Page 100 - Getting of the fence
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                                Chapter 4
 could create a teaching situation where there is congruence between the individual student and teacher perspectives and where constructive frictions are created when the teacher introduces approaches that the student initially did not regard as beneficial.
Taking into consideration that teaching approaches can have an effect on student learning (Many & Wiseman, 1992; Tutaş, 2006), the differences in students’ responses at school level could be related to what students are actually being taught. One interpretation of the findings is that EFL literature in Dutch secondary education is taught primarily through a Language approach followed by a Context approach in some schools or through a Context and Reader approach in other schools, thereby reflecting the students’ answers. However, it might also be the case that EFL literature is often taught through a Text approach in combination with the Context approach element ‘Literary history’ and the Reader approach element ‘Reading experience’, since these are the elements that cover the three core curriculum standards for foreign language literature. In the latter case students might consider these elements simply as not beneficial and therefore these elements did not appear often in our data. However, our study does not allow us to draw conclusions with regard to direct relations between how the students are taught and how they perceive EFL literature education.
In spite of this, the difference in students’ responses between different schools does call for future research that focuses on what is actually happening in these classrooms as well as an analysis of learning tasks. We believe that an analysis of these tasks might reveal that learning tasks can be “very one-sided and more often reflect teachers’ personal styles than students’ needs” (Vermunt & Verloop, 1999, p. 277). Locating a blind spot or finding out that certain approaches are over- represented can be very helpful in improving the quality of teaching (Vermunt & Verloop, 1999). Despite the increasing body of information about student perceptions regarding various parts of the curriculum, more research is needed to bridge the gap between theory and practice.
Being aware of the impact of the way literature is taught on how students perceive this component could help teachers in creating an effective situation of congruence as well as constructive friction (Vermunt & Verloop, 1999). However, when a teaching approach has negative effects on student learning or when discrepancies between students’ and teachers’ perceptions are too large, this can create destructive frictions (Vermunt & Verloop, 1999). Destructive frictions may also occur when students perceive the teaching and learning as irrelevant and
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