
substantiation in texts, that Prue wishes her students to learn. Nor does it include
inviting students to read critically or to deconstruct texts, for instance, for the ways
in which authors create gendered characters or race that I prefer. All of these
alternatives benefit students in different ways, since they position them to engage
in cognitive and literary strategies that ask for close readings of texts. My experiences
with reader response approaches, when I see them used in urban districts, is that
they minimize study of the text in favor of the study of the issues the text raises or
in favor of individual readers personal reactions to particular moments or
characters. When I participate with teachers in studies of students written work
samples produced in classes where this approach is predominant, we notice that the
students struggle to reference the text and to explain how textual references might
or might not warrant statements about the text. These practices grow from close
readings, and it is these types of close readings that we require from students in
their university composition and literature classes, so much is made of students
preparation for these in high school in the name of college and career readiness in
the US (Conley, 2007).
Although Mies values reader response, and it does appear to be her predominant
approach to literature instruction, she has other tools in her repertoire that provide
students with opportunities to dig into the text after their initial reader response
experiences. She refers to the placemat method as one such didactic tool and
uses it in conjunction with what she refers to as a group expedition to give students
opportunities to chat with other groups about the turning point (agnitio) they
find in the text. Although she only gives one example of student talk in a group
expedition that references textual moments, it appears that the students did find
different turning points, so I can imagine that these were lively text-centred discussions that could have produced beneficial differences in their understandings.
As I reread my notes on the Mies vignette, Im struck by my hostility towards
reader response approaches to literature instruction. Some of that hostility has to do
148
with the way in which such approaches position students to discuss or write about
the issues raised by texts or their own individual connections to moments or
characters rather than to discuss or write about the text as a cultural linguistic artifact
in what we understand as close readings. In the US, we promote close readings as
part-and-parcel of academic projects with texts of all sorts, including media and
actual observations, as the kinds of skills students need with literature to be college
ready.
The other issue that my notes raise on my reading of Mies chapter has to do
with the possibilities or impossibilities of students identifying with characters and
situations in texts. Perhaps my concern has to do with the differences in empathizing
and sympathizing. While it appears to me to be possible to be sympathetic to
characters and situations outside our experiences, I wonder about positioning students
to empathize or identify with characters and situations removed from what they can
know, and I wonder about the results of such requests of students. Why, Ive asked
for example in my notes, would a teacher want students to identify with a young
prostitute? Is it possible for students to do that, to, in fact, empathize this way?
What would they learn from doing that? That the situation is horrible, that its
bondage, that its a ruined life? These possible learnings seem to me to be stock
responses, which I suggest are all that we can do when we confront such readings
and situations so removed from anything we know. As stock responses, they lead
to generalized explications. Mies, for example, admires the pieces of writing that
were written to the prompt: imagine you were the protagonist, what would you
think or wish to tell your mother? Please finish this: Mama, if you could see me
now For me, they represent a type of generalized theme writing that such
impossible identifications and the prompt pre-structure for the student.
In general, I think thats it is quite difficult for anyone to say much about the
protagonists situation that hasnt already been said, so talk and writing, such as
these examples, reproduces received language and ideas. I dont take this generalized
identification to be something from which students benefit in the ways they might
benefit, say, from learning to study a text through multiple different perspectives
by doing close readings. In the study through perspectives, they would work with
analysis, application of concepts or frameworks, interpretations through those
concepts or frameworks, and comparative syntheses critical and portable cognitive
strategies.
The majority of my comments in my journal on Mies vignette repeat my
questions about the intended learning goals in reader response approaches to
literature instruction and how they help students dig deeply and carefully into
the text. Rather than go on with them, Id like to conclude because I think Ive
represented my position towards reader response approaches to literature well
enough in these few paragraphs. I began as a heavily biased reader to that aspect
of Mies vignette focused on her reader response approach, but I also want to
acknowledge the way she gives students opportunities to build from this work with
her use of the two other tools she puts into play that take students into the text.
I have been seduced by the college ready rhetoric (Conley, 2007; Common Core
State Standards Initiative, 2010) and the teaching practices of close readings of
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PETROSKY
texts as cultural artifacts, and as a composition and literature instructor at the

university, Ive seen the struggles of students who have had steady diets of reader
response to learn how to analyse, interpret, and critique texts rather than relate
them to their lives or to social issues.
FINALLY
Id like to return to my opening comments and mention briefly that since I dont
know the texts or the contexts of these vignettes, my comments throughout this
chapter appear to me to be about the particular approaches to teaching and learning
rather than about the teachers or the students work samples be they talk or
writing. By writing what Ive seen in these glimpses of teaching and learning, Ive
most certainly said more about the approaches to teaching and learning that I value
than about the figures and scenes of these classrooms. That, of course, is inevitable,
and as such, my comments are both an example of perspective taking at work and
the values of one reader reading.
REFERENCES
Applebee, A. N. (1996). Curriculum as conversation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Conley, D. T. (2007). Toward a more comprehensive conception of college readiness. Eugene, OR:
Educational Policy Improvement Center.
Kendrick, M. (2010). Using student collaboration to foster progressive discourse. English Journal,
99(5), 8590.
McConachie, S., & Petrosky, A. (2010). Content matters: A disciplinary literacy approach to improving
student learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers.
(2010). The common core state standards initiative: A state-led effort to create shared high standards
to make sure all American students are ready for college and work. Retrieved from http://www.core
standards.org
Nystrand, M., & Gamoran, A. (1991). Instructional discourse, student engagement, and literature achievement. Research in the Teaching of English, 25(3), 261290.
Nystrand, M., & Gamoran, A. (1997). The big picture: The language of learning in dozens of English
lessons. In M. Nystrand (Ed.), Opening dialogue: Understanding the dynamics of language and
learning in English classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press.
Oakeshott, M. (1991). Rationalism and other essays: New and expanded edition. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty
Fund, Inc.
Anthony Petrosky
School of Education
University of Pittsburgh
150
ANNE TURVEY AND JOHN YANDELL
10. DIFFERENCE IN THE CLASSROOM

Whose Reading Counts?
The social multiaccentuality of the ideological sign is a very crucial aspect.

By and large, it is thanks to this intersecting of accents that a sign maintains
its vitality and dynamism and the capacity for further development. A sign
that has been withdrawn from the pressures of the social struggle which, so
to speak, crosses beyond the pale of the class struggle inevitably loses
force, degenerating into allegory and becoming the object not of live social
intelligibility but of philological comprehension.
Volosinov, V.N. (1929/1986: 23).
We welcome the commitment to dialogue that is embodied in the organisation of
the case studies. This is, in our view, a hugely significant development, a way of
negotiating the power relationships implicated in any real-world research, a way of
addressing questions of representation in academic discourse. We see a connection
between such methodological commitments to the intersecting of accents within
the domain of research and scholarship and broader understandings of meaningmaking, both in the world and in the literature classroom. In what follows, we trace
something of the history of our engagement with literature teaching. We situate this
history within particular institutional and policy contexts. We sketch out an argument
for a literature-teaching praxis that is irreducibly, and sometimes uncomfortably,
multiaccentual.
Reading the case studies made us reflect, again, on our own national context and
on the shaping influence of government policy on that context. For the past two
decades in England, the content of English as a school subject has been specified
by statute.1 Since 1989, we have seen four versions of a national curriculum, each
with different emphases, each making somewhat different claims about the purposes
and values of English. All four versions, though, have been closely articulated with
high-status, high-stakes, centralised regimes of inspection and assessment. These
regimes, tending to enforce data-driven models of accountability and performativity,
have had a profound impact on notions of teacher identity: professional judgement,
at least in a pessimistic account of this period, has been displaced by the lesser
virtue of mere compliance. In such an account, the task of the English teacher has
been reconceptualised as involving little more than the delivery of a pre-specified,
pre-packaged curriculum.
We both started our teaching careers in the era before the National Curriculum.
We remember, with more than a little fondness, a time of more direct and immediate
TURVEY AND YANDELL
accountability, the time when our students perennial question, Why are we reading
this? demanded a response that was both personal and professional: since texts, in
those days, were chosen by departments and by individual teachers, we had to be
ready with reasons more local and perhaps more compelling than the current
catch-all defence of its in the National Curriculum. These choices were, without
doubt, informed by the criterion of accessibility an exercise of professional
judgement that is always problematic because of the assumptions it entails, both
about the text and about the readers. But the fact that these choices were themselves
open to scrutiny were part of the dialogue between teachers and their students
meant that our own interests as readers, and our thinking about our students
interests, identities and needs, were often explored in the classroom.
Our early years as teachers coincided with a period of fundamental change in
the English curriculum, particularly in relation to the teaching of literature and
particularly in London, where we both worked. Whereas the past two decades have
been a time of centrally-imposed change from above, the preceding decades saw
change from below, change that was responsive to social movements and to school
students themselves: change that was motivated, primarily, by taking seriously
questions of representation. In the classrooms such as those where we worked,
classrooms that were constituted in diversity, both the senses of representation teased
out by Spivak (1988), the cultural and the political, were centrally and inextricably
implicated: this was both about acts of sign-making (re-presentation) and about
speaking for. So we chose writers whose work represented something of workingclass experience (Barry Hines, Alan Sillitoe, Alan Bleasdale, Shelagh Delaney);
we chose African and Caribbean (Chinua Achebe, Sam Selvon, V.S. Reid, Buchi
Emecheta), and Black American (Angela Walker, Maya Angelou, Rosa Guy, Mildred
Taylor) writers; we chose writers who were attempting to speak to the experiences
of contemporary British urban youth (Farukh Dhondy, Jan Needle, Geraldine Kaye).
What was at stake here was more than a rebalancing of the canon, to make it less
male or more up-to-date, to give it a postcolonial or a proletarian flavour. The
category of literature itself was problematised, in two important ways. First, our
work as English teachers took seriously Raymond Williams insistence that culture is
ordinary (Williams, 1958). The 1970s and 1980s was a period in which community
publishing flourished and its fruits, largely in the form of autobiography and poetry,
figured prominently in English classrooms; allied to this was the tradition of publication of school students own work, from Chris Searles editions of Stepney Words
(1971) to the steady stream of anthologies produced by the Inner London Education
Authoritys English Centre, such as Our Lives (Ashton and Simons, eds, 1979),
City Lines (Simons et al., eds, 1982) and Say What You Think (Moger and Richmond,
eds, 1985). The presence of such collections and community publications in the
classroom had the effect of blurring the boundaries of literature; it also acted as a
powerful reminder of the cultural productivity of school students and the communities
from which they came. Second, there was an overtly political dimension to some of the
texts that we chose to read with our classes: the selection of Beverley Naidoos (1985)
Journey to Joburg, for example, could not be seen as entirely separable from a
shared set of commitments to the struggle against apartheid (see Yandell 2008b).
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DIFFERENCE IN THE CLASSROOM
To some extent, these changes in what was read reflected teachers shifting
conceptions of the processes and purposes of reading. There was a widespread
recognition of the significance of students interests of what they brought to
the reading that happened in classrooms and, perhaps, of the validity of diverse
reading positions. There was, too, a shared understanding that literacy involved
reading the world as well as the word (Freire and Macedo, 1987), and hence that
encounters with literature were never simply a matter of induction into an academic
discourse. At times, though, we wonder whether the arguments about which text to
read left unexamined how these texts were read, or whose readings (really) counted.
We think that this history matters, and we would want to honour it. This
(necessarily abbreviated) sketch of a history that shaped us as well as being shaped,
in some small measure, by us and teachers like us, is simultaneously the history
of institutional forces and social movements. It might suggest that, to rephrase
L. P. Hartley, another country is our past. Our reading of the Dutch and Australian
case studies is, like all other readings, situated: we notice, and attend to, points of
commonality and difference in relation to our own experience. So, for example,
we notice the degree of teachers and students autonomy in the choice of text. We
recognise the social/political purposes in Ramons and Mies account, and we read
Prues choice of Beverley Farmers short stories as motivated, a product of Prues
interests: we might even want to suggest a parallel between the choice of Farmer
and the movement from the local to the general that Prue encourages her students
to make in their reading of Farmer.
What has happened in England in the past two decades is that the experience of
literature in the classroom has been fundamentally reconfigured. In part, the effect
of the imposition of a national curriculum has been the reassertion of canonicity,
both of a prescribed list of canonical authors and of a predetermined notion of
literary value. This process is most apparent in the fact that, since 1989, the proposition that all secondary students should study Shakespeare has been given statutory
force. It is not simply about the return of dead white men, but also about the
curricularisation, the institutionalisation, of the Other. Literature, in every version
of the National Curriculum thus far, has been constructed as a double category. On
the one hand, there is the English literary heritage, with its list of canonical authors
from Chaucer to Tennyson (QCDA, 2009). The list, with its startling anomalies (in
what sense are either Kate Chopin or Oscar Wilde representative of a specifically
English literary heritage?), has statutory force. On the other hand, there are texts
from different cultures and traditions (QCDA, 2009). These texts and their authors
are thus defined by their difference, by their categorical separation from the
English canonical authors. In relation to the English literary heritage, the correct
readerly attitude is one of reverence: pupils should be enabled to understand the
appeal and importance over time of these texts (ibid.). For the texts from different
cultures, however, different criteria are in operation. There is a requirement that
the authors are so familiar with a particular culture or country that they represent it
sensitively and with understanding (ibid): thus policy, at a stroke, insists on a one-forone correlation between culture and nation, and by extension nationality, and assumes
a particular relationship between the writer and the culture that is represented.
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TURVEY AND YANDELL
For the readers of such different texts, on the other hand, much greater latitude is
envisaged: they are to explore how ideas, experiences and values are portrayed
differently in texts from a range of cultures and traditions (ibid.). The marking out
of literary territory in this way, the creation of lines of demarcation, enforces
messages about texts (how they should be categorised and hence how they should
be read) and also about readers and their cultural positioning. These divisions are
marked most conspicuously in the exam board anthologies that almost all fifteenand sixteen-year-olds study. There are sections devoted to poetry labelled English
Literature, and a separate section entitled Poetry from Different Cultures. These
institutional messages are in tension with the anthologised poems themselves, many
of which, like John Agards Half Caste, represent complex struggles of intercultural negotiation. In London classrooms, the assumption of a monocultural,
hegemonic norm, the perspective from which cultural difference is to be approached,
is nothing short of absurd.
The second strand in the process of the repositioning of literature has been the
renewed emphasis on a skills-based approach to the curriculum. Particularly in
the past decade or so, with the advent of the National Literacy Strategy (DfEE
2001), texts have tended to become merely exemplary: drained of all particularity,
all local significance, they are presented as vehicles for the teaching of generic
devices. Our purpose, though, is not to elicit sympathy for lost autonomy; on the
contrary, our argument, in the remainder of this piece, is that spaces for dialogue
are always present in the literature classroom, no matter how prescriptive the
curriculum.
For all the contributors to this collection, these personal histories that help to
identify and articulate the philosophical frameworks in which we locate our
professional practice (to borrow Piet-Hein and Brentons words in Chapter One)
must be part of the books conversation. In Prues pedagogy, Bella Illesca sees
the enactment of practices that support a form of democracy. The social space of
Gills classroom encourages the development of shared understandings of texts:
problems of understanding are jointly pursued and meanings are negotiated. But it
is more than the acculturation and reproduction of certain linguistic practices or
even the joint construction of knowledge that we see so vividly presented in the
accounts of Prues classrooms; Prues teaching comes out of and shapes her
professional beliefs and values about the purpose of education: to help students
develop a consciousness of the values, the responsibilities, the behaviours underpinning a democratic process. In the Dutch case study, we think of Ramon and
Mies intention that the study of literature should broaden their students world
view, enable them to look at the world from different perspectives as they are
learning to read a text in different ways. The social engagement that underpins
their teaching is based on concepts of identification, recognition and empathy.
These are at one level literary concepts that literature teachers want students to
understand as they experiment with and gain confidence in using what Ramon calls
tools for textual analysis, and Piet-Hein refers to as a broad repertoire for reading
literature. But these concepts are also part of a profoundly moral and ethical
purpose seen most clearly in Mies belief that the study of particular novels can
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induce compassion and fear, can lead to levels of social awareness about real
world inequalities and exploitation. Mies reflects:
In my classes, I cannot help but emphasize the social context in books and
stories, because it is exactly my goal to engage in a discussion of social topics
by means of youth novels. I recognize that I am not so much interested in
whether the students like the book, but rather that they identify with the main
character.
We recognise aspects of our own histories and practices in these accounts but we
would want to place centrally in our story experiences of diversity in London
classrooms and the impact of these experiences on our teaching of literature. In
what follows, we focus on particular moments in our experiences as teachers and
teacher educators, moments that speak to our interest in the diversity of readers and
readings and in how such readings are produced.
ANNE
In 1992 I wrote about an episode that had occurred early in my time as an English
teacher in a London school, some thirty years ago now (Turvey, 1992). The
episode has come to stand as something of a defining moment for me, in the way it
led me to reconsider some of my ideas about how students engage with literature
and about what it could mean to acknowledge the lives, histories and subjectivities
of these students in a classroom discussion about meaning and literary value. I was
teaching Wide Sargasso Sea: set in the Caribbean, this novel presents Jean Rhyss
alternative view of Rochesters mad wife in the attic from Jane Eyre. Like Prue in
her approach to Beverley Farmers stories, I was mindful of an examination at the
end of the course where the girls would have to demonstrate a command of literary
discourse to write about the novel. In those days, the demand that students reflect
on their interpretations and evaluate others interpretations, something Prue has to
consider, was a less significant part of this literary discourse as far as the examination
was concerned. The girls I taught were also far less confident than Prues in using
the conventions of a literary discussion but they could see that it somehow
mattered, for the examination of course, but also in their developing relationship
with their teacher, and they wanted to belong to this literary community. I know
that I valued what I imagined to be the kinds of exploratory talk that characterise
powerfully Prues classroom, although as the following account will show, there
are problems with my intentions and my interpretation of a joint construction of
knowledge through exploratory talk.
Rhys, born in Dominica of a Welsh father and a third-generation Creole mother,
was one of a selection of authors from the new African and Caribbean Literature
examination paper. You were not allowed to select texts from the new paper and do
them alongside authors from other option papers such as Twentieth Century
Literature or The Comedy of Manners; if you decided to do this new paper, the
Special relief paper, you were restricted to answering questions from it alone.
I hadnt read the examination board small print and thought Rhys would go well
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with other things we were doing. I would want to defend my decision to try out a
text from the African and Caribbean Literature paper with other texts from the
more traditional period papers on the grounds that it put these texts together as
worth studying, as comparable in a number of important ways. It didnt set this
literature apart as different or other. (A last minute realisation of what Id done
and a phone call to the examination board by my head of department asking that
they make allowances for teacher error did the trick and the students were none
the wiser. I still think I was right to encourage my students to read Rhys alongside
more securely canonical texts; these days, though, such mistakes in applying the
examination regulations would not be so easily rectified.)
My focus in the lesson was the position of Antoinette Bertha Cosway, the
Creole girl in the novel who is married off to Rochester. I directed the discussion to
a consideration of Antoinettes isolation and the way Rhys enlists our sympathy for
her caught as she is in a patriarchal society. The particular essay question I had
concocted was something about the marooning of the Creole whites in a landscape
where beauty hides cruelty. At this point I had just dictated the essay question
one student stopped me with a question about the word marooned. Nathalie, a
black girl, was new to the group. She had been born in Jamaica and had lived there
with her grandparents until she was 10, when she joined her parents in England.
She was new to the school and so had not been with us for Jane Eyre the year
before; nor had she been inducted into certain practices around a text that had
guided my work with this class. I started to explain the word marooned
means isolated or cut off but she interrupted me impatiently, angrily: No,
I mean maroons were slaves, werent they, back home. From Africa and they
escaped into the mountains.
I remember conceding this angle on the word, but very much in a spirit of
encouraging the girls to express personal opinions about literature in a dialogue
orchestrated by me. I may have thought at the time that, like Prue and her class, we
were thinking about writing in a way that illuminates our own world where issues
of migration, place and displacement are increasingly complex and central to
the experiences of the girls I taught. But actually, I was the teacher accepting the
students contribution, validating her attempt to learn the rules of this literary
game. Everything the word marooned might actually mean to Nathalie and how
she brought to her reading a history and a personal lived experience of being
marooned were not really admitted by me. I was not prepared for her sudden
resistance it seemed sudden at the time but now I see it differently her resistance
to the kind of discussion we were having, as well as to my interpretation of a
particular word.
Why, she said, are we feeling so sorry for Antoinette? Why shouldnt she be
the outsider there? You just talk as though the place was to blame for her unhappiness, like it drove her mad or something. Anyway, what about all the others?
What about Christophine and Tia? They live there. What do you mean marooned?
I HATE this book.
In my work with this class on Rhyss novel, I was interested in exploring themes
and ideas similar to those that Prue identifies: migration, place and displacement.
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But I see now that what shaped my approach had its roots in my own very literary
education, one that led me to focus on the novels relationship with another literary
text, Jane Eyre. It is clear to me now how this intertextual approach so easily
privileged some voices and silenced others. Nathalies experiences of separation
and exile, of migration from the West Indies to east London, did more than just
inform her reading of the novel and her understanding of a particular word; she
was attempting to make sense of her lived history in the light of a book which she
felt marginalised that history, a book which I seemed to endorse. The result of this
was her challenge. The book had a meaning for Nathalie which she tried to articulate
against the grain of an academic discourse to do with texts and examinations
and my desire to give these girls access to a particular kind of language work
and a particular kind of literary experience. I responded to her contribution as to a
disruption and she could see through my reluctance to shift my position. But things
did change and the students, several of whom were black and shared some of
Nathalies history, made this possible.
This episode of classroom talk illuminates an aspect of Bakhtins work picked
up by Bella in her comments on Prues classroom. Bakhtin insists on the diversity
of voices that present distinct and value-laden views on the world (Bakhtin, 1981).
This view of language underpins both the Australian and Dutch case studies and
influences the way the teachers there invite from their students alternative readings
and a wide range of interpretations of the literary text. Its a diversity which literature
teachers would want to celebrate; but it is also the source of tension in the lesson
I have described. In my appropriation of a word and in my reading of the novel,
Nathalie meets what Bakhtin calls an authoritative discourse (342) in which I am
heavily implicated. Such a discourse permits no play with the context framing it,
no play with its borders, no gradual and flexible transitions. Nathalie is trying to
make sense of it in the light of her own internally persuasive discourse that has
developed over time in countless interactions between her views and those of others.
The learning I am writing about is at its core social. It had begun with a students
question about a word marooned. For Nathalie, this word had previously existed
in other peoples mouths, in other peoples contexts, serving other peoples
intentions and in order for Nathalie to make it her own, she must populate it
with [her] own intention, [her] own accent (Bakhtin, 1981: 293). What developed
was a complex negotiation, in part a struggle at many levels. Clearly there are
considerable inequalities of power here as there are in any classroom. Race was
also an issue which influenced different readings of the novel and what happened
around those readings. Nathalies challenge resulted in a discussion about different
races, isolation, leaving home, moving away, which then looped back to the word
marooned. By this stage the word had assumed a significance for all of us, a
meaning in fact that was steeped in a history of colonialism and slavery. Nathalie
had in effect insisted that I attend to that history and to her knowledge of it. She did
this in ways I could not have predicted or controlled.
And what of the effect on me and my understanding of a word? What happened
in the lesson was part of a process of developing an individual consciousness that
Bakhtin refers to as ideological becoming and this process is ongoing for pupil
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and teacher. It involves struggling with anothers discourse (348) as Nathalie and
I can be said to struggle. The role of the other is critical: once I acknowledged
Nathalies separateness and had distinguished between my taken-for-granted view
and her internally persuasive discourse, new possibilities opened up for all of us.
Certain words are gathering a dense texture of meaning for Nathalie which are not
the same for me or for other students in that literature lesson, but we share the
process. Her challenge forced a recognition of difference which involved the
individual subjectivities of all of us and we arrived at no easy consensus. But
the literature lesson had opened up a space for a conversation, for learning about
migration, place and displacement and for learning about identity, in ways that
would have been difficult or even impossible outside the classroom.
In writing about discourse and education, Deborah Britzman describes the kind
of learning that Nathalies intervention made possible. I like to think that my
literature lessons were more a site of departure as a result:
Discourse that is internally persuasive provisions creativity, the play of
meanings. It celebrates the ambiguity of words. For Bakhtin, internally persuasive discourse is the site of departure rather than a place of arrival. A
tentative discourse, subject to negotiation and shifting contexts, and able to
voice possibilities unforeseen, internally persuasive discourse is a discourse
of becoming In education, internally persuasive discourse provisions
engagement with what we know and the struggle to extend, discard or keep
it: it is characterised by those surprising questions raised by the students
and the teacher that move from exhausted predestinations to the unanticipated.
Internally persuasive discourse is opened during times of spontaneity, improvisation, interpretive risks, crises, and when one reflects upon taken-for-granted
ways of knowing. In this way internally persuasive discourse is always in
dialogue with authoritative discourse (Britzman, 2003: 4243).
Britzmans reading of Bakhtin offers a way of theorising the episode with Nathalie
and, more generally, a way of thinking about the affordances of the literature
lesson. Britzman emphasises the provisionality of meaning-making and the sheer
difficulty of negotiating divergent readings in contexts where, inevitably, questions
of power are salient. Such negotiations involve shifts in thinking about the role and
authority of the teacher and of her reading(s).
Many years later I am visiting another London school in my role as a teacher
educator. Catherine, a student teacher in my tutor group, is teaching Steinbecks
novel, Of Mice and Men. Its a younger class of 14year-old boys so the terminal
examination is less pressing. But even so the work on the novel is intended to lead
to a literary essay on the theme of loneliness in the novel. The boys have just met
Crooks, the black character in the novel who is set apart from the others in a
society that is segregated at every level. Before the lesson begins, Catherine tells
me about what occurred at the end of the previous lesson. The discussion had gone
something like this:
Allan: But what have the others on the ranch got to feel so superior about?
Kemi: Youre missing the point. Thats the way they thought then.
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Catherine was interested in and troubled by this exchange. At one level, the first
boys question goes to the heart of the mad failure of logic that is racial discrimination. But, she wondered, how much did the class understand of the novels
historical context and how segregation was strengthened by the very economic
conditions that created and sustained the poverty and rootlessness of the books
other characters? And the second boys response seemed to distance the novel from
current concerns about race and ethnicity which Catherine knew these boys were
actually very interested in.
At the beginning of the lesson that I observe, Catherine begins with a question
foregrounding the literary essay that is the stated outcome of the work on the
novel, or so it says in her lesson plan. She asks: Is Crooks lonely? Should he be in
this essay about loneliness? The boys respond in an open-forum discussion:
The others dont want to mix with him he says its because hes black and like
Kemi said last lesson, people thought like that then.
Thats true but its also I think that Crooks wants to be on his own and he can
sort of feel like he has something of his own in his room so maybe its better for
him that way. Its sort of power.
Yeah, hes lonely but not the same way the others are.
Catherine: So he chooses it you mean? He chooses to be on his own?
In a way he does.
Thats the same now, Miss.
You mean racial prejudice?
I do mean that but I mean choosing to not mix like Crooks does. Thats the
same now everywhere in the school too. You cant change that. People
stick together. Id do what Crooks does.
The atmosphere in the room grows tense and Catherine doesnt know quite
where to go with it. I wasnt really prepared for that direction, she said to me in
our discussion after the lesson. I wish I had let it go on but I wanted to do the
photos exercise.
There were four photographs. In groups of four, the boys were asked to look at
one of them and using a simple framework for analysing images, to consider three
things: whats in the photo; how does it make you feel; what questions do you have
about it?
I was at a table where the boys were looking at a black and white photo of Ku
Klux Klan members, hooded and cloaked and standing around some kind platform/
altar next to which was an American flag. One boy knew something of the postCivil War origins of the Klan and the discussion turned to the significance of the
robes, the hoods, the insignia, the significance of a uniform in general and then to
whether or not the KKK still exists.
Yeah it does I saw a programme about them.
Can anyone join?
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Well Tende, we definitely couldnt!

And then why do they have a flag?
Americans have their flag all over the place.
But why? Why dont we?
No, its like the BNP [the British National Party a neofascist group that has
become more prominent in recent years] and the way they use the flag to sort
of hide behind. Its a disguise. Weve got the BNP in my area.
No, I dont think theyre hiding well, maybe they are, but its more like it
shows theyre the real English people.
But you can have a flag and not think those things?
What things?
About black people about foreigners. The flag doesnt make you think those
things.
In considering talk in classrooms from a Bakhtinian perspective, Paul Thompson

writes about the ways in which the internal heterogeneity of any text admits of a
range of interactions between the text and its readers. Thompson describes an
example of hot seating as part of the study of a play for a class of twelve- and
thirteen-year-olds. The pupils own social language interacts with the language of
the play and as a result, they are given the opportunity to create their own text
within the dramatists. Thompson writes:
While all texts are in some way both univocal and dialogic, I have argued that
it is important for teachers to ground classroom speech genres in the dialogic
function of text, so that each voice can take other utterances as thinking
devices and so that, on this basis, other utterances can become the medium
for the generation of richer meanings than would be the case when the
function of texts is primarily univocal (Thompson, 2008: 253).
For the boys in Catherines lesson, the novel serves just this dialogic function.
They have been given freedom within those discursive frames derived from literary
analysis and its focus on character and themes and the result of this freedom is that
they create their own communicative contexts. They make connections between
Crooks, a character in a novel, and the social and historical forces in the real
world of that time. Perhaps more remarkably, they make powerful and personally
meaningful connections between the world of the novel and their own lives. In the
small group and also in the larger open-forum discussions the boys have found
what Thompson calls a semiotic space where they can create their own heterogeneous texts within the texts that they are given. There are contending voices in
their talk as they try to make sense of such complex issues as racial supremacy and
its connections to notions of nationhood and the flag.
When the teacher interjects with a question that directs them back to the novel
Does your picture change your view of Crooks? there is a degree of uncertainty
in their responses as they consider how to use these new ideas from their discussion in
the context of a literature essay, a very important textual voice for them and one
that, as they are beginning to understand, determines what they can say about
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character. When they come to write the loneliness essay, their comments about
Crooks are clearly informed by this earlier discussion and they sit uneasily within
the literary essay on which they will be graded.
If Crooks lived today, what would he say about his life?
Did John Steinbeck know about the Ku Klux Klan and what did he think about it?
Crooks loneliness is different from the other characters and I think his kind of
loneliness still exists, whatever people say.
Steinbecks work is re-made in this particular classroom in unexpected ways
that make possible insights into the lived experiences of multicultural societies and
identities. Catherine has created a space for the boys to consider both otherness and
common ground and it is clear that there will be no easy consensus, no absolute
convergence of views. The tensions that underpin this discussion of a literary work
go to the heart of students lifeworlds, their lives and communities that inform their
reading of the novel.
JOHN
In what follows, I want to develop some of the strands of Annes contribution. In

particular, I hope to problematise assumptions about the status of the textual object
and the nature of agency and activity as a way of complicating the picture of the
literature classroom. What does a literary text look like? What is its provenance?
And what does reading look like? What do students do with texts? To address these
questions, I want to focus attention on the teaching of Shakespeare
Throughout the four different versions of the National Curriculum that have
been imposed on us during the past two decades, Shakespeare has retained a
singular prominence as the only compulsory author, on whose work English students
have been relentlessly examined in national tests for 14-year-olds as well as in
public examinations for 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds (GCSEs, AS and A2 syllabuses).
Shakespeare represents one pole of attraction within the canon wars Shakespeare
as the repository of enduring cultural value, the centrepiece of what policy refers to
as the English literary heritage (texts that enable students to understand the nature,
significance and influence over time of texts from the English literary heritage, in
the magnificently tautologous words of the current version of the English National
Curriculum [QCDA, 2009]). The primary significance of Shakespeare in the school
curriculum is thus as an index of transcendent value. In this conception of what
encounters with Shakespeare might look like, it is clear that the role of the school
student is that of an acolyte at the shrine of high culture, learning to value aright
what has already been defined as valuable. Shakespeare is all about a common
entitlement to cultural goods of enduring value. Such textual pursuits might appear to
have nothing to do with students own subjectivities, nothing to do with particularities
of history and culture, nothing to do with the world beyond the classroom.
And yet, as I will go on to argue, doing Shakespeare, like doing Steinbeck,
involves the (re-)making of texts, and hence, necessarily, the cultures and histories
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of the school students who are actively involved in these processes of textual
production. What is involved here are the questions of whose reading counts and
what counts as valid knowledge the very questions that we suggested earlier
might sometimes have been neglected in the debates over which texts to read. My
argument, in essence, is that the very curricular node where, viewed from the lens
of policy, agency might seem most limited can actually become a place of
flourishing cultural productivity. To elucidate the argument, I will draw on research
data derived from my collaboration with Monica Brady, an experienced teacher
working in a secondary comprehensive school in the docklands area of east London.
Further, the case of Shakespeare Shakespeare as instantiated in contemporary
London classrooms might offer something of a challenge to the conceptions of
the literary text that inform the case studies from Australia and the Netherlands.
We might want to question assumptions about the stability of the text; and, if the
textual object is itself (sometimes) unstable, polymorphous, it might become easier
to see the difficulties, the tensions and contradictions, in the paradigm that equates
second and subtler readings with better readings. (As Catherines pupils learn to
produce their literary essays on Steinbeck, is there a danger that something
important in their response to the novel and the images is lost? Are they learning to
discard readings that lie outside the frame of the literary?)
In every classroom, whenever any text is read, there is a sense in which every
reader and every reading constructs a new and different text. But the case of
Shakespeare might shed light on the need to attend to wildly divergent histories of
textual production and reception (as well as to the generic differences between
drama and prose fiction). The category of the literary is unstable not only because
of its porous boundaries but also because, at what might be thought as its centre,
we are actually dealing with different kinds of text, differently produced and
reproduced.
When Prue and her students are reading short stories by Beverley Farmer, the
question of where the text is, and of what kind of text it is, seem fairly unproblematic. The text is there, on the printed page. Likewise, there would seem to
be straightforward answers to questions about the author. Prues students know
who wrote the stories because they have met and had a chance to interrogate Beverley
Farmer. Perhaps I should say, though, that theres an aspect of Prues account that
bothers me, in that there seems to be an elision of authorship and textual authority.
What does bringing Farmer into the classroom to account for her text(s) do to what
Said (1984) called the worldliness of the text to the texts autonomous existence
in the world? The effect of Farmers visit is to bring the students reading of her
fiction into a closer alignment with Prues reading. The discovery that Farmer is
not a rabid, man hating feminist at all leads them to a reappraisal of their earlier
(hasty) readings of her work. But what if Farmer had been less generous, less
endearing, less accommodating? Would this have provided a warrant for the
students first readings of the stories?
In contrast, when Monica and her students are working on Richard III, for
example, it becomes much less easy to identify a single textual object. The text is
the Cambridge School Shakespeare edition of the play, but it is also a series of still
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images of Richard, assembled by Monica from an internet search and presented to

her students very early on in the process of studying the play. The students discussion of these images enables them to open up questions about representation
and character, about theatrical conventions and ideas of monarchy, about role and
interpretation. The text is also two films, the Olivier (1955) and the McKellen (1995)
versions, both of which are introduced into the classroom, compared, discussed,
argued over, reflected on. In some sense, too, Richard III is instantiated in Monicas
classroom in a series of other pedagogic events, including role-plays which might
at first glance not seem to stand in a particularly close relation to the Shakespearean
drama but which are, as I have argued elsewhere (Yandell, 2008a), both sites of
cultural making and meaningful in relation to the students exploration of Richard
III.
Theres a paradox here, perhaps. Shakespeare, icon of cultural authority, becomes
in the classroom the most writerly of texts (Barthes, 1977). There is no fixed point,
no stable, single text. The script itself is merely a prompt, a starting-point, an
invitation to perform. And, as the past few decades of editorial scholarship have
made increasingly plain, there is no fixity either in the Shakespearean canon or in
the text of any single play. And even if we were to avail ourselves of Dr Whos
Tardis to bring Shakespeare into the classroom, this would not resolve matters,
particularly given the conditions of theatrical production in which Shakespeare
worked, conditions that were irreducibly collaborative: conditions, in other words,
in which even the notion of individual authorship had no clearly-defined place.
Four centuries on, interpretation is all. The plurality of prior readings both
legitimises and renders inescapable the students own appropriations. This has
preoccupied me for some time. In the 1990s, I chose to read The Merchant of Venice
with my class of fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds in the school in Hackney, east
London, where I spent most of my time as a teacher. My students read contributions
to the debate about whether it was either possible or desirable to read the play
outside the frame of the Holocaust, to attain an innocent reading through the
pretence of historical ignorance, as it were (Barton, 1984, Wesker and Thacker,
1994). They explored the different interpretations available in two performances
(the BBC Shakespeare production, directed by Jonathan Miller, with Warren Mitchell
as Shylock [1980], and a Channel 4/Middle English version, made for schools,
with Bob Peck as Shylock [1996]). And they also remade the text, writing in role
as various characters. When I first wrote about this, I focused attention on Hong
Hai, a student of Vietnamese heritage, writing as Shylock (Yandell, 1997). To
characterise this activity as one that encourages empathy is, of course, valid, but
there was far more going on than identification with the chosen character. In
examining the text that she created, I traced the evidence it provides of close reading
and engagement with The Merchant of Venice before speculating that the act of
writing had provided Hong Hai with the opportunity to reflect on her own history,
her orientation towards her Vietnamese heritage as well as towards the dominant
culture of (white) British society. Writing in role involved a playful remaking, at a
distance both from the lived experience of the writer and from the Shakespearean
text that was being read. The distance created a space for the exploration of both
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Shakespeare and the writers lifeworld. Re-reading my own account now, I wonder
if more emphasis should be placed on the playfulness of this space.
My continued puzzling about the nature of the textual object what and where
the text is isnt entirely separable from my desire to offer a different account of
what students encounters with the text (sometimes) look like. I want to reassert the
materiality of the sign and of the sign-makers, and I want to attend to the embodied
nature of textual activity in Monicas classroom. Her students are used to exploring
complex ideas and complex texts through collaborative, improvised role-play. In
these explorations, students bodies, their clothes, the furniture and the physical
organisation of the space of the classroom are all semiotically significant: all these
material, multimodal resources are re-made in the interests of the sign-makers
and all, therefore, need to be attended to if we are to hope to produce an adequate
account of the work that goes on in literature classrooms.
Monica has a clearly worked-out rationale for the approach that she adopts:
Why do I do role-play? Partly I suppose because I think that it helps to access
abstract concepts. It gives pupils the opportunity to explore ideas, characters
and concepts; to put themselves into a story and make it into something that
makes sense to them. It allows them to bring their own world knowledge,
their own context to that story whether it is historical or fictional. I think that
it is difficult to explain anything without narrative and the role-play lets the
pupils bring their own narratives into their learning. It shifts the power from
the teacher to the pupil and invites them to work with peers to construct their
own interpretations.
The process is as important as the finished piece for in the course of preparing a
role play they are talking, offering ideas, revising, contesting, incorporating,
justifying, accepting. In presenting they are throwing their interpretation
into the ring to be picked up and developed by others sometimes in subsequent
presentations, sometimes in class discussion, sometimes in writing. This
process of course happens in other collaborative activities, in exploring text
or images, but in these activities the teacher usually gives the resources and
the talk (and hence the outcome) can be more restricted (Monica Brady,
email to John Yandell, 2008).
There are connections here with the practices described in the Netherlands case
study. Empathetic engagement in lives and worlds different from the students own
is seen as an important part of the work of the classroom. Students are engaging
with texts by drawing on their resources of culture and history, the funds of
knowledge (Moll, 2000) that they bring with them to the classroom.
This active and collaborative engagement is, simultaneously, serious and playful.
Its relationship to the Shakespearean text is highly variable: sometimes, students
incorporate lines, present recognisably Shakespearean characters; at other times,
the activity will involve the exploration of a scenario, the relationship of which to
the play that they are studying only becoming apparent in a subsequent lesson.
Such work extends over time, and the effects are often not immediately discernible.
Monicas emphasis on process rather than product, and on the unpredictability of
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the uses to which such interactions will subsequently be put, does not conform
to the current fashion for measurable outcomes. Textual meaning is construed as
irreducibly intertextual and social, arising out of the readers experience of other
texts, other subjectivities, other histories. Textual appreciation the aesthetic
dimension of the experience of Shakespeare tends to emerge less from any obvious
focus on language or form than, almost tangentially, from the juxtaposition of
different versions, different performances, different texts.
Something else has occurred to me as I have reviewed the video footage of
Monicas lessons. Even when her students are not engaged in improvisation as a
discrete activity, her classroom seems to be an arena of serious play. In class
discussions of Richard III, students craft interventions that are, simultaneously,
contributions to the official business of the lesson and part of a running gag at the
expense of one of their peers. As they offer interpretations and evaluations of the
text, they inhabit ever so slightly exaggerated scholarly roles, not quite parodic yet
not quite their everyday selves. In the literature classroom, the play really is (and is
not) the thing.
CONCLUSION
Role-play in Monicas classroom, like the conversations among Catherines students,

needs to be seen through a Vygotskian lens. The relationship between cognitive
development and semiotic activity is a complicated one: work in all semiotic modes,
including language, enables the development of thought, gives learners access to
resources beyond their immediate experience. Over time, signs loneliness,
prejudice, power are remade, filled with increasingly dense, rich meanings.
In the process, a dialectical relationship is established between scientific and
spontaneous concepts (Vygotsky, 1987): the everyday knowledge that students
bring with them has the capacity to transform and reorganise the curricularised,
canonical knowledge of schooling.
Suzanne Miller refers to the supportive social space that can be created in
the literature classroom. These spaces are nothing less than Vygotskys zones of
proximal development with the teacher often taking a lead role in the early stages
in order to provide questions and suggest lines of enquiry that push the pupils
thinking forward.2 In the classrooms Miller observed where open forum discussions
were based on deeply respectful personal-emotional relations between teacher
and pupils, she found that:
Over time the dialogic strategies moved inward to become part of students
repertoires for meaning-making. In varying ways each teacher mediated
specific habits of mind by lending her structuring consciousness (Vygotsky,
1978) to enable students to think in increasingly complex ways about texts,
knowledge and the world (Miller, 2003: 312).
We would expect that Millers Vygotskian model of dialogic, developmental
processes would provide common ground for Prue, Ramon and Mies. The emphasis
on respectful pedagogic relationships built over time seems to us to be absolutely
165
TURVEY AND YANDELL
central to any adequate account of the literature classroom. We recognise, too, that
we all work in circumstances not of our making, negotiating our way through
contradictions that are historical, structural and institutional. But we are acutely
aware of the danger that accounts of dialogic practice can too easily smoothe over
the fractures and disjunctions, can soften the dissonance of the different voices
engaged in the dialogue. In our contribution, we have tended to focus on these
moments, on the evidence that they provide of students thinking in increasingly
complex ways that are not easily assimilable within dominant literary discourses.
So when Suzanne Miller talks about new ways of talking and thinking about text
we take her to mean something that offers a challenge to existing practices, to
established ways of doing literature and to the authority of the teacher.
NOTES
1
In what follows, we will be focusing very largely on the experience of English as a school subject
within the state system in England. Even the term state system marks a simplification of the
complex map of schooling provision that is both highly stratified and atomised to the point of
incoherence. There remains, however, a fairly clear line of divide between those schools that are
state-funded, attended by over ninety per cent of the pupil population, and the private, fee-paying
sector. In each of the other countries of the United Kingdom, the relationship between government
policy and curriculum has been a somewhat different one. For an account of these differences, see
Jones (2003).
Like Miller, we understand the ZPD as a sociocultural space, not merely (as in more psychological/
technicist appropriations of Vygotsky) a way of referring to an individuals capacity for further
development. See also Daniels (2001) for a Bakhtinian, dialogic reading of the ZPD.
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Barthes, R. (1977). Image music text. London: Fontana.
Barton, J. (1984). Playing Shakespeare. London: Methuen.
Britzman, D. P. (2003). Practice makes practice a critical study of learning to teach. Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press.
Daniels, H. (2001). Vygotsky and pedagogy. New York & London: RoutledgeFalmer.
DfEE (Department for Education and Employment). (2001). Key stage 3 national strategy: Framework
for teaching English: Years 7, 8 and 9. London: DfEE.
Freire, P., & Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy: Reading the word and the world. London: Routledge and
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Jones, K. (2003). Education in Britain: 1944 to the present. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Miller, S. M. (2003). How literature discussion shapes thinking: ZPDs for teaching/learning habits of
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Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the Subaltern speak?. In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.), Marxism and the
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MA & London: Harvard University Press.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1987). Problems of general psychology, including the volume thinking and speech.
New York & London: Plenum.
Wesker, A., & Thacker, D. (1994, April 13). The trial of Shylock. Guardian.
Williams, R. (1958). Culture is ordinary. In N. MacKenzie (Ed.), Conviction (pp. 7492). London:
MacGibbon & Kee.
Yandell, J. (1997). Sir Oracle: The merchant of Venice in the classroom. Changing English, 4(1),
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Yandell, J. (2008a). Embodied readings: Exploring the multimodal social semiotic resources of the
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Anne Turvey and John Yandell

Institute of Education, University of London
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MARK HOWIE
11. AUTHENTICITY WAS NEVER REALLY

