Literary Understanding and Metaphor: a study of the processes used by learners to understand poetic metaphor and of the ways in which teachers model such understanding and how it comes about (LiMet)

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Irene Pieper; Professorin Dr. Dorothee Wieser
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning
• Term: from 2015 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 283241218

LiMet is the first study to reconstruct both the processes used by learners to understand poetic metaphor and the ways in which teachers model such understanding and how it comes about. It thus addresses two urgent desiderata in the research.Recent contributions to research in the field have addressed the assessment of literary competence. However, from the perspective of literature education it is just as necessary to focus on the processes of understanding in order to gain empirically-based starting points for lesson development and for the support of the development of literary competences. This study will focus on a core dimension of literary understanding, the understanding of poetic metaphor.(1) With regard to learners, two stages of secondary education will be addressed: grades 6 and 9. 48 students of Middle School and Gymnasium will take part in a think-aloud-study in which they will engage with three poems with differing metaphorical structures. The learners' strategies in relation to different niveaux of understanding will be reconstructed using content analysis (coding-system, explicative qualitative content analysis EQUIA). In addition, hypotheses will be formulated with regard to student development between grade 6 and 9 and with regard to the textual challenges presented by poetic metaphors. Methodologically, one result of this study will be the optimisation of the coding system and the EQUIA.(2) Concurrently, problem-centred interviews will be carried out with the sixteen teachers of the students surveyed. Here, the focus will be on exploring how teachers deal with poetic metaphor in class, with regard both to the poems selected and to processes of understanding. On the basis of these data the teachers' practical professional knowledge and the beliefs which underlie this knowledge will be reconstructed. This engages with a second desideratum in research: the modelling of subject-specific professional knowledge. Through the teachers' evaluation of vignettes from the think-aloud-protocols their diagnostic perspectives will be assessed. One aim of this part of the study is to create the basis for a model of subject-specific professional knowledge and beliefs in literature education. (3) The results attained from the work with learners and teachers will then form the context for a further interpretative step, in which the teachers' responses and evaluations will be related to the think-aloud-protocols in order to assess congruence and tensions. This study will make it possible to draw first conclusions as to how the development of literary competences with poetic metaphor can be fostered. Furthermore, it will offer a basis for the further investigation of classroom engagement with poetic metaphor.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants