1

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

At the Desk and on the Nightstand: Reading as a Mediating Artifact in Teachers’ Professional and Personal Lives

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL FOR THE PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

for the degree

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Field of Learning Sciences

by

Malayna Brett Bernstein

EVANSTON, IL

December 2009

2 Abstract

This dissertation examines teaching reading in relation to the personal resources that

English teachers bring to the classroom. To date, there has been limited research on how the

“personal” interacts with the “pedagogical” for teachers, though this has been a fruitful mode of

inquiry for better understanding student learning. To this end, I designed a mixed-method study

that took an ecological perspective on English teachers’ reading lives. I examined teachers’

personal orientations to literature, how these orientations were manifested in reading instruction,

and the impact of these orientations on students. Data included extensive teacher interviews and

surveys, yearlong observations of teachers’ classrooms, and surveys of students’ personal and

academic reading orientations. My analysis revealed a typology of personal reading orientations,

and uncovered relationships between types of readers and types of classroom instruction, as well

as mediating factors that can contribute to dissonance between a personal reading stance and a

pedagogical one. Statistical analysis showed that students’ orientations to reading shifted

towards their teachers’ orientations in several areas. Finally, both qualitative and quantitative

analysis revealed that teachers with similar personal reading orientations tend to cluster together

at the same schools.

3 Acknowledgments

Over the last several years, I have spent many hours imagining what I would write when I

finally arrived at this particular page. Now that the moment is upon me, words – which I so

clearly value – seem completely inadequate. Here is my humble attempt to acknowledge the

many people who have supported me through this long, roundabout journey.

Carol Lee has gone beyond any reasonable expectation for an academic advisor. Never

once has she made me feel that I was asking too much of her, no matter how late the phone call,

how close the deadline, or how incomplete the draft. She knows the perfect balance between

being nurturing and holding high expectations, a balance I strive to emulate with my own

students. From the first day I met her, she has treated me like a colleague, which spurs me on to

try to become one. She and Haki have taken me into their home and made me feel a part of the

family. Perhaps most importantly, she refuses to artificially separate the personal from the

political from the academic, and I will continue to model myself after her mold in this regard.

Miriam Sherin has also been a particularly committed mentor. Not only has she found

intellectually compelling work to offer me, but she has been a paragon of academic efficiency. I

have never left her office or finished reading her (extensive) notes uncertain of the next step to

take. In a world of abstraction, this has been enormously welcome. Further, she has been a

wonderful model of the young academic mother. Somehow she seems to devote herself

completely to her family, without sacrificing her brilliant work.

The entire SESP community has been enormously supportive. Jim Spillane and Jelani

Mandara have been dedicated committee members offering helpful suggestions at every stage of

this project. Dan McAdams has been enormously generous with this time and always willing to

take a moment to discuss a curiosity of mine. Over the years, Andrew Ortony, Danny Edelson,

4 Marjorie Orellana and Kimberly Gomez were particularly kind and inspiring teachers. My

friends in SESP’s Teacher Education programs, Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon, Meg Kreuser,

David Renz, Peg Kritzler, Lois Trautvetter, Mary Goosby and Mary Gajewski gave me my first

introduction to world of teacher education. Finally, Penelope Peterson, who has cultivated this

very special community, has been a wonderful friend, mentor and teacher. She has supported me

through every stage of my academic development.

My Learning Sciences cohort was essential to surviving graduate school. Carrie Tzou,

Mike Stieff, Megan Bang, Virginia Pitts and Lauren Amos continue to be dear friends and

valued colleagues. Our windowless office in Annenberg forged lifelong friendships and

intellectual comrades. Carol’s research team similarly offered great friendships in a safe and

scholarly environment. Ellen Wang, Anika Spratley, Julia Eksner and Erica Rosenfeld continue

to be dedicated peers: over papers at AREA or over coffee.

I also much acknowledge Anne Greene, who comes from a time before graduate school.

She planted the seeds of this dissertation in me at Wesleyan. I continue to look to her as an

example of how to navigate the world of academe with grace, fortitude and style.

The teachers who were part of this study deserve special recognition. They opened their

classrooms to me, welcomed me into their homes, and shared their life stories with me with

enormous honestly, humor and thoughtfulness. They also reminded me just how difficult and

complex good teaching really is. Whenever my students question why I work them so hard, I

think of these instructors, and I am reassured that such hard work is necessary to cultivate great

teachers.

Finally, there are no words to sufficiently describe how my family has supported this

effort. Phyllis and Mark Bernstein knew the precise moment to shift from nurturing to nagging.

5 Despite any regret they might have now, they set me on this path from a very early age. They

have encouraged my ambition and intellectual growth for thirty-four years, and I will never

sufficiently be able to thank them for that. Penny and Harry Arthurs also offered support at

every step of the way. Eli and Carlo were integral to maintaining my sanity and center through

this. Reading to them before bed has always reminded me why this study mattered in the first

place.

Finally, it would have been enough if Joshua Arthurs was my intellectual partner in life,

but he also cooks me dinner every night, puts my children to bed when I am too tired to brush

their teeth and wash their hair, and he makes me laugh every single day. I could not be who I am

or do the work I do without him.

6

Dedication

To all the teachers in my life, beginning with my parents, and most recently including my sons.

And to Josh, who vowed to teach with me for the rest of our lives.

7 Table of Contents

Abstract ................................................................................................................................ 2

Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................ 3

Dedication ............................................................................................................................ 6

List of Tables and Figures..................................................................................................... 8

Chapter One: Introduction..................................................................................................... 9

Chapter Two: Literature Review ......................................................................................... 23

Chapter Three: Methodology .............................................................................................. 53

Chapter Four: Personal Reading Orientations...................................................................... 89

Chapter Five: Pedagogical Reading Orientations............................................................... 122

Chapter Six: Students’ Reading Orientations..................................................................... 148

Chapter Seven: Conclusion ............................................................................................... 174

Appendices

Appendix A: Reading Life Story Interview............................................................ 183

Appendix B: Teacher Survey................................................................................. 190

Appendix C: Student Survey ................................................................................. 216

Appendix D: Agency & Communion Codes and Examples ................................... 225

Appendix F: Literary Codes and Examples............................................................ 229

Bibliography..................................................................................................................... 232

8 List of Tables and Figures

Figure 1: Bronfenbrenner’s Blank Model ...................................................................... 15

Figure 2: Bronfebrenner’s Model including Typical Sites of Inquiry............................. 16

Figure 3: Bronfenbrenner’s Model with In and Out of School Systems Included........... 18

Figure 4: Spectrum of Literary Criticism....................................................................... 44

Table 1: Agency and Communion Orientations............................................................. 90

Table 2: Text and Reader Orientations .......................................................................... 97

Table 3: Text-Centered/Agency Relationship................................................................ 98

Table 4: Literary Complexity .......................................................................................103

Table 5: Range of Text Type and Text Hierarchy.........................................................107

Table 6: Text- vs. Reader-Centered Talk .....................................................................124

Table 7: Cronbach’s Alpha ..........................................................................................149

Table 8: Pre-test Correlations.......................................................................................150

Table 9: Post-test Correlations .....................................................................................151

Table 10: Paired-Samples Test .....................................................................................152

Table 11: Descriptive Statistics Including Effect Size ..................................................153

Table 12: Teacher Results Summary............................................................................155

Table 13: Pre-Test ANOVA Table ...............................................................................156

Table 14: Post-test ANOVA.........................................................................................159

Table 15: Repeated Measures ANOVA........................................................................160

Figure 5: Change in “Reading in Free Time” Scores ....................................................162

Figure 6: Change in “Reading as Part of a Community” Scores....................................163

Figure 7: Change in “Personal Reading, Complex” Scores...........................................164

Figure 8: Change in “Reader-Centered Orientation” Scores .........................................165

Figure 9: Change in “Text-Centered Orientation” Scores .............................................165

Figure 10: Change in “Seek Reading Challenges” Scores.............................................166

Figure 11: Change in “Mastery Reaction to Reading Challenge” Scores.......................167

Figure 12: Change in “Academic Reading - Complex” Scores .....................................168

Table 16: ANCOVA Table ..........................................................................................168

9 Chapter One: Introduction

Overview

Classrooms are complex. To thoroughly examine the dynamics of a classroom, it may

not be enough to consider each actor in isolation – a student, a teacher, a curriculum – nor is it

enough to investigate how they interact. We begin to capture the complexity of the classroom by

understanding each actor as multifaceted. For example, we can more deeply understand student

learning when we consider not only students’ classroom performance, but how students’ lives

outside the classroom affect their academic understanding. Similarly, curriculum studies show

how we better appreciate the effectiveness of a curriculum when we consider the policy and

standards to which it responds, its objectives as outlined by the designers, as well as its

enactment by schools and teachers. While in the past two decades, educational research has

made major strides in understanding teachers in more nuanced ways – unpacking their

knowledge and beliefs about students, content and pedagogy – researchers have not moved

beyond the classroom walls in trying to understand teaching; that is, the focus of the inquiry has

been almost exclusively on teachers’ beliefs and knowledge about those entities within the

classroom: students, curriculum, content. Teachers’ lives outside of schooling experiences have

been largely ignored. This dissertation begins from the premise that such a gap in our

understanding of teachers has contributed to an oversimplified understanding of perhaps the most

important player in classrooms, a gap which at times contributes to undifferentiated approaches

to teacher education and development. This study hypothesized that by taking an ecological

perspective on teachers’ lives – which included studying their personal histories, practices,

identities, and beliefs – we could better understand teachers’ instruction. By cultivating a better

10 understanding of how the personal impinges on the pedagogical, this study may provide future

opportunities for effective teacher learning and ultimately improve student achievement.

Context for the Research

Recent tests of reading achievement among American students paint a disheartening

picture. The vast majority of students in this country read at a “basic” level1 (Grigg, 2007); there

is a significant divide between the reading achievement of white, Asian American and wealthy

students, and their African American, Latino, South East Asian America, American Indian2, and

poor and working class peers (ACT, 2006; Grigg, 2007); a massive gap persists between those

students of highly-educated parents and students of parents who have completed fewer years of

formal education (Grigg, 2007); and nearly half of college-bound students are not prepared for

the demands of university-level reading in all content areas (ACT, 2006)3. Perhaps most

discouraging is that despite great strides in reading research and the development of empirically-

based curricular and policy reforms in the past two decades, few gains have been made in student

achievement, and among some groups, students were reading better in 1992 than in 2005 (Grigg,

2007).

Understanding that teachers are at the heart of any educational reform movement, I

contend that to better prepare and develop English teachers’ reading instruction as a means

1 According to the NAEP report: “Twelfth-grade students performing at the Basic level should be able to demonstrate an overall understanding and make some interpretations of the text. When reading text appropriate for twelfth grade, they should be able to identify and relate aspects of the text to its overall meaning, extend ideas in the text by making simple inferences, recognize interpretations, make connections among and relate ideas in the text to their personal experiences, and draw conclusions. They should be able to identify elements of the author’s style.” 2 Each of NAEP’s ethnic and racial designations includes a diverse range of cultures, academic and otherwise. While I do not believe such designations can effectively capture the diversity of cultures often subsumed within each category, NAEP does not disambiguate their categories, so I am beholden to presenting this data in its clearly over-simplified manner. 3 ACT found that only fifty-one percent of ACT test takers had sufficient reading skills to attain a grade of a B or better in typical first-year college courses across the curriculum.

11 towards improving student achievement, we must first come to understand teachers’ personal

orientations to reading and literature. Analyses of reform movements in other content areas

besides English (e.g. AAAS, 1990; NCTM, 1989, 2000) have consistently uncovered failed

implementations of these progressive and ambitious movements (Cuban, 1984). Implementation

studies often place blame on teachers. For example, Cohen contends that “teachers are the most

important agents of instructional policy,” but found that teachers often lacked the necessary

knowledge for implementing reform (Cohen, 1990).4 In her comparative research with Chinese

and American teachers, Ma similarly found that American teachers lacked the knowledge

required for successfully teaching reform mathematics (Ma, 1999).

Much of this research concludes with one of two arguments: either teachers must be

better equipped with relevant knowledge or designers must make their expectations more

explicit. For example, Cohen contends that, “if students need a new instruction to learn to

understand mathematics, would not teachers need a new instruction to learn to teach a new

mathematics?” (Cohen, 1990), while Ma suggests that “teacher’s manuals can explain

curriculum developers’ intentions and reasons for the way topics are selected and sequenced”

(Ma, 1999). If we accept these conclusions, that as researchers, curriculum designers and policy

makers, we must better teach teachers in order for reform to succeed, those of us who study and

support teachers may do well to heed Cohen’s analogy and look to research developed on how

students best learn.

In response to the dramatic divide between progress in research and stasis in schools, my

project uses a Cultural Modeling framework (Lee, 1995, 2001, 2007) to better understand some

4 It is important to note here that David Cohen and other implementation researchers do not claim that it is the teachers’ fault for the implementation failure. They most often charge curriculum designers and teacher educators with the responsibility of helping teachers learn in order to better understand the curriculum’s goals.

12 of the resources and deficits teachers bring to the classroom. Cultural Modeling “is based on the

premise that students bring to the Language Arts classroom a rich array of knowledge that is

useful in learning generative concepts and strategies in reading and writing, (Lee, 2001).”

Foundational to Cultural Modeling is the idea that teachers can help students identify these often-

untapped resources and engage them in academic settings. My work makes a parallel claim

about teachers. Rather than focusing on the kinds of pedagogical and content knowledge that

teachers lack, I begin with the assumption that English teachers have deep and meaningful

relationships with reading, and embedded in those relationships are pedagogical resources that

may often lay untapped during instruction.

I conceive of teachers’ untapped resources similar to how Moll and others define

students’ Funds of Knowledge (Moll, 1992, 1997). These Funds of Knowledge take shape in a

variety of linguistic, social, familial and community contexts, often outside of the confines of the

classroom. Research shows that attending to these cultural resources and developing curricula

that capitalize on these assets lays a foundation for academic success (e.g. Ladson Billings, 1994;

Lee, 2000; Moll, 1992). It follows that in order to teach teachers more effectively, we may want

to know something about their Funds of Knowledge. If we are to extend the framework of

culturally relevant pedagogy to teacher education, we must come to understand the cultures in

which teachers’ understandings of their world take shape. To this point, limited work has been

done to examine teachers’ lives outside of the classroom and how their cultural lives beyond the

scope of school may shape the knowledge that influences their instruction.

While some research has faulted a lack of teacher knowledge for the failings of

educational innovations, other researchers attribute the failure to a conflict between teachers’

beliefs and the underlying goals of the curriculum or policy, a conflict that results in poor

13 adaptation. Teachers necessarily adapt curricula to the specific needs of their classrooms, and

this adaptation can either fall within the “curriculum envelope,” in other words, meeting the

designers’ expectations, or it can contain “lethal mutations,” which corrupt the curriculum to the

point where it no longer serves the intended objectives (Ball, 1996; Ben-Peretz, 1990; Brown,

1996; Cohen, 1990; Cuban, 1994; Sherin, 2002). Elbaz, detailing her findings from a case study

examining the “practical knowledge” of a veteran English teacher through a series of interviews

and classroom observations, urged curriculum designers to consider, “the importance of the

individual teacher’s effort to disclose meanings [in curricula] that are not merely in line with the

demands of the practical situation but are also an expression of personal values and purposes”

(Elbaz, 1981).5 Cuban explains that these “personal values and purposes” can be expressed freely

in teachers’ classrooms as “[teachers] can alter the content they teach, even if it is mandated by a

state department of education, if they believe that the topics and content will be in the students’

best interest. They also have limited freedom, drawn from their isolation as solo practitioners, to

ignore and modify these changes” (Cuban, 1994).

A slightly different conclusion follows from this mediating beliefs perspective. Rather

that prescriptively assuming we must better teach teachers in order for them to more accurately

carry out our objectives, we might first take a step back and consider teachers’ beliefs before we

begin writing curriculum or policy. Furthermore, considering teacher beliefs as part of the

design of teacher education and professional development programs may lead us in new and

more effective directions for preparing and sustaining excellent teachers.

Both conclusions suggest the need to more fully explore teachers’ lives outside of the

5 While “personal values and purposes” are different from the terminology I have used in this proposal, many researchers who have looked to Elbaz’s discussion of the personal have interpreted this construct to include beliefs (Richardson, 1996; Thompson, 1992).

14 classroom in order to unpack the knowledge and beliefs teachers bring with them into schools.

To this end, I have adopted Bronfenbrenner’s ecological framework for understanding human

development (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1986) as a lens for studying teachers’ lives. Using a human

development perspective to holistically examine teachers is a new approach in the field of

teacher research, yet it has yielded rich data about teacher knowledge, identity and beliefs.

Bronfenbrenner argued that human development research had traditionally focused

within the individual or the familial unit, but to fully understand an individual or family, one

must focus on the relationship between the individual unit and its environment. For example, his

family research was driven to answer the question, “how are intrafamiliar processes affected by

extrafamiliar processes?” (Bronfenbrenner, 1986). My work uses a similar frame: How are

teachers’ lives outside of the classroom relevant to teachers’ instruction within the classroom? In

particular, I consider how the meaning-making processes with which teachers engage when

reading in their personal time impact their reading instruction in the classroom. Further, I

consider the dynamic processes that – over time – have developed these personal orientations to

reading.

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model includes five layers: the microsystem, made up of the

individual’s immediate environment, the mesosystem, comprised of connections between the

different settings within that immediate environment, the exosystem, which contains settings

outside the microsystem but that indirectly affect the individual, the macrosystem, which

includes the larger cultural context within which the individual resides and takes part, and

finally, the chronosystem, involving the history of the individual’s development as well as that of

the environment in which she lives (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1986). The overarching theme of

Bronfenbrenner’s work is that we must look outside of the individual subject of research to best

15

Macrosystem

Exosystem

Mesosystem

Microsystem

Chronosystem

Individual Individual

understand the subject herself, and his five layers provide guidance for how to navigate the

massive and amorphous landscape surrounding the individual.

Figure 1: Bronfenbrenner’s Blank Model

While I do not explicitly identify and investigate each layer of Bronfenbrenner’s system

for each participant in my study, I used them as guides for how to structure my inquiry.

Traditionally teachers have been studied within the context of the classrooms in which they

teach, and in a small number of studies, their own educations. Teacher education research has

used professional development as a site for inquiry, and some policy work has examined the

educational climate influencing teachers at the moment of the inquiry, such as the climate of

assessment under the No Child Left Behind policies. If we were to fill these typical sites of

16 inquiry on Bronfenbrenner’s model, with the teacher at the center, we would draw a system with

several significant holes.

Figure 2: Bronfebrenner’s Model including Typical Sites of Inquiry

Microsystem: Classroom

Mesosystem:

Exosystem: Professional Development,

Department Practices

Macrosystem: Climate of Assessment

Education

Teacher Preparation

17 While all of these areas are important to include in an inquiry into teachers’ instruction,

my study suggests that we open up the sites of exploration to understand teachers more

holistically. If my focus is a teacher’s reading instruction, we can conceive of the microsystem,

the immediate environment of her instruction, as encompassing the classroom, students and

texts. The mesosystem contains the areas where those entities interact, such as students’

experiences reading the assigned texts. The elements contained within these first two layers are

typical sites of investigation for understanding reading instruction. I suggest that in order to best

understand instruction, however, we must look beyond the immediate environment of the

instruction. The exosystem, those settings which indirectly affect the classroom and instruction,

might include the teacher’s department, the school itself, the community surrounding the school,

sites of professional development, and perhaps, as I contend in the title of this dissertation, the

books on the teacher’s nightstand. We can see the macrosystem, the larger cultural influences, in

multiple forms. One can easily imagine that the teacher works within a national educational

ethos, such as aggressive assessment. There are also the various cultural influences of her home

and the school community that might dictate, for example, how much a teacher or literature is

valued. The teacher also functions within a particular worldview of her subject matter. What is

the place of literature or literacy in society? Upon what criteria should literature be assessed?

These are the types of issues that I take up in detail in this project. Finally, Bronfenbrenner’s

model suggests that we not only look at the teacher in the moment of instruction, but that we

investigate the path that brought the teacher to that moment. How has the teacher formed her

ideas about her subject matter and instruction over her lifetime? My project specifically attends

to this kind of retrospective view. Again, taking a human development perspective on teacher

knowledge is a novel approach in the field, yet it has filled out our understanding of teachers’

18 instruction by providing a historical backdrop and detailed explanation of the how and why

teacher’s instruction came to be.

Figure 3: Bronfenbrenner’s Model with In and Out of School Systems Included

Microsystem: Classroom

Mesosystem: How classroom,

department, school and home are related

Exosystem: District, professional development sites, governmental policies and

practices AND friends, family and books on the nightstand

Macrosystem: Societal beliefs,

political and social climate

Literary traditions

Lifetime of reading

Education

Teacher Preparation

19 While this dissertation focuses on secondary English teachers, I believe the importance of

understanding teachers’ personal and cultural lives applies to teachers in all content areas. A

focus on issues of literacy may be especially appropriate for this work, however, as some

literature suggests reading and writing are particularly personal endeavors and therefore

appropriate sites for explorations of academic identity and personal practice (Cook-Gumperz,

1986; Ivanic, 1994, 1998; Moxley, 1986). Additionally, teachers in other content areas, such as

math or science, may not regularly, deeply engage their disciplines in their everyday lives6,

whereas English teachers quite often have long personal histories with reading, and reading for

personal fulfillment is frequently a part of their daily practice. Further, Lee has suggested that

literary meaning making in schools is much more closely aligned with expert practices than in

other disciplines (Lee, 2007). Those expert practices, she goes on to explain, are not those of

field professionals, but engaged by people “who vociferously read canonical literature as well as

contemporary literature that is unique and complex…” (Lee, 2007). Hence, teachers with robust

content knowledge are not straying far from either their literary training or their daily practice

when teaching literature, rather they might be encouraging the very same practices in which they

regularly participate.

Research Goals

My interest in exploring how teachers’ personal reading experiences affect their

classroom practice led me to design three related topics of inquiry: one, what are teachers

personal orientations to literature; two, how do these personal orientations relate to teachers’

6 This is not to say that other content area teachers do not have meaningful histories and routine experiences with their subject matter, but rather that these experiences tend to be academic rather than personal. For example, in her work eliciting life stories from elementary math teachers, Drake describes stories that are almost exclusively based in classroom experiences (Drake, 2000).

20 pedagogy; and three, how are students affected by teachers with different personal orientations?

I hypothesized that certain kinds of literary stances might be aligned with particular pedagogical

approaches, which in turn, might have specific effects on students. The work of this project was

to both detail what those personal orientations, pedagogical stances and student effects might be,

as well as to explore how they were related.

In my first line of inquiry, I sought to understand what it is we mean by personal when it

comes to reading, i.e. what matters about teachers’ personal reading lives? What about English

teachers’ personal reading experiences might be worth knowing for English Education faculty,

school administrators, curriculum designers, professional development facilitators and anyone

else developing teachers’ instructional approaches to reading. Using narrative, I allowed

teachers to define themselves as readers, and from their stories, I identified meaningful

categories of personal orientations to reading.

