Läsa texten eller ”verkligheten”: Tolkningsgemenskaper på en litteraturdidaktisk bro

Abstract in English

The dissertation Reading Texts or Reality investigate teachers use of interpretive communities in teaching literature in secondary school. It discusses how different learning outcomes generates from three interpretory frames for reading. Teachers can be looked upon as critics when they show unexperienced readers why and how they read an interprete literary texts. In their teaching,they don´t relate only to their students but also to thier own conception of subject matter and to a broader discourse in society that deals with questions of why and how we read literature. Following voices of the discourse are included in the study: eight teachers, curriculum texts, a journal for the profession and a journal för scholors.

Teachers combine several aims in their teaching of literature. They use literature to discuss life, gender and problems related to young people, text as faction. But, they also try to teach their students about narrathology and how to understand and interpretate fictional texts, text as fiction and a world of signs. The curriculum, however, means that literature is read only to gain knowledge about the world,oneself and other people. A contradiction is that one of the criterias for assement includes knowledge of texts and methodology from the academic subject. One of the other voices in the discourse, a journal for scholors, talk about the literary texts but very seldom about teaching the texts. Another voice, a journal for teachers in Swedish, follows the curriculum closely and discusses reading literature as a way to get knowledge of the world.

Research in subject matter didactics can investigate teaching, relate different aims to different outcomes and show possibilities for teaching literature and reading comprehension. If we choose only one interpretive community, we get one kind of reading comprehension.If we combine two in a complex teaching strategy, we extend learning and reading comprehension of our students.