What Do We Want Students to Know from Being Taught a Poem?

ABSTRACT

This paper uses a Gwen Harwood poem to open up questions of “knowing” around the teaching of Literature. Following our own brief reading of the poem, we particularly discuss ways in which questions of knowing/knowledge have been considered in Literature teaching historically, such as: - the binary of “knowledge” and “experience” - the role of the cognitive in teaching/studying Literature - forms of knowing that include the aesthetic and affect - how knowledge might be “made” in the Literature classroom: the role of pedagogy and the question of “producing culture” The article concludes with a discussion of how such issues have arisen in a set of interviews with a small number of teachers in Australia and England. Their views on the teaching of Literature help us reflect on the knowledge issues opened up earlier in the article.

KEYWORDS:

• Literature
• knowledge
• knowing
• poetry

Acknowledgments

The pilot project reported in this paper was funded by The University of Melbourne.

Gwen Harwood’s Suburban Sonnet is reprinted by permission of Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Gwen Harwood’s Suburban Sonnet. Gwen Harwood: Selected Poems by Gwen Harwood. Text Copyright © Gwen Harwood. First published by Penguin Books Australia 2001. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd.

2. Though we are not suggesting the terms of these debates are identical, one can see similar kinds of arguments being played out in what North characterises as the field’s ‘central axis of dispute’ prior to the 1970s as that between ‘literary ‘scholars’ and literary ‘critics’’ (North 2017, 1). The ‘scholarly turn’ is marked by treating literary texts as ‘opportunities for cultural and historical analysis’, and as having replaced ‘critical’ approaches, which ‘in their day, had tended to treat literary texts as means of cultivating readers’ aesthetic sensibilities’ (North 2017, 2). Graff, too, highlights further the ways in which ‘scholarship’ and ‘criticism’ became antithetical terms (Graff 1987, 122).

3. For a discussion of literature, knowledge and experience in this period, especially through Muller’s book and Dixon’s Growth Through English, see Sawyer (2019).

4. Investigating Literary Knowledge in the Making of English Teachers was funded by the Australian Research Council under its Discovery Scheme for 2016–2020 (DP160101084). Its Chief Investigators are: Larissa McLean Davies, Brenton Doecke, Philip Mead, Wayne Sawyer and Lyn Yates. The international pilot study also included John Yandell, Andy Goodwyn and Rachel Roberts.

5. ‘Unseen’ texts are texts which have not been studied in class and are encountered for the first time for analysis in an exam setting.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wayne Sawyer

Emeritus Professor Wayne Sawyer researches in the areas of secondary English curriculum, curriculum history, literacy policy, literary knowledge and pedagogy in low SES schools and he has published widely in these fields. He is a past Chair of the New South Wales (NSW) Board of Studies English Curriculum Committee and is an Honorary Life Member of both the NSW English Teachers Association and the Australian Association for the Teaching of English.

Larissa McLean Davies

Associate Professor Larissa McLean Davies is recognised for research combining English education and literary studies through a body of publications on literary knowledge, text selection, curriculum and the teaching of Australian literature. Larissa is also the lead Chief Investigator of the ARC Discovery Project Investigating Literary Knowledge in the Making of English Teachers. She is regularly invited to deliver national and international keynote addresses on topics related to these research areas.