Abstract #3003

Abstract: Studies show that teacher-led discussions about literary texts that offer resistance are largely absent from today’s Scandinavian classrooms, partly because many teachers experience that to lead such discussions is a challenging task (Johansen, 2022). They distrust their ability to do so and ask for support in terms of useful discussion models. However, enthusiasm for the subject is likely to be sustained by the passion of reading, which can be encouraged by working with complex texts. In the project “Inquiry dialogue to promote comprehension and interpretation” we investigate the effects of an intervention to support language arts teachers’ enactment of a specific type of talk called “Inquiry Dialogue” (ID) (Reznitskaya & Wilkinson, 2017) about complex literary texts.
The purpose of the project is to examine whether repeated criteria-based feedback to teachers followed by video-based group reflection improves the quality of teacher-led discussions about complex literary texts in lower secondary school. The study uses a single-group pre-/posttest design, including 22 teachers and their students in Swedish eight grade classrooms. The intervention ran from October through May 2022/2023, and included observations, feedbacks, and group discussions to support teachers’ instructional improvement. Measures before and after the intervention included quality of discussions (quantitative coding by protocol), teacher and student self-efficacy (surveys), and student reading ability (comprehension and interpretation tests). The study is theoretically framed by theories on dialogic teaching, building on Bakhtinan concepts (1981), and on theories on aesthetic defamiliarization in literary texts (Miall, 2006; Shklovsky, 2007).
This presentation focuses on the enhancement of the quality of discussions and improved teachers’ self-efficacy related to classroom discussions in relation to the intervention. Enhancement of the quality of discussions was measured by protocol-based analyses of teacher-led discussions pre and post intervention. Other aspects of the intervention, as well as the students’ perspective, are also discussed in the presentation.
References
Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. University of Texas Press.
Johansen, M. B. (2022). Uafgørlighedsdidaktik i litteraturundervisningen. Nordlit, no. 48, 1-12.
Reznitskaya, A., & Wilkinson, I. A. G. (2017). The Most Reasonable Answer. Helping Students Build Better Arguments Together. Harvard Education Press.
Shklovsky, V. (2007). Art as technique. In D. H. Richter (ed.) The critical tradition: classic texts and contemporary trends. 3rd Ed, (pp. 775–784). Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Inquiry dialogue to promote comprehension and interpretation. Effects of an intervention to improve the quality of teacher-led discussions about complex literary texts.