Teaching Literature as Discourse A Critical Pedagogy Approach

Abstract

Over the past four decades, the need for more critically-oriented classrooms has become exceedingly urgent, where analytical and critical thinking, both become pivotal themes in higher education teaching context. The core belief of Critical Pedagogy is the necessity to develop in learners a new skill which is ‘Critical Thinking’; considering that it is the most essential skill to enable the learners to think individually. This necessitates a shift from the ‘Banking Model of education ‘towards the Problem-Posing Model which would contribute into raising ‘Consciousness’. Recourse to an interdisciplinary teaching of literature, through the incorporation of methods and techniques advocated in discourse analysis, along with Critical Thinking would contribute into developing the learners’ criticality by being exposed to a ‘Language of Possibilities’. The present paper intends to consider the main concepts cited above starting with the notion of discourse so as to evade the traditional aim of literary studies, i.e, knowledge about literature. Henceforth, literature as discourse will become the focus of the following part to demonstrate that interaction and interpretation in context would eventually lead to a better teaching activity in literature classes. What becomes at stake here is to conditionally investigate the feasibility of our claim in the Algerian context.