In order to develop as readers, students must read a variety of texts for a variety of purposes. This has long been a  highly prioritized area of school development within OECD countries in general and in the curricula in different European countries (e.g OECD 2016). In addition to reading diverse non-fiction texts across school subjects, students need to engage in reading fiction. There is strong research evidence that reading fiction does not only develop literary text competence, but also a general text competence not only important for reading in itself, but also to enable students to acquire knowledge and express themselves in various subjects and situations. As Langer (op.cit) emphasizes, “reading literature involves cognitive dimensions that are critical components of intellectual development”. Literature has always been considered a central part of language arts (L1) curricula, and it still a key component of language arts. Yet, an essential change is taking place across countries: the core central focus of language arts is changing from literature to literacy, stressing more and more non-fiction (Langer, 2013, p.162). This shift makes it timely to investigate the roles of literary texts across language arts lessons.

Previous studies have indicated the importance of instruction that provides students with opportunities to discuss texts to build a deeper understanding of them (Applebee et.al, 2003; Nystrand, 2006; Wilkinson & Son, 2011, Janssen et.al, 2006). The literary tradition the students learn within, appears to be an important factor for how students handle literary qualities in the texts they read (Johansson, 2015), and there are a various of ways to approach literary texts. Research on students' work with fiction texts have shown that there are two main instructional traditions when working with fiction: An experiential approach – focusing mainly on how students’ experience a literary text and their subjective reasoning around the texts -  and an analytical approach – where students are often asked to analyze literary texts in different ways, often with evidence from the text (e.g Rødnes, 2012; Swann & Allington, 2009). Researchers in the field proposes to facilitate both personal and analytical readings (e.g Rødnes 2014, Langer 2013, Fjørtoft 2014), but how students actually work with literary texts in their lessons – and what purposes this instruction has, is an understudied area in times where the role of literature in school may be challenged by a strong focus on general, non-fiction literacy.

The present study draws on 180 video-recorded language arts lessons across 46 secondary classrooms in Norway. By analyzing these recordings using a validated language arts specific manual (The Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observation), our study investigates how literary text are used in language arts lessons, and to what extent the instruction provides student with opportunities to gain a deeper understanding of the text.

The main aim of the presentation is twofold: first, we provide an overview of the opportunities for active use of texts in video recorded language arts lessons (N=180) gathered at 46 different Norwegian schools. Second, we analyze how the texts are used (what function they serve), with a particular emphasis on the classrooms where texts are used actively to build a deeper understanding of the text and/or genre and how to approach texts in general.

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