McDonald 2004 Critical Reading 10-11 year olds.pdf - Oncourse

18 Moving from reader response to critical reading
students investigate how this positioning occurs, and
they may offer resistant readings to ‘mainstream’ ways
of thinking articulated in the story. In this article, the
term ‘mainstream’ signifies an assumption of ‘normal’,
‘typical’ and ‘universal’ for dominant social and
cultural practices (Baynham, 1995, p. 43). Critical/
analytical practices have been seen, therefore, to
propose an alternative to dominant reader-response
interpretations of texts. The research presented here
suggests, however, that a reader response stance can
contribute to the formation of a critical reading
position. The article concludes with the notion of a
response-critical continuum which may be a useful
concept for introducing young readers to alternative
ways of thinking about literary texts.
The term ‘critical reading’ here encapsulates alternative
ways of reading which go beyond typical
approaches to reading as word recognition, information
processing, and personal response. Today, critical
ways of reading are intended to construct readers who,
for example, can identify texts as crafted objects, who
are alert to the values and interests espoused by the
text, who recognise their position as compliant or
resistant readers. When readers perceive texts as
motivated, rather than innocent, they position themselves
within an alternative discourse of reading,
participating in a critical literacy. Current Australian
English syllabi require teachers to employ pedagogies
that enable students to take up a position within such
an alternative reading discourse.
Educational issues in literature for primaryage
students
When children’s literature is presented in a classroom
it gains authenticity and authority from its educational
setting. Stories have the ability to ‘naturalise’ their
ideological positions and they ‘subject’ readers to
become their ‘ideal’ readers, that is, to produce
readings that align with the views of the text. As
Candlin states, ‘‘children’s fictional texts are engaged
in a struggle for young people’s minds’’ (Candlin,
1992, p. ix; see also Stephens, 1992).
Furthermore, current reading approaches do not
position teachers to challenge the ways of thinking
and being (the discourses) that stories portray in
classroom texts. The discourses stories present are
perceived as unproblematically ‘neutral’ by these
reading approaches, and by teachers. As discursive
practices, however, all stories constitute, and are
constituted by, ways of thinking which typically
present mainstream views on gender, ethnicity and
social groups. Recently, literary texts which challenge
these mainstream views have been published, and rereadings
of older texts problematise previous interpretations
(for example, The True Story of the Three Little
Pigs, Scieszka, J. (1989), Snow White in New York, French,
F. (1986); see also Bradford, 1996).
The role of the teacher in reading practices
In any classroom, the teacher is the interpretative
authority on the text for the students. The narrative is
filtered through the teacher’s talk about the text, that is,
the teacher mediates the text to the students. As Luke
and Luke (1989, p. 252) note, ‘‘[t]acitly and intentionally,
teachers will emphasize and de-emphasize, select
and exclude’’. The text becomes remade through this
‘‘running metatextual commentary’’ (Luke, de Castell
and Luke, 1983, p. 118). Baker’s research on talk in
reading lessons (1991a, 1991b, 1992; and Baker and
Freebody, 1989a, 1989b) highlights how, in the metatextual
commentary, students are ‘‘asked to look
through the text into the story, and through talk into
the world. The text and the talk remain transparent and
unread’’ (Baker, 1991b, p. 176). Together, Baker argues,
the text, and the teacher’s talk about the text,
‘naturally’ construct a subject position within dominant
ways of thinking for the student.
The study
The research discussed in this article was a case study
of how one teacher sought to introduce her students to
critical ways of reading that were distinct from the
interpretative responsive readings employed by the
class and herself in other lessons in the study. The
reading programme took place with students aged ten
to eleven years, in a Year 5 classroom in Sydney,
Australia. The text was a children’s novel which the
teacher read aloud to the class on a daily basis over a
period of a school term (ten weeks). Information about
the study-class cohort is summarised in Table 1.
As can be seen from Table 1, the class contained a
balance of ESB and NESB students, and gender, and
had a wide range of reading abilities. It was important
for the effectiveness of the study that the students not
be categorised as high ability. The teacher and I wanted
to ensure that any critical ways of reading achieved in
the classroom dialogue could be attributed more to the
kinds of talk about literature promoted in the classroom
interaction, rather than to general high reading
ability or a well-established English-speaking background.
The text selected for the study was I am Susannah
(1987), an Australian novel by a multi-award winning
Australian author, Libby Gleeson. The major characterisation
in the novel presents three generations of
women, the protagonist, 12-year-old Susie, her mother
Martha, and an elderly neighbour, Jess, known as the
Blue Lady. Each of these characters is ‘matched’ by
another female character who represents more traditional
ways of being for women.
The students responded to the novel through discussion
of various features, events and characters at a
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