My project’s second line of inquiry explored how teachers’ personal orientations to

literature interacted with teachers’ literature instruction. While researchers have covered much

terrain in characterizing teachers’ knowledge, devising ways to best represent that knowledge,

and understanding teacher beliefs, the effects of such knowledge and beliefs on teachers’ actions

and on resultant student learning remains somewhat uncertain7. Thus, I examined how and when

teachers’ personal orientations to reading shape teachers’ reading instruction. I was specifically

interested to see if certain personal orientations lent themselves to certain kinds of teaching. In

cases where teaching approaches and personal orientations seemed to be at odds, I sought to

uncover what mediating factors might limit the influence of teachers’ personal orientations on

7 It is important to make the distinction here between learning and outcomes. While plenty of process-product research has correlated certain teacher actions with specific student outcomes, such as test scores, limited research has looked at the connection between teacher actions and how students engage their subject matter qualitatively.

21 instruction. If I contend that teachers’ personal reading experiences are a potential resource for

teachers’ pedagogy, it is also important to understand what might limit the influence of such

resources.

Ultimately, this research is most useful if there are clear implications for student learning

embedded in the results. In her review of research of the teaching of history, Suzanne Wilson

explains

We would do well to begin exploring a fuller range of factors that shape teaching: The connection between teaching and teacher beliefs and learning and student beliefs remains a black hole in our research landscape…I am not arguing for traditional, quasi-experimental research on teaching that links certain teaching moves to the development of certain kinds of student understanding. Rather I am suggesting that we need a more detailed portrait that attempts to fill in some of the gaps… (Wilson, 2001)

Thus, a third major aim of this project is to explore these relationships amidst the complex

landscape of the classroom, as well as the various influences upon that classroom. After

categorizing a range of personal approaches to reading and describing how the personal and

pedagogical interact, I sought to understand how different orientations, lending themselves to

certain pedagogies, affected students differently. Taken in total, I hypothesized that there would

be alignment between teachers’ personal orientations to literature, their reading instruction, and

their students’ understanding of literature.

Chapter Overview

The second chapter of the dissertation details the previous research related to my work

and explains both how it has been a foundation from which I could build, as well as a way to

identify what has gone relatively unexplored until now. The third chapter includes my

22 methodology, including my study design, participant sample, collected data and analysis. The

fourth chapter of the dissertation presents the analysis of the life story interviews, describing

typical reading identities across the range of reading orientations. I explore how certain clusters

of variables related to personal reading practice seem interconnected. I then detail four cases of

teachers with typical and atypical outcomes. The fifth chapter examines how the participants’

personal orientations to reading were manifested in instruction. Again, I provide an overview, as

well as follow the same four case teachers in detail through a year of teaching. The

observational data used in this chapter is bolstered with interview data from the clinical

interviews. The sixth chapter examines the student survey data, showing which classes made the

most changes in their approaches and attitudes towards reading, and isolating which variables are

worthy of more in-depth study. Finally, my conclusion discusses the implications for this

research for teacher educators, policy makers, and educational researchers.

23 Chapter Two: Literature Review

Overview

In this chapter, I synthesize the existing literature that examines teachers’ personal

orientations to reading. I begin by examining constructs typically associated with teachers’

pedagogy, including knowledge, beliefs, and identity. I discuss a variety of ways to understand

these elements of teachers’ cognition and development, and then I focus in particular on the

effectiveness of narrative research for this type of inquiry. I illustrate how narrative research has

been used successfully to define these constructs in contexts outside of education, and I discuss

how I have imported ideas and methods from human development work in psychology and

applied them to teachers’ lives. I then look at theory and research that has explicitly examined

teachers’ and scholars’ literary orientations. Finally, I review the handful of studies that have

followed a similar line of research to my own, which investigates teachers’ personal literary

orientations and their effects on practice.

The “Personal” in Pedagogy

My project’s first line of inquiry, an attempt to understand teachers’ histories with,

beliefs about, personal knowledge of, and identities around reading, comes as a direct response

to Grossman’s plea to the English education community in her 2002 review of the literature.

What is striking in the research on the teaching of literature is the general lack of research on the teachers of literature…studies of response in the classroom have begun to demonstrate the power of teachers in shaping students’ responses. However, relatively little research has explored how teachers themselves develop preferred responses to literature.

24

This notion of teachers’ “preferred responses to literature,” what I often refer to as their personal

orientations to literature, however, required some explication. Studies in teacher education have

endeavored to explore issues related to teacher identity, beliefs, epistemology, and knowledge,

and yet these constructs remain largely unrelated in the research, and there is little agreement on

what exactly researchers mean when they invoke these ideas (Calderhead, 1996; Clandinin,

1987; Richardson, 1996). What such concepts look like specifically in relation to reading and

literature has been left uncertain as well. This ambiguity limits the usefulness of applying this –

albeit amorphous – body of research to new sites of study. As I have attempted to respond to

Grossman’s challenge, I have tried to be clear how my representation and elicitation of this kind

of “personal response” relates to the work that has come before and how it synthesizes many of

the terms often used in relation to the idea of the “personal.”

To further complicate matters, researchers have yet to settle on appropriate methods for

examining issues of “personal knowledge.” Calderhead surveyed the methodological landscape

in his literature review on Teachers: Beliefs and Knowledge (1996). He details how simulations,

“the use of a contrived problem, situation, or context…used to elicit teachers’ thinking about

practical teaching situations”; commentaries, “what teachers report on their thinking”; concept

mapping and repertory grid which “attempt to systematically elicit and represent [teachers’]

conceptual structures”; ethnography and case studies; and teacher narratives have been the most

popular methods for understanding teachers’ knowledge and beliefs. He argues that there are

tradeoffs for choosing any one of these methods. Narratives and commentaries might rely too

much on teachers having knowledge of their own beliefs or on reporting their beliefs honestly.

Concept mapping may force particular structures onto how teachers understand or articulate their

25 knowledge. Ethnography may present too much data, which allows researchers to see in their

data whatever they were hoping to find. Ultimately, each approach in isolation falls short, which

is why this study was designed with multiple access points to teachers’ personal knowledge of

reading.

Despite syntactical and methodological differences, the continued work attempting to

understand teachers’ beliefs and knowledge has increased steadily, especially over the last

twenty years. Despite this proliferation of research, however, several important gaps remain in

the field. The existing research generally limits the examination of these constructs to teachers’

school experiences: the classrooms in which they teach or, in a few cases, in which they were

taught. My study attempts to fill out our understanding of teachers’ knowledge and beliefs by

extending the inquiry into teachers’ personal lives: understanding teachers’ literary knowledge

and beliefs as they have been shaped by their literary experiences outside of the classroom.

Further, I suspect that the multiple terms used to describe “personal knowledge” have been so

closely related in their use because they are in fact so interrelated. Rather than artificially trying

to tease apart such interconnected constructs as beliefs and knowledge, I chose to use a variety of

comprehensive and integrated methods of inquiry that would capture many of the cognitive and

developmental aspects of teachers’ personal orientations to reading.

As many of the elements of the “personal” – beliefs, identity, dispositions – have their

roots in psychology, this project borrowed its perspective from the work of McAdams in the field

of human development. McAdams’ work is rooted in a life-course perspective that encompasses

many of these constructs, and thus using his Life Story instrument, my work with teachers not

only included variables involving beliefs and knowledge, but personal history, identity, evolving

goals, and dispositions towards others. My adapted Reading Life Story detailed teachers’

26 ongoing relationships with and memories of reading, as well as their reading identities – how

they think of themselves as readers. McAdams explains how this narrative approach has been

lauded in the field for being a particularly thorough way of identifying differences between

individuals’ identities, as well as how it captures individual psychological differences on other

levels, such as individual traits and motivations.

Every life story is unique. The rich texture of human individuality is best captured in the intensive examination of the individual life story (Nasby & Read, 1997; Singer, 2005). At the same time, common patterns across life stories, especially within given cultures, can be identified, and these common patterns can speak to important and measurable individual differences between people. Individual differences in narrative identity are not reducible to differences in dispositional traits or characteristic adaptations. But research has documented important empirical relations between the levels-ways in which traits and motives, for example, relate to narrative identity (McAdams, 2006).

The Life Story interview provided insight into how teachers have developed their

“preferred responses to literature,” as well as an understanding of how they make sense of

that personal history in the current moment. Thus with the reading Life Story interview, I

have attempted to use a mode of inquiry that comprehensively captures many of the different

elements identified as “personal” by previous research and provides a comprehensive sense

of each teacher’s personal orientation to reading.

Narrative as Methodology

A major aim of this research is to draw the landscape of teachers’ reading lives outside of

the classroom, similar to educational research that has investigated literacy practices embedded

in children’s families, communities, and social practices. There is a range of ways to empirically

identify such personal experiences: observing, shadowing, surveying, periodically collecting log

or diary entries. While these methods may shed light on particular activities and experiences

27 teachers have outside of the classroom, they are limited in their explanatory power about reading.

The private and sporadic nature of reading makes it difficult to authentically observe. Surveys

and log entries can decontextualize and isolate reading experiences, and the resultant data may

lack any coherence a teacher has made of these experiences. In Acts of Meaning, Bruner offers

an alternative to recreating a precise historical account:

…we obviously cannot track people through life and observe or interrogate them each step of the way. Even if we could, doing so would only transform the meaning of what they were up to. And, in any case, we would not know how to put the bits and pieces together at the end of the inquiry. One viable alternative is obvious – to do the inquiry retrospectively, through autobiography…It will inevitably be a narrative…its form will be as revealing as its substance (Bruner, 1999).

In a critique of one popular tool used for understanding teachers’ reading orientations, Deford’s

Theoretical Orientation to Reading Profile survey, Muchmore makes a similar claim to Bruner,

suggesting,

…survey instruments tend to mute the voices of teachers by separating their beliefs from their lived experiences. Beliefs do not exist in a vacuum… All teachers possess life stories in which their thoughts and actions are situated, yet survey instruments…regularly filter out this rich and important context, leaving only the disembodied responses to a series of propositional statements.” (Muchmore, 2001).

The narrative aspect of this study relies on teachers not only to detail important events that

happened over the course of their reading lives, but to explain why and how those events matter

to them. The narratives address aspects of teachers’ knowledge, beliefs, identity, goals and

experiences, while at the same time providing coherence and context for their remembered

experiences.

The idea of applying narrative to teacher research is hardly novel; researchers and teacher

educators have successfully drawn out the context of teachers’ lives employing autobiographical

28 approaches for a variety of purposes, using a multitude of methods and theoretical frames.8 In

this section, I will outline some of the major discussions and uses of narrative that inform my

work and will describe how I refined the tool for my research goals.

It is important to note here that much of the teacher research that has dealt with narrative

has focused on using narrative as a tool for teacher development (Gomez, 1996; Ritchie, 2000).9

While I think this is a worthy and useful endeavor, it is important to distinguish that from the

work of this project, which, while it may have some unintended metacognitive benefits for the

teacher participants, is not intended to be an intervention. I do, however, hope that this work can

inform teacher educators who use and create narrative exercises for prospective and developing

teachers.

Narrative Use in Human Development Research

The research that most informs the narrative methods in my study comes from

McAdams' work on Life Stories. McAdams contends “identity is a life story,” as “people living

in modern societies provide their lives with unity and purpose by constructing internalized and

evolving narratives of the self” (McAdams, 2001). These narratives take “the form of stories,

complete with setting, scenes, character, plot and theme” (McAdams, 2001),10 a form that

suggests the Life Story interview format.11 The life story interview asks subjects to act as

“storytellers” of their lives, and in doing to so, to recount different moments and influences,

spanning their life course, with attention to particular high and low points, earliest memories,

8 For a historical survey of some this work, see Connelly & Clandinin, 1990. 9 For an extensive survey of the many uses of autobiography in education, see Graham, 1991. 10 This conception of story as a psychological organizing or structuring principle for narrative and personal experience is echoed in work by Turner (1996) and Labov & Waletzky (1967), among others. 11 See appendix for a modified version of the interview.

29 significant turning points, vision of the future, among others. McAdams’ research is firmly

rooted in Erikson’s research on human development, which delineated progressive stages in

individuals’ psychological growth (Erikson, 1959). For McAdams, the life story becomes useful

for understanding an individual once she has reached the stage of “emerging adulthood.”

While McAdams appreciates that life stories are “coauthored by the person himself or

herself and the cultural context within which that person's life is embedded and given meaning,”

(McAdams, 2001), the focus of much of his work is less the co-authoring cultural context, and

more the developmental stages which allow for different meanings to evolve. Bruner’s frame for

understanding the self through narrative focuses more attention on the cultural scripts that frame

individual’s discourse, and he examines the ways in which culture and self dialogically interact.

In fact, he claims that we can only understand the individual to “the degree to which we are able

to specify the structure and coherence of the larger contexts in which specific meanings are

created and transmitted” (Bruner, 1990). Wiley’s family research has adopted a similar frame,

which situates studies within a particular cultural context to see how stories mold that context.

Her work also expands the notion of narrative identity beyond adulthood, illustrating how

“personal storytelling [is] a medium through which [young people] begin to construct selves that

bear the imprint of an autonomous cultural framework” (Wiley, 1998).

I accept both aspects of the life story, that it is created in relation to a particular

developmental stage in a person’s life, and that it is structured in accordance with shared cultural

scripts. Hence, my analysis situates the narratives within the particular cultural experience of

individuals at a particular moment in time during their life course.

Narrative Identity in Educational Research

30 In much of the educational research involving narrative, a link is articulated between

narrative and identity or a “conception of self.” While issues of teacher identity have been

explored through narrative in multiple contexts – in relation to emotions (Zymblass, 2003a;

Zymblass, 2003b), curriculum enactment (Vulliamy, 1997), curricular choices (Agee, 2000), race

(King, 1991; MacIntyre, 1997; Sleeter, 1993), gender (Dillabough, 1999), and professionalism

(Sachs, 2001; Stronach, 2002) – these aspects of identity are typically investigated in the context

of the participants’ experiences as teachers; rare is the focus on teachers’ personal identities.

While my study builds from notion of teacher identity established by previous research, it

departs from the confined notion of teacher identity existing only in a professional realm. I

contend that uncovering the personal practices, beliefs, goals and attitudes encompassed in

teachers’ personal identities – identities that may have taken shape outside of schools – will have

important implications for understanding teachers’ work inside the classroom. Further, minimal

research has extended the notion of teacher identity to examine identity within a particular

academic subject area, despite almost exclusively exploring identity within academic

environments. In particular, as reading seems intimately intertwined with how we see ourselves

as individuals, the focus on teachers’ personal reading lives is a good starting point for

understanding academic identity within the context of a particular discipline.

Exploring the link between narrative and teacher identity has been perhaps most strongly

advocated by Connelly and Clandinin, whose work examines teachers’ professional lives. They

explain “…we realized that the theoretical puzzle was to link knowledge, context and identity.

‘Stories to live by’…is the intellectual thread…that helps us to understand how knowledge,

context and identity are linked and can be understood narratively” (Connelly, 1999). For

Connelly and Clandinin, narrative is a tool for expressing cohesion of experiences that shape a

31 professional identity. Their notion of identity is limited only to each participant’s teacher

identity, based on school experiences alone.12 While I accept the idea that individuals may hold

onto several situational identities at one time (e.g. Sheldon, 2000; Stryker, 1968), the literature

suggests that in some cases there is leakage between one and the next (Sheldon, 2000), especially

where there are connecting threads, such as subject matter or reading (Rosenblatt, 1985;

Zancanella, 1991). As with almost all acts of cognition, new information builds on the old.

Especially with teachers, it would make sense that new pedagogical content knowledge would be

informed by existing content knowledge, knowledge that has taken shape in classrooms as well

as social and personal experiences. Again, I think this is especially the case for English teachers,

who engage literary texts in daily practice over the course of a lifetime. Hence there should be

connections between the reading lives and reading identities of teachers outside the classroom

and those within the classroom. This notion of the identity of a reader across settings should be

explored in both personal and pedagogical contexts.

Connelly and Clandinin, along with their teacher collaborators, provided a pedagogical

lexicon for the narratives, giving them a particular vocabulary and structure for writing the

stories. For example, the teachers were encouraged to use the terms professional knowledge

landscape, in-classroom place, out-of-classroom place, sacred story of theory-driven practice,

conduit, cover story, and story to live by. While this shared language lent coherence to the

collection of narratives, for this project, I left my participants’ answers to their own terminology.

If language is related to identity (e.g. Gee, 2001; Gumperz, 1982; Norton, 2002; Ochs, 1993),

then limiting teachers’ language use could limit the expression of their identities as readers,

potentially confining the possibilities of the subject’s expression of identity to a narrow 12 While they mention both "in-classroom places" and "out-of-classroom places," their out-of-classroom realm still exists within the school, just not in the room in which the teacher actually teaches.

32 conception of reader as teacher of reading. I encouraged teachers to tell their stories in their own

words, using open-ended questions and prompts, and I believe the wide range of the stories’

content, vocabulary, and register confirm the success of the teachers’ freedom of expression.

This allowed me to analyze not only the content of the life stories, but the means of expressing

those stories as well. Further, I encouraged the teachers to focus on their personal reading

stories, rather than their experiences with reading as a teacher, which was a limitation set for the

teachers in the Connelly and Clandinin studies. While in some cases teachers felt that their

classroom stories best illustrated certain personal periods in their lives, all participants’ life

stories included non-teaching episodes, including reading experiences with friends, family, their

own teachers and professors, as well as intimate experiences reading texts on their own. This

diversity within the reading stories shows how the life story interview successfully allowed for

an open interpretation of “significant reading experience.” Again, this allowed analysis to

examine not only teachers’ reading identities, but also the contexts in which teachers believed

their identities as readers were formed.

In a similar vein to my own work with English teachers, Sherin and Drake used narrative

to explore issues of teacher math identity with math teachers. They extend the notion of teacher

identity to teachers’ early experiences with their content area (Sherin, under reviewa; Drake,

2000). Parallel to the stance I take in this work with English teachers and reading, Sherin

explores how “teaching is not simply a function of what a teacher knows and believes about a

domain, but is also related to a teacher’s ‘sense of self’ with regards to the domain in question”

(Sherin, under reviewa). Similar to my work, they borrow McAdams’ life story interview to

provide a structure with which to elicit teachers’ narratives. Drake found McAdams’ approach

“provides a more contextualized and integrated view of teachers’ beliefs, knowledge, and prior

33 experiences than can be achieved through a focus on any one of these components separately”

(Drake, 2000). Drake categorized six typical stories that mathematics teachers tell, which each

reflect a different mathematical identity, such as “turning point” stories, where teachers

overcome early difficulty with subject matter, or “roller-coaster stories” in which teachers

continually vacillate between positive and negative experiences with math. Drake found that

“patterns in teachers’ stories are related to patterns in their practice” and that “specific beliefs

and ideas within the stories help to explain particular patterns of adaptation and curriculum use”

(Drake, 2000). While this work was done with elementary school mathematics teachers and

curricula, the theoretical underpinnings of her work were not content-specific, and Drake’s study

design and theoretical framework became foundational for this study. There were points of

departure, however, beyond content and grade level. Whereas Drake organized her teacher

stories by their chronological patterns, I analyzed the stories with regard to their literary and

psychological orientations, so they are more holistically content-driven than organizationally-

driven. This comes from my contention that English teachers have a qualitatively different

relationship with their subject matter than elementary math teachers, and this affected the kinds

of stories teachers told in each field.

Political Purposes for Narrative Research

Many educational researchers who employ narrative as a central methodology infuse a

social and political purpose in their choice, typically a form of “giving a voice to the voiceless.”

Connelly and Clandinin (1990), who co-construct their research narratives with teachers, explain,

“in narrative inquiry…the practitioner, who has long been silenced in the research relationship, is

given the time and space to tell her or his story so that it too gains the authority and validity the

34 research story has long had.” Casey, who presents autobiographies of politically-, socially- and

morally-motivated teachers, explicitly intends her research to “celebrate their alternative

progressive versions of education, and in doing so, to recreate the possibility of public debate

which has actually been suppressed by the national reports” (1993). In these cases, which are

typical of others in the field, we see a purposeful adding of too-often absent, even “suppressed,”

voices to public debates and research rhetoric.13

While I appreciate and support the activist notion of making space in the research and

public dialogue for teachers’ voices, for me it is as much a practical motivation as a social one. I

simply do not believe research can paint a full picture of teaching and learning without having

the voices of those studied present in the study. Especially as this work is specifically meant to

unpack the practices, processes and ponderings of teachers, I need their voices present both to

expose what is happening and to help explain it. This is not to say, however, that simply by

including teacher voices in research we have created equity and undermined the hierarchy typical

in the research paradigm. In many cases a teacher lends her voice to a study, in which it is then

fragmented and coded without consultation or approval, which “suppresses the standpoint of

those studied and replaces it with the standpoint of the discipline” (Nespor, 1991). Researchers

must strive to set forth both an equitable and reasonable solution here. I have encouraged the

participants to understand my frame for coding, as well as to engage them in discussion around

parts of my analysis. Just as researchers benefit from being part of a long-standing theoretical

conversation that guides their work, teachers have been engaged in an ongoing conversation

about practice, which can and should inform and complement the researcher’s perspective. In

this way, while I aim to make teachers’ voices a large part of this study, I have also tried to share 13 For other discussions of the political and critical nature of narrative, see Elbaz-Luwisch, 1997; Goodson, 1991, 1997; Nespor & Barylske, 1991; Piper, 1997, Zymbylas, 2003).

35 with them my understanding and interpretation of their words and see how it compares to their

own.

Methodological and Analytical Differences in the Use of Narrative

Diverse approaches have been taken to understanding and characterizing narrative. Those

who use narrative for therapeutic purposes aim for different results than those who use it for

ethnographic purposes, who look for still different results than those who use it for political

reasons. Each purpose comes with a different set of methods and analytical frames.

While I am using both human development and educational narrative research to ground

my own work, it is important to articulate both what is methodologically and analytically

common to these uses, as well as how they differ, and to specify how I have leveraged the

affordances of each. One important distinction between different uses of narrative relates to

issues of causality, where the very act of investigation causes the outcome. Some educational

researchers, such as Connelly and Clandinin, warn against creating a driving and often

“inaccurate” sense of causal force in a narrative, whereas many psychologists, such as McAdams

and Bruner, accept causality, like all forces of cohesion in autobiographical narrative, is part of

the narrative process itself; making connections and finding cohering themes is part of how we

retrospectively make meaning and sense out of our lives in the present moment. Much of the

teacher-researcher community is concerned with reliability, cautioning the researcher against

“deception,” “abuses” and “fake data” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). Again, psychological

research tends to be less concerned with accuracy, explaining “it is easier to live with alternative

versions of a story than with alternative premises in a ‘scientific account’” (Bruner, 1990). The

very humanity of storytelling allows for multiple possibilities and truths.

36 These different stances affect methods significantly. Whereas Connelly and Clandinin co-

construct narratives between researchers and teachers, participants and observers, collectively

contributing to the “plurivocal” narrative account that is agreed upon by the group, McAdams

and Bruner are explicitly interested in how the subject constructs the narrative on her own and

what that construction communicates about the teller, what cultural story-structures she invokes.

These researchers are informed by content as well as form.

In this work, my approach is closer to the human development school. I am not

suspicious of incorrect information. In fact, I am as interested in how teachers will choose to

present themselves as I am with the information itself. I agree with Bruner and McAdams that

there are no uninterpreted events in our lives that lay neutral in our histories; the personal telling

of our history is how we have come to understand it over time, how we have made the pieces fit

into a narrative that explains who we are and shapes our view of ourselves. For these reasons, I

will not concern myself with “accuracy,” although I certainly do not expect teachers to create

new lives for themselves. I expect them to selectively remember particular moments, and to

interpret those moments for themselves and me in their retelling. Simply, there is no history

without interpretation. As Bruner explains, “In the end, even the strongest causal explanations of

the human condition cannot make plausible sense without being interpreted in the light of the

symbolic world that constitutes human culture” (1990).

Another methodological concern with narrative is whether to interpret the identity that

emerges from the life story as timeless or ephemeral. For example, can we draw conclusions

about a teacher’s long-term identity as a reader from an isolated interview? In their theoretical

work, Nespor and Barylske conceive of identity not as a fixed entity that becomes articulated in

narrative, but as an emerging conception that is formulated through the process of the interaction

37 of a narrative interview; they look at how teachers “make themselves” through the experience of

the narrative interview (1991). Their work alerts the researcher to some important dangers in

interpreting narrative. The selves articulated by teachers in narrative are constructed in a

particular moment; they are not timeless.

McAdams found that over a three-year period college students did change the specific

episodes that made up their life stories, however, the emotional tone, motivational themes, and

narrative complexity of the stories remained relatively stable across different time points

(McAdams, 2006). Hence, we might say that salient aspects of the life story, if not the specific

content, remain beyond the moment of the interview.

One issue that remains, however, is that these narratives are necessarily co-constructed

with university researchers, however unobtrusive, who may represent a particular worldview and

approach to the story teller, who will construct on a micro scale her answers, and on a macro

scale, her identity in relation to her perceived expectations of the researcher-interviewer.

McAdams’ study did examine students’ stories over time, but each life story was given in a

university setting, with a university researcher. Bruner explains, “others are also rendered

narratively, so that our narrative about ourselves told to another is, in effect, ‘doubly narrative’”

(Bruner, 1990). This can be made more complex by the setting of the interview, the existing

relationship of the subject to the interviewer, university and research in general, and well as other

particulars that will affect each participant differently. Researchers attend to these influences in a

multitude of ways. While I appreciate that the context of the interview must affect the interview,

I also accept that there cannot be a context-less setting. I introduced my own multiple selves to

the participants – not only am I a researcher, but a teacher, a reader, a wife and a mother. By

having some informal discussion before the interview, I tried to offer multiple pathways towards

38 the participants’ orientations towards me. Additionally, I did not invite participants to come to

the university for their interviews. Instead, I asked participants to suggest a setting for the

interview, and a variety of “home turfs” were used, including teachers’ living rooms, favorite

cafés, backyards and classrooms. In these ways, I hoped to limit how much the academic

purposes for the interview shaped the participants’ answers.

In sum, the studies I reviewed in the previous sections have been foundational in terms of

my conception of my own work, and at the same time, they have alerted me to certain constraints

of using narrative to construct a sense of reading identity. In terms of my influence on the

construction of a participant’s narrative, and therefore her emerging identity, I have chosen the

life story interview as it is based on research that says that the “story” is how we naturally make

sense of our lives (McAdams, 2001). While it does impose a framework for storytelling, that

framework is based on existing personal sense-making structures, so it was not unnatural or

forced for any participants. I did not, as Connelly and Clandinin do, offer a particular

professional language for the narrative, which allows me to use analyze the particular discourse

each teacher uses to describe her experiences, as well as the participant’s conception of herself

beyond being a teacher. Additionally, while there exists a set structure for the interview, the

questions are open-ended and lent themselves to many types of response. Furthermore, as my

experiences with the case teachers were not be limited to a one-time interview, but rather

continual interaction over the course of a year or more, in a variety of investigative settings, I

triangulated the original claims based in the narrative data with other data sources. In this way,

while I recognize the constructed identities created through narrative were established within a

certain moment, my continual interaction with the teachers over the course of a year, along with

survey data, allowed me to see what aspects of the narrative identity persisted over a longer

39 period of time.

Literary Orientations

My study departs from the previous body of teacher identity literature and narrative

research by asking teachers to describe a personal, rather than professional, relationship with

their content. I contend that a teacher’s personal orientation to literature is a site of literary

meaning making that affects pedagogical approaches to literature and is thus worthy of

educational research. While several studies have examined how teachers’ experiences with

reading have affected their notions of teaching reading, the contexts for exploring literary

meaning-making were largely dictated by the researchers, and most often situated in school

settings, such as college coursework (Holt-Reynolds, 1999; Grossman, 1990). The open-ended

nature of McAdam’s life story interview, along with the developmental focus on episodes from

many periods of the storyteller’s life, allowed for participants to touch on many different

contexts, beyond the school-age period, that influenced their identities as readers.

For the purpose of this study, I use McAdam's definition of identity as a “life story,” the

sense one makes of her life as a whole, which in turn structures how she understands and

approaches new experiences (McAdams, 1993); however, my approach to analyzing the life

stories and categorizing teachers’ identities is different than previous work with this kind of data.

As my focus is specifically on life stories of teachers as readers, my analysis of interviews was

influenced both by McAdam’s notion of identity, as well as theory on orientations to reading

(Grossman, 1991; Rosenblatt, 1938; Probst, 1987; Vipond, 1984). Identifying literary

orientations using a narrative approach rooted in human development has not been used before,

and yet proved particularly useful for explaining how teachers developed as readers over their

40 lifetimes.

Considerable theoretical work has explored different types of response to reading, and

there has been a good deal of discussion over the implications of these different types of

response on teaching and student learning. There is a wide range of literary interpretative

stances, from those that privilege the text over the reader, to those who subvert the text’s

intended meaning in favor of the reader’s individual interpretation. This section details this

range of interpretive stances and considers some of their potential effects on instructional

practice.

Cultures of Reading that Shape Identity

The reading identities documented by this study have been complexly cultivated in

personal and professional, informal and academic, storied and forgotten ways. Literary

knowledge, like all academic knowledge, is not a static, constant force, but an embodiment of

active practice. As Applebee contends, “all traditions that surround us--those of architecture,

agriculture, the arts, religion, history, science, mathematics, literature…they are traditions of

knowledge-in-action, deeply contextualized ways of participating in the world of the present”

(Abblebee, 1996). Literary knowledge is no exception. Not only is there a range of ways to

reason about literature (Beach, 1991; Culler, 2000; Grossman, 2005; Lee 2007; Purves, 1972),

along with these varying literary perspectives come different practices, discourses and

institutions associated with them. We can conceive of “literary theory [not as a] disembodied set

of ideas but a force in institutions. Theory exists in communities of readers and writers, as a

discursive practice, inextricably entangled with educational and cultural institutions” (Culler,

2000). Teachers are brought up in these different communities and institutions, engaging in

41 different literary discourses, though these differing perspectives are often ignored in the face of

departmental policy, curricular expectations and standardized assessment (Zancanella, 1991).

This research shows that these often deeply-rooted personal literary perspectives are regularly

manifested in literature instruction, at times in concert with outside expectations, in other cases,

in conflict with the various demands placed on teachers’ instruction.

This study seeks to uncover the literary traditions, conversations, institutions and

resultant practices that shape English teachers’ personal orientations to literature; to understand

how such orientations manifest themselves in literature instruction; and to reveal how these

influences on instruction ultimately affect students. A goal of this research is to empirically

investigate several theories about reading orientations suggested in English education. There are

a great variety of perspectives on how to read literature, and several scholars have suggested

ways in which these perspectives might influence instruction. For example, Probst maintains

that those with highly text-centered orientations to reading, such as a New Critical approach,

have the potential to limit student understanding and reading achievement, as

if there is a norm, a best reading, then the correctness of other readings can be judged by how closely they approximate that best reading. Thus, the most persuasive critics because preeminent, their interpretations become the touchstone by which other readings are judged, and students are subtly encouraged to submit to and imitate the thinking of their critical betters. (Probst, 1990).

Ultimately, this “assures that [students] will fail” (Probst, 1990). He suggests that more reader-

centered approaches, such as the transactional reading model proposed by Rosenblatt, “allow[s]

students to take more interest and ownership of literature,” (Probst, 1990). In her own words,

Let us not brush aside [the child’s interpretation] in our eagerness to do justice to the total text or to put that part into its proper perspective in the study. It is more important that we reinforce the child’s discovery that texts can make possible such intense personal experience (Rosenblatt, 1982).

42 Of course, there are differing perspectives on such matters of text interpretation.

Smagorinsky critiques what he sees as Probst’s extreme stance, where only the personal culture

of the reader matters. He explains,

Probst (1988) goes so far as to argue that readers should resist culture in order to provide the most personal reading possible. I will argue, in contrast, that it is impossible to become acultural as a reader or producer of texts. Rather, one’s notion of meaning emerges through participation in cultural practices; as Moll (2000) has argued, it is inevitable that we live culturally, to which I would add that it is inevitable that we read culturally (Smagorinsky, 2001).

For Smagorinsky, the cultural and historical context of the text itself must be in conversation

with the reader’s cultural experience. The result is a dialogic reading that takes place within the

“transaction zone,” where reader and text meet (Smagorinsky, 2001). To place all of the

resources for meaning making within the reader is to ignore the cultural history of the text,

placing meaning outside this zone.

Both Probst’s and Smagorinsky’s perspectives depart from the traditional literary stance

most often seen in English classrooms, which aligns more closely with text-centered, formalist

approaches, as described by Hines and Appleman:

…“good” teacher training and educational practice were typically in keeping with New Critical priorities. This conflation of literary theory and pedagogical principles, as English educational histories suggest, occurred because New Critical priorities dovetailed so completely with literary pedagogical “interests” that formalist priorities became commensurate with “good” instruction (2002).

From a cognitive perspective on language comprehension and reading theory, Anderson explains

that most often in schools, “from first grade to graduate school,” students encounter text-centered

perspectives.

…it is simply assumed that knowledge can be expressed in printed language, and that a skilled reader can acquire knowledge from reading. On this view, each word, each well-

43 formed sentence, and every satisfactory text passage “has” a meaning. The meaning is conceived to be “in” the language, to have a status independent from the speaker and hearer, or author and reader (1977).

Another common approach in classrooms is to uncover the author’s intentions in the text,

typified by E. D. Hirsch’s discussions of reading. Scholes explains both Hirsch’s approach, as

well as its potential implications for the classroom.

Hirsch’s approach is in fact the most conservative way of arriving at the meaning of a text. It assumes that the author of a literary text is by definition superior to the reader and that his achievement has been equal to his intention…[This approach] offers principles for the validation of interpretation and thus lends itself to a certain kind of pedagogy. As Hirsch reminds us, this tradition of hermeneutical study has its roots in biblical exegesis, so we should not be surprised to find that it tends to regard the author as God. Its most powerful appeal, I should think, comes to our sense that students are in fact not adequate readers, and hence are in need of a rigorous discipline in which there must be a standard for “right” and “wrong” readings (Scholes, 1982).

Clearly, a variety of literary theories abound, some in stark contrast to one another, and others

that share central components. Scholes (borrowing from Roman Jakobson) suggests that six

elements can contribute to the reading of a text (1982). Grossman describes these as “the author,

the text itself, the context in which the text was written, the medium in which the author wrote,

the codes which govern the production of a literary text, and the reader of the text” (Grossman,

1991). Each literary theory privileges one or some of these elements over the others. I found it

useful to think about these elements along a spectrum, with the text on one side, and the reader

on the other. From the text to the reader, one includes more and more context that is less and

less related to the original text, and along this spectrum, we can place the different literary camps

that consider different parts of the spectrum; that is, first one considers the text itself: its words,

rhetorical devices and structures. This is where the New Critics and Formalists focus. Next, the

Structuralists consider how linguistic structures existing in the world outside the text influence

44

Reader-Centered Text-Centered

Post-Structuralism Deconstructionism New Historicism

Formalism Structuralism New Criticism

Phenomenology Reader Response

the meaning of the text. New Historicism considers the historical context in which the text was

created and author wrote, and so on and so forth. At the far end of the spectrum is the reader,

who in no way influenced the author or the text’s creation, and yet ultimately makes meaning of

the text for herself. Phenomenology and Reader-Response Criticism, for example, focus their

interest in texts only so far as how the reader makes meaning of those texts. Here, I have drawn

the this literary spectrum as I have described it above, with those schools of criticism that focus

on context of reading on the right, and those that focus more exclusively on the text on the left.

Figure 4: Spectrum of Literary Criticism

While literary theories such as New Criticism and Reader Response may be neatly

plotted out in textbooks and scholarly journals, they rarely maintain such clear delineation in

reality. Using an open-ended interview and a range of data, this research sought to capture the

complexity of teachers’ personal literary stances, be they clearly and explicitly aligned with

particular theories, or haphazard and implicit14. The interviews also provided insight not only

into the current position of the teachers’ literary stances, but into the many complex paths,

people, places and practices that shaped such orientations. Ultimately this matters because in the

14 Schraw (1996, 1999) has shown how readers’ implicit models of text, which align either with the transactional or text/author-centered approach, affect how people read. This work goes further to say that such models of reading, often implicit, may also affect the teaching of reading.

45 same way that cultures of practice lead to teachers’ literary points of view, those very points of

view lead to new cultures of teaching and learning that shape new readers. Hines and Appleman

make this point nicely,

With Tompkins (1980), we believe that theories of interpretation offer not only ways of reading texts, but also, either implicitly or explicitly, ways of seeing and interpreting ourselves and our surroundings beyond the world of the classroom. Further, for literature teachers, those ways of seeing become ways of teaching; that is, as our teaching becomes increasingly informed by literary theories, those theories can provide useful lenses to understanding the dynamics and discourse of literature classrooms (2002).

This dissertation goes further to say that certain literary stances, when enacted in

teaching, have the potential limit or support learning for different students. Certain literary

stances seem to be more in line with reform notions of teaching and learning in the field of

English. Thus, teacher educators, curriculum designers and policy makers may benefit from

understanding teachers’ personal literary stances, as these may be sites from which rejection or

acceptance of a reform approach stem.

Literary Orientations and Effects on Instruction

While I assumed the frame of transactional reading as a lens for my analysis, expecting

that teachers would engage texts in a variety of ways based on their own personal experiences, I

was well aware that my study participants might not share such a view of reading. In fact, the

range of approaches to literature became of a source of coding in and of itself, with a

transactional frame at one end of the spectrum. It is important to consider how different literary

theories inform the kind of stance readers may assume. Theoretical schools such as New

Criticism and Formalism, which posit all meaning for the text inside the individual text (Ransom,

1941; Wimsatt, 1954), stand in stark contrast to the reader-response approach, which considers

46 the meaning-making process to be dialogical between reader and text (Beach, 1993; Probst,

1987; Rosenblatt, 1938, 1978; Tompkins, 1980). Each approach, of course, opens up another

range of stances. As Grossman explains, when using a context-centered approach, like that of

New Historicism, rather than a text- or reader-centered approach, a variety of theoretical

frameworks may be invoked during reading, such as a feminist, Marxist or Freudian approach

(Grossman, 1991).

Several studies have indicated that teachers’ literary approaches can influence instruction,

(Hines and Appleman, 2002; Holt-Reynolds, 1999; Probst, 1987; Rosenblatt, 1983; Scholes,

1982), and I found it constructive to investigate how these teachers' personal frameworks for

reading came to be as well as how they affected reading pedagogy. For some readers, their

theoretical framework in part shapes their identities as teachers; interestingly, some teachers’

personal reading orientations are at odds with their professed and observed pedagogical stance –

a dissonance that has implications that I discuss in the following chapters, and that has been

documented as well with prospective teachers’ ideas about literature and the teaching of

literature (Holt-Reynolds, 1999). While some excellent work has explored the extent to which

literary theory shapes teachers’ approaches to instruction (Holt-Reynolds, 1999; Hines and

Appleman, 2002), many of these studies employ clinical questionnaires and interviews to

identify these orientations, which limits the researchers’ understanding of the complex ways in

which these stances came to be. Additionally, the previous research tends to rely on a handful of

case studies, which, while providing important detail, limits the ability to generalize. While the

nine teachers in this study hardly represent a large sample, their numbers were large enough to

see a range and begin an attempt at categorization. Further, Holt-Reynolds’ study consisted of

extensive interviews with one pre-service teacher. While her study shed light on how difficult

47 the student-to-practitioner transition can be, the study did not look beyond the first year of

teaching. I believe that the first year of teaching is an exceptional case, and to truly see how

personal literary orientations affect pedagogy, one should look beyond the first years of teaching.

Hines and Appleman’s study explicitly discussed particular literary stances and their

instructional enactment with their teacher participants, rather than investigating how teachers

have made sense of such stances, perhaps less-well defined and delineated, on their own.

Finally, the focus of both of these studies was how teachers’ literary orientation manifested itself

in instruction. Holt-Reynolds did some work to understand how college coursework affected her

case study’s literary stance, but beyond this, no work was done to understand how the complex

literary stances took shape in the teachers’ lives. I believe my work shows that while college

coursework may be an important influence, readers’ orientations to literature are deeply

embedded in their personal histories and woven throughout many periods of their lives.

Ultimately, I believe that this has important implications for teacher education and development.

Previous Studies Exploring Personal Reading Approaches

Little previous research has examined the personal reading habits of teachers. The work

that has been done, while somewhat applicable to my work, differs in several ways. For example,

Wineburg and Grossman created a school-based teacher book club as an alternative professional

development setting (Thomas, 1998; Wineburg, 1998). While their investigation differed

significantly from mine in that they introduced a reading intervention rather than studying the

typical reading experiences of teachers, their work reinforced the important connection between

personal reading and teaching reading, and how these connections can differ dramatically

between different readers. They explain,

48 Initially, [teachers] interpreted the disagreement as an instance of interpersonal conflict. But after many similar disagreements, we came to understand the discussion as emblematic of dramatic differences in teachers’ beliefs about how to read texts, about how students make meaning from texts, and about how and when to draw on young people’s personal experience in teaching the humanities (p. 352).15

I believe these “dramatic differences about how to read texts” should also be investigated in

teachers’ existing personal reading practices and reading identities, in addition to the special

professional development settings that involve reading as described in Wineburg’s study. The

more authentic setting of teachers’ personal lives should shed light on typical practices,

untouched by this special intervention developed by researchers. Additionally, my study

provides some historical perspective and insight into how these “dramatic differences” came to

be.

Another body of work has examined how teachers carry their orientations to reading

learned in university through their experiences in teaching reading (Grossman, 1990; Holt-

Reynolds, 1999). I think this is extremely important work that relates closely with the

fundamental questions I grapple with – what are the connections between a personal orientation

to reading and the teaching of reading? How and in what ways is a teacher’s personal reading

orientation shaped? Despite these similarities, I feel there are several major limitations to the

existing studies. Both Grossman’s and Holt-Reynolds’ studies focus exclusively on first-year or

pre-service teachers. No discussion of longitudinal study or cohort-comparison was made in

publications about either of these projects. First-year teachers are a special case, and while

interesting to study, may reveal little about the long-term effects of personal education and

reading orientation on teaching. Hence, my sample includes teachers from every level of

15 Many of the reading differences observed in this study were noted between History teachers and English teachers' different orientations to reading; however, it seems through the study that individual differences were also apparent within each content area group.

49 expertise, from novice to veteran. Furthermore, the two studies have a very small number of

subjects. Grossman studied six teachers, three with education degrees and three with English

degrees, and she sought to describe the differences in their teaching practices with regards to

reading. While she extrapolates from this study to make strong claims about the differences in

teachers' approaches to teaching based on their education, even within her own study, only two

of her three non-education majors conformed to the general arguments she made about teachers

who lacked pedagogical training. This leads me to believe that factors more than just college

major need to be examined to fully understand teachers’ orientations to reading. In fact, she

herself allows that “the differences between [the three English majors] illustrate the ways in

which specific conceptions of the subject matter, beliefs about teaching, and teaching context

contribute to a particular pedagogical understanding of the subject matter” (p. 51), rather than

educational background being the only variable. Her other suggested considerations – subject

matter, beliefs and context – are closely aligned with the sites of investigation for my study. I

believe that these variables take shape not only in university classrooms, but in family

experiences, friendships, individual encounters with texts, among many other sites of literary

meaning-making.

Holt-Reynolds’ work attended closely to pre-service teachers’ orientations to reading

(Holt-Reynolds, 1990). She did a comprehensive study of sophomore and junior education

majors in college who were training to be secondary English teachers. She used interviews about

several different components of personal content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge

to paint a comprehensive picture of the prospective teachers’ orientations to reading and the

classroom. As in my work, she investigated each participant’s history with the discipline. She

also created interviews aimed at understanding each student’s definitions of literature, literary

50 stances, and teacher roles. She concluded that personal academic expertise in the content area did

not carry over to pedagogical content knowledge. This is an important relationship to investigate,

but needs to be extended to teachers who have some experience in the classroom. Several studies

of teacher expertise track important pedagogical changes in teachers’ knowledge as they gain

more years of experience (e.g. Berliner, 1994; Sherin, under reviewa), indicating that teachers

learn on the job. This would suggest that content knowledge might begin to have an impact on

classroom practice only once pedagogical lessons are learned through practice. Certain

impediments to fully enacting content knowledge in pedagogy may exist, but perhaps we cannot

comprehensively study this when blinded by the severe obstacles to effective teaching that all

novice teachers face.

Other work has connected teachers “conceptions of reading” to their reading practice in

the classroom (Anders, 1994; O'Brian & Norton, 1991), but many of these studies were done

with elementary teachers and focused on beliefs about acquiring reading competency and skills,

rather than the more sophisticated notions of “reading to learn” or engaging with literature that

we hope to see at the high school level. Anders and Evans’ study did attempt to understand

teachers’ beliefs about texts, an inquiry this work shares, but their interest is how the influence of

beliefs about texts on the teaching of reading changed as a result of an intervention, rather than

how they existed independently of researcher input.

Finally, Hines and Appleman, in a series of three related studies with high school and

college teachers, examined “the relations between the teachers’ commitments to literary and

pedagogical theories and the dynamics of classroom instruction.” This work is closely related to

the work of this project, in that it defines a range of literary stances and explores how they take

shape in experienced teachers’ classrooms. The researchers do not attempt to understand the

51 ways in which their participants’ “commitments” took shape, and they somewhat narrowly

define teachers’ reading orientations as well-defined literary theories. While their analysis

helped me identify potential places of intersection between personal literary theory and

instruction, I allowed the participants’ literary orientations to be somewhat more nuanced and

less rigidly defined.

