Abstract:

In September 2023, the "Scholastic Kids & Family Reading Report" revealed declining trends in children's leisure reading, with only 46% of 12–17-year-olds reading for pleasure, compared to 70% of 6–8-year-olds. Concurrently, usage of electronic devices for gaming or apps rose from 74% in 2018 to 84% in 2023, with similar increases in YouTube viewership and other online activities, highlighting intensified competition for children's leisure time.

These findings elucidate the waning interest of children and adolescents in literature classes, driven by their preference for digital entertainment's immediate gratification and interactive nature. This preference diminishes the appeal of traditional, slower-paced literary analysis, contributing to negative attitudes toward literature classes.

In response to the current educational landscape, the presentation will introduce an innovative pedagogical approach: "Wandering Literature". This concept was developed through comprehensive observations of the human, socio-cultural, digital, and pedagogical domains. The human domain is characterized by curiosity—a fundamental desire for knowledge, understanding, and exploration. The socio-cultural domain has revealed insights into solitude and the dynamics of virtual communication. In the digital domain, the 21st century has transformed the nature of knowledge acquisition; knowledge is no longer linear or hierarchical but is instead fluid, exchangeable, and accessible through digital exploration. In the pedagogical domain, the aim is to facilitate the creation of knowledge through unbounded exploratory learning, unshackled by the traditional limitations of time and space.

"Wandering Literature" is an academic course designed in reaction to postmodern reality. Over the past eight years, this semester-based curriculum has evolved from focusing on physical exploration to adopting a synchronous format, a change prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic and various security emergencies. To date, around 300 prospective middle and high school educators have participated in the course. These individuals form the primary target audience, with the foundational belief that their engagement in exploratory learning will enable them to act as intermediaries between literature and the secondary target audience—their students. To date, over 70% of the students who have participated in the course have incorporated "Wandering Literature" into their curriculum.

In the presentation, we will undertake a virtual literary exploration of Paris, guided by Emile Ajar's "The Life Before Us", and of Petra, Jordan, following the forbidden journeys of the 1950s and the novel "A Perfect Peace” by the renowned Israeli author, Amos Oz. These case studies will demonstrate how the traditional learning environment is expanded to include both real and virtual spaces, and how the focus of learning extends beyond the literary text to embrace the full spectrum of reality associated with the text; How the mediums of learning are diversified to include not only books but also the full array of technological tools accessible to learners, and how collaborative learning creates knowledge by using interdisciplinary tools.

Keywords:

Pedagogical Innovations, Secondary and undergraduate education, Multidisciplinary Studies, Virtual Learning Environments (VLE).