Teaching the Reading Experience: upper secondary teachers’ perspectives on the aesthetic aspect of literature studies

Teaching the Reading Experience: upper secondary teachers’ perspectives on the aesthetic aspect of literature studies

Written fiction is a cornerstone in upper secondary Swedish first language (L1) studies. However, in a time when international assessments in education create and maintain a focus on measurability, aspects of literature studies that are intangible might not be given the same attention in the literary classroom. One of those aspects is the reader’s immersion in a text through an aesthetic experience, which is one of the reasons why readers turn to fiction. This would mean that one of the main incentives to read fiction is separated from literature studies in school.

In my thesis, I examine the nature of Swedish L1 literature studies from teachers’ perspectives, and the role of the Reading Experience—the affective and experiential element of being immersed in a text when reading fiction—in the literary classroom. In doing so, I employ focus group interviews, an online questionnaire, and personal interviews, within a theoretical framework comprising ideas by Dewey about art as communication, Felski’s modes of textual engagement, Rosenblatt’s Transactional Theory, and Langer’s concept of Envisionment.

Although curricular stipulations and the current focus on measurability downplay the Reading Experience, I found that individual teachers’ priorities create a space for it in literature studies in the upper secondary Swedish L1 classroom. Individual priorities determine whether the teaching approach is student- or teacher-centered. Furthermore, a sociocultural perspective on learning is central, letting the individual benefit from the collective in discussions. The Reading Experience in literature studies and a student-centered teaching approach are dependent of individual priorities, which entails a risk of arbitrariness and inequivalent education. Thus, if all students are to be granted a holistic teaching approach that regards the measurable and the instrumental as well as the intangible and experiential, all teachers have to take it into account in their teaching.