Page 48 - Getting of the fence

Chapter 2
link to a Comprehensive Approach, followed by the Reader (.827) and Context approaches (.808). The lower contribution of the Language approach (.646) might be due to the relatively low reliability because of the low number of items of the language scale. This validates our model of a Comprehensive Approach to foreign language literature teaching and learning which includes a Text, Context, Reader, and Language approach.
2.3.2 Research question 1
With regard to the huge amount of curricular freedom foreign language teachers have with the literature component in Dutch secondary schools we investigated how EFL teachers approach literature. Table 2.7 shows the reported occurrences of the four approaches. Marked on a scale of 1 (never) to 6 (always), the difference between the highest mean score for the Text approach (4.18) and the lowest mean score for the Language approach (3.55) is .63, which is considered small. For each of the four approaches some participants indicated that the approach never occurred in their EFL literature lessons. However, each of the four approaches have also been indicated to always occur in these lessons. These results show that, on average, each of the four approaches occur regularly in the EFL literature lessons, but there is also a wide range in the way EFL literature is approached.
Table 2.7 Descriptives of the reported occurrences of the four foreign language literature teaching approaches
M SD
Text approach 4.18 1.07 Context approach 3.56 1.07 Reader approach 4.03 1.09 Language approach 3.55 1.06
2.3.3 Research question 2
Minimum Maximum
1.00 6.00 1.00 6.00 1.00 6.00 1.00 6.00
In order to answer our second research question, we investigated whether several teacher demographics and/or curricular factors are significantly related to the average reported occurrence of the four approaches.
2.3.3.1 Teacher demographics
We employed a two-tailed t-test to find out whether there are significant differences between gender and level of education and the average reported occurrence of the four approaches (see Table 2.8).
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