Teaching Literature and Reading Performances: a possible relation
Associate Professor Gitte Holten Ingerslev
Danish School of Education
Aarhus University
Denmark
ghi@dpu.dk
This article deals with the relations between different approaches to literature teaching and the
resulting reading performance among Danish students in upper secondary school (16-19 year olds
in the Danish Gymnasium). It looks into how the reading of literature can be both supported and
hindered in literature lessons.
In Denmark, the number of young people opting for upper secondary school has
tripled over the last 20 years, resulting in a much wider range of student backgrounds in every class.
In spite of this fact, teaching has not changed radically. It remains directed towards the small
percentage of students who are already relatively experienced readers and rather sophisticated
language users. The possible consequence is that non-reading readers experience defeat and
subsequent lack of interest in language and literature. As a result, many students might be in danger
of never establishing personal reading strategies or developing a joy of reading.
The two studies which are the basis of the article aim at investigating the relation
between the teacher’s conception1 of learning and knowledge on the one hand, and the student’s
conceptions of learning, reading and interpreting literary texts, on the other (Marton, Dall'Alba et al.
1993; Boulton-Lewis, Smith et al. 2001). Teachers and students tend to be embedded in their
individual cultural background, and they have attitudes and ways of acting which differ from person
to person. These differences are not often made explicit, and it is one of the aims of this article to
shed light into that area as a greater understanding of that field will lead to a more precise
understanding of the difficulties which the student with little reading experience face in upper
secondary school. Another aim of the article is to reveal possible connections between students’
learning conceptions and learning approaches, and their reading and interpretation skills. Finally the
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Conceptions and ways of understanding are not seen as individual qualities. Conceptions of reality are considered
rather as categories of description to be used in facilitating the grasp of concrete cases of human functioning. Since
the same categories of description appear in 'different situations, the set of categories is thus stable and generalizable
between the situations even if individuals move from one category to another on different occasions. The totality of
such categories of description denotes a kind of collective intellect, an evolutionary tool in continual development.
(Marton 1981)
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article describes possible ways of teaching reading and writing and at the same time supporting the
students in developing metacognitive skills.
Teachers and students in literature classrooms
Often the teachers´ theoretical backgrounds for choosing literary texts and their criteria for selection
of reading approaches are not explicit. Neither are the teachers’ conceptions of good reading
competences, of a good text and of a student’s appropriate basic knowledge. By conception of
knowledge is meant whether knowledge is an objectively given truth which the teacher wants to
convey to the students, or whether knowledge is being constructed in each individual brain through
working with the material. That leads to the fundamental ontological question of whether the text
exists before the reading, or whether it comes to life through being read. An answer to that question
is decisive to the way a text will be taught. And it leads to an epistemological question: How does a
person learn, and how does a person read?
The answers to these questions may vary, and the different approaches may lead to clashes in the
classroom. Such a situation is illustrated in Diagram 1:
The teacher’s
conception of
knowledge
The teacher’s
view of the
subject
The student’s
conception of
learning and
study behaviour
The teacher’s
teaching
practise
The teacher’s
idea of the ideal
educational
setting
The student’s
way of
reading and
learning
The student’s idea of the
content and aim of the
subject
The student’s
idea of the ideal
educational
setting
Diagram 1. Hidden clashes in the classroom
The teacher’s conception of knowledge, view of the subject, and idea of the ideal educational
setting is decisive for the teacher’s teaching practice and is often not expressed openly in the
classroom. This means that (some of) the students are not able to decode what is required.
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On the other hand the students in a classroom have conceptions of learning and ideas of the ideal
educational setting which are decisive for their study behaviour, and they have an idea of the
subject content and of the aim of the subject which form the basis of their ways of reading and
learning. For these reasons, among others, students assume different roles in classrooms. In the
PEEL project (Baird and Mitchell 1987), they are categorized as follows:
Passive Receptivity. In this case responsibility and control of the lesson is wholly the teacher’s.
