Abstract

ABSTRACTResearch shows that teachers and education are often represented negatively or stereotypically in popular and literary culture, both in the Dutch language area and in Anglophone contexts. Regarding contemporary Dutch literature, though, research on educational representations has until now focussed on small corpora of novels that explicitly deal with education. In this article, we explore the representations of teachers and education in a much larger and broader corpus: the 170 submissions to the bulk list of the prestigious Dutch Libris Literatuurprijs of 2013. We provide a Keyword in Context Analysis of 292 educational representations in this corpus and offer a demographic analysis of the 71 teachers who inhabit the novels under analysis. In doing so, we show that educational representations and teacher characters are relatively common in contemporary Dutch language novels. Our analysis also reveals that literary representations of teachers are predominantly negative in nature, especially regarding their behaviour towards students, their external presentation, and their pedagogical skills. Representations of education in general tend to be even more negative. In that sense, literary representations of education appear to converge with the negative public appeal of the educational sector in the contemporary Low Countries.

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.