Conditions för teaching and learning : Four literature students in schoolyear nine seven years later

Abstract This study is based on my work as a secondary school teacher of literature and the Swedish language and rooted in my interest in developing knowledge about the importance of teaching literature in order to both cultivate young people’s reading habits and their view of themselves as readers. The more concrete purpose of this study is to examine a reading project that focuses on theories of literary perception and teaching literature. I examine four pupils who, in 2003, participated in the reading project as readers and compare this description with their view of themselves as readers seven years later. I complete the study by examining how they discuss reading and the teaching of literature. The method is qualitative and the empirics include materiel collected in two different time periods: first in 2003, in a class I taught in a secondary school; and second in 2010, when I examined four of the former pupils who participated in the project from 2003. The material contains documentation of the reading project, teacher’s notes and observations during the reading project, transcribed recordings of interviews, the pupils’ written reading logs and written inquiries about reading habits. The study shows a variety in literary perception among the pupils and attitudes towards reading. The study also shows that enlightened teaching can contribute to pupils’ motivation to read literature. One of the didactic challenges concerning these findings is that the teacher — before planning and executing the lesson — should be aware of the pupils’ reading habits and attitudes towards reading in order to be able to adjust the teaching process to the pupils’ conditions. The teacher should also be aware of the societal context of which pupils are a part and try to integrate the use of media other than literature. Finally, the teacher should be both skillful at utilizing different literature teaching methods and at choosing literature