Cultivating affective engagements in literature teaching: Teachers' encounters with literature

Beskrivning

Commonly mentioned reasons for reading and teaching literature are its potential to affect readers by, for example, evoking thoughts, stirring up feelings, posing ethical questions. Research has largely focused on literature’s affective potential or student’s affective responses to literature (e.g., Felski, 2020; García-González et. al., 2020). Less attention has been given to teachers’ affective engagement with literature and its influence in the literature classroom. However, previous research highlights that an essential aspect of becoming a literature teacher involves allowing oneself to be affected by literature (Harstad, 2018).

The point of departure for this study is the notion that a teacher’s own affective encounters with literature are of importance to cultivate affective encounters in the literature classroom. The aim of this study is to explore what the teacher’s own affective encounters with literature can set in motion for literature teaching. The material consists of video recordings of focus group conversations with secondary education L1 teachers. The teachers were asked to bring picturebooks that had somehow affected them in some way and that they had either used or saw potential for using in their literature teaching. Theoretically, the study draws on Rita Felski’s (2008, 2020) view of aesthetic experiences as a combination of affective and analytical engagements.

In the presentation, we present the study as a work in progress and offer an initial analysis of the teachers’ accounts of their affective encounters with literature. We also discuss the potential benefits and challenges of teachers engaging affectively with literature and what such engagements can bring about for teaching literature.

Period	26 juni 2025
Evenemangstitel	Legitimising Literature in an Evolving Media Landscape
Typ av evenemang	Konferens
Plats	Nijmegen, NederländernaVisa på karta
Omfattning	Internationell