Page 50 - Getting of the fence

Chapter 2
2.3.3.2 Curricular factors
We investigated the following three curricular factors: the difference in average occurrence of the four approaches between years 4, 5, and 6; the number of literature lessons taught per year; and the percentage of the literature component for the final English mark. The results presented in Table 2.10 show that each of the three curricular factors are to a certain extent significantly related to one or more of the four approaches. For this reason, each of the three curricular factors will be discussed in the sections below.
Table 2.10 Correlations between curricular factors and teaching approaches
Text approach Context approach Reader approach Language approach
*p< .05; ** p< .01
Years
4, 5, and 6
.06 .26** .08
-.03
Number of literature lessons per year
.23** .34**
-.12 .19*
Percentage of the literature component for the final English mark
.32** .30** .14 .08
As Table 2.10 indicates, there is a significant relation between the average occurrence for the Context approach and the difference between years 4, 5, and 6 (r = .26, p < .01). This means that teachers reported spending more time on the context approach the higher the year they were teaching. We did not find significant relations between the three years and the Text, Reader, and Language approach.
Results from the questionnaire informed us that there is an enormous variation between schools regarding the number of literature lessons taught on a yearly basis; with a minimum of 0 hours and a maximum of 120 hours per year. As expected, the correlation analysis shows that there is a significant relation between the number of literature lessons per year and the average occurrence for the Text (r = .23, p < .01), Context (r = .34, p < .01), and the Language approach (r = .19, p < .05). These results indicate that when teachers teach more hours of literature per year, the reported occurrence for three approaches is higher. The amount of lesson time spent on the Reader approach decreases slightly but not significantly when more lesson time is spent on literature.
Similar to the number of literature lessons per year, the percentage of the literature component for the final English mark also differs massively between schools (between 0 and 60%). The results show that the percentage of the literature
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