Overall, these studies suggest that personal knowledge and practice with reading should

be studied in connection with teachers’ reading instruction in the classroom; however, new

directions need to be pursued to expand the typical sample and study of reading practice in more

authentic settings, rather than as a response to professional development. This research is a step

in examining these issues in an authentic setting with a varied selection of teachers.

The most similar research to my current study is Zancanella's study of five middle school

English teachers’ “personal approaches” to literature and their teaching of literature (Zancanella,

1991). Unlike the research I have described until this point, Zancanella does not rely exclusively

on an intervention or university coursework to provide an understanding of teachers’ personal

orientations to reading. While his work shares many of the same questions underlying my study,

however, his study takes a few different approaches. First, Zancanella’s study did not attempt to

categorize teachers’ personal approaches or identify specific variables in practice to relate to

these approaches. Rather, the study is descriptive and narrative in conveying its findings. While

this is useful exploratory research, research that builds on this work with more potentially

explanatory variables and mixed methods may allow for larger sample sizes, the findings of

which may be more generalizable. Second, Zancanella's study did not investigate the effects of

teachers’ personal approaches or classroom practices on students. The importance of these

findings will have more impact if there are clear implications for student learning. Finally,

52 Zancanella noted an important, yet unexpected finding that emerged from the data: the impact of

a state-mandated assessment on all of the teachers’ pedagogies (Zancanella, 1992). My research

benefits from his findings, as I paid special attention this potential mediating factor in teacher

surveys and observations. I also expand the scope of potential mediating factors under study; in

addition to external assessments, I include measures of pedagogical content knowledge, beliefs

about students, and federal, state, district, and department curricular and policy initiatives;

pedagogical content knowledge; and beliefs about students; all of which influence teaching.

One other notable study is very close to the work I describe here. Muchmore (2001)

conducted an ethnography of a teacher colleague of his, and included extensive life history

interviews with not only the teacher participant, but with her family, friends and colleagues as

well. He found that “there were long-standing beliefs [about literature] that were generally

rooted in her personal life experiences which transcended school,” and that these beliefs were

related to her instructional practices. This case study reinforced many of my hypotheses as I

began my work, and I hope that my work can extend this kind of inquiry to a wider range of

teachers.

53 Chapter Three: Methodology

As my study sought ways to holistically capture various aspects of teachers’ personal

relationships with reading, I used a variety of methods and collected a range of data to

comprehensively investigate this often-private relationship.

Study Overview

I conducted the study over a 15-month period. I sought to uncover answers to a range of

questions, focused not only on teachers’ cultural resources for literary understanding, but how

those resources were used or ignored in the face of instruction, what variables mediated the use

of personal resources, and how and when the personal orientations shaped by those resources

were appropriated by students.

Summer Fall Winter Spring Summer Reading Life Story Interviews (n=9)

2 Classroom Observations (n=9)

2 Classroom Observations (n=9)

2 Classroom Observations (n=9)

Video-based Teaching Interview (n=9)

Teacher Survey (n=9)

Student Survey (September) (n=approx 450)

Student Survey (June) (n=approx 450)

Using a variety of data sources allowed me to paint a nuanced and holistic understanding

of each teacher. To help define teachers’ personal orientations to reading, the Reading Life

Story interview and a survey about personal and professional experiences with reading were

administered to nine teachers. Those nine teachers were observed teaching six times over the

course of the year, which allowed me to see ways in which teachers’ personal approaches to

reading were manifested in instruction. In September and again in June, the teachers’ students

were given surveys about their personal and academic relationships with texts. This provided

me with data about the influence of different kinds of readers on their students. At the end of the

54 year, teachers were interviewed using video and artifacts from their classrooms. This gave me

insight into teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge. This interview was also an opportunity to

triangulate early hypotheses with the teachers themselves. Fuller descriptions of each element of

the study are provided later in this chapter.

Sample and Recruitment

Using snowball sampling, I began soliciting participants for the study though teacher and

administrator friends and colleagues and made subsequent connections with other high school

English teachers from those initial contacts. Once I made a contact with a teacher at one school,

I received permission from the English department chair to contact all other teachers in the

department. In this way, I sought to avoid particular teacher networks, though not surprisingly,

groups of friends often volunteered together. While the sample is not random, it does include a

range of teachers.

Study Participants

Nine high school English teachers took part in the study, included five women and four

men, eight white teachers and one African American. At the start of the study, two of the

participants had 2-3 years of teaching experience, four had 4-6 years of experience, and three had

7-10 years of experience. Two teachers had their bachelor’s degree with some graduate work,

and the rest had at least one master’s degree. One participant was a doctoral candidate in

literature. All of the teachers had majored in English as undergraduates.

The nine teachers were equally divided between three schools. Two schools were part of

the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), and one was a public school from a western suburb of

55 Chicago. One CPS school, Greenwood16, was a charter school on the south side of the city,

which required application for admission, though it took most of its students from the

surrounding neighborhood. The small population of less than 400 students was 95% African

American and 5% Latino. Ninety-five percent of the study body was classified as “low income”

and less than 1% was classified as “limited English proficient”

(http://research.cps.k12.il.us/resweb). The school’s mission was devoted to university

preparation, and 62% of the students graduated in five years, with 51% enrolling in post

secondary education. Fifteen percent of the student body met or exceeded a passing score on the

state standardized test (Prairie State Achievement Exam, PSAE) and the school did not make

“adequate yearly progress” according to the standards of “No Child Left Behind.” One hundred

percent of the teaching faculty was considered “highly qualified”

(http://www.cps.k12.il.us/Schools/scorecard).

The other CPS school, Cantor, was on the “near west” side of the city. The considerably

larger student body of more than 3,000 students was more diverse than Greenwood’s, with 62%

of the population being Latino, 22% African American, and the remaining students divided

between Caucasian, Asian American and other ethnic and racial groups. Eight percent of the

student body was classified as “Limited English Proficient,” and 87% of the student body was

classified as “low income” (http://research.cps.k12.il.us/resweb). Thirty-four percent of the

student body met or exceeded a passing score on the state standardized test (PSAE) and the

school did not make “adequate yearly progress” according to the standards of No Child Left

Behind. Eighty-seven percent of the teaching faculty was considered “highly qualified”

(http://www.cps.k12.il.us/Schools/scorecard).

16 All school names are pseudonyms.

56 Cantor housed three special programs, the International Baccalaureate Program, the

Performing and Fine Arts Program, and the Vocational/Technical Program, each of which

required special application for admission. These programs allowed students from outside the

neighborhood and accounted for 70% of the student population. The other 30% came from the

surrounding “mandatory attendance area” (Cantor school website17).

The third school, Highland West, was located in a suburb approximately twenty miles

southwest of Chicago. The school’s website describes the surrounding area as “primarily a

middle and upper middle class residential suburban area.” The student body was made up of

1,890 students, of whom 71% were Caucasian, 8.5% were African American, 8.5% were Latino,

and 12% were Asian American (Highland West school website). The Highland teachers

mentioned to me on a few occasions that the Caucasian label was somewhat misleading, as a

portion of the white student population were first or second generation Polish immigrants. Based

on classroom observations, I believe that this was also the case for many white students at Cantor

High School.

Ninety-seven percent of Highland’s students completed high school, with 64% attending

a four-year university and 33% continuing at two-year colleges (Highland West school website).

Ten percent of the student body is designated as “limited English proficient,” and four percent

are considered “low income” (Highland West school website). All of Highland’s teachers are

considered “highly qualified” (Highland West school website). The school did not make

“adequate yearly progress” according to No Child Left Behind, though in a letter to parents, the

school explained that this was due to less than 55% of one demographic group, in this case

“students with disabilities,” failing the PSAE. Over 55% of the rest of the school population did 17 In order to maintain the anonymity of the schools, I have not included the schools’ web addresses.

57 achieve a passing score (Highland West school website).

These teachers come from a range of schools, representing urban and suburban areas,

ethnically diverse and racially homogeneous student bodies, as well as a range of academic

success, according to national standards and college acceptance rates. While not a random

sample, I have surveyed teachers from a diverse array of settings, hopefully representative of a

variety of teaching contexts.

Introductory Biographies18

In the next two chapters of the dissertation, I present four in-depth cases of teachers from

the study, as well as aggregated data from all of the teachers. To provide some sense of the

individual teachers, I introduce them here with short biographies that give an overview of their

educational and professional backgrounds.

Greenwood:

Don: Don was the department chair at Greenwood. He had taught for eight years in

public schools in Chicago and Boston, after several years of work in other fields, including

bartending and non-for-profit work. He triple majored in English, psychology, and Education,

with a minor in history, and he held two masters degrees, one in Liberal Studies and on ein

Education Administration.

Sally: Sally had taught between four and six years, in elementary and secondary schools.

She had worked in various jobs before teaching, primarily as a filmmaker. She was an English

major in college, with concentrations in poetry and visual arts. She also taught media studies

courses.

18 The names of all teachers and schools have been changed to protect privacy.

58 Dennis: Dennis had taught between seven and ten years in public high schools and

community colleges. At the time of the study, he was also the English and Speech Department

chair at a local community college, and he worked full time both at Greenwood and at the

community college. He had been an English major with a minor in American studies. He had a

master’s degree in education and had been a doctoral candidate in English before becoming a

teacher.

Cantor:

Samantha: Samantha had taught in public schools for between seven and ten years. The

year after the study, she became department chair at Cantor. She majored in English in college

and had a Master of Teaching degree. She began teaching immediately following her schooling,

and held no other jobs in between. She was heavily involved in teacher research and regularly

presented at professional conferences.

Lucy: Lucy had taught for between seven and ten years at public schools, including one

start-up charter school before coming to Cantor. She was an English major in college, with an

English education minor. She had a Master of Teaching degree and had been involved in a

university-based social justice program through which she took extensive coursework in critical

theory and curriculum. For several years prior to becoming a teacher, she had worked in non-

for-profit organizations.

Doug: At the time of the study, Doug had taught between four and six years. He had an

English Bachelor of Arts degree and a master’s degree in Education. Before teaching, he had

spent a year in the service industry. The year after the study, he left teaching to care for his

daughter full time.

Highland West:

59 Brad: Brad had taught for five years at the time of the study, beginning his teaching

career at an all-boys private Catholic school before coming to Highland West. He was an

English major in college with a history minor, and he had a master’s degree in Education. He

did not work in any other fields prior to becoming a teacher.

Kelly: Kelly19 had taught for three years at the time of the study. She double-majored in

English and psychology as an undergraduate, with a minor in horticulture. She had a Master of

Teaching degree. Prior to her teaching career, Kelly had worked at in a non-for-profit

organization devoted to writing and publishing.

Nancy: Nancy was the most novice teacher in the study, having taught for two years at

the time of the study. She had a bachelor’s degree in English, with a minor in English education.

She had taken additional graduate courses in reading and learning disabilities, and had held no

other jobs prior to becoming a teacher.

Data Collection and Analysis

As my study examined three questions relating to teachers’ personal lives, their

instruction, and their students, it necessitated a range of methods and types of data. The complex

relationship between teachers, students, and texts needed to be examined from a variety of

perspectives, both to understand the nuances of the relationship, as well as to triangulate my

findings amongst varied data sources and methodological approaches. Detailed descriptions of

each method of data collection and the means of analyzing that data follow.

19 While I established close relationships with all of the teachers in the study, I was friendly with Kelly before the study began. She had been my teaching assistant for a summer school course, and we occasionally saw each other socially outside of work.

60 Life Story Interview

Interview Development and Administration

The research program began by conducting reading life story20 interviews, as adapted

from McAdams instrument, with nine21 high school English teachers. McAdams asserts

“identity is a life story,” as “people living in modern societies provide their lives with unity and

purpose by constructing internalized and evolving narratives of the self” (McAdams, 2001).

These narratives take “the form of stories, complete with setting, scenes, character, plot and

theme” (McAdams, 2001),22 a form that suggests the life stories interview format.23 The life

stories interview asks subjects to act as “storytellers” of their lives, and in doing to so, to recount

different moments and influences, spanning their life course, with attention to particular high and

low points, earliest memories, significant turning points, vision of the future, among others.

I modified my interview for English teachers about reading in line with Drake’s

adjustments for math teachers (Drake, 2000). Rather than asking about the highest or lowest

point in the subject’s life, for example, I asked about the highest or lowest point related to

reading. I departed from Drake's modifications, however, in that her focus was on math teachers'

experiences with both math teaching and the subject of math itself. For the purpose of this study,

the reading life story interview specifically focused on the content of reading in the subject’s

20 See Appendix A for a full version of the Reading Life Story Interview. 21 In addition to these nine interviews, I conducted two preliminary pilot interviews and four interviews that were intended to be included as part of the main study. I excluded the four interviews from the data analysis, because the interviewees’ school did not allow me to observe teaching or collect data on students. I only analyzed interviews for which I had corresponding classroom observations. The pilot interviews were conducted with graduate students who had formerly been teachers. One had been a history teacher, as my initial interest was to examine how English and Social Studies teachers approached reading differently. Upon seeing how rich these initial interviews were, I decided to focus exclusively on English teachers, for fear that I would encounter too many variables between the two disciplines. In future work, I would like to use a similar frame to this study with teachers across the content areas. 22 This conception of story as a psychological organizing or structuring principle for narrative and personal experience is echoed in work by Labov & Waletzky (1967), Bruner (1990), Turner (1996), among others. 23 See Appendix A.

61 personal life, not reading as it related to the classroom or teaching, although many subjects

discussed the teaching of certain texts in some of their answers. As the study sought to isolate the

personal and pedagogical variables to determine a relationship between them, it was important

that they were introduced separately to the teacher.

I used limited prompts beyond the initial, open-ended questions outlined in the interview.

Generally, I showed my engagement with the interviewee and encouraged her to continue talking

by interjecting short phrases, such as “interesting,” “yes,” or, “right,” and nodding. In addition,

if something seemed unclear, I would refer back to the specific statement or reference, and ask

for clarification. For example, if a participant mentioned a term I did now know, I would ask,

“What did you mean by ?” If the interviewee did not answer the complete question once

she finished speaking, I would reiterate that part of the prompt. For example, often participants

would describe an episode, but not relate it to themselves as a reader today. Upon the

completion of such an answer, I might say, “That’s an interesting story. How might you relate it

to yourself as a reader today?” In these ways I sought to limit my influence over the direction or

nature of the interview and allow the open-ended answers to unfold in natural directions. I

believe the diversity of types of response and the general length of response demonstrates the

success of my limited intervention.

In total, I analyzed nine reading life stories for this study. I administered all of the

interviews, which were audio-taped. I also took notes during the interviews, to the extent that it

did not interfere with the natural flow of the interview and my interaction with the interviewee.

My notes allowed me to record my early impressions of the participants and the interview. The

interviews ranged dramatically in length, from the shortest being just over an hour, to the longest

being close to three hours.

62

Reading Life Story Analysis

One of the strengths of the life story interviews also presented a significant challenge.

The detailed and diverse episodes that composed the participants’ life stories allowed for

nuanced and rich descriptions of teachers’ reading lives, as well as fertile ground for many

potentially important variables. Therein lay one of the great trials of analyzing these interviews:

which variables should I investigate, and once applied, which codes held the most explanatory

potential? The following coding schemes emerged as having the most explanatory power, as

well as having the greatest implications for pedagogy. They came as a result of two years of

testing different coding schemes, both as a collaborative effort within a research team, as well as

in individual dialogue with the literature and the data.

I analyzed the reading life story interviews through an iterative process that balanced a

theory-driven approach with grounded theory. I began my initial reads of the interviews without

codes, open to what themes would emerge. As I discovered emerging trends, I looked to existing

analytical frames that approximated the emerging themes to see if they would comprehensively

account for patterns in the data. Certain codes, in particular Bakan’s agency and communion

codes (as adopted and elaborated by McAdams, 2002), were suggested by the format, and thus

attempted early in the process. As I was interesting specifically in reading identity, I looked to

research and theory on literary stances, English content knowledge, and literary complexity. In

the end, my codes reflect a range of appropriation, from some sets of codes taken almost directly

from previous research, many modified from existing coding schemes, and some which emerged

solely from this study’s data.

As my questions about teachers’ personal reading identities encompassed issues of both

63 literature and identity, codes typically used in both literary and psychological studies were used

to analyze the interviews. These aspects of the life story interviews were analyzed separately,

then holistically compared to see what kinds of relationships existed between the two constructs.

How does a person’s reading identity relate their understanding of literature? Might literature be

a vehicle for an English teacher’s construction of her identity? In many ways, this connection

between identity and literature emerges naturally from the foundations of Lee’s Cultural

Modeling framework; for Lee, ethnic identity is rooted in community practices and membership

(Lee, 2007). To understand reading identity in this case, we must understand the cultures of

reading that shape that literary identity.

In the following sections, I detail the codes I used to analyze the reading life story

interviews. Two sets of codes were used to analyze the interviews with the goal of

characterizing teachers’ personal reading orientations. First, consistent with McAdams’ analysis

of life stories, I distinguished between agency-oriented and communion-oriented readers. Next, I

employed codes based in the work of Grossman (1991), Probst (1987), and Smagorinsky (2001),

where I analyzed whether teachers’ responses were more text-centered or reader-centered.

Within the text-centered comments, I looked for the complexity of literary reasoning, based on

Hillocks’ “taxonomy of skills in reading and interpreting fiction” (1984), and range of kinds of

literary works invoked. For the reader-centered codes, I used Probst’s guidelines for students’

engagement with texts (1987) to further detail the analysis. Finally, I analyzed the relative

coherence of the types of answers within interviews. Each set of codes is discussed in more

detail below.

Agency & Communion. The themes of agency and communion are borrowed from

64 McAdam’s own appropriation of the terms from Bakan (1966). McAdams explains,

Agency refers to the separation of the individual from and mastery of the individual over the environment, subsuming such overlapping motifs as power, autonomy, achievement, control, and isolation. Agency denotes story material in which characters assert, expand, or protect themselves as autonomous and active “agents.” Communion refers to union of the individual with the environment and the surrender of the individual to a larger whole, covering such motifs as intimacy, love, reconciliation, caring, and merger…Life stories may be compared and contrasted, therefore, with respect to the degree to which the thematic lines of agency and communion dominate the text.

In my early reads of the life story interviews, I noticed a trend where some readers spoke almost

exclusively of themselves and the text in their episodes, whereas others spoke of reading as an

activity in which one engaged or was engaged by others. This suggested to me that applying the

agency and communion codes might be appropriate, and in fact they successfully captured this

and other salient aspects of the stories.

McAdams refined each of the two major codes to encompass four more defined themes

(1996). I’ve outlined the codes and themes below, including excerpts from McAdams’

definitions (2002), as well as typical examples from my own data.

Code/Theme Description Example from Reading Life Story Agency: Achievement/ Responsibility

“The protagonist…reports substantial success in the achievement of tasks, jobs, instrumental goals, or in the assumption of important responsibilities.”

I finished reading Joyce’s Ulysses, and it was course, you know, anytime you read any text of that magnitude, it’s sort of an Everest in the sense for a reader…I actually finished, what I felt at the time, was probably the best paper I had written, because to me it demonstrated a thorough understanding of the work that I had done reading, as a reader…The fact that was actually able to wrap my head around it and to be able to say something that I felt like was somewhat intelligent about the topic on a piece of paper, to me, really meant a lot.

Agency: Power/Impact “The protagonist asserts him- or herself in a powerful way and thereby has a strong impact on other people or on the world more generally.”

I never really thought of myself as being a fluent reader…but because this was the first time that I had been in a group of people who weren't fluent readers, and showing them that skill that I had, and, you know,

65 seeing that it inspired them.

Agency: Self-insight “The story protagonist attains a clear, new, and important insight about him or herself through the event. As a result of this experience, the protagonist feels that he or she has become wiser, more mature, or more fully actualized as a person.”

He asked us to list books that we’ve read, great books, books that we’ve read that were really good…So this big list goes on the board and I look up at the list and I’m like, there’s no black people on this list, there’s no women on this list. So I’m trying to think of some books that I’ve read that would diversify the list that’s on the board and I can’t think of any books that I’ve read that would diversify that list!... my cultural identity was not necessarily, it was important to me, but it wasn’t something that I saw in a practical sense… I didn’t necessarily locate that and like cultural things, like what I read, and what I, you know, like how that influenced me, and I didn’t, and I don’t think it became an issue until that class, and that point of time, when I saw that on the board…Because, then after that, of course, African American, Latino, Native American literature, I kind of started reading all these different things to kind of open it up, what I read.

Agency: Status/Victory “The protagonist attains a heightened status or prestige among his or her peers, through receiving a special recognition or honor or winning a contest or competition. The implication in SV is that status or victory is achieved vis-à-vis others.”

It was just such a huge undertaking, writing was so hard and that it all came down to how long I read these texts in the first place. Anyway, our teacher handed them back with a scowl on her face, she was a woman that intimidated us but made up work so hard. She said that nobody in the class did even close to what she wanted, and she said except for one paper, and she held it up. I was thinking what if this was mine, like could it be mine, but this was the moment that defined whether or not I was a confident student, or wanna-be inferior one. And she said that KW did it perfectly, she said that I wish you guys could all read hers, she did exactly what I wanted, she has very few revisions, and she handed it to me and looked me in the eye and said “wonderful.”

Communion: Love/ Friendship

“A protagonist experiences an enhancement of love or friendship toward another person.”

…I mentioned I have a stepdaughter, and we’ve taken a lot of driving trips my husband, her, and I and we always read. We either get books on tape, but more often we read to each other…because reading is so often a very private and solitary activity that when it makes a connection between myself, and especially someone that I’m already so close to, it’s a very strengthening thing.

Communion: Dialogue “A character in the story experiences a Growing up, again this is high school

66 reciprocal and non-instrumental form of communication or dialogue with another person or group of others.”

friend, who was very smart, and she would always go to the library to get books. Libraries are nice, and I’m really glad we have them, but I don’t like libraries, I don’t like borrowing a book, I’d rather buy it, even if I end up not liking a book, which is pretty rare. I’m a book collector. So this isn’t one particular instance, but I remember having lots of conversations with her about this, why would you spend your money to do that, you can just go get it at the library.

Communion: Caring/Help “The protagonist reports that he or she provides care, assistance, nurturance, help, aid, support, or therapy for another, providing for the physical, material, social, or emotional welfare or well-being of the other. Instances of receiving such care from others also qualify for CH.”

And then I got the quiz back and I got a D on it and I never had a D. And so I was really upset by it and I can remember not being able to focus in class, I was so upset because she gave it back at the beginning of class. And at the end she said she wanted to see me, and I was like “Oh, no, this is awful.” And she said, “you know this. I know that you know this I can tell from the way you are in class you just didn’t demonstrate that on the quiz…you can still definitely get an A in this class, but I know that you know this.” And, just even that little encouragement was enough that, by the next time I got an A and I ended up with an A in the class.

Communion: Unity/ Togetherness

“Whereas the communal themes of LF, DG, and CH tend to specify particular relationships between the protagonist and one or a few other people, the theme of Unity/Togetherness captures the communal idea of being part of a larger community.”

