A New Look at Literature Instruction

Prepared by: Judith Langer
ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading, English, and Communication Digest #65

In secondary schools there has been no major change in conceptualizing literature instruction in the past 25 years (except for what individual teachers have been doing). While there has been extensive change in English classes, the concern has been primarily with writing. And despite the fact that more than 80% of the writing that goes on in English classes is about literature, there has been little recent research on the teaching of literature. English and language arts teachers have come to feel schizoid in their classes, using process-oriented approaches to writing, and very traditional approaches to the teaching of literature.

No research in literature has attempted to help it keep pace with what we've learned about writing theory--or learning theory. In particular, there has been virtually no study of how students come to understand literature parallel to the study of the writing process.

Across the years, scholars have made distinctions between literary and scientific thought--suggesting that together they form the multiple sources of reason we can draw upon when constructing meaning. For instance, Suzanne Langer speaks of subjective and objective realities, Louise Rosenblatt speaks of aesthetic and efferent readings, and Jerome Bruner speaks of narrative and paradigmatic thought. However, none of these has been systematically studied.

Related works suggests that literary thinking is a natural and necessary part of the well-developed intellect. A series of studies show that doctors, physicians, and lawyers use both modes of thought to solve problems. A recent study at Xerox Parc demonstrated that machine repairers use storytelling to solve their problems.

Yet nonetheless the literary way of thinking has been largely unexplored. We know a lot about scientific, but not about literary (or subjective, or aesthetic understanding). And the teaching of literature has become "rudderless"--without a strong theory of what it's about.

For the past few years, Judith Langer has been developing an underlying theory for the teaching of literature. To do this, she has been studying the nature of literary understanding, and identifying the ways in which the understanding of literature differs from understanding other coursework. She has been using this information as a way to rethink instruction.

Her studies show that during reading, there are a series of relationships the reader takes toward the text--each adding a somewhat different dimension to the reader's growing understanding of the piece.

The four major stances in the process of understanding are:

These stances are not linear, can occur and recur at any point in the reading, and help us understand where to provide support in helping students move through the process.

While readers work through these stances in reading both literary and non-literary works, their orientation toward meaning--what they're after--differs substantially. Langer describes readers' orientations toward literary and nonliterary readings in the following ways:

The reading of literature, then, involves a great deal of critical thought--particularly characterized by the exploration of possibilities. But it is different from the kinds of thinking that students engage in when they read science or social studies pieces, where the pattern is to use the content they read to gain facts.

These notions, both the stances and orientations toward meaning, provide useful guidelines for teachers to use in support of students' processes of "coming to understand."

For further information, see ED 315 755, Langer, Judith (1989), THE PROCESS OF UNDERSTANDING LITERATURE, Report Series 2.1. May be purchased from Center for the Learning & Teaching of Literature, 1400 Washington Avenue, University at Albany, Albany, NY 12222, price $5.00.