In this article, Carmel Hinchion and Jennifer Hennessy reflect on a project undertaken by the Ubuntu Network in partnership with pre-service English teachers and their lecturers at the University of Limerick.  The project was set in the context of an English pedagogy course as part of the undergraduate initial teacher education (ITE) programme where student English teachers prepare for teaching in post-primary classrooms.  Their article focuses on a literature unit where ‘culturally salient’ texts were chosen to promote, not only a reading of the word but of the world (Freire, 1970).  A culturally salient text, as understood by Kress (1995), is one that allows us to ask questions about its significance in its own cultural domain and for other cultures. Drawing on the metaphor of a ‘reconstitutive mirroring experience’ (O’Loughlin, 2009), literature acts as a reflexive and reflective medium in shaping a world view.

Introduction

This article briefly explains the reading model employed with student teachers for the Ubuntu project, and then looks at the value and purpose of reading literature.  It examines the place of reading as an element of literacy learning, where literacy is framed by the Freirean idea of freedom and empowerment.  This perspective is theorised with reference to both the Junior Certificate and Leaving Certificate English Syllabi in the Republic of Ireland.  The article will go on to describe how the theme ‘Similarities and Differences’ underpinned a pedagogical model with student teachers as they prepared to teach literature, in this instance the novel, in their English classes.  It explores how reading literature offers an opportunity to develop cultural awareness and provides a critical lens for problematising texts. The pedagogical model of dialogic and participatory practice is described and finally the authors offer some reflections on issues of cultural diversity relevant to the Irish school context.

Reading and understanding text

McCormick (1994) explains three competing models of reading: the cognitive (which privileges the text); the expressivist (which privileges the reader’s life experiences); and the socio-cultural (which privileges the cultural context).  However he also contends that all three models are interconnected.  A reader approaches texts with their own experiences, assumptions and viewpoints while texts intrinsically contain their own messages and viewpoints, all of which are mediated by historical and cultural contexts.

Hubard agrees that ‘… the understanding of a text is reached when the horizon of the spectator (their background, experience, personality, cultural and historical situation, and so forth) and the horizon of the work (what the object puts forth to the spectator) fuse into a new larger horizon’ (Hubard, 2008).  It is this fusion of horizons which underpins this model of reading.  Foregrounded also in this understanding of reading is the concept of critical literacy which will be addressed in more detail later.

                According to the Junior Certificate Guidelines for Teachers, ‘reading is an act of making meaning’ (1990:32); it is a creative interpretative process which happens through interaction between the text and reader with the text offering ‘a spectrum of possibilities’ (1990:46) to the reader.  In keeping with the belief that knowledge is not a fixed entity but a continuous creation, then no reading is absolute.  Rather reading is a process of building a relationship with a text where there is understanding, lack of understanding, remembering, forgetting, intimacy and distance, all shaped in a contextual space.  Texts are always open to re-reading and reconstitution.

The value of reading literature

Literature is a symbolisation of experience in language.  Literature can be an artistic symbol where a literary encounter may be ‘transformed into expressive realisation’ (Webb, 1992:1) or a cultural symbol, a microcosm of a social world, or it can be one or both at the same time.  However, it is literature as a culturally significant symbol that is the focus of our explorations.  Literature is never a neutral or a value-free creation as a cultural force (Peim, 1993) and the teaching of literature also involves a consideration of values, morals, ethics and a context of ‘some social philosophy’ (Rosenblatt, 1995:16).

Culturally salient texts can act as a mirror which allows us to consider and reconsider ourselves in the world.  They can help us to escape reality and crawl through the looking glass like Alice in Wonderland, and they can also help us to re-establish our position in the world.  We can vicariously experience both reality and fantasy between the covers of a book.  Literature tells a story, of which we become a part.  Our own story is drawn forth as we read another person’s story.  Bakhtin describes this as dialogism where ‘everything means, is understood as part of a greater whole - there is a constant interaction between meanings’ (1981:426).  Reading literature becomes a way to encounter experience, feel a response, think about situations, form perspectives, extend possibilities and critique our world.

Reading literature is an act of imagination and in turn requires empathy, for when looking at the ‘what if’s of life or viewing things from an alternate perspective, we need to take a leap into the minds and hearts of the storytellers or characters.  Webb writes that reading literature is a reflective act as ‘imagination enables us to connect with experience in ways simply not available in the moment or duration of experiencing itself.  Imagination is, from the beginning, a reflective cast upon experience’ (Webb, 1992:xii).

Literature can help us discover that across time, place and cultures, people share certain fundamental traits, desires and problems.  At the same time, literature affirms the great diversity that co-exists with shared human commonalities.  Literature from different socio-cultural contexts portrays a ‘myriad of ways in which people of different times and places and cultures have dealt with the problems of human existence’ (Bishop, 2000:76).  It helps us to think about character, human motivations, relationships, moral dilemmas, traditions and heritage and many other themes and issues.