…she loaned me the book I never gave it back; it became part of my personal library. Um, you know, it’s, it’s a share and a knowledge that if I read a book that’s really good I want to tell somebody else about it. I want them to also read it. I want to have a conversation about it…I saw it kind of as a community of, of readers, people also want to read things, just like you. Like, well I know you like the Hobbit so you’re going to like these other books too so just go ahead and go get them and go read those too.

Each response to a prompt from the reading life stories was analyzed for evidence of each of the

eight themes by a team of three coders. Two undergraduate education majors joined me as part

of this process. The two undergraduates each read an article by McAdams to give then some

background on the Life Story narrative approach. I guided them through the coding of one

reading life story, at which time I helped define the categories and answer their questions about

the process. Then we each analyzed two stories on our own and compared our results. Where

67 we differed in our coding, we determined if the discrepancies were a matter of having different

opinions, or if any of us did not clearly understanding the codes. Once we all felt comfortable

with the process and the codes, we then reanalyzed the first three interviews, along with the final

six interviews. We compiled our scores, and where we differed, we discussed our differences,

and came either to a consensus or majority opinion. There were no occasions where each of us

assigned and was committed to a different code.

I am aware that there were inescapable issues of hierarchy embedded in the process, as I

was an advanced doctoral student and the other coders were undergraduates, and furthermore I

was their employer, as I paid them for their time. Nonetheless, I encouraged the coders to

disagree with me, and on several occasions where we disagreed, I was not only swayed to their

interpretation, but was convinced of a new meaning for a code.

We departed somewhat from McAdams’ coding, where a code is either present or not

present (receiving a score of “1” or “0”). In our data analysis, if more than one code was clearly

present in the episode, we determined if those multiple codes were equally important, or if some

codes seemed more salient than others. If the latter were the case, then the primary code

received a score of “2,” where the secondary codes received a score of “1.” If there were only

one score or multiple, equally important scores, then those scores all received “2.” In the end,

the themes were added together for total agency and communion scores. This modification came

as a result of the research groups’ dissatisfaction with giving codes equal scores when some

codes were clearly more central than others in many of the episodes. For example, in one of

Denis’ episodes, he describes a scene where a cousin gave him The Hobbit, which he read and

loved. He describes that moment as a catalyst for wanting to share books with others and

become part of and create a “community of readers.” The majority of the episode is devoted to a

68 discussion of his “community of readers,” and the coders felt that “unity and togetherness” was

the over-arching theme. He begins the episode, however, by talking about his cousin sharing a

book with him, and he goes on to mention moments where he gives books to others, including

his students, who he believes will enjoy them. This clearly felt like “caring and helping” to us,

but while it was an important narrative piece of the episode, “caring and helping” did not seem to

be the overarching point of the episode, which was to describe his community of readers. Hence,

“unity and togetherness” received a score of two, while “caring and helping” received a score of

one.

During out first complete round of coding, all three coders shared a 60% inter-rater

reliability score on each of the specific themes. Ninety-four percent of the time two of the three

coders agreed on the primary code. Seventy-six percent of the time all three coders agreed on

the same communion or agency orientation for the primary code, but not the specific theme

therein. After discussion and collaboration, we came to agreement on all but one code, with a

99% rater agreement.

While the interview includes eight prompts – high point, nadir, turning point, earliest

memory, important childhood memory, important adolescent memory, important adult memory,

one other important memory – not all life stories had eight episodes. I originally defined an

episode as one complete answer to a prompt. Some participants chose not to respond to certain

prompts, often because they said they could not remember a reading story that accurately

responded to a particular period of their lives, most often childhood. On a few occasions the

coding group determined that an episode did not adequately address reading. These stories had

fewer episodes than those than included reading-related responses to all of the prompts. In other

instances, the group determined that a response to one prompt actually contained more than one

69 complete story. Often the two stories had a related theme, but described two separate

happenings, at two different time points, that were each cohesive units unto themselves. In these

cases, we counted each episode separately. For example, in response to the “turning point”

prompt, NB first describes a moment in childhood when she read a novel by Judy Blume, and for

the first time, felt empathy for a character. She explains, “oh my gosh, I understand these

people, and like really feel like this connectedness with them.” She then goes onto to describe a

scene later in childhood, when she observes her mother reading The Firm, a decidedly “adult

book,” and realizes that she too can read a “four hundred and some page” book, and she does.

These were clearly both turning points for her, but for two different reasons. After reading Judy

Blume, NB realizes that she can have an emotional experience reading and that characters in a

book may be similar to her. We ultimately coded this scene as “unity and togetherness” scene.

The second story was about accomplishment, a feeling of “wow, I can do this!,” which was

coded as “accomplishment and responsibility.”

Often when there were two separate stories for one prompt, the coders initially disagreed

on the primary code, as one coder would elect the primary code for one scene, and the other two

coders would place the primary code on the other scene. Once we realized that several responses

included two separate stories and redefined the unit of analysis as a complete story, much of our

disagreement was settled.

Another major modification to McAdams’ protocol was the eventual elimination of the

“self-insight” code. All three coders expressed dissatisfaction with the self-insight code as it

related to the other mastery codes. Whereas achievement/responsibility, status/victory and

power/impact all involved the individual asserting herself vis-à-vis others, episodes involving

self-insight were often solitary. Additionally, self-insight was often employed in service of other

70 codes, particularly communal themes. For example, self-insight often led to aligning with a

particular community or realizing love or appreciation for another person. As these

consequences of self-insight were often in service of an expression of communion, the self-

insight code seemed to offset the communion orientation. Finally, the most disagreement over

codes occurred with self-insight codes. I do not know if this was a result of our

misunderstanding of the self-insight code to begin with, or the particular way in which this theme

was manifested in stories about reading. Nonetheless, the totals were calculated both with and

without the “self-insight” theme. In the larger scheme of the data, larger trends were more

evident once “self-insight” was eliminated.

Reader-Centered & Text-Centered. In addition to the agency and communion

orientation, I wanted to capture something about the way the teachers orientated themselves to

literature. There are many analytical frames that one could adopt to capture a subject’s reading

orientation. I have outlined a spectrum of reading stances from focusing almost exclusively on

the reader (i.e. Probst, Rosenblatt), to balancing reader and text in a dialogical reading

(Smagorinsky), to concentrating singularly on the text, be it the structure, the form, or the

meaning (as outlined by Anderson, 1977; Hines, 2002). I have also described a similar spectrum

of literary criticism that ranges from an exclusive focus on the text as the site of meaning-making

to the reader as the agent of interpretation. Both approaches to categorizing reading orientations

contain a duality between text and reader, which became an important aspect of my analysis of

teachers’ reading orientations. While I recognize that these collapsed codes of “reader-focused”

and “text-focused” gloss over important distinctions within each category, any more detail would

have obscured trends in this small sample of participants. Hence, I analyzed each episode of the

71 life story to determine if the goal of the reading episode was reader-based or text-based. For

example, if the goal of reading a book was to feel closer to a friend or family member who also

read the book, then the goal was reader-based. If the goal of reading was to better understand

how the author achieved a particular effect, then the goal was text-based. Of course, people read

with a variety of goals and intentions; however, I was curious as to what teachers focused on in

their descriptions of reading activities. This was not a matter of coming to a complete

understanding of how the teacher read a text. A more useful means for such understanding

might be a talk-aloud protocol with a teacher while she read a short story or poem. Instead, I

was interested in how teachers thought of themselves as readers, and how they described

themselves in relation to texts was a useful proxy for this.

I should note that focusing on the goal of the reading episode came after several other

attempts to capture the idea of a text- or reader-centered experience. I first began coding with an

eye to determining if the text or the reader was privileged as the authority for interpretation. I

found too little description of the act of literary interpretation to meaningfully use this code. I

also attempted to analyze whether the goal of the episode – for example, to gain a better

understand of one’s place in the world – was achieved through the text or through the experience

of reading the text. For example, some teachers described gaining insight through an

understanding of the characters or the author’s message of a text, which would be text-based.

Other readers described gaining insight as a result of their interaction with a teacher or family

member who guided their reading of a text. This would merit an “act of reading”-based code.

While I coded all of the interviews with these text- and “act of reading”-based codes, in the end,

the codes held little explanatory power. I could not draw meaningful comparisons between the

teachers using these codes, nor did they seem to correlate with the agency and communion

72 codes. Hence, I abandoned that aspect of the analysis.

Once I determined that the goal of the reading episode – be it text-based or reader-based

– was a fruitful analytical path, I added several sub-codes to help determine the nature of goal

and the resultant reading experience. Clearly there are many ways to engage either a text-based

or reader-based goal. Because of the paucity of work exploring personal reading orientations, I

began choosing sub-codes based on themes suggested for literature instructors. For text-based

codes, I looked to Hillocks’ “taxonomy of skills in reading and interpreting fiction” (1984). He

outlines a hierarchy of complexity in interpretation, which begins with “basic stated

information,” which is drawn directly from the text, and “key details,” which isolate important

information, but still requires little inferencing. The hierarchy then moves into a more

interpretive realm, encompassing both “simple” and “complex implied relationships,” which

require either local or global inferencing. Towards the top of the taxonomy, Hillocks places

“author’s generalization,” which requires the reader to glean the author’s larger point from the

text as a whole. Finally, a “structural generalization…require[s] that a reader explains how parts

of the work operate together to achieve certain effects.” While this was a useful starting point,

when I applied only these codes to assess the depth with which teachers discussed texts in their

interviews, I found several important aspects of literary reasoning unaccounted for. On multiple

occasions, participants spoke about issues of intertextuality, either relating two different works to

one another, or speaking in larger terms about an entire genre, literary period, geographical

literary community, or an author’s body of work. Generally, these discussions encompassed

many of the same higher-order inferencing attributes involved in structural generalization or

authors’ generalization, so I placed these at the top of the taxonomy as well.

To account for teachers’ reader-centered approaches, I looked to Probst’s suggestion of

73 the elements that should make up teachers’ questions about reading. Unlike Hillocks’ primarily

text-centered approach, Probst mainly focuses on how literature relates to the world outside of

the text. He believes the goals for reading literature should include students learning about

themselves, about others, about other cultures and societies, about “how texts operate” in order

to “shape our thought and manipulate our emotion,” about how context shapes meaning, and

about “the processes by which we make literary meaning out of texts.” I appropriated these

goals for student learning as a means to characterize the ways in which readers engage with texts

beyond the text itself. Even those more text-centered goals, such as thinking about how texts

operate, include the reader as a key component of the reading experience.

Ultimately, my coding of this aspect of the life story interviews delineated between a

focus on the text itself or a focus the act of reading in a larger context. I think that it is important

to reiterate that this dichotomy is rarely, if ever, so concrete. Hillocks repeatedly makes the

point that readers must use personal and real-world knowledge to solve higher-order rhetorical

problems, and Probst – to some degree – establishes that the student should understand a text’s

intended meaning. I found, however, that when I focused the reader’s goals in each episode, I

was able to disambiguate a clear purpose, either in terms of a textual problem or a personal one.

Is the reader’s goal to make meaning of the text, or does she use the text as a way to make

meaning in her own life? Did the reader strive to come to a “correct” understanding of the text

according to a literary tradition or academic community or to develop a deeper understanding of

herself as a person? Further, the content of the episodes often echoed the reader’s motivation.

Did the life story episodes detail textual features or the relationships or personal journeys that

were inspired by those textual features?

Below I provide excerpts of the most frequently occurring types of text-centered and

74 reader-centered episodes.

Code/Theme Example

Text-centered: Basic stated information Information drawn directly from the text with no inferences required.

…we were reading Gabrielle García Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. I got to the end, like I was really, I was totally sucked into the book, as much as it frustrated me to have to go back to look at the stupid family tree to figure out which character was it really that I was thinking about in the moment, because they are all the same…

Text-centered: Implied relationships Information gleaned from the text as a result of local or global inferencing.

Brutus, uh, has someone else stab him to die. And, it, and how that that showed his cowardice, and, um…Yea, Cassius, Cassius I think actually falls on his own sword, where as Brutus has one of his henchman actually run him through… Or something like that, and it got me to see that, you know, the author had made a choice about how they committed suicide to say something about the character.

Text-centered: Structural generalization Making a structural generalization “require[s] that a reader explains how parts of the work operate together to achieve certain effects” (Hillocks, 1984).

…so I fell in love, and I was so like confounded by the fact that Bernice’s cousin had set this up the entire time, and that apparently, Fitzgerald had intended for us to figure it out, since Ms. Grunholtz is now pointing out all the clues, that I was like, F. Scott Fitzgerald is great… it was also the first time that somebody had pointed out to me that, and I wasn’t thinking that, thinking of it as like authors intent, but that author’s do things intentionally, and it’s not just a story that comes out kind of, comes out, the final edition isn’t what comes out the first time. You know like, authors can manipulate stuff, and they do.

Text-centered: Authorial generalization Understanding authorial generalizations requires the reader to glean the author’s larger point from the text as a whole.

And what’s been very interesting in the Clone Wars novels, and why some of them are almost literary, is that it looks at what that would do to someone. What war…they’re very anti-war, in that they show the horrors of war and they specifically how the horrors of war are taking these people who spent their whole lives focused on peace into becoming killers and how that’s changing them and destroying them, in one way or another. And that’s…[a] more complex and sophisticated adult theme, then just you know the hero against the bad guys to save the day… All the Clone Wars stuff there have been good guys and bad guys on both sides, um, and the cost of war and how it’s damaging to everybody.

Reader-centered: Knowing about ourselves Knowledge about oneself is new personal insight that comes about as a result of reflection on the themes presented and inspired by the text.

He assigned us to read On the Road by Jack Kerouac… I have never felt like I was similar to anyone. I was adopted and that might be part of why, but I never felt in my immediate family, I never felt like I belonged in my community, I never felt like I belonged, I never felt like I belonged at school. So this was, here was a person whose being, I was being taught about this person who wrote this book by someone who saw me as an individual, and who respected that. And then this guy

75 who wrote this book, was just like, “Ok I’ll see you later” and he just kind of left this place that he didn’t really feel comfortable, and sought out others who felt that same sense of displacement and they made their own community that was, you know went from here and here and everything in between. I really thought that that was really cool…

Reader-centered: Knowing about others Knowledge about others is new knowledge about other people, either those represented in the text or with whom the reader read the text, as a result of reading the text.

…reading that book sort of changed my whole life, like the path of my whole life, because…well it planted the seed of wanderlust in me and like it was you know very soon after that went on my first driving trip and I’ve taken probably a dozen driving trips around the country and my understanding of the way people relate to other people in the larger community of this country and the world came from reading that book.

Reader-centered: Knowing about contexts Knowledge about contexts involves understanding the multiple contexts, be they social, historical or geographic, which are represented by the text.

…So, I think it was during fifth grade, we used to, we got on this kick of the Civil War, and during that time I read, Uncle Tom’s Cabin… and Gone with the Wind for sure, and I think there was, for some reason, I want to say that there was a third book, and it may been because like Roots had just come out then, the miniseries, or North and South, but there was something going on in pop-culture around the Civil War. Kristine, from our school library now, checked out Gone with the Wind…

Reader-centered: Knowing about cultures and societies

Knowledge about cultures and societies is provided by texts that introduce the reader to new cultures and societies different from those of which the reader is already a part.

…my parents had some “Time Life” hardcover like special edition books in the cabinet in the bathroom. I don’t know why they were there, I don’t know why they got them, but there was like one that was like World War II, one that was on like, basically it was like bizarre and gruesome murders, one that was like, all kind of horrific things, and there would be, you know they were photo journals, so these like amazing black and white photos, and then this story that would go along with it. I remember it was almost like sneaking in to get it out, like when I finally discovered it, like sneaking into the cabinet, and pulling it out, and then being fascinated. Reading about World War II, and the Nazis, and the holocaust, and Hitler…

Each episode of the life story interview was holistically identified as being reader- or

text- centered. Many episodes embodied aspects of both. In these cases, as with the agency and

communion codes, I determined if the codes should have equal weight, of if one orientation was

more salient than the other. If both text- and reader-centered approaches were strongly evident,

they each received a score of “2.” If one was more salient than the other, the stronger code

received a score of “2,” while the weaker code received a score of “1.” If the code was not

76 present, it received a score of “0.” I totaled the scores to determine the extent to which the life

stories were reader- or text-centered. With the sub-codes, I gave a score of “1” if the code was

present in the episode, and added them together for a total score for each sub-code.

While this aspect of the life story interview was coded only by me, the codes were

developed together with a English teacher education undergraduate, who took a two-year

independent study with me, during which he read various articles by Grossman, Probst,

Rosenblatt and Hillocks and read over much of the data involved in the study. While I know an

ideal analysis would involve multiple readers, the constraints of the study did not allow for such

rigor.

Complexity. It has been well documented that rich and robust content knowledge is

necessary for pedagogical flexibility (i.e. Shulman), and that the lack of such flexibility impedes

successful adaptation of reform (i.e. Ball, Cohen).24 While I certainly do not think that the

reading life story interview is a perfect window into teachers’ content knowledge, I felt there

might be merit to analyzing the literary richness and range of the stories. I tried to capture issues

of complexity by analyzing two variables in the life story interviews: type of works read

(breadth) and levels of reading (breadth and depth).

While most pieces of writing elude a simple categorization, I ascribed some literary

classification to each specific text mentioned in the reading life stories. Where classification was

ambiguous, I conducted some research on the text to see how critiques have generally classified

24 An interesting side note is that McAdams (2004, 2007) found that people who tell more complex stories rate high on the psychological trait of “openness,” and often have more success in psychotherapy than those who tell less complex and nuanced stories. While there is hardly the evidence to make the connection between the two fields empirically, this relationship between complexity and openness in ego development may be consistent with the connection between complex thinking about content and curricular openness and flexibility.

77 it. My goal was not to restrict a text’s meaning or literary significance by categorizing it, but to

establish the breadth of literary variety in each story. Popular categories ranged from “children’s

literature,” which was popular in the early episodes, to post-modern literature, which often reared

its head in college and graduate school. Popular, canonical, anthologized, historical, political,

“world,” non-traditional and academic or theoretical literatures were all present as well. Where

fewer than five literary types were present in a reading life story, I classified the literary range as

low. Five to seven literary types established a “moderate” rating, and eight or more was

considered “high” in its range.

In addition to breadth, I was interested in the depth with which the texts were discussed.

While Hillocks’ categories helped established the nature of the text-based focus of the episodes,

they also helped describe how deeply the teachers discussed the texts. Upon early reads of the

interviews, I noticed that some teachers avoided engaging in almost any literary discussion at all,

while others ran straight to the “authorial” punch line, with little inferential explanation. Other

readers used the interview as an opportunity to relive meaning-making experiences by telling

stories that included both simple plot and character discussion, as well as, and often in service of,

more complex rhetorical and inferential discussion. For this category, I rated both the level of

the literary discussion, which accounted for how high on Hillocks’ taxonomy the episode

reached, and the number of levels the discussion, that is, how many levels did the teacher engage

in the course of discussing a text. “Basic stated information” and “key details” were considered

“basic,” implied relationships were considered “moderate,” and “authorial” and “structural

generalizations,” along with my added categories of intertextuality, genre, period, geography and

author, were considered “high.” If a teacher only discussed a piece of literature at one level, they

received a score of “1,” whereas if their discussion included “basic,” “moderate” and “high”

78 levels of literary reasoning, they received a score of “3.”

Combining the literary breadth and depth of the discussions gave me a score for each

reading life story’s complexity.

Coherence. In addition to investigating each participant’s communal or literary leaning, I

was interested in the extent to which these teachers’ stories were coherent. How strongly

oriented were these teachers in one direction or another? Did most episodes in a story return to

similar themes? I used the overall scores for the major codes of agency/communion and text-

centered/reader-centered to determine coherence. Ultimately, classifying the coherence of a text

helped me investigate if teachers who leaned strongly in one direction had a greater effect on

their students’ literary orientations than those teachers whose life stories were more balanced

between different orientations.

Teacher Questionnaire

I also asked the teachers to fill out a questionnaire about their personal and academic

reading experiences. The extensive questionnaire had over 200 multiple choice and fill-in

questions, and was divided into three sections: personal reading background, professional

teaching background, and school and department background. These sections collected

information about each teacher's education, experience teaching, experience with other jobs,

background information on her school and student body, interaction with the English department,

professional development, school and district assessment procedures, and personal and

professional reading practice. While a primary interest of the study is how teachers engaged in

reading outside the classroom, the other information is also part of the story and helps me situate

79 teachers’ personal orientations into the larger context of the teaching environment, in part acting

as a safeguard to understand what other factors influence how teachers approach reading in the

classroom beyond personal practice and reading identity. This is consistent with taking an

ecological approach to understanding each teacher.

The questionnaire models itself on a number of sources. Most of the questions regarding

school demographic questions and those concerning the educational backgrounds and

involvement with their departments come from 1969 study by the Illinois State-wide Curriculum

Study Center on "The teaching of reading by English teachers in public high schools: A national

survey" (McGuire, 1969) and the School and Staffing Survey from the National Center for

Educational Statistics (2003-2004), as well as some questions from the Study of Instructional

Improvement published by the University of Michigan (2001). Many of the questions about

reading practice come from the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, published by the

National Center for Education Statistics in 1992. As there were no questionnaires that I could

find that specifically probed teachers about their reading practice, many of these questions were

modified and supplemented to fit this particular sample.

Of primary interest in the analysis of the teacher background questionnaire were trends in

reading practice, as well as isolating any variables clearly correlated with reading practice, such

as educational background or interaction with other members of the English department. This

data source also serves to provide demographic information about teachers, their departments

and their schools.

I did not formally analyze these questionnaires in their entirety as their own unique

source of data. Rather I used the information from the questionnaires to bolster my

understanding of the life story interviews, provide general background information about

80 participants, and triangulate information I gleaned from other data sources. In the future, I would

like to return to these interviews and analyze them as their own data source.

Classroom Observations

Observation Protocol

After conducting the life story interviews with nine teachers and conducting an initial

analysis to assure that the teachers represented a range of personal reading orientations, I

observed the teachers teaching on three occasions. The observation days were evenly spaced

over the course of the school year, selectively chosen by the teacher and me as classes that

focused primarily on literature and that purposefully sampled a number of different units and

placement within the unit (i.e. introduction, review, assessment). On each occasion, I observed

two classes back to back, as I was interested if one teacher’s approach might differ between

different classes. When possible, I observed both a “high” and “low” level course, such as an

Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate course, as well as a “regular” or

“comprehensive” course. The six classes were recorded with video and field notes, and included

information based on informal discussions with the teachers and students before and after class,

as well as during official class time.

The data gathered from the classroom observations were extensive. Notes, observation

logs and video offered rich sources of information about teachers’ instructional practices and

student learning. As I wanted to investigate this data thoroughly and through multiple lenses, I

limited my analysis to four of the teachers. Ideally, I would have analyzed the classroom data

from all nine teachers, but time and limited resources made this difficult. As this element of the

study was exploratory in nature, I was not attempting to uncover consistent trends between

81 different teachers; rather, I was exploring the various ways in which personal reading

orientations may or may not manifest themselves in instruction. Future work may attempt to

categorize these connections between the personal and instructional reading practices with a

larger sample, but for this initial stage, a limited number of intensive case studies was more

appropriate.

