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                                regarding courses that included literary texts. Recent examples regarding the first type include a research project commissioned by the International Baccalaureate Organisation (Duncan & Paran, 2017), in which one of the research questions explored the views of students regarding the impact of literature on language learning. An example of the second type is Nguyen (2014), where students were asked to explore the pedagogical change on their learning experience with literary texts via a pre- and post-project questionnaire.
Although it goes without saying that student voice research in which student 3 voice serves as a data provider is extremely valuable to our understanding of
students, Pinter (2014) argues that “it is essential that SLA [Second Language
Acquisition] also widens its research agenda” (p. 168) with research that focuses
on students as active research participants where they are given “central and autonomous conceptual status” (Christensen & Prout, 2002, p. 481). This ties in with Charteris and Smardon’s (2018) call for research where young people are positioned “agentically as action-oriented individuals” (p. 10). To our knowledge, in the area of EFL and literature teaching, no research has been conducted that focuses on learner oriented discourse with the students as active participants in a co-construction of knowledge. Our study aims to fill this gap.
3.1.5 The present study: context, purpose, and research question
The current study is part of an on-going research project exploring the teaching of literature in EFL classrooms in secondary schools in the Netherlands, where literature is part of the common core curriculum (see Chapter 2). The larger project responds to the movement, within the global context of foreign language education, towards a re-integration of the domains of language and literature teaching (Carter, 2015). Even though the division between language and literature still exists in many contexts (Paesani & Allen, 2012), several frameworks have been developed to promote this integration (for an overview see section 2.1.2). Although these frameworks may be practical and valuable, in Chapter 2 we claimed that most of them lack a theoretical foundation. Through investigating EFL classrooms in a secondary school setting and building on previous theoretical understandings we have proposed a Comprehensive Approach to foreign language literature teaching and learning model (hereafter: Comprehensive Approach). The term ‘approach’ refers to the focus of the EFL lesson where literature is used. Within the Comprehensive Approach we make a distinction between on the one hand the literary text as the focus of the study of literature, and on the other hand,
Connecting students and researchers
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