Abstract
This paper investigates the role of teaching literature for deeper learning. It draws on models of simulation, which have usually been more common in psychology, law, and political science. Teaching literature may be ideally suited for deeper learning since literary texts can be seen as experimental social action. Each text confronts its readers with ethical choices. This property of literature as a medium can in turn be transformed into new models for teaching literature. Ultimately, literary simulations can hence constitute a path towards civic education and social responsibility. Such approaches, in turn, may contribute not only to discussions of the “relevance” of the humanities as such, but also their role for interdisciplinary basic research.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
I am indebted to Oliver Meyer for this term.
- 2.
At the same time, a caveat may be in order here. There is a sense in which the current debate is curiously lopsided. For establishing the relevance of, say, fields within the life sciences, for instance, no one would require life scientists to look into how the field is viewed by scholars of literature. There may thus be a key discrepancy here in arguing that the humanities need to prove their efficacy in the terms of another discipline, or that their value lies only in their transferability. In the face of such discussions, however, this paper takes a pragmatic approach, looking at both what the humanities have to offer and how and in what fields this knowledge may then be applied.
- 3.
The link between literature and simulation has often been made in the context of the opposition, or at least difference, between literature and other, usually digital media (e.g., Lem 1989). At the same time, the idea of literature as a medium of experimental or imagined action has also been taken up by literary authors, most prominently by German writer Wellershoff, who spoke of his fiction as a “literary space of simulation” (Bügner 1993). My aim in this paper is to ask how these approaches to both reading and writing literature might fruitfully be transformed into a different approach to teaching literature.
- 4.
He is one of the expert advisers of the PLATO project.
- 5.
I am indebted to Oliver Meyer for this point.
- 6.
Simulation II is not so much a re-enactment as it is an enactment, because students cannot simply replicate a scene from the text but have to write their own scripts and hence create their own interpretation of the text which in this sense becomes “their” text.
- 7.
I am indebted to Oliver Meyer for this term.
- 8.
As Shavelson also notes, parents’ religious beliefs are transmitted to children such that they impact on how students interpret what they are learning (2018, p. 287).
- 9.
This part of the essay is centrally based on the work of Margarete Imhof, to whom I am greatly indebted.
- 10.
The following ideas are chiefly indebted to Margarete Imhof’s ideas.
- 11.
Both these terms are Margarete Imhof’s.
- 12.
My discussion of the potential outcome of the simulation is crucially based on Margarete Imhof’s assessment.
References
Ahmadov, A. (2011). When great minds don’t think alike: Using mock trials in teaching political thought. Political Science and Politics, 44(3), 625–628.
Balas, A, Ebner, N., & Kotelis, A. (2017). European council simulation “European agenda on migration” role-play negotiation. https://eeas.europa.eu/sites/eeas/files/sim1-european_council_simulation_migration-110917-eu_file.pdf
Banerjee, M., & Meyer, O. (2018). Deeper learning in promoting pluriliteracies development in American studies courses. Gutenberg University of Mainz. Unpublished manuscript.
Bügner, T. (1993). Lebenssimulationen: Zur Literaturtheorie und Fiktionalen Praxis von Dieter Wellershoff. Wiesbaden: Springer.
Charon, R. (2008). Narrative medicine: Honoring the stories of illness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Felman, S. (Ed.). (1982). Literature and psychoanalysis: The question of reading - otherwise. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Gardner, H. (2018). Higher education: A platonic ideal. In O. Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, G. Wittum, & A. Dengel (Eds.), Positive learning in the age of information: A blessing or a curse? (pp. 9–21). Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Gendolla, P., & Schäfer, J. (2004). Vernetztes Probehandeln: Literatur im Zeitalter permanenter Mutabilität. Philologie im Netz, Beiheft 2, 23–34.
Hansen-Schirra, S., Hofmann, S., & Nitzke, J. (2018). Acquisition of generic competencies through project simulation in translation studies. In O. Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, G. Wittum, & A. Dengel (Eds.), Positive learning in the age of information – A blessing or a curse? (pp. 267–280). Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Karraker, M. W. (1993). Mock trials and critical thinking. College Training, 41(4), 134–137.