THE QUESTION
Reading, Ethics and the Historical Interruption of Literature
Teaching by English
Criticism must be sensitive to the way in which language reveals the other
and our responsibilities to the other (Eaglestone, 1997, pp. 78).
ONE
The teaching of literature has historically had a concern with ethics (Eaglestone,
1997; Hunter, 1997; Scholes, 1989). Thus it is not surprising that the pieces by my
Australian and Dutch co-contributors should emphasise the sort of reflection and
judgement that allows readers to connect what is represented in texts to aspects of
their being in the world. Evident in their contributions are practices which accord
with Hunters identification of an enduring ethical emphasis in the teaching of
literature in schools. We see in them what Hunter describes as the superimposition
in the classroom (p. 315) of an aesthetic pedagogy and its use as an instrument
for social and moral training (p. 319). Ramon, Mies and Piet-Hein begin by
emphasising the importance of self-reflection in reading: We will assume that
identification and recognition of personal experiences can grant access to a text, so
the text can be used for further personal development. Prue writes of the importance
of reflection, depicting it as a step to self-actualisation for students. Through
engaging in reflective writing in response to literary texts, she argues, students can
learn to speak in their own voice.
In both of these examples we can also see the influence of epi-reading, a concept
Eaglestone takes from a schema developed by Donoghue (1981), as perhaps the
dominant reading practice in English studies, if not, as the Dutch contribution
suggests, mother tongue education more generally. As Eaglestone explains it, the
practice of epi-reading is founded on intentionality, or the desire to hear the
absent person (Donoghue, quoted in Eaglestone, p. 3). In this practice, the reader
transposes the words on the page into a somehow corresponding situation of persons,
voices, characters, conflicts, conciliations (Donoghue, quoted in Eaglestone, p. 3).
I have, for the most part, read the texts of my co-contributors with a sense of
affinity. As an Australian teacher of senior secondary English, I recognise the
reading pedagogy depicted in these texts to take place in the space between two
key historic models or discourses that also continue to underpin the curriculum in
HOWIE
my home state of New South Wales (NSW). These are the cultural heritage model,
which understands literature as Literature, a canon of writing that is supposedly
universally valued for being the best (intellectually, aesthetically and morally) that
has been thought and written, and growth pedagogy (Reid, 2003), which locates
the focus of English teaching in the language and experience of young people, in
contradistinction to any valuing of the great texts of our cultural heritage. It is
certainly the case that tensions exist within senior secondary English in NSW,
where traces of the past dominance and prestige of Literature have remained highly
influential following the historical interruption of Literature teaching by (the New)
English after the famous Dartmouth conference of 1966 (cf. Dixon, 1967; Peel,
2000). Dartmouth, of course, is associated with growth pedagogy, a subject model
which opened up the possibility for young people to appropriate literary texts as a
moment in the formation of their identities, in a way that is akin to though not, as
I shall explain, identical with the ethical imperative that Eaglestone describes. As
such, growth pedagogy has offered a sense of the possibilities for an ethic of reading
that has perhaps never been fully realised in senior Secondary English in Australia.
I will go on to argue that this has been so primarily because of the paradoxical
reliance of personal growth on the enduring and overshadowing influence of
Literature, through a shared grounding in epi-reading, for whatever purchase it has
attained at this level. My contention, in short, is that the enduring influence of the
discourse of Literature in schools exceeds the inclusion of classic works on
reading lists. It is perhaps even more evident in the prevailing influence of epireading, and the way this practice has come to be applied to a more expansive
range of texts and textual forms. As Hunter argues, the notion that English and
literature teaching offer a privileged moral insight into all departments of ethical
life (p. 332) has been remarkably enduring, despite changes in curriculum, including
changes to reading lists and course structures and content (cf. Patterson, 2008).
Recontextualised in terms of the secondary English or mother tongue classroom,
Eaglestones understanding of ethical criticism enables a different sort of focus on
the relationship between ethics and literature teaching to that of Hunter. Eaglestone
moves considerations beyond the superimposition of ethics through particular pedagogies of reading and responding to literature. His thinking shifts attention instead
to how particular pedagogical practices employed in the teaching of literature are
being experienced by students as ethical subjects. In other words, Eaglestones
notion of ethical criticism offers a way of attending to the ethical in the textual
(p. 7), and not just the ethical capacities that students might develop through an
experience of texts that is defined by a strong tradition of pastoral guidance and
self-reflective practice (Patterson, 2008, p. 314). Student readers are not simply
trained in ethics; rather, their lived experience of the classroom is ethically
implicated and has ethical significance.
As my prefacing quotation from Eaglestone implies, the act of reading bestows
upon the reader the responsibility of responding in some form. Accordingly, I respond
to my co-contributors by reflecting on my teaching of the NSW English Extension
2 course. In this course, as I will make clear, the ongoing tensions in secondary
English between the historic subject discourses of Literature and growth-influenced
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AUTHENTICITY WAS NEVER REALLY THE QUESTION
English are very obvious. (Patterson suggests that the senior years curricula of other
Australian states put greater emphasis on ethics than the NSW curriculum [2008,
pp. 320321]. This could well indicate that such tensions will also be obvious
in classrooms in other states; certainly, as shall be seen, my reading of Prues
contribution suggests that this is the case in Victoria.) Taking my lead from the
work of Eaglestone on ethical criticism, I explore the possibilities for ethical selfreflection when students write in response to texts in an expressive manner, a
pedagogy I associate most strongly with personal growth. Expressive writing of
this sort might also be characterised as the translation of epi-reading into an overtly
subjective critical writing practice, and therefore in keeping with the idea that such
a reading is also the translation of words to acts (Eaglestone, p. 3), such as in this
particular example the expression of a new moral sensibility. My engagement
with the thinking of Eaglestone will take me in turn to the philosophy of Levinas,
which informs Eaglestones understanding of ethics.
My contention is that the defining practices of Literature teaching and personal
growth pedagogy do not adequately prepare students to recognise and act in response
to the way language reveals the other and our responsibilities to the other. This, it
must be stressed, is not to deny that personal growth otherwise appears to have
been a historic interruption of Literature teaching, its pedagogical other, promoting
an alternative ethic through its emphasis on teachers engaging with the otherness
of their students, making space for their lives, language and voices in the official
curriculum. However, as I will go on to explain, (growth-influenced) English retains
the paradigmatic assumption of Literature teaching that the realm of ethics is
separate from the realm of the aesthetic, or from works of literature, making it
necessary for readers to proceed through the text to a realm of ethics (Eaglestone,
p. 30). In other words, both subject discourses, for all their differences, assume the
separation of ethics and language.
My own commitment is to a form of English studies that involves a revitalised
commitment to ethics, heeding the ethical call for interruption (Eaglestone, p. 164)
by promoting a pluralistic understanding of reading and response and, consequently,
the subject positions available to students. This is as distinct from the cultural
heritage model, which advocates of growth pedagogy criticised, and from growth
pedagogy itself.
The ethic of reading to which I aspire understands the different reading positions
available to student readers to be grounded in key historic models or discourses
of the subject English. These models or discourses are sometimes represented as
competing (Morgan, 1997, p. 17). A concern with ethics that welcomes the arrival
of the other, in this instance the pedagogical other, is likely to suggest that these
discourses are best approached in a way that resists the reductive logic of the same,
which is characteristic, for example, of dialectical synthesis, or reading in a manner
that is simply oppositional. Certainly, this is the position to the different subject
discourses that I am advocating here, when considering their pedagogical recontextualisation. I have sought in my teaching to bring the subject models or discourses
underpinning the NSW curriculum into a dynamic, transformative relationship
(Howie, 2005). This is one that requires students to engage with the idea that
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HOWIE
reading and the making of meaning are open-ended, contingent and provisional
activities that are fully mediated. Meaning, as I understand it, is not transcendentally
derived from, nor does it originate in, the unique and singular consciousness of the
individual, be it the author or the reader. On these terms, an ethical understanding
of reading and reading pedagogy is one that remains open to difference and even
surprise, recognising and, importantly, keeping in play the meaning making
possibilities stemming from the characteristic approaches of different subject models.
In short, I argue that an ethical reading is one that instantiates a centrifugal movement
outwards from a fixed centre, resisting a singular, definitive response or a final
word, all the while keeping students attention on the relationship between language,
text and self-expression. Having worked through to this understanding, it is here
that I find my sense of affinity with my co-contributors representations of their
pedagogy lessens and becomes problematic.
TWO
In my text I signal a particular stance towards a certain historical understanding and

discourse of literature and its teaching, using grandiose capitalisation to represent it as
Literature. Following Widdowson (1999), I do this to signal the rarefied nature of
Literature as a concept and pedagogical instrument. Historically, exorbitant claims
have been made for the institutionalised study of Literature. These claims have
been succinctly summarised by Widdowson, who suggests that By the middle of
the twentieth century, in the Anglo-American tradition, the concept Literature was
centrally established [as] a select(ive) and valuable aesthetic and moral resource to
replenish those living in the spiritual desert of a mass civilization (p. 59). As a
consequence of this historical development, students, particularly in the senior
secondary years, have been expected to access such replenishing ethical and civilizing
resources by learning the practices of criticism, in order that they might internalize
or make their own certain moral messages. The aspirations held for Literature
teaching in its liberal humanist guise, which give it a prophylactic function in
response to rising secularism and the supposed depravities of modernity, set before
it what Eaglestone calls an emancipatory ethical mission (p. 15).
The enduring influence of Literature has been particularly evident in 2010, with
widespread attention being given to the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of
Harper Lees To Kill a Mockingbird. Noteworthy in commentary surrounding this
event has been the emphasis placed on the ubiquity of the novel in classrooms
throughout the western world (see, for example, Craven, 2010). In general, commentators have depicted the novels main character, Atticus Finch, as the supreme
liberal individual. He has also been understood to reflect the humanistic, ahistorical
and apolitical values of his creator. Cravens epi-reading of Mockingbird, for
example, rests on both his assertion that Atticus Finch is indisputably an archetype
of goodness and his contention that Lee has escaped the net of racial politics and
American history, instead writing in a universal and timeless voice that is something like moral truth.
At this point, I feel it necessary to emphasise a certain problem, or paradox, for
the ethical claims of the sort of reading practices Craven applies to Mockingbird
172
when they are used in the classroom. In a liberal, humanist model of teaching
Mockingbird, the student self is brought into being and validated to the extent
that he or she is willing to be subsumed by the literary other, identifying with
Atticus Finch in order to take on the values of Harper Lee as his or her own.
By the same token, as all of this suggests, the idealised other of any Literary text
has always already been conjured into being before the act of reading begins. As
I have argued above, within a humanist model of Literature teaching it is in fact
this conjuring act that largely enables a text to be defined as Literary and worthy of
study. It is entirely unremarkable that To Kill a Mockingbird should be so popular
with teachers, for it presents an ideal of selfhood that is congruent with the ideals
of liberal democracy. As Craven describes it, the novel is a morality tale for
millions. It consequently depicts values and ways of being in the world that are
certainly not going to be discovered for the first time in the dialogic exchanges that
ideally characterise an English or Literature classroom. To the contrary, how most
teachers will want students to respond to this novel has, half a century on, been
well and truly decided before the students begin reading it. For example, one
Australian teacher (Spires, 1999/2000) has outlined the professional isolation she
experienced in seeking to question the dominant liberal, humanist approach to
teaching Mockingbird of her colleagues.
To the extent that reading Literature is indistinguishable from a particular understanding of criticism, the Literature student is by definition required to learn how to
perform such criticism. Studying Literature might consequently be characterised
as learning to operate from a set of pre-given strategies and understandings, or
learning to do and be the same as every other reader-critic. A paradox is evident
here. The great individualising mission of liberal, humanist criticism Bloom
(1994) writes of reading Literature as the relation of an individual reader and
writer (p. 17) seems to be of a piece with normalisation, reducing difference to
sameness by ascribing for students a particular way of approaching the task of
reading, and setting in place boundaries of acceptability in terms of what can be
said or written in response. I can return here to the example of To Kill a Mockingbird.
Operating within the liberal, humanist model of Literary criticism, renowned
Australian critic Craven responds to those who would dare to suggest that the novel
has racist undertones by delimiting its meaning in definitive terms: it should not
be sneered at in the light of politically pious hindsight.
It therefore seems clear to me that Literature teaching strives for wholeness,
completeness, unity, symmetry and closure. There is little room here for ineffable
otherness. Evident in the emphasis that Literature has traditionally placed on
attaining a definitive reading that makes clear an indisputable and universal moral
message is a paradoxical quest for certainty that might be understood to be ethically
lacking. This is so because of its reliance, as is evident in Cravens reading of
Mockingbird, on a standard of correctness set by an authors sense of life
(Nussbaum, quoted in Eaglestone, p. 51). Such reliance on authorial intention, which
does not hold up to sustained examination, as Eaglestone for one has shown,
creates a totalising system which enacts a form of violence, in that it disallows
multiplicity in being (Levinas, 1969, p. 216). Admittedly, the humanist
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HOWIE
understanding of reading as a process of identification and enactment made possible

by authorial intention would appear, at first glance, to be defined by sympathy for
the other, and consequently entirely ethical on the terms I have begun to outline
here. This is an understanding, for example, that I recognise as underpinning the
teaching of my co-contributor Mies, who describes using empathetic responses
to fiction to open her students eyes to social inequality and injustice. However,
Levinas argues that an ethical relationship with the other cannot be reduced to a
movement of sympathy merging us with him [sic] (p. 89). Moreover, taking his
cue from Levinas, Eaglestone (pp. 4852) makes the case for how identification
and enactment demands a certain solidarity and symmetry a refusal of surprise
that calls into question the ethical claims of empathic reading. Without denying its
necessity at some point to teaching and learning in a Literature or English classroom (cf. Thomson, 1987), this sort of thinking about ethics gives us, at the very
least, pause to reconsider the claims made in Miess piece and Cravens commentary
on Mockingbird as to the primacy of empathetic reading as a pedagogical goal.
A further defining element of Literature teaching, in contradistinction to
English, is its emphasis on reception at the expense of composition (Sawyer, 2006).
I will subsequently go on to consider the implications of this hierarchy for varied
types of expressive writing undertaken by students in response to texts, which Prue
describes as students speak[ing] in their own voice, of their own response. My
particular focus will be the possibilities for an ethical (self) criticism of the sort that
Scholes (1989) advocates, in which we rewrite our lives as we read, through the
pedagogy of having students reflect in writing on their own reading responses.
THREE
The teaching of English in secondary schools has historically sought to differentiate

itself from the teaching of Literature. English has come to include texts drawn from
popular culture and most significantly students own texts (cf. Peel, 2000;
Sawyer, 2006). Such a shift in orientation has significantly involved the movement
from a central concern with Literary criticism, or responding to and evaluating the
writing of others, to valuing student composition. The study of English is concerned
with students reading the texts of others, the text that is the world around them, and
the text of their own lives in order that they might actively give shape to their own
experience in their own compositions. This echoes Scholess ethical injunction that
we keep on reading in order that we might keep on rewriting the texts that we read
in the texts of our lives, and keep on rewriting our lives in the light of those texts
(p. 155). English would appear to have embraced difference and heterogeneity,
rather than the sameness reflected in a shared Literary tradition and the practices of
liberal, humanist Literary criticism. It seemingly remains open ended and does not
seek a definitive understanding or final word. Students are working out how to be
in the world, in their own way and largely for themselves, in dialogue with
significant others. To the extent that it is accurate to suggest that English students
are expected to do more than internalise particular (already) authored and authorised
views of being in the world, English seems to be ethical in the sense in which
174
Scholes and Eaglestone appear to understand this word. English brings the realm of
the ethical into the classroom and the realm of language, in a spirit of fraternity
and discourse (Levinas, p. 216) that remains interruptive and asymmetrical. This
allows students the space to reflect upon and rewrite their lives in response to the
texts they read, meaning English resists the reduction of the other to the same,
which is essentially the mission of Literature teaching as I have described it
above. Such, at least, is the ethical promise of English, not least because of the
defining influence of personal growth pedagogy. For the way these arguments have
been played out at the level of policy and in classrooms is obviously very
complicated.
One particular complication relates to the highly problematic notion of authorial
intention, and how it is implicated in both the study of Literature and English. A
concern with intentionality, which plays such a key role in the study of Literature,
did not disappear with the historic movement from Literature to English. To the
contrary, authorial intention and its corollaries of presence, truth, and authenticity
can be understood to have actually made possible the shift from Literature to
English. As Gilbert (1989) argues, (so-called New) English took the idea of criticism
as a direct engagement with an authors mind, intentions, preoccupations, and
recontextualised it in terms of student composition, establishing the primacy of the
pedagogical goal of students writing in a personal manner that is at once honest
and sincere. This view of English accords with Eaglestones description of epireading, highlighting how authorial intention is actually as essential to the identity
and being of English as it is Literature. Intention is an enduring and necessary
supplement to students understanding of themselves as readers and as writers in
both of these significant discourses of English studies, and this stems from the
shared grounding of these discourses in the critical practice of epi-reading. Intentionality is essential to any understanding of texts, whether those written by
established writers or students, as a direct expression of self, and elides contradiction and difference, collapsing meaning and form into one. Largely ignored by
the proponents of epi-reading is the fact that self expression, as a type of response
that follows on from that form of reading which is making sense or meaning of
ones own being and the surrounding world, is no less subject to the exigencies of
rhetoric and the vicissitudes of interpretation to the whole regime of temporality
and textuality (Scholes, p. 154) than a Literary critical response. Phenix (1990),
for example, describes expressive writing as a form of self-talk that allows us to
be ourselves (p. 73).
As Scholess formulation of the whole regime of temporality and textuality
suggests, it is never possible to posit a notion of voice that is singular, authentic
and present to itself, whether one is referring to writing done by students, or writing
done by others to which students are responding. As it is impossible to appeal to
the presence of the author behind the text as a way to secure meaning, an appeal to
intention also cannot function as a gauge of the validity of a students interpretation.
Moreover, if the presence of the author behind the text cannot secure the meaning
of a literary work, students expressive writing similarly cannot be understood as
the authentic expression of a transcendental consciousness. Such writing is always
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HOWIE
constructed, always produced according to a set of protocols set in advance. There

are always gaps (temporal, intellectual, emotional, physical ) between the student
author and the autobiographical subject. This is the case with both the critical and
the expressive writing students are required to produce in response to Literary
texts. There is no personal response in either case. Both forms of writing are
examples of school writing, by which I mean writing that is doing certain kinds of
identity work sanctioned by schooling.
On these grounds, English and Literature teaching become largely indistinguishable because they are unified in (impossibly) presupposing a singular, whole and
complete human agent. The interruption of Literature teaching by English has
perhaps not been as abrupt and definitive as some have suggested (see, for example,
Donnelly, 2007). This suggestion of an alternative history calls into question the
(interruptive) ethical promise of English in its relationship with Literature, and
focuses attention on the work being done in classrooms by teachers to bring some
sort of disciplinary order to the relationship between Literature and English.
FOUR
In the texts by my Australian and Dutch co-contributors, I see an evident tension

between the power and status of Literature and the ethical promise that arises from
reading and responding to Literary texts under the influence of other subject discourses or models. Such a tension inevitably creates paradoxes in reading pedagogy,
as is evident in the way that returning to the example at hand the ethical
promise of English in its interruption of Literature has been stymied.
On my reading, Prue sets herself and her students the apparently impossible task
of melding a liberal humanist discourse of Literature teaching with an emphasis on
the (supposedly but impossibly) authentic self-reflection that English values. This
is evident when one of her students reflects, with no hint of irony or incongruity,
on the efforts she and others have made to understand both the meaning Farmer
had intended and what the stories meant to us, as if these two different types and
levels of interpretation can be reconciled and held at the same time in a Literature
course. Prues emphasis on the presence of the author behind the text to secure
authentic meaning, which is actually made manifest in a rare classroom visit
Fortunately for us by the author being studied, has clearly been internalised by
this student. Certain of Prues students have apparently come to believe even if
they remained unaware of this or could not express their awareness in the manner
I am here that the extent to which they are allowed to be able to speak in their
own voice is delimited by the degree of correlation between their own response
and what it has already been agreed that the author was likely to have meant, if not
what she actually said she meant when she visited.
A type of symmetry is clearly at work here. The responding student must
genuflect before the implied figure of the author, her response being little more
than a variation on the same, by which I mean a socially agreed interpretation as to
what the author might have meant that has already been determined by and within
the interests and boundaries of liberal, humanist criticism. The apparently otherwise
176
ethical movement towards self-realisation, or students finding their own voice

and in so doing interrupting a fixed and monologic understanding of the studied
Literature, in effect sees them echoing a collective voice that is also somehow
attributable at the same time to the monolithic figure of the author. Consequently,
in Prues text we see the responses of students being disciplined, in the sense that
they are brought into line with the sort of criticism demanded by the discipline of a
liberal, humanist study of Literature. This eventuates despite Prues attempts to
open her Literature classroom to influence of pedagogical strategies more directly
associated with personal growth and English, as seen in her emphasis on students
writing expressively, in an online and collaborative environment, to their reading.
Despite Prues ethical orientation towards opening up her Literature course to
a pedagogical other, I still detect in her piece a sense that the reflective writing she
has required of her students is not of the same value as meaning making processes
more closely associated with Literature teaching. In other words, the relationship
between Literature and English in Prues classroom appears to remain hierarchical
and symmetrical, even as she stresses the disruptive value of pedagogies that are
more growth orientated in nature. Of the classroom visit by the author her class is
studying, Prue writes:
She draws them in with her funny stories against herself and paints a picture
of a young woman with whom they can all identify. The students are in awe.
They find that she is not a rabid, man hating feminist at all. This is arresting
for them, some comment that they need to rethink their hasty conclusions,
that they might read her work differently now.
In effect, by inviting the author (and her intentions) into her classroom, literally
and otherwise, Prue is arguing that reading Farmers work differently for her
students means they should actually begin to read it as it should be read; that is, the
way it might be conceived Farmer would have it be read. This amounts to the
closing and fixing of a desired set of meanings. Farmers presence certainly provokes
recognition of values and ways of being that initially went unrecognised by Prues
students. In this way, the students do appear to be rewriting their lives in light of
the text they have been reading. But paradoxically this also involves a kind of
identity or identification with the author, a kind of collapsing of their selves
within the self that Farmer offers them.
Here we see Prues emphasis on expressive writing run smack against the
enduring force of liberal, humanist criticism and the requirement that students read
and respond to Literature in a sanctioned manner. The necessity of certain critical
protocols, particularly the notion of authorial intention guiding students reading,
does not sit readily with Prues professed belief that reflective writing (as an
expression of the student self) will help them to refine and extend their understandings of Literature. In the context of a senior secondary English curriculum,
emphasis on expressive writing is clearly underpinned by competing, perhaps even
irreconcilable impulses. One impulse values instinctive (or pre-reflective) selfexpression. The other is rather suspicious of self-expression, instead valuing critical
re-finement and emphasising (self) discipline. Prue herself describes this as rectifying
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HOWIE
students blind spots. As such, her emphasis on what she calls metacognition runs
the risk of opening the space of interiority only to close it, doing violence to her
students understanding of themselves and their being by making alien aspects of
themselves which they might otherwise value.
I would emphasise that such a consequence is a structural inevitability, likely to
be brought about by any attempt to open Literature to the influence of pedagogies
more closely associated with English and personal growth. Certainly, it is a consequence that is clearly evident in one example of a students expressive writing that
Prue quotes: Unfortunately Im not very good at metacognition and sometimes
I abandon logic for emotion and intuition. Represented here is a surprising turn of
events: a student feeling they must apologise, in an English studies class no less,
for feeling different and not wanting to be constrained by an imposed interpretation
(in this case of their very being as a student). For all the work Prues students have
done on learning how to continue to refine and extend their responses to Literature,
the student in question at least has found this to have limited applicability to her
own developing sense of self.
Prues efforts to interrupt the study of Literature in her class, working towards a
very different ethic of reading from that propagated by the powerful liberal, humanist
discourse, would seem to have been undermined by the enduring force of authorial
intention. Her efforts to create the pedagogical space for a very different understanding of the act of response, which acknowledges the value of reflective writing
by students, actually reifies the notion of authorial intention, and paradoxically
serves to highlight the gap between the more instinctive nature of students personal
responses and the more disciplined responses they are apparently still expected to
produce within the enacted curriculum. That this is so is attributable to the fact that
such expressive writing is still intended to be critical in nature, which is to say it is
the product of epi-reading. The very idea that drives Prue to open her pedagogy to
other, asymmetrical influences, paradoxically also becomes the reason for effectively
closing it off, as she does by literally inviting the author into her classroom and
consequently (re)establishing a symmetrical relation between her students and the
otherness of the text they are studying. Prues thinking appears to be that if she
can go directly to the original source of meaning, why not go beyond the text and
do so. Her pedagogy ultimately cannot engage with Otherness, at least in the way
that Eaglestone and Scholes suggest, because of the enduring disciplinary power of
epi-reading, with its emphasis on authorial intention.
FIVE
Prues failure to bring about an ethical criticism in her classroom, as reflected in

the examples she provides of her students expressive writing, is clearly not a
consequence of some personal or pedagogical failing. It is a failure, as I have
argued, that was structurally determined by a curriculum that has been formed not
from the interruption of Literature by English, but from the subsuming of English
by Literature, when the latter is understood as being of a piece with a form of
criticism that privileges intention. Subsequently, hierarchies of power and value in
178
relation to criticism and composition were consequently (re)formed in Prues

