Democracy and citizenship in literary texts in the English as a foreign language classroom
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Keywords:
Democracy and citizenship, intercultural competence, English as a foreign language, continuing education, children’s and YA literature
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Abstract
The past decades have seen an increased focus on citizenship education inspired by the work of the Council of Europe and UNESCO (Byram, 2008; CoE, 2010). In a Norwegian context, Democracy and citizenship is one of two interdisciplinary topics in the Curriculum in English (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2020) in the Knowledge Promotion (LK20). Democracy and citizenship is one of three interdisciplinary subjects in LK20, and thus also central to the English subject. The present study aims to examine how teachers in primary and lower secondary school understand the topic of democracy and citizenship in literary texts in the English as a Foreign Language (ELF) classroom.The respondents in this study are in-service teachers of English who take part in continuing education in English subject pedagogy and have an assignment related to a children’s literature project. In the project, the teachers choose a literary text in line with the topic of democracy and citizenship. The methodology is qualitative content analysis, with inductive category development. Nineteen participants, working as teachers, contributed to the project.The discussion is linked to theory on intercultural competence and Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed. Analysing the reports reveals four major themes: intercultural competence, critical thinking, societal structures and diversity. Findings show that the participants are reluctant to mention dissent and disagreement, and this could indicate that the focus is on balance and agreement in the reports analysed, and that this is central to the teachers’ understanding of democracy and citizenship in some Norwegian schools today.
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