Reading as literacy: The English syllabi in Ireland

Literacy is embedded in cultural norms and power relations.  To participate effectively in the world there are many literacies to be learned (Mullins, 2002).  These include reading, writing, speaking and listening in different contexts, and for different purposes.  These are not separate and discreet or fixed attainments, but overlapping and dynamic evolutions for optimising strengths in life.  New literacies are always emerging, especially technological and visual ones in the present era.  The English syllabi in Ireland has centrally positioned literacy as the force for personal growth and socio-cultural competence.  Even though there are a number of English syllabi in the Irish schooling system (Junior Certificate Schools Programme, Leaving Certificate Applied, Transition Year, Leaving Certificate Vocational Preparation Programme), this articles concentrates here on Junior Certificate English and Leaving Certificate English.

The Junior Certificate English Syllabus is premised on a personal growth model of education.  It aims to enable students to become empowered in the world through reading, writing, speaking and listening in the domains of personal, social and cultural literacy. Personal literacy emphasises the expression and validation of the personal language register; social literacy emphasises the functionality of language; and cultural literacy emphasises the importance of the aesthetic uses of language.

The Leaving Certificate English Syllabus builds on the Junior Certificate aims and is premised on a socio-cultural view of the world where individuals understand themselves as constructed through social interaction.  ‘Text’ is understood as any communicative product constructed in social and cultural milieus.  Language in this context is not a neutral medium of expression and communication but an embedded signifier.  It is also, according to Mullins, ‘a living, cultural entity subject to permanent change and development in the mouths, pens and computers of its users’ (2000:118).  Mullins advocates a flexible approach to language development where students learn a wide range of ‘discourses’.  This approach is considered to be a significant political act as ‘it places literacy development in a rich framework of social practices and invites students to play their role in our democracy as free, responsible, citizens’ (Mullins, 2000:120). 

Both the Junior Cycle and Senior Cycle syllabi essentially promote a concept of literacy which is values-based.  These values include promotion of individual growth, promotion of citizenship and the promotion of a critical perspective of our world.  The Senior Cycle Syllabus especially encourages this questioning stance where students are required to develop higher order thinking and evaluative responses to texts.  Students are encouraged to problematise texts and challenge assumptions.  This ‘critical literacy’ involves asking three broad questions: why was this text written?; how was this text written?; and are there other ways of writing this text? Critical literacy encourages students to see texts as ‘opportunities for dialogue and speculation’ (DES, 2009:8).  In reviewing the approaches to reading, Fisher states that critical literacy is not just about deconstruction and response but also ‘about making a difference, moving the book out of the classroom, developing an awareness of the book as an artefact and giving the children a real voice in discussing text’ (2008:20).

            Reading critically undercuts efforts to essentialise beliefs and gives literature a subversive and transformative capacity.  Following the liberatory model of education, our consciousness about the world is raised and there is a ‘constant unveiling of reality’ (Freire, 1970:64) so that we are not just receiving objects but active participants.

Reading cultural context

The concept of culture is multi-layered and complex.  The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment defines culture as ‘the beliefs, behaviour, language, and entire way of life of a particular group of people at a particular time’ (NCCA,2006).  According to Giroux, ‘culture is the medium through which children fashion their individual and collective identities and learn in part how to narrate themselves in relation to others’ (2002:187-8).

            Both the Junior Certificate and Leaving Certificate syllabi are explicit in their promotion of cultural awareness in the classroom advocating that ‘a range of resources will be selected from different periods and cultures and students will be encouraged to approach them in a comparative manner’ (Department of Education and Science, 1999:3).  Research into the development of students’ awareness and acceptance of cultural diversity has highlighted the necessity for a pro-active rather than re-active stance in the teaching of cultural texts (Burns, 2002; Hickling Hudson, 2003; Tuomi, 2005).

In the Comparative Literature section of the Leaving Certificate English Syllabus, students are asked to read the cultural context of a number of texts.  According to the Draft Guidelines for Leaving Certificate English, this is not a sociological study but ‘it means taking some perspectives which enable the students to understand the kind of values and structures with which people contend.  It amounts to entering into the world of the text and getting some insight and feel for the cultural texture of the world created’ (1999:72).  This implies looking at the family, social, religious, economic and political structures embedded in this setting (DES, 1999:73).

            Calder (2000) asserts that all of our experiences are filtered through lenses and stresses that if we believe what we see through our own individual lenses or our ‘cultural filters’ to be global reality, we may begin to act in a manner which leads to injustice for others.  The study of cultural texts as part of the English syllabus highlights to the student the mono-focal parameters of their own individual experience and invites them to share in a multi-focal experience, taking cognisance of the cultural dissonance which often prevails in diverse societies. It allows literature to become a site for dialogue and cultural awakenings where the text might be positioned as a mirror, a window or a sliding glass door (Bishop, 2000).

Dialogic and participatory pedagogy