Search results
1 – 10 of over 9000Sarah W. Beck, Karis Jones, Scott Storm, J. Roman Torres, Holly Smith and Meghan Bennett
This study aims to explore and provide empirical evidence for ways that teachers can simultaneously support students’ literary reading and analytic writing through dialogic…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore and provide empirical evidence for ways that teachers can simultaneously support students’ literary reading and analytic writing through dialogic assessment, an approach to conferencing with writers that foregrounds process and integrates assessment and instruction.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses qualitative research methods of three high school teachers’ dialogic assessment sessions with individual students to investigate how these teachers both assessed and taught literary reading moves as they observed and supported the students’ writing. An expanded version of Rainey’s (2017) scheme for coding literary reading practices was used.
Findings
The three teachers varied in the range and extent of literary reading practices they taught and supported. The practices that they most commonly modeled or otherwise supported were making claims, seeking patterns and articulating puzzles. The variation we observed in their literary reading practices may be attributed to institutional characteristics of the teachers’ contexts.
Research limitations/implications
This study illustrates how the concept of prolepsis can be productively used as a lens through which to understand teachers’ instructional choices.
Practical implications
The descriptive findings show how individualized coaching of students’ writing about literature can also support literary reading. Teachers of English need not worry that they have to choose between teaching writing and teaching reading.
Originality/value
This study presents dialogic assessment as a useful way to guide students through the writing process and literary interpretation simultaneously.
Details
Keywords
Allison H. Hall and Susan R. Goldman
This paper aims to examine the extent to which students’ experiences and perceptions of their literature classroom align with their teacher’s instructional goals for literary…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the extent to which students’ experiences and perceptions of their literature classroom align with their teacher’s instructional goals for literary inquiry and what teachers can learn from gaining access to students’ perspectives on their classroom experiences.
Design/methodology/approach
Thematic analyses were used to examine the data sources: mid-year and end-of-year interviews with six students, audio recordings of the teacher’s rationale for her instructional designs and a reflective discussion with the teacher upon reading the student interviews three years later.
Findings
Much of what the teacher intended students to get out of her instruction was what they expressed learning and experiencing in the class, yet some understood the purpose of the class to be far from her intentions. All the interviewed students had deeply personal and varied ways of relating what they learned in class to the world and their own lives. The teacher’s reflection on the interviews highlighted the importance of making space for multiple meanings and perspectives on literary works.
Originality/value
This paper speaks to the importance of surfacing students’ individual and varied ways of making sense of literary texts as part of instruction that values students’ thinking as well as the epistemic commitments of literary reading.
Details
Keywords
Todd Reynolds, Leslie S. Rush, Jodi Patrick Holschuh and Jodi P. Lampi
The purposes of this study is to expand on previous work in English language arts (ELA) disciplinary literacy and to unpack literary text reading processes across three different…
Abstract
Purpose
The purposes of this study is to expand on previous work in English language arts (ELA) disciplinary literacy and to unpack literary text reading processes across three different participant groups.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors recruited literary scholars and first-year college students to read literary texts aloud and voice their thoughts. Transcripts were collaboratively coded and analyzed using a priori and emergent coding.
Findings
This study presents the findings in two ways. First, this study grouped the codes into four categories, namely, background knowledge, comprehension, disciplinary knowledge and building an interpretation. This described the differences in frequencies among the participants’ strategy use. Next, to more fully describe how participants read literary texts, this study presents the data using three processes, namely, generating, weaving and curating. These findings indicate a continuum of strategies and processes used by participants.
Practical implications
The study suggests using the ELA heuristic for instruction, which includes moving students beyond generating and weaving by asking them to do their own interpretive work of curation. This potential roadmap for instruction avoids a deficit mindset for students by recommending low-stakes opportunities that meet students where they are as they build their capacity for interpretive moves.
Originality/value
The findings help the field to gain an understanding of what novices and experts do when they read literary text, including both strategies and processes. This study also provide an ELA heuristic that has instructional implications. This study adds to the body of knowledge for disciplinary literacy in ELA in both theoretical and practical ways.
Details
Keywords
Katariina Saarinen and Pertti Vakkari
Lending novels is the major service provided by public libraries. The efforts in developing search systems have been focused on retrieving non-fiction. There is a need for…
Abstract
Purpose
Lending novels is the major service provided by public libraries. The efforts in developing search systems have been focused on retrieving non-fiction. There is a need for designing systems to support fiction searching in libraries. The aim of this study is to analyze readers’ methods of accessing fiction in a public library for informing the design of fiction search systems. This study seeks to find out which attributes of books readers perceive as indicators of a good novel, and what kind of tactics they use for finding these good novels in the public library.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors observed 16 adult library users by semi-structured interviews eliciting information about their literary competence, what characterizes a good novel and how they accessed and identified good novels in the library.
Findings
Based on the data this paper developed a tentative reader typology, which differentiated the attributes of good novels and major tactics for accessing them.
Practical implications
The typology was used for inferring user models and design ideas for systems supporting fiction searching.
Originality/value
This is the first empirical study to inform how readers’ literary competence is associated with the tactics used and indicators recognized in books for finding and selecting good novels to borrow.
Details
Keywords
Mike Thelwall and Karen Bourrier
Despite the social, educational and therapeutic benefits of book clubs, little is known about which books participants are likely to have read. In response, the purpose of this…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite the social, educational and therapeutic benefits of book clubs, little is known about which books participants are likely to have read. In response, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the public bookshelves of those that have joined a group within the Goodreads social network site.
Design/methodology/approach
Books listed as read by members of 50 large English-language Goodreads groups – with a genre focus or other theme – were compiled by author and title.
Findings
Recent and youth-oriented fiction dominate the 50 books most read by book club members, whilst almost half are works of literature frequently taught at the secondary and postsecondary level (literary classics). Whilst J.K. Rowling is almost ubiquitous (at least 63 per cent as frequently listed as other authors in any group, including groups for other genres), most authors, including Shakespeare (15 per cent), Goulding (6 per cent) and Hemmingway (9 per cent), are little read by some groups. Nor are individual recent literary prize winners or works in languages other than English frequently read.
Research limitations/implications
Although these results are derived from a single popular website, knowing more about what book club members are likely to have read should help participants, organisers and moderators. For example, recent literary prize winners might be a good choice, given that few members may have read them.
Originality/value
This is the first large scale study of book group members’ reading patterns. Whilst typical reading is likely to vary by group theme and average age, there seems to be a mainly female canon of about 14 authors and 19 books that Goodreads book club members are likely to have read.
Details
Keywords
Pertti Vakkari and Anna Mikkonen
The purpose of this paper is to study what extent readers’ socio-demographic characteristics, literary preferences and search behavior predict success in fiction search in library…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study what extent readers’ socio-demographic characteristics, literary preferences and search behavior predict success in fiction search in library catalogs.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 80 readers searched for interesting novels in four differing search tasks. Their search actions were recorded with a Morae Recorder. Pre- and post-questionnaires elicited information about their background, literary preferences and search experience. Readers’ literary preferences were grouped into four orientations by a factor analysis. Linear regression analysis was applied for predicting search success as measured by books’ interest scores.
Findings
Most literary orientations contributed to search success, but in differing search tasks. The role of result examination was greater compared to querying in contributing search success almost in each task. The proportion of variance explained in books’ interest scores varied between 5 (open-ended browsing) and 50 percent (analogy search).
Research limitations/implications
The distribution of participants was biased toward females, and the results are aggregated within search session, both reducing the variation of the phenomenon observed.
Originality/value
This study is one of the first to explore how readers’ literary preferences and searching are associated with finding interesting novels, i.e. search success, in library catalogs. The results expand and support the findings in Mikkonen and Vakkari (2017) concerning associations between reader characteristics and fiction search success.
Details
Keywords
Although it is commonly assumed that comparative studies are the best way to proceed in constructing theories of organizing, the practical fulfillment of this postulate has always…
Abstract
Purpose
Although it is commonly assumed that comparative studies are the best way to proceed in constructing theories of organizing, the practical fulfillment of this postulate has always been problematic. For example, anthropologists should have given organization theorists a clue long ago: they made the stories of their exotic localities interesting by using a variety of fictional approaches in their reporting. The purpose of this paper is to call for the development of anthropologies of organization through “distant reading” of novels.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses insights from literary theory, notably Iser and Moretti, to discuss the benefits of “distant readings” of novels for scholars and students within the discipline of organization studies.
Findings
Distant readings can make it possible for those studying organizations to consider novels as sources in historical anthropology; can enable an exploration of the theories embedded in the novel; can contribute to advancement in approaches to reading fieldwork material, and can help organization theorists better delineate the boundaries of their own literary genre.
Originality/value
The paper broadens the understanding of the relationship between the novel and organization through explaining how reading novels through the glasses of an organization theoretician might produce “novel readings” but also novel insights into the practices of organizing – across times and places.
Details
Keywords
To introduce statistics and issues raised in national study of American reading habits.
Abstract
Purpose
To introduce statistics and issues raised in national study of American reading habits.
Design/methodology/approach
Highlights from the National Endowment of the Arts reading survey, which was conducted in 2002 and published in 2004, are presented. These are presented alongside personal views on the current trends.
Findings
A downturn in literary reading, as noted in the survey, is countered when compared with library circulation statistics over the same period. A major consideration is that many people now listen to their books, instead of reading them.
Originality/value
The paper questions the popular blame of the internet for the downward trend in literary reading.
Details
Keywords
Scott Storm and Emily C. Rainey
Research on disciplinary literacy in English has struggled with how to represent large-scale disciplinary communities and consider issues of justice and power. The purpose of this…
Abstract
Purpose
Research on disciplinary literacy in English has struggled with how to represent large-scale disciplinary communities and consider issues of justice and power. The purpose of this study is to offer insights into the disciplinary practice of a community of literary scholars.
Design/methodology/approach
Using statistical topic modeling augmented with complementary qualitative analysis and interpretive rhetorical analysis, the authors describe patterns in a corpus of 4,039 articles published in the year 2018 and drawn from 215 peer-reviewed literary journals, a corpus comprising 15.5 million words.
Findings
Analysis suggests that contemporary literary scholars collectively build knowledge that considers diverse matters of form, including literary and linguistic forms, literary works and other representational forms; criticality, including critical theories and critical concepts; and humanity, including humanistic themes, human institutions and people/places.
Originality/value
This manuscript offers detail about the nature of contemporary literary scholarship as evident through linguistic patterns in and across published works.
Details
Keywords
Researchers and teachers have noted the power of students reading text sets or multiple texts on the same topic, and numerous articles have been published with examples of and…
Abstract
Purpose
Researchers and teachers have noted the power of students reading text sets or multiple texts on the same topic, and numerous articles have been published with examples of and frameworks for text set construction. This study aims to traces the theoretical assumptions of these frameworks and explores their distinct implications and tensions for understanding disciplinary literacy in English language arts (ELA).
Design/methodology/approach
The author draws on three frameworks, using a focal article for each: cognitive (Lupo et al., 2018), critical (Lechtenberg, 2018) and disciplinary (Levine et al., 2018), and connect those articles to other research studies in that tradition. Separately, the author describes each of the three text set frameworks’ design principles. Then, across frameworks, the author analyze the disciplinary assumptions around each framework’s centering texts, epistemological goals and trajectories.
Findings
The centering text, goals and trajectories of each framework reflect its underlying epistemological lens. All frameworks include a text that serves as its epistemological center and the cognitive and disciplinary frameworks, both rely on progressions of complexity (knowledge/linguistic and literary, respectively). The author traces additional alignments and tensions between the frameworks and offer suggestions for possible hybridities in reading modality and reading volume.
Originality/value
Many articles have been written about models of text set construction, but few have compared the assumptions behind those models. Examining these assumptions may help English teachers and curriculum designers select texts and build curriculum that leverages the strengths of each model and informs researchers’ understanding of disciplinary literacy in ELA.
Details