Pieper conf oct06

The teaching of literature
Irene Pieper
Pädagogische Hochschule Heidelberg
Symposion Deutschdidaktik
Strasbourg, 17/10/06


Aspects
• Literary education and the notion of „literarische
Bildung“
• Curriculum developments and central purposes of
literary education
• Primary and secondary education: From learning with
literature to learning about literature?
• Canon and criteria of text selection
• Reading literature, reading literacy and competences
• Reading literature, assessment and „literarische
Bildung“


Literarische Bildung
Notion
of elite

Participation in cultural life
Personal development and
enrichment within society

CULTURE –
culture
Domain of social

Canon

subjectivity

diverse cultural
forms
Teaching
literature

meaningfulness

?!

cultural techniques
reading
content
form
literary history
media


Curriculum developments since
the late 1970s
• Conception of language: pragmatics;
communication
• Diversification in literary studies
• Conception of text: literary texts, pragmatic
texts; other media
• Focus on learning / the learner

• Shift: encourage students to read / reading for
personal enrichment in context


Primary and secondary education:
From learning with literature to
learning about literature?
• Primary school: learning to read, arts, ethics
• Secondary education: traces of literary studies
• Adequate reception of literary texts?


Canon and criteria of text
selection
• Critique of the notion of canon
• Exemplary texts
• Criteria: students‘ interests; introduction to different
genres / to literary history; themes; pluralism;
pragmatic reasons..


Reading literature, reading
literacy and competences
• Reading literacy – literary competences?
• Progression in interpreting literary texts?
• Scaling?
• Concepts of competences – theoretical framework /
branch of literary studies

Reading literature, assessment
and literarische Bildung
• Problems of assessment
• Exemplary texts
• Context knowledge
• Tension between general aims of education and
operationalisation of competences, evaluation


Outlook
• Double route: reading literacy – culture of reading
• LE and foreign languages in dialogue
• Cross-cultural perspectives


Key Questions
• How can the specific educational benefit of
dealing with literature be laid down in a
European framework?
• How can literature be addressed within an LEframework so as to acknowledge different
national traditions?
• How can literature be addressed within an LEframework so that both cultural memory and
the present cultural diversity are reflected?