Creating meaningful dialogue in the literature classroom
Submitted by:
Juli-Anna Aerila
Abstract:
Successful literature discussions are one of the key elements in enhancing children to make connections with literature and reading. However, in many cases the classroom discussions centred to literature fail. According to prior research (Allington & Gabriel, 2012; Goodman, 2001; Tauveron, 2006) literature discussions should be lead as small-group discussions and concentrate on sharing the thoughts and experiences aroused during reading. Especially personal experiences shared in social interaction seems to be crucial in order to facilitate the understanding of others and can improve the resources for empathy and social inference (Mar & Oatley 2008). Currently, the literature discussion are still very teacher-oriented and controlled by the teacher. This means that most of the students are passive, and do not participate or find the discussions meaningful. (Chinn & Anderson, 2001).
We have implemented a literature pedagogy promoting programme StoRe – Stories make readers since 2017. The programme is aimed at in-service teachers of primary schools in order to support the meaningful pedagogy in literature education and to enhance the conscious of readership of teachers’ own. StoRe-program includes research implemented in accordance to the traditions of educational design research (Stephan, 2014). This means that teachers plan partly collectively, partly themselves a teaching period of literature for their students. After designing, teachers implement, document and assess the literature teaching period in the joint session of the StoRe teachers’ group.
As a part of StoRe programme, we have collected data from classroom interventions of the primary school teachers. The data consists of the designs of literature teaching periods, audio-recorded conversations in the lessons and primary school students’ products relating to the literature period. Analysing the data students’ reading experiences and approaches to literature are revealed. Additionally, we aim to support the effectiveness of literature discussions and scaffold the innovative reading practices creating during the StoRe-programme.
In this study we concentrate on the quality of the literature conversations aroused during implementing different literature-based tasks, like creating a readers’ theater performance or continuing the experience of reading poetry to the form students have chosen. This kind of activities are commonly used to create engagement to literature and reading. However, there is only a little research on the quality of the interaction during these small group activities. Furthermore, it seems that the educators do not value or realize the possibilities these conversations contain.
The data of the study is analysed using multimodal discourse analysis. Multimodal discourse analysis is implemented to studying social interaction and it approaches meaning as multimodal and through multiple modes. However, multimodal discourse analysis is not about identifying and studying modes as isolated but rather about understanding the world as multimodal. (Bezemer, Diamantopoulou, Jewitt, Kress & Mavers, 2001). The aim of this multimodal analysis is to investigate the modes of expressing the individual reading experiences and signs of sharing these experiences.
The high quality of literature discussions is one of the keys in good reading skills and in feeling the reading of literature meaningful. The traditional teacher-led classroom discussions concentrate often on memory-based questions and studying concepts of literature matched to texts. In these cases the personal experiences are left aside. In the StoRE-program one of the aims is to produce research-based information on the quality and effectiveness of the small group discussions while enhancing the bond between the readers and literature.
A central point for discussion concerns the multimodal analysis of the data: What are the modes expressing the individual reading experiences as well as sign sharing these experiences?
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