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A lift for democracy? About the relationship between literacy, fiction and democracy.

The declining results in reading skills revealed in large-scale international surveys such as PISA are seen as a critical issue for education in general, but also for democracy, social justice, and economic competitiveness. In this article, we investigate the reading-promotion programmes in Swedish schools called “Läslyftet” (Elevated Reading), organised by the National Agency for Education. In particular, we study the link between fiction and democracy and how reading-promoting ideas are implemented by the Swedish National Agency for Education. The result indicates the effective downplaying of literature, with fiction being marginalised in the reading programme in favour of non-fiction. Also, in line with the idea that all teachers are language teachers, the school subject Swedish has become pushed into the margins to the benefit of other school subjects such as natural sciences, in which the importance of reading for the development of a democratic society is emphasised.

Reading fiction has been an important basic content in mother-tongue education and the school subject Swedish (L1) since the nineteenth century. Declining results in reading skills identified in large-scale international surveys such as PISA are seen as a critical issue for education in general, but also for democracy, social justice and economic competitiveness. Closely related to this is the fact that school has become a battleground in the political debate. This ratio has led to an intensification of reading-promotion programmes in Swedish schools, organised by the National Agency for Education under the name ‘Läslyftet’ (Heightened Reading). Notable here is the effective downplaying of literature, with fiction marginalized in the reading programme in favour of non-fiction. Also, under the motto that all teachers are language teachers, the school-subject Swedish has been marginalized to the benefit of other school-subjects, such as natural sciences, in which, for example, the importance of reading for the development of democratic society is emphasized. What are the implications of such developments for LI education in Sweden, and what are the underlying ideas, interests and values behind identified discourses?

Emilie Flygare-Carlén (1807—92) was one of the most widely read novelists in Sweden throughout the nineteenth century. This study construes her works as participating in an emancipatory dialogue. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the way in which Emilie Flygare-Carlén treats, discusses, and problematizes gender relations in her novels. The study has been restricted to Emilie Flygare-Carlén’s 1840s, and concentrates on a number of focal themes in her writing: romantic love, society, identity, and marriage.

The first chapter of this book deals with the romantic notion of love, and investigates why two of three heroines in Kyrkoinvigningen i Hammarby (The Consecration of the Church of Hammarby, 1840-41) are destroyed by their love of the novel’s romantic hero. The main interest of the second chapter of the study is the various ways in which a female writer could shed light on broader social issues, when at the same time there existed a resistance against female participation in the discussion of society. In Flygare-Carlén’s breakthrough novel Rosen på Tistelön (The Rose of Tistelön, 1842) it is shown how an author can move past this by using the novel’s full potential to mold and test her society through the use of aesthetics and genre. The analysis also demonstrate the way in which specifically coded female spheres and topics, such as the household and motherhood, are being used in Flygare-Carlén’s novel in order to discuss societal issues of the time, including the vulnerable position of women in nineteenth century society.

The topic of this study’s third chapter is the possibilities of the female subject. In the novel En natt vid Bullar-sjön (One Night by the Bullar-sjö Lake, 1847), the two leading female characters are examined in their attempts at building independent identities in a time when predominantly men were allowed to become individuals. The last chapter of this book discusses marriage as an institution, and demonstrate how the legal rights of marriage are criticized and problematized in the novels Ett år (Twelve Months of Matrimony, 1846), En nyckfull qvinna (The Whimsical Woman, 1848-49), and Ett rykte (A Rumour, 1850). In the chapter’s latter half, the melodramatic and intrigue-saturated style that typifies Flygare-Carlén’s novels towards the end of 1840s is also discussed. Diverging from those who regard this mode solely as a means of creating suspense, breathing with commercial undertones, I analyze this kind of aesthetics as a bearer of both meaning and ideology. The thesis ends in a discussion of how Flygare-Carlén’s novels move along the borders of emancipation of her time in an examining and exploratory manner. Her novels map limitations, such as the superior position of men, but also possible openings, including equal marriages and improved female influence on society.

From once being synonymous with reading and writing, literacy, as a concept has expanded in the last three decades to today being associated with multiple meaning making forms and competences. Impactful, in this shift, has been the research orientation of New Literacy Studies. Besides academia, the literacy concept has also had a major influence on the global assessment frameworks of Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). This study is interested in the epistemological potential of this perception of literacy, but also on how it affects educational policy. Material examined is a large Swedish governmentally-initiated professional development programme for teachers, launched in 2014. Two main variants of the literacy concept can be identified in the programme, one more closely aligned with New Literacy Studies, and the other more influenced by PISA and PIRLS. Findings show, strong impact from the global assessment version of the literacy concept, resulting in a mainly skills-based and instrumental educational discourse, far from the concept of Bildung, traditionally characteristic of the Nordic school systems. Further, of the two variants, New Literacy has a broader epistemological potential, and is, as such, more closely related to Bildung.

The present article focuses on the role of the teaching and learning of literature in a large-scale Swedish, professional development programme for teachers called the Reading Lift. More specifically this study, using qualitative content analysis, examines the educational function of the most prominently referred to literary didactic theory and method developers in the program: Judith Langer, Aidan Chambers, Louise M. Rosenblatt, and Rita Felski, but also the relationship between literary didactics, literacy, and fiction. The results show a strong domination of Langer-inspired manual and strategy-based approaches, primarily promoting efferent reading stances. More holistic hermeneutic and dialogic approaches in support of aesthetic reading, represented by Chambers, Rosenblatt and Felski, are less common. Further, there is a strong alliance between the literacy concept and the systematic and manual-based literary didactic approaches. Also, in the literacy discourse, literary works of art have become not just texts amongst other texts, and foreign, but are also framed as hypermediacy. Based on our results we tentatively suggest that a shift in paradigms of literature education has taken place, from literature pedagogy, grounded in print culture, to literature didactics, situated in new mediacy and the digital.

This article is about the implementation of a literary module in a large scale Swedish professional development programme for teachers called the Reading Lift, which was introduced in 2014 in response to alarming PISA results. While the government-assigned preparatory work stressed the importance of literature and literary didactic methods, this area was reduced significantly in the hands of the National Agency for Education. For upper secondary school, the Agency did not initially plan for any literary content. This article examines what happened when L1 teachers demanded a literary module. Specifically, we study how the module was implemented and how literature is viewed. The study is based on interviews with researchers who contributed with content on behalf of the Agency and qualitative content analysis of the literature module. Results show that the module represents a focus on knowledge and art, unlike the instrumental and skills focused perspectives on literature for compulsory school, explored in an earlier study. One explanation for this, is that the influence of street-level agency bureaucrats was reduced due to various circumstances. The result was to the benefit of literary education but at the same time a high-risk route for the Agency’s requirements for measurability