For the four cases I chose two teachers who each represented opposite extremes on the

scales of my analysis and whose instruction was in line with their practice, one teacher whose

life story consistently fell in the middle of my scales of analysis, and one teacher whose life story

and practice seemed at odds with one another. I discuss these cases in detail in chapters four and

five.

Observational Data Analysis

I used the findings from the Reading Life Story interviews to guide my analysis of the

teachers’ classes. For each class, I watched video of the class using an observation log,

referenced my notes from the day of the observation, and examined artifacts from the class, such

as handouts and quizzes. In my initial passes with the data, I looked for themes based on the

emerging findings from the Life Story interviews. As there was no clear translation from a

description of personal reading orientations pedagogical practice, it took time to refine how and

what I would look for in the classroom practice. The log was honed after many initial class

viewings, and eventually included the following categories:

Teacher, Date, Class Level

Unit of Analysis/ Short Description of Activity

Teacher Q & Comments: Text-Centered

Teacher Q & Comments: Reader-Centered

Student Q & Comments: Text-Centered

Student Q & Comments: Reader-Centered

Teacher: Hierarchy Levels

Student: Hierarchy Levels

Number of texts discussed

Number of students taking part

82 For each class, I analyzed the extent to which teachers’ and students’ comments and

questions were text- or reader-centered, I looked at how high on the hierarchy both teacher and

student questions and comments reached, and extending the idea of literary complexity that I

analyzed in the interviews, I looked at how many texts and authors were referenced and

discussed within a class period. I distinguished between primary texts, which were central to

class discussion, and secondary texts, which were peripheral to the discussion. I measured each

element for both the teachers’ comments and questions, and the students’ comments and

questions. For example, if a teacher regularly made statements that reached the higher end of

Hillocks’ hierarchy, this would only be part of the story. I also wanted to know if students

engaged the material on such levels. This dual-focused element of the analysis comes in part

from Probst’s observations that teachers sometimes engage a text in a text-centered way, while

students make personal comments about how the texts relate to themselves (1988). I was curious

to see if how the teacher presented the material was consistent with how students interpreted the

material. I also did basic counts of how many students participated part in every class.

Over the course of my analysis I found that, much like in the analysis of the Reading Life

Story interviews, multiple analytical themes were present in many discussions of text. For

example, sometimes a text-focused discussion began with some reader-centered dialogue. For

such circumstances, I coded for a primary and secondary focus.

I was also interested to see if I could determine whether the class was communion- and/or

agency-oriented. Most teachers used a variety of instructional methods and assessments that

included both group and individual work. No classes explicitly engaged in assigning an

achievement hierarchy or encouraged students to measure themselves against their peers. There

were some more nuanced features of agency and communion that I discuss in the cases, but for

83 the observation log, I found that isolated agency/communion features were hard to identify. In

future work, I hope to explicitly inquire into students’ communion and agency orientations in

relation to reading to see if these are at all shaped by their teachers’ influence.

The unit of analysis for a class period was a tricky measure to take. I had hoped to create

equal-sized units of analysis in order to compare elements across different classes. This proved

difficult. Many teachers broke up their classes into different activities with very different

characteristics, so it did not make sense to analyze the entire class period as a whole. I attempted

to create equal-sized smaller units, such as turns speaking, but I found that the length of

statements students made in each class was so variable that these units did not capture any

significant point of comparison. In the end, describing different activities and approximately

how much of the class time was dedicated to them proved useful for narrative description and

qualitative comparison between classes. I then converted the time spent in each activity into a

percentage of all of the observed classes, and I compared teachers’ use of time in different

activities, attended to whether activities were text- or reader-based and student- or teacher-

centered.

Video-based Clinical Interviews25

At the end of the school year, I analyzed the classroom video and artifacts collected from

the observations, and I selected segments and artifacts that highlighted approaches typical to

each teacher and of each class. If a teacher’s pedagogical orientation was predominantly text-

centered, I chose predominantly text-centered activities or discussion. I asked teachers to explain

certain moves or choices, tell me what they thought students might be thinking or learning in

25 See Appendix D for an example of a typical Video-based clinical interview. These interviews all followed the same model, with similar questions about the teachers’ objectives for, planning of, and execution of the lesson, as well as student learning.

84 certain moments, and inquired about how specific clips fit into teachers’ larger and more long-

term goals for their students’ reading achievement. I asked questions as to the teachers’

objectives for students in each section, and this gave me insight into the teachers’ literary

reasoning. It also helped validate some of my initial interpretations of the data. I also selected

clips where it seemed that students were struggling. I solicited explanations as to what was

happening in the video, and this gave me some sense of teachers’ knowledge of students and

curriculum.

I did not analyze these interviews on their own, but instead used these clinical interviews

to fill in my analysis from the observations and Life Story interviews. In the future, I hope to

return to these interviews for their own formal analysis.

Student Surveys

Survey Development and Administration

The last source of data came from participating students in each teacher’s class. Students

from every class were given a survey about their orientations and attitudes towards reading, both

at the very beginning of the year and at the end of the year. In total, I had permission and

complete surveys from three hundred fourteen students, from six teachers’ classrooms. Two

teachers misplaced the student surveys once they were administered, and one teacher mistakenly

told his students that they did not need to put their names on the surveys. Because I could not

check the surveys against the consent forms, I could not use the unnamed surveys.

As I developed the student survey before I had administered or coded the teacher

interviews, questionnaires and classroom observations, I only had a general sense of the various

85 constructs I wanted to investigate with students. I asked students questions on a broad range of

topics related to reading both in and out of school, and I found that from the original one hundred

eighty-one questions, one hundred eight related to codes I was investigating with the other forms

of data. The remaining questions were not relevant to my emerging findings. The final set of

constructs results from both an interest in trying to parallel constructs investigated in other areas

of the study relating to the teachers, as well as ensuring that enough questions addressed each

code so that the constructs were robust.

The final twelve clusters of questions measured the following:

• Inclination to read during free time • Inclination to read alone. • Inclination to read as part of a community of familiars, i.e. “In my free time, I

choose something to read that a friend recommended.” • Sense of reading as part of a larger societal practice, i.e. “I think it is important to

know the names of certain writers.” • The extent to which the student is reader-centered, i.e. “When I read in my free

time, I pay attention to how the story relates to my life.” • The extent to which the student is text-centered, i.e. “What do you remember best

after you’ve read a book? Its language.” • Inclination to seek out challenging reading experiences, i.e. “I like to read books

that take a lot of thinking.” • Mastery reaction to challenging reading material, i.e. “When I read something I

don’t understand, I look up information in a textbook, dictionary or other book.” • Personal reading experiences that reached the “basic” level of Hillocks’ hierarchy. • Personal reading experiences that reached the “complex” levels of Hillocks’

hierarchy. • Personal reading experiences that reached the “meta” levels of Hillocks’

hierarchy. • Academic reading experiences that reached the “basic” level of Hillocks’

hierarchy. • Academic reading experiences that reached the “complex” levels of Hillocks’

hierarchy. I hypothesized that students of more reader-centered teachers may become more reader-

centered over the course of the year, and that, likewise, students of more text-centered teachers

may become more text-centered over the course of the year. I also hypothesized that teachers

86 whose classroom discussion regularly reached higher levels of Hillock’s taxonomy may

influence their students to increase the complexity of their reading, both in and out of school. I

hypothesized that students of agency-oriented teachers may have higher “reading as an

individual pursuit” scores by the end of the year, and similarly, that students of communal-

oriented teachers may become more communal in their reading habits.

I was also interested in the extent to which students felt empowered to read. Probst

hypothesized that students easily give up when they believe there is a singular and correct

interpretation that lies only within then text and that students would be more empowered to read

if they believed that their personal interpretations of texts were valid. I used Dweck and

Legget’s construct of mastery and helpless orientations to motivation to see if different types of

teachers and instruction influenced students to both seek out challenging reading experiences and

to attempt to overcome challenging reading experiences (Dweck, 1998). In line with Probst, I

hypothesized that students of text-centered teachers may not seek out challenging material and

may not attempt to read through challenging material.

There were several limitations to the student survey instrument and administration.

First, I provided the teachers with the student survey in September, with the intention that this

administration would serve as the baseline to which I could compare scores from June and get a

sense of student change as a result of the teachers’ influence. The charter school in Chicago

worked on a special schedule and began in August, so their students took the survey after having

been in school for about a month. Other teachers had trouble collecting consent forms and

therefore administered the survey in October. Hence, some students had already been in class

with their teachers for several weeks and their scores may not be as uninfluenced by their

teachers as I would have liked.

87 Second, this instrument did not actually measure how complex students’ reading was, but

rather how complex they perceived it to be. In future work, I would like to perform talk-aloud

reading protocols with a sample of students both at the beginning of the year and at the end. This

would not only give me a more accurate and detailed picture of how students read, but would

allow me to probe students based on their answers and inquire into how their teachers may have

influences their reading habits.

Survey Analysis

My analysis of the survey data began with testing construct validity using psychometric

measurements to assure that items that I had grouped based on theoretical notions actually

measured the same latent variable. I used Cronbach’s coefficient alpha and dropped questions

from groups that brought down Cronbach’s score.

Once I created my variables, listed above, I created correlation matrices among the

variables at pre- and post-test stages to get a sense of the data as a whole. This table includes

the means of pre- and post-test scores, t-tests including the level of significance, and the d-effect

size.

Finally, I tested my hypotheses using inferential/main analyses. I expected to see

differences between teachers based on their personal orientations to reading. From those

teachers with a more communal/reader-based scores, I expected students to develop more

communal/reader-based scores, and likewise with the agency/text-based readers. I used three

methods to test my hypotheses: ANOVA for the pretest, ANOVA for the post test, and

ANCOVA, post-test adjusted for pre-test scores.

88 * * *

In summary, over the course of a school year, I observed, videotaped, and analyzed the

classrooms of teachers representing a range of personal orientations to literature. For each

teacher, I looked at similar variables – for example, goals for reading – between the personal

remembrances and the classroom instruction. Where there was significant difference, I went back

to the clinical interviews and teacher surveys to help fill in the picture. I analyzed surveys from

a range of teachers with different orientations to reading to see how each teacher may have

affected their students’ orientations to reading over the course of the year.

89 Chapter Four: Personal Reading Orientations

The first stage of my study was to collect reading life story interviews from each of the

nine participants. These helped me identify a range of different personal orientations to reading

and categorize readers according to type. I analyzed the interviews according to four sets of

variables: communion and agency orientations, text-centeredness and reader-centeredness,

literary complexity, and interview coherence. In this chapter I outline my findings for the group

of teachers as a whole, then I present four detailed cases of teachers representing different

categories of reader orientations.

Agency Orientations and Generativity

The English teachers fell along a spectrum from communion-oriented to agency-oriented

readers. After totaling the communion and agency scores for each participant, I calculated the

percentage of communion and agency scores for each teacher, adding up to one hundred. This

made comparison among the participants easier, considering they each had a slightly different

numbers of episodes within their life stories. The following table shows the range of teachers’

scores.

90

Table 1: Agency and Communion Orientations

Several interesting trends were evident in these outcomes. First, while there is a slim

majority of communion-oriented teachers, the teachers fell along a range of communion and

agency orientations, with four of the nine teachers leaning towards an agency orientation. This is

somewhat surprising, as we might expect a greater majority of the teachers to lean towards

communion. McAdams has found that more generative adults tend to express higher levels of

communion than less generative adults (1996), and teaching is arguably a generative field of

work. Economic research on the decision to become a teacher has shown the choice is

significantly motivated by “non-pecuniary” rewards to teaching (Dolton, 1990). Research on

pre-service teachers’ choice of teaching as a career has found “a consistent pattern for altruistic

and service oriented goals as sources for motivation,” though somewhat less pronounced for

secondary teachers than for their elementary counterparts (Stiegelbauer, 1992). Many of these

91 themes were present in the content of the reading life story interviews as well; teachers professed

a commitment to teaching at least in part because it was a “helping” profession (Stiegelbauer,

1992). For almost half of the participants, however, their professed social justice mission was

somewhat at odds with their literary orientation, as an agency orientation focuses on the power of

the individual rather than the collective. This became an important tension to investigate during

classroom observations. Were those with a more agency-oriented reading life story somehow

less “benevolent” in their teaching style?

A disconnect between professed interest in equitable instruction and the actual effects of

instruction has been well documented in the literature (e.g. Cohen, 1990). A lack of content

knowledge is frequently cited as an underlying reason for this disconnect. The agency

orientation of such a large group of my study participants suggested that, at least for English

teachers, personal orientation to one’s content might also be part of the equation. Although

teachers might articulate an interest in equitable instruction, if their personal orientation to

literature is not communal in nature, might that interfere with their altruistic intentions or belie

their self-report? This is taken up in more detail in the chapter five.

Communion Orientations and School Groupings

Another surprising finding was the groupings of schools according to the communion and

agency scores. The teachers with the top three communion scores, with an average of 79% of

their life stories devoted to communion themes, all taught at Greenwood High School.

Greenwood had the most explicit social justice message of any of the schools in the study. The

three teachers at the middle of the spectrum, with an average of 61% of their stories related to

communion themes, were all from Cantor High school, the other urban public high school in the

92 study. The three teachers with the lowest communion scores, with an average of 40% of their

stories related to communion themes, taught at Highland West, the one suburban school in the

study. All three Highland teachers did live in Chicago at the time of the study, and were thus

eligible to teach in the Chicago Public School system. Two of the teachers explicitly addressed

the choice to teach in the suburbs, explaining a tension between their social justice inclination

and an interest in financially supporting themselves and having more academic freedom, which

they felt was more possible in the suburban school.

Again, these groupings according to school might not be so surprising if we accept the

connection between generativity and communion orientations; teachers with high communion

ratings would most likely gravitate to inner city schools where inequity and injustice have had

the greatest impact and are most evident. I did not, however, expect that these themes would

present themselves so strongly in discussions of reading. Teachers were asked to discuss their

relationships with texts, and it seems that how teachers approach texts may speak to how they

relate to the world outside of texts as well. Lee makes the point nicely that “literature is

essentially narratives of personal experience” (2007). Perhaps because how we orient ourselves

to the personal experiences presented in literature is deeply intertwined with how we interact

with the real experiences of our lives, such a connection between a communal orientation in

reading and a commitment to social justice should be expected. This raises the stakes for

English teachers. If how we relate to literature is a proxy for how we engage the world around

us, then English teachers are never simply teaching about words, plots, characters or symbols,

they are conveying ideas about how to relate to others.

Episodes describing teaching were rare in the reading life story interviews. Hence, it is

not simply a match of content between stories that speak of helping others and lives that live out

93 those stories in urban schools. The most common communion themes came from reading

episodes about learning from teachers and family, sharing ideas with family and friends, and

feeling unity with a larger community through texts.

Story Coherence and External Influences

Several studies have observed the coherent character of academic departments in

secondary schools (Siskin, 1994; Stodolosky, 1995), so perhaps the agency/communion clusters

according to schools should not come as a surprise. Perhaps this psychological element simply

echoes the kind of curricular dispositions and ideas about learning that Stodolsky found to be

consistent in and distinct amongst departments (1994). Or perhaps similar communion and

agency orientations may be related to the social, political and disciplinary identities that Siskin

found to be highlighted by departments (1995). Two elements of these interviews complicate

this picture, however.

First, Siskin’s and Stodolsky’s studies both found that departments differed primarily by

discipline, whereas in this study, I found significant differences between different departments

that all were part of the same subject area. We know that there are a range of ways to reason

about literature, (Grossman, 2007; Lee, 2007), so perhaps different departments within the field

of English not only cohere around larger ideas consistent throughout the field, but are bound my

more nuanced distinctions related to textual interpretation. I believe there is room for new

research to explore these discipline-bound differences among different departments within the

same field, especially in English. I can imagine that examining the larger cultural aspects of the

schools and how they interact with the discipline-specific nature of the English department might

be a fruitful place to begin.

94 Second, the way in which the department seemed to influence individuals within each

department varied greatly by school. Through background informational surveys, I knew that

Greenwood had the most cohesive intradepartmental work plan. For every class in Greenwood’s

English department, two teachers were teamed together to create a consistent curriculum

between their two different sections. While these teams were referred to by each of the

Greenwood teachers in their pedagogical interviews and during informal conversations through

out the year, in the personal reading life story interviews, mention of intradepartmental

relationships and influences was absent. While all three were highly communal in their

orientation to reading, their stories were quite varied and distinct from one another.

Similarly, the Highland teachers in my study knew each other well. They were part of a

group of friends outside of school, and considered themselves part of a cohort within Highland,

as they all began teaching there around the same time. They referred to one another’s teaching

styles in the pedagogical interviews and during my observational visits, but on only one occasion

did one of these teachers refer to another Highland teacher during the life story interview, and

never in the life story interviews did they refer to how the other teachers might have influenced

their relationship to literature. While all predominantly agency oriented, the specific literary

content and themes of their stories were quite different.

Cantor’s cluster of teachers, however, seemed to be quite influenced by one another and

the department. Repeatedly though out their life story interviews, they referred to one another,

the department and a shared curriculum as influences on their personal reading. Unlike the other

schools, among which there were similar orientations, Cantor’s teachers invoked similar literary

themes. In particular, they all referred repeatedly to the notion of “authorial intent,” and both

Doug and Samantha explicitly situated the roots of this perspective in teaching with the

95 International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum at Cantor, despite this being an interview about

personal reading experiences. All three of the teachers had at one time taught with this honors

program. Samantha explains that despite getting her English Education masters degree at a

prestigious university, she had not truly understood how to engage literature until teaching with

the IB program. Upon receiving a harsh critique from a graduate course professor, she

explained,

I knew it was a significant moment in my sort of experience with literature and writing and English and all that stuff, but I didn’t realize that it was a turning point until a couple years later, when I first started teaching in the IB program at my school. I realized then that what I’d been asked to do as a grad student, I wasn’t able to do because I wasn’t reading. I had never, I hadn’t been trained to read as a literary analysis writer. I thought I had been, but I really hadn’t… Now that I’m an IB teacher, being an IB teacher now has made me much more aware of that.

Samantha believed that it was her IB experience that allowed her to understand some of the

complex approaches to literature that she was exposed to in graduate school.

Doug described a comparable literary reawakening having become part of the IB

program. He similarly attended an exclusive and prestigious university for his undergraduate

and masters degrees and grew up in an academic family. Nonetheless,

…another turning point, for me would be, recently, in teaching the IB program. Um, and the international baccalaureate program and working with [Samantha] has been probably my biggest turning point…I was an English major, and, you know, went to a good school, and so I understood authorial intent, but a big turning point was teaching that [IB] course because it forced me to analyze texts in a much more concrete and specific way than I ever had before. And, ah, and I understand literature far, far better now than I ever did before. And I, and I’ve noticed it as a reader now, is that when I read stuff critically, that, you know, I can, I’m immediately thinking, looking, I’m able to see and analyze literary techniques and connect them to what the authors’ themes are in ways I really couldn’t before. And it’s, it’s really powerful, and it’s sort of, and you know that happens in all teaching that when you teach something you get to know it much better than you ever did before. And certainly, and I feel like, I’ve said this to [Samantha] many times is that, by working with her, she’s sort of the one whose guided me on that path, and working with her, I feel now that I could go to any sort of masters or PhD program in English and I’d be able to do pretty well.

96

Here, Doug explains that how Samantha influenced not only his teaching in the IB program, but

his personal approach to literature, “as a reader.”

While Lucy is not as explicit in attributing her personal reading style to her colleagues,

the department or the IB program, she refers to issues of “authorial intent” in four separate

episodes, more than participants from other schools. Understanding texts in the context of their

“authorial intent” is a hallmark of the IB approach to readings. There are a multitude of

explanations for why this consistency exists so strongly within this one department, even to the

point of affecting how the teachers read in their off time. It is worth noting that both Lucy and

Samantha did their Master of Teaching degrees together, and this shared background may

explain their similar orientations. Kelly, from Highland West, completed the same program,

however, she does not refer to authorial intent once in her life story interview.

I think it is notable that these teachers, so influenced by their department, seem to have

the most balanced reading life stories, falling in the middle of the agency/communion spectrum.

Lucy’s story was 69% communion-oriented, Samantha was 67% communion oriented, and Doug

was 46% communion-oriented, each within one standard deviation of the mean for communal

orientations. I have come to suspect that there may be a relationship between the lack of a strong

agency/communion orientation and the ability to be influenced by external factors. This did not

seem to be a case of three like-minded, similarly reading-focused teachers choosing a department

that seemed consistent with their approaches; rather, two of the three realize their literary leaning

as a result of the curriculum and their colleagues. While there is certainly not enough data here

to firmly establish this point, I think it is one worth exploring in the future. Does having a strong

agency or communion leaning influence how a teacher from fully appropriates a curriculum?

97 Does having a balanced life story allow for some openness to new ideas? Perhaps the kind of

rigidity that is often blamed for “lethal mutations” in curriculum adaptation can be usefully

explored through personal narrative rooted in disciplinary orientations. We know that beliefs

affect how teachers adapt curriculum (Elbaz, 1997), but as characterizing and quantifying

“beliefs” is so elusive, perhaps story coherence could be a variable to help us understand this

phenomenon better.

Text-focus and Agency Orientation

Just as teachers fell along a range of communion and agency orientations, there was a

spectrum of text- and reader-centeredness as well. Overall the group was considerably more

reader-centered in its approach to discussing texts, with an average of 70% of the stories devoted

to reader-centered discussion.

Table 2: Text and Reader Orientations While not a perfect mirror, there is a strong suggestion that reader-centered teachers also tended

towards communion orientations, and likewise, there is a positive correlation between being text-

centered and having an agency orientation, as r =0.68.

98

Table 3: Text-Centered/Agency Relationship

Ultimately, I believe the most compelling explanation for this connection comes from Probst’s

discussion of a text-based pedagogy’s effect on students. As I highlighted in the literature

review, Probst suggests,

if there is a norm, a best reading, then the correctness of other readings can be judged by how closely they approximate that best reading. Thus, the most persuasive critics because preeminent, their interpretations become the touchstone by which other readings are judged, and students are subtly encouraged to submit to and imitate the thinking of their critical betters. (Probst, 1990).

The very notion of a “best reading” according to New Critical or Formalist theories suggests not

only there is one best interpretation, but that the answers lay in the text itself and an exclusive

text-based focus will result in the most accurate interpretation. All other aspects of the reading –

the inspiration for the reading, a teacher who facilitates the reading, the feeling evoked by the

reading, the prior experiences that shapes the interpretation – are secondary to, “focusing on

ambiguity, paradox, irony, and the effects of connotation and poetic imagery…show[ing] the

contribution of each element of poetic form to a unified structure” (Culler, 1997). Ultimately,

the text-based reading can be judged by an objective standard that resides in the text alone. This

99 focus on the text alone, to the exclusion of the reader, excludes any notion of a community of

readers, a common theme with communion-oriented readers. Further, the focus on hierarchies of

“best” readings is in line with issues of power and the assertion of the self vis à vis others, as is

common in stories with agency orientations.

