Bibliography: pages 87-92. / The aim of this dissertation is to present a means to redress imbalances that have operated in and continue to pervade our school classrooms. The singularity that is demanded by compliance, conformity and order of the Modernist era is now rejected in a celebration of in diversity and heterogeneity. At the root of the journey is belief in the power fit challenges that lie within the dissolution of our foundations and frames of reference - to capture the moment, and to move beyond into a new set of relationships with a world and those who constitute it. Postmodernism is about a new way of thinking - being conscious to the manner in which we are positioned and being aware that the knowledge we gain is not innocent, but carries with it a historical weighting. Our struggle in the classroom rests in language, for we fundamentally recognise that it is through language that we are constituted as subject, but also in which we act as a constituting subject. The task of the postmodernist is to disturb the constructs of our lived realities - "to make strange" and to enter into new relationships that are grounded in possibility. It is the postmodern moment that is the point of "rupture" (Foucault's term) - that moment of realization of being within a language and a particular historical and cultural framework [Marshall: l992:3]. For this to be possible, it is necessary to uncover the mechanisms that take control and how they do so. Truths are provisional and limited, thus any transformative potential lies in the spaces that are constituted in the differences provided by that which is meaning. Our task in the classroom is to recognise the frames of reference which validate the subject's position in the world, and lay open alternative empowering channels to move beyond the immediate. Literature is our instrument of liberation. As we seek to understand how our meanings have been constituted, a state of constant deferral of meaning must be achieved.-In the classroom, such possibilities create a new type of "knower", one whose meaning is validated by experienced and whose positioned is guaranteed by a redefined reader-text-author-teacher relationship. We regard Literature as an act of interaction, and as unity lies in its destination (the reader), it is critical that we redefine the ideas about society's centre and the margin. Our struggle in the classroom, therefore, is about the questions of identity, place and values.

