Unspoken assumptions, deep holes and boundless expectations
The dialogical tensions in teaching short stories
This study examines the different institutional, disciplinary, and pedagogical factors that come into play when
teaching literary works with the goal of fostering dialogue, understood in the sense of civic communication and tolerance. Drawing
on an Action Research approach, the analysis probes a specific experience teaching the diverse English-language
short story tradition in the Canadian and German university context. The results show that to maximize the potential of teaching
literary works for nurturing dialogue, instructors must navigate among multiple and at times contradictory forces reflecting
institutional and disciplinary teaching priorities, divergent conceptualisations of dialogue, theoretical incongruities, varied
literary and critical traditions, and complex mediation techniques.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Looking inward: Is there a beginning to dialogue?
- 3.Unspoken assumptions: Dialogue’s shifting terrain
- 4.Confronting the method: Mining the deep holes
- 5.Tending the tensions: Dialogue, mediation and connectivity
-
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