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

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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 r UKLA 2003
Literacy April 2004 19 Table 1: Summary of information about study class cohort Number of students 30 Chronological ages 10.4 to 11.6 years Reading ages n 7.3 to 11.9 years Gender balance 17 girls, 13 boys Language background 46% English Speaking Background (ESB) 54% Non-English Speaking Background (NESB) [Lebanese 5 Italian 1 Chinese 3 Egyptian 1 Armenian 2 Korean 1 Sri Lankan 2 Portuguese 1] Total no. of students classified as learners of English as an additional language 11 (Source: Class teacher) n Reading ages as per the Progressive Achievement Test (A) in Reading Comprehension (ACER, 1986) whole-class level. These lessons took place at different times before lunch (1pm) and ranged from between 40 and 70 minutes in length. The reading of the novel was considered a part of the ‘shared reading’ aspect of the literacy programme and the teacher placed importance on developing a community of readers (Fish, 1979) who talk about a good book together (personal communication). Some students obtained a copy of the novel and followed the teacher’s reading. A non-critical pedagogy: students’ stories In the study the teacher wanted to develop classroom talk which could be seen to construct moves towards critical reading. To achieve this, she not only paid attention to grammatical, narrative and gender perspectives in the novel (‘critical talk’) but also encouraged students’ personal stories as responses to the novel, which I have called ‘noncritical’ talk. In each of these lessons this ‘story-telling’ positioned the students to empathise with the novel’s events and the characters’ actions and reactions in relation to those events. Table 2 below presents examples of the relationship between text stimuli and the students’ stories. Lessons 1 and 7 will be discussed as exemplars of a non-critical pedagogy. As Table 2 shows, the students were encouraged to align their experiences with those attributed to the characters in the novel. This deliberate foregrounding of the students’ repertoire was particularly important in Lesson 1, when the teacher (T) drew on the students’ experiences of friendship to introduce the novel, as can be seen in the excerpt below. In each excerpt that follows the numbers indicate the turns taken and their place in the lesson sequence. For example, 1 T indicates that this excerpt is part of the teacher’s opening monologue: 1T Now what I want you to do is think about the friends you have had since you’ve first started being conscious of the importance of a friend in your life. Let’s do a little bit of thinking. Who are the friends who have been special to you . . . Now hands up those of you who have had or have a special friend that has been part of your life for a lot of that time, lot of those years. Yeh, many of you, ok. Could we just talk about those friends for a moment. The long-term friends, people who’ve been part of your Table 2: Examples of the relationship between the study lessons, text stimuli and students’ stories Lesson Text stimulus Story topics Lesson 1 Susie’s best friend announces she is leaving Leaving friends, or being ‘left’ when friends leave: friendship stories Lesson 7 Susie uses her mother as an ‘excuse’ to her peer Times when students have made ‘excuses’ to avoid doing something Lesson 10 Susie’s mother takes her shopping for party clothes Improvisations of scenes based on experiences of going shopping for clothes with mum Lesson 15 The activities of the Blue Lady as artist Grandparent stories, their activities and relationships with the students r UKLA 2003
Page 1: Literacy April 2004 17 Moving from
Page 5 and 6: Literacy April 2004 21 104S 128S 13
Page 7 and 8: Literacy April 2004 23 of being for
Page 9: Literacy April 2004 25 Constructing

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