This study investigates what classroom participants do with literary texts and how literary texts are pedagogically recontextualized through classroom activities in L2 tertiary literature classrooms. Premised upon the pedagogic processes of decontextualization and recontextualization that take place in the meaning-making practices of the literature classroom, the current study examines the process of literary text recontextualization via the multimodal partnership of vocalization and gesticulation. Through this process, esoteric literary meanings requiring specialist knowledge are transformed into mundane meanings from one semiotic-institutional domain to another, where the literary text qua cultural artifact is recontextualized via first-order languaging by dint of pedagogic activities. To understand the real-time first-order languaging dynamics (Thibault, 2011a) that enable the pedagogic recontextualization of literary texts to take place, a micro analytical toolkit grounded in qualitative multimodal interaction analysis is used. This toolkit draws upon the concept of the Growth Point (McNeill & Duncan, 2000) in conjunction with Systemic Functional Grammar (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004) and McNeill‘s (1992) theory of language and gesture. Classroom observation and video recording in university literature classrooms in Hong Kong and Taiwan provide multimodal data on students‘ languaging behaviours when they engage with literary texts in classroom talk. In order to make links with second-order socio-cultural norms that regulate first-order classroom interactivity (Thibault, 2011a), Bernstein‘s (1990) sociological theory of recontextualization in education is re-thought from the distributed language view (Cowley, 2011; Steffensen, 2011; Thibault, 2011a). Maton‘s (2007) Legitimation Codes of Specialization and Hunter‘s (1988) Foucaultian analysis of literature education (Foucault, 1972, 1985/1984) also inform the conceptual framework. The findings indicate the stability of the textual and lexicogrammatical constructions that function as second-order constraints and the variations in gesture use in its embodied coordination with speech in the pedagogic process of literary text recontextualization through different pedagogic activities. The semantic cohesive relations of Elaboration, Extension, Enhancement, Engagement, and Equipment, fostered by different gesture types together with their corresponding linguistic constructs in the recontextualized texts, demonstrate that the semiotic integration of speech and gesture comprise a single languaging system in the meaning-making process. Based on the production of literary meaning in moral judgement, the specialized consciousness of the ethical self is raised, with ethical subjects constituted through processes of subjectivity, self-reflexivity, and self-confession in the process of literary interpretation and appreciation. The conceptual framework integrating macro- and micro-levels of analysis manifests its theoretical originality by establishing both the methodological framework for multimodal interaction analysis and the cognitive framework for languaging dynamics. The understanding of the meaning-making process in the first-order languaging dynamics suggests that language is an embodied multimodal process. This major conclusion stimulates a re-thinking of important aspects of classroom interaction that have received little attention. Hopefully, the analysis and findings in the current study illustrate the significance of English literature education and suggest new directions for multimodal research in classroom interaction studies. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This study employs a hybrid research method. My religious background has led me to find a great affinity for certain literary criticism, that which sees literature as a source for moral thinking and moral decision-making. I offer a history of my transactions with texts, texts that were initially formative for me as a moral thinker, then useful for me in a variety of ways as a teacher of texts, then which I later began to appreciate in a more critical and theoretical way as I developed a deeper understanding of how those texts had influenced me and how they had – or had not – influenced my students. I borrow heavily from the theory and method of autoethnography in this study, in the sense that I will examine a variety of “internal data” from my memories of books, teachers, and classroom situations, along with “external data” including interviews, report cards, lecture notes and exam questions, and will subject my data to a number of critical lenses with the goal of what Anderson (2006) describes as a commitment to “an analytic research agenda focused on improving theoretical understandings of broader social phenomena” (375). Using the lenses of the literary theory and criticism of Wayne Booth, Martha Nussbaum, Robert Coles and Aharon Lichtenstein, I will analyze my experiences as a reader and teacher, and I explain how literary works I read and taught can serve as vehicles for the development of a student’s moral sensibility – and how teachers can help facilitate that development. I use my own unique vantage point, that of an Orthodox Jewish boy who initially found friends in secular texts, then found that those texts were among his great teachers of values, to offer a singular perspective on the power of these texts. These lenses, which are (to mix metaphors a bit) filtered through my unique perspective, provide an interpretation that will at first lead me to explore the field of moral education as a whole, if only because I shared many of its desired outcomes in my literature classroom. After a brief overview of this field, I use the work of Hanan Alexander, David Hansen, Carl Rogers, and others to present a more general yet nuanced account of how “spiritual awareness” and the humane fusing of reason and emotion can be fostered in students, with a flexibility and understanding that learning is a way to learn a process, not a process towards a specific set of intellectual goals. I humbly call this hybrid method a literary-auto-ethno-pedogography, as I seek to produce a critical history of my education as a reader and teacher of literature. After an inquiry into my own reading and teaching to understand my own and my students’ development as moral decision makers; I then seek to expand the depth and quantity of moral conversations and bring them to the classrooms of others. As such, my study includes ideas for how to bring about moral conversations in English classrooms, both through student writing and oral exchange, based on ideas from Sheridan Blau, Jeff Wilhelm, David Hansen, Barry Holtz, and others. I conclude with the still unanswered questions that my study has raised for me and for other researchers who share my interest in the relations between secular and religious education and the problem of teaching literature to shape character and refine a reader’s moral sensibility. I also offer some concluding suggestions about how future students and teachers might build on and expand upon my work.

No description available.

The aim of this study is to investigate the extent to which the teaching of literary art to / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

