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

24 Moving from reader response to critical reading
141T
Sonya, I want to ask – do you have grandparents
who are like that? Is that your experience?
[S nods assent].Yeh. They are actually,
they are not all like that, it is unfortunate that
you have had that experience. (Lesson 15)
In this talk the students reflected on how their own
experience of the elderly aligns itself with what the
novel offered. The students’ talk blurred lived experience
and textual experience and implied a recognition
that multiple positions were available for elderly
women. The students were able to consider the ways
of being taken up by their own female relatives and to
recognise the shifting roles that this may entail. Thus
Sonya’s resistance revealed the dynamic quality of
knowledge in constructing the potential for alternative
subject positions. Here, in effect, the student moved
towards a critical reading, which questioned the reader
and subject positions offered in the teacher’s metatextual
talk. What is apparent in these exchanges is that by
making an alternative discourse available for debate
the teacher positioned the students to examine their
experiences in the light of that alternative.
Conclusion
This article has presented an analysis of aspects of four
different lessons that utilised features of narrative and
feminist qualities of the study text to move students
towards critical reading. The lesson analysis elaborated
on how an analytical/critical reading contrasted
with a response reading developed through students’
stories. Reading positions alternative to those established
in non-critical talk emerged as the students
began to observe the construction of characterisation
and aspects of different gender discourses.
The power of the novel to ‘pull’ a reader into alignment
with its characters and ideology is important to note.
Deliberately developing this alignment also appears to
be essential for students’ motivation and interest. What
is also apparent from the transcripts is the contribution
that deliberation on points-of-view, the conflation of
personal understandings with narrative analysis, and
involvement in ‘debates’ makes to readers’ enjoyment
and enthusiasm. The potential to utilise a response
reading position in order to develop a critical reading
position with literary texts is implied.
The selection of the novel is crucial to supporting
moves towards critical reading. The features of the
novel’s construction offered the teacher a resource to
introduce her readers to the possibility of alternative
ways of being. The students’ interpretative responses
to a gender discourse were deliberately positioned
within a focus question ‘frame’, which both structured
a comparison of characteristics and constructed a
move towards a recognition of a particular gendered
position. Thus the focus question could be seen to mark
a point on a response-critical continuum, where it
invited responses to character analysis and also highlighted
alternative ways of being for females.
Lastly, it is interesting to observe that the authorised
classroom talk promoted a reading position which
complied with the novel’s ideology. Nevertheless,
debates emerged when one student engaged in a
critique of the discourse position presented in the
novel and in the metatextual talk. Thus the literary text
offered the possibility of an inspection of certain ways
of being and thinking, where lived experience could be
examined and tested in the light of vicarious fictional
experience. Furthermore, perhaps for the participants,
and certainly for such analysis as this, the student
challenge revealed the process by which critical reading
may be attained.
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