classroom, and these appeared to marginalise the more growth-like expressive
writing by her students that she otherwise sought to privilege.
The structural limitations that inevitably made problematic the status of the
expressive writing undertaken by Prues students would seem, from Piet-Heins
contribution, to be more generally an issue of mother tongue education when it
has a literary focus. Piet-Hein notes that one can have a reading experience and
subsequently reflect upon it in writing. He also notes that experience can be a
skill as well as a discovery. This sense of key structural differences being inherent
in acts of reading and response, dividing each from the other, is very useful in
highlighting that the experience of reading, and whatever understandings and
reactions this might produce, is not to be conflated with the act of writing about
this experience. It cannot be assumed that the writing a student produces about
their reading is in fact an immediate and faithful transcription of the authentic, prewriting discoveries he or she has made in the act of reading. An example from
Miess contribution highlights what I mean.
Mies expresses every confidence that the reading log entries her students have
made in response to Blue is Bitter are authentic, or somehow pre-textual, acontextual, [and] utterly unmediated (Lucy, 2010a, p. 17). They are, it would
seem, understood by her to be significant indicators of moral development and the
realisation of the ethical goals informing her teaching. However, a response such as
that by Anna, who is quoted as having written I did not know that boys can also be
prostituted, how awful!, casts doubt on this assertion. Anna might well have felt
awful. However, given the confronting and distressing content of the book she was
reading, as outlined by Mies, it could be argued that she was always going to write
such a response, once the reading log task had been set. I remain unconvinced that
Annas emotional response, as heart-felt as it appears to be, originates purely from
or with her. From my experience, and as Prues reflections indicate, students are
able to read the hidden curriculum very incisively. It is not hard to imagine that
Anna knew that the writing task before her required a certain sort of response, and
that only a certain sort of response would be acceptable to her teacher, who had,
after all, selected the novel for very overt reasons related to social justice education.
Knowing her teacher was going to read and evaluate her response, Anna could
hardly have written, say, I did not know that boys can also be prostituted. It is
pleasing to see that gender equality is now evident in even the most heinous of
criminal activities. Our society has truly advanced. In the formation of Annas
response, her reading of her teachers intentions and desires will be integrated with
her pre-existing understandings of sociality, community and morality, helping her
to intuit the sort of ethical self that is best (or most prudently) expressed in her
present circumstances. And this is a self that Mies was clearly already anticipating,
displacing Annas inner-life as the singular and originating centre of her reading
log response, including its morality.
As I would suggest is the case with any form of expressive writing, a reading
log is a performance. In it students perform being a reflecting reader and writer,
creating a complex persona with which they should not be immediately equated. In
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HOWIE
this sense, and despite the attempts of Ramon, Mies and Prue to distinguish between
Literary (i.e. critical) and expressive responses to text, the subject position a
reading log makes available to students is not so very different to that made
available to them by a traditional critical response. To describe a reading log as a
performance does not make the responses students have recorded untruthful or not
genuine. But it does emphasise that intentionality cannot be secured by the apparent
presence of the (student) author behind the text; it reminds us that, contrary to the
claims of liberal, humanist criticism, intention is a particular textual effect,
distilled by critical readings but always exceeded by the text (Culler, 1983, p. 218).
Mies is, by her own admission, more interested in promoting empathy for others,
or epi-reading, than exploring issues of textuality. As she describes her pedagogy,
she appears to treat the characters and the events in the novel she has selected for
class study as if they have a life of their own, and are not representations. She
expects her students to do the same. As a consequence, in this particular representation of her teaching, she apparently takes little concern with the textually
mediated nature of the relationship between her students responses to their reading
and the type of writing they are expected to do in their logs. She does not, for
example, read and evaluate Annas response beyond its intentionality, or as anything
other than the expression of her students inner-life. For this reason, at least on my
reading of what is only a very partial representation of her classroom, she appears
to have little interest in the sort of ethical questions relating to reading that theorists
like Eaglestone pose, offering instead a genuine but problematic vision of ethics
being engaged in the teaching of literature.
In responding to Prues text I have observed that she encouraged her students to
engage in metacommentary and online discussion that was supposed to somehow
reflect their authentic selves the self that freely engages with and responds to
the text. I argued that this notion of writing as an expression of self elides the ways
that writing is also a taught practice. So, too, with Miess class and the reading logs
students were writing. In the interests of promoting a particular ethical understanding
of reading and responding to Literature (or, as is more accurate for Miess class,
literature), I have replied to both Mies and Prue by highlighting the limitations of
appeals to authorial intention, whether in students own texts or those of others, to
secure meaning, and the consequent need to teach students to be reflexive about
their reflective and expressive writing. It has been my contention that teachers need,
in the interests of an ethical understanding of reading and response, to help
students to come to understand their expressive writing in response to Literature as
a constructed, textual artefact, bringing into being a certain sort of self in a way
that bears comparison with their supposedly more impersonal and objective critical
writing. As a consequence, students might come to better understand the performative elements of such writing, and the reading practices upon which it depends.
In fact, in my teaching of the Extension 2 course in NSW, I have found it to be the
case that helping students to come to a deep understanding of reflective and
expressive writing in response to texts, including their own, is integral to their
success. In this course, responding to text in a personal way is a skill as much as
it is a discovery, and consequently it is something that can be enhanced by teaching
180
students to understand their own authorial presence as an effect of textuality rather

than intention. This, I would suggest, requires an ethic of reading that recognises
the ethical dimensions of lived classroom experience, and which is sympathetic to
the points of convergence to be found in the thinking of Scholes and Eaglestone.
SIX
Since the introduction in 2000 of the current NSW syllabus (Board Of Studies,
1999) for the final two years of school, an elite minority of students have been able
to undertake a major independent project as part of their matriculation year studies
of English. This project takes the form of a major composition, which is submitted
for external examination. Given it is centred upon composition, as opposed to
reception, the course might be said to be the most overt manifestation in Australia
of the historic interruption of Literature by English. Composition is broadly defined in
this course. Students choose from options that allow them to work with and in
traditional (or Literary) textual forms and non-traditional forms; students are also
able to elect to complete a major critical study. It is a further requirement of the
course that an accompanying Reflection Statement of 1500 words be completed
and submitted with the major work. The main purpose of this document is to explain
to the examiner the process the student has undertaken in completing their major
work, as well as the works intended meaning and how this meaning has been
realised through aspects of language and form.
My critique of the assumptions of both English and Literature in no small
part derives from the fact that I teach the Extension 2 course. Teaching in this
course has provided me with an opportunity to think again about the relationship
between the subject discourses of Literature and English, reflexively inquiring into
the assumptions that underpin my own professional practice, and to explore
possibilities for kinds of reading and response that have not hitherto been available
to me in my work with students. In the course of teaching this new course, I feel
that I have been able to reconceptualise what it means to read and to write in an
English classroom. The very process of implementing this course of grappling
with the issues of curriculum design and implementation that a new course involves
has prompted me to rethink these dimensions of my practice.
In particular, it has allowed me to me to recontextualise, and test out in new
conditions, the transformative model of programming for response that I have
proposed elsewhere (Howie, 2005). In keeping with my theme here, I would like to
recast that model in ethical terms. The way the model asks teachers and students to
work, in a recursive manner, in and through certain frames, each derived from a
different subject model or discourse underpinning the NSW curriculum, seems to
me to be congruent with Eaglestones definition of ethical criticism as an interruption in many different forms (p. 170). Such an approach to programming
seeks always to open out meaning, to encourage another response through different
understandings of language and text, enabling to the extent that this is possible in
a school context, with imposed assessment requirements and so on students to
enact the ethic of There [being] no final reading, no last word (Eaglestone, p. 179).
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HOWIE
Space does not allow me to show how this programming model works, which is
something I have done elsewhere (Howie, 2008 and 2009). Instead, I would like to
focus here on some outcomes of its use, highlighting how it has helped one of my
students, Sara, to come to rewrite a text she has read in the text of her life, and to
rewrite her life in the light of this text. By way of comparison with the sort of
expressive writing being undertaken by students in the classroom snapshots
provided by my co-contributors, I will seek to highlight the textual strategies Sara
has employed in her Reflection Statement, as she strives for an ethical form of
textual criticism and expressive writing, resisting any appeal to intention for
meaning or the validity of her interpretations.
SEVEN
Saras major project was entitled De-fining Obama: Exploring Performativity and
Authenticity in the Language of Identity Politics. (Her choice of a set of speeches
as the basis for her project suggests a further interruption of Literature in the NSW
curriculum, in this case by a broad definition of literature, which is able to
accommodate the tradition of belle-lettres.) In her Reflection Statement, she
summarised her project as follows.
My major work seeks to respond to questions of truth and authenticity
which arise in the study of language. Its exploration of the role and distance
between language and identity inevitably leads to consideration of the fluidity
identities assume apropos the ethical dimensions of response and criticism. A
close reading of the language of Barack Obama, a figure who arguably
epitomises the notion of ever-changing identity characteristic of postmodern
times, highlights the inherent link between language and identity. In studying
and responding to these themes in Obamas speeches, through the critical
frameworks of speech act theory and Derridas notion of iterability, my essay
seeks to evaluate the validity of a distinction being drawn between authenticity
and performativity in communication acts. From here I consider the
implications of this for understanding identity.
Eaglestones ethic of (critical) disruption is a very apt description of the different
critical-creative strategies employed by Sara in her project. Sara actively writes
against the gap between the major work and the Reflection Statement, resisting
the otherwise reductive functioning of the latter as a means to expound her
supposed intentions as the singular author of the former. This is most obvious in
certain choices she made in relation to the structural organisation and textuality of
her Reflection Statement, which she chose to place before her major work when it
was submitted to the NSW Board of Studies for examination.
Saras Reflection Statement begins with a heading that reads The Last Word
or, rather, not. Tellingly, she does not close this off with a full stop. It then
continues with a piece of italicised text that is placed between a top and bottom
border, and which does not include a fully formed last word or again a full stop,
In a final gesture I return to the stage and stand upon it, perpetually. It seems that
regardless of how I might try to resist, my performance will never come to an.
182
A series of three rhetorical questions follows: What were my intentions? Were they
authentic? Do these things matter?. Here we see a carnivalised attitude (cf. Bakhtin,
1984) to the reflection statement being adopted, a critical-creative strategy that
calls the whole enterprise of the reflection statement into question, most overtly its
supposed instantiation of an authorial presence behind the composition. This, of
course, is occurring even as Sara sets about fulfilling the formal requirements of
this course component. Her central concern with performativity runs on from her
essay on Obama, which actually comes after the reflection statement, blurring the
lines between critical and expressive forms of response, but without recourse to
intentionality. Saras experimentation, her performance, has not originated with
her, as she acknowledges, but is being depicted as a condition of writing in general.
The placement of the reflection in front of the essay is also a form of response by
Sara to the task and subject position of being a critical reader of her own text. In
this move, she takes the expressive writing required of her beyond the bounds of
self-revelation and into an entirely other ethical realm, indicating that the project
has left her with the responsibility to fashion and express her (reflective) self in
a certain way. She apparently does so in order to enact the conclusions she has
arrived at in her essay with regards to the ethical possibilities enabled by certain
perspectives on language and text. Sara responds first and foremost in a textual
manner to her understanding that she has been called into question by completing
her project, as indicated by the first of her rhetorical questions. Saras critical
reading and writing, in other words, become a way of being that interrupts the very
idea of a singular, self-present consciousness and identity, which the Reflection
Statement is otherwise expected to establish, and to which both traditional Literary
criticism and growth orientated expressive writing refer for meaning and validation.
In a sense, in keeping with the ethical aspirations of the transformative programming
model I have been working with, Sara has interrupted the historical interruption of
Literature by English, practising an alternative form of reading to epi-reading. (Of
course, this not to suggest that such a disruption was something she intended.)
The interruption of particular understandings of identity and being is certainly
the focus of Saras writing in response to her own composition. The refusal of
closure is a key element of the ethic enacted through her expressive response to her
own writing, as well as her response to the various texts that she read in completing
her project. The start of Saras Reflection Statement actually picks up from, but
most significantly refuses to complete the ending of her essay. To help make this
clearer, the final two paragraphs of Saras essay are reproduced below, with a
minor edit for the sake of coherence.
No, the performance is not yet over It seems that as long as I continue to
go on writing, this performance will also continue. Regardless of what
I do, I, like Obama, will never escape the performance; the Other will always
be watching and the authenticity of my performance will always remain
questionable, even when that other is myself, as this conclusion makes clear.
I have come this far and can only conclude, as my social contract with my
reader necessitates, that authenticity was never really the question, even if it
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HOWIE
was the question that got me this far, which is nowhere near as far as
performance has taken President Barack Obama.
In self-consciously adopting highly performative writing strategies, such as the
creative use of punctuation and syntax at the start of her reflection statement, Sara
displaces her authorial self from the centre of her expressive writing. Instead, we
see a self that is inextricably textual and textualized, one that is made possible by
the reading and writing she has undertaken in completing her major work.
Moreover, it is expressed through practices that self-reflexively refer outwards to
the very conclusions with regards to the relationship between language and
identity, authenticity and performativity that she arrives at in her essay.
Thus it seems that the questions of paradox and contradiction raised by the
Obama persona and its use of rhetoric are not ones for dismantling by
rhetoricians or academics with a totalizing system or theory, but instead
might be observed for the ethical impact the performance has on society and
what good the President might bring about. However, notions of ethicality,
like democracy, can never be said to be complete, pure or entire in that the
communications and text required to disseminate such ideals through society
are inevitably caught in questions of paradox and contradiction. Regardless of
the words or utterances that Obama uses in his attempt to move somewhat
closer to democracy, he is inevitably, like anyone attempting to
communicate, caught up in the limitations of the text. Therefore, the crafting
through language of an identity that is pure and whole and entirely singular in
meaning becomes an impossible task.
In the organisation, physical placement (with regards to her essay) and language
of her Reflection Statement, Sara seems to be making a case for the fact that she
has not so much authored her essay, as it has authored her at least the her who
is writing the Reflection Statement. This allows her to refuse the closure that comes
with the last, all-defining last word of a singular and centred authorial presence.
She further opens out her work, and its (proper) being or identity, by taking it
from the context of an examination process, and (re)defining it, as both a (literarycritical) work and a form of work, in a spirit of affinity with Derridas (Derrida,
1994) notion of a new international, particularly the idea and ideal of democracy to
come. (Sara had, in the process of completing her project, undertaken some reading
in this area.) She writes in her Reflection Statement, Like all texts, [the] identity
[of mine] may be unfixed; however, its role is evident and perpetual: to be read,
reflected on, responded to and, as a consequence, open minds to the possibilities
of democracy the very promise inherent in Obamas ascension. In these words,
I see the non-originary trace of what Eaglestone describes as the necessary
witnessing that is the responsibility and duty of criticism (p. 170). As Saras
teacher, it has been my great honour to be here, in this piece, a witness to her
work. It has been my privilege to respond to her writing, recontextualising it as part
of a new and different dialogue, and consequently reshaping its identity and state
of being, along with hers. This is a responsibility I have been willing to embrace
with a sense of affinity shared with Sara for the new international. In fact, this
184
is an affinity that I believe to be a defining element of English studies and essential

to any understanding of ethical criticism (cf. Lucy, 2010b).
The self-reflexive interruptive approach adopted by Sara conveys a very real
sense of the way that students can, by embracing the idea that expressive writing is
a textual performance, as opposed to the authentic expression of a present and
singular self, begin to understand how they might rewrite the texts they have read
in the texts of their lives, and consequently rewrite their lives and selves in the light
of those texts. Such an outcome requires awareness on the part of teachers of the
ethical limitations of the epi-reading practices that have come to define the
discourses of Literature and English, most particularly their shared emphasis on
intentionality and the symmetrical relationships this creates in classrooms.
CONCLUSION
In my reading of the texts of my co-contributors, I have endeavoured to instantiate

my belief, following Levinas and Derrida, that an ethical response is one of
recognition, even fellow-feeling, but which nevertheless refuses absolute solidarity.
I have therefore understood my response-ability (Pope, 2002, p. 261) to be to
locate through close and generous reading, in a non-traditional or Leavisite sense,
an interruption or alterity within [a texts] dominant interpretation where reading
discovers within a text insights to which the text is blind (Critchley, 1999, p. 30).
In other words, to identify what the said of the texts of my co-contributors cannot
say. In this way, what Critchley (p. 31), paraphrasing Levinas, describes as the
passage to the transcendence of the Other is produced. This brings us close to
what Eaglestone appears to mean when he emphasises interruption as a key defining
feature of ethical criticism. My own text, of course, is now open to critical interruption. I make no claims as to a final word, or a definitive statement on my
chosen themes. Instead, I only hope that this text will promote further dialogue.
In the exploring the expressive writing of my own student, Sara, I have sought
to illustrate how students might come to practice an ethical criticism in their
expressive writing. I believe that Saras writing provides a real sense how students
can, by embracing expressive writing as a textual performance, rather than the
authentic expression of a present and singular self, find a way to negotiate the
historical tensions that continue to exist between Literature and English tensions
that are very visible when students are required to conform to a systemic requirement
to write in an expressive manner in response to their reading. The ethical critical
alternative, as Saras writing appears to confirm, is not one that is reducible to
common sense. Indeed, it requires teachers and students to remain open to the idea
that we should resist a sense of solidarity with the self that is brought about by
writing of a self-revealing nature, a notion which can help us move beyond the
compromised promise of an ethic of reading that has resulted from the enduring
influence of intentionality, as has been passed on from Literature to English. The
idea, of course, that There is nothing outside of the text (Derrida, 1997, p. 158)
remains a controversial one, to the extent that it is now routinely depicted in public
commentary in Australia and elsewhere to pose a threat to Western civilization (cf.
Lucy, 2010a). I prefer to believe it is an entirely ethical belief, and one that actually
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HOWIE
promotes ethical practices in English studies. Saras writing emphasises that it is

also a belief that is on the side of nothing less than the idea and ideal of democracy.
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Fremantle Press.
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Spires, M. (1999/2000). Developing a critical literacy approach with To Kill a Mockingbird. English in
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Mark Howie
Springwood High School
NSW, Australia
187
IRENE PIEPER
12. LITERATURE CLASSROOMS AND THEIR LIMITS
ESSAYING AN ESSAY
An essay in the style of Montaigne provides an attractive option that is not usually
stressed in my academic writing, namely to articulate a subjective voice and to
present a stream of reflections rather than a line of argument which is unfolded
systematically in the course of the text. Joining a professional dialogue on literature
classrooms via an essay seems especially appropriate: it is an ongoing challenge to
talk about and deal with cases of teaching and learning in such a way that their
complexities can be met which asks both for focus and a respect for the dynamics
of shifting perspectives.
My contribution to our conversational inquiry is strongly influenced by
discussions on literature education and related research in Germany. There seem to
be considerable commonalities in education across countries and continents in the
Western world, as the conversation presented in this volume shows, and yet as
I engage in the cases written by Dutch and Australian literature teachers I am
mindful of the way that my perspective has been shaped by my experiences as a
teacher and researcher in Germany.
Literature education has received a great deal of attention in Germany after the
country participated in the international surveys on literacy outcomes and
performed badly in PISA 2000. Suddenly it became apparent that our curricula had
a rather dramatic blind spot: reading literacy was expected to have been developed
by the end of primary education (usually grade 4), and so from grade 5 on not
much attention was paid to enhancing reading competencies, the assumption being
that students would be able to read and comprehend texts which were considered
appropriate at a certain year level or which had traditionally been taught in certain
years. This is central to any understanding of literary education because the domain
reading dealing with texts and media in secondary education is at the same time
the domain of literary education (cf. Pieper, 2007). Thus Literaturdidaktik took
up the challenge and has since then put more effort into developing a reading
curriculum beyond primary school than ever before.
At the same time the debate on literarische Bildung has been renewed, a
concept which stresses identity-formation through engaging with well accepted and
highly valued, canonical literature and which is influenced by the idea of Bildung
as Wilhelm von Humboldt shaped it. At the moment this concept is taken up to
counter-balance the more instrumental notion of reading literacy (cf. Rosebrock,
2008). However, literarische Bildung had been criticised quite strongly as an
PIEPER
elite-concept in the 1970s a crucial time for the establishment of the discipline
Literaturdidaktik in the universities. The concept Lese- und literarische
Sozialisation (reading socialisation and literary socialisation) at that time became
more prominent. It introduced a broader view to the formation of personality and is
meant to be more inclusive, e.g. with respect to learners from lower socioeconomic
backgrounds who are less likely to be introduced to literature through their families
(cf. Pieper, 2010). The concept of socialisation, which is both a descriptive and a
normative concept, points to the contextual aspects of learning and offers systematic
insights which should provide a basis for adequate interventions.
Re-reading some of the more programmatic studies of the 70s offers some djvu at this moment, because much of todays discussion in Germany is about the
gulf between learners from different socio-economic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Key issues were raised then that the educational system has still been
unable to solve: how to design learning contexts in such a way that Bildung is not
what learners need to bring with them in order to unfold it further, but opportunities
are offered for experiences which allow students to develop their potential as
readers. And although there is a consensus that reading literacy should somehow be
attended to, teacher educators and experts in the field of Literaturdidaktik argue
that an approach which emphasizes instrumental training has pronounced shortcomings in that it does not cover the richness of reading experiences and it does not
even outline the pathway that students are able to follow to meaningful cultural
practices. Moreover, such an approach might feed the illusion that educational
success is simply a matter of being trained in certain skills and strategies (cf. Pieper
et al., 2004; Bertschi-Kaufmann & Rosebrock, 2009).
In contrast to such a reductionist approach so the consensus appears to be
amongst the voices in this conversational inquiry, at least students should be
entitled to manifold experiences with respect to language and literature. The
elementary role of both language and literature is stressed internationally by a
current Council-of-Europe-project which links this notion to the right of learners to
language education and develops it further within a framework of pluri-lingual and
intercultural education (Coste et al., 2009). Literature is seen to play an important
role in education in many respects, not least because it can enable students to cross
cultural and national boundaries (Pieper et al., 2007). So, when stressing the idea of
meaningful literary praxis as something that is integral to identity formation, it is
possible to establish links to the traditional concept of literarische Bildung, but in
a more liberal, egalitarian, and learner-oriented sense that has a more worldly and
transcultural character which affects the notion of literature in that it moves beyond
the concept of canon.
However, in the context of institutional learning a more instrumental approach
towards reading literacy is not the only competitor to literary education in this
richer sense. Another challenge within the German context has emerged with respect
to the need to provide precise descriptions of competences which can be acquired
in dealing with literature and which can or should be applied in understanding and
interpreting literary texts. This research question obviously has significant educational
implications for pedagogy, curriculum and assessment. Within the frame of literary
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LITERATURE CLASSROOMS AND THEIR LIMITS
education, these competences should then of course be taught. This is another