These same notions of objective standards, reading hierarchies, and “best” performances

were echoed in the agency-oriented elements of the text-centered readers’ life stories. It was

Kelly (text 50%, agency 64%), who in the example of a “status/victory” statement cited earlier,

spoke of having the best paper of her class. This theme of comparison and competition with her

peers according to academic ability was echoed throughout her interview. Brad (text, 63%,

agency, 62%), who describes meaning as being “latent in the book,” also repeatedly speaks of a

hierarchy of texts. In one instance, he explains,

So, as you can probably tell from some of the books I’ve been dropping that I don’t tend to read a lot of, ok case in point: one of my aunts actually sent me a copy of The DaVinci Code, and none of my relatives ever give me books at all. I have a very anti-intellectual family… In any event, I got through the first twenty pages of The DaVinci Code and it just seemed like it was too much fluff, and I put it back on my shelf…But I don’t know that it was that I wasn’t enjoying it…I didn’t really do a lot of reading until I was probably about twenty years old…In any event, when I finally started to enjoy reading, and I decided that I really love it, I really truly do, but it was a very late development, I felt like I had a lot of catching up to do. So, I think I tended to gravitate towards seminal works, in a sense, in an effort to maybe make-up for lost time.

While he admits to “enjoying” The DaVinci Code, he puts it down in favor of “seminal works.”

Later in this episode he describes reading challenging and “frustrating” books,

…reading that’s not always pleasurable, but for some reason I feel like I am deriving some benefit out of it. I feel like I have to, it’s cathartic in a way. I feel like I’m putting myself through some sort of penance for the first twenty years where I didn’t actually form any reading memories…I don’t know if it’s to punish myself.

This comparison of popular literature to “seminal” or “canonical” works was repeated not only in

the interview, but also in multiple informal conversations we had about literature through out the

100 year. Again, this relates to the idea of a hierarchy of texts based on textual merit alone that is

typical of the text-based reader. Although he had a more enjoyable experience reading The

DaVinci Code, his interest in reading was not personal enjoyment, but literary achievement.

Doug (54% agency, 37% text), while an aficionado of graphic novels and a lover of the

Star Wars books, also often compares the relative greatness of texts, on three separate occasions

discussing how different types of texts he has read (graphic novels, science fiction novels, and

Catcher in the Rye) compare to (and pale in that comparison to) Shakespeare: “this is hamburger

and that’s a filet mignon.”26

This register of relative greatness and achievement in reading and literature is markedly

different than what you find at the opposite end of the spectrum. Whereas the text-based/agency

readers tended to focus on an individual and direct relationship with the true meaning of the text,

the highly reader-centered/communal readers tended to focus on the context surrounding the text

that contributes to the reading experience. Meaning is not literary; it is personal. Many of the

reader-based/communal readers concentrate on how literature changed their lives and their

relationships and on how people influenced their reading. Dennis (82% reader, 86% communal),

Sally (82% reader, 79% communal), and Don (78% reader, 71% communal) all speak of a

personal influence in every episode of their life stories, frequently mentioning family members,

teachers and friends. They each repeat the notion of “community” throughout their stories, and

how literature brings them closer to others. Dennis explains that he shares books he loves with

26 It is important to mention that these text-based readers do not personally align themselves with New Critical or Formalist camps. On the contrary, they often claim to advocate other schools of literary thought. DM spoke often of “authorial” readings, and would most likely fit into a structuralism camp, highlighting how the author put structures in place to create an effect on the reader. BT often spoke of loving “texts with historical context,” though his discussion never engaged the “connections among texts, discourses, power, and the constitution of subjectivity” that is the hallmark of New Historicism (Culler, 1997). In relation to the other participants, however, Brad, Doug, Lucy and Kelly were four of the most text-centered readers, and I believe a text-centered umbrella effectively captures a tendency towards textual focus in reading.

101 other people, becoming part of a collective “community of readers.” He explained that after his

cousin first gave him The Hobbit as a teenager, he became a fanatical about sharing books with

others. After receiving and enjoying The DaVinci Code, a book he was sure he was going to

hate, he says,

I got it, and I read it like in like two days, and I was like, “oh, you got to read this book,” you know? Just, just to read it, ’cause we had a conversation about this particular, you know, what subject this particular text is about. But I, since then, I always kind of recommended things for other people to read. I’ve always, you know, like, shared ideas, given books like people, like, “here, take this book, and you know, don’t even give it back to me but read it, because I know, you’re going to like, and you should just keep it”…I saw it kind of as a community of readers, people also want to read things, just like you. Like, well I know you like the Hobbit so you’re going to like these other books too so just go ahead and go get them and go read those too.

By referring books to his colleagues, students, family and friends, Dennis used literature as a

way of creating community among the people he knew. Similarly, Samantha (90% reader, 67%

communal), describes teaching the last unit of the year to her senior IB students, and focusing on

Sherman Alexie’s poetry. After graduation, the writer came to read at a local museum, and

Samantha gathered her class for an informal literary reunion. She describes how with Alexie’s

poetry,

I can’t say that I had going in a really clear understanding of his work, and I still don’t…but that collective experience of having my students and myself and the other teacher who came in to observe, that experience of engagement with poetry that way, I loved… I like [reading poetry] to be a collective reading experience. Especially now that I am trying to be a better reader, when I read, it’s not just about story to me anymore, it’s not just about those things, it’s very much about the art of it. I like getting other people involved in that reading, especially students, and not students in terms of, a student-teacher relationship, but we are on almost a friend relationship, like on that level…I love to dialogue, especially that poetry, to some extent prose, but definitely about poetry. Poetry to me is a collective reading experience.

While Samantha used poetry as a way to create community among people she knew, Sally took

this a step further by using literature as an impetus to meet new people out in the world. She

102 explained how On the Road,

planted the seed of wanderlust in me and like it was, you know, very soon after that I went on my first driving trip and I’ve taken probably a dozen driving trips around the country, and my understanding of the way people relate to other people in the larger community of this country and the world came from reading that book.

For some of the communal readers, literature was not only a way of creating community,

but by exposing themselves to new communities outside of familiar norms. In Samantha’s case,

literature also had the potential to create division. She explains,

I’ve always been encouraged to read in my family. My brother’s a voracious reader…So that there’s always been like this culture in my family, and I’m not sure whether it was there to begin with… I mean I know we were read to as children and all that kind of stuff, but we’re, at Christmas one of the staple items, everybody gets books…We’ve always been encouraged to read, but I think one of the things that my parents didn’t realize would happen out of that, is that by reading so much, we became different people than they expected. Like, who I was raised to be and who my brother was raised to be, we are not those people, and I think a big part of that goes along with the fact that we read, and we got to see all these other worlds, and make up our minds for ourselves about that, and so we ended up coming out of our childhood with a different value system than our parents probably expected.

Here we see that Samantha’s family promoted reading books, but it had the effect of exposing

Samantha and her brother to new communities, ultimately, whose values they felt suited them

better than their own family’s. Similar stories of feeling close to those in texts in comparison to

those people in the readers’ real lives was echoed by Don and Sally as well.

This emphasis on the world outside of texts – how that world affects reading and how

reading affects an understanding of the world – is the primary focus on the reader-

centered/communal readers.

Literary Complexity

103 When I first began characterizing the differences between reader-centered/communal

readers and text-centered/agency readers, I suspected that the more exclusive focus on the text of

the latter group might result in more sophisticated literary discussion in the interviews.

Table 4: Literary Complexity

This notion was fed in part by the most extreme agency/text-centered case, Brad, who often

spoke eloquently at the high end of Hillock’s taxonomy27. For example, he explains why his

“thorough” reading of Ulysses was so important to him.

…it definitely had an impact on the type of texts that I tend to read. It sort of steered me in a direction, you know, I would say that I tend to read a lot of modern American and modern British fiction. So, in that regard, it had a big impact because I felt like, I don’t know, I guess just stylistically, I really enjoyed it, and I suppose I would also say that it in some ways harkened back to some of the very reasons that I got interested in reading themselves. One, interconnectivity of text, and texts of history, and texts with historical context, to me was really important, and I mean, you know, Ulysses is sort of paradigm that in terms of that type, that style of reading, and so, my experience with that particular book defined, in a way, the way that I approach reading in general.

27 See Appendix 5 for a table outlining the hierarchy and Chapter 3 for a description of the hierarchy.

104 Brad’s discussion seemed to exhibit an understanding of literary genres, periods, and

geographies, as well as how texts relate to one another.

In examining the literary complexity of his and the other life story interviews, however, I

was surprised at the limited literary discussion that actually took place in Brad’s interview,

compared to the others. Brad mentions the fewest number of books and genres of all the

participants. Additionally, he exclusively engages literature at the high end of the Hillocks’

taxonomy, without discussing the meaning-making processes he used to make his claims.

Brad’s reading is substantially different than the more complex readings of other

participants, often where several levels of sense making are employed together as part of the

meaning-making process. For example, Don relays the following story about reading

Hemmingway. Notice how he first discusses a larger thematic point, that characters were “free

from the constraints of religion,” then he outlines what Hillocks would call a “key detail,” the

church visit, which Don describes as being symbolic. Then he comes back to a larger inference,

that these characters were “valid” without being religious.

There were instances in The Sun Also Rises where I guess they were just, they were so free from the constraints of religion, which I, you know, from my earliest memories, I’ve been an atheist. I can remember sitting in church and saying “this is such bullshit.” I mean four years old and like you’re born in original sin, and I’m like “I wasn’t, I don’t know who you’re talking about. But this is just ridiculous, this is absolutely ridiculous.” And that gets into the whole, the symbolism cause there. I definitely believe that there are some fundamental truths between various religions. Um, but to call one the truth has always been really, really offensive to me. So with The Sun Also Rises I guess that was the first book I read that had sort of atheistic sensibilities in that they’re really, you know they go into the church and the characters don’t know how to pray. And then they just walk back out and have a cocktail, you know? And so, on that level it was my first real experience outside of very conservative Indiana, that you know you don’t have to go to church and you don’t have to believe in a particular religion, in order to be a human being.

Also interesting in this story is how Don intersperses personal exploration within the literary

105 reasoning. His memory of not only the larger “authorial generalization” but the smaller “key

details” are mixed up in his memory of the passage’s personal significance to him. His personal

experience of living as a gay atheist in Indiana is intimately linked to his reading and

understanding of the literary aspects of the novel.

Upon seeing the kind of literary complexity that some of the participants did achieve in

the life story interviews, I returned to Brad’s anomalous and somewhat confusing case. I found

that while he discussed larger issues of structure or genre, he rarely engaged the implications of

that structure or genre for the meaning of the work. For example, in discussing the post-modern

works Gravity’s Rainbow and Infinite Jest, he mentioned the “architecture” and structure of the

books, but with no discussion of their contribution to the meaning of the novels. His vocabulary

for discussing literature in the interviews was sophisticated, but descriptions of how he made

meaning of literature were absent. Of course, also absent is virtually any discussion of personal,

rather than literary, meaning making through literature. In future work, it will be interesting to

see if the lack of discussion of the context of the reading event correlates with lack of deep

discussion of literary meaning as well. Does a personal investment in certain literature help our

academic understanding of it? I suspect that Brad does in fact have high literary reasoning

capabilities. Perhaps the life story interview is only a good gauge of the level of someone’s

reading ability if they are reader-centered. Quite possibly a more straightforward exam or a

reading think-aloud would provide a better indication of text-centered readers’ complex thinking

about texts.

Five of the eight participants scored high on the complexity rating for the life story

interviews: Don, Samantha, Lucy, Dennis, and Doug, with a mention of books representing at

least eight different genres, and literary discussions at all three levels of my condensed version of

106 Hillocks’ taxonomy: low, moderate and high28. The other readers ranged between four and six

different genres, and anywhere from no discussion ranking on the literary hierarchy to discussion

at two different levels. Notably, Brad is the only “low” complexity case who reaches the “high”

level of the taxonomy.

Sally is also a notable case here, as she is the only highly communal reader on the low

end of the literary complexity spectrum. Analysis of her interview reveals that her strong focus

on family, friends, and community came at the expense of literary discussion and meaning-

making. The ultimate goal of her reading experience was not a deep reading, but a personal or

interpersonal effect.

…We’ve taken a lot of driving trips my husband, [my step-daughter], and I and we always read. We either get books on tape, but more often we read to each other, and we read Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. I hadn’t, none of us had read it, so it’s a great thing to discover something as, you know like this small group in this intimate setting. I don’t know where we were going, but I remember it being very late at night when I read the last chapter and I didn’t think Hannah was up. Usually, right, if she’s sleeping we’ll just read the chapter again when she wakes up and I was reading it with like a flashlight and it was quiet for awhile and I was just talking to Mike and we were like, “wow that’s a great book”, and then Hannah goes, “can we read that again?” We didn’t, on her own she just read it again and then since then she has really, a couple of different times… When I asked her how she saw herself in [her school] community she said, “like that girl in Stargirl.” Stargirl was this person who sort of went her own way on everything, like she didn’t try to fit in, and was just like this original person and it made me feel really good that she could, that I was able to bring to her this role-model that she could think of as like someone, you know, she would want to fashion herself after. Not that she has to stick to that, but as far as role-models go I was like, “Wow, great she’s using that.”

While Sally engages some discussion of the character development of the protagonist of the

novel, the vast majority of her discussion is about her family and her step-daughter’s personal

growth. There is no discussion of plot, themes, literary devices or authorial intent. Throughout

Sally’s interview, texts function almost exclusively as vehicles for self-exploration or means of

28 In the graph, these are represented in “Literary Hierarchy Range” between 1 (discussing literature at one level), 2 (discussing literature at two levels), and 3 (discussing literature at all three levels).

107 connecting with others. In this episode, there is virtually no discussion of the literary aspects of

the text, even as basic as the plot development, despite it being the central focus on the episode.

Not surprisingly, there is a correlation between the breadth of the literary range and the

breadth of the types of text discussed. Those who read more books discussed them at more

levels of the hierarchy, with a correlation of r=0.74.

Table 5: Range of Text Type and Text Hierarchy

There is not a significant correlation between an agency or communion orientation and literary

complexity, which suggests that while agency and communion are useful explanatory variables

in some aspects of literary sense making, the picture is still complex. Ultimately more research

can help us flesh out the entire picture of personal reading orientation. Hence, while the life

story interview is useful, it would seem to be best used in concert with other data.

Detailed Cases

Now that I have laid out the range of ways teachers engaged with texts in both text- and

reader-centered ways and with communal and agencies orientations, I present four cases to

108 examine these trends in more detail. I explore the life stories of Don and Brad, who represent

opposite ends of the communal/reader-centered and agency/text-centered spectrum; Doug, who

sits squarely in the middle of the spectrum; and Sally, who is the only communal/reader-centered

reader to score so low on literary complexity. Exploring these individual cases in more depth

provides a deeper understanding of how the trends and anomalies noted in the previous section

function.

Don At the time of the study, Don served as department chair of Greenwood’s English

department. He had taught for eight years, both in Chicago and in Boston, where he attended

college. As an undergraduate, he had triple-majored in English, education and psychology, with

a minor in history, and he held two Master of Arts degrees, one in liberal studies and one in

education administration. Don came to teaching after several years of working in various jobs in

other fields, including non-for-profit work, college admissions, and bartending. He was wholly

committed to the college preparation mission of the school and taught all Advanced Placement or

honors classes.

Seventy-one percent of Don’s life story was devoted to communal themes, and 78 percent

was devoted to reader-centered discussion, making him a highly communal and reader-centered

case. Two primary human development themes ran through his reading life story. The theme

most frequently coded in his story was that of caring and help, and this theme was often

manifested in discussions of his reading teachers, from kindergarten through college. In four of

his ten episodes he discussed his teachers29, and in fact at one point during the life story

interview, he realized of his story, “…there’s another instance where there’s encouragement 29 Only one other participant mentioned teachers in this many episodes of her reading life story.

109 from a teacher. Apparently that’s a theme in my life.” Don felt his teachers influenced and

guided his experience with literature and learning. For example at one point in college, Don

experienced test anxiety. He explains,

I was doubting myself so much, that it was it was restricting my ability to read and to interpret and to use my mind as I can, because the emotional anxiety was so, so strong …Usually, I could kind of push, push that aside and work through it. But in that particular instance I wasn’t able to at first but then after a little redirection from [my professor] telling me that ‘you do know this, I mean I know that you do, so don’t sweat about it and just, you know relax on the next one’…

Don reported that he proceeded to pass the rest of the class and end up with an A at the end of

the term. Similar stories from other readers might have focused on personal achievement over

adversity; however, Don’s story continually emphasized how difficult situations were overcome

as a result of the help of others, rather than focusing on his own persistence or intelligence.

A second major communal theme of Don’s life story was unity and togetherness. Don

makes the point on several occasions that he was different from those with whom he grew up.

He mentions through out the interview that his family was “not all that academic,” and “there

weren’t a lot of books in the house.” His family regularly attended church, which Don felt was

“absolutely ridiculous” and “offensive.” Being gay and atheist, he never felt completely

comfortable in “conservative Indiana.” Through books and education, Don described finding

communities that did not materially exist for him through out his childhood but with which he

felt at home. Once he began reading, he explains that, “there was this whole world that had been

opened up to me. You know, all this hidden meaning.” As a result of reading, he became

“fascinated with European culture and its seeming liberal ideas, that things that were sort of

commonplace in Europe were not in the United States, and I guess like then personally it

obviously was relating to my to my being gay.” He discovered books, like The Sun Also Rises,

110 that had existential and “atheistic sensibilities” and explained that reading Hemmingway, “was

my first real experience outside of very conservative Indiana, that you know you don’t have to

go to church and you don’t have to believe in a particular religion, in order to be a human being.

And, it sort of validated that.” Later he describes discovering gay fiction, which was, “my real

exposure to other stories being told by people like me for people like me so they didn’t have to

explain why the two men were hanging out together; it was a given, you know?” His sexual,

academic and religious orientations had made him feel like an outsider in his home environment,

and literature had been a vehicle for discovering communities in the world that were more

aligned with his “sensibilities.” He seemed to have felt unity and togetherness with those

characters, settings and ideas presented in literature, somewhat in opposition to the isolation and

difference he felt with his family and home environment.

Don was very reader-centered in his interview. In his reading stories, he tended to

emphasize the environment surrounding the text, the context for the reading, rather than the text

itself. He often stressed the roles of others in his reading lives, as when his teachers or family

helped him read and engage texts. In addition to his many stories about his teachers, Don also

described how his mother, despite not being a book-lover herself, fetches books from the library

for him and eventually gets him his own library card.

Another major reader-centered theme in Don’s discussion of reading was his developing

understanding of himself through texts. As with the earlier description of Don realizing that he

was an atheist, he was often awaked to deeper personal understanding through texts in his story.

He described reading The Primer of Existentialism as an epiphanic moment: “…as soon as I read

it, I was like, I’m an existentialist! That’s what its all about, duh! I’m not Christian or Jewish or

anything like that I’m an existentialist. And so that was the philosophy that I jumped on.” Later

111 in his story, he described reading a novel by a gay author about a gay couple. He explains,

The main character was probably about my age and dealing with similar issues that I was dealing with and he had to come out to his family. Oh wow! There’s a character that had to go through this, and being in a relationship and do you still want to be in a relationship, and should you be monogamous and all those things that, you know, you deal with… And, I guess what’s kind of interesting about that is that when you’re gay you don’t adopt automatically by forfeit the dominant culture’s view of what a relationship is. So, it doesn’t always mean, you know, getting married, ring on the finger, monogamous relationship, what does it mean? What should you do? Should you take that model out of people too, or do you want to vary it? So I guess I’ve always used reading as a way of exploring options without actually having to go through them myself. So I could see, you know, through fiction and through literature, just all the different ways of being. All the, the ways of living your life and the choices that you make and, and pretty much coming up with it all from scratch.

Here, rather than detailing the plot of the book, the characters’ lives, or his understanding of the

literary themes, rhetorical devices or authorial intention of the book – all of which are common

topics of discussion in text-centered reading stories – Don’s focus was how the text helped him

understand his own life. In this way, Don’s reading life story was very reader-centered.

While the focus of his reading life story was the context for meaning making, often the

literary interpretation that resulted as a part of that meaning making was quite sophisticated.

Rather that sacrificing literary complexity for personal insight, Don integrates literary

complexity within his personal reflection. The breadth and depth of his literary discussion is

greater than any other participant in the study. He discusses fourteen different types of text,

ranging from signposts to canonical works, from gay pulp to philosophy. He discusses these

texts at all levels of the literary hierarchy; in six of ten episodes he engages the texts at the

highest levels of the hierarchy, discussing intertextual themes, genre and inference.

Sally

112 Sally also worked in Greenwood’s English department, and like Don, her life story was

very reader- and communal-centered. She had taught for between four and six years at the time

of the study, both in elementary and secondary schools. She had completed her bachelor’s

degree with a double major in poetry and visual arts. She describes her primary focus in college

as film, which she saw as a melding of her majors. She had many jobs before coming to

teaching, including working in publishing, non-for-profits, law, administration, and filmmaking.

Of all of these, filmmaking was the most salient for Sally, and she often referred to herself as a

filmmaker or an instructor of media studies. She saw this area of expertise as being consonant

with her work as an English teacher.

Like Don, Sally was a highly communal and reader-oriented case, with 79% of her story

devoted to communal themes and 82% dedicated to reader-centered discussion. The major

human development theme of Sally’s life story was unity and togetherness; seven of her thirteen

episodes were coded as such. This theme manifested itself somewhat differently in Sally’s story

than in Don’s. Whereas Don found community through the characters and ideas presented in

literature, Sally formed and strengthened actual relationships with other people through the act of

reading. While the community Don found through literature was almost mythical, existing

outside of his reality, Sally formed relationships with people by reading with them or to them,

learning about literature from or with them, or as a result of literature pushing her towards new

people like those she read about in books.

Like Don, Sally felt different from those with whom she grew up. When she was in

elementary school, her cousin scolded her for being a “bookworm,” so she publicly shunned

literature until high school. She often felt “isolated” from her peers, and explains

113 I have never felt like I was similar to anyone. I was adopted and that might be part of why, but I never felt in my immediate family, I never felt like I belonged in my community, I never felt like I belonged, I never felt like I belonged at school.

