Developing quality education through imaginative understanding using literature

Abstract

This article describes a literature workshop carried out in 2016 in higher education with future teachers/translators of English. It introduced an intercultural citizenship and human rights perspective in a regular language course through the reading of specific novels, short stories and films. It rests on the notion of the ecological university (Barnett, 2011), which links the learning that takes place in higher education with the community, in this case through the development of democratic values and competences and also by encouraging learners to take social or civic action beyond the classroom. This vision of the university resonates with an educational orientation in language learning in higher education beyond the purely instrumental (Byram, 2008; Byram, Golubeva, Han & Wagner, 2017) that encompasses citizenship and human rights perspectives (Osler & Starkey, 2010). Building on new conceptualisations of reading in the digital age (Allington & Pihlaj, 2016), the workshop combined critical thinking, imaginative understanding, and intercultural citizenship to provide “quality education” (Nussbaum, 2006, p. 385).