consequence of an outcomes-orientation in the educational system which has
brought about new forms of assessment for literature and which has led to a
renewed focus on a methodology of close reading. Meaning then follows exegetical
procedures and can and should be justified by referring to the text (Kmper-van
den Boogaart & Pieper, 2006). Thus, reading literature at school in a way takes up
the philological tradition again, which was far less popular before 2000 and now
has to be balanced against notions such as the one and only valid interpretation and
unreflective processes of canonization and valorisation. It is therefore claimed that
with regard to literature the what and how to assess should be discussed in the light
of literary theory and even cultural sociology (for a summary of the discussion see
Abraham & Kepser, 2009). With regard to the learners one might ask: Is it possible
to follow literary texts closely and in constant dialogue with other readers as well
as in dialogue with the text, under the guidance of a teacher or even student-peers,
within the institutional frame of the literature classroom, with an exam at the end
and still experience this as meaningful and as a worthwhile learning process?
While formulating this question I realise that I insist on dialogue and implicitly
argue conversation to be the form of dealing with literature in the ambitious frame
of literary praxis alluded to above. This seems to be in line with the program of this
whole conversational inquiry and the positions of the various contributors to it.
Still, from a methodological/pedagogical point of view,1 dialogue about literature
in the literature classroom remains one option among others. More activity and
production based approaches have lately been emphasized in German teacher
education activities such as producing texts as responses to texts, designing
dialogues, making drawings, acting out texts in the form of scenes or tableaux,
often with the aim of shaping the learners way into the text and allowing for learnercentred individual meaning construction.2
Teacher educators and researchers have made a strong point about the tensions
inherent in classroom dialogue, referring to Mehans reconstruction of the initiation
replyevaluation (IRE) sequence (Mehan, 1979), and the dominance of the teachers
own reading of a text and his or her mediation of the interpretation process within
classroom settings. The IRE sequence does limit possible ways into the text (cf.
Wieler, 1989). Scenarios construct learners as following a strict route with very little
room for finding their own language or for developing their thoughts. I am thinking
of the pattern which Ehlich and Rehbein call teachers lecture with various roles
where the teacher allocates parts of the text to be spoken to learners by posing
precise and closed questions (Lehrervortrag mit verteilten Rollen, Ehlich &
Rehbein, 1986). A literary dialogue, if it is to be genuine, has to be arranged
differently (Merkelbach, 1995; Hrle & Steinbrenner, 2004). It should be oriented
towards an understanding which is not based on dominance, but on cooperative
communicative action as postulated by the philosopher Jrgen Habermas. Habermas
sees the competences that make a subject capable of speaking and acting, that put
him (sic) in a position to take part in processes of reaching understanding and
thereby to assert his own identity as fundamental to the development of personality
(Habermas, 1987/2006, 138).
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PIEPER
Another route which links identity formation to conversations goes back to the
philosopher, theologian and educational researcher, Friedrich Schleiermacher, who
in 1798/99 wrote his Versuch einer Theorie geselligen Betragens (Essay on a
theory of social behaviour). In this essay he attempted to link the social to the
romantic concept of socialising in the so-called salon (Schleiermacher, 2000). Here
again personal development is a strong notion. Both the romantic Schleiermacher
and the contemporary philosopher Habermas stress the link between identity
formation and the shaping of society in constant dialogue with the traditions and
cultural knowledge that constitute social life. They link their theoretical
considerations to everyday life. Both learning and socialisation are important
aspects of their theories, a presupposition being the wish to understand the other.
Habermas insists that part of the process of understanding is the achievement of an
agreement on what the situation is. This has a stabilizing function:
In coming to an understanding with one another about their situation, participants in interaction stand in a cultural tradition that they at once use and
renew; in coordinating their actions by way of intersubjectively recognizing
criticisable validity claims, they are at once relying on membership in social
groups and strengthening the integration of those same groups; through
participating in interactions with competently acting reference persons, the
growing child internalizes the value orientations of his social group and
acquires generalized capacities for action. (Habermas, 2006, 137)
What could be the status of literature in a dialogue of this type? What are the
circumstances which can allow for such a dialogue? Does this presuppose a cultural
and social homogeneity which is not a common feature in todays classrooms. Isnt
this insistence on personal development via communication expecting a bit much
when it comes to literary education? I have students in mind whom I taught in
upper secondary in 2000 who made it perfectly clear that it would sometimes be
quite a relief to deal with a clear cut task instead of doing all the talking.
Thinking about literature as the centre of a dialogue amongst learners or between
learners and teachers raises an important question concerning literary expertise.
After all, literature has been the focus of quite a diverse body of literary knowledge,
including theories and reflections across various disciplines. And what about the
relation between achieving an understanding and exploring the manifold meanings
a text might have for a community, maybe even involving heated controversies?
Does the whole point of dialogue as invoked by Habermas sense lead into too
much harmony? Jonathan Culler sees limits of aiming at well argued, yet moderate
interpretations on the route of Umberto Ecos model reader. This construct of the
Italian Semioticist and Linguist points to a process of meaning construction which
carefully follows the textual clues and aims at an adequate interpretation (Eco,
1999). The latter is brought into opposition to making use of the text. Culler, to the
contrary, argues in favour of overstanding the text (with a terminology that he
finds in Wayne Booth; cf. Culler, 2007, 172), the just interpretation on the traces of
the model reader not being stimulating and not leading into new knowledge. Culler
justifies what is often criticised as overinterpretation: overstanding the text
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consists of pursuing questions that the text does not pose to its model reader. [ ]
it can be very important and productive to ask questions the text does not encourage
one to ask about it. (Culler, 2007, pp. 172173) From my own experience in
teaching and teacher education I sense a sometimes strong discrepancy between the
approaches of the literary academic and the hermeneutical praxis of students, even
in upper secondary, who are preoccupied with coming to terms with a story rather
than deconstructing meaning or comparing various interpretations of the text.
In now turning to the conversations on literature and literature education presented
in the Dutch and Australian cases, I would like to raise questions concerning the
institutional frame of the classroom. Needless to say, this differs considerably from
the free salon of the romantics and Habermass idea of a discourse without
hierarchical restrictions. Classrooms raise a number of issues that complicate these
ideals, including the relationship between the literary expert (the teacher) and the
novices, and the ways of staging the dialogue (a term used by Laila Aase at the
symposium on verbal understanding and literature at the IAIMTE conference
2007) need attention: in short the ways of bridging what might need bridging if
circumstances are those of the real rather than of the ideal worlds of communication
presented by Habermas and Schleiermacher and if development and learning are in
focus. Expectations about literary dialogue should not, after all, present an impossible
ideal that ultimately leads to disillusionment. I am aware that this lense is a subjective
one, and it may leave a lot of noteworthy aspects in the shadow. At the same time
I am conscious that each essay in this ensemble illuminates different dimensions of
a literary education, tackling the question of the meaning of a literary education from
the writers own situation and concerns. My own perspective is one which
foregrounds the way classroom settings mediate the exchanges that occur within
them, and which considers the potential of such exchanges not only but also as a
product of those institutional settings.
RAMONS ROUTE THROUGH PRE-ACADEMIC LITERARY EDUCATION
All three cases feature an aspect of literary education which I have not looked at
yet, but is foregrounded in Ramons reflections: the attitudes and expectations about
literature that a teacher might have developed through his or her own socialisation.
Ramon explains his own passion for literature by going back to his school days as a
student and sees these experiences as a driving force for choosing literary studies
and a professional career as a literature teacher. This passion has developed a somehow postmodern academic character in that Ramon knows how to apply diverse
concepts from literary theory to a literary text. This is not a matter of preferring
one theory over another, but of recognising the potential of each to facilitate an
alternative reading of a text:
From the knowledge I have gained from these ideas, I believe that combining
these different approaches when reading and analysing a text is most
rewarding. I want to pass this capacity on to my students. I want to make sure
that by the end of their high school education they are able to read a book in
different ways and that they are able to use different approaches.
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PIEPER
Reading this I wonder about the attribute rewarding. I suppose that from Ramons
perspective this is a kind of intellectual gratification which moves beyond personal
enjoyment with regard to a story to a different form of appreciation.
The quote above links this experience to a teaching aim that turns out to be
ambitious. Ramon provides the students with tasks which he has linked to theoretical
approaches to literature. The intended group work is designed beautifully and it
should lay out the path towards the acquisition of tools for advanced readings in
this pre-academic classroom. I am interested in the implicit notion of competence
in the design of the lesson: Ramon clearly aims to inculcate a set of strategies and a
knowledge which can be applied again to reading other literary texts a competence
that is a much more technical concept than the philosophically based one by
Habermas which I mentioned above. Ramon uses the term tools several times
towards the end of his reflections and invokes the notion of an extensive interpretive
repertoire as something he wants his students to develop. However, his thoughts
on the lesson and on the follow-up-discussion with Mies and Piet-Hein show some
dissatisfaction. In a plenary session the students are much more inclined to discuss
the protagonist than to compare their approaches. Suddenly the teachers role
changes: during the group work he had handed over responsibility to the students
to a large extent: they were required to work their way through a task based on a
specific theoretical perspective, then form new groups where expertise could be
exchanged. Now that things do not work out, Ramon takes the lead and his reflections
show some frustration: they are not yet ready to read a story in the way that I read it.
In trying to analyse the mismatch of lesson design and students performance,
Ramon points to the story he has chosen, which he sees as too difficult for his
students level of literary competence. Here I wonder about consequences: from
this observation his more directive teaching might be seen as being entirely appropriate. If students need more scaffolding in order to advance to this level of
engagement, the expert might be needed to a larger extent. So, one way of reading
this case could be that Ramon is showing the necessary flexibility to re-arrange his
design in the course of the lesson. And I have some sympathy for reading it in
this way because choosing an adequate story seems to me to be an art in itself:
it would be closing the process of engaging in literary learning if the challenge of
dealing with a difficult text was always to be avoided. How do we balance these
two sides of one coin, looking for something that is adequate and at the same time
a demanding piece of literature? After all, teaching can be given and arrangements
can be made in order to assist students in finding their ways into the text. It could
be argued that in literary education we should look for instructional texts: texts
which partly exceed the learners literary competence but have a potential to develop
students competences (are instructive) especially if mediation (instruction) is
provided in classroom contexts. Adequate texts in classroom contexts thus differ
from those which parents might rightly consider as adequate birthday gifts or
which peers recommend to each other for leisure reading. This of course does not
mean that motivations and interests of students should be ignored but that a careful
text-choice should not only look at where learners are but also at where they should
move to.
194
Ramon himself concludes that his aim of providing tools is not achieved. Instead
the students seem emotionally detached from the text and this may be the reason
they are stuck. While he himself experiences a combination of different approaches
as rewarding, the students do not seem to benefit from being provided with tools to
engage in this kind of interpretive activity. Maybe the questions which could derive
from their readings are not yet to be dealt with in such a differentiated way but are
to be found closer to their experience? Perhaps Ramons frustration also points to
one of the pitfalls of teaching competencies in this more technical sense: in order to
stress what can be generalised and transferred the significance of the chosen piece
of literature, which is somehow unique (though not necessarily high art), gets lost.
Yet the story does have some content and meaning. Thus, Ramon decides to put
much more emphasis on the reading experience in the future.
At the end of his reflections or rather, of the insights that he has presented to
us Ramon seems to aim at a different balance which puts more stress on the
personal approach to the text as a basis for a conversation that can be more and
more advanced. I here sense more strongly than before the notion of identity
formation as providing a context and rationale for reading literature. It is, however,
in my opinion one of the dilemmas of pre-academic and even academic literature
teaching to balance the need to establish a personal link with the text with encouragement for a sensitive and critical reading which listens to the text and other
readings and then or at the same time? argues an in-depth-understanding.
Ramon does not only aim at this but also at a dynamic process of meaning construction and a comparative approach of interpretations that is systematically arranged
around different theoretical approaches. Perhaps practice here has to get in the way
of theory? After all, even literary critics would probably rather argue their own
point than that of their colleagues or competitors; they are not necessarily able to
detach themselves from their preferred approach but remain convinced of its rightness.
However, I do appreciate the ambitions Ramon brings into the classroom. It seems to
me that his trust in the students potential and his intellectual respect open the route
to engaging with the challenges of literary study for students and teachers alike.
MIES ROUTE TO SOCIALLY ENGAGED READING
Mies might be said to start where Ramon ends: She underlines the importance of
identification with protagonists, engagement in the story and involvement. What
the two seem to share is that they are both passionate readers though probably in
different ways. Mies ambitions are not only related to experiencing what is presented
in a piece of literature. By choosing youth literature for the class she wants to engage
in a discussion of social topics and when students even take the initiative to raise
money for a charity she feels satisfaction: I have reached my goal, to induce
compassion and fear. And what is more, I have incited an actual willingness to get up
and do something against social evils. And to underline the value of this experience
she borrows from one of her favourite authors, Joost van den Vondel, who aims at
this classic form of engagement according to his preface to the tragedy of Jephta.
Mies arranges her lesson as a form of inquiry. She wants to know whether students
of the age of 13/14 who are said to be driven by an interest in plot and storyline, as
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well as a desire to escape reality, can take the step towards a socially engaged
reading. Piet-Hein later elaborates upon the relationship between the aesthetical
and the ethical dimension of literature and literature education, pointing to problematical disjunctions and restrictive positions. In Mies class I sense a strong
pedagogical dimension of literature teaching that is reflected in the text she has
chosen for study, namely an example of youth literature which is by definition
rather heteronymous than autonomous: youth literature is situated in the context
of socialisation and education and takes over functions with regard to its prior
addressees. A pedagogical and normative dimension is included, although not
always explicit. In an interesting article on youth literature in the literature classroom
Bettina Hurrelmann points to another tension: the Sitz im Leben (setting in life)
of childrens and youth literature is not usually the classroom but rather leisure
time, family surroundings, peers (Hurrelmann 2002). So, in a way, school crosses
borders, and it is not surprising that Mies compares her way of dealing with the
book Blue is bitter to a book-club-setting which is also an arrangement outside the
institutional frame of school education. This is also shown by the way Mies aims at
creating an atmosphere of trust and intimacy. Hurrelmann is in favour of reading
childrens and youth literature in school and has been an important supporter of
bringing those books into school. However, she insists that the change of the Sitz
im Leben needs to be acknowledged and I wonder about the systematic differences
of the space created in school from the informal one of a family setting. For
example there is a physical and emotional closeness between parents and children in
reading together in family contexts which certainly influences the reading experience.
In primary education and with younger learners in secondary school it is a
learning process in itself to keep some distance, be it towards teachers, be it in
dealing with daily life themes. The classroom is a far more public space than the
family.
Within an expert-discussion I talked about youth literature in school and the
development of competences with four teachers of lower secondary Gymnasium.3
One of them, lets call him Anders, brought up the issue of emotionalising via
literature. He was very critical about it and when we asked for an explanation he
expressed his concerns about not crossing the border by functionalising emotions
and being too suggestive or even manipulative: Das ist doch auch bestimmt der
Grund, warum viele dann dieses Thema Drittes Reich einfach satt haben, weil sie
diesen Prozess nicht mehr wollen, sie wollen nicht mehr stndig diese Keule auf
dem Kopf haben und dann so, jetzt denk mal nach. (I am sure this is why
students [in Germany] are so fed up with reading about the Third Reich because
they dont want this process any more, this being hit on their head with a cudgel
and then now think. Transcript Hildesheim 5/2010, 91/92, my translation).
Anders is also a teacher of philosophy, who insists on showing respect towards the
personality of the other, and I was impressed by his determination to make room
for emancipatory thinking and to preserve a critical distance. There remains, of
course, the other side, which was pointed out by one of his colleagues who insisted
that at times it may be necessary to create emotional closeness so that students can
get involved.
196
Here, the ethical becomes an issue not only of literature but also of pedagogy in
general. I suppose that to achieve the right and responsible balance is not something that teacher educators could systematically instruct their students to achieve
or that teachers could plan in detail. It is perhaps less something that can be
dictated by a set of principles, but is rather situational and linked to experience, not
to mention the personal style that a teacher develops in facilitating relationships in
class. However, when reading Miess account of her teaching, it struck me that the
institutional frame is not only a restriction to literature teaching, but can also
provide a room where students can deal with strong and challenging experiences.
They can thereby develop ethical judgements. This means, however, that they
should have the option to identify as well as to distance themselves which should
be beneficial when looking at issues more closely. If involvement is too strong the
emotional experience can be overwhelming and is possibly appreciated as gratifying.
But this experiential closeness can come into the way of reflection and readers can
miss out on the complexities of the conflicts presented. This is why the recognition
and analysis of perspectives and other literary techniques is not only a (pre)academic
task in higher education but also a way of realising how a narrator or an author
supports certain views, contrasts different perspectives, makes room for the identification of ethical dilemmas etc. The concept of empathy takes into account these
complexities in that it moves beyond identification in the sense of involvement
with one character and aims at developing engaged forms of multiperspectivity
(e.g. Rsch, 2007).
Also, it is via a more distanced and critical view that overstanding the text in
the sense of Culler can be a conscious and productive process. Classroom communication can offer room for a critical and enriching exchange which should be
carefully developed over the years. I realise that Mies provided individual writing
tasks and think about the dialogue of the writer with his or her own text. This might
also provide a safe and beneficial environment, including the prospect of an
exclusive exchange with the teacher, which is something that is very important to
younger students. To experience this dialogic thinking via writing as enriching,
though, is quite demanding for learners.
PRUES ROUTE TO A JOINT CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE
Re-reading Prues dialogue with Bella now, after dealing with the reflections
offered by Ramon, Mies and Piet-Hein, I think that Prue could be said to share both
Ramons more academic interest and ambition and Mies engaged approach. Prue
appears to be motivated by a belief that students and teacher can work together, in
order to think about writing in a way that illuminates the world they share with one
another, and to reflect on how they want to live in it. She writes: Talk, writing,
and talking about writing, are not ends in themselves but also a way of helping us
to construct our futures both public and private.
Engaging in the process of learning how to interpret Farmers text thus
becomes relevant for the way the students think about their lives. Although the
communication that occurs around Farmers book is strongly linked to social
issues, the enlightening interactions in which the students engage also appear to
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PIEPER
have at their heart an awareness which is an aesthetic one. For Prues teaching is
clearly driven by a desire to develop a literary expertise, too. Her aim is to impart
hermeneutical skills that enable her students to approach a discussion of the
stories via a close examination of short passages to increase their confidence in
moving from the particular to the general the approach they need to demonstrate
in the passage analysis task in the end of year exam. She offers theoretical insights
e.g. of Freudian analysis in order to have the students participate in analytical
discourse and she encourages them to think about their own thinking in the light
of an intellectual character by providing them with a quote from Ron Ritchharts
book. Thus, Prue offers a rich arrangement that allows for a deep encounter with
Farmers stories but also stresses the conscious intellectual development of her
students. Preparing for exams at the same time scarcely seems to pose a problem.
The whole encounter between Prue and Bella shows that students and teacher alike
have emancipated themselves from perceiving exams as external obligations that
determine everything they do. Moreover, the classroom seems to have become a
space for a postmodern variant of the romantics salon:
Strict boundaries are so naturalised in schools that we become nervous of
blurring them, but I like it when I do. Students bring their recess talk with
them into class. They flick in and out of a personal chat as they prepare for
the days lesson. I see such informality as a way of learning about each other,
and hence contributing to our ability to have conversation about an idea or a
text or a piece of writing.
Prue joins in and takes part in the learning, she often uses the we, and she
considers the process they are going through as a joint construction of knowledge.
Another boundary of the classroom thus dissolves: teacher and students here form
a community, despite the fact that Prue does some scaffolding and supervises her
students learning process. She also varies the arrangements: group activities,
plenary discussions, blogs and teacher-student-dialogue allow for different kinds
and levels of interaction.
There is an impressive sovereignty in Prues reflections as well as in her design
of the lesson which is certainly encouraged by the professional dialogue of the two
teachers. Both enjoy the reflective space which has opened up between and around
them and which allows an opportunity for clarifying aims and thinking about
pedagogy. And I wonder why such an arrangement which is so obviously beneficial is
the exception in our German schools rather than the rule. Time is needed, as well as
respect and trust between the participants in such conversations but time is probably
the most difficult and expensive part. Teachers who work full time hardly find the
opportunity to visit each other in class because they are teaching themselves during
school hours. Bella clearly sees the exceptional aspect of the whole arrangement:
This idea of talking for the sake of talking about education feels a little
special. No workshop activities to structure our thinking or outside experts to
talk to us about how teaching happens and should be done. We are two
colleagues who share a passion for English teaching and we have this unique
opportunity to talk to each other about what we know and do, from a unique
198
perspective the inside of a classroom. It is a privilege to be allowed into

another teachers classroom.
However, especially in this Australian case I feel the need to look at what is
around the classroom in a more attentive and focused way. Bella senses the extraordinariness of the place, an elite girls school, when she compares it to an ordinary
Australian government school:
At a glance what strikes me about the students whom I see here compared to
the students that I taught at my old school is an almost intangible sense of
place and social cohesion; it is in the way they talk, the way they walk, in
their gazes, in how they make use of the schools physical resources and in
how they wear their uniforms.
Bella realises that the whole setting confirms the right of a certain I to exist and
name the world. In this setting, preconditions for an education on the route to
literarische Bildung in its strong sense can surely be described as optimal. There
is a consensus about values, habitus and lifestyle in Bourdieus sense; there is
choice, even in the very concrete sense that students decide to do literature; there is
certainly more proximity between teacher and students than in difficult suburbs
where the distance between the educated teacher and the learners families is often
quite extreme. Research on reading socialisation shows that less fortunate students
often cannot experience institutional settings as spaces for exploration and learning
and struggle with more open and egalitarian arrangements (Groeben/Schroeder,
2004): their families might well not share the emancipatory ideas of those who,
because of their higher socioeconomic status and their accumulated cultural capital,
form part of a consensus on the liberal educational practices which I sense forms
the context for Prues approach to teaching. So those students might not be able
to respond to an invitation like the one Prue offers to join a conversation about
literature. They might even feel more comfortable in a setting that is more strictly
regulated. And again I feel that societies lose a lot of the integrative potential of
school if they arrange for selecting students by de-facto-economical differences,
excluding those students who do not have access to the modern worlds wealth.
This affects literary education in a very significant way: schools that cater for
disadvantaged students are often more likely to adopt a simplistic and functionalist
logic in order to equip students with basic skills rather than seeing the need to
provide them with rich encounters with culture in its various forms. The place of
literature in the curriculum is often questioned, as in German basic secondary education at the Hauptschule (Pieper et al., 2004). Would an emphasis on more variety
and less social uniformity in schools have the potential to provide for more social
cohesion and cultural participation that reflects our colourful and diverse societies?
SURPASSING THE LIMITS OF THE CLASSROOM
Re-reading my reflections I realise that the question of how to surpass the limits of
classroom dialogue which can be determined by formal expectations, pressure to
perform well, expectations to succeed in exams, motivations to tackle tasks rather
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than to engage in meaningful debate and problem-solving, has become an important

anchor-point for my thinking. I think that literature perhaps like philosophy,
ethics, religion, and possibly music is a subject which has more potential to
provide a context for a sense of identity formation and the shaping of responsible
interactions. However, literary praxis in the Western world has until now been
more common in middle and upper class environments, and I feel that there are
other environments including schools that cater for disadvantaged communities
where belief and trust in the meaningfulness of literary works is especially needed,
even though it may be much harder to achieve. Mies points to Mary Kooys
Canadian book-clubs which might serve as an example. One of my own projects in
two schools of the Hauptschule in Hildesheim again showed how difficult it was to
engage students and encourage an exchange about their reading. Their reading
books often remained a rather alien praxis to them, even in Grade 7 and 8.
I would consider the academic prospects of literary intellectualism as another
aspect of delimiting the classroom: an approach which is close to emotional
experience and much determined by an engagement in the story is extended towards
more reflective readings and even towards the development of the habitus of an
intellectual character. Such an approach moves beyond the general educational
aims of schooling and surpasses institutional restrictions. Ramons reflections
show how carefully a route to a more academic conception of literature has to be
shaped. It seems to me that giving up the at first glance perhaps nave reading
of a literary text as conveying a meaningful message that might be understood and
potentially has something to offer would be a loss. This does not necessarily imply
an approach which aims at a close familiarity with the text and involvement all the
way through, but foremost a responsible attitude towards the students and the
questions they are capable to reach out to.
Very little has been said about text choice and meaning construction in class. It
would be tempting to bring in a literary dialogue with even younger readers and
watch for its potential for students and teachers alike. Is it perhaps in dialogue with
learners that stretching interpretation beyond the sound and decent in the sense of
Culler, perhaps because of a nave yet interested approach, is productive? Should
students always be aware of the difference between interpreting and overstanding
the text a point which I made earlier? And when do perhaps we have to admit
that we missed the text instead of strengthening its potential? Is this a point to be
made at all?
NOTES
1
Methodisch is what I would use in German. In English proper it is, however, rather the
pedagogical point of view, I have learnt.
These approaches form part of the so called Handlungs- und Produktionsorientierung. See
Spinner, 2008; Waldmann, 2007.
The expert-discussion, where teachers are addressed as experts for their professional field, was
carried out in May 2010 as part of the international project LIFT-2 which is situated in the EUComenius-programme. LIFT-2 aims at the development of an international literature framework for
secondary education. The project is led by the University of Groningen (Theo Witte). The other
200

contributing countries are Germany, Rumania, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Finland. The
experts discussed which novels would be suitable for which group of age and had a set of criteria to
describe the texts. They elaborated about characteristics of learners within their group-discussion.
The project is inspired by a model which Witte has proposed in 2008 (Witte, 2008).
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Bertschi-Kaufmann, A., & Rosebrock, C. (2009). Literalitt. Bildungsaufgabe und Forschungsfeld.
Weinheim, Mnchen: Juventa (Lesesozialisation und Medien).
Coste, D., Cavalli, M., Crian, A., & van de Ven, P-H. (2009). Plurilingual and intercultural education
as a right. Strasbourg: Council of Europe, Language Policy Division. www.coe.int/lang.
Culler, J. (2007). The literary in theory. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP.
Eco, U. (1999). Die Grenzen der Interpretation. Mnchen: dtv.
Ehlich, K., & Rehbein, J. (1986). Muster und Institution. Untersuchungen zur schulischen Kommunikation.
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Groeben, N., & Schroeder, S. (2004). Versuch einer synopse: Sozialisationsinstanzen Ko-Konstruktion. In
N. Groeben & B. Hurrelmann (Eds.), Lesesozialisation in der Mediengesellschaft. Ein
Forschungsberblick (pp. 306350). Weinheim, Mnchen: Juventa.
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Grundzge der Literaturdidaktik (pp. 134146). Mnchen: dtv.
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Deutsch Sonderheft. Beitrge zum 16. Symposion Deutsch-didaktik Kompetenzen im Deutschunterricht
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Mehan, H. (1979). Learning lessons. Social organization in the classroom. Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard UP.
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Pieper, I. (2007). Reading literature: A major domain in German primary and secondary education
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Interkulturelle Literatur und ihre Didaktik (pp. 7698). Baltmannsweiler: Schneider.
Rosebrock, C. (2008). Lesesozialisation und Lesefrderung. In M. Kmper-van den Boogaart (Ed.),
Deutsch Didaktik. Leitfaden fr die Sekundarstufe I und II (pp. 163183). Berlin: Cornelsen Scriptor.
Schleiermacher, F. D. E. (2000). Versuch einer theorie geselligen Betragens (1798/99). In F. Schleiermacher
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Ed., pp. 1535). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
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Deutsch Didaktik. Ein Leitfaden fr die Sekundarstufe I und II. Berlin: Cornelsen Scriptor.
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Waldmann, G. (2007). Produktiver umgang mit literatur im Unterricht. Grundriss einer produktiven
Hermeneutik. Theorie, Didaktik, Verfahren, Modelle. Baltmannsweiler: Schneider.
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Witte, T. (2008). Het oog van de meester [The Eye of the Master]. Delft: Eburon.
Irene Pieper
Department of German Language and Literature
University of Hildesheim, Germany
202
MARY KOOY
13. READING THE WORD AND THE WORLD

