Innovative Methods of Teaching in the Literary Education Milan Mašát Palacký University Olomouc, Faculty of Education Czech Republic Abstract In this paper, we present partial results of a research investigation focused on the factors that influence the integration of innovative methods into the teaching of literature education at the lower- secondary school. In the paper we present the results of part of interviews with two groups of respondents - 1st year bachelor’s students and 2nd year master’s students at the Department of Czech Language and Literature at the Faculty of Education, Palacký University in Olomouc. We present interview data on innovative methods. We investigated students´ preconceptions about these methods as well as their knowledge of specific methods and how they learned about them. Our findings point to a certain inadequacy in the disciplinary-didactic preparation of future teachers and to the current state of teaching literature education in primary and secondary schools. The findings correspond with the findings of another research that are carried out in this field. Data collection was done through structured interviews and data analysis was coded according to grounded theory. Keywords: innovative methods, literary education, lower-secondary school, research investigation, university students 1. Introduction The transformation of society associated with the change of the political establishment in Czechoslovakia at the end of the 1980s was also strongly reflected in the approach to the Czech educational system and to individual educational disciplines. According to experts, literary education was to become a full-fledged education based on an aesthetic approach, on the aesthetic-educational nature, on pupils´ direct reading experience with the text or on a focus on literary works [1]. In this paper we present the results of interviews with students of Czech Language and Literature who are trained for their profession at the Department of Czech Language and Literature of the Faculty of Education of Palacký University in Olomouc. The focus of the interviews was, among other things, to find out to what extent the tested students are familiar with the so-called innovative teaching methods, which we perceive as practices that relate to didactic interpretation of the text and which in a certain way activate students in the sense of constructivist learning at the expense of the transmissive transmission of knowledge. In the context of literary education, Hník [1] perceives so- called innovative methods as practices that lead to teaching literary education in a reading sense, whereby “it is based on the artistic text and its interpretation, on the reading experience [1, p. 84].” The reader-centered subject, a fundamental building block of literary education as it is currently conceived by the discipline of literature didactics, also works with the concept of creation, which is an integral part of the didactic interpretation of a literary text. However, the innovative conception of teaching literary education does not eliminate the doctrine; it should be conducted in terms of cognition of the work, not cognition about the work (compare [1]). We are particularly driven to carry out the research investigation by the fact that many of the professional and disciplinary-didactic knowledge and skills that teacher education students acquire as part of their graduation from the relevant courses are not applied to the educational process at the level of education for which they have been awarded the qualification, for various internal or external reasons. This statement is supported by several informal interviews with graduates of some study programs of the Department of Czech Language and Literature of the Faculty of Education of Palacký University in Olomouc. We are convinced that based on the results of the research it will be possible to implement certain forms of targeted intervention focusing on the transfer of competences acquired by students from the academic sphere to practice. The aim of the research investigation is to determine which factors enter the transfer of disciplinary-didactic knowledge, based on which it will be possible to take certain measures in the sense of possible cooperation between academia and schools, in the line of further education of teachers from practice or in the circle of certain transformation of the content of relevant disciplinary-didactic subjects taught at pedagogical faculties of Czech universities. In this paper we present the results of interviews with two groups of university students focusing on their knowledge of innovative methods as described above. For the sake of completeness, we present examples of methods that fulfil the concept of innovative approach to literary education. Hnik [1] lists, for example, text completion, inspired creation, retelling a story, summarizing the main situation of a lyric text, paraphrasing the narrative, imitating the Journal of Information Technologies and Lifelong Learning (JITLL), Volume 6, Issue 1, 2023 Copyright © 2023, Infonomics Society | DOI: 10.20533/jitll.2633.7681.2023.0033 248