Creative approaches to literary texts may develop students’ literary competences, but little is known about how prevalent such approaches are and how they are implemented. This study explored naturally occurring, that is non-interventionist, literature instruction in the subjects L1 Norwegian and L2 English, based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of 301 video-recorded lower secondary lessons from 73 classrooms in Norway in 2015–24. By juxtaposing L1 and L2, the study recognises the importance of literature instruction across school subjects, and it advances the understanding of how literary texts are taught in L1 relating to L2. The findings indicate that creative response activities were a recurring feature in both subjects across the studied decade, although they occurred more frequently in L2 lessons. In both subjects, teachers provided opportunities for students to exercise various literary competences when responding creatively to literary texts. However, they offered little guidance on how students could undertake these activities and rarely combined them with analytical reflection that could support students’ developing literary competences. The study discusses implications for teaching and research.
This study aims to reveal how Nordic lower secondary language arts teachers motivate and describe their literature instruction. It investigates what motivations for literature instruction teachers appeal to, what literary materials they use, and by what instructional means and methods they teach literature. An online questionnaire was completed by 701 teachers from a random sample of schools across the Nordic countries. Analyses showed that teachers valued using literature for various reasons, although using literature to develop students’ reading comprehension and linguistic skills were prioritised. Across all five countries, the reading of narrative texts was favoured. However, genre preferences varied by country: contemporary short stories were significantly more frequently read in Norway, Denmark, and Finland than in Sweden and Iceland, while young adult novels were significantly more commonly read in Denmark than in the other four countries. The most common instructional practices included letting students answer text-based questions and discussing literary texts. A key finding of the study is that literature reading in Nordic schools seems to be a matter of reading instruction rather than literature instruction. Thus, while different types of skills are emphasised, less attention is given to literary reading experiences.
Reading engagement is widely recognised as critical for literacy development, yet its dynamic nature poses challenges for empirical analysis. This study examines reading engagement as a situated event within shared reading (SR) sessions involving 40 students, organised into four groups, in vocational upper-secondary education. The data consists of two video-recorded SR sessions per group, resulting in a total of eight sessions drawn from a six-week intervention. Drawing on conversation analysis and our own operationalisation of reading engagement, as presented in this article, literature discussions were analysed at the micro level. The data were coded for indicators of the different dimensions of reading engagement. The findings show high behavioural engagement, increased cognitive and social engagement across sessions, and more frequent affective expressions. The analysis reveals that the dimensions of reading engagement are intertwined and mutually supportive of each other. Social engagement occupies a central position due to its potential to influence and strengthen cognitive engagement. The study contributes with a methodological framework for analysing engagement as an emergent classroom event. Furthermore, the study shows that SR is a context in which multidimensional reading engagement can be observed.
Learning effective writing skills is a priority in secondary education due to its crucial role in academic success and lifelong development. This study evaluated the effectiveness of Reading and Writing in Pairs; a peer tutoring programme aimed at improving writing skills. Using a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design, 90 secondary students were divided into an intervention group (45) and a comparison group (45). Both groups completed pre-post writing assessments and the Self-Efficacy for Writing Scale, while the intervention group also participated in a final learning perceptions survey. The intervention focused on the narrative genre, with peer tutoring sessions over six weeks (15 hours), including explicit genre and writing instruction. Results showed the intervention group outperformed the comparison group in writing performance (.001 < p ≤ .029; .05 ≤ η²p ≤ .14), except for spelling (p = .875; η²p = .00), with no significant differences in writing self-efficacy (.137 ≤ p ≤ .324; .01 ≤ η²p ≤ .03). Students reported learning benefits, regardless of their role as tutor or tutee, and faced minimal difficulties. These findings suggest that the programme is effective for enhancing writing proficiency but may require more time to impact self-writing beliefs. Future interventions should emphasise tutor training and ensure active participation in tutor-tutee dynamics.
The Semitic root forms an integral part of Hebrew language instruction, and though formally taught from second grade on, its extraction seems to be an obstacle for most students. We used our unique online root awareness instruction program in order to teach young children to extract the roots of different Hebrew words, as well as pseudowords, and to detect their weak spots in the process. In this paper, we present the effects of our program, as demonstrated by a significant improvement in the children's root extraction skills. We further provide an analysis of the children's responses, based on which we specify the factors that best predict failure in root extraction. These factors may lead to new insights regarding Hebrew language instruction as well as other Semitic languages.
