Freedom To Teach and Learn Literature

About the Book

This book is based on the author’s practice in teaching and learning literature. It approaches this subject as a privileged context for critical thinking, knowledge construction, and autonomy both for teachers and learners. It emphasizes practice though linking it with theory. Readers will fi nd many examples to clarify explanations. It presents concept mapping as a powerful tool to facilitate one’s expression of thinking+feeling+acting when experiencing a literary text. The book offers the opportunity of a hands-on participation in working with concept maps and of interacting with the author through email, if the reader feels like doing it. The aim here is to suggest ways to achieve a context of freedom and autonomy in literature classes as well as to encourage more readers to love reading and literature.

About the Author

Marli Merker Moreira

I was born in São Leopoldo, in the southernmost state of Brazil. I am married to my junior high sweetheart and I have three daughters and a son and eight grandchildren. The turning points of my academic life were my meeting with one of the greatest Brazilian poets, Manuel Bandeira, and my graduate courses at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Actually, I was the fi rst student of Prof. Novak and Prof. Gowin to apply concept mapping to language and literature, in those early years of concept maps. I taught language and literature in high school and at college level for three decades, always aiming at offering students time and space for autonomy, creativity, and learning how to learn. An unforgettable experience was living in Pensacola, Fl this year, as an invited researcher to work with Prof. Alberto Cañas, at the Institute of Human and Machine Cognition. Ithaca (NY.) and Pensacola (Fl.) are forever in my heart. Now, I am engaged in writing a novel and a book of poems.