dr john gordon - heacademy.ac.uk analysis ... blackwell publishing. segall, a. 2004. ... dr john...

Literary pedagogy:

a cross-phase study

of reading novels

together

Dr John Gordon [email protected] Supported by the British Academy under Grant MD150021.

mailto:[email protected]

New pedagogic research in the disciplines Social science, Literature, Linguistics, Narrative Analysis Student progression especially Secondary to HE ____ Study of novels by groups in HE , schools and reading groups. Teacher-education interest. ‘Reading round the class’ - little account of its efficacy or research of dialogic learning. Transcripts of talk around novels >> shared novel reading to stimulate deep reader-response. ______ How does higher education seminar discussion relate to practices commonly used in secondary education? Can informal reading practices enhance study of novels at university?

Pastures of Heaven [email protected] @sharednovelread

Literature's Lasting Impression

Which novels do you remember ? How did that reading happen? Conventions?

[email protected] @sharednovelread Literature's Lasting Impression

Research – public survey results

I never liked to read aloud in class but was happy to read along while others read aloud.


On a regular basis and I think usually later in the afternoon on a Friday the head master of our village primary school would read to the whole class. The memory still elicits that same warm glow in me all these years later.


I felt like the characters in the book were alive. I was able to access a text that I may not have been able to fully appreciate if I'd attempted it by myself. My English teacher introduced me to literature not just books.


It was a set book for GCE. It has put me off Hardy ever since. It seemed to relate so little to adolescent male (and probably female) interests.


On reading I felt like a starving man confronted with a banquet. Those English Literature classes were the most memorable experiences of my education.


Research – interview data

•Video presentation •From interview transcripts


Research – reading in class

2 x secondary, 2 x primary, 1 x university

observation, audio >> transcribe Conversation Analysis Analysis informed by 700+ PGCE observations


Data

Extract A: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Secondary, semi-rural, year 10 (14-15 years, GCSE) Extracts B: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas Primary, urban, year 6 (10-11 years, end KS2)


Data

Extract C: Tom Jones Henry Fielding University seminar group Extract D: The Contemporary Novel University seminar group


Shared reading / set texts • widespread method of teaching • very little research • powerful when it works well …but easy to do badly!

In schools: 100% exam, closed book, SILENT


Using transcripts

Read transcript – read sections aloud.

‘Noticings’ – role of quotations.

Reading aloud – text voiced for others.

Collective interpretation.

Unique narrative work of teachers (and students).

[email protected] @sharednovelread


Shared reading / set texts pedagogical content knowledge: ‘that special amalgam of content and pedagogy that is uniquely the province of teachers, their own special form of professional understanding’ Lee Shulman literary forms and texts as ‘pedagogical invitations’, Segall ‘poetic event’ – Louise Rosenblatt ‘differentiated attentiveness’ – Douglas Barnes


For improved literary teaching

• attention to nuances of language used by teachers

• scrutinise links between discussion and study texts

• show apparently natural traits as strategic

• make so-called intuitive/learned skill identifiable

• highlight moments where pupils/students construct interpretations

• keep in mind the tension of literary pedagogy:

public reading <> individual reading


Using transcripts in ITE

a) Read aloud >> orality, FUN

b) Don’t expect to get through lengthy transcripts –selection

c) Comparative >> difference and parallel

d) Disciplinary focus >> for me highlighting two concurrent functions of process – presenting a story (engagement) and guiding response to it (attention, analysis).

e) Transcripts yield ITE/pedagogical interests – especially spoken quotation. How do teachers mark those?

How do students keep track of them?



Questions

a) How does shared reading link to your courses / research?

b) Practical details – dilemmas and successes

c) How can these findings inform your course design?

d) Have you used recording and transcripts to develop teaching?

e) Are there course-specific uses?



Methodological reflection

• Conversation Analysis – ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, Sachs)

• Interest in how participants understand and share ‘game’

but influence of pedagogical theory/intent

• Architecture of talk (Seedhouse) interesting, but especially intonation, emphasis

• Role of texts in conversation – utterances as turns?

• CA focus on local and situated <> generalisability to inform pedagogy

• Attainment-driven research >> quantitative. Questionable outcomes (grades rule)

• Scope to complement local focus with corpus approach?

• Potentially 150,000 words >> cross-phase/in-phase/cross-text/in-text


References

Barnes, D., Britton, J., Rosen, H. & LATE. 1969. Language, the learner and the school. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin.

Clayman, S. E. 1990. From talk to text: newspaper accounts of reporter-source interactions. Media Culture Society 12: 79–103.

Davidson, D. 1979. Quotation, Theory and Decision 11(1).27-40. doi:10.1007/BF00126690.

Garfinkel, H. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

Gordon, J. 2012. Echo, not quotation: what conversation analysis reveals about classroom responses to heard poetry, Classroom Discourse, 3:1, 83-103

Rosenblatt, L. 1978. The reader, the text, the poem. Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Sacks, H. 1992. Lectures on Conversation: Volumes I and II (ed. Jefferson, G.) Oxford: Blackwell.

Seedhouse, P. 2004. The interactional architecture of the language classroom: A conversation analysis perspective. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Segall, A. 2004. Revisiting pedagogical content knowledge: The pedagogy of content/the content of pedagogy. Teaching and Teacher Education 20: 489–504.

Shulman, L.S. 1987. Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. In Learners and pedagogy, ed. J. Leach and B. Moon, 61–77. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Washington, C. 1992. The Identity Theory of Quotation. In The Journal of Philosophy 89. 582-605.

Literary pedagogy:

a cross-phase

study of reading

novels together

Dr John Gordon

University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

dr john gordon - heacademy.ac.uk analysis ... blackwell publishing. segall, a. 2004. ... dr john...

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