Planning for progression?

Norwegian L1 teachers’ conception of literature teaching and literary competence throughout lower secondary education

Abstract

This article reflects on the literature teaching of lower secondary L1 teachers in Norway. We examine how teachers plan for and assess their students’ literary development, and ask what they consider to be the main purpose of literature teaching, what they understand as literary development, and to what extent they experience and understand literature instruction planning as a collaborative and collegial task. Methodologically, the study is based on semi-structured interviews with L1 teachers (N=9) at one lower secondary school in a Norwegian city. Theoretically, the study builds on L1 paradigm syntheses, models of literary competence, while also lending itself to sociological studies of professions. The findings suggest that Norwegian L1 teachers consider fostering the joy of reading to be the most important aim of literature teaching. Their teaching is legitimized from a reader-oriented position, mainly supported by everyday theory and common-sense discourse rather than scholarship or theories of literary criticism, didactics, or pedagogy. Furthermore, the teachers demonstrate dissenting views on how to plan for and structure students’ development of literary competence throughout the three-year course but tend to agree that the development should progress from experience-based literature teaching to more analytical and interpretative approaches. As a general trend, teachers experience difficulties assessing students’ progression in literary competence, predominantly resorting to assessing students’ knowledge and use of analytical concepts. Finally, the findings imply that variations in the teachers’ understanding of literature teaching’s purpose and in their related planning and assessment should be seen in the context of the school’s professional community, especially regarding what opportunities it facilitates for discipline-specific peer networks.