Rosenblatt’s reader-response theory, with its emphasis on the reader’s role in co-creating meaning, offers insights for enhancing students’ literary experience. This systematic review examined the implementation of the approach within primary and secondary education, focusing on pedagogical practices, text choices, and benefits of reader-response approach for aesthetic engagement. The analysis of 39 empirical studies (1989-2024) revealed four key practices: literature discussions, free response writing and creative writing, reading modality practices, and teacher read-alouds. These practices all emphasize the role of the aesthetic transaction between text and reader in enhancing the reading experience. The review also identified genres such as realistic fiction, multicultural literature, picture books, graphic novels, Gothic literature, humorous fiction, and historical fiction, that have been used in studies applying Rosenblatt’s theory to enhance aesthetic engagement. These studies explored the potential of such texts to enhance aesthetic engagement, particularly when text choices align with students’ interests and backgrounds. Furthermore, the review found that the reader-response approach promotes several key benefits: fostering personal connections and deeper engagement, enhancing personal and literary understanding, fostering empathy, and promoting identity construction. These findings advocate for a pedagogical shift toward practices that prioritize personal connections, interpretive freedom, and the holistic development of readers.
This article represents conversations about L1 literary conversations. It is an assemblage of discussion, literary quotation, transcriptions of classroom dialogue, and our reflections on making audio recordings of lessons to review L1 teaching. We adopt an unconventional article format intended to reflect qualities of L1 literary conversations, which may be provisional, layered, recursive and open-ended. They allow for different perspectives and, as intertextual links in a Bakhtinian chain of literary expression and exchange, never really end. They are embodied in materialities of shifting ratio, tilting to print or the spatial arrangement of a page, then to speech and sound. They span time and occur through multiple voices, some belonging to teachers and students, others participating through literary constructs such as ‘narrator’ or ‘character’. We present a posthumanist account of how we recorded literary conversations, conveying our methods and considering the extent to which MP3 audio files helped us understand the voices comprising L1 literary pedagogies. We work in a space between research and professional development, declining social science conventions which inform many education research publications. We attempt an aesthetic that complements the distinctive modes of knowing and learning through literature (an epistemological orientation) conveying the unique nature of collaborative enquiry about L1 literary pedagogies (an ontological orientation).
The article explores how the ideals of dialogic teaching and writing for real-life purposes can conflict in practice. To this end, the article focuses on dialogic interactions between the teacher and students in a 5th-grade writing classroom where writing is approached as something anchored in real-life situations. Drawing on positioning theory, I unpack these interactions, observing how basic teaching ideals seem to intersect and create tensions that challenge not only students but also the teacher. Such teaching ideals include a desire to a) be sincerely dialogical and appreciative of students’ perspectives, b) support and qualify students’ rhetorical reflections concerning constituents of the specific situation, and c) create engagement by anchoring writing in real purposes outside the classroom. The article points to how the real life to which students must relate as writers can be both limiting and eye-opening.
This study aims to reveal how Nordic lower secondary language arts teachers motivate and describe their literature instruction. It investigates what motivations for literature instruction teachers appeal to, what literary materials they use, and by what instructional means and methods they teach literature. An online questionnaire was completed by 701 teachers from a random sample of schools across the Nordic countries. Analyses showed that teachers valued using literature for various reasons, although using literature to develop students' reading comprehension and linguistic skills were prioritised. Across all five countries, the reading of narrative texts was favoured. However, genre preferences varied by country: contemporary short stories were significantly more frequently read in Norway, Denmark, and Finland than in Sweden and Iceland, while young adult novels were significantly more commonly read in Denmark than in the other four countries. The most common instructional practices included letting students answer text-based questions and discussing literary texts. A key finding of the study is that literature reading in Nordic schools seems to be a matter of reading instruction rather than literature instruction. Thus, while different types of skills are emphasised, less attention is given to literary reading experiences.
The Semitic root forms an integral part of Hebrew language instruction, and though formally taught from second grade on, its extraction seems to be an obstacle for most students. We used our unique online root awareness instruction program in order to teach young children to extract the roots of different Hebrew words, as well as pseudowords, and to detect their weak spots in the process. In this paper, we present the effects of our program, as demonstrated by a significant improvement in the children's root extraction skills. We further provide an analysis of the children's responses, based on which we specify the factors that best predict failure in root extraction. These factors may lead to new insights regarding Hebrew language instruction as well as other Semitic languages.