The purpose of this study was to show the inadequacy of preparation of prospective teachers of English in composition, trace the historical background of the present situation, and provide model curricula to remedy the inadequacy.The inadequacy in composition in English preparatory programs was established in Chapter I by citing results of studies conducted by leaders of the profession and by major professional organizations such as The National Council of Teachers of English and the Modern Language Association. These results, which apply equally to teachers in public schools and colleges, show that few teachers are prepared properly to teach writing in any mode and are the consequences of preparatory programs in which writing and methods to teach it have been neglected in favor of an almost total literature orientation.Chapter II, The Historical Background of the Present Situation, shows the growth of the three agencies responsible for preparing an English teacher to enter the classroom—the college English and Education departments and the State Department of Education. The independent development and different life styles of the three agencies were traced from their origins in Europe, through the expansion of public education in the post-Civil War era to their twentieth century inter-relationship on college campuses in preparatory programs. The expansion of education following World War II increased requirements for credentials of public school teachers to four years of college, but the Ph.D. in literature remained the credential for teaching English in colleges and universities. Therefore, the college programs for English majors and minors maintained their literature orientation even though it is axiomatic that all English teachers must teach composition for a substantial portion of their professional life. Few prospective teachers receive instruction in writing beyond the freshman composition requirement and techniques for teaching writing are seldom incorporated into methods courses. The only remedy, therefore, is to offer model curricula that balance writing and the study of literature in the preparatory program.Two model curricula are based on assumptions that prospective English teachers can learn to write and teach writing given sufficient instruction; that, if they are taught a balanced program, English teachers will teach a balanced program; that finding faculty to teach writing courses in the model curricula will be difficult at first, but there are a few qualified people on every campus and a national program of internships can be established to provide additional faculty until graduates of the new program are available; and that a psychological orientation is vital to the Cluster Curriculum, one of the model curricula.The two model curricula are the Cluster Curriculum and the English Adjunct Curriculum. The structure of the former is based upon a nucleus of Psychological Development Sessions around which are clustered both subject and pedagogical experiences, thereby balancing writing, literature study, methods to teach both, and opportunities to work within the school system from the start of professional education.Because the Cluster Curriculum is based upon cultural changes, the English Adjunct Curriculum is suggested as a forerunner while the necessary changes take place. The English Adjunct Curriculum can be attached to the current program of English studies by requiring a Writing Adjunct to general studies courses in freshman and sophomore college years, and Writing Adjuncts to literature courses in junior and senior years of English programs. In addition, the English major and minor will be required to enroll in one course in how to teach composition per academic year. To accommodate increased writing requirements, changes in literature requirements are suggested.

In the past years foreign languages have been taught in Spain as a device to translate and interpret literature. Now the emphasis is put especially on language, and literature is only appreciated as a device to improve the language skills and not in itself. However, the author considers that literature should play an important role in second language teachings as a literary experience too, and has devised a curriculum of English Literature for Spanish-speaking students in the last grade of high school.The project includes an investigation of the purposes for such a curriculum, the criteria to be used in selecting the literature for the curriculum and a selection and presentation of literary texts.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether adding affective objectives to the primarily cognitive syllabus objectives of a college freshman literature-composition course would generate data to indicate change in self-identity, relationship, and control.Affective objectives included attending to: (1) students' verbal and written response to literature and other experiences--to the central concerns of self-identity, relationship, and control; (2) students' involvement with "engagement" in literature shown in expressed response to the literary work (discussion or writing about the response) and in the re-creative response (re-creation of the work in some oral, dramatic, or artistic form).The central concerns referred to three broad areas of psychological and social importance to the maturing individual. Self-identity was seen as the student's awareness of both his uniqueness and his common humanity revealed by statements of open-mindedness, understanding of self, good self-concept, creativity, a firm sense of the here and now, not fearing to be wrong, free personal style, confidence, spontaniety, and wholeness. Relationship was seen as the student's awareness of relationship with other people, revealed by statements of democratic character structure, freedom from social pressure, clearer, more open sense of reality, thinking well of others, seeing self and others as interdependent, ability to love, and desire to love. Control was seen as the student's growing mastery of the "what" and "how" of interpersonal communication revealed by statements of or indications of tolerance, seeing the value of mistakes, sense of power, not fearing to be wrong, increased objectivity, responsible choice, facile language functioning, resourcefulness, choosing freely, prizing, acting in relation to values, self-direction, and ascending strength in cognitive functioning.The study was limited to two freshman literature-composition courses with a combined population of forty-one randomly grouped students during the Winter Quarter of 1971-72 at Ball State University. It was preceded by a pilot study.Data considered as acceptable evidence of hypothesized change were generated from statements of self-identity, relationship, and control--of increasing number, or complexity, or both--from four sources: (1) student writing (themes and journals); (2) student-completed evaluation forms (two at mid-term and two at the end of the course); (3) pre- and post-inventories (a value survey and a personal profile); and (4) student interviews (mid-term and final).Student writing showed that a majority of the students showed change in complexity in statements toward which the criteria of self-identity, relationship, and control applied. The following proportions were evident: In first and last themes, six out of seven students-taken alternately from a group of every third student of the population--showed change. In themes 2-6, five out of seven students--taken alternately from another group of every third student--showed change. In journals, four out of seven students--taken alternately from yet another group of every third student--showed change.Student-completed evaluation forms (two at mid-term and two at the end of the course) showed that a majority of the students' statements showed change--either in quantity or complexity or both--in self-identity, relationship, and control.Data from students' pre- and post-inventories neither verified nor negated change in self-identity, relationship, and control.