Student work is limited to undemanding roles such as giving superficial responses, transcribing
work etc.
Students do not fully understand the nature, purpose or progress of the lesson. They are uninformed
and are not involved in managing the lesson and lesson content.
Relatively uninformed responding is another way of describing students’ roles in class. Students
participate actively, but mainly when directed, by answering teacher questions or performing set
tasks. The teacher still has the control. Students do not fully understand the nature, purpose or
progress of the lesson and there may be insufficient time, encouragement, or student inclination to
ask and gain answers to many evaluative questions. Some students’ questions or answers are valued
more than others by the teacher.
Students might be active, but not fully informed and not involved in managing the lesson and lesson
content.
Informed participation. In this case students participate actively according to teacher directions.
Teacher assumes responsibility and control for lesson nature and development. Students ask
evaluative questions and are aware of, or actively engaged in finding out, answers. All contributions
are valued by the teacher and, as far as possible, considered critically by the class.
Students are active. They are informed, but not involved in managing the lesson and lesson content.
Informed Collaboration. Students collaborate actively with the teacher and share responsibility and
control of the nature, purpose, and progress of the lesson. Students ask evaluative questions, and
reflect on and determine answers. All contributions are valued by the teacher and, as far as possible,
considered critically by the class.
Students are active, informed and involved in managing the lesson and lesson content.
The article is based on two studies which investigate and map student reactions to different kinds of
teacher instructions. The above mentioned categories are used in the final analysis.
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Another related area which is subsequently being investigated is the conception of progression in
connection with teacher instruction. The conception of progression is based on an idea of
development towards a goal including increasingly more complex aspects. It is a movement from
the simple to the complex through more and more advanced ways of learning so that learners
develop the ability to look at themselves in relation to the text and in relation to their own historic
time and the time in which the text is produced, and to look at a text on several levels.
Progression can be seen as a combination of a whole series of elements, such as metacognitive
awareness, deep learning2 (Biggs 1987), higher order thinking, reading skills and linguistic
competence – written as well as oral.
The two studies investigates the necessary basis of
progression.
The two studies
Both studies are empirical studies.
Study 1 was carried out with eight teachers and eight classes in year 9-12, altogether 172 15-18 year
old students, and investigates the relation between the teachers´ conception of learning and
knowledge within literature teaching in each specific class and the students’ conceptions of learning
and of reading literary texts.
Study 2 is a collaborative action research project in one of the 10th grade classes.
In Study 1, the teachers were asked the questions mentioned below. The questionnaire was given
after classroom observation and a short interview:
- Within the reading of literature, which competences do you want the students to
develop?
- How do you define progression?
- Which teaching approach will enhance students´ competences and progression?
The Deep Processing Student is the student who goes into depth in her work, who ponders and who is not satisfied till she
has comprehended the material. She will not give up before she has understood what a problem is all about. The knowledge
structure of a student like that will typically be integrated. That means that new knowledge is connected to existing
knowledge. In this group of students there will be a majority with a complex approach to learning.
2
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This study is based on qualitative as well as quantitative research: Classroom observations were
carried out in five classrooms in three lower secondary schools – year 9/10 (folkeskoler) and in five
classrooms in two upper secondary schools – year 10/11-12 (gymnasier). Open interviews were
carried out with three lower secondary school teachers, five upper secondary school teachers, and
nine students who were followed for three years – and interviewed once a year.
The students filled in a questionnaire with open questions on learning and reading in
year 9/10 and finally in their second year of upper secondary school. They also filled in two forms:
Reflections on Learning Inventory (RoLI) (Meyer 2000; Meyer and Boulton-Lewis 1997) and a
Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) (Pintrich et al. 1991). The teachers also
filled in a RoLI questionnaire and an Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI) (Prosser and
Trigwell 1999).
