Beliefs about the Value of Teaching Literature: Why Teach Literature?

The importance of PTs acquiring beliefs about the value of teaching literature.  PTs need to espouse justifications for teaching literature based on definitions for what is literature.   As beginning teachers, these PTs will experience attempts to socialize them to conform to status-quo instruction that reflects reductive, decontextualized notions of meaning-making in ways that limits the power of literature instruction.  It is important that beginning teachers learn to resist pressures to conform to these status-quo notions of literary instruction and curriculum.   Research on beginning teachers development in their initial years of teaching shows that those teachers who have a strong, well-defined set of beliefs were less likely to conform to the traditional teaching practices operating in the schools than those teachers who do not have a well-defined set of beliefs and attitudes (Smagorinsky, Cook, & Johnson, 2003).  All of this suggests that PTs need to acquire more than simply teaching techniques.

    Our methods courses therefore need to explore with PTs the central question: why teach literature?  Based on their  definitions of literature, they can then formulate purposes for teaching literature.  In doing so, PTs are learning to define their beliefs about the value of teaching literature, beliefs that should serve them in their future teaching careers to help them resist the pressures of status-quo practices and curriculum and to formulate new directions for teaching literature.

     PTs best learn to formulate why they are doing what they are doing, as well as analysis of competing beliefs and attitudes related to teaching literature, through observing and talking to teachers about their beliefs so that they can perceive the relationships between beliefs and practices. And, they need to be able to critically examine the principles and assumptions underlying literature curriculum as driven by larger social, historical, and political forces determining what literature and how that literature should be taught (Zancanella, 1998).

    PTs also need to be familiar with research on the value of teaching literature and the arts so that they can provide evidence fo the value of teaching literature in certain ways in terms of student gains in achievement, especially for struggling learners.  For example, Albers' (2006) work in visual discourse analysis also indicates that when visual texts are analyzed by noting cueing systems within visual texts, and the social discourses that are evident from such analysis, more complex understanding emerges about students' literacy practices.

Why Teach Literature?

    Rather than focus on one single justification for teaching literature, PTs could explore a number of different justifications related to the following aspects of literature instruction.  In doing so, they need to not only define the benefits of engaging in literature described in the "what is literature" section, but also formulate purposes in terms of the benefits of using their particular instructional methods--what students will learn from participating in their classroom activities. 

    As we argued, literature affords certain social and cultural experiences that enhances the quality of students’ lives through engaging in transactions with texts (Probst, 2004).   However, PTs can enhance the value of these transactions through engaging discussions, writing-about and writing-of literature, drama, and video production activities.  PTs therefore need to justify the use of these activities by defining the larger purposes and value afforded by those activities.

Fostering imagination.   We teach literature because an imagination honed and sharpened by the study of literature is crucial in reading the other texts and the other events of our lives.   We can do that if we have read powerful literature under the guidance of a teacher who invites and encourages that imaginative participation in the story, helping us learn to conjure out of ink on paper the human experience portrayed.  Through developing engaging response activities, a teacher invites thoughtful reflection on experience crucial to making sense of the complex issues and the difficult choices life presents us (Dewey, 1916). 

Enacting alternative voices.  We also teach literature as a form of enactment that (Rosenblatt, 1978; Wilhelm, 2001) actively engages students in a transaction driven by their personal purposes and experiences that lead to construction of new alternative voices and perspectives.  Through experiencing enactment with texts, students learn to play with language and images as a means of adopting alternative perspectives related to their lives (Smagorinsky, 2001). They can therefore envision different ways of being in the world that leads them to adopt different identities and perspectives.

Inviting perspective-taking.  Literature invites perspective-taking—the adoption of alternative ways of perceiving and experiencing the world leading to empathy for others’ perspectives (Beach, Appleman, Hynds, & Wilhelm, 2006). In a world that is increasingly segregated and divided, it is essential that students be open to engaging with the other and alternative perspectives, leading to tolerance and openness to changes.  In a world limited by rigid certainties, literature affords different ways of imagining alternative ways of thinking and experiences. 

