14 - How Literature Discussion Shapes Thinking

Summary

Within the last few decades literature has been broadly recognized in many disciplines as a major way of knowing, a distinct narrative mode of understanding that can contribute to a keen and critical mind. By stimulating attention to dilemmas, alternative human possibilities, and the many-sidedness of the human situation, literature provides “the varying perspectives that can be constructed to make experience comprehensible” (Bruner, 1986, p. 37). Theoretical conceptions of the act of reading literature have also changed during the last century from New Critical approaches for getting static meaning out of a text to constructivist approaches requiring readers' active making of meaning (Bartholomae & Petrosky, 1986; Rosenblatt, 1978). Literature learning, in this view, involves creating and elaborating responses and interpretations within the constraints and resources of the text and classroom conversations – as a means of learning to enter into larger cultural conversations about interpretations and possible meanings (Applebee, 1996).

Research evidence, however, suggests that literature learning as taught in the secondary school has not generally supported such constructivist ways of knowing and thinking. In many classroom contexts, interactions about literature cut off students from their own responses and reflection – even teachers who believe they are holding “discussions” insist on their own “correct” textual interpretation (e.g., Applebee, 1996; Marshall, Smagorinsky, & Smith, 1995; Nystrand & Gamoran, 1991). Research in such classrooms reveals what students learn: that their responses and interpretations play no role in school literature reading, that they should not draw on their social knowledge about human experience to make sense of literary texts (Hynds, 1989).