The
qualitative
research
approach
used
in
this
study
is
derived
from
phenomenography3. All teachers and selected students participated in open-ended interviews,
designed to promote reflection about teaching and learning.
Phenomenographic data analysis produced categories of description within
conceptions of teaching and learning and of the reading of literature. Two researchers went
through the data and defined these categories independently. They also discussed the categories
together in order to establish categorical clarity.
The variation, or qualitatively different ways of experiencing the process, is presented
in the words of the participants as they talk about the teaching of the subject, and as they talked
about the learning in the subject, and the reading of literature
1) Study 2 takes up the challenges posed by Study 1 and deals with one teacher and one class
in 10th grade, the first year of upper secondary school in Denmark. It is a collaborative
action research project.
The primary purpose of Study 2 was to find out to which extent students developed personal
conceptions of learning and personal study behaviour, sophisticated knowledge of language, and
advanced reading skills
Furthermore the following specific aspects were pointed out as being important in the study.

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awareness about genre (oral and written)
Phenomenography is a phenomenological research approach used in educational research
5

written work such as writing to reflect, writing to communicate, fiction as well as non
fiction

ability to give response to other’s work, written as well as oral response, resulting in a
growing awareness of the fact that working with other people’s texts make you alert and
critical to your own texts

higher order thinking and metacognitive awareness

reading, in producing texts, in reflecting on and analyzing a selection of texts

development of cultural competence

understanding of oneself in a social and historic context
Major results of Study 1
Table 1 illustrates the overall results for Study 1. It gives a general picture of the positions in which
the participants placed themselves. It is built from the categorisation of student and teacher
positions based on their conceptions of learning and teaching.
STUDENT
1
Conception of good learning:
Surface Approach (Reproduction)
- get more knowledge
- remember
- use
TEACHER
1
Conception of good teaching:
-
transfer knowledge
train apprentices
Transmissive approach
Certainty orientated
2
Deep Approach (Reflection)
- understand
- change one’s knowledge
- change as a person
2
- enhance understanding and
conceptualization
- enhance cognitive, metacognitive
and knowledge based abilities
Interpretive, dialogic approach
Uncertainty orientated
Table 1. A diagram of teacher/student interaction
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The results in the upper left quarter reveal a student with a limited conception of learning, one who
is certainty orientated, which means that he or she feels threatened by teaching which challenges
their thinking. Analyses of student interviews show that these students predominantly come from
non-reading backgrounds. They tend to feel insecure and ill at ease when starting in upper
secondary school, especially in humanistic, interpretive subjects compared to the more exact
subjects. A student from this group would typically say: ‘Just write on the blackboard what I’m
supposed to say at my exam’.
A teacher in the upper right quarter sees a professional teacher as a person who is
good at knowledge transmission, who is well prepared for every lesson and who leads the class
through the material.
A student in bottom left quarter is probing and investigative. He or she wants to
understand the content of the subject and would typically want to do project based, decentralised
work which would challenge habitual thinking and enhance individual development.
A teacher in the bottom right quarter, beyond the specific subject, aims at his or her
student’s personal development. He or she sees a dialogical approach as part of good teaching
procedure and regards social processes as not only a way to learning and understanding but also a
student’s possible way to understanding aspects of him- or herself.
The diagram gives a general picture of the positions which the investigation showed that students
and teachers take in relation to each other in classrooms, and the diagram is based on the
categorisation of student and teacher positions based on their conceptions of learning and teaching.
I will return to these positions and the results of the clashes between incompatible approaches later
in the article.
The teachers’ conceptions of teaching and learning
In the investigation in study 1 the 8 teachers’ conceptions of good teaching fall into these four
categories:
Good teaching is:
1) transmission of knowledge from teacher to student
2) development of abilities and understanding of the subject along the lines of
- or in
accordance with – the teacher’s abilities and understanding
3) teacher-student co-operation aiming at enhancing the student’s understanding and
conceptualising
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4) planning of teaching sessions where the students have the access to developing cognitive,
metacognitive and domain specific abilities. The aim is broader than strictly domain specific.
