RR 94-1 How do prospective teachers think about literature and the teaching of literature?
Abstract
What do prospective English teachers believe literature to be? What texts do they regard as literature and why? And what criteria do they apply in choosing texts they would teach? This report addresses these questions. The data comes from an extensive protocol of tasks and questions that the authors used with a nonrandom sample of 28 prospective English teachers at a larger Midwestern state university. In the report, the authors the range of responses they received and speculate on the sources of these responses. Although the prospective teachers - some of whom completed their undergraduate degrees during the study - reported that they had not been taught explicit criteria for evaluating texts, a they had no difficulty generating criteria. Rather than self consciously coherent arguments, they seemed to draw on a potpourri of ideas and experiences in responding to question and tasks. Part of a longitudinal study of prospective teacher's ideas and beliefs about literature and the teaching of literature, the data raise several questions for further analysis.