Learning effective writing skills is a priority in secondary education due to its crucial role in academic success and lifelong development. This study evaluated the effectiveness of Reading and Writing in Pairs; a peertutoring programme aimed at improving writing skills. Using a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design, 90 secondary students were divided into an intervention group (45) and a comparison group (45). Both groups completed pre-post writing assessments and the Self-Efficacy for Writing Scale, while the intervention group also participated in a final learning perceptions survey. The intervention focused on the narrative genre, with peer tutoring sessions over six weeks (15 hours), including explicit genre and writing instruction. Results showedthe intervention group outperformedthe comparison group in writing performance (.001 < p <= .029; .05 <= eta 2p <= .14), except for spelling (p = .875; eta(2)(p) = .00), with no significant differences in writing self-efficacy (.137 <= p <= .324; .01 <= eta 2p <= .03). Students reported learning benefits, regardless of their role as tutor or tutee, and faced minimal difficulties. These findings suggest that the programme is effective for enhancing writing proficiency but may require moretimeto impact self-writing beliefs. Future interventions should emphasise tutor training and ensure active participation in tutor-tutee dynamics.
Creative approaches to literary texts may develop students' literary competences, but little is known about how prevalent such approaches are and how they are implemented. This study explored naturally occurring, that is non-interventionist, literature instruction in the subjects L1 Norwegian and L2 English, based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of 301 video-recorded lower secondary lessons from 73 classrooms in Norway in 2015-24. By juxtaposing L1 and L2, the study recognises the importance of literature instruction across school subjects, and it advances the understanding of how literary texts are taught in L1 relating to L2. The findings indicate that creative response activities were a recurring feature in both subjects across the studied decade, although they occurred more frequently in L2 lessons. In both subjects, teachers provided opportunities for students to exercise various literary competences when responding creatively to literary texts. However, they offered little guidance on how students could undertake these activities and rarely combined them with analytical reflection that could support students' developing literary competences. The study discusses implications for teaching and research.
Feedback is an important element in the development of students' L1-oral language skills. The current study focused on teachers' perceptions of feedback in L1-oral language teaching in secondary education. The findings are based on 19 interviews in which teachers provided their ideas on how they value feedback, their own classroom experiences with feedback, and their aspirations in this respect. To analyse the interview data, a framework with feed-up, feedback, and feed-forward was used, distinguishing between teacher, peer, and learner feedback. Findings show that the teachers strongly valued and used teacher feed-up, and teacher and peer feedback in the classroom. They used feed-forward to a lesser extent and the integration of peer and learner feed-up in class was hardly mentioned. This study suggests several improvements, such as implementing more practice, feedback rounds, and feedback training to support student feedback skills, investing in a safe learning environment, and giving more attention to feedback effectiveness in teacher training.
Numerous studies have documented the features of child-directed speech, such as recasts and prompts, that contribute to the development of phonology, morphology, lexicon, and syntax in children before three. Upon entering the school system, significant disparities in language skills become apparent. This exploratory study aims to provide a deeper understanding of the processes that foster the development of complex syntactic skills in French-speaking children aged three to five with language vulnerabilities in an after-school intervention programme. Specifically, this research investigates which features of child-directed speech influence the syntactic structure of children's utterances in terms of complexity and completeness. A series of dyadic interactions between an adult and a child engaged in a joint narration within an intervention programme were analysed using sequential analysis. The findings indicate that the functional strategies (assertions and prompts) employed by adults as the discursive strategies (recasts and offers) significantly influence the syntactic structure of children's utterances. Assertions facilitate the production of complete and more complex utterances, whereas prompts are linked to the use of incomplete and simpler utterances. Additionally, recasts promote the use of complex and complete utterances, in contrast to offers. Furthermore, children appear to become increasingly aware of adults' expectations over time.
Rosenblatt's reader-response theory, with its emphasis on the reader's role in co-creating meaning, offers insights for enhancing students' literary experience. This systematic review examined the implementation of the approach within primary and secondary education, focusing on pedagogical practices, text choices, and benefits of reader-response approach for aesthetic engagement. The analysis of 39 empirical studies (1989-2024) revealed four key practices: literature discussions, free response writing and creative writing, reading modality practices, and teacher read-alouds. These practices all emphasize the role of the aesthetic transaction between text and reader in enhancing the reading experience. The review also identified genres such as realistic fiction, multicultural literature, picture books, graphic novels, Gothic literature, humorous fiction, and historical fiction, that have been used in studies applying Rosenblatt's theory to enhance aesthetic engagement. These studies explored the potential of such texts to enhance aesthetic engagement, particularly when text choices align with students' interests and backgrounds. Furthermore, the review found that the reader-response approach promotes several key benefits: fostering personal connections and deeper engagement, enhancing personal and literary understanding, fostering empathy, and promoting identity construction. These findings advocate for a pedagogical shift toward practices that prioritize personal connections, interpretivefreedom, and the holistic development of readers.
This article takes its starting point in the idea that literature education has democratic potential. It questions a view of literature education as fundamentally a fosterer of democratic citizens, and aims to conceptualise a literature education which in itself can contain democratic moments. The quest for such moments is informed by a Mouffean agonistic understanding of democracy, particularly the aspect of collective identity formation. It is also informed by Masschelein and Simons' understanding of school as 'free time' and by Felski's concept attunement from her theory of literary reading. A fusion of these theories works to form an understanding of the literature classroom as a spacefor becoming, individually and collectively, in an open, non-predetermined sense. The theoretical argument is illustrated by a discussion between four upper secondary school students about the short story 'Farangs' (Lapcharoensap, 2005). I use Felski's attunement and the metaphor of harmonising, singing in harmonies, to conceptualise a relation between literature education and democracy that centres on becoming in collective terms.
This article represents conversations about L1 literary conversations. It is an assemblage of discussion, literary quotation, transcriptions of classroom dialogue, and our reflections on making audio recordings of lessons to review L1 teaching. We adopt an unconventional article format intended to reflect qualities of L1 literary conversations, which may be provisional, layered, recursive and open-ended. They allow for different perspectives and, as intertextual links in a Bakhtinian chain of literary expression and exchange, never really end. They are embodied in materialities of shifting ratio, tilting to print or the spatial arrangement of a page, then to speech and sound. They span time and occur through multiple voices, some belonging to teachers and students, others participating through literary constructs such as 'narrator' or 'character'. We present a posthumanist account of how we recorded literary conversations, conveying our methods and considering the extent to which MP3 audio files helped us understand the voices comprising L1 literary pedagogies. We work in a space between research and professional development, declining social science conventions which inform many education research publications. We attempt an aesthetic that complements the distinctive modes of knowing and learning through literature (an epistemological orientation) conveying the unique nature of collaborative enquiry about L1 literary pedagogies (an ontological orientation).
This study examines how young writers use stance and engagement-key constructs in shaping disciplinary voice-in L1 argumentative writing. A corpus of 118 student texts from grades 5 (age 10-11) and 8 (age 13-14) was analyzed using a framework that combined theory-and data-driven categories. Descriptive and comparative analyses revealed that grade 5 students used significantly more hedges, counters, invoked attitude, reformulation markers, and self-mentions, while grade 8 students employed more direct quotations and questions, suggesting a shift toward less explicit self-positioning and more content-focused argumentation in grade 8. A qualitative look at two texts illustrates how stance and engagement are realized in context, showing nuances-such as hedging combined with self-mentions in grade5, and content-focused counters and rhetorical questions in grade 8-that are not fully captured by the quantitative measures. This highlights how writing task, genre, and instructional context shape the expression of disciplinary voice alongside general grade-level tendencies. The results are discussed in the context of general writing development theories as well as theories of voice and disciplinary writing.
The article explores how the ideals of dialogic teaching and writing for real-life purposes can conflict in practice. To this end, the article focuses on dialogic interactions between the teacher and students in a 5th-grade writing classroom where writing is approached as something anchored in real-life situations. Drawing on positioning theory, I unpack these interactions, observing how basic teaching ideals seem to intersect and create tensions that challenge not only students but also the teacher. Such teaching ideals include a desire to a) be sincerely dialogical and appreciative of students' perspectives, b) support and qualify students' rhetorical reflections concerning constituents of the specific situation, and c) create engagement by anchoring writing in real purposes outside the classroom. The article points to how the real life to which students must relate as writers can be both limiting and eye-opening.
High-quality teaching is a pivotal element in achieving favourable student learning outcomes. However, previous research has hardly investigated the quality of literature teaching, especially not among student teachers. This study focuses on addressing this gap by analyzing literature lessons taught by student teachers during their five-month field experience in Germany. For the purpose of this study, high-quality teaching is defined as teaching that successfully integrates normative ideas about good teaching with effective practices that support student learning. Drawing on a newly developed, subject-specific model of teaching quality, this study assesses subject-specific and generic dimensions of teaching quality as well as variation in teaching quality among student teachers. To this end, the study designed new instruments for video-based observation and used them to evaluate N = 22 videotaped literature lessons on narrative texts. The results show that student teachers perform considerably better in generic quality dimensions than in subject-specific ones. Furthermore, standard deviations and cluster analyses indicate considerable student heterogeneity. These findings imply that teacher education programs should emphasize developing subject-specific teaching competencies in literature instruction even more and pay more attention to student teacher heterogeneity.