The argument of this thesis is that Finnegans Wake is a peculiarly appropriate text for an investigation of the academic discipline of English, and that the issue of readership is the best way to approach the Wake. The thesis, which is organised into three main sections, shows that both Finnegans Wake and the discipline of English Studies are similarly engaged in problems of defining audiences. The opening section shows that the Wake has long been seen as a limit to literature, and as a defining text of literary study. Reception theory proves unable to cope with a study of historical audiences. Finnegans Wake was written over a period roughly concomitant with the rapid professionalisation of English studies and underwent a loss of audiences except for its critical reviewers. The extended third chapter sets out in some detail the growth of English studies, both in itself and more specifically as a context for the name of Joyce in the 1930s and beyond. This also includes analysis of the passage of the Wake in university syllabi. The second section considers post-structuralist claims that the Wake disrupts or subverts the space of the academy. It analyses a wide range of poststructuralist and other reactions to the Wake, and proceeds to a study of inscriptions of readership in the work of Derrida, and explores Derrida's idea of audiences for Joyce. The third section presents two readings of key elements of Finnegans Wake. Analysis of the letters, and of some of Joyce's sources, stresses the important role of the professor figures, which is indicative of the extent to which Joyce's last work was influenced by the professionalisation of literary study. Textual analysis proceeds with the Four, who function as an internal interpretive community. A brief conclusion sums up the argument of the thesis.

This thesis examines certain social and institutional forces that have shaped the outlooks and procedures of English departments in South Africa. The approach taken is based on the researches of Michel Foucault, notably his genealogical approach to history, and his view of the university as an institution within a broader "disciplinary society" that controls discourse in the interests of existi~g power relations in that society and not out of a concern with disinterested truth. It is argued that English departments are contingent, historically constituted products whose genealogies continue to have serious consequences for struggles around contemporary issues, notably the reception of indigenous South African writing. The first chapter examines the beginnings of the institutionalised study of English literature in England. This inquiry reveals that English literature became the subject of academic.study as a result of conflict between opposing interests in the university and the social world of nineteenth century J England. It also points to the existence of a "discursive space", an inherently unstable area, which the emergent subject of English was forced to occupy as a result of the ezisting arrang~ment of disciplines in the university. Chapter Two analyses the decisive contribution made by I. A Richards a9d the importance of practical criticism for the humanist enterprise of English studies. F. R. Leavis's adaptation of practical criticism is also examined with a view to understanding its consequences for English studies in South Africa. Chapter Three examines the early history of English studies in South Africa and assesses the impact of metropolitan developments on the manner in which the discipline was constituted in this country. Chapter Four focuses on the effect of metropolitan developments on the conceptualisation and study of a South African literature. Chapter Five examines descriptions of sub traditions of South African literature that were offered during the 1960s and '70s and concludes by offering an analysis of the radical critique of English studies that appeared at the end of the decade. The thesis concludes that the radical critique was largely unsuccessful for a number of reasons, one being the lack of a genealogical analysis. It is suggested that the manner in which English studies was historically constituted, and its mode of institutional existence, pose a perhaps intrinsic obstacle to the study and teaching of indigenous writing. / Thesis (M.A. - English) - University of Natal, 1989