Vortrag | Hannah Tenhaef: Unbounding Literature

ARLE / IFTE 2026 – “The Unbounded Journey: The Teaching of First Language, Literacy, and Literature in a Dynamic World” | Barcelona, Spain | June 25–27, 2026

Hannah Tenhaef

Unbounding Literature: Sociocultural and Activity Theories as Frameworks for Inclusive Literature Teaching

Developing high-quality literature teaching for students with highly heterogeneous ways of thinking, perceiving, and acting remains one of the key challenges for teachers and researchers alike. However, key insights from Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory (1934/1986) and its further development in Leontyev’s second-generation Activity Theory (1978) offer a suitable framework for designing genuinely inclusive learning environments. The proposed paper presentation aims to conceptualize literature teaching in terms of leading activities that are deliberately oriented towards learners’ zones of proximal development.

While Vygotsky’s early work employed the now outdated term defectology, his underlying perspective was profoundly progressive: he viewed learners not through their limitations but through their capacities and potentials. His proposals on how to address heterogeneous learning conditions cofounds contemporary concepts such as resource-oriented teaching, scaffolding, and collaborative learning with more capable peers. For students with disabilities – many of whom, at the time, were not educated at all, and in many contexts still continue to be taught in segregated settings – Vygotsky’s approach represented a genuine paradigm shift. It advocates inclusive participation in the cultural and intellectual life of society, including access to challenging and meaningful content such as literature (cf. Frickel 2024).

Building on this theoretical foundation, this presentation illustrates how the core ideas of Vygotsky and Leontyev could be implemented in educational practice by providing an example of literature teaching with a wordless picture book. The picture book will first be discussed in terms of its sociocultural function, its aesthetic appeal and its role as a medium of literary learning. In this context, ‚unbounding‘ refers to two interrelated aspects: the inclusive engagement with the subject matter for all students, regardless of their abilities, and the expansion of the concept of literature to encompass multimodality and accordingly formats beyond the written text. Subsequently, the specificities of the picture book serve as a starting point for designing exemplary learning designs that integrate all of Leontyev’s leading activities. Thereby, this presentation will serve as an introduction to practice-oriented approaches to inclusive literature encounters grounded in sociocultural and activity-theoretical principles.

References

Frickel, D. A. (2024). Literatur im Möglichkeitsraum. Die Entwicklungslogische Didaktik als Grundlage für einen inklusionsorientierten Unterricht mit Literatur. In T. Häcker, A. Köpfer, D. Rühlow, & S. Granzow (Eds.) EIN Unterricht für Alle? Zur Planbarkeit des Gemeinsamen und Kooperativen im Inklusiven (pp. 107–119). Bad Heilbrunn: Verlag Julius Klinkhardt.

Leont’ev, A. N. (1978). Activity, consciousness and personality. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1934/1986). Thought and language. London: MIT Press.