“The students can’t problematize”: On disciplinary identity, signature pedagogies and literary thinking in language departments

Abstract

The essay explores the teaching of scholarly reasoning as a pedagogical problem tied to the organization and definition of academic subjects. With special focus on the subject of English in Sweden, and based on a study of academic syllabi, it attends to the function ascribed to literary study and to the subject’s dominant assumptions and teaching practices for imparting domain knowledge and processes of inquiry. It suggests that, whilst the subject’s premises limit undergraduate students’ repertoire in the curricular field of literature, the educational aims of language departments and the conventions for teaching literature hamper the development of students’ ability to problematize in literary study.