How do prospective German teachers deal with the ambiguity of literary texts?

Abstract

One goal of first language teaching is that students should acquire the ability to deal competently with the ambiguity of literary texts. Previous research, however, has not clarified how (prospective) teachers develop these skills in the classroom. To address this gap, two lessons by teacher students on the text Nacht (‘Night’) by Sibylle Berg were analysed contrastively in the present study. The results show that the students treat the text differently with regard to the learning opportunities: While one student models the text as a ‘training device’ and encourages the learners to apply existing prior knowledge to the text in a schema-like manner, the other student regards the text as a complex learning object for which the learners need support for understanding. The article discusses the findings against the background of findings from professionalisation and teaching research and derives consequences for further research in the field of literature teaching.