Growing into Literature: Advancing Theories and Practices in Literature Education

The consortium project Growing into Literature (2025–2029) seeks to reposition literature education around the act of reading, the artistic and aesthetic processes involved in literary engagement, and students’ lived experiences of literature. The project addresses the question of how students’ agency and experientiality can be strengthened and supported through literature teaching and national formal curricula. By examining curricula, teaching materials, classroom practices, and assessment forms, the project explores ways to foster students’ creativity, personal engagement, and active participation in literary learning.

Drawing on theories of narrative agency, curriculum coherence, and arts-based education, the project investigates how literature education can be restructured to support both the analytical and affective dimensions of reading. Particular attention is given to the role of personal experience and agency in literature instruction and national assessments, as well as to the potentials and challenges of arts-based approaches to literature teaching.

The project aims to (1) examine the theoretical foundations of literature education, (2) investigate and develop a coherent curriculum framework that foregrounds student agency and meaningful engagement with literature, (3) investigate teaching materials for literary education, and (4) investigate teachers’ and students’ perceptions of arts-based literature teaching. Through these efforts, Growing into Literature contributes to a renewed understanding of literature education that foregrounds aesthetic experience, creativity, and student agency in literature education. The consortium project is a collaboration between Tampere University (PI: Kaisu Rättyä), University of Turku (PI: Aino Mäkikalli) and Åbo Akademi University (PI: Heidi Höglund).

Combining analysis and affect: Arts-based approaches to literature teaching
Sub project at Åbo Akademi University
PI: Heidi Höglund

The objective of the sub project is to develop theoretically grounded and empirically informed knowledge of arts-based approaches to literature teaching. Specifically, it investigates, both theoretically and empirically, the potential outcomes of combining analytical and affective approaches in arts-based literature education. In addition, the project seeks to understand teachers’ perspective in incorporating arts-based approaches into literature teaching in upper secondary education. To achieve these aims, the project researchers conduct poetry workshops in upper secondary classrooms in collaboration with a poet. The data collected for analysis include audio recordings of the workshops, students’ written texts, and interviews with teachers.

Through a series of studies, the project seeks to advance understanding of arts-based approaches to literature teaching in upper secondary education and to explore how analytical and affective dimensions of literary learning can be productively integrated through such pedagogical practices.

Project members at Åbo Akademi University:
Heidi Höglund, Principal Investigator (PI)
Katrina Åkerholm, post-doc researcher
Margrethe Sønneland, post-doc researcher
Victoria Kotkamaa, doctoral researcher
Athena Farrokhzad, poet, expert in creative writing