Over more than a century of formal schooling in literature, generations of students have become acculturated to authoritative school-based discourses that devalue everyday literary practices. However, research indicates that when students draw on their everyday practices in the classroom, they engage in rich literary reading experiences. In the current study, we argue that school-based discourses may limit teachers just as they limit students, and that teachers' literary funds of knowledge may be another potentially powerful resource for closing the distance between school and everyday reading. Drawing on social and literary metaphors of distance and closeness, we compared the discussions of the same teachers reading the same poems in personal (book club) and professional (lesson planning) settings. Analysis showed that teachers' literary stances differed across conditions. For instance, in the book club condition, teachers were more than twice as likely to enact a close stance when reading-immersing themselves in the text-world and empathizing with characters. We recommend that researchers and teacher educators attend more closely to and make visible the constraints of school-based discourses and the value of everyday funds of knowledge-not just for students, but for teachers.

Poetry is a key element of many literature curricula but poetry teaching is something with which many teachers struggle. Research indicates that teachers lack experience of poetry as well as subject knowledge and that current high-stakes testing poses challenges. While previous research has investigated teachers’ experiences through large quantitative studies, this study focuses on what teachers who are keen readers of poetry regard as key elements of pedagogy. The material comprises 15 interviews with secondary school teachers of Swedish. A thematic analysis identified four themes: drawing on personal engagement, discussing pupils’ conceptions from the outset, creating a safe classroom atmosphere, and scaffolding pupils’ interpretations. The study highlights the centrality of the aesthetic experience and suggests that attention should be paid within research regarding how aesthetic content should be taught and that teacher educators should scaffold pre-service teachers’ individual exploration of poetry to help them become confident teachers of poetry.

The aim of this compilation thesis was to increase the understanding of secondary students’ poetic literacies both inside and outside school. The study employed an overarching theoretical framework derived from New Literacy Studies in which poetry reading is understood as a social practice (Barton, 2007; Barton & Hamilton, 2000; Street, 2001). Paper I was a systematic literature review of international research discussions on the teaching of poetry reading in secondary school. The descriptive analysis showed that the research has mainly come from English-speaking countries, namely Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and the US, and the primary areas of research have been in the fields of education, literature, and psychology. The majority of studies were qualitative, and methods such as interviews, observations, surveys, and textual analyses were used. An inductive thematic analysis of topics in the research identified four major themes: “personal response pedagogies”, “development of poetry reading during secondary education”, “educational politics and poetry reading pedagogy”, and “boys and poetry reading”. Paper II explored secondary students’ leisure use of poetry with special regard to the reading of poetry. The study comprised 21 interviews and was inspired by constructive grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014). The analysis showed that the most common activity was private reading at home. Poetry was read for inspiration in order to create poetry, prose, and images. The participants’ examples of their favourite poems showed that lyric poetry and song lyrics were favoured. Paper III was based on the same empirical material as paper II and aimed at exploring the participants’ main reasons for reading poetry for leisure. Felski’s (2008) theory about leisure reading was employed in the analysis. The analysis rendered three categories: “being seen by the poem”, “an internal community”, and “support in difficult periods”, which indicated that there is a relational dimension to the reading process. Paper IV explored secondary Swedish teachers’ perceptions of key elements of poetry pedagogy. The study comprised 15 interviews. A thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) identified four themes: “drawing on personal engagement”, “discussing pupils’ conceptions from the outset”, “creating a safe classroom atmosphere”, and “scaffolding pupils’ interpretations”, which comprised the two sub-themes “scaffolding the aesthetic experience” and “scaffolding textual analysis”. Rosenblatt’s (1994 [1978], 1995 [1938]) theory of aesthetic reading and Shulman’s (1986, 1987) concept of pedagogical content knowledge was employed to interpret the participants’ perceptions. In the final section of the thesis, trends in the results in papers I–IV were discussed. The findings suggested that the aesthetic experience of poetry was key to the reading practices inside and outside secondary school. Students’ statements about their poetry reading outside school showed that they tended to read for psychological reasons, whereas the teachers’ statements about the teaching practices indicated that these were oriented towards textual analysis.

Föreliggande artikel undersöker poesiintresserade 16–19-åringars fritidsläsning av poesi. Mot bakgrund av en internationell diskussion kring behovet av studier som diskuterar litteraturens legitimeringar i en starkt medialiserad samtid, studeras här utsagor om varför unga läser poesi för att bidra med ny förståelse om poesins värde för unga läsare idag. Studiens material utgörs av nätintervjuer med 21 unga kvinnor och män från hela Sverige. Gruppen läser huvudsakligen centrallyrik. Analysen genererade tre kategorier vilka belyser viktiga funktioner av den privata läsningen av centrallyrik: att bli sedd av dikten, en inre gemenskap och stöd i svåra perioder. Kategorierna analyseras och diskuteras i relation till Felskis (2008) begrepp «igenkänning», «förtrollning», «kunskap» och «chock» men enbart «igenkänning» visar sig ha förklaringsvärde. En didaktisk implikation av resultaten synes vara att elever bör ges möjligheter att utforska centrallyriken utan krav på ingående redogörelser av läsupplevelser för att kunna utveckla en individuell relation till genren.

This article explores the value of leisure reading of poetry for a group of 16 to 19-year olds with a keen interest in poetry. Against the background of the international discussion of the value of reading literature and the need for new legitimisation in the context of new media, statements about why young people read poetry contribute to our understanding of the importance of poetry for readers today. Twenty-one men and women from different parts of Sweden were interviewed for the study. The poetry read is mostly lyric poetry. The analysis generated three categories, which highlight key aspects of their leisure reading of lyric poetry: being seen by the poem, an internal community and support in difficult periods. The categories are analysed and discussed in relation to Felskis’s (2008) concepts of «recognition», «enchantment», «knowledge» and «shock», but only «recognition» is found to have explanatory value. The results point to the importance of letting students explore lyric poetry without always having to present their personal response in class.

The aim of this study is to review research on poetry reading pedagogy in secondary education from 1990 to 2015. Today there is little research on poetry teaching in Sweden and thus little guidance for secondary teachers. Therefore, this study thematically analyses peer-reviewed articles from English language international journals. Articles were retrieved through a systematic literature review. The results show that many researchers suggest personal response pedagogies mainly developed from Louise M. Rosenblatt’s work. Further, a progression of poetry interpretations seems to require explicit teaching throughout the years of secondary education. Also, current educational politics, heavily influenced by neoliberalism, impose high-stakes examinations that challenge poetry curricula. Teacher education needs to address this issue. Minor themes found were: ontologies in relation to teaching poetry reading, and poetry reading as identity formation/tool for social critique. These could be possible areas for future research.

Skolans undervisning ligger ofta till grund för ungas poesiintresse. Det visar en intervjustudie som också pekar ut tre möjliga framgångsfaktorer: använd samtidspoesi, fördjupa kunskapen om poesi som genre och låt eleverna skriva egen poesi.