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Oxford Review of Education
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/core20
Do teachers read against the text? Studying the
prevalence of critical literature pedagogy through a
vignette
Jeroen Dera
To cite this article: Jeroen Dera (06 Mar 2025): Do teachers read against the text? Studying the
prevalence of critical literature pedagogy through a vignette, Oxford Review of Education, DOI:
10.1080/03054985.2025.2473960
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2025.2473960
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Do teachers read against the text? Studying the prevalence of
critical literature pedagogy through a vignette
Jeroen Dera
Radboud Institute for Culture and History (RICH), Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
ABSTRACT
While issues surrounding representation constitute a pressing con-
cern that also impacts literature education, there are few studies
that map out whether and how teachers concretely employ repre-
sentational criticism in their teaching of literature. This article,
therefore, addresses the question of what role representational
criticism plays in literature educators’ engagement with narrative
prose. Drawing on the framework of critical literature pedagogy
(CLP), and its distinction between reading with and against the text,
it reports on an interview-based inquiry in which 25 teachers from
the Netherlands were presented with a vignette designed to
prompt reection on how they would discuss a specic passage
from the canonical novel The Assault by Harry Mulisch with 11
th
-
grade students. The analysis focuses particularly on the attention, or
lack thereof, that participants paid to representations of gender and
Africa conveyed in the selected passage.
The results reveal that Dutch teachers pay little attention to such
representations, which, from a CLP perspective, could be inter-
preted as reinforcing hegemonic worldviews about the ‘other’.
Hence, the study conrms the need for further research into the
implementation of CLP among teachers, while also demonstrating
the methodological strength of using vignettes to investigate lit-
erary-pedagogical choices educators make in response to specic
texts.
KEYWORDS
Literature education; critical
literature pedagogy;
representational criticism;
Dutch literature; vignette
methodology
Introduction
The premise that texts are never ideologically neutral and that they either reinforce or
challenge existing representations through language is a foundational insight in literary
studies, widely accepted in the eld (Bennett & Royle, 2023). However, in an era of
escalating societal polarisation, this insight might become progressively uncomfortable
for educators engaged in literature teaching. For instance, the recent wave of book bans
in American schools primarily targets works featuring characters of colour (Goncalves
et al., 2024), further politicising the analysis of such representations in classrooms.
Regarding the theme of racism, research has already shown that many teachers experi-
ence uncertainty about their responsibilities in countering it (Arneback & Jämte, 2022).
CONTACT Jeroen Dera jeroen.dera@ru.nl Radboud Institute for Culture and History (RICH), Radboud University,
PO Box 9103, Nijmegen 6500 hD, The Netherlands
OXFORD REVIEW OF EDUCATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2025.2473960
© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly
cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or
with their consent.
This potential reluctance to address and discuss racism, as well as queer representations
and issues related to feminism, is exacerbated by the fact that such topics are increasingly
labelled with the pejoratively used term ‘woke’ and are becoming controversial issues in
a climate of political polarisation.
It is not a given that teachers feel adequately equipped to address such controversial
topics in the classroom, and some therefore attempt to avoid discussing them altogether
(compare Cassar et al., 2021; Kello, 2016). In the context of literature education, this
avoidance is relatively feasible. While a history teacher cannot easily omit the Holocaust
or the Israel-Palestine conict from an overview of twentieth-century history, a literature
teacher can select texts that do not engage with controversial subjects, or can focus the
analysis solely on the technical aspects of a literary work, rather than on how it relates to
prevailing ideologies concerning gender, ethnicity, sexuality, or ability. However, this
approach would likely result in a less enriched literary development for students, parti-
cularly given that many literary texts encourage reection on one’s own perspectives, for
instance, on topics that provoke discomfort. In this sense, literature teachers function as
‘gatekeepers of perspectives’ (cf. Wansink et al., 2023): their choices play a signicant role
in determining which themes students encounter through literature and the angles from
which they learn to engage with them.
In the current climate, where debates surrounding representational criticism have
become increasingly heated, literature educators nd themselves in a hypothetical
bind. On the one hand, literary theory suggests that representations within literature
should be critically analysed; on the other hand, pedagogical practice often reveals
a reluctance to engage in such critical examination, as it may lead to uncomfortable
situations that some educators prefer to avoid. Within this context, it is crucial to examine
how teachers navigate potentially controversial representations in literary texts. The
central research question of this article, therefore, is: What role does representational
criticism play in literature educators’ engagement with narrative prose? This question aligns
with the theoretical framework of critical literature pedagogy (CLP) and, as I will argue, is
best addressed through a vignette methodology. Accordingly, this article not only seeks
to shed light on the approaches contemporary literature educators adopt when teaching
literary prose (in this case: the canonical Dutch novel The Assault by Harry Mulisch) but
also advocates for a specic research methodology that facilitates discussions with
teachers about literary representations without explicitly naming the topic –
a somewhat detached approach that has largely been uncommon in research on CLP,
despite its merits in terms of validity.
Studying the practice of critical literature pedagogy
In literary texts, language and formal devices are employed to ‘say something meaningful
about, or to represent, the world meaningfully to other people’ (Hall, 1997, p. 1). As W.J.T.
Mitchell (1995) has argued, an analysis of such representations in literary texts implies
a triangular relationship between what is represented, the one who represents, and the
audience that receives the representation: ‘Representation is always of something or
someone, by something or someone, to someone’ (p. 12). In the context of literature
education, the student occupies the position equivalent to ‘to someone’; it is the student-
reader who is exposed to the representations embedded within the text under study.
2J. DERA
Since representations in literary texts are not neutral but are often shaped by, or even
help shape, stereotypical notions, representation analysis constitutes a literary-critical
practice well suited to the framework of critical literature pedagogy (CLP). Within this
framework, students are taught to combine two approaches to literary texts: ‘reading with
the text’ and ‘reading against the text’ (Borsheim-Black et al., 2014). ‘Reading with the text’
involves understanding the text as a literary artefact, with attention to the storyline or
central message, literary devices, historical context, thematic interpretation, and personal
connections that one as a reader makes with the text. ‘Reading against the text’ entails
a more deconstructive approach, requiring students to examine how the text is
embedded in and shaped by ideologies, such as prevailing norms surrounding gender,
ethnicity, sexuality, and ability. In the context of representation analysis, combining
reading with and against a text within CLP entails that students should be able to identify
where stereotypes occur in the text (by recognising devices and/or analysing characters)
and relate these to hegemonic notions (for example, about whiteness or masculinity).
Given that critical pedagogies presuppose ‘orientations that involve acknowledging and
dismantling systems of power’ (Dyches et al., 2021, p. 369), they are particularly advocated
in the literature for implementation in teaching about the canon. The canon, after all,
epitomises a system of power, not only because in various national educational contexts
texts by white male authors continue to dominate reading lists (e.g. Adam & Barratt-Pugh,
2020; Dera, 2021a; Northrop et al., 2019; Stallworth et al., 2006), but also because
canonical texts, due to their specic historical roots, often reproduce ideologies in
which, for example, masculinity, whiteness, heterosexuality, and ability are marked as
more valuable than femininity, blackness, queerness, and disability. Scholars have argued
that this constitutes a form of curriculum violence, advocating for the selection of texts
that are inclusive and considerate of all students (Hadley & Toliver, 2023), while emphasis-
ing that both privileged and marginalised student groups benet from cultivating
a critical consciousness of canonical literature (Dyches, 2018).
The combination of reading with and against the text advocated by CLP undoubtedly
aims to challenge prevailing hierarchies, to raise awareness among privileged students of
these hierarchies, and to empower students from marginalised groups. In this sense, it
represents an activist approach to literature education, a point perhaps most clearly
articulated in publications explicitly marked as anti-racist (e.g. Letting Go of Literary
Whiteness: Antiracist Literature Instruction for White Students; Borsheim-Black &
Sarigianides, 2019). Drawing on Rita Felski’s notion of ‘suspicious reading’, McKenzie
and Jarvie (2018) have pointed to a potential risk inherent in such an approach: that
students, acting as suspicious detectives, might apply a checklist of ideological questions
to the text with the objective (or teacher-directed assignment) of unmasking or exposing
ideologically problematic passages. A possible unintended side eect, McKenzie & Jarvie
argue, is that dominant stereotypes are not so much critically examined but rather
inadvertently reinforced.
In light of this caveat, a signicant question arises: how exactly do critical
literacy pedagogies manifest in the concrete didactic practice of literature tea-
chers? While there appears to be a considerable consensus among researchers
regarding the desirability of a CLP approach within the literature curriculum,
there is less clarity concerning its implementation by practising teachers, let
alone in an international context. This lack of clarity is partly due to the
OXFORD REVIEW OF EDUCATION 3
methodologies employed in studies on critical literacy practices, which typically
rely on case study designs (e.g. Williams, 2022) or small-scale interview studies
based on purposive sampling (e.g. Dyches et al., 2021). While such studies can
provide valuable insights into the practices of educators who have ample experi-
ence with CLP and are fully committed to its aim to disrupt oppression, purposive
samples are prone to selection bias, leaving unclear how less experienced or
hesitant teachers engage with CLP’s premises.
This problem of selection bias also emerges in practice-oriented research where
teacher-practitioners from various national and educational contexts report on the appli-
cation and associated learning outcomes of CLP in their own classrooms (e.g. Noor Davids,
2019; Papola-Ellis, 2020; Steiss, 2020). There is no doubt that such contributions can
inspire other (pre-service) teachers in the eld, yet due to their focus on a single classroom
unit conducted by a single teacher-researcher, these studies are less convincing in terms
of their representativeness and replicability.
The need to assess the broader application of CLP in literacy and literature education is
further underscored by quantitative studies surveying teachers on how they eectively
implement reading and literature education in practice. For instance, Sotirovska and
Vaughn (2023) found that many American pre-service teachers embrace literacy’s social
justice potential, yet a striking one-third remain neutral on its socio-political role. Similarly,
European studies reveal limited emphasis on literature’s socio-political dimension among
teachers (Dera, 2025; Myren-Svelstad & Grüters, 2022; Nissen et al., 2021), which is possibly
linked to knowledge gaps concerning diversifying literature education (Elliott et al., 2021).
Judging by the patterns in such quantitative studies, it appears that the participants
selected through purposive sampling in qualitative studies on CLP do not represent
a cross-section of the population of literature teachers in Western countries – despite
the undeniable value of the approach they advocate, not least because the understanding
that literary language is not ideologically neutral should be a basic premise for every
literature learner to acquire. Questionnaire research, on the other hand, has the disad-
vantage of not being able to probe deeper into participants’ responses, potentially limit-
ing the depth of the ndings. Therefore, for a methodologically sound investigation into
how CLP is implemented in practice by literature teachers, it would be prudent to adopt
an alternative approach. In the following section, I introduce a recent study from the
Dutch context that explores literature teaching decisions made by educators using
a vignette methodology.
Methodology: exploring literary-didactic choices through a vignette
Context of the study
This study forms part of Uses of Literature in the Classroom (2021–2025), funded by the
Dutch Research Council (NWO) and approved by the author’s faculty Ethics Committee
(le number 2021–6368). The project investigates how literature is conceptualised,
legitimised, and taught in Dutch education, engaging teachers, textbook developers,
and students. Given the absence of national mandates, including a prescribed reading
list, literature education practices vary widely between schools (Dera, 2019). Often
associated with upper-secondary education (ages 15–18) (Dera, 2020), literature is
4J. DERA
typically viewed as a distinct component of language education, where communica-
tive skills dominate (Dera et al., 2023). Previous studies within the project suggest
a predominant focus on structuralist approaches, raising questions about the extent to
which more ideologically critical perspectives aligned with CLP resonate with teachers
(Dera, 2021b, 2024).
Participants
Twenty-ve teachers participated in the study, all of whom were qualied to teach Dutch
language and literature at upper-secondary education in the Netherlands (10
th
–12
th
grade). The rationale for 25 informants was that theoretical saturation in interview
research is typically observed between nine and 17 participants (Hennink & Kaiser,
2022). Of the participants, 16 identied as female and nine as male. On average, they
had 13 years of teaching experience. The teachers were recruited following their involve-
ment in a survey study within the Uses of Literature in the Classroom project, in which they
had indicated their willingness to engage in follow-up research activities. They were
selected through random sampling from the 88 teachers who had expressed their avail-
ability for participation. All participants gave their consent for participation in the study,
including audio-recording of the interviews.
Design
To address the research question, What role does representational criticism play in literature
educators’ engagement with narrative prose?, the participants were presented with
a vignette. In this study, vignettes are dened, following Skilling and Stylianides (2020), as:
written, visual, or oral stimuli, aligned with relevant research paradigms and methodologies,
reecting realistic and identiable settings that resonate with participants for the purpose of
provoking responses, including but not limited to beliefs, perceptions, emotions, aective
responses, reections, and decision-making. (pp. 542–543)
The vignette developed here was incorporated into semi-structured interviews aimed at
mapping the participants’ views on and experiences with literature education. These
interviews followed a funnelled structure, beginning with general questions (e.g. What
do you consider the primary goal of literature education?) and progressively narrowing
down to more specic issues (e.g. How do you approach the teaching of poetry in the
classroom?). The vignette was presented at the end of the interview as a hypothetical
scenario, placing the participant in a situation designed to provide insight into the
practical choices they might make when confronted with an ecologically valid situation.
In designing the vignette, three key considerations were of particular importance:
(1) Real-life situation
The vignette needed to encourage participants to share their own design
principles for literature education. Rather than presenting a scenario featuring
a ctitious teacher’s practice for participants to critique, it was essential to create
a ‘real-life vignette’ (cf. Sampson & Johannessen, 2019) that placed participants
in a hypothetical situation requiring them to design educational content
OXFORD REVIEW OF EDUCATION 5
themselves. The decisions made by participants in this context may not neces-
sarily reect their actual behaviour (compare Goerman & Clifton, 2011), but they
do provide insight into the perspectives they consider in the hypothetical
scenario, and thus into the role that literary representation plays within those
considerations.
(2) Familiarity
To ensure ecological validity, the vignette needed to prompt participants to
reect on a literary text that is well-recognised within Dutch education. Given
the choice of CLP as the theoretical framework for this study, this concerned
a canonical text that could be reasonably assumed to be familiar to all
participants.
(3) Minimal bias
The vignette was intended to prompt participants to engage in representation-
ally critical reections, while minimising any priming towards representation
analysis or other approaches aligned with CLP. Such priming might occur, for
instance, by presenting a scenario where a lesson must be designed on ideology
or by selecting a literary excerpt that overtly addresses a theme such as racism.
This could potentially distort the participants’ engagement with representa-
tional criticism. Moreover, it is well-documented that participants are more likely
to provide socially desirable responses when addressing issues they perceive as
sensitive or controversial (Bergen & Labonté, 2020; Grimm, 2010), which means
that direct questions regarding, for example, anti-racist pedagogy could lead to
social desirability bias.
These considerations culminated in the development of a vignette that can be accessed
through an Open Science Framework folder accompanying this article (https://osf.io/fbe79/?
view_only=ee18d6f046c94875877399225d20cbd7). Participants are asked to imagine
a scenario in which they must substitute for an ill colleague and discuss an excerpt from
the canonical novel The Assault (1982, De aanslag in Dutch) by Harry Mulisch with an 11th-
grade class. As participants in this real-life scenario are provided with nothing but the text
excerpt to inform their preparation, their individual pedagogical choices regarding the
discussed work are explicitly elicited (cf. Principle 1). This text has been among the most
widely read works in Dutch secondary education for decades and continues to be frequently
recommended by dierent generations of teachers (Dera, 2019; Dera & Lommerde, 2020),
which justies the claim that the text is well-recognised within Dutch education (cf.
Principle 2). Since participants are given the freedom to choose their approach to the passage,
bias towards specic representations within the selected excerpt is avoided, while still allow-
ing for a representation-critical analysis (cf. Principle 3).
Before delving deeper into the selected passage, some context regarding Mulisch’s
novel is necessary. The Assault follows protagonist Anton Steenwijk at various points
throughout his life. The novel begins in January 1945, near the end of the Second World
War. Anton is playing a board game with his family when they hear gunshots outside.
They soon discover the body of Fake Ploeg, a collaborator with the Nazi regime, lying in
front of their neighbours’ house. In a fateful decision, the neighbours move the body in
front of the Steenwijk villa, implicating them in the murder. When German forces arrive,
they burn down the Steenwijk home and arrest Anton, separating him from his family.
6J. DERA
Anton’s brief imprisonment with Truus Coster, the woman in the vignette excerpt who
later turns out to be a resistance ghter, adds another layer of mystery to the tragic
events. After Anton learns that his parents and brother have been executed, the rest of the
novel follows him into the 1980s as he struggles to come to terms with the trauma of that
night and grapples with questions of guilt and responsibility. As Anton encounters various
people connected to the event over the decades, Mulisch explores broader themes of
memory, fate, the moral complexities of wartime actions, and the lasting impact of
trauma.
In Dutch literary history, The Assault is interpreted as both a psychological novel about
the development of an individual who loses his parents during wartime, and as
a philosophical novel addressing concepts of guilt and responsibility (e.g. Brems, 2006;
Van der Paardt, 1991). The excerpt used in the vignette explicitly provides educators with
opportunities to engage with these psychological and thematic contexts. The passage is
taken from the third chapter of the novel, in which Anton nds himself in a pitch-dark
police cell with Truus Coster (whose name is not yet known at that point). Since Anton
remains uncertain and unaware of his family’s fate after the traumatic events, the passage
lends itself well to a psychological interpretation. Additionally, the fragment contains
numerous direct references to World War II, and the conversation between Anton and the
young woman reects on the issue of guilt and responsibility, particularly Anton’s
deduction that ‘no one’s ever at fault’. The widely accepted reading of The Assault as
a historical novel about trauma and guilt is thus easily activated by the excerpt.
At the same time, the fragment is well-suited for a critique focused on representation,
aligning with the principles of CLP. First, there is the portrayal of female characters.
Although the woman in the cell is clearly aware of how the Nazis attempt to shift
blame onto the resistance, she is also associated with feminine stereotypes and arche-
types in her encounter with Anton. While the boy remains calm, the young woman begins
to cry, and it is particularly her breast (which connotes both motherhood and sexuality)
that provokes a response in Anton. This representation of a female character, in short,
opens the way for a gender-critical analysis. Furthermore, the passage in which the
woman’s touch is compared through Anton’s focalisation to ‘something very solemn,
a kind of initiation, something they might do in Africa’ oers a compelling point for
critique. This comparison is problematic for several reasons: Africa is treated homoge-
neously, as if no cultural distinctions exist across this vast continent, and it is reductively
framed as a space where spirituality dominates – an essentialist portrayal that engages in
othering through stereotyping. Identifying this process could be seen, to use Arneback
and Jämte’s (2022, p. 201) terms, as a form of ‘norm-critical action’, in which students are
made aware of ingrained norms that position an entire continent as deviant or exotic.
In summary, the excerpt in the vignette oers educators the opportunity to present the
conventional literary-historical narrative of The Assault (reading with the text), while also
highlighting how ideologies of femininity and Africa, embedded in this canonical text
from the 1980s, can be critically scrutinised (reading against the text). Because the
vignette explicitly asks participants how they would discuss the selected passage with
their students and requests them to highlight specic excerpts, it allows for a clear
understanding of how teachers engage with the representations within the text. This
image is further rened by the interviewer. After the participant explains how they would
approach the excerpt from The Assault, the interviewer presents four specic elements
OXFORD REVIEW OF EDUCATION 7
from the passage, asking whether the participant considers it important to focus on each
particular aspect. These elements are, in order: the spatial detail that the cell is pitch dark
(which could, in a narratological analysis, be linked to the ambiguity of the question of
guilt), the framing of the perpetrators as ‘dirty collaborator[s]’, Anton’s touching of the
woman’s breast, and the reference to the African initiation ritual. While the vignette thus
serves as an initial elicitation of the choices the participating teachers make, the follow-up
questions in the interview act as a second lter, confronting the participants with
narrative elements that can be analysed through the lens of representation, without
explicitly instructing them to demonstrate such an analytical approach. In this way, the
research method employed also facilitates the identication of whether or not partici-
pants recognise the questionable aspects of the imagery.
Procedure
As previously mentioned, the vignette was part of a longer interview in which participants
were asked about their views on literature education. It served as the concluding segment
of the interview and was introduced after approximately 40 minutes of conversation.
Participants were given 20 minutes to read the excerpt and organise their thoughts
before the interview resumed. At the resumption, the participant was invited to speak
rst, providing an opportunity to explain the choices they would make regarding the
fragment. Following this, the four specic narrative elements were presented to the
participant, in accordance with the design previously outlined. Finally, each participant
was asked if they wished to address any additional points related to the vignette in light of
the discussion.
The interviews were conducted at the participants’ schools by a trained research
assistant. All conversations were audio-recorded and subsequently transcribed ad verbum
for further analysis.
Data analysis
To contextualise the responses to the vignette in light of the research question, the
interview transcripts were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. For the quanti-
tative analysis, each participant was coded for whether they employed a representational-
analytical approach in relation to the excerpt from The Assault (yes/no). This coding was
applied to both the participant’s initial response to the vignette (rst layer) and their
reactions to the specic passages concerning the touching of the breast and the compar-
ison with the initiation ritual in Africa (second layer).
For the qualitative analysis, memos were employed to capture ‘the emergent pat-
terns, categories, and subcategories, themes, and concepts’ within the data (cf. Saldaña,
2016, p. 44). Specically, it was determined which approaches to the excerpt from The
Assault the participants adopted (e.g. a cultural-historical perspective, an analysis of
literary techniques in the passage, and/or an approach aligned with CLP) and the
arguments they provided for doing so. Additionally, for each of the four elements
presented, the participants’ arguments regarding whether or not to address these
aspects in the classroom were coded. To ensure the validity of this analysis, a research
assistant independently created memos for the transcripts, which were then discussed
8J. DERA
in data sessions with the author to build consensus. Furthermore, the analysis was
presented to three participants for member checking, incorporating their feedback
into the process.
To further elucidate the results generated by the vignette, participants’ responses to
the excerpt from The Assault were compared with other data sources from the project
Uses of Literature in the Classroom. First, the results were juxtaposed with the answers
participants provided to the interview question, ‘What do you believe is the purpose of
literature education?’, in order to determine the extent to which their ideal-typical vision
aligned with their choices regarding a specic excerpt from a canonical text. Secondly, the
teachers’ responses were compared to those of 11
th
-grade students, who, in a sister study
within the project, were presented with the same excerpt and asked to indicate the
questions it raised for them and whether it piqued their interest in the novel. These
students were also explicitly asked about the same four narrative elements, including the
passage involving the breast and the Africa representation, allowing for a comparison of
the sensitivity to representational criticism between teachers and students.
Results
This paragraph addresses how the participating teachers in the study responded to the
vignette. First, the quantitative and qualitative patterns in both analytical layers are
examined. Subsequently, several areas of tension are discussed, which arise when (not)
applying CLP in practice.
First layer: teachers’ initial responses to the vignette
Of the 25 participants, none addressed either the passage in The Assault where Anton
feels the woman’s breast or the representation of Africa as a place of initiation rituals. In
other words, a critical approach to these representations was absent from the way
participants indicated they would discuss this excerpt with their students. Three teachers
did note that students might feel uncomfortable with the sexual innuendo in the frag-
ment, yet they did not extend this observation to pedagogical or literary-critical choices
they might make in this regard. Furthermore, two teachers expressed that they would
specically draw attention to the ‘tenderness’ of the female character, but they did not
link this to a critical gender analysis.
While a critical lens on representation was thus absent, the thematic issue of guilt was
relatively frequently chosen as a starting point for discussing the passage (14 instances).
Additionally, the literary-historical context of The Assault (e.g. its place in literary history or
the trends in Dutch novels about the Second World War) was often raised (16 instances),
as were the narrative-analytical features of the passage or the novel from which it was
taken, such as attention to the use of darkness in spatial depiction or leitmotifs recurring
in the novel (15 instances). Ten teachers indicated they would ask students who they
believe the woman in the cell to be, highlighting the text’s indeterminacy. Similarly, 10
teachers stated they would attempt to connect the passage to contemporary discussions
about guilt and responsibility in wartime contexts, such as in Ukraine.
