The co-construction of beliefs about literary education on a senior highschool level

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Using a qualitative design, this empirical study addresses the question of how German students nearing completion of the high school course come to form and maintain beliefs about, and attitudes towards, literature; the study thus has a dual concern with literary education and the sociology of education. Our assumption is that advanced-level German teaching at school (Leistungs- und Schwerpunktkurse) has a significant impact on the formation of the belief systems in question; an example of this is the conviction shared by many students that Goethe s Faust is an essential part of the core works of German literature.The study focuses on the question how concepts of literary educationthrough literary experiences by both students and teachers are mutuallyformed in terms of accepting, rejecting or varying these belief systems. Inaccordance with interaction theory, we consider interaction in teachingsituations as a matter of co-construction.Literary education is thus understood as a partially collective beliefsystem not only engendered by families or peer groups but also by thesocial practices prevalent in schools as sites of cultural (re-)production.Although unstudied, the subject is clearly of great relevance since itaddresses the issue of maintaining cultural continuity (or morespecifically, of continuing the literary tradition) and the mechanismswhich enable us to do so.In terms of its methods, the study uses narrative and guides interviews inorder to carry out research into students' concepts of literary education.In addition, the impact on these concepts by families and peer groups isincorporated into the research design by applying standardizedquestionnaires. Videotaped teaching sequences allow exploring thenegotiation of meaning and classroom discourse in advanced-level courses (Leistungskurse) in the senior years of high school. This will besupplemented by analyses of teaching paperwork and teachers narrativeinterviews from the very beginning of the study in order to determine theirconcepts of literary education.