Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Don't fear poetry! Secondary teachers' key strategies for engaging pupils with poetic texts
Luleå University of Technology, Department of Arts, Communication and Education, Education, Language, and Teaching.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-9425-8170
2020 (English)In: Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, ISSN 0031-3831, E-ISSN 1470-1170, Vol. 64, no 6, p. 953-966Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Poetry is a key element of many literature curricula but poetry teaching is something with which many teachers struggle. Research indicates that teachers lack experience of poetry as well as subject knowledge and that current high-stakes testing poses challenges. While previous research has investigated teachers’ experiences through large quantitative studies, this study focuses on what teachers who are keen readers of poetry regard as key elements of pedagogy. The material comprises 15 interviews with secondary school teachers of Swedish. A thematic analysis identified four themes: drawing on personal engagementdiscussing pupils’ conceptions from the outset, creating a safe classroom atmosphere, and scaffolding pupils’ interpretations. The study highlights the centrality of the aesthetic experience and suggests that attention should be paid within research regarding how aesthetic content should be taught and that teacher educators should scaffold pre-service teachers’ individual exploration of poetry to help them become confident teachers of poetry.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Taylor & Francis, 2020. Vol. 64, no 6, p. 953-966
Keywords [en]
poetry pedagogy, aesthetic experience, secondary education, teacher education
National Category
Didactics
Research subject
Swedish and Education
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ltu:diva-75880DOI: 10.1080/00313831.2019.1650823ISI: 000485822700001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85071965408OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ltu-75880DiVA, id: diva2:1349124
Note

Validerad;2020;Nivå 2;2020-09-28 (alebob)

Available from: 2019-09-06 Created: 2019-09-06 Last updated: 2020-09-28Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. Möten med dikten: Poetiska läspraktiker inom och utanför gymnasieskolan
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Möten med dikten: Poetiska läspraktiker inom och utanför gymnasieskolan
2020 (Swedish)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

The aim of this compilation thesis was to increase the understanding of secondary students’ poetic literacies both inside and outside school. The study employed an overarching theoretical framework derived from New Literacy Studies in which poetry reading is understood as a social practice (Barton, 2007; Barton & Hamilton, 2000; Street, 2001). Paper I was a systematic literature review of international research discussions on the teaching of poetry reading in secondary school. The descriptive analysis showed that the research has mainly come from English-speaking countries, namely Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and the US, and the primary areas of research have been in the fields of education, literature, and psychology. The majority of studies were qualitative, and methods such as interviews, observations, surveys, and textual analyses were used. An inductive thematic analysis of topics in the research identified four major themes: “personal response pedagogies”, “development of poetry reading during secondary education”, “educational politics and poetry reading pedagogy”, and “boys and poetry reading”. Paper II explored secondary students’ leisure use of poetry with special regard to the reading of poetry. The study comprised 21 interviews and was inspired by constructive grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014). The analysis showed that the most common activity was private reading at home. Poetry was read for inspiration in order to create poetry, prose, and images. The participants’ examples of their favourite poems showed that lyric poetry and song lyrics were favoured. Paper III was based on the same empirical material as paper II and aimed at exploring the participants’ main reasons for reading poetry for leisure. Felski’s (2008) theory about leisure reading was employed in the analysis. The analysis rendered three categories: “being seen by the poem”, “an internal community”, and “support in difficult periods”, which indicated that there is a relational dimension to the reading process. Paper IV explored secondary Swedish teachers’ perceptions of key elements of poetry pedagogy. The study comprised 15 interviews. A thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) identified four themes: “drawing on personal engagement”, “discussing pupils’ conceptions from the outset”, “creating a safe classroom atmosphere”, and “scaffolding pupils’ interpretations”, which comprised the two sub-themes “scaffolding the aesthetic experience” and “scaffolding textual analysis”. Rosenblatt’s (1994 [1978], 1995 [1938]) theory of aesthetic reading and Shulman’s (1986, 1987) concept of pedagogical content knowledge was employed to interpret the participants’ perceptions. In the final section of the thesis, trends in the results in papers I–IV were discussed. The findings suggested that the aesthetic experience of poetry was key to the reading practices inside and outside secondary school. Students’ statements about their poetry reading outside school showed that they tended to read for psychological reasons, whereas the teachers’ statements about the teaching practices indicated that these were oriented towards textual analysis.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Luleå tekniska universitet, 2020
Series
Doctoral thesis / Luleå University of Technology 1 jan 1997 → …, ISSN 1402-1544
National Category
Didactics
Research subject
Swedish and Education
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:ltu:diva-78564 (URN)978-91-7790-585-1 (ISBN)978-91-7790-586-8 (ISBN)
Public defence
2020-06-12, A109, Luleå, 10:00 (Swedish)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2020-04-20 Created: 2020-04-17 Last updated: 2020-06-11Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Publisher's full textScopus

Authority records

Sigvardsson, Anna

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Sigvardsson, Anna
By organisation
Education, Language, and Teaching
In the same journal
Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research
Didactics

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 491 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf