Faculty of Education - Theses

Permanent URI for this collection

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1

Personal knowledge and the teaching of literature

Beavis, Cathy ( 1981)

The study explores the place of pupils' personal response in the teaching of literature. The same short story was taught by a different teacher to each of four year-eight classes. The classes were taped, the students' written work was collected and the teachers were interviewed about a number of issues relating to English teaching and the development of personal response. The teachers' comments and practice were juxtaposed against central tenets of Michael Polanyi's thought, with a view to identifying the degree to which his account of "personal knowledge" accorded with intuitive practice of good teachers. His ideas were found to have considerable relevance to the teaching of literature. In an effort to relate classroom strategies to pupils' personal responses, Roy Thomas' adaptation of Eisner's objectives, and his own notion of a "teaching point" were employed as a framework for comparison. While these tools of analysis proved ultimately inadequate in accounting for all the elements contributing to such engagement, they did make possible the identification of a number of important features of classroom practice. The study closes with some general observations about strategies, attitudes, values and beliefs, likely to result in a deeper awareness of the text and in a personal engagement with it.