Page 22 - Getting of the fence

Chapter 1
in the answers and repeatedly justifying the role, position, and relevance of literature in foreign language teaching has prevented us from moving forward, from developing a coherent foreign language literature methodology, and from systematically investigating this area of research. In our view, if we want to get off the fence, break this justification habit, and take steps in building a well-structured and content rich foreign language curriculum, we need to: (1) systematically investigate the current situation of literature teaching within the foreign language curriculum, (2) understand how the relevance and usefulness of a desired situation where literature and language teaching go hand-in-hand (Paran, 2008; Paesani, 2011) is experienced by teachers and (3) emphasize the perspective of students (Paran, 2008).
1.5 Theoretical approach
In this thesis the issues presented in sections 1.2 – 1.4 are addressed through the framework of pedagogical content knowledge research (in Dutch: vakdidactisch onderzoek) because of its dual focus on content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge and its dual focus on teacher and student perspectives.
The term pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) was introduced by Shulman in his 1985 seminal address to the American Educational Research Association and defined as a type of content knowledge “which goes beyond knowledge of subject matter per se to the dimension of subject matter knowledge for teaching” (Shulman, 1986, p. 9). Also, “it is the particular form of content knowledge that embodies the aspects of content most germane to teaching” (Shulman, 1986, p. 9). In other words, because pedagogical content knowledge represents an amalgam of content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge, research in this area focuses on both knowledge of a particular subject and suitable pedagogical approaches to transfer this knowledge thereby considering the diverse abilities and interests of students. PCK research has mainly gained ground in the teaching of science subjects, especially mathematics (Blömeke & Delaney, 2012; Depaepe, Verschaffel, & Kelchtermans, 2013). Although PCK research is taking place in the field of foreign language teaching in an explicit way (e.g. Evens, Tielemans, Elen, & Depaepe, 2019; König, Tachtsoglou, Lammerding, Strauß, Nold, & Rihde, 2017), more often it is included implicitly and therefore very hard to identify in database searches. Isaac (2002), for example, examined the perceptions of students of
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