Abstract
Traditional reading strategies focus on reading for information - summarizing and recalling main ideas. Reading literature, however, requires discipline-specific reading strategies (Lee, 2004). Just as historiography informs the reading of history, (Wineburg, 1998), literary theory informs the study of literature (Scholes, 1985). One's theoretical perspective determines the focus of interpretation - whether on the text itself, the context of textual production, or the experience of the reader (Grossman, 1991). This study frames disciplinary literacy in literature studies as grounded in literary theory and explores the implications for teacher learning and student learning. It connects professional development, teacher knowledge, classroom practice, and student learning; that is, what it would mean for teachers and students to develop this kind of disciplinary knowledge, and what it would take to get them there.
This research explored twelve literature teachers' prior knowledge and practice and examined their participation in a professional development intervention, during which the teachers: explored their own and alternative approaches to texts, deepened their understanding of literary theory, and developed unit plans to teach multiple theoretical approaches to literature. Following the workshop, I observed and supported four teachers' practice and assessed their students' learning. Data include: teacher and student interviews, classroom observations, student learning assessments, and artifacts of teacher and student work.
A series of three free-standing papers - with corresponding literature reviews and methods sections - tease out individual threads of the interwoven study. The first paper, examining teacher learning, develops a three-dimensional model of the reciprocal, mutually supportive relationship between content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and pedagogical knowledge as structured around a teacher's orientation to the discipline. The second, a case study of one classroom, connects teacher learning and student learning, and highlights the importance of representation and ownership of ideas. The third paper explores literary theory as a framework for interpretive reading strategies, examining student learning across four 9th grade classes, and focusing primarily on the experiences of marginalized readers. Data suggest that interpretive frameworks empowered students to deepen comprehension and develop multiple theoretically-grounded interpretations of literary and non-school texts.