Kidd, D. C., & Castano, E. (2013). Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind. Science, 342(6156), 377–380.
Kosslyn, S. M. (2018). Why we should teach the humanities. In O. Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, G. Wittum, & A. Dengel (Eds.), Positive learning in the age of information: A blessing or a curse? (pp. 23–28). Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Lem, S. (1989). Literatur als Simulation möglicher Welten: Stanislaw Lem im Gespräch mit Florian Rötzer. Kunstforum, 98, Video-Special: 100.
Lill, F. (2016). Angriff auf die freien Denker: Universitäten in Japan, Großbritannien und den USA verabschieden sich von ihren Geisteswissenschaften. Die Zeit, 15(2016), 1–2.
Markant, D., & Gureckis, T. (2014). Is it better to select or to receive? Learning via active and passive hypothesis testing. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 143(1), 94–122.
Meyer, O., Coyle, D., Halbach, A., Schuck, K., & Ting, T. (2015). A pluriliteracies approach to content and language integrated learning – Mapping learner progressions in knowledge construction and meaning-making. Language, Culture, and Curriculum, 28(1), 41–57.
Meyer, O., Imhof, M., Coyle, D., & Banerjee, M. (2018). Positive learning and pluriliteracies. In O. Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, G. Wittum, & A. Dengel (Eds.), Positive learning in the age of information: A blessing or a curse? (pp. 235–265). Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Minnameier, G. (2018). Reconciling morality and rationality: Positive learning in the moral domain. In O. Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, G. Wittum, & A. Dengel (Eds.), Positive learning in the age of information: A blessing or a curse? (pp. 347–362). Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Oser, F. (2018). Positive learning through negative learning: The wonderful burden of PLATO. In O. Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, G. Wittum, & A. Dengel (Eds.), Positive learning in the age of information: A blessing or a curse? (pp. 363–370). Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Pellegrino, J., & Hilton, M. (Eds.). (2012). Education for life and work: Developing transferable knowledge and skills in the 21st century. Washington, D.C.: National Research Council of the National Academies.
Rowlandson, M. (1648/1997). The sovereignty and goodness of god. In N. Salisbury (Ed.), The sovereignty and goodness of god by Mary Rowlandson: With related documents (Bedford Series in History and Culture). Bedford. (Original work published 1648).
Shavelson, R. J. (2018). Positive learning in the age of information (PLATO) – Critical remarks. In O. Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, G. Wittum, & A. Dengel (Eds.), Positive learning in the age of information: A blessing or a curse? (pp. 281–291). Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Spiegel, M., & Spencer, D. (2017). The principles and practice of narrative medicine. A narrative medicine classroom/workshop (pp. 42–53). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wineburg, S., Breakstone, J., McGrew, S., & Ortega, T. (2018). Why Google can’t save us – The challenges of our post-Gutenberg moment. In O. Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, G. Wittum, & A. Dengel (Eds.), Positive learning in the age of information: A blessing or a curse? (pp. 221–228). Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Winthrop, J. (1630/1994). A model of Christian charity. In R. Gottesman, L. B. Holland, & N. Baym (Eds.), The Norton anthology of American literature (Vol. 1, 4th ed., pp. 170–180). New York: Norton. (Original work published 1630).
Wood, S. (2018). Small experimental action. Paragraph, 40(3), 383–398.
Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, O., Wittum, G., & Dengel, A. (2018). Editorial – About a ‘Plato’. In O. Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, G. Wittum, & A. Dengel (Eds.), Positive learning in the age of information – A blessing or a curse? (pp. 1–6). Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Banerjee, M. (2019). Literature, Simulation, and the Path Towards Deeper Learning. In: Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, O. (eds) Frontiers and Advances in Positive Learning in the Age of InformaTiOn (PLATO). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26578-6_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26578-6_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-26577-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-26578-6
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)