What is the attitude of the new poets different from that of the old poets?
Answers
Answer:
The position of poetry within literature teaching is not simple – students tend to show negative attitudes to it and
consider it incomprehensible and distant from today’s world and teachers are afraid of working with it (Hník, 2010;
Benton, 2000). In the research project which started in 2011 at the Pedagogical Faculty of Palacky University we
focus on the reader perception of poetry in students aged 12-19 and the possibilities of influencing their attitudes
towards it by teaching methods. This study presents the process and partial results of the longitudinal stage of the
research during which we monitored eight experimental classes where poetry was taught based on experiential
pedagogy and the students’ creativity (Vala, 2011). Here, we present the results for the students of a general
secondary school aged 14-15, namely 8 boys and 13 girls.
2. Research methods
The analysis of the results was based on the results of research questionnaires mapping the shifts in the students’
reception of poetry, the teaching methods and their teacher’s reflections. The analysis of the records of the students’
creative work and their personal diaries the students kept during the research played an important role in the
research. The students’ diaries summarize the tasks which the students were assigned, the teaching methods used
and the forms of work, but above all they record the authentic reflections, impressions, trails of thought and creative
work of the monitored students.