Teachers and Students Renegotiate Literature Reading,
Teaching and Learning
Entering the two classroom worlds in the Netherlands and Australia provides a
window into the problems, possibilities, and practices in engaging students in
literature in ways that shift significantly from standard literary practices in
schools. Though worlds apart, they explore territory that stake new claims, pose
new questions, and point the way forward. Both take teacher and student learning
seriously. They attend to them judiciously. But they are not the same. They share
common goals for literature teaching, but each comes to the pedagogy and
curriculum in ways that differ significantly.
Given the two distinctive national and educational contexts (the Netherlands and
Australia) of the cases, we expect difference. Each study, situated within a larger,
contextual realm, reflects its particular informing culture, history, practices, and
understanding of content within existing conceptions of teaching and learning.
Each study represents a departure, a digging deeper, a shift in pedagogy, exploring
the possibility of enhanced student engagement in literary texts, despite policy
mandates that paradoxically work against this.
The two cases re-view the teaching and learning of literature. Each involves
classroom teachers and a supportive colleague or critical friend. Each creates
learning experiences both in the classroom and in dialogue with a professional
peer. Each works to make sense of and reconstruct a developing theory, a praxis
for teaching and learning literature. Each, however, approaches the research from
distinctive perspectives, contexts, and goals (Arnot, Pedder, & Reay, 2003).
My contribution to this conversational inquiry arises out of my ongoing
research around reading, literature and learning. In 2000, I initiated a four-year
research project with nine novice secondary English teachers (Kooy, 2006, 2006a)
who began teaching at the onset of the study. The core of the project involved
reading and reflecting on literature. We collaboratively established a book club called,
books and brunch. The success of the group may be attributed to the fact that it
became a source for mutually selecting the literature, maintaining a reading life,
telling the stories of teaching and life, and collaboratively creating new professional
knowledge critical features in a hostile, educational environment where cutbacks
included no support or mentoring for novice teachers. The group developed into a
meaningful context and community for learning over the course of four years
(Kooy, 2006, 2006a). It was my good fortune to function both as researcher and
KOOY
participant, simultaneously reading and joining the discussion and conducting the
research.
The details of this research have been reported elsewhere (Kooy, 2006, 2006a).
Among its key findings were that this group of novice teachers: (a) developed their
professional learning dialogically and socially through reading books together;
(b) cultivated relationships, critical to a learning community, over time; and, (c) determined choice as central to motivation and engagement. In discussions with the
teachers, I also drew conclusions about how these occasions provided support for
continuing professional learning and the resilience of the teachers in handling the
day-to-day challenges of their professional lives, in that their experiences of interactively participating in discussions around literary texts often created narratives of
teaching that shaped their evolving professional knowledge. It was noteworthy that
these women teachers, though novices (like their students of literature in the
schools), were able collaboratively to cultivate a professional community for
learning. The conclusions I reached in dialogue with them enhanced their sense of
the support they needed for their continuing professional learning and built their
resilience when handling the day-to-day challenges of their professional lives.
An exciting development for me, however, was the way these teachers took up
the principles of learning from engaging with text that we had identified as
underpinning their conversations and applied them in establishing book clubs for
young people in their schools. In 2006, six of the teachers agreed to continue with
the research to investigate how the professional knowledge they had developed
over the four years (in teaching and research) would transition into their schools.
For the purpose of this chapter I will focus on two of the six teacher participants
who created book clubs that included students, namely Sandras student book club,
and Evelyns mother-daughter book club.
These two groups, like the other four, met outside of class time and space.
Initially it surprised me that the teachers did not choose specific classes as research
sites. In reflecting, it seems that their outside-class choices provided an alternative space for transitioning from professional to pedagogical knowledge. The
two groups that I have chosen to focus on seem to me to provide interesting
perspectives on the conversational inquiry being enacted in this volume, as they
model contrasting ways of developing student engagement, collaborative construction
of knowledge in community, and critical analysis of literature (Fielding & Rudduck,
2002).
The two groups under discussion shared common features. Both groups consisted
of a research teacher, all female participants, volunteers, who collaboratively planned
the meetings, selected the books, participated in group interviews at the beginning
and end of each academic year. Research funding and the schools supplied books
and food for each member. The research teachers each had a supportive colleague
who joined the group in 2006. The research teacher supported and organized the
meetings and both teachers participated to varying degrees in the discussions,
though both groups, essentially, were student-led. Members of the research team
(two graduate assistants and I) attended and videotaped each meeting but maintained
a peripheral role in the discussions.
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READING THE WORD AND THE WORLD
Group 1: Sandras group emerged in response to earlier requests by a group of

Grade 11 and 12 black girls in her inner city public secondary school who wanted
to participate in a book club like she did (they had learnt about her participation
in a book club, i.e. in the first phase of this research). She approached her principal
who offered to use the schools literacy funds to purchase the books; the research
funds covered the costs of lunch. Word spread and 16 young women (12 black,
2 Asian, 2 white) arrived for the first meeting (along with Sandra, her colleague
Helen, a research assistant, and me). In our opening discussion, eight of the girls
noted they had never owned a book. The arrival of books remained a highlight
over each of the four years (with many asking daily: Are the books here yet,
Miss?). Membership rotated as senior students graduated and others joined. The
numbers and racial ratios remained relatively stable, however.
Group 2: Evelyn taught in the same urban Catholic high school she herself had
attended. Since her time as a student, the school transitioned from an all-white
to a primarily black student body. Evelyn designed her group in consultation
with her principal. They agreed to invite Grade 9 students and their mothers.
They focused on Grade 9 students, with the aim of offering a club to students
new to the school. Rebecca joined as a student teacher and by year four (2009
2010), received a permanent position in the school. Evelyn and Rebecca urged
the girls to invite their mothers, because in their black, high-density, low socioeconomic neighbourhood, few parents came to the school so this was a grassroots attempt to draw in the parents. Membership in this all-female book club
group remained stable over the four years, with 14 girls and three mothers.
Agreement to remain all-girl and not admit new members remained consistent
over the four years (although regularly, boys, smelling the food, would knock on
the staff room door and ask to join, pleading their desire to read good books).
In connecting to the case studies in the volume, it is worth noting that the nature
and purpose of the two groups are distinctive from their classroom counterparts in
the study; that is, all members are volunteers who collaboratively chose the books,
led the discussions, participated in seven annual meetings and two reflective interviews, and maintained sustained membership. At this point, preliminary findings
suggest: (a) tapping into students experiences of reading provides rich and valuable
data on teaching and learning; (b) being able to exercise choice with regard to the
text for study opened up other forms of inclusion, most notably agreed protocols
about how to engage with and discuss the books; (c) relationships that develop over
time through shared experiences build trust and opened new avenues for learning;
and (d) listening to and engaging with the largely unheard student voices heightened
awareness of the importance of engaging those directly affected in educational
practice and curriculum.
LISTENING TO THE STUDENT VOICES:
TEACHING AND LEARNING LITERATURE
This section comprises two vignettes about the operation of the book clubs in
two different secondary schools. I wrote these vignettes at the time that I was
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KOOY
implementing this research project on book clubs. Membership in each club

consisted of two white teachers and predominantly black girls. I have chosen these
vignettes to gesture towards the range of ways in which the book clubs were
organised without pretending to give a comprehensive account. In the first vignette,
I describe the moment when students selected the controversial book, PUSH
(coinciding with the production and press around the movie, Precious, based on the
book), a decision that generated such intense interest that well over 20 girls arrived
at the door. The discourse differs markedly from the conventional literature
discussions in a classroom.
The second vignette captures moments from an exit interview that brings four
years (Grades 912) of book club membership to a close. Here the members, all black,
and two of their mothers and their teachers, conduct a reflective conversation around
literature teaching and learning. At this point, they are effectively taking on the role
of knowledgeable teachers, educating me and the teachers who were present about
the complexities of reading as they experienced it at school (MacBeath, et al., 2003).
Group 1: Bringing Literature to Life through Interactive Dialogue
The students in Room 117 were still waiting for the lunch bell when the researcher
with the video camera arrived and started setting up. As they left, they noticed
another adult arriving (another outsider, not one of their teachers) with enough
bags of hot meals to feed a crowd. The crowd in question was the student book
club that invaded their classroom at lunch every month or so and was noticeable
in other ways: students in no wise necessarily considered bookish crowded
around hallway windows or were draped (sitting, standing, leaning) on stairs,
discussing the latest book club novel; talking about books including issues of
prostitution, and street violence, of rape and incest, books that departed
sometimes significantly such as in PUSH from books in their English classes.
Each had participated, in fact, in selecting this book. You could tell that made a
difference because they were telling others they should read them, and having
arguments about them, and saying this one was better than that one, and Ill
tell you why.
This particular meeting begins as the students started to trickle in, some
poking their heads in and disappearing before returning a few minutes later.
Gradually, they all assemble, hungry for the food but hungrier, it would soon be
evident, to talk. All entered the room very anxious to register their opinion on
the story of Precious, the main character.
What happened next was nothing like a disciplined discussion; because the
time was short and the things they needed to say werent, they just launched their
opinions across the room and to the persons beside them, striving and competing
to be heard, barely waiting for anyone to finish speaking before cutting in. One
girl, closest to the door, literally positioned herself on the edge of her seat,
perched on her knees, lurching forward into the empty circle their desks made,
and waving her arm now and then, until she captured the first opportunity she
could to say what she needed to say: that she had been through an attempted
rape by her stepdad and that Precious story was her story too. And that was just
the beginning.
206
This scene occurred in January, 2010, at an inner city school in Toronto with a
pronounced population of visible minority (black) students. Viewed through a
traditional evaluative lens, it represents a departure from normalized student discussions in schools: students arriving at different times, overlapping talk, no lesson
plan in place, sensitive topics arising unpremeditated. Looked at another way, it is
a picture of passionate discussion following engaged reading, and chords of
relevance between literature and life being struck in youthful minds. It is a picture,
arguably, that reflects the innate appetite for learning through story and dialogue
(Kooy, 2006). The exchanges tackle the deep issues in the book:
Alisa:
Jamila:
Kasmira:
Evelyn:
Shawnika:
Latreese:
Jamila:
Latreese:
Breelyn:
Gerree:
Kasmira:
Evelyn:
When youre so used to something [the ongoing abuse], you dont

know whats right from wrong.
She said she knew that it was wrong She liked the feeling but
mentally she knew it was wrong.
Her hormones are coming into play.
I liked that she talks about the confusion. Her body is supposed to
feel pleasure but it really angers me that that is what he takes
away from her and that he uses physical violence
I love she wrote over and over, Im so confused I hate him
you bastard
I wanted to ask, you know how school kicked her out because she
was pregnant, what do you think about that, were they right?
Maybe she didnt want to deal with the fact that she was pregnant?
Miss B found out she (Aleese) was pregnant, she was like, oh,
I know how you can get free diapers, and do you have this
you know? She was right on it and we have to talk about
school. It gave her hope; shes not by herself.
In this book, they try to close down doors for you
Its like, when youre pregnant youre done
Yeah, and thats not right
I think principal felt bad after he kicked her out when he saw that
school was only way to get out of house for her.
The discussion turns to the change in Precious life when a teacher advocates for her:
Gerree:
Janine:
Alisa:
Latreese:
I think its the knowledge that comes first you know when you
go to school, you learn skills
And she learned other peoples stories and realized
In that school, she learned she was not alone, there were others
worse off.
She never wanted to explain herself until she went to the
meeting
Toward the end of the meeting, in a completely unscripted moment, Jamila has
as insight about the book club reading experiences:
Miss, if you had books like these in schools, our essays would be amazing. In
these kinds of essays, you can talk about other peoples life stories. Look how
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KOOY
amazing it is [the discussion], and look how long our discussion was
imagine the books. What was it Streetcar Desire What does that have to
do with me? What do I know about years and years ago? Its like were not
going to like it but we have to read it, understand it. But its not interesting.
Were not going to study it, and our essays will be dull and boring
Their spontaneous half-hours talk, the individual reflections and responses that
criss-crossed the room freely, revealed a significant degree of literary analysis:
opinions and perspectives supported with precise recollections of details in the text,
reflections on multiple themes and tensions in the narrative, and connections to
current social topics. Thus their relationship to the novel, in which they had
invested numerous hours of reading time, added importantly to their growing
repertoire of literary, social and intellectual capacities. Janines sudden connection
and comparison between her reading experiences in the book club and her
literature classes prompts her to teach the teacher (Evelyn) that the question of the
canon and the related pedagogy may need reviewing and rethinking, perhaps even
including the voices of the students (Arnot, et al., 2003; Cook-Sather, 2009;
Holdsworth, 2005).
Group 2: Student Voice on Teaching and Learning Literature
At another high school, in a different area of town, a group of female students
begins to gather in the staff room of their newly built school. Little groups
gather around a few round tables distributed in one area of the large room. By
6:00 PM, the food has arrived and is distributed on the extensive counter and
the girls begin to fill their plates, talking, laughing and preparing for the talk
that will ensue. The research assistant sets up the video camera while I find a
chair and arrange my papers on my lap. By 6:30, all girls (14 of the 15 at this
meeting) wander over to the sofas and chairs. Six sit together on a sofa intended
for four; two others sit at the extreme end of another sofa. Soon, two mothers
arrive. They help themselves to food and drink and find a space among the girls;
one sits next to her daughter. The chatter is comfortable, relaxed, interactive.
This is the fourth year of the group meetings; the girls and their mothers have
been together since Grade 9, not at lunch but after school and work hours so
that some of their mothers could participate. The group, made up entirely of black,
female students, three mothers, two teachers and two researchers has been
meeting about every six during each of the four school years. Each left school
on a bus, some worked for a few hours, others looked after siblings, but each
took the bus (sometimes with a young sibling in tow) back to the school for book
club that began with a hot meal at 6:00 PM. Frequently, the staff room did not
empty until 8:30 PM.
Their self-led discussions range across multiple points of interest in the
novels, often leading into deep debate: on how much sympathy the main character
deserves (Winter, the errant daughter of a drug-dealer in The Coldest Winter
Ever), on the trustworthiness of strangers (Lovely Bones); on whether and when
its right to engage in a physical fight (The Color Purple; and the story about
gangs), on what can be done about the signs of suicide (13 Reasons).
208
In this final meeting in their senior, Grade 12 year (June, 2009), the teachers
and students participate in a group exit interview. The topic veers toward the
question of reading itself. The students delved into a reflection on books they
had read for school, on Flowers for Algernon, A Clockwork Orange, and
Shakespearean plays. They pondered why some works of fiction were more
appealing in the classroom context than others and exchanged questions based
on their recent school English reading: Was Flowers for Algernon boring, or
was it the way it was taught? How can A Clockwork Orange be made more
accessible when even the movie is hard to understand? And why was Shakespeare
so prominent in the curriculum?
LaTonya, who asked the last question, responds to a fellow student who
laments being required to read and learn Shakespeare in the original English
verse: But thats not exactly what I mean its not just Im bored why is it a
must? Perceiving the conversation continues to turn on critiquing the value of
Shakespeare in the curriculum, she insists further: No, no, no, Im not saying
I dont like Shakespeare Shakespeare is good, but why do they push it so
much? Three, four, five plays by Shakespeare some people want variety
Reading this vignette now, I can see that LaTonya is not contesting the merit of
Shakespearean learning experiences indeed she stresses her appreciation of the
works. What she is seeking is insight into the rationale for Shakespeares centrality
in the English curriculum at her school. LaTonya thus voices the learners need to
understand not only the what but the wherefore of engagement with literary
texts. She calls attention to the learners position as the subject of inherited choices
and asks whether these choices have been well-considered (Flutter & Rudduck,
2004). She is furthermore testing her freedom, in this dialogic space, to penetrate
the Wizards fortress: Why this book and not others? Why your choice and not mine?
In questioning the choice of required reading in English class, these budding
critics also consider the critical role that teaching approaches play in students
motivation (or lack of motivation) to engage in the reading. Shakia reflects:
I think if a book is boring, what could make it more interesting? Not
everything has to relate to our lives but give us a visual activities we can
understand. Mrs. S made us take a play and rearrange it we got bonus
points for the best lines, did games with the book
Anita comments on the limits of engagement when the motivation is weak: Miss
N said she opened our bank accounts and would put ten cents in each time we read
(aloud), but I still said No.
When, in this particular discussion, the theme of choice in book selection
develops further, Enka relates the experience of the outcome of an independent
study unit the previous year. Students had to choose to work on two of three books
Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Scarlet Letter. She did not find
this level of choice helpful. She encountered difficulties reading The Scarlett Letter:
I tried my hardest. I went through the first page, and it was dense like three
pages in one condensed. And it was so boring I didnt understand what was
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KOOY
going on nothing. And lots of people felt that way. We all had to do the ISU
[independent study unit] we all talked about it, came to school Oh did you
read this part? Yeah, yeah, yeah kind of like a book club meeting.
Enkas anecdote reminds me of the importance of the teachers pedagogical role in
combination with sound curriculum: In the absence of the teachers creative efforts
to motivate engagement with the literature, even the students best efforts can end
in frustration.
It is important to note that the student members in this particular group in
contrast to the discussion that PUSH prompted in the other group described in my
previous vignette displayed considerable skill in collaboration (turn-taking,
deferring, extending, etc.). This could reflect the fact that they had developed
relationships, understanding one another, and creating possibilities for dialogue and
reflection over time. At this point, they had been meeting (voluntarily) for four
years. The group membership had been consistent and virtually all attended each of
the meetings.
In this particular discussion, and in similar discussions that occurred with other
book clubs, three themes arose: (a) the value of the book club in expanding
awareness of multiple perspectives; (b) its role in strengthening the participants
confidence and skill in expressing opinions and developing new knowledge; and
(c) the ways some traditional classroom practices, though apparently more geared
toward supporting academic objectives, fall short of serving the need for intellectual
development. By contrast, the discourse that developed in each book club through
learning negotiation, developing relationships, and cultivating dialogue for learning
and inquiry through sustained experience of interacting with other people extended
everyones intellectual horizons. Although the dialogue posed intellectual challenges
that the participants sometimes found daunting, they were prepared to meet them
because of their commitment to the conversation we could call it a conversational
inquiry of which they were a part (Cook-Sather, 2008; Fielding & Bragg, 2003).
LEARNING AND TEACHING FOR INFORMED LITERARY PRAXIS
The evidence documented in the book clubs contributes to a growing body of

research disrupting the commonplaces of education (Craig, 2008; Schwab, 1973) to
reveal how dialogic, participatory, and democratic practices might go further to
support successful learning in school. In the study, we identified ten marks of
learning, arising from the book club experiences that students linked to possibilities,
approaches, and preferences for literature study: 1. Participating with peers in
exploratory and critical conversations; 2. Choosing the text; 3. Connecting to the
book (at emotional, personal, cultural and social levels); 4. Being motivated to read
(having a purpose and plans); 5. Making sense and negotiating meaning in a social
context; 6. Posing and solving authentic problems; 7. Questioning, challenging and
resisting texts; 8. Engaging deeply with texts about relevant issues; 9. Seeing multiple
perspectives; and 10. Experiencing change in ones thinking, actions, perspectives.
Although the students in the out-of-class book club point to the universal
potential for learning through their intersubjective inquiries, they reach, to some
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extent, into the practices and experiences in literature classrooms. That is, while
involving students in dialogue about their own learning helps young people become
better learners, it also provides insights for teachers that enable them to improve
their pedagogy (Kordalewski, 1999). Encouraging students to interrogate and help
construct educational experiences means allowing teachers to learn from and with
their students, to strengthen habits of inquiry, reflection, and dialogue which are
key to informing and improving practice.
CROSSING INTO THE CASE STUDIES:
RENEGOTIATING THE CONTOURS OF LITERARY EVENTS
Piet-Hein, Ramon, Mies in The Netherlands and Prue and Bella in Australia pursue
literature teaching by closely observing, planning, enacting, and listening in their
classes and engaging in interactive dialogue with each other. These classroom
teachers use student texts and voices to inform and gauge their reflections on the
literary events that occur in their classrooms. Their shared passion for keeping
literature central in their classes defends against the widespread pressures to reduce
the aesthetics of literature to a focus on linguistic competence and fluency, as the
Dutch educators write in the introduction to their case.
My familiarity and involvement with the Dutch cases leads to me to focus on the
research inquiry of Ramon and Mies, who, with Piet-Hein, investigate and reflect
on the ways their goals, perceptions, and expectations of literature shape a renewing
praxis for literature teaching and learning.
Ramon and Mies share a commitment to engage in professional learning in
order to enhance their teaching practice. Both are in a Dutch department that
provides the freedom they need to design their own teaching methods and allows
them to select their own literary texts. Both share a desire to critically and deeply
engage their students in the study of literature. Each, however, is shaped by distinctive
perceptions of literature that, not surprisingly, affect the ways they enact their
pedagogies in their classrooms.
Ramons perspective links to his own transformational literary experiences in
university that equipped him for critical literary analysis. Initially, he is convinced
that this will provide the framework for his teaching and at the same time, prepare
his students for the standardized exam. His initial foray into organizing students
into five groups with each focusing on one literary lens (text, reader, author, sociological, time and space) fails to materialize in the student texts. When the students
fall short of Ramons expectations, he recognizes that he has pressed them into
complex narrative interpretations currently beyond their reach. The strategy seems
to leave his students disengaged, something that Ramon obviously did not intend:
Actually, I dont think I reached what I was hoping for. Why was that? He recognizes the gaps. Students seem unprepared, only too ready to summarize in language
that mimics his own. He was all too ready to lead the discussions and steer students
toward an accepted structural analysis of the story. He tries to explain it by using
Wittes categories of literature reasoning and attributes their failure to limited
literary competence. In troubling the inconsistencies and tensions, together with
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Piet-Hein, Ramon begins to re-view his conceptions of students, the place of the
literary text, literary learning, received knowledge, and critical tools for reading.
Mies comes to a similar point in her teaching, but her journey differs significantly.
She has the freedom to select the texts and pedagogy without being concerned
about a mandated final examination. Mies had participated in a conference session
where I had presented my research showing a video-tape of young people discussing
the book, Sold (the same group discussion that I have described in my first
vignette). Mies was prompted to find a parallel text in Dutch (Blauw is Bitter) and
to read it aloud to the class. This is what she describes in this volume. Through her
reading she brings the students into the imaginative world of the story and involves
them in reflections on paper, encouraging them to record reactions to the content
and context, to write poems, collaboratively prepare a placemat, and ultimately to
participate in collaborative social action: raising funds for an organization that
rescues young Filipino prostitutes.
Mies is more hopeful about the effects of her literature lessons as she reveals in
her dialogue with Piet-Hein. She is particularly impressed by the students empathy
and emotional involvement, the quality of their writing, and their self-directed social
action arising out of their engagement with the issues raised by the text. But this
prompts Piet-Hein to inquire into the limitations of her approach; he senses a
certain lack of objective cultural knowledge, a place to situate the events, and the
subjective nature of the responses. This in turn makes me feel that Mies has not
gone far enough. And yet what might the next steps be? How will the students
subsequent literary study take them beyond their existing boundaries?
But I still want to affirm the way each of the cases presented in this volume
embodies conversational inquiries that, in the Freirian (1970) sense, begin with
action (for example, introducing new ways of engaging students in reading) which
the teachers then re-view through reflection and critical dialogue with others, give
rise to further action.
The process departs significantly from the traditional one-shot workshop where
teachers are expected to take in the received knowledge (whether or not it is
actually relevant to their specific institutional setting) and act upon it (i.e., apply it
in the classroom). The teachers in the cases participate, as Bella writes, in acts of
praxis and resistance, firmly planted in their individual schools and literature
classes.
INVITING THE BOOK CLUB STUDENTS AND TEACHERS INTO
CONVERSATIONAL INQUIRY
When Prue expresses a desire to cultivate conversational inquiry, so helpful in

