Teaching Literature in a Post-Dictatorship Country

Albanian literature curricula in a high school system has incorporated in a few years a lot of concepts, authors and methodology pretending in absorbed and integration of knowledge worldwide on literature teaching process and environment. Analyzing the academic process of constructing the base and the theoretical axis of the teachers, which actually are teaching literature can be noticed easily that a large number of them in their last ten years of their professional carrier has nothing to do with it. Their studies in university stage was only ideologized and focused on socialist realism. The university’s curriculum was strictly handicapped and based on the communist ideology on “creating the new people- the communist one”, as the literature itself, and every art form was “shaped” as it. Being such a teacher nowadays in Albania you have to face a challenge: You feel prejudged by your “experienced” colleges, who has not accepted and never “known” really the perspective of reading a fiction text as a “open text”. You felt yourself “trapped” in textbooks, their sources and their perspective is limited on their authors theoretical backgrounds. Having a parenting and student tradition, mentality as their academic success is based only on “the book” (even if in Albania we have more than 10 years practicing “altertext”-as a possibility of performing the subject program through the book chosen by teachers between three or four possibilities) makes it difficult to provide an “open” experience on learning through a based bibliography. The academic coordinators in pre-university system, aren’t always ready for the teacher who want to realize the teaching process leaded by the ideas of globalization, open minded individual, constructive perspective of the personality of the student, on national history and tradition versus “the other”.

[Folklore in the Context of Literature Curricula (Aligned with the Current Literature Curriculum for the 5th Grade)

The article aims to present basic theoretical problems connected with studying folklore in the secondary stage of Bulgarian schools. The first part offers a brief diachronic review of the theoretical paradigm of Bulgarian folklore research, presenting the transition from the narrow philological understanding of folklore as “national poetic creativity” towards its wide sociological interpretation as “a type of creative culture”. In the second part of the article two curricula for the fifth grade, in which folklore is a key component, are analysed and compared – the one from 2007/2010 academic years and the current one, implemented since 2016/2017. The main goal of this part is to demonstrate how and how much the Literature curricula offer an opportunity for studying folklore in alignment with current theoretical stipulations in Bulgarian folklore research.

‘Human rights and democracy are not self-evident’: Finnish student teachers’ perceptions on democracy and human rights education

This article discusses democracy and human rights education (DHRE) in Finnish teacher education, drawing on existing literature, curricula and a survey of student teachers’ perceptions. Earlier studies suggested that DHRE in Finnish teacher education is unsystematic, implicit, and dependent on the teacher’s individual interests. These studies highlight a sense of national exceptionalism, where DHRE is assumed to be self-evident. In 2019, we conducted a survey of student teachers (n=300) in one university. Data content analysis reveals that student teachers now see DHRE as relevant and timely, and by no means self-evident. Student teachers believe that DHRE needs to be explicit and part of their professional education. Although the Finnish national curriculum addresses DHRE explicitly, there is a lack of implementation and explicit DHRE teacher education. We contend that the data reflects societal change, and that the notion that democracy and human rights are self-evident needs to be challenged in Finland.

The Competence Approach and Its Literary Educational Projections in the First High School Stage

In line with the current educational theses, this publication recognizes the role of competency approach in the contemporary literary education, focusing on the literary educational discourse in the first high school stage (grades 8-10). The development illustrates the functionalization of the competence approach in the teaching of literature in Bulgarian school, as well as its relation to the specific literary-educational approaches - thematic and intertextual. The research represents ideas for studying works included in the literature curricula (for the respective classes), combining scientific theses and literary-educational pragmatics, focusing on the development of the thematic chain "native and foreign" and the generated intertextual allusions.

The Competence Approach and Its Literary Educational Projections in the First High School Stage

In line with the current educational theses, this publication recognizes the role of competency approach in the contemporary literary education, focusing on the literary educational discourse in the first high school stage (grades 8-10). The development illustrates the functionalization of the competence approach in the teaching of literature in Bulgarian school, as well as its relation to the specific literary-educational approaches - thematic and intertextual. The research represents ideas for studying works included in the literature curricula (for the respective classes), combining scientific theses and literary-educational pragmatics, focusing on the development of the thematic chain "native and foreign" and the generated intertextual allusions.

Against coloniality: Toward an epistemically insurgent curriculum

This study interrogates the colonial and Western epistemology underlying mainstream curricula and proposes a decolonial approach that can build an epistemically insurgent curriculum that takes into account non-Western epistemologies. We begin with an analysis of coloniality in Western culture and knowledge systems, including in education. Then, building on the epistemological challenge proposed within decolonial literary works by Pablo Neruda, Eduardo Galeano, and Josías López Gómez, we describe how history and literature curricula can foreground non-dominant saberes (ways of knowing) that call into question the monopoly on understanding claimed by Western modes of reason, and how they can participate in the ethical and analectical project of attending to the being and agency of those who have been marginalized. This approach can help teachers and students to participate in building a sophisticated global border thinking and can provide them with new conceptual tools to make sense of their own realities.

Losing Literature: The Reduction of the GDR to History

Federal and state curricula not only determine much of what is taught in school, they also reveal what is important to political and cultural leaders and ultimately help shape a country's narrative. This article examines how the GDR currently is addressed in history and literature curricula for the Oberstufe. While state history curricula consistently require coverage of the GDR, literature curricula vary widely, with a few states clearly including GDR literature and many states completely omitting it. If GDR literature is ignored in state curricula, it risks being ignored in the classroom, limiting student understanding of the GDR to historical facts and depriving them of an opportunity to better understand both past and current German society.

Eccentric Periodization: Comparative Perspectives on the Enlightenment and the Baroque

There is no classification of the universe that is not arbitrary and conjectural. … But the impossibility of penetrating the divine scheme of the universe cannot dissuade us from outlining human schemes, even though we are aware that they are provisional.—Jorge Luis Borges, “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins” (104)Our professional practice of grouping cultural products into historical categories has recently been the subject of lively critical discussion, as well as some consternation. Here I want to consider how, and how well, periodization organizes knowledge in the field of comparative literature. Organizing knowledge is what scholars do in all disciplines, of course, but the organizational models differ according to our objects of study. Historians may be the most dependent on schemata of periodization, but literary scholars aren't far behind. Literature curricula in United States universities are largely organized according to diachronic historical categories, whether they are labeled by centuries or by rubrics tied to a historical period's style or ideology or political circumstances. This is not surprising since European periodic categories long precede the establishment of curricula in the United States. Periods are powerful because they carry with them their own historical accumulations and applications, and they become dialectical as we engage their diverse cultural and historical meanings. For this reason, they can be particularly useful to comparatists. Indeed, to speak of any period at all is to make a comparative statement. One period necessarily implies others, each period a part that exists in relation to other parts and to an implied whole—a provisional “classification of the universe,” to quote from the passage by Jorge Luis Borges that I take as my epigraph.

The Literature Curriculum in Russia: Cultural Nationalism vs. The Cultural Turn

In Western educational systems, the question “Why study literature in school?” has been raised in connection with the theoretical development often summarized as “the cultural turn.” The author strives to contribute to this discussion by examining the development of educational discourse in Russia. During the Soviet period, literature was – together with history – the subject most heavily influenced by the dogmas of Soviet state ideology. As such, literature enjoyed great prestige and was a compulsory and separate subject from the fifth to the eleventh school years. Since 1991, the educational system has undergone radical reform, but the number of hours devoted to literature has not changed significantly. This would suggest that literature still is perceived as an important means of incorporating children into the national and political community. The target of this study is to identify authorities’ specific aims in devoting so much time to literature in school, as well as to elucidate in what way literature is to achieve these aims. Russian guidelines for the development of literature curricula published in the years 1991–2010 are examined to see just how literature is legitimated as a secondary school subject. Based on this material, the author draws conclusions about the rhetorical practices and ideological development of curricular discourse, its relationship to Soviet educational thought and the extent to which the cultural turn has influenced this sphere.