Is europe open to a student-oriented framework for literature?: A comparative analysis of the formal literature curriculum in six European countries

Abstract

This study is a comparative analysis of literary curricula in six European countries and is part of the LiFT-2 project, funded by the Comenius Life Long Learning Programme of the European Commission. The result of this project was a European literary framework for secondary education which can be de-scribed as a developmental competence-based taxonomy for teachers (www.literaryframework.eu). In this article we chart the paradigmatic tendencies of the literature teaching curricula between grades 7 and 12 of five countries (Czech Republic, Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Romania) and three German states (Bavaria, Lower Saxony, Thuringia). The aim of this study was to discover the degree to which these tendencies corresponded to the developmental European Literary Framework we have conceived on the basis of the shared pedagogical content knowledge of teachers and experts in six countries. The conclusion is that most of the analysed literary curricula are open to a developmental competence-based framework, but additional research is needed to determine whether Europe as a whole is ready for such a framework. © 2013 International Association for the Improvement of Mother tongue Education.