Abstract #1827

Abstract: In the book called Authorizing Readers, Peter J. Rabinowitz refers to Graff’s expression “The Bully/wimp syndrome.” The expression is associated with literature teachers’ sense of either dominating their classes by concluding what will be legitimate and not legitimate to claim about a literary text or the opposite: a sense of letting the pupils down by letting them chat on (Rabinowitz & Smith 1998).

This PhD project is based on a qualitative research study of the literary conversation as it takes place in senior classes in the Danish public school and in the gymnasium. The main focus is the teacher’s verbal didactical strategies when combining and connecting the pupils’ own cultural identity themes with literary conventions within the literary institution and tradition.

According to researchers in the field (Nystrand 1997, Mercer & Littleton 2007), literature teachers tend to follow the Initiate Response Evaluate model, which implies sessions of teacher led questions followed by the pupils’ responses (Nystrand 1991). Eventually, research points out the shortcomings of literary conversations based or partly based on this model. Recently, the Norwegian researcher Emilia Andersson-Bakken has constructed a study relevant to this issue by categorizing types of teacher constructed questions (Andersson-Bakken 2015). The outcome of this study confirms and qualifies what other researchers in the field conclude: the literary conversation in the school system is problematic, particularly when it comes to the teacher’s organization of open questions (Andersson-Bakken 2015).

Open questions are, with Nystrand’s definitions, constructed with the intention to create a dialogic discourse in which the pupils’ own intuitive responses are a natural part of the literary conversation. An open question can be characterized as being open if what follows is the possibility of several different answers. In contrast, a closed question calls for one specific answer.
So far the common approach lies in the assumption that the more open questions the more dialogic the conversation turns out. Relevant to this assumption, Andersson-Bakken’s research clarifies two notable effects. First; open questions are not a guarantee for the dialogical conversation. Second; the distinction between open and closed questions is not necessarily important for the development of the conversation. The cause of those effects can be found in what I define as clopen questions: questions that semantically seem open, but in a given context they actually function in a closed direction.

The goal of this project is to contribute with further understanding of the clopen question discourse for the benefits of literature teachers. A relevant part of this contribution is to study the relations between the teacher’s questioning strategies and the context; hereby the elements represented in the classroom.
In doing so I take a phenomenological approach by asking: What if I step outside the public school and the gymnasium and from such a position examine the literary conversation in a collective of readers? In author schools literary conversations are a natural part of the educational process. What characterizes the inherent didactic order of which the literature teacher organizes a conversation in an author school? From that perspective: How can we then understand the literary conversation in the traditionally schooled institution?

The Danish author Josephine Klougart believes that many people often read literature with some sort of fearful notion (klougart 2014). She believes that this notion is a result of what she describes as a very prescriptive and normative way of reading in the public school system. With such an allegation it is interesting to study how she orchestrates the literary conversation, when she teaches at writing school.

The theoretical frame of the project also includes the thinking of Stanley Fish who has made a particularly notable contribution to the field of reader-response-theory (Fish 1980). With his perspective, everything in the process of interpretation is connected to the reader and the cultural settings that the reader is a part of. One of Fish’s main points is that every individual is anchored in social and cultural contexts. In that sense the individual is not an individual but a communal you. It is Fish’s statement that a communal you will not be able to see the world either with subjective or objective eyes. If anything; the communal you sees the world with both a subjective and an objective discourse at the same time.

Subjective and objective discourses are present at the same time in the literary classroom, and they are embedded in the traditional questioning technique. It seems that the more the teacher separates them it generates a literary classroom conversation that is: 1) either a marketplace where every claim about a text becomes a mirror of the pupils’ own everyday experiences, or 2) a courtroom where only one or a few readings are legitimate (Faust 2000). Further, it seems that when the teacher attempts to integrate the subjective and objective discourses in one question, the question will turn out both open and closed at the same time. This project examines the complexity related to these issues.

Questions I would like to discuss in the seminar:
What are the specific and/or general challenges when building a bridge between author school readings and classroom readings?
How do I avoid favouring the author readings/my own idea too much?

References:

Andersson-Bakken, E. (2015). Når åpne spørsmål ikke er åpne. I: Nordic studies in Education(35), 280-298.

Faust, M. (2000). Reconstructing familiar metaphors. I: Research in the teaching of English(35), 9-34.

Fish, S. (1980). Is there a text in this class? Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press.
Klougart, J. (2014, 6. juni).

Min yndlingssætning. Set den 26.08.2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvmWtabJvo8

Mercer, N. & Littleton, K. (2007). Dialogue and the Development of Children’s Thinking. London: Routledge.

Nystrand, M. & Gamoran, A. & Kachur, A. & Prendergast, C. (1997). Opening dialogue. New York: teachers College Press.

Nystrand, M. & Gamoran, A. (1991). Instructional discourse, student engagement and literature achievement. I: Research in the Teaching of English(25), 261-290.

Rabinowitz, P. J. & Smith, M. W. (1998). Authorizing Readers. New York: Teachers College Press.

Is there a literary conversation in this class?