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

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22 Moving from reader response to critical reading 2S 4T 5S 6S 7S 9S 17S 18T 19S 20T 26T 27S 31S 39S 45S story who we would describe as being quite opposite to the Blue Lady, a contrast to her . . . Mrs Watson . . . What do we know about Mrs Watson so far? . . . How would you describe Mrs Watson to me? She knows quite a lot about the street, she knows quite a lot about everyone Nosey Stickybeak Gossip lady, hot gossip lady. There’s two people in our street like that. . . . She’s got to look after her husband and son. Excellent, well done Nadine . . . what is really important to Mrs. Watson is that she has a husband, and a son, who require her to look after them . . . Make dinner Yes, she needed to go and do dinner . . . She’s got to go and make dinner and serve it up to them, look after them, this is what is important to her. Her husband and her son are her priority .... What are other contrasts? She doesn’t have enough time, like the Blue Lady, to like do what she wants and stuff A family woman Mrs Watson probably cares about how she dresses while the Blue Lady doesn’t care Libby Gleeson has done this purposely (Lesson 15) The students’ cultural logic constructed a set of characteristics that coheres in the context of the talk. On the one hand, elderly women look after their husbands and children (17S), ‘make dinner’ (19S), be a ‘family woman’ (31S), do not have time of their own (27S), and care about their appearance (39S). Alternatively, elderly women have time to do what they want to (27S) and be unconcerned about how they dress (39S). The teacher listed Mrs Watson’s and the Blue Lady’s attributes and behaviours on charts as the students offered them: effectively she was recording a set of elements that contribute to mainstream and alternative discourses around elderly women. To this point in the lesson the teacher treated these elements as individual and discrete. Visually, these charts were placed alongside each other. Then one of the male students proposed that these contrasts had been deliberately constructed, ‘‘Libby Gleeson has done this purposely’’ (45S). It appears that the simple naming of these contrasts constructed a context which made this proposition, foregrounded in earlier classroom talk, possible. This statement shifted the basis for the classroom talk. The student’s assertion noted explicitly the constructed quality of the characterisation: there is an analytical awareness of the text as object. The observation (45S) also indicated that this student at least was able to position himself reflectively: while fellow students responded to the characters’ attributes and behaviours as presented ‘within’ the novel, this student was able to draw on knowledge from ‘outside’ the story. Furthermore, having heard this observation, the rest of the class was able to consider its import. In her monologue which followed, the teacher reinforced the student’s thinking and elaborated on a number of points for the class. To facilitate the following discussion excerpt is presented in three sections 46 T i, ii, iii: 45S 46T i ii iii Libby Gleeson has done this purposely . . . There is no doubt that Libby Gleeson has done this purposely. We are beginning to realise what an incredible master she is with the construction of this story. She is setting up these two women as opposites, as a counterbalance for each other. . . . We’ve got a very traditional sort of woman here in Mrs Watson, very traditional. The family woman dedicated to the service of her husband and child when her whole life revolves around making sure the cleaning and the washing and the cooking is done. . . . But Mrs Watson represents for us a very traditional sort of older woman in the story. What about the Blue Lady. Let’s come back to her in this conversation called ‘‘What makes the Blue Lady in this story different from the typical female characters we encounter’’? (Lesson 15) The teacher asserted a number of propositions in this talk. First (in 46Ti), she strongly reinforced the contention ‘‘Libby Gleeson has done this purposely’’ (45S) with such phrases as ‘‘there is no doubt’’, ‘‘an incredible master’’. These statements did emphasise the continuing focus on the constructedness of text. They did not, however, draw attention to the implication that the class-as-readers were being positioned by these oppositions. Second, the teacher identified (in 46T ii) the activities which, she asserted, situate Mrs Watson within the subject position ‘traditional’. The teacher would have been aware of the students’ familiarity with the activities and attributes that construct Mrs Watson’s role. These activities and attributes had been presented by the students as individual traits; now they were reinterpreted by the teacher as forming a cohesive pattern, a ‘traditional’ role. Thus a version of a traditional subject position for women was articulated for the students in the teacher’s metatextual commentary. Third, the notion of ‘difference’ was now defined as ‘not traditional’ and in the ensuing discussion the Blue Lady was characterised as taking up a ‘different’ (nontraditional/feminist) discourse. As her activities were surveyed in this light, the teacher developed the students’ responses to articulate how ‘different’ ways r UKLA 2003
