Page 180 - Getting of the fence

Chapter 7
students find most beneficial and important? One argument why such measures would perhaps be too drastic concerns student variation. Although in general, students seem to find the Language approach very beneficial and important, they did not indicate that the literature lessons were only about acquiring English language skills and linguistic competence, the so-called “isolationist position” (Paran, 2008, p. 468). More specifically, we found that students appear to value either a combination of the Literature and Personal Development factors or a combination of the Language and Personal Development factors. Moreover, we found that even at class level, students vary in what they find beneficial and important. To summarise, we suggested that the discrepancy between teachers and students in this case can be reduced by approaching literary texts in the EFL lessons through a Comprehensive Approach, thereby aiming to create a more desirable situation of congruence and constructive friction (Vermetten, Vermunt, & Lodewijks, 2002) (see also section 7.5.4).
7.3.3 Including the voices of teachers and students
In PCK research the perspectives of teachers and students are equally valued (Grossman, Schoenfeld, & Lee, 2005). The inclusion of the perception of students in our studies resulted in several unique contributions. Through the surveys we administered in Chapters 4 and 5 we found out that the majority of the students view the EFL literature lessons as a language learning opportunity but also that students vary in what they find beneficial and important. Also, students view EFL literature lessons somewhat differently compared to teachers: the Text and Context approaches together formed one factor, which we called the Literature factor. Also, the Language approach element ‘Language development and variety’ was considered to be part of this Literature factor (see section 7.3.3 for a detailed discussion). Furthermore, students who find the Literature factor important show a high level of engagement. Last but not least, the students’ contributions had a constructive and unique impact on the development of the Comprehensive Approach; every underlying element of the four approaches underwent some kind of change and students even added an element.
The inclusion of the perception of teachers contributed to our insights into how EFL literature is approached as well as how teachers experience the relevance and usefulness of working with the Comprehensive Approach. Through the lenses of sensemaking (Coburn, 2001; Weick et al, 2005) and Practicality Theory (Doyle & Ponder, 1977; Janssen, Westbroek, & Doyle, 2015), teachers indicated that they
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