    Through sharing their responses, students are exposed to different perspectives reflecting different ways of knowing and believing, leading them to recognize how their backgrounds and experiences build meaning and distance or include them in texts they read.  From hearing different perspectives voiced in the classroom, students experience dialogic tensions that serve to challenge their status quo notions of the world.  In doing so, students are experimenting with the uses of new social languages constituting their identities as well as employ alternative, hypothetical, “what-if” languages portrayed in fantasy or science fiction literature, leading them to they begin to perceive their lived-worlds in a new and different ways.  Given the need to develop alternative perspectives on the political, economic, cultural, and ecological challenges facing the world, it is essential that students be open to entertaining these alternative perspectives.

 
Inferring symbolic meanings of language use.  Teachers can also help students learn to infer the symbolic meanings of language.  In doing so, students are learning to appreciate how language means in different and complex ways, as well as experiencing the playful nature of language.  For example, in Carol Lee’s research (2007), high schools students draw on their experiences with inferring symbolic meanings of language use in rap and  “playing the dozens” to infer the symbolic meanings of language in Shakespeare’s plays.

    Appreciating the literary uses of language leads students to engage in writing and performing literature through poetry readings and slams, as well as participation in drama activities. Through engaging in these performances, students learn to perceive the power of spoken literary language to construct imagined alternatives to status-quo worlds and to engage others in these shared envisionments.

    They can also help students learn to adopt a “point-driven stance” associating with attending to the symbolic meanings of texts related to the larger "point" or thematic meanings of texts (Hunt & Vipond, 1992).  Rather than assume that this "point" resides in the text itself, teachers can help students learn to recognize how these thematic meanings are socially constructed through sharing of responses. 

Making intertextual connections.  Teachers also help students define intertextual connections between different texts in terms of similarities in themes, topics, genres, stances, ideologies, and style.  By drawing on their knowledge of literature to make these intertextual connections, students then begin to perceive themselves as competent readers who have acquired the conventions of reading for meaning, for example, they ability to apply knowledge of “rules of notice” to attend to the importance of titles, endings, or turning points in a text as implying significant meanings (Rabinowitz, 1998) or applying problem-solving strategies for determining who committed a crime in a murder mystery.

    From making these intertextual connections, students also learn to identify prototypical plots, character types, and themes common to certain literary genres.  In doing so, they can then examine how these prototypical elements are representing identities and social worlds, for example, how the mythic quest for truth reflects a larger need to understand the world.  And, based on their knowledge of prototypical literary elements, students can identify instances in which authors play with or parody those elements to challenge familiar ways of constructing texts, leading to creating their own literary parodies.

Grappling with difficult texts.  Teachers also can help students learn how to grapple with difficult texts that require re-reading to identify and understand what puzzles or mystifies them (Blau, 2003).  From helping students learn to enage in re-reading, teachers are fostering students to revise and rethink what may be initial superficial readings, leading they to be open to the need to continually rethink the ideas in understanding and producing texts.  Learning to revise their initial interpretations may then transfer to revising their writing.

Critiquing ideological assumptions.  Teachers can also help students engage in critique of the ideological assumptions constituting characters’ actions and social worlds through applying feminist, Marxist, post-colonial, psychological, cultural, archetypal, or post-structuralist critical lenses (Appleman, 2000; Beach, Appleman, Hynds, & Wilhelm, 2006). By learning to adopt certain critical stances and lenses, students are critiquing how characters are constituted and limited by powerful institutions. For example, from experiencing the portrayals of racism in multicultural literature, students experience the historical and institutional forces shaping characters’ lives that may enhance their awareness of how these forces operate in their own communities (Beach, Thein, & Parks, 2007).  In applying a post-colonial critique of Western perspectives of third-world nations, they begin to recognize the limitations of these Western perspectives. Or, in noting the ways in which discourses of race, class, and gender limit characters’ development, they begin to examine how these discourses operate in their own lives.