Literacy April 2004 23 of being for women might be realised. As the next part of Lesson 15 proceeded, however, the students struggled to come to terms with their own views of what alternatives ‘old ladies’ may take. This discussion is analysed next. Presenting an alternative (feminist) discourse In the final section of Lesson 15, the teacher drew attention to the ‘difference’ that the Blue Lady is, in contrast to the ‘traditional’ Mrs Watson. One student’s response, ‘‘She’s got no time for anything else, but for her art’’ (47S), stated a direct contrast to how Mrs Watson’s time is spent. This response was used by the teacher to initiate a lengthy discussion on the possibilities of a non-traditional and alternative lifestyle for women. The excerpts below record the essence of the discussion: 46T . . . What about the Blue Lady, let’s come back to her in this conversation called ‘What makes the Blue Lady in this story different from the typical female characters we encounter?’ Sam? 47S She’s got no time for anything else, but for her art. 50T So her art occupies her whole life. Her art is her priority. ... 55S A hobby? 56T Yeh but isn’t a definition of a hobby something that you do as a pleasure activity outside of work? 57S Yeh, but she doesn’t have any work to do. ... 59S Well, dyeing her wool is the work she does, and the drawing is the hobby. 60T Ok, let’s just talk about this aspect of ‘work’ at the moment. What are you going to say Jerry? 61S What is dyeing if it’s not her work? 62T . . . What else do you have to say about this? Nadine said ‘‘Well, it’s like her hobby cause she really hasn’t got a job’’. And yet, we’ve said that this occupies a huge percentage of her life. Jerry has said ‘‘Well if it is not her work, what is it?’’ Hobbies and leisure pursuits are those things that we do in addition to work. They are little sidelines that give us pleasure. How would you describe what the Blue Lady does? 63S It’s her work. (Lesson 15) In this classroom talk the teacher presented cultural and feminist positions. She attempted to establish the concepts that art is ‘work’, and that ‘art-as-work’ was an alternative to the domesticity of Mrs Watson. One interpretation of the teacher’s talk across 56T-62T is that she wanted the students to consider the Blue Lady’s occupations as serious, rather than trivial or marginal. This is evident in her comment ‘‘occupies a huge percentage of her life’’ (62T). The marginalised position of ‘art’, in the students’ view, is apparent in the definition of art as ‘a hobby’ (55S) and the comment ‘‘but she doesn’t have any work to do’’ (57S) with the adversative ‘but’, used by both teacher and students to indicate the debate. The concept of art-as-work appears particularly to have challenged the students’ knowledge of ‘work’ as a money-earning occupation and the students’ comments now attempted to reconcile their understanding of work with the Blue Lady’s activities. This can be seen in the excerpt following: 67S Probably, the art is like a job, she wants to be in the art gallery or like that? 69S She might be getting an award cause then she can sell it and then she will have money. 73S She’s talented in what she does. (Lesson 15) The tentativeness of the students’ acceptance of the teacher’s suggestion is evident in their use of modality ‘probably’ (67S) and ‘might’ (69S) as they tried to explain to themselves, in practical ways, how art may equal work. This tentativeness was articulated as a frame clash for one student (indicated by a bold S in the following excerpt), who openly contested the ‘truth’ of this premise. This resistance to a compliant reading of the alternative way of being put forward by the teacher, offered the other students the possibility of re-examining their experience of elderly women: 79S 80T 81S 94S 98S 117S 135S 136SS 138S 140S I disagree with everyone – she doesn’t have any major priorities, but I just think it is something that she does just to fill up her time. Why would you say that? How do you know if she really enjoys it, how do you know that she doesn’t do it just cause she is bored?. . . . I don’t know . . . usually old ladies are sort of in the middle – some are secretive and some talk – usually most of them are in between, like they really talk and sometimes they are quiet cause my grandma sits for two hours and goes to sleep – but she also draws. . . . I don’t know if this is right – the Blue Lady is sort of like a younger person – she likes to draw and everything. My grandma is 90 and she is like Mrs. Watson, I don’t really know. . . . My grandma is exactly the same as the Blue Lady. She is 90 years old, her husband’s dead, she’s an artist and she really likes children. ... Again I disagree with everyone. Old individuals, they usually get shipped off to the old folk’s home. Objection! Objection! [general loud reaction] My grandmother was living in a flat by herself and she was crippled. Old people don’t live with anyone because sometimes they’re a bit bitter r UKLA 2003
Page 1 and 2: Literacy April 2004 17 Moving from
Page 3 and 4: Literacy April 2004 19 Table 1: Sum
Page 5: Literacy April 2004 21 104S 128S 13
Page 9: Literacy April 2004 25 Constructing

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

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