Teachers’ choices of literary history content

Abstract

This study investigates and discusses teachers’ choices of content when they introduce literary history in the course Swedish 2 for students in the second year of upper secondary school. The study was conducted against the background of a lack of previous research about literary history teaching and previous studies that have highlighted students’ lack of interest in literary history. The material consists of video-recorded observations of eight Swedish teachers’ introductory lessons to literary history. The introductory lessons were chosen since they can be seen as occasions when teachers try to spark interest in the subject. All teachers taught in a university preparation pro­gramme. The study is based on a didactics and curriculum theory framework. Thematic content analysis was applied to analyse the material. The study presents a wide range of possible teaching content and thereby contributes new empirical knowledge about what forms the content of literary history can take in the teaching context and more specifically what teaching content is emphasised when teachers introduce literary history. Previously, teaching and learning literature has been widely discussed in rela­tion to the different conceptions of the subject Swedish: Swedish as a skills subject, Swedish as a cultural heritage subject, and Swedish as an experience-based subject. The results of the study are discussed in relation to these conceptions but make further contributions by concretising and visualising the variety of teaching content that occurs in classrooms when literary history is introduced.