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Peeling the Onion: Student teachers' of literary understanding

Literary understanding can be studied not only as a theory of literature but also as a practice among readers. The purpose of this study is to gain an insight into what personal theories student teachers hold about literary understanding, since the way a teacher conceptualises a problem has an influence on students' learning of literature. Two separate studies were carried out of how student teachers in two cultures, the Hungarian and the Swedish, understand the concept of literary understanding. Twenty-five Hungarian and eight Swedish students were interviewed and the interviews were transcribed and analysed according to the phenomenographic method of qualitative analysis. The student teachers' conceptions were captured in two sets of categories describing how understanding took place and what they had understood. The descriptions of the process of understanding were then characterised in four qualitatively different categories: understanding as a linear process, understanding as a vertical process, understanding as a process of discernment and, finally, understanding through variation. The descriptions of the outcome of understanding were also characterised in four qualitatively different categories: as the author's intended meaning, as textual meaning, as a personal meaning and as the legitimate meaning. The categories found capture a substantial proportion of the potential variation in how literary understanding can be seen. The three central aspects of human awareness and understanding, variation, discernment and simultaneity, can all be found in the students' conceptions of literary understanding.