The teachers’ conceptions of good teaching were strongly connected to the teachers’ conceptions of
learning listed below.
The teachers who primarily focussed on content answered within categories 1. and 2. in Good
Teaching (‘transmission of knowledge from teacher to student’ and ‘development of abilities and
understanding of the subject along the lines of - or in accordance with - the teacher’s abilities and
understanding’)
The teachers who primarily focussed on competence, meaning and growth answered within
categories 3. and 4. (‘teacher-student co-operation aiming at enhancing the student’s understanding
and conceptualising’ and ‘planning of teaching sessions where the students have the access to
developing cognitive, metacognitive and domain specific abilities’)
The teachers conceptions of learning fall into these categories:
Learning means:
1) to add to knowledge and to remember
2) Development of ability to use domain specific skills
3) Development of understanding
4) Change and individual personal growth
Points of Focus
Content
Competence
Meaning
Growth
From the data collected, teachers thus divide themselves into two categories, Transmissive Teachers
and Interpretive Teachers. These categories are adopted from the Australian PEEL-project (Baird
and Mitchell 1987; Baird and Northfield 1992). The transmissive teacher argues that good teaching
is transmission of knowledge from teacher to student in order to develop abilities and understanding
of the subject along the lines of - or in accordance with - the teacher’s abilities and understanding,
whereas the interpretive teacher aims at enhancing the student’s understanding and conceptualising
and plans teaching sessions where the students have the possibility of developing cognitive,
metacognitive and domain specific abilities. In this case the aim of teaching is broader than strictly
domain specific.
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The students’ conceptions of reading
The phenomenographic analysis of student interviews combined with questionnaires gave these
results concerning the students’ conceptions of what can be achieved by reading fiction and poetry:
Reading is the way to factual knowledge (knowledge about literary history, methods of literary
analysis, knowledge of historical events, basis of essay writing).
The students in this category simply said that they read literature in order to qualify for further
education. Some of them read literature for school and only for school. Some of them also read
for joy, but they did not see any connection between their reading for school and their reading
for joy. They all had transmissive teachers.
Reading is an escape from reality.
The reading the students talk about here is their reading outside schools. These students all had
transmissive teachers.
Reading is a way to language construction.
The students in this group talk about the way one refines one’s language by reading and meeting
different authors’ ways of describing feelings and conflicts between human beings.
Reading is a way to identification and enhanced understanding of other ways of conceptualising the
world – and of acting.
Reading is a way to enhanced personal insight and the ability to reflect upon oneself from an
outsider’s view
Reading implies change, not just of yourself as a person, but of your understanding and interaction
with others
Students within the last four categories (about 25%) are all from reading backgrounds, and they are
all extensive readers. They have well established reading habits. This group had both transmissive
and interpretive teachers.
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In the classes visited in this study, the majority of the students (about 75%) resumed the roles of
passive receptivity or relatively uninformed responding4. They came to class and listened and took
notes, they did the group work which the teacher had decided and prepared beforehand, and in the
interviews the majority did not understand the nature of the subject or know why they should do the
things they were asked to do in class. Despite the fact that the teachers predominantly claimed that
in class they were working with literature and interpretation of literary texts as the main task, the
majority of students said in the interviews that they had Danish lessons in order to improve their
punctuation and to learn how to write properly.
The underlying aims in the lessons were not clear to these students. Many of the students were
confused with respect to how to read and interpret a text. They read the text at home, and they
brought to class suggestions for discussion, but they often realized that their suggestions were not
appreciated. Little by little they gave up preparing the texts at home. They may have read the texts
superficially, but they did not prepare the texts in the sense that they really put energy and reflection
into the reading. They realized that it does not pay off to do so, as their reflections were not often
considered in class. These students divided reading in two categories: for school and for joy.
