Towards a literary teaching on empirical grounds: A literary didactic discussion based on 413 elementary school students’ reception of Katarina Taikon’s novel Katitzi

Abstract

Within the ongoing project Alla läser! (Everybody reads!) a large group of students (413), aged 10–12, has been reading and discussing Katarina Taikon’s novel Katitzi. The book, published in 1969, is the first volume in the well-known and influential series about the girl Katitzi, a character with clear connection to Taikon’s own life. The books depict a very obvious racism towards Romani people in Sweden. At the same time, it is a story with action, humor, and warmth. The article’s aim is to analyze the student reception and response after reading and discussing the novel, and to relate the results to established theoretical constructions within the literary field that highlight the democratic and empathetic potential in literature. These results are also related to some recent Katitzi-research, in which different positions are taken concerning the importance of the autobiographical dimensions of the novels.

                        Students filled in digital questionnaires before and after reading. The methodo­logical approach of the project is to combine quantitative and qualitative perspectives. The results show the students’ strong involvement in the story. A clear majority (76%) formulate ideas about human rights, discrimination and racism, with both a local and a global perspective. The article provides empirically-based support for the personal development potential of literary fiction; something that has often been discussed theoretically, but rarely in relation to real and ordinary readers. It also shows that affective reading does not necessarily lead to a subjective and narrow understanding of the text, something that Reader Response inspired literary teaching and reading have often been criticized for during the last twenty years in the Swedish context.