OXFORD REVIEW OF EDUCATION 9
Second layer: teachers’ elicited responses to specic passages in the vignette
Faced with the passage in which Anton feels the breast of the woman in the cell, ve
participants indicate that, upon further reection, they consider it important to
address this passage. However, they do not approach it from a representationally
critical perspective. Eleven teachers deem the passage unimportant and would there-
fore not raise it unless a student mentions it. Nine participants believe that the context
of the class determines whether they would engage with the passage. In the case of
the comparison with Africa, eight of the 25 participants assert that they would address
this phrase, while nine would let this depend on the class dynamics. Eight educators
regard the passage as of minor signicance or are uncertain about how to approach
the comparison.
From a quantitative perspective, we can assert that a CLP approach is largely absent
among the majority of participants. The contrast with the elicited responses regarding the
darkness in the cell and Anton’s framing of the murdered man as a ‘dirty collaborator’ is
considerable: in this instance, 23 and 20 participants, respectively, indicate that they
would highlight these elements due to their narratological and thematic signicance in
relation to the question of guilt that is foregrounded in canonical interpretations of The
Assault. In terms of Borsheim-Black et al. (2014), one could argue that the participants
apply the strategy of ‘reading with the text’ to the fragment, without engaging in ‘reading
against the text’.
This is further underscored when focussing on the arguments presented by partici-
pants regarding the passages involving the breast and the comparison with Africa. The
participants who expressed willingness to discuss Anton’s touching of the breast gen-
erally approach it from a psychological perspective, primarily focusing on the protago-
nist’s coming of age. However, they do not critically engage with the gendered manner in
which a female body is employed to catalyse the development of a male character. For
instance, Participant 6 (female, 40 years old) notes:
So he is somewhat at the intersection of a mother gure on the one hand, while on the other
hand, he is maturing, and oh, he touches a breast—oh, how exciting. So if you want to discuss
matters of literary perspective and what kind of protagonist Anton is, then it would be
interesting to explore that. Such an analysis would also t within a narratological analysis.
In this case, the representation of the female character is rendered ambiguous (as both
a mother gure and a site of sexuality), but it is not critically interrogated. Rather, the
female character becomes noteworthy only insofar as she facilitates an exploration of the
male character’s psychology. Similarly, teachers who consider the class’s reaction decisive
in addressing the passage also tend to disregard a gender-critical approach. Instead, they
describe the potential discomfort of students regarding sexual innuendos as the deter-
mining factor in whether or not to engage with the passage. As Participant 7 (female, 30
years old) explains: ‘If there’s an “ew!” then I know I need to address it. If there’s no “ew!”,
I won’t do anything with it, though’.
In the case of the Africa comparison, the vast majority of teachers do not adopt
a representation-critical approach either. Only three of the 25 teachers, when explicitly
directed to the phrase, recognise the potential for a representationally critical reading.
Participant 16 (male, 40 years old) admits to initially overlooking the comparison, but then
10 J. DERA
states: ‘I think I would discuss it with my students, particularly in its historical context. It’s
a book from the 1980s, and an initiation ritual like the one in Africa – well, there are
initiation rituals everywhere. So I nd this rather stereotypical’. Participant 17 (male, 45
years old) echoes this reasoning, suggesting that Mulisch’s comparison carries ‘something
primitive’ and is ‘unnecessarily exotic’, further adding: ‘Perhaps I would even make
a comment in class, something woke or so’. For Participant 15 (female, 41 years old),
however, it is less clear how to engage students in a discussion of this passage, and she
feels the need to reassess her reading of The Assault from 20 years ago:
I notice it more now than when I rst read the novel. In the society we live in today, you have
to be careful not to present other cultures from the perspective of your own. Yes, let the
students discuss it, but I also need to acknowledge to them that I nd this dicult myself. The
students should know that too. We need to talk about it together, but that can be
complicated.
That awareness is by no means present among all participants. Five of the eight teachers
who would address the Africa comparison do so not from the perspective of the peda-
gogy of ‘reading against the text’, but rather by incorporating the image into
a narratological approach without applying a representationally critical lens. For instance,
participant 9 (female, 50 years old) considers it ‘funny’ they initially overlooked the image
and suggests the possibility of discussing with students ‘what deeper meaning this
reference to Africa might have’. Participant 24 (male, 48 years old) interprets the compar-
ison symbolically, suggesting that Africa carries the connotation of a ‘rite of passage’,
aiming to show students that ‘every detail in a text is important’. In both instances, the
comparison serves as an entry point into a form of close reading that may be understood
as ‘reading with the text’, but without engaging in any ideological reection on the image.
Finally, it is worth noting that one teacher in the sample demonstrates an ability to
engage in representationally critical reading, yet does not nd the Africa comparison
problematic enough to address. Participant 18 (male, 58 years old) comments in this
regard:
I don’t nd it a particularly shocking or condescending comparison with Africa. I think it’s
reasonably objective. There simply are those kinds of things, those kinds of rituals, and you
sometimes see those images, and a boy might think: hmm. I don’t feel it’s viewed entirely
from a Western postcolonial or colonial perspective. But well, if a student stumbles over it, we
can of course discuss it—like, is this really what Africa is like?
In this instance, the teacher seems to suggest that texts need to score higher on
a spectrum of problematic representations for him to address them independently in
the classroom, implying that representationally critical readings should be reserved for
texts that engage in more overt stereotyping.
Reading ‘with’ and ‘against’ the text: areas of tension
The responses to the vignette reveal several areas of tension regarding the participants’
literary-pedagogical considerations. The rst area can be directly inferred from the
quantitative observations mentioned above: the tension between the teachers’ initial
reactions to the vignette (where no one addressed questionable representations) and the
elicited response, where, although only three participants engaged, some did indeed
OXFORD REVIEW OF EDUCATION 11
adopt a critical perspective on the Africa comparison. It seems that even teachers capable
of reading critically in terms of representation need to be primed to notice specic details
in the text before they begin to question it at the ideological level.
A second area of tension arises between The Assault as a whole and the excerpt
presented to students in the vignette scenario. From the participants’ initial
responses to the vignette, it becomes clear that they activate their knowledge of
this canonical novel’s central themes (guilt and responsibility in World War II) in
relation to elements from the excerpt. In other words, they use the excerpt as
a springboard to discuss the broader themes of The Assault, treating the physical
interaction between Anton and the female character (including the Africa compar-
ison) as secondary. Participant 14 (female, 50 years old), for instance, explains why
she would not address the passage in which Anton feels the woman’s breast with
students:
Because I don’t nd it immediately important for the story or the interpretation of the story.
(. . .) Then I would much sooner talk about the pitch darkness, for the scene and its symbolism,
and the NSB member, because thematically, guilt and innocence.
By ‘the interpretation of the story’, this teacher refers to The Assault in its entirety, without
reecting on the fact that the students in the scenario only have access to the excerpt and
might have dierent reactions or questions, particularly in relation to the second half of
the passage. A similar reex is observed in Participant 22 (female, 43 years old), who
states, ‘So, if you suddenly start talking about initiation rituals in Africa, you’re really
straying far from what the story is about’. Participant 24 (male, 48 years old) even
mentions leitmotifs from The Assault that do not appear in the excerpt at all:
You have to make choices. You can’t cover everything . . . That’s impossible. And for me, this
sentence is less functional than discussing the darkness or the jangling of keys or having a die
in your pocket.
The word ‘functional’ suggests that the elements under consideration (darkness, the key
motif, the die motif) t into an overarching interpretation of the novel, a stance that is
strongly structuralist in tone. The desire to provide students with xed narratological
interpretations of The Assault seems to obstruct alternative approaches, such as reading
against the text.
A third issue emerging from the data is the tension between the participants’ views
on desirable literature education and the choices they make regarding the vignette. Of
the 25 teachers interviewed, 19 stated that one of the objectives of literature educa-
tion is to broaden students’ worldviews or horizons, while also fostering empathy or
nuanced understanding of others. The relative lack of attention to the issue of social
representation in the excerpt from The Assault is indicative of the tension between
vision and practice that emerges here. For some participants, their vision on literature
education and their practical implementation of the vignette are even (seemingly) at
odds with one another. In response to the interview question about the most impor-
tant goal of literature education, Participant 13 (male, 39 years old) argues that, for
him, it is ‘one hundred per cent’ about the question: ‘Who am I? Who do I want to be
in relation to others, who am I as a subject?’ In other words, his focus is on personal
development and ethical formation in relation to others. However, this latter aspect is
12 J. DERA
absent in his elicited response to the Africa comparison. Instead of oering a critical
perspective on Mulisch’s representation, this participant reproduces similar stereo-
types, which he then presents as knowledge about the world that students can gain
by focusing on such representations:
Look, Africa, initiation rituals, boys who have to kill their rst lion, or tribes where you have to
put your hands into those calabashes full of ants and then you’re a man. Or you’re circum-
cised or whatever. Giving that context teaches your students something. And whether it’s
important for the story doesn’t matter. You’re teaching them something about the world, and
that’s always a gain.
A similar tension is evident with Participant 14 (female, 50 years old). In her view of
eective literature education, she refers to the specic demographic of the school
where she teaches:
I also think it’s important that students broaden their worldview. I dare to say this here, we
really have a very white school, and there are more colours in the world, and there are more
cultures. And I think, students also sometimes read The House of the Mosque [a novel by the
Iranian-Dutch author Kader Abdolah], then there is more understanding for another culture.
The essence of this view is that through literature education, students may develop more
nuanced, less negative or stereotypical views of non-Western cultures. Yet, in her elicited
response to the Africa comparison, this teacher herself exhibits essentialist thinking when
she explains how she would address the passage if a student were to ask about it:
Look, if students were to ask about this, like, ‘Oh, why does Africa suddenly come into the
picture here?’ Then I think I would say, in the context of opening their eyes, that every culture
has its own customs.
While this teacher seemingly acts in accordance with her view that multiculturalism is
valuable, she nevertheless reinforces the reductionist ideology embedded in the Africa
comparison.
The nal area of tension becomes apparent when the vignette data are compared with
student responses to the same excerpt, as collected in a sister study within the Uses of
Literature in the Classroom project. Like the teachers, the 40 interviewed students (11
th
grade) make no remarks about the portrayal of women in the excerpt. However, a clear
distinction emerges in the case of the Africa comparison. While only three of the 25
teachers (12%) noted the negative connotations of that comparison, 12 of the 40 students
(30%) did so. For instance, Participant 12 (female, 17 years old) in the student interviews,
when asked for her opinion on the passage in question, commented:
I thought: is this really the rst thing you mention? It’s not overtly racist, but I do sense a kind
of separation between the characters and Africa. African people here would never say
something like that. You really can’t get away with that.
As with the teachers, only the minority of participants in the student interviews reected
critically on the representation of Africa. Nevertheless, the pool of critical voices regarding
representation among the students is more substantial than among the teachers.
OXFORD REVIEW OF EDUCATION 13
Conclusion and discussion
This article began by acknowledging that issues surrounding representation in contem-
porary political contexts have become increasingly polarised. In that context, literature
teachers, acting as ‘gatekeepers of ideas’, play a critical role in shaping the perspectives
with which students engage, determining which viewpoints they encounter and which
they do not. This premise led to a research question on the prevalence of representational
criticism in literature educators’ engagement with narrative prose, with representational
criticism being understood as a method of ‘reading against the text’, in accordance with
the principles of critical literature pedagogy (CLP). By presenting Dutch literature teachers
with a vignette that placed them in a real-life scenario, requiring decisions about which
textual elements to discuss with students regarding the canonical novel The Assault by
Harry Mulisch, insight was gained into the prevalence of CLP within the sample.
The results reveal that Dutch literature teachers seem inclined to pay little to no
attention to how gender and other cultures are represented in literary texts where
these themes are not overtly foregrounded, such as The Assault. The dominant focus in
the sample is on narratological and thematic elements, in this case issues of guilt and
responsibility during wartime, indicative of a ‘reading with the text’ approach. While it is
possible to incorporate critical discussions of representation within such an approach, as
highlighted by Borsheim-Black et al. (2014), this does generally not occur in the choices
teachers make, both in their initial responses to the vignette and in elicited remarks on
specic passages.
In that sense, a tension arises between the widely held view among teachers of what
literature education should achieve – namely, broadening students’ worldviews and
fostering nuanced understanding of others – and their literary-pedagogical practice,
where reections on the ideological aspects of texts, including identity and representa-
tion, appear absent from the toolkit. In that respect, although they are certainly not
generalisable, the ndings of this study align with earlier research indicating the relative
absence of critical literacy approaches in teachers’ repertoires towards literary texts (Dera,
2025; Myren-Svelstad & Grüters, 2022; Nissen et al., 2021). Hence, they underscore that
research into CLP in practice could focus more intently on the implementation of this
literary-pedagogical approach among teachers who do not explicitly work from an
advocacy-based perspective.
Aligning with this methodological note, a secondary aim of this article was to advocate
for the use of vignettes in exploring the decisions literature teachers make, allowing them
to speak about representations in literary texts with minimal bias. The results clearly
indicate that the methodology was eective in highlighting blind spots concerning
representation that exist in literature pedagogy, at least in the Netherlands. The discre-
pancies between teachers’ articulated aims of literature education and their concrete
choices made in relation to the vignette argue for the validity of this method compared to
approaches such as self-reporting through questionnaires or regular semi-structured
interviews.
However, there is room for renement. As behaviour towards a vignette may not
always align with how participants would handle similar scenarios in reality (cf.
Goerman & Clifton, 2011), it would be methodologically robust to combine this
approach with targeted classroom observations. Moreover, in the realm of critical
14 J. DERA
literature pedagogy, it is worth considering whether an excerpt from a canonical novel
with a stronger tradition of ‘reading against the text’ would have resulted in similarly
low incidence (in the Dutch context, one might think of Max Havelaar (1860) by
Multatuli, a nineteenth-century indictment of the treatment of the colony of the
Dutch East Indies). Moreover, participants in this study were presented with a rather
decontextualised passage from Mulisch’s novel and were not asked for their perspec-
tives on the text as a whole. Had they been, teachers might have independently made
critical remarks about aspects of representation not present in the selected extract.
Therefore, we cannot rule out the possibility that they are capable of engaging with
this novel in an ideologically critical manner. Still, the fact that most teachers – also
when compared to students – did not seem to respond at all to the somewhat
questionable representations embedded in a highly frequently taught novel such as
The Assault emphasises the importance of continuing to highlight approaches such as
CLP in teacher training and professional development courses.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Femke ter Haar and Floor Toebes for their assistance during data collection and
data analysis.
Disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by the author.
Funding
This study is part of the project Uses of Literature in the Classroom: Legitimizing Literature in Upper-
Secondary Education (with project number VI.Veni.201C.046 of the research programme VENI-SGW)
which is (partly) nanced by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
Notes on contributor
Jeroen Dera is Associate Professor of Dutch Literature at Radboud University (Nijmegen, the
Netherlands). His research interests include literary education and online reading cultures among
adolescents. He is editor-in-chief of the new journal Humanities & Education, which operates at the
intersection of humanities research and educational sciences.
ORCID
Jeroen Dera http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7990-1642
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