Abstract
This empirical study researches a literary reading process. 8th grade pupils participate in a close reading of a short story, Magrete Kind (Zwilgmeyer, 1895), in which they engage with different types of fiction reading activities (Norwegian: “fiktive lesemåter”). The process takes place in a professional workshop, an arena for working systematically with teaching quality in teacher education. The purpose of this article is to contribute to knowledge about the composition of experience-based processes in reading fiction, where the pupil’s reader role becomes visible. The study is anchored in literary and dramaturgical theory, and fictionalization is central. The dramaturgical analyses show that the pupils like to work collectively and in role. They also enjoy working bodily and spatially, and are positive about staging and remediating the short story. Their approach to text is often text-external, and they are oriented towards thematic and relational layers of meaning. The remediation of the short story gives the students a good text experience, but this means that they move away from the original narrative.
Highlights
I loved performing in front of others
I could pretend I was someone else”. He engaged with a short story intellectually and emotionally – with head and heart.The eighth grader was taking part in a Norwegian lesson, where the teacher worked with different ways of fiction reading activities1 (Steffensen, 2005, p. 121)
In a recently published book, What happens in Norwegian lessons? Blikstad-Balas and Roe (2020, p. 98) state they are “surprised at how little teachers in the Norwegian lessons [...] emphasized the students’ experiences and reading experiences”
Summary
In the teaching of literature, a distinction is often made between experience-based and analytical approaches to working with texts (Rødnes, 2014). When pupils are engaged in a hunt for literary techniques, the texts themselves are reduced Such a way of reading devalues the intrinsic quality of literature (Eyde & Skovholt, 2017; Fodstad, 2017, 2019) and hardly facilitates meaningful literary encounters (Gabrielsen in Heie, 2019). The ways of reading fiction that we explore are those activities where students imagine and form opinions about the themes, figures and language of a text. The purpose of this empirical study is to contribute to knowledge about and provide concrete examples of how teachers can compose experience-based reading processes for pupils who are working with fiction. – Which ways of reading fiction does the teacher use and what characterises these? – What do the pupils say about these activities and how do they experience the text?
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