Page 184 - Getting of the fence

Chapter 7
gather their own data from the world outside school’, and helping learners to develop a ‘growing insight into the way language works to convey meaning’” (cited in Bolitho et al., 2003). Because of its very nature, literature can play a key role in the development of students’ language awareness, taking the language learning pay-off (Jones & Carter, 2012) to the next level. In sum, taking current national and international curriculum developments in foreign language teaching into consideration (sections 1.2 and 1.3), investigating, for example, how a language awareness approach to literature in the foreign language classroom can enhance students’ perception and sensitivity towards negotiable meanings, should be at the centre of research in this field.
In line with PCK research, we purposefully included the voices of teachers and students in all five empirical studies. Although we believe that including their voices provided us with a rich picture of the position, relevance, and focus of the EFL literature curriculum, it also created a very wide lens through which we were not always able to obtain a certain level of depth. For example, we did not investigate what teachers perceive as beneficial and important regarding EFL literature lessons or where these perceptions come from. We also did not investigate possible links between these perceptions and teachers’ lessons. Investigating where teachers’ perceptions regarding EFL literature teaching come from, what these perceptions are, and how they could influence teaching practice will provide valuable insights for teacher educators and curriculum developers. With regard to student voice, we did not, for example, include the Learner as initiator perspective in the design of the research process and research activities (section 3.4) and we did not include the students in the process of enriching existing literature lessons. Because students perceive EFL literature teaching in a unique way, future research in foreign language literature teaching should include students in the actual curriculum design; from learning objectives, to assessment, and finally lesson design. From this point of view, students can indeed be regarded as participants in Educational Design Research by being involved in the iterative cycles of analysis, design, development, and evaluation (McKenney & Reeves, 2019).
Lastly, we postulated in section 1.4 that, although there are a growing number of empirical studies in the field of foreign language literature research that could be considered PCK research, it is very seldom explicitly referred to as such. From the perspective of PCK research, it could be argued that, similar to Dutch EFL curricula in secondary education, international research in the field of foreign language literature education is also ill-structured. Although an increasing
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