Co-Creation of Understanding. On a Literature Course in the Developmental Education System

The article describes the theoretical grounds and structure of a literature course as a part of aesthetic education at school, based on the concept of developmental learning by D.B. Elkonin and V.V Davydov. This course became a first attempt to create a program from the first to the final year at school, which required finding a solution to a complicated problem of transferring the practice of developmental learning from primary to secondary school. The conception was innovative in that it considered literature as a part of Arts rather than Philology. The purpose of the course is to educate a cultured reader who would be able to engage in a text-mediated dialogue with an author. The course is based on the ‘author – literary text – reader’ relation (M.Bakhtin). It is shown that a child’s experience of creative work in literature (as the author) is essential for fostering the cultured reader. Learning happens through acquiring and interchanging the positions of the author, reader, critic and theorist, and furthermore, on different educational stages these positions play different roles in literature development of schoolchildren. The main educational paths are: “Readers’ practice and creative work of children” and “History of the world literature”.