The Literature-Enactment-Process

Abstract

This project promotes reading literature for students through a new approach termed the Literature-Enactment-Process (LEP) where students can gain access to and comprehend narratives and associated topics of inquiry through a range of phases, with drama-based conventions as a pivotal point. As a pedagogical tool, these performative strategies are embedded in a larger approach that combines individual and collaborative comprehension processes. The LEP seeks to explore literature interactively, in that the student’s individual views, the perceptions of others, and the text details are equally taken into account. Teaching literature should not remain restricted to correctly answering interpretative questions. If teachers demand only one “right” interpretation, learners are deprived of the enrichment and multiple meanings texts can generate. Students must be motivated to think and learn for themselves and for a world which is constantly changing, often to the detriment of our natural environment. For this purpose, the Literature and Ecology (LITECO) workshop was designed to fuse the study of literature and ecological learning using and exemplifying the LEP. At the University of Graz, the Literature-Enactment-Process was tested with current and future teachers as well as language arts students and positively evaluated as an interdisciplinary teaching approach for the (foreign) language classroom in secondary education.