Teachers Reading/Readers Teaching: Five Teachers' Personal Approaches to Literature and Their Teaching of Literature.

Abstract

This study investigated relationships between five junior high personal approaches to literature and their of literature. Each was interviewed eight times and observed while literature eight times. Data comprised of field notes, transcriptions of audiotapes, and a variety of written artifacts were used to prepare individual case studies. The case studies revealed that personal approaches to literature included an emphasis on vicarious involvement. The case studies further revealed that use of present in their personal approaches to literature is limited by a school approach to literature which consists of a focus on comprehension and learning of literary terms and concepts and which is supported by state-mandated achievement tests. The conclusions suggest that pedagogically useful exists in these five personal approaches to literature but that institutional constraints and lack of a theoretical framework for literary studies prevent it from being utilized. English teachers are readers of literature long before they are teachers of literature. Earlier than even their first day of kindergarten, they have begun a long literary education, an education which will continue both in and out of so that, by time they first consider literature, they already carry with them complex ways of thinking about what literature is and how it works. During past ten years, research on thinking has become an important part of enterprise of understanding nature of (Clark & Peterson, 1986). Among such studies are a number which focus on beliefs and teachers bring to classroom. Described variously as studies of teachers' implicit theories (Clark & Peterson, 1986), teacher knowledge (Shulman, 1987), and the personal in teaching (Clandinin 8c Connelly, 1987), these projects have in common goal of understanding relationships between what teachers know and believe and their ways of teaching. Included in this stream of inquiry have I wish to thank Ben F. Nelms for his encouragement and guidance throughout this project. Research in Teaching of English, Vol. 25, No. 1, February 1991