Then Sally described an inspiring high school English teacher, who “really broaden[ed] [her]

scope of the world” with the books he introduced to her and the way he taught them. She told

stories of she and a friend challenging her teacher’s authority, as he taught them books that

advocated such subversion. She explains,

…he had us reading things that were sort of beyond, like really pushing us to really broaden our scope of the world. He assigned us to read On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I had had a best friend in the class who like, we would, we were just constantly challenging him, and like one time he told us “You know if you were in college, you wouldn’t have to come to class, you’d have to prepare…” and so we were like ok, so he was like, “This is like a college class, you should treat it like a college class.” So we cut class, and like walked by the windows of the classroom to see what he would do… I was being taught about this person who wrote this book by someone who saw me as an individual and who respected that. And then this guy who wrote this book was just like, “Ok I’ll see you later,” and he just kind of left this place that he didn’t really feel comfortable and sought out others who felt that same sense of displacement and they made their own community that was, you know went from here and here and everything in between.

Sally goes on to explain how being taught about “this guy,” Jack Kerouac, was an

inspiration for a new way of life.

Reading that book for his class and the way he discussed it with us…It was significant because that actually, reading that book sort of changed my whole life, like the path of my whole life…it planted the seed of wanderlust in me and like it was you know very soon after that went on my first driving trip and I’ve taken probably a dozen driving trips around the country and my understanding of the way people relate to other people in the larger community of this country and the world came from reading that book.

Later in her life, Sally took a college class focused on the beat movement, where she

heard about a literary community in Colorado where they studied and wrote beat works. She

joined that community one summer, where she met a woman from New York, who inspired her

to move to New York, because that is

…the place where people go who don’t know where they’re suppose to be. And we’re

114 all, this is like a big happy family. I loved that. You know that was the first time I felt like I was in a place where I belonged.

Sally’s experience of reading On the Road was shaped by those with whom she read the

book, her teacher and her friend, and in turn, it shaped how she related to people in the world.

She expanded her community of friends and colleagues as a result of reading literature. This

interplay of interpersonal relationships strengthened or inspired through literature is a theme

through out her life story, where she also spoke about becoming closer to her stepdaughter, her

students and her friends by reading books with them.

Sally is also highly reader-centered. As we can see in her unity and togetherness themed

discussion, her focus is almost always the people involved in reading the text, not the plot,

architecture, or characters within text itself. Moreover, rarely is Sally the only reader present in

her reading experiences; in fact in no episode does Sally describe her reading experiences

without including other people as part of the process. She discusses more people in more roles

than any other teacher in the study. Whereas many participants discuss teachers, family, and

friends in their stories, Sally also includes descriptions of her students, vivid details about

characters, authors and general discussions about the role of the reader in the reading experience.

For Sally, the very purpose of reading is to build relationships and “connections” between

readers. She explains that this is the very essence of why reading should be important to her

students:

…because reading is so often a very private and solitary activity that when it makes a connection between myself and especially someone that I’m already so close to, it’s a very strengthening thing. In terms of how reading fits into my life, it helps when I’m trying to teach reading. It really helps to think like, there is a purpose to this because a lot of times when you have thirty kids in a room going like, “why do we have to do this, this is so stupid, this is so boring,” you need an arsenal of experiences that help you remember why, you know, and how enriching it is, and how it makes connections

115 between people that wouldn’t probably otherwise have that, in such a rich way.

While Don integrated complex literary discussion within his reader-centered episodes,

Sally’s story was sparser when it came to intricate literary engagement. She discussed the fewest

different kinds of books, with a major emphasis on children’s literature and academic literature,

the later of which she often spoke about disparagingly. Of a course on literary theory in college,

she says,

I got very angry, like that was the overarching emotion because this class was suppose to be about, he talked a lot about, he’s socialist and the proletariat and the masses and how we need to be able to deconstruct and decode all of this stuff you know, and I’m like you know, who of those people that you are reporting to serve would understand any of this, or care?

She felt this literature served to divide people between those who could comprehend it and those

who could not, whereas the literature she valued brought people together.

Sally’s story never reached the high end of Hillock’s hierarchy, as her literary discussion

was primarily engaged with plot and character detail. She made few inferences, never discussed

larger bodies of work, genre or author, and never made intertextual references. I think it is

important to make the point that there are other areas of complex and intelligent discussion in

Sally’s life story interview; simply, they were not rooted in literary discussion. Like Brad,

perhaps a different kind of inquiry would better assess her content knowledge. The point here is

that robust content knowledge was not present in her reading life story.

Brad

Brad had taught for five years at the time of the study, having begun teaching at a private

Catholic school for boys and then moving to a public school in a Chicago suburb. He had never

held any other jobs besides teaching English. He was an English major in college, with a history

116 minor, and went on to get his Master of Arts degree in Education. In contrast to all of the other

teachers, Brad engaged in virtually no professional development, except for a few activities that

were school or district mandated. For Brad, teaching English was about reading books, and he

did this prolifically. Whereas most of the teachers in the study complained about not having the

time to read enough books during the school year, Brad reported to read one book a week on

average. When we saw each other for interviews or observations, our informal discussion was

most often about what each of us was reading at the time.

Brad was my most text-centered and agency-oriented participant, with 62% of his life

story devoted to agency themes and 63% dedicated to text-centered discussion. The primary

human development theme of Brad’s life story was achievement and responsibility. For Brad,

reading achievement was a matter of selecting difficult material and overcoming any obstacles to

proper literary understanding. He used the register of achievement throughout his life story,

describing reading as “difficult,” and the act of reading as “tackling” literature. For example, he

describes the process of reading Ulysses as,

anytime you read any text of that magnitude, it’s sort of an Everest in the sense for a reader, where you’re struggling over a course, you know, a long period of time, and you feel like you are working incessantly towards, there is a really discernable goal.

The language of “struggling,” conquering an “Everest,” and texts of “magnitude” is consistent

with how he discusses other literature throughout the interview. He described Infinite Jest as

“one of those twelve hundred page tomes,” and provides vivid descriptions of the extensive

footnotes, sometimes “eight pages long,” with “footnotes to footnotes.” While this is all true and

somewhat remarkable about Infinite Jest, it strikes me that he goes into great detail about the

difficulty of the book, and does not mention a single character, plot line, theme or larger point to

117 the story. This is the case for every text he mentions, and this is unique to Brad among my cases.

While he discussed books that are very difficult to read, he never described what meaning he

made of them. Instead he detailed the arduous process of meaning making, be it drinking coffee,

writing papers, re-reading, or consulting peers, as well as his triumph of eventual meaning

making, but he never shared that meaning with me in his interview.

Brad’s definition of reading achievement was clearly tied up with the difficulty of the

book, and this may explain why he failed to recall any significant reading episodes for an earliest

memory, childhood memory or adolescent memory. Many participants had difficulty

remembering their childhood experiences with reading, but all were eventually able to think of

something. I suspect this may be because reading as a child involved reading children’s

literature, which is somewhat explicitly not difficult to read.

Another aspect of his agency orientation was the virtual lack of any other people in his

reading life story. On two occasions he mentioned a peer from his master’s program, and he

took great pains to describe how difficult the program’s reading was, perhaps making it

acceptable that he would seek out someone’s help. He also describes in detail how “brilliant”

this peer was, and how her inability to easefully read the coursework material helped make him

feel better about his own abilities. He describes the situation here,

I was in grad school at the time, and I was in a couple of history classes that were incredibly difficult. Just, far and away, more difficult than anything that I had ever encountered in my entire life to date. Highly theoretical, just ridiculously abstract, we’re sitting here reading you know, Foucault and Lecan, as I’m trying to weave through all of this ridiculous theory that seems so somehow invaluable to me, I had a friend who was in the same class with me at the time, and she was probably one of the, if not the, most brilliant person I have ever met in my entire life. So, we were sort of struggling through this work together, and so to see somebody with such a high degree of natural talent struggle through the work in the same way that I did, but at the same time feel like I was able to, you know, we’d had so many conversations, but you know what, any conversation, it didn’t really matter which one I describe here, but you know, anytime we

118 were able to sit down and kind of try to flush out some of the ideas that were latent in the book in our own minds, I felt like I had as much to offer as she did, and I suppose that gave to me an awful lot of confidence, and so I think when I think about what that says about me as a reader, or maybe just reading in general, would be that, to have someone that you respect on a critical level and on an intellectual level show confidence in you as a reader and an interpreter of text you know, I think that’s very critical in the way that you understand yourself as a reader, so I really came to grow tremendously in my confidence, in terms of my own interpretive powers.

While this episode is centrally about the reading experience, there are also several very text-

centered themes present in this quote. Consistent with the notion of a “best reading” in New

Criticism, he identifies his peer as perhaps “the most brilliant person he has ever met.” Thus, she

is highly qualified provide good interpretations of the text. Further, he mentions the difficulty of

the texts on numerous occasions, again consistent with the idea that there is an objective

hierarchy of good texts. These in particular seemed “invaluable” to Brad. We also see his text-

centered focus with the description of understanding in his own mind the “the ideas that were

latent in the book.” This notion of the ideas not being constructed by an author or interpreted by

the reader, but being within the text itself is again a very text-centered notion of reading. Finally,

we see a notable absence of any meaning he did eventually make of these texts or even the

course in general. Beyond the names of the theorists he studied, he provides no interpretation of

the texts, no sense of how it guided his studies or his teaching. The most meaningful aspect of

this “turning point” episode for Brad is that it instilled confidence in his own interpretive

“powers.”

Doug

At the time of the study, Doug had taught between four and six years in public high

schools. He had an English Bachelor of Arts degree and a master’s degree in Education, both

119 from a very prestigious university. His father was a university professor of theology, and he

“grew up around books.” Doug’s reading life story is notable because he balances both text- and

reader-centeredness, along with agency and communion orientations. Fifty-four percent of his

life story was coded as relating to agency themes, 37% was text-centered. He was among the

middle three participants on both spectrums. Also notable is how often Doug discusses the

current influences of his school’s English department on his reading story, as I have described in

a previous section. One of the primary reasons to examine Doug’s case is to explore what it is

about his personal orientation that allows for such openness to learn from others and adapt to his

school’s English curriculum.

His primary agency theme was that of achievement and responsibility. Interestingly, he

discusses personal achievement and responsibility less often than he discusses the lack of it.

These episodes were still coded as “achievement and responsibility,” as the focus was clearly on

these elements of reading. On several occasions he details his inability to do the work required

of good reading, mentioning how much more he should have read in college. He explains how

he has come to read many of the works he should have read at university now that he is a

teacher. This is consistent with the rest of Doug’s interview. He places the site of much of his

interpretive growth as a reader in his school English department, and specifically attributes it to

his department chair, Samantha, and the International Baccalaureate program in which he teaches

several classes.

His communion tendencies most often presented themselves in discussions of caring and

help. Like many other participants who spoke about these themes, he discussed his family and

teachers extensively, occasionally mentioning himself as a teacher and why his work is

important. He regularly comes back to the idea that teaching is an important, if not noble,

120 profession. In describing positive influences on his reading life, he mentions both his parents,

including his father who is a teacher, as well as the university-based private school he attended

for elementary and secondary school and his university. Interestingly, he speaks often of

institutions, twice mentioning his school and three times describing his university, but never

discussing individual teachers or professors. This may explain some of his deference to the IB

program.

His story was quite complex, discussing eight different types of literature at all levels of

Hillocks’ hierarchy. In five of his eight episodes, these discussions of literature relate to

literature he has read as an IB teacher, and in all five of these cases, he reaches the highest levels

of Hillocks’ hierarchy.

Summary

Narrative is a useful tool for understanding personal orientations to reading, both how

teachers currently engage with texts, as well as the path that brought them to their present literary

stance. Among the teachers in this study, analysis revealed connections between an agency

orientation and text-centeredness, and between a communal orientation and a focus on the

reading experience surrounding the text. Teachers who were more communally oriented seemed

to gravitate to urban schools, often with explicit social justice missions, while the agency-

centered readers seemed to favor the academic freedom of the suburban school. The three

teachers with the most balanced orientations, in the middle of the agency/communion spectrum,

seemed to be influenced by one another and the departmental curriculum. This suggests that a

balanced life story might allow for more openness to appropriating new ideas. Finally, teachers’

interviews varied substantially in their literary complexity. While it does not seem that literary

121 complexity has any relationship to other variables explored in the interviews, the number of

types of books a teacher read correlated with the depth of the literary richness with which she

discussed the texts.

122 Chapter Five: Personal Reading Orientations as Enacted In Teaching

Overview In the life stories chapter of this dissertation, I outline a range of ways that teachers

understand themselves as readers and show how different factors related to personal orientations

to reading seem to cluster. While I believe that these results have important implications for

teacher educators and educational researchers, such knowledge remains academic unless there

appears to be some influence of these personal orientations on instruction. This chapter

examines such associations.

The previous chapter explored agency and communion tendencies, text- and reader-

centered stances, orientation coherence, and literary complexity. In this chapter, I examine how

these elements of a teachers’ reading orientation manifest themselves in instruction. I begin with

an overview of some of the ways in which each personal reading characteristic manifested itself

in classrooms, as well as a discussion of some of the dissonance between certain teachers’

personal orientations and their instruction style. I then detail the four cases. Don (78% reader,

71% communal) and Brad (text, 63%, agency, 62%) represent opposite ends on both the

agency/communion and text/reader-centered scales. Doug (54% agency, 37% text) was my

most balanced case; on both agency/communion and text/reader-centered scales, he was the only

teacher who fell among the three teachers in the middle of the spectrum. Sally (82% reader, 79%

communal) was one of my most extreme cases of a communal, reader-centered orientation, but

her instruction was at odds with her professed reading stance, and I was curious to explore the

factors that explained such dissonance. I hope that by examining the connections between

personal reading orientation and instruction with this range of teachers, I provide some insight

123 into the some of the ways that personal reading and reading instruction are related.

Findings and Discussion

Teachers’ personal orientations to reading manifested themselves in a range of ways in

teachers’ reading instruction. In most cases, there was clear alignment with personal and

pedagogical practices, while in a few cases it seemed that other factors mediated the influence of

a teachers’ personal orientation on her pedagogy. Here, I explore how different personal

reading factors relate to pedagogical ones across my four case studies.

Text- Versus Reader-Centered Discussion

As text- and reader-centeredness was a primary distinguishing factor in my analysis of

teachers’ personal orientations, I was curious in the extent to which this orientation was present

in classroom discussion. I coded teacher and student talk separately, as I was interested how

closely students’ talk would mirror teachers’ talk. I had imagined it might be possible for

students to take discussion in different directions than teachers intended, as suggested previously

by Probst (1988). In some classes, it was clear that both reader- and text-centered themes were

under discussion at the same time. For example, a teacher might begin a discussion by asking

about motif, but as part of the discussion she might ask students how those motifs related to their

own lives. Where two themes were present, I determined which theme was more predominant in

discussion and coded that theme as “primary.” If the two themes appeared in discussion with

equal regularity, I coded the theme that most closely aligned with the stated objectives of the

lesson as “primary.” The other theme was coded as “secondary.”

124

Table 6: Text- vs. Reader-Centered Talk

Several interesting findings emerge from these results. Don, who has the second most reader-

centered personal orientation of this group, engages students in the most reader-centered

discussion. Twenty-two percent of his comments and questions to students are primarily reader-

centered, and 41% of his text-centered discussion with students has a secondary reader-centered

focus. Also notable is how much of his students’ discussion mirrors his own; in fact his students

have more reader-centered discussion than any other group of students among my case teachers.

Finally, Don and his students’ discussion is far more integrated between text- and reader-foci

than any of the other case teachers. Most of Don’s class’s discussion includes both a primary

focus and a secondary focus. Further, Don is the only teacher to use text-focused discussion as a

backdrop to reader-centered discussion. This is very similar to his reading life story, where

personal meaning making involved detailed literary exploration.

In her life story, Sally has a more reader-focused personal orientation than Don, but her

125 class is almost exclusively text-centered. While she engages in reader-centered discussion in just

over 10% of class time, her students focus on reader-centered discussion in less than one percent

of class time, and they engage in reader-centered discussion as a backdrop to text-focused

discussion in about three percent of their talk. I explore the reasons for this disconnect between

Sally’s personal and pedagogical orientations later in the chapter.

Brad is very consistent between his personal and pedagogical orientations to text- and

reader-centeredness. As the most text-centered reader, Brad and his class focus on text-centered

discussion for almost 80% of their class time. They spend less than four percent of their time

discussing reader-centered themes. None of the discussion is integrated between text- and

reader-focused talk. Either they engage with one kind of discussion or the other. Unlike Don

who often uses a reader-focus to engage textual understanding, or vice versa, Brad and his class

examine each focus separately.

Finally, Doug presents an interesting case as so much of his life story is balanced

between text- and reader-centered discussion. Interestingly, reader-centered discussion is rarely

the focus of his class, rather, like Don, he uses reader-centered discussion as a means towards

engaging text-based, literary discussion. Unlike Don, however, he never uses text-centered

discussion as a backdrop to reader-centered themes.

Class Activities

We can also come to understand these teachers’ classrooms according to the activities in

which they engage. I was interested to see if reader or text-foci might manifest themselves not

only in the type of class talk, but in the way the teacher would organize literary meaning making.

Similarly, I was curious to see if agency and communion orientations would emerge through

126 activities being more individual or group oriented. For example, was the teacher always the

arbiter of textual analysis, as we might expect from a text-based/agency reader who values

certain interpretations over others and regards a correct interpretation as more important than the

meaning-making process? In these classes I would expect teacher-centered instruction. Or were

students encouraged to make meaning of the texts for themselves, as we might expect from a

reader-centered/communal teacher, who values the meaning-making experience over the actual

meaning and who places importance on the community of readers rather than the text? In this

case I would expect more student-focused activities.

While it is a bit difficult to consolidate the many ways in which four teachers engage their

students over six class periods, the table above gives us a sense. I categorized four activity types

as being student-centered (in greens and blues): students leading the activity; students working

individually, either writing or reading; and students working in small groups. In Don’s class,

students often worked in small groups while individuals held one-on-one meetings with him, and

Teacher-centered: pinks and reds Student-centered: blues and greens

127 I also classified this as student-centered. Teacher-centered activities (in pinks and reds) included

the teacher providing instructions, lecturing, directing discussion, providing something for the

students to watch, such as a movie, and administering assessment. In a few instances, class

discussion seemed to be jointly led by the teacher and the students. Often this was done

explicitly, in that teacher would ask the students what they would like to discuss, but would also

offer a few topics of their own.

The following table consolidates the different activity types according to who directed the

activity.

Don is the most student-centered of all the teachers in his activities, with fifty percent of

his class devoted to teacher-centered activities and almost fifty percent to student-centered

activities. Brad’s class is almost ninety percent teacher-centered. Notably, he never uses the

most common student-centered arrangement of having students work in groups. He is most

often the focal point of his classroom. Sally’s class is close to sixty percent teacher-focused.

Interestingly, Doug’s class is almost evenly split between student-centered, teacher-centered, and

jointly-directed activities. Again, I will discuss some of the potential explanations for this later

in the chapter.

128

Literary Complexity

As with the reading life story interviews, I coded for literary complexity in two ways. I

analyzed teacher and student talk according to Hillocks’ literary hierarchy, and I also looked to

see how many texts teachers and students regularly engaged during a class in order to get a sense

of their intertextual focus. I suspected that references to multiple texts might be used in service

of promoting some of the “meta” levels of reading, such as intertextuality. I split my analysis

between student and teacher talk, for I wanted to see how much of the student discussion

mirrored the teacher’s. I imagined scenarios, particularly with lecture, where teachers might

engage literature on very high levels, while students were not given the opportunity or were able

to echo the same literary themes.

Most interesting to me about this breakdown is that despite their very different orientations, Don,

Brad and Doug all average about the same amount of high-level literary discussion, around sixty

percent. Only Doug’s students fall somewhat behind his level, with forty-four percent to his

129 fifty-nine percent. I believe this is because Doug’s classes are very tiered; his IB courses

regularly engaged in high-level literary talk, while his “regular” classes most often engaged the

lower end of Hillocks’ hierarchy. Thus, Doug’s average student talk is somewhere in between.

Don’s and Brad’s student follow closely behind their teachers with the level of their literary

discussion. Only Sally reaches very low levels on literary hierarchy, with most of her talk to

students in the low range of the hierarchy. Her students follow suit, with only three percent of

their talk in the high end of the hierarchy. I believe this explains much of the disconnect

between Sally’s personal and pedagogical orientations. The literary complexity of both her

reading life story and her class instruction is very low; I expect this is the root cause of the

dissonance between her professed personal stance to texts and her pedagogical one. Her lack of

pedagogical content knowledge may make it difficult for her to know how to engage students in

the way that she herself reads. I would like to explore this possibility further in future work by

observing how teachers’ instruction changes as a result of rich content learning experiences, such

as the National Writing Project or the National Endowment for the Humanities summer sessions

for teachers.

The number of books discussed in each class is consistent with the hierarchy levels.

Interestingly, Doug is the only teacher who regularly engages students with their own writing

and their peers’ writing as texts for exploration. This might also explain why his students’

literary talk is less sophisticated than Don and Brad’s students; there may be less literary

complexity in his student-generated work than in the more traditional literature presented in the

other classes.

130

Now that I’ve provided an overview of the four case teacher classes, I explore each one

in detail. Notable is how in each classroom described below, students’ talk generally mirrors

their teachers’ talk, which underscores the importance of understanding how teachers engage

with texts if we want to have an effect on how students engage with texts.

Don

Don’s reading life story is a crowded one, populated by friends, lovers, teachers, parents,

sisters, students, fictional and non-fictional characters. Don’s classroom is similarly crowded.

The physical room itself is covered exclusively by student-generated work, which he refers to

regularly as reminders of lessons previously learned. Authors are very present in his classes; no

text is read without some reading assigned about the author. These supplemental texts are not

derived from the standard text-book bios, but from carefully selected magazine articles and

books. In fact, the authors of the biographies themselves are often present in the discussion; in

131 one case, two biographies of Langston Hughes were presented, one which focused on his racial

identity and association with other black writers and the Harlem Renaissance, the other focused

almost exclusively on his sexual orientation and how it can be interpreted through his writings

and personal correspondence. He asks students to consider the interests of each biographer and

which they think in more accurate.

He often encourages students to make personal connections to the texts, frequently

assigning journal reflections on the themes of upcoming texts. These kinds of personal

reflections are clearly valued in the class, as students, often unprompted, relate ideas from the

texts to their own lives. Don himself also models these personal-textual connections. When

discussing Plato’s Symposium and ideas about love, he refers to his own first reading of the

Symposium in English class, and how it was the first and only suggestion in high school that

romantic love might occur between two men. When asked by a student whether he believes in

Plato’s notion, he first asks the student what she believes, then asks students what the Greeks

believed, explained how literary critics interpret the Symposium, then provided of his own

subjective meaning of the text. Providing these kinds of multiple subjective interpretations –

with no conveyance that some interpretations might be more highly valued than others – is

typical of Don’s approach with his students. I contend that it is consistent with Don’s personal

orientation to literature, where many voices and characters are present in his reading life story.

In this same class on Plato, he connects a range of authors’ views on love, first giving

students a text by Margaret Atwood, then the Plato, then asking students to write their own

“origin of love” story, and reminds them that the story of Adam and Eve is also such a story. In

this way, once again, he underscores the subjectivity of ideas, in this case about love; there are

no universal truths in Don’s class, but a range of interpretations. Students are encouraged to

132