her own learning with her students, she raises a critical theoretical point. While
teacher voices have only recently entered educational research (at least in the
research on professional communities of learning), little of the discourse includes
student voices. Prues conversational inquiry opens paths for teachers to become
learners and for their students to become teachers. The absence of voice is linked to
powerlessness, which not only inhibits the educational success of all children
(Lodge, 2007), but is especially devastating to the educational experience of
212
children from diverse, marginalized, and/or economically disadvantaged cultures in

societies that often expect parental and governmental authoritarianism (Freire,
1970). Negotiating their own learning empowers students to occupy the enabling
center of their educations, not the disabling margins (Shor, 1996, 2000).
The students in the book club study cultivated a context where their voices
could be meaningful, where they felt that by speaking out they could make a
difference, and push their learning forward. If we imaginatively bring the voices of
the book club students into conversation with the teachers in the Dutch and Australian
cases, what might we find? We imagine entering Prues class where she and Bella
wander among the students. The observing students will find students in this
classroom engaged in exploration and critical examination of the shared text. They
listen intently to the negotiating of meaning (the language is at times uncertain, one
student finishes anothers thought), the problem-solving and problem-posing, the
ways these students alter their views of the text (through, for example, the authors
visit). They listen in on the small groups as they negotiate and take in multiple
perspectives on the text.
They also point to elements they could not find at least in this, their brief,
imaginary encounter. They want to experience tangible evidence of the students
deep desire to learn. They want to see choice in selecting texts (the most common
positive attribute of the book club experiences). When I asked why this was so
important and why they generally chose such difficult social issues in their choices
(e.g., Sold, PUSH), they responded with clear conviction: (a) we learn from the
situation to prepare for a life that may include such horrors either personally or to
family and friends, and, (b) we learn how rich we are, and (c) our knowledge of the
world expands. At the same time, they want to be exposed to texts they might not
encounter on their own. They want challenge, to be able to resist (while allowing
others the freedom not to resist and to be swept up by the story). In one book club
meeting, Latreese chose not to read The Book of Negroes, saying she had tired of
reading about black history and the painful abuse her people suffered at the hands
of slave traders and owners. Latreese attended the meeting, however, acknowledging
her resistance on the one hand, and yet supporting her peers on the other.
In each of the cases, teachers move forward by attempting to rethink their
perceptions, pedagogies, and the practices of literary study in their classes. They
attend to the voices of their students in order to gauge the construction and development of knowledge. They look back in reflection through dialogue. Each,
through interactive and ongoing dialogue, examines, interprets, and begins the
difficult challenge of reconstructing their perspectives and practices.
I remain struck, however, by the learning the teachers who participated in the
book clubs experienced by making what was arguably a more radical intervention
in the reading practices of their students. By including themselves in the dialogic
learning experiences they staged for their students, the teachers gained valuable
cultural knowledge (about ethnic as well as other individual and collective life
experiences), and developed a listening pedagogy (Janusik, 2010; Paciotti &
Bolick, 2009) which nourished their professional efficacy while also supporting the
self-efficacy and motivation of their students (Pekril & Levin, 2007).
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The voices of the students dominated the discourse in each book club. It was the
students who make the book choices, led the discussions, and participated most
predominantly in the interviews. Over time, the teachers became increasingly more
peripheral in the discussions, more observer than participant. Kordalewski (1999)
observed: When students have a voice in classroom processes, they share in
decision-making and the construction of knowledge. The teacher, consequently,
becomes a co-learner and facilitator as well as a source of knowledge. Yet, I also
have to admit that the teachers involved did not always take up the knowledge
about teaching and learning that we gained through implementing the book clubs
and apply it in their ordinary classes. This is perhaps because the outside-of-class
structure of the book group, teachers, confident that students found a sustained,
supportive and dynamic context for dialogue around texts and critical issues,
prevented such a link being made. The obstacles posed by schools as institutions to
facilitating the type of conversational inquiry that occurred in the book clubs
remain huge (Lodge, 2007).
But it remains the case that a reflexive relationship exists between teaching and
learning (Kordalewski, 1999; see also, Pekril & Levin, 2007). It is impossible to
speak of student voice without also paying attention to teacher voice. The
importance of the latter may be easy to overlook while the monologic model of
teaching continues to dominate. The prevalence of speaking can be a weak
indication of authentic communication, when the talk is scripted, rather than dialogic,
when it posits boundaries to knowledge, and closes off the universal potential for
learning through inter-subjective inquiry. Allowing students to interrogate and help
construct educational experiences also means allowing teachers to learn from
students, to strengthen habits of inquiry, reflection and dialogue which are key to
the improvement of practice.
In spite of a growing body of research on teacher learning and development,
little, if any, finds its way into school districts, schools, and classrooms. This raises
red flags in times of a continuous flow of educational initiatives, curricula, policies
and standards. Since a growing body of research indicates that the final gatekeeper,
the teacher, determines the reality of implementation and application, she has
become a significant contender in the drive to reform, change and improve student
performance. Awareness of the teacher role has driven educational Ministries to
find ways to teach teachers. All too frequently, this results in increasing the
traditional, one-shot, visiting expert format that long ago lost its relevance and
currency (Clark, 2001; Kooy, 2006). The case study teachers disrupt the norm
by working closely with others who have a stake in the ways literature is taught
and learnt. Surely this represents a significant valuing of teachers professional
knowledge.
In this respect, the cases provide a valuable comment on what happened in the
book clubs. As I analyse the data set produced in the course of implementing the
book clubs, I re-view how the teachers situated themselves in the dialogical spaces
that were created. Why, I ask, did we not see more transition into classroom
practice? The import of this research, with its focus on learning and literature,
clearly brought the focus back on to teachers. But I am aware that others might ask:
214
So what? So what if teachers meet in a sustained, professional book club (Phase 1

of the research)? So what if they use the knowledge developed to establish groups
in their individual schools (Phase 2)? So what if these site-based groups developed
into powerful communities of learning?
The accounts of teaching and learning by the teachers in the Dutch and Australian
case studies show worthy attempts to facilitate a conversational inquiry within the
conventional space of the classroom, but this space ultimately limits what they
achieve. The book clubs in the study reveal potential for student engagement
located completely outside the conventional space of the school. Paradoxically,
however, this means that it remained a challenge for the teachers involved in the
book clubs to imagine or apply what they had learnt in their typical literature classes.
The institutional structures and routines associated with school still pose
powerful obstacles to any change. With this in mind, the Dutch and Australian cases
provide a model of reflective practice that could begin to address this situation. The
book club teachers seem currently prevented from engaging in this kind of
reflective practice when they are swept up in the hurly-burly of the day-to-day. A
step towards meaningful reform involves creating a bridge between the dialogical
space of the book club and the conventional space of the classroom and to find
ways and discourses that examine the liminal spaces between the two paradigms of
literature teaching and learning. For that to emerge, teachers and students need
time and opportunity to negotiate and to engage in conversational inquiry within
the school (Cook-Sather, 2008; Mansfield, et al., 2007). The evocative possibilities
for those stakeholders most vested in literature education, has the potential to bring
forward ways for reading the word and the world.
REFERENCES
Arnot, M., McIntyre, D., Pedder, D., & Reay, D. (2003). Consultation in the classroom: Developing
dialogue about teaching and learning. Cambridge: Pearson Publishing.
Clark, C. (Ed.). (2001). Talking shop: Authentic conversation and teacher learning. New York: Teachers
College Press.
Cook-Sather, A. (2008). Authorizing students perspectives: Toward trust, dialogue and change in education.
Educational Researcher, 31(4), 314.
Craig, C. (2008). Joseph Schwab, self-study of teaching and teacher education practices proponent? A
personal perspective. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24(8), 19932001.
Fielding, M., & Bragg, S. (2003). Students as researchers: Making a difference. Cambridge: Pearson.
Fielding, M., & Rudduck, J. (2002). The transformative potential of student voice: Confronting the
power issues. In Symposium on student consultation, community and democrative tradition. Paper
presented at the annual conference of the British Education Research Association, University of Exeter,
UK.
Flutter, J., & Rudduck, J. (2004). Consulting pupils: Whats in it for schools? London: Routledge Falmer.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Holdsworth, R. (2005). Taking young people seriously means giving them serious things to do. In
J. Mason & T. Fattore (Eds.), Children taken seriously in theory, policy and practice (No. 12 in the
Children in Charge Series). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Janusik, L. A. (2010). Listening pedagogy: Where do we go from here? In Listening and human
communication in the 21st century (A. D. Wolvin, Ed., Chap. 9). Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
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Kooy, M. (2006). Telling stories in book clubs: Women teachers and professional development.
Toronto: Springer.
Kooy, M. (2006a). The telling stories of novice teachers: Constructing teacher knowledge in book clubs.
Teaching and Teacher Education, 22(6), 661674.
Kordalewski, J. (1999). Incorporating student voice into teaching practice [electronic resource]. In
J. Kordalewski (Ed.), ERIC clearinghouse on teaching and teacher education (pp. 14). Washington,
DC.
Lodge, C. (2007). Engaging student voice to improve pedagogy and learning: An exploration of examples of
innovative pedagogical approaches for school improvement. International Journal of Pedagogies
and Learning, 419.
Mansfield, J., Collins, R., Moore, J., Mahar, S., & Wanrne, C. (2007). Student voice: A historical
perspective and new directions (41 p.). Paper No. 10. Research and Innovation Division, Dept. of
Education, Melbourne, AU.
McBeath, J., Demetriou, H., Rudduck, J., & Yyers, K. (2003). Consulting pupils: A toolkit for teachers.
Cambridge: Pearson Publishing.
Paciotti, K., & Bolick, M. (2009). A listening pedagogy: Insights of pre-service elementary teachers in
multi-cultural classrooms. Leadership Online Journal, 7(4). Retrieved April 29, 2011, from http://
www.academicleadership.org/article/A_Listening_Pedagogy_Insights_of_PreService_Elementary_Teachers_in_Multi-cultural_Classrooms
Pekril, S., & Levin, B. (2007). Building student voice for school improvement. In D. Thiessen & A. CookSather (Eds.), International handbook of student experience in elementary and secondary school
(pp. 711726). New York: Springer.
Schwab, J. J. (1973). The practical three: Translation into curriculum. School Review, 83, 501522.
Shor, I. (1996). When students have power: Negotiating authority in a critical pedagogy. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Mary Kooy
Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
The University of Toronto, Canada
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PART 4: CONTINUING THE CONVERSATION
14. LITERARY PRAXIS

(A Concluding Essay)
We began our inquiry by listening to the conversations between young people in

Prues and Ramons classrooms, as they tried to convey their impressions of the
books they were reading. The writers who have contributed to this volume have
likewise been struggling with words in an effort to tease out what it means to teach
literature. They have been engaging with the accounts that Prue, Ramon and Mies
have given of their teaching in an effort to jointly construct meaning and reach
understanding to echo our description of the interpretive discussions in Prues
and Ramons classes. This is not to say that they have felt compelled to achieve
consensus about the value of literature teaching. Their essays might instead be read
as initially suspending their beliefs about literature teaching in order to arrive anew
at a sense of its value. And they have engaged in this inquiry in a dialogical spirit,
fully conscious that the words they are using are spaces for conflicting meanings
and values. In the process of writing their essays, they have each weighed up the
words they have chosen, gauging whether those words name precisely what they
feel about the value of literature and literature teaching. We can attest to this as
their editors in the course of engaging with them as they have progressively taken
their essays through several drafts in order to understand what they do as teachers
of literature.
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT THROUGH FACILITATING
THIS CONVERSATIONAL INQUIRY?
Each of the contributors to the foregoing conversation writes from a standpoint

from within the world of which they are a part (cf. Goldman, 1977, p. 6), conveying a
deeply felt sense of their situation as teachers of literature and their obligations
towards their students. They all view the activity of interpreting texts as crucially
bound up with the need to negotiate the social relationships that comprise any
classroom. We have seen that they differ with respect to the attitude of care that
teachers ought to feel towards their students. Mies, for example, sees her primary
role as one of sensitizing the young people in her classroom to the plight of those
who are less fortunate than themselves, an emancipatory gesture that Laila Aase
and Tony Petrosky feel obliged to question. Prue attempts to cultivate a sensitivity
on the part of her students to the words on the page, a literary critical disposition
that Laila commends, while Mark Howie questions the way she apparently privileges
the author as the source of the meaning of the text. Ramon, on the other hand,
wants to enable his students to experience the interpretive possibilities opened up
by a range of literary critical frameworks an aim that he himself begins to doubt
in the face of his students apparent resistance to the text he has chosen for study.
Yet for all these differences in their pedagogies, it seems fair to say that the
contributors to this volume are united in their sense that teaching literature involves
a capacity to respond to young people, to reach out and engage in a dialogue with
them that taps into their worlds of experience and imagination. They all locate their
decision making about curriculum and pedagogy, and the theoretical rationales
they give for their practice, within their ongoing interactions with their students.
Thus they continually reflect on how the young people in their classrooms are
making meaning from texts and reaching judgments about the representations of
life offered to them in the books they are studying.
We use the word praxis to name this kind of professional engagement. This is
because the word embraces a sense of continually reflecting on the ongoing
activity that you find in classrooms. Everyday something is happening; everyday
teachers and their students are caught up in meaning-making practices that exceed
their intentions as actors within school settings (cf. Barnes, 1975/1992, p. 14);
everyday they actively create the world around them. As players within this world,
Prue and Ramon and Mies seek to understand what is going on, reflexively
monitoring their words and actions as they interact with the young people who
share the social space of the classroom with them. They seek to know what they
are doing, developing their understanding of the intellectual and pedagogical
traditions in which they work, as well as learning from their practice and trying to
grasp the full implications of what they do. As we have seen, this has involved turning
the spotlight on themselves and interrogating their values and beliefs as teachers of
literature, reflecting on the matches and mismatches between their intentions and
what they actually achieve in their lessons (cf. Kemmis, 2005, pp. 407408). It is
hardly surprising that the essays written in response to their accounts of their work
acknowledge their courage in allowing their teaching to become an object of
scrutiny.
But to cast Prue, Ramon and Mies as heroes of their own tales does not really do
justice to the impulse behind the writing they have done. Indeed, to the extent that
such a construction might be conflated with managerial notions of individual
accomplishment, as though the excellence of any teacher is not ultimately a function
of the community in which he or she works, it is actually misleading. One of
the paradoxes of schooling is the way that it constructs both teachers and students
as individuals, as though to prevent them from recognizing the intensely intersubjective nature of what happens in schools. Everybody, to borrow from Leontev, is
fixated on his or her individual job, instead of seeing their actions as part of the
larger social activity of schooling (see Engestroem et al., 2003, p. 4). Rather than
experiencing this larger activity as a collaborative venture, and sensing how their
actions contribute to the renewal of culture each day, teachers and students are
instead hailed or interpellated as individuals, to borrow from Althussers
influential account of ideology (Althusser, 2008, p. 44). They are confronted by
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structures with which they cannot identify, continually subject to the surveillance
of performance appraisal that requires them to show that their work as individuals
meets certain pre-defined standards into which they have had no input.
It is obvious that the attitude of inquiry adopted by Prue, Ramon and Mies
conflicts with the assumptions underpinning such performance appraisal in significant
ways. By engaging in dialogue with educators in other settings, they are making an
attempt to transcend the deeply alienating situation imposed by standards-based
reforms, and enacting a deeper form of accountability to their colleagues and
students than that typically reflected in performance appraisal. They are seeking to
understand the meaning of their work as an expression of a larger network of social
relationships, as part of the collective process by which society renews itself, and
rejecting the way neo-liberal reforms construct them as isolated individuals vis-vis anonymous structures.
Through engaging in conversations with each other, the contributors to this
volume have all been obliged to grapple with a sense of difference as much as
sameness as they have sought to appreciate how they each understand and enact
their identities as teachers of literature. And this sense of difference has thrown
their own values and beliefs into relief, prompting them to identify the intellectual
and pedagogical traditions that mediate their professional practice, as well as to
scrutinise the institutional structures that shape their work as teachers of literature.
There is a critical dimension to the authors inquiry that might be described as a
confrontation with self. This involves acknowledging how ones self or identity is
the product of ones circumstances and upbringing, of the language and culture into
which one has been born, of how ones unique sensibility is actually an expression
of an ensemble of social relations (Marx, 1969, pp. 1213). But the inquiry has
not simply involved the identification of structures and controls and a denial of
agency. This confrontation with self is also a positive vision of ones own making,
and of how people collectively renew their lives each day. The inquiry has affirmed
rich forms of subjectivity and social engagement as an alternative to the way neoliberalism reduces individuals to factors contributing to the growth of the economy.
Even a recognition of the way teaching and learning are currently being
transformed by standards-based reforms is ultimately an insight into our sociability,
into the way our lives are bound up with the lives of others (cf. Smith, 2005). Such
reforms mediate already-existing relationships, affecting the way teachers and their
students negotiate those relationships without ever being able to efface them. Our
starting point for this conversational inquiry was the world of performance appraisal
embodied in PISA and other standardised testing, a world that is conceived (to
borrow from Goldmann) as a purely external objectivity, independent of or
opposed to the subject (Goldmann, 1977, p. 43). The reflexivity enacted by Prue,
Ramon and Mies and their commentators provides a counterpoint to the way such
practices construct classrooms, exposing their dreadful presumption of treating
these complex social spaces as though they simply lend themselves to the transparency (a key word in the neo-liberal lexicon) of the classifications and measurements of an outside observer or expert (see, e.g. the My School website: http://
www.myschool.edu.au/). This notion of objectivity within the context of the
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interactions of classroom life finally makes no sense, when reality is experienced

as a constant process of negotiation between subject and object, as a shifting
set of relationships involving me and you, requiring continual interpretation,
judgment and an adjustment of expectations on the part of both teachers and their
pupils, when in short it involves the interactions that we associate with
reading.
The foregoing essays have each shown students variously taking up their
teachers invitations to engage in dialogue about the meaning of the life they share
with others as they engage with literary texts. We might think of the rewards that
Sandy Harris distributes to her students in a secondary school in Auckland (see
Terry Lockes chapter), or of Nathalies question about the meaning of the word
marooned (see the chapter by Anne Turvey and John Yandell) or of the ethos of
the Hauptschule in Germany (see Irene Piepers chapter) or the participation of
minority students in after-school book clubs in Toronto (see Mary Kooys chapter)
these and other chapters in this volume all conjure up images of specific settings
and social relationships that resist being reduced to the sameness of numbers.
Classrooms may comprise all sorts of solid, material things, such as desks,
chairs, laptops, books, folders, lockers and electronic whiteboards, but they cannot
finally be experienced and understood as a world that is simply there. The
immediacy of the everyday life in classrooms is the product of social relationships,
relationships that ultimately extend beyond the physical space of a room. They
extend, too, beyond the individuals who occupy that space to embrace a complex
network of relationships as they are played out in society as a whole, including (to
limit ourselves to the chapters that we have just mentioned) the differences between
Pakeha and Maori and Pacific Islander cultures, the displacement experienced
through migrating from the West Indies to East London, the struggle of Turkish
people to find a place for themselves in modern Germany, and the history of visible
minority students in an inner city school in Toronto. Our request to our contributors
to write essays has been driven by a recognition that we need to generate new
ways of representing classroom interactions, foregrounding the complexities of
those interactions as a process that eludes the generalising mentality embodied in
practices such as standardised testing. This means apprehending the here-and-now
within an ever-changing network of relationships that exceeds our capacity to grasp
everything that is going on, making the everyday a focus for continuing inquiry.
And this does not involve simply fitting everything together, as though it is a
matter of synchronously locating classrooms within a larger social space that
stretches beyond our immediate view. It also embraces a recognition that any
representation of social phenomena is inadequate because the phenomena it seeks
to capture has already ceased to exist. Another way to say this is that the present
always contains within it the history of existing social relationships, collective
memories that shape what happens. Even when, as individuals, we may not have
lived that history, the past remains an inescapable dimension of our experience of
the present. And the same might be said about the ways our hopes and expectations
mediate our engagement with the here-and-now. Thus we have tried to represent
teaching not just as an activity limited by the immediacy of day-to-day life in the
222
LITERARY PRAXIS
classroom, but as involving ongoing reflection that connects the present with the
past and the future.
Where does literature teaching fit into a world of neo-liberal reforms, where
everything is mapped out in advance, and education is conceived primarily as a
matter of inculcating the requisite knowledge and skills for people to take their
places in a 21st century economy? Policy makers do not want to grapple with the
paradox that their futuristic scenarios reflect decidedly contemporary values and
assumptions. Education within a neo-liberal framework can never be about realising
potential that might exceed the boundaries of the present and create the conditions
for a new society, for a completely different sense of how life might be lived than it
is lived currently. To make a distinction that Shirley Grundy posed some years ago,
the school curriculum is typically conceived as a product rather than a praxis, as
though its primary purpose is to give young people technical skills (including
functional literacy skills) to operate within a world that is conceptualised largely
as one subject to manipulation and control, as distinct from one that is open to
significant transformation that might accord with a vision of a truly humane society
(Grundy, 1987. pp. 1112). Drawing on Habermas, Grundy argues that this reduction
of curriculum to narrowly technical interests is at the expense of acknowledging
the interpretive and emancipatory dimensions of knowledge and social life (Grundy,
1987; Habermas, 1972), of a way of knowing that posits the world as one of our
own making and as therefore open to the possibility of being changed through our
own actions.
Within the framework of neo-liberal reforms, debates about literature teaching
are reduced to securing its place alongside other subject areas, as though curriculum,
as product, embodies knowledge that exists in a realm outside the social transactions that constitute everyday life (cf. Wells, 1999). This gives rise to a very
traditional understanding of literature teaching, involving a belief in the value of
great literary works that supposedly embody our culture (this is what is happening
in Australia with the introduction of a national curriculum). Is it our fate, then, as
literature teachers to reproduce a division between a literary culture and an everyday
world where people employ technical skills? This appears to be the scenario
reflected in Laila Aases anecdote about a student in a technical stream in Norway,
whose parents assured him that, after leaving school, they had never found it
necessary to read another short story and who therefore concurred with his view
that reading stories was a complete waste of time an anecdote that is also echoed
by Irene Piepers account of the curriculum offered in similar educational settings
in Germany. This binary between literary culture and vocational education continues
to compromise our work as literature teachers, even when (as in Prue Gills classroom) literature teaching is informed by post-structuralist understandings that have
the potential to destabilise texts and their meanings and thus to disrupt any notion
that literature is part of a fixed tradition or high culture. The privileged conditions
in which Prue is working means that she cannot escape being constructed as engaging
in an elite pursuit, as several of the contributors to this volume have pointed out.
The intellectual rigour of the essays that comprise this volume is shown by the
way the authors do not shy away from the contradictory character of literature
223
teaching and the history that has created the world in which we find ourselves.
They recognise that the binaries to which we have just referred between so-called
culture and everyday life, between an academic education and vocational training,
between those who have academic ability and those who are more practically
oriented reflect entrenched structures and practices that shape the experiences of
young people as they make their way through school. That those who are consigned
to a vocational education are typically young people from working class or other
disadvantaged communities is another inescapable dimension of the way school
systems in western countries are disenfranchising whole groups of students and
denying recognition of their lives and local cultures. The emphasis of neo-liberal
educational reforms is squarely on canonical forms of knowledge, the products of
western science and culture, rather than on facilitating classroom dialogue that is
genuinely respectful of the attitudes and values that teachers and students are
bringing to their exchanges with one another.
The sense of the promise of literature teaching that emerges from the foregoing
conversational inquiry is all the more compelling because it is something that can
only be realised when teachers reflexively engage with their own education as
educators, as well as monitoring their exchanges with students, fully aware of the
structures and traditions that mediate their relationships with them. Although Prue
works in an elite private school, she is clearly driven by a democratic spirit which
presupposes that the sensitivity towards words and meaning that she values can
enhance an awareness of lifes possibilities by all students, wherever they might be
located. The structures in which she works may militate against this, driving a
wedge between a so-called literary education and the functional literacy prized by
the young person in Lailas anecdote, and thus reducing the value of both. But this
should not mean giving up on the prospect of transcending this binary, and
believing that the literary sensibility that Prue values should be part of everyday
life.
We conclude by affirming the importance of a literary praxis, conceiving a
literary education as more than a body of skills and knowledge, or as a tradition of
highly valued works that reflect the best that has been thought and known in this
world, as Matthew Arnold famously expressed it, but as opening up the possibility
of a more fully aware or knowing engagement with everyday life (Kemmis, 2005;
cf. Roberts, 2006). The glimpse of the conversations between students in Ramons
and Prues classrooms with which we began this inquiry, when they self-consciously
use the words available to them in an effort to understand the nature of the
experiences presented to them in the texts they were reading, might also serve as
the concluding moment of this book. This remains a significant image, not only
of what students do with texts within classroom settings, but of our situation as
educators, when we experience moments involving a recognition of the materiality
of language, of the way language mediates our relationships with one another and
the world around us, as against the facile notions of transparency of neoliberalism.
To suppose that language provides simply a window on the world out there is to
accept reality as it is given. It is to abandon the possibility of thinking otherwise, of
imagining different worlds.
224
LITERARY PRAXIS
But here our writing stops, even though there can be no stopping, no simple
prcis in a final paragraph that might sum up the understandings that we have
reached. Any new understanding is always a process of reconstructing existing
understandings and beliefs. This is what we hope is occurring as you read this final
sentence, and reflect anew on the situations in the Dutch and Australian literature
classrooms and the other classroom settings described in the foregoing exchanges
as they might contrast with your own experiences.
REFERENCES
Althusser, L. (2008). On ideology. London: Verso.
Barnes, D. (1975/1992). From communication to curriculum (2nd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.
Engestrm, Y., Miettinen, R., & Punamki, R.-L. (Eds). (2003). Perspectives on activity theory. Cambridge:
Goldmann, L. (1977). Lukcs and Heidegger: Towards a new philosophy. London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul.
Grundy, S. (1987). Curriculum: Product or Praxis. London: The Falmer Press.
Habermas, J. (1978). Knowledge and human interests (2nd ed.). London: Heinemann Educational Books.
Kemmis, S. (2005). Knowing practice: Searching for saliences. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 13(3),
391426.
Marx, K. (1969). Theses on Feuerbach. In K. Marx & F. Engels (Eds.), Selected works (Vol. 1, pp. 1315).
Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Roberts, J. (3006). Philosophizing the everyday: Revolutionary praxis and the fate of cultural theory.
London: Pluto Press.
Smith, D. (2005). Institutional ethnography: A sociology for people. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.
Wells, G. (1999). Dialogic inquiry: Towards socio logical practice and theory of education. Cambridge:

Radboud University
Brenton Doecke
School of Education
225
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Laila Aase is Associate Professor (emeritus) of didactics of Norwegian language

and literature at the University of Bergen, Norway. She has worked in teacher
education since 1978 and produced a number of books and articles in the field of
didactics of language and literature in school. She also has written a number of text
books for the subject of Norwegian in upper secondary school.
Brenton Doecke is Chair in Education and Director: Centre for Partnerships and
Projects in Education (CPPE) at Deakin University, Melbourne. His research
interests include English Curriculum and Pedagogy, Professional Identity and the
impact of Standards-Based Reforms. He played a leading role, as a member of the
Australian Association for the Teaching of English, in the development of the
Standards for Teachers of English Language and Literacy in Australia (STELLA),
providing an alternative to neo-liberal constructions of professional practice. His
most recent publications include a co-authored book with Douglas McClenaghan,
Confronting Practice: Classroom Based Inquiries into Language and Learning
(2011), Putney NSW: Phoenix Education.
Prue Gill is currently working part-time with pre-service teachers at Monash
University, having recently retired from the secondary classroom after more than
thirty years as a teacher of English, Literature and Theory of Knowledge. She has
taught in a variety of settings government and private secondary schools, TAFE,
and the tertiary sector, and in different types of classroom, including inter-disciplinary
and vertical groupings. She has been involved in the Victorian Certificate of
Education English curriculum development since its pilot years, and in the external
assessment of year 12 English and Literature. She is a past president of the Victorian
Association for the Teaching of English.
Ramon Groenendijk studied Dutch language and literature at Radboud University,
followed by Comparative Literature, also at Radboud University. After receiving
his Master of Education degree, he started working at Zwijsen College Veghel,
where he still teaches. Besides teaching, he is also carrying out a PhD-research
concerning the literary development of students.
Mark Howie is Deputy Principal at Springwood High School in NSW and a
former president of the Australian Association for the Teaching of English
(AATE)., Mark has taught English for many years in a range of public schools,
most recently as the Head Teacher of English at Penrith High School. Mark has
contributed to a number of publications in the areas of English curriculum and
teaching, including co-editing Only Connect: English Teaching, Schooling and
Community (with Brenton Doecke and Wayne Sawyer) for Wakefield Press and
AATE and Charged with Meaning: Reviewing English 3rd Edition (with Susanne
Gannon and Wayne Sawyer) for Phoenix Education.
Bella Illesca is an English teacher who has worked in government and nongovernment schools in Australia and overseas. She taught in the English Education
program at Monash University where she also worked as a Research Assistant on a
number of projects exploring language and literacy and teachers professional
learning, professional identity and professional ethics. She has since been working
as a Research Fellow at Deakin University. In 2006 she completed her Masters
thesis, Literacy and Accountability: The changing shape of English teachers work
and has since authored and co-authored a number of publications, including: Doecke,
Kostogriz and Illesca (2010). Seeing things differently: Recognition, ethics and
praxis. English Teaching: Practice and Critique September, Volume 9, Number 2,
pp. 8198. http://education.waikato.ac.nz/research/files/etpc/files/2010v9n2dial1.pdf
Mary Kooy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching
and Learning and Director of the Centre for Teacher Education and Development
at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto in
Canada. Her research interests include professional learning and development for
teachers. Her longitudinal research began in 2000 with novice teachers (Telling
Stories in Book Clubs: Women Teachers and Professional Development), continued
as school-based research (20062010). The longitudinal inquiry, now entering phase
three, will explore the effects on an online professional community distributed
across Canada. Dr Kooy teaches courses in Graduate Programs in professional
learning communities, teacher induction, and curriculum innovation.
Terry Locke is Chairperson of the Arts and Language Education Department in
the Faculty of Education at the University of Waikato. His research interests include
the teaching of literature, constructions of English, teaching writing, and the literacy/
ICT nexus. His latest book (edited) is Beyond the Grammar Wars (Routledge,
2010). He is coordinating editor of the journal, English Teaching: Practice and
Critique.
Graham Parr is a senior lecturer in English Education at Monash University,
Australia, having previously taught English and Literature for 14 years in secondary
schools in Australia and the US. His research interests include teacher professional
learning, literature teaching, English curriculum and pedagogy, teacher education
and educational work more broadly. Recent publications include Writing=Learning
(co-edited with Brenton Doecke) and the Report of the National Mapping of
Teacher Professional Learning in Australia project (co-authored with Brenton Doecke
and Sue North). His new book, drawing on his awarding-winning PhD, is called
Inquiry-based professional learning: Speaking back to standards-based reforms.
Anthony R. Petrosky, the Associate Dean of the School of Education at the
University of Pittsburgh, holds a joint appointment as a Professor in the School of
Education and the English Department. Along with Stephanie McConachie, he codirects the English Language Arts Disciplinary Literacy Project in the Institute for
228
Learning (IFL) at the Learning Research and Development Center. As a part of this
Institute project, he has worked with professional learning and curriculum development in English for school and district leaders in the public schools of Austin,
Dallas, Denver, New York City, Forth Worth, Prince Georges County, and
Pittsburgh. McConachie and Petrosky are the co-editors of Content Matters: A
Disciplinary Literacy Approach to Improving Student Learning, a recent (2010)
collection of reports on the IFL Disciplinary Literacy Project, as well as co-authors
of chapters in the book. He was the Principal Investigator and Co-Director of the
Early Adolescence English Language Arts Assessment Development Lab for the
National Board for Professional Teaching Standards which developed the first
national board certification for English teachers.
Irene Pieper is Professor in Literary studies and Literary Education (Literaturdidaktik) in the Department of German language and literature at the University of
Hildesheim, Germany. Her research interests include reading socialisation, development of literary competences, literature teaching and learning. She currently
focuses on learners understanding of poetic metaphor. Besides, she is involved
with the Council of Europes project on the languages of education and the
development of the platform of resources for plurilingual and intercultural education.
Mies Pols-Haaijman was born behind the book-printery of her grandfather in
the old city of Deventer and is the daughter of two teachers. It is therefore not
surprising that her main interest lies with books. It was not only her hobby, but
later on her profession. She studied Dutch history and literature in Amsterdam and
Afrikaans in Pretoria; was a lecturer at the University of South Africa and Pretoria
in Linguistics and later on in Dutch art, culture and literature. Back in Holland, she
worked as a teacher and practical trainer of young teachers. She is married and has
4 children and 4 grandchildren.
Anne Turvey is a lecturer in education whose responsibilities have included
subject leader for the PGCE English and Drama; course tutor for the Masters of
Teacher and the MA Module Literature, Feminism and the Curriculum; Chair of
London Association for the Teaching of English (LATE) and Committee member
National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE) ITE. Publications include
Transformations in learning and teaching through Initial Teacher Education,
(2006), with D. Stevens et al. in Literacy, Vol. 40, 2; Whod be an English
Teacher?, (2005), in Changing English, Vol. 12, 1; The Space Between: Shared
Understanding of the Teaching of Grammar in English and France to Year 7
Learners (2002) with K. Turner in Language Awareness Vol. II: 2.
Piet-Hein van de Ven is a former secondary school teacher in Dutch language and
literature. From 19781998 he was a senior researcher and assistant professor at
the Department of Dutch language and literature studies and the Department of
Business Communication, Radboud University, Nijmegen. His research has focused
on teacher education, on subject related methodology (vakdidactiek) for the
229
teaching and learning of the school subject Dutch, and on language abilities. From
1999, he has been an Associate Professor (vakdidaktiek) and teacher educator in
Dutch language and linguistics at the Graduate School of Education, Radboud
University Nijmegen. Between 20032007 he was also Professor HAN-University
Arnhem-Nijmegen, Faculty of Education. His present research focuses on the
practice of the school subject Dutch and on teachers professional development.
This research includes historical and international-comparative perspectives.
John Yandell taught in inner London secondary schools for twenty years, including
eleven years as head of English at Kingsland School, Hackney. For the past seven
years he has led the Secondary PGCE English and English with Drama course at
the Institute of Education. Recent publications include Critical Practice in Teacher
Education: a study of professional learning, which he co-edited with Ruth Heilbronn,
as well as papers in Changing English, Cambridge Journal of Education, English
in Education and English Teaching: Practice and Critique. He is currently engaged
in research on how literature is read in English classrooms in urban secondary
schools.
Theo Witte is assisting professor and teacher trainer (language and literature) at
the University Centre of Learning & Teaching at the University of Groningen
(Netherlands). In 2008 he finished his PhD at the University of Groningen on the
thesis The eye of the master. An analysis of the development of literary competence
in upper secondary classes. His research interests include literature education,
differentiation, literary development, and interaction and learning. Since 2009 he
has led a European project with the aim of a Literary Framework for European
teachers in secondary education. In 2010 he started an investigation into the development of lyrical competence at children from 4 to 18 years.
230
INDEX
A
Achebe, C., 130, 152
Aesthetic, 44, 52, 64, 65, 79, 83, 92,
97, 100, 101, 124, 131, 132, 165,
169, 171, 172, 198, 211
Agard, J., 140, 154
Agnitio, 60, 65, 66, 99, 148
Angelou, M., 152
Aristotle, 125, 126
Australian Association for the
Teaching of English (AATE), 3
Australian national curriculum, 40,
74, 82, 223
Authorial intention, 116, 118,
173175, 177, 178, 180
Classroom talk, 10, 111, 137,

141, 157
Common European Framework of
Reference for Languages, 92
Critical literacy, 115, 116, 211
Culler, J., 192, 197, 200
Curriculum, 3, 4, 6, 13, 17, 18, 24,
34, 36, 37, 39, 44, 45, 54, 7476,
8284, 8992, 94, 97, 101, 104,
115, 125, 132134, 151154, 161,
169171, 177179, 181, 182, 189,
190, 199, 203, 205, 209, 210,
220, 223
D
Dartmouth Conference, 170
Delaney, S., 152
Delta Plan, 92
Democracy, 37, 39, 109, 111, 125,
154, 173, 184, 185
Derrida, J., 12, 182, 184, 185
De Tocqueville, A., 109111, 119
Developmental psychology, 92, 97
Developmental stages of response,
64
Dhondy, F., 152
Dialogical inquiry, 3637
Dialogism, 11
Dixon, J., 77, 78
Dutch educational system, 92, 100
Dutch national curriculum, 45, 90
B
Bahktin, M., 11, 13, 16, 19, 43, 44,
77, 80, 110112, 157, 158
Barnes, D., 18, 38
Barthes, R., 114, 115
Benjamin, W., 16
Bildung, 124127, 131, 133135,
189, 190, 199
Bleasdale, A., 152
Book clubs, 56, 57, 75, 196, 200,
203208, 210, 212215, 222
Booth, W., 192
Bourdieu, 199
Boyd, B., 112, 117119
Bracke, D., 56, 65, 116, 118
Britton, J., 78
Britzman, D., 158
E
Eaglestone, R., 169175, 178,
180182, 184, 185
Eagleton, T., 15, 78, 112, 114
Eco, U., 192
Elsschot, W., 90
Emecheta, B., 152
Empathy, 53, 59, 64, 66, 116120,
131, 132, 154, 163, 180, 197, 212
C
Canon wars, 161
Chaucer, G., 153
Classrooms, 3, 9, 23, 44, 69, 89, 109,
123, 138, 151166, 169, 189200,
203, 219
231
INDEX
English National Curriculum, 161

Epi-reading, 169172, 175, 178,
180, 183, 185
Ethics, 169185, 200
Evocriticism, 116120
Intertextuality, 36, 111

Iser, W., 97, 116, 130
F
Farmer, B., 23, 25, 2832, 3436,
38, 77, 79, 114116, 140, 141,
145, 146, 153, 155, 162, 176, 177,
197, 198
Fish, S., 78
Freire, P., 153, 213
Frow, J., 75, 76, 82
K
Kaye, G., 152
Kracauer, S., 73
Kress. G., 37
G
German educational system, 190
Growth pedagogy, 154, 160, 170,
171, 175
Guy, R., 152
H
Habermas, J., 191194, 223
Hartley, L., 153
Haug, F., 16, 70, 76
Heteroglossia, 16, 111
Hines, B., 152
Homer, 117
Honneth, A., 80, 81, 83
Howard, J., 82
Humboldt, A., 189
Hunter, I., 78, 79, 169, 170
I
Ideology, 12, 13, 78, 109, 134, 135
Initiation-reply-evaluation
sequence191
Intentional fallacy, 115, 118
International Association for the
Improvement of Mother Tongue
Education (IAIMTE), 3, 193
International Mother Tongue
Education Network (IMEN), 3,
5, 6
Interpretive community, 93, 97, 99
232
J
Jane Eyre, 155157
L
Learning-to-learn paradigm, 92, 100
Leavis, F.R., 185
Lee, H., 172, 173
Lesson planning, 18
Levinas, E., 171, 174, 185
Liberal humanism, 172
Literacy, 4, 18, 40, 44, 72, 75, 115,
116, 124, 153, 189, 190, 205,
223, 224
Literary canon, 38, 45, 91, 124
Literary competence, 45, 51, 92, 93,
97, 100, 101, 124127, 129, 130,
135, 194, 211
Literary criticism, 111, 112, 114,
116, 118, 173, 174, 183
Literary development process, 9394
Literary theory, 19, 40, 47, 95, 96,
117, 191, 193
M
Maori and Pasifika students, 112
Marx, K., 13, 221
Memory work, 16
Montaigne, M., 10, 16, 189
Morality, 79, 173, 179
Multicultural classroom project, 112
N
Naidoo, B., 152
Narrative, 16, 17, 32, 104, 105, 119,
132, 144, 164, 204, 208, 211
National Literacy Strategy, 154
Needle, J., 152
INDEX
Neoliberalism, 224
New Criticism, 116
New South Wales English
Curriculum, 170
Norwegian, 12, 123135
O
Oakeshott, M., 144
Obama, B., 182184
Orwell, G., 83
P
Pedagogical content knowledge, 91
Performativity, 151, 182184
Phronesis, 111, 126
Poetry, 93, 105, 115, 134, 144,
152, 154
Popular culture, 75, 174
Postcolonial literature, 75
Postmodernism, 116
Poststructuralism, 116
Practitioner research, 72, 82
Professional identity, 70, 75, 76
Professional learning, 13, 24, 44, 63,
6972, 76, 8284, 204, 211
Program for International Student
Assessment (PISA), 4, 6, 11, 13,
124, 189, 221
R
Reader response, 4648, 56, 5859,
64, 65, 78, 116, 147150
Reception theory, 47
Recognition, 43, 66, 80, 81, 83, 110,
139, 143, 147, 153, 154, 158, 177,
185, 197, 221, 222, 224, 228
Reid, I., 13, 27, 38, 73, 74, 76, 77,
80, 170
Reid, V.S., 152
Rhys, J., 155
Richard III, 162, 163, 165
Ritchhart, R., 26, 31, 32, 198
Role play, 163, 164
Rosenblatt, L., 116, 132
S
Said, E., 27, 40, 162
Schleiermacher, F., 192, 193
Scholarship of teaching, 24
Scholes, R., 78, 169, 174, 175,
178, 181
Selvon, S., 152
Shakespeare, W., 153, 161165, 209
Shulman, L., 24, 91
Siddhartha, 140
Sillitoe, A., 152
Smith, D., 16, 17, 69, 75, 221
Social justice, 109, 179
Spivak, G., 69, 73, 78, 8183, 152
Standardized testing, 4, 5, 27, 139,
221, 222
Standards-based reforms, 3, 4, 6, 7,
11, 13, 69, 74, 221, 227, 228
Steinbeck, J., 161, 162
Storytelling, 117
T
Taylor, M., 152
Teacher competencies, 89
Tennyson, A., 153
The Merchant of Venice, 163
To Kill a Mockingbird, 140, 172,
173, 209
U
United States Urban Public
Education, 139
V
Van Aalten, T., 47, 48, 51, 96, 97,
115, 116, 143
Van den Vondel, J., 53, 54, 119, 195
Vocational education, 133, 223, 224
Volosinov, V.N., 152
Vygotsky, 95, 165
W
Walker, A., 152
Whitman, W., 112
Williams, R., 83, 152
233
INDEX
Y
Youth literature, 195, 196
234
Z
Zone of proximal development, 95,
97, 100, 101

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Literary Praxis

PEDAGOGY, EDUCATION AND PRAXIS

Piet-Hein van de Ven

ISBN: 978-94-6091-584-0 (paperback)

Published by: Sense Publishers,

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved 2011 Sense Publishers

PART 1: COMPARATIVELY SPEAKING

PART 1: COMPARATIVELY SPEAKING

PIET-HEIN VAN DE VEN AND BRENTON DOECKE

1. OPENING THEIR TEACHING UP TO SCRUTINY

VAN DE VEN AND DOECKE

practice as teachers of literature, opening their teaching up to scrutiny by others

OPENING THEIR TEACHING UP TO SCRUTINY

VAN DE VEN AND DOECKE

strategies to bring in other viewpoints and perspectives, thus introducing other

OPENING THEIR TEACHING UP TO SCRUTINY

VAN DE VEN AND DOECKE

Piet-Hein van de Ven

PIET-HEIN VAN DE VEN AND BRENTON DOECKE

(Literature Classroom, Melbourne, Australia)

VAN DE VEN AND DOECKE

education as a cultural phenomenon. This meant capturing the interpretive practices in

VAN DE VEN AND DOECKE

VAN DE VEN AND DOECKE

The contributors to this volume use language as a primary means by which to

VAN DE VEN AND DOECKE

(Errinerungsarbeit) (Haug, 1990) and more recently her attempts to investigate

Rather than supposing that representing classroom practice involves aspiring to

VAN DE VEN AND DOECKE

an alternative task: of constructing accounts of teaching that explore the differences

VAN DE VEN AND DOECKE

Piet-Hein van de Ven

PART 2: TEACHING AND REFLECTING

PRUE GILL AND BELLA ILLESCA

It is the idea of a conversational inquiry that wins me over. Would I be prepared

GILL AND ILLESCA

GILL AND ILLESCA

GILL AND ILLESCA

Would Farmer be angry because of his lack of honesty? You

Farmer paints a picture in colours. Very striking and disturbing;

GILL AND ILLESCA

The students talk about this passage continues:

Weird she uses brackets like that. Whats the purpose?

GILL AND ILLESCA

GILL AND ILLESCA

Then we move on to a task designated by the state curriculum authority as part of

GILL AND ILLESCA

gain an understanding of the variety of human experience;

GILL AND ILLESCA

A FINAL REFLECTION FROM BELLA

As I sit in Prues classroom with her students, I am reminded of Ian Reids

GILL AND ILLESCA

RAMON GROENENDIJK, MIES POLS AND

4. ILL NEVER KNOW WHAT IT IS LIKE

ILL NEVER KNOW WHAT IT IS

three subdomains of literature: history, literary analysis, and the development of

Our conversation about literary education is a type of hermeneutic research. Mies

ILL NEVER KNOW WHAT IT IS

values that are attached to certain types of behavior? Does the

text-oriented approach, structural analysis

The students have been introduced to these approaches in foregoing lessons.

ILL NEVER KNOW WHAT IT IS

fragment 1: group work