In classes where the students’ roles could be described as informed participation or
informed collaboration, the majority of students saw a connection between reading for school and
reading for joy, and some of them, who had not been reading literature before, started reading, and
felt that they could manage. Study 2 showed that students changed their attitude to reading
according to their teacher’s teaching practice.
Major results of Study 2
The teacher observed in study 2 planned and carried out lessons and tasks in order to ensure that
the individual student got a possibility of developing
- his or hers personal conception of learning and rewarding study behaviour
- a conscious and enhanced use of language
- a competent and informed reader approach
This was implemented through lessons and sessions where individual work, pairwork and group
work took place in every lesson. Lessons where writing and thinking had their natural space, a
lesson often started with the students writing down their own questions to the text. This work gave
4
See the categorisation in the beginning of the article
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the teacher information about the individual student’s conception of learning and domain specific
problems and challenges, in that way the teacher continuously had the possibility to plan work
tasks which would challenge each student to read, write and reflect This meant lessons where
everybody accepted and even liked the fact that working with texts is time consuming.
Simultaneously the teacher and the class cooperated on establishing a class culture based on mutual
respect with room for different personalities and cultures. The different interpretations were always
discussed with respect for the individual student’s observations.
After a year of this way of working the students’ evaluation was positive. 19 students were highly
satisfied, and ten of these stated that they had started reading fiction on their own accord which they
had not done before. Four students praised the variation and the opportunity of being creative. One
person stated that he realised the importance of group work and the fact that you can learn from
others while working in groups. One wrote that it had been a year full of challenges, and that she
had finally understood what this subject was all about. One out of 26 students found the way of
working “trivial” as he put it.
When asked about their own contribution to the work of the year, 20 students
answered that they had worked well. Five answered that their work had been ‘ok’, and one
answered that he had not worked much. This student is also the student that found the lessons
trivial. The reason was that he was an excellent reader even before he started 10th grade, and he had
an academic background, and he wanted to be introduced to literature reading at a more advanced
level. The students’ written exam papers were evaluated by an external examiner, who wrote that
the most striking thing about the students´ essays was that they were all personally involved in what
they wrote. They all had a personal approach to reading, interpretation of texts and writing about it.
It was no surprise that the dissatisfied student had an excellent score.
The major results of both investigations
A teacher’s definition of the subject of Danish combined with his/her teaching practice is decisive
for the non-reading student’s development in learning and reading.
The students from reading backgrounds will go on reading, and their teachers’ conception of good
teaching will not influence these students’ reading habits dramatically.
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If the student is not an experienced reader, a transmissive teacher seems to breed reproductive,
passive student behaviour.
A dialogic, interpretive teacher who aims at enhancing the student’s metacognitive development
and domain specific conceptualisation seems to produce active, probing student behaviour
In figure 1 above these different positions are illustrated
Finally and perhaps the most important factor of them all, the basis of progression is a joy of
reading and a wish to work hard in the subject. When students know what the task is about, and feel
that they are getting better day by day, their joy of working increases.
A lot of educational research takes for granted that there is a close connection between a
student’s conception of learning, approaches to learning and learning outcome. The relevance of
studying these areas may be found in the fact that despite the change in student uptake in upper
secondary education in Denmark, the number of students from families with little formal education
who obtain a university degree, have not changed radically (Hansen 1995). The reasons for this are
multiple. One reason is that these young people do not get access to what Jerome Bruner calls
‘cultural codes’ (Bruner 1998).
Danish Language and Literature have a central position in building this access to
cultural tools so that the students can see their lives and their own role in this in a wider and more
reflective perspective. For that reason it is of utter importance that the central issues of language
and literature form a never-ending dialogue in the student’s consciousness. Unfortunately, this is
not always the case.
The area is important for political, sociological and humanistic reasons, and continuous, detailed
classroom research is necessary in order to cover this area.
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Bruner, J. (1998). Uddannelseskulturen. København, Munksgaard.
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