Page 152 - Getting of the fence

Chapter 6
Ralph (School E, 24 years teaching experience)
For Ralph, the keyword in his process of sensemaking of the Comprehensive Approach was variety. He emphasised, however, that it was not so much a new way of looking at the curriculum but more of a wake-up call (assimilation). He felt that he had been stuck in a certain routine and the Comprehensive Approach opened his eyes again to a richer didactic repertoire in his literature lessons including other arts such as music, fashion, and photography. Ralph enjoyed this richer repertoire, which increased his ability to improvise and be more playful in his lessons. Nonetheless, Ralph also emphasised that this year was only the beginning of enriching the literature curriculum. For him, breaking free from the set routine took a lot of time and energy, which caused him to revert to the ‘regular way’ of doing things. Despite this experience of relevance, Ralph’s lessons moved further away from a Comprehensive Approach in year 2. Whereas in year 1 the average deviation from the assumed even distribution was 17%, in year 2 this was 22%. Although we only coded 4% Language approach in year 2, Ralph, like Fred and Doris, was more conscious about integrating students’ English language development in his literature lessons. Ralph, for example, provided his students with listening assignments whenever they watched a video fragment in class and he asked the students to translate extracts of a literary text in class.
Sarah (School E, 8 years teaching experience)
Sarah’s enriched literature curriculum centred on her students. The Comprehensive Approach offered her a framework, which enabled her to be more aware of and therefore explicit in the reasoning behind why she teaches literature in a certain way (accommodation). She felt that she was now better able to justify her curriculum and communicate this to her students. Analysing her curriculum through this lens sensitised her towards including the Reader approach. For her this meant that she emphasised the relevance of literary texts by connecting them to contemporary issues. The increased emphasis on the Reader approach was also visible in the lessons, which showed an increase in
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