Promoting Democratic Values Through Fiction: A Study about the Use of Fiction in L2 Classrooms

Sammanfattning: This study suggests that fiction can be used not only for language acquisition, but also for discussing democratic values. In this qualitative study, the aim is to understand how teachers use fiction, what approaches they have and explore what types of tasks the participants combine when working with fictional texts. Through online surveys and interviews with six in-service 7-9 teachers, we found that most participants use fiction to allow students to discover linguistic expressions, expand their vocabulary and learn new words within a concrete context. When teachers adopt a critical literacy approach and combine reading fiction with other tasks in other skills, it opens up a possibility for students to understand and critically examine the world around them.  While looking at the results of the study in relation to critical literacy as defined by Janks (2013), it becomes clear that fiction offers a socially critical viewpoint where students can critically analyze the world around them through the literature and the different types of tasks associated with it. In the conclusion of this paper, limitations are presented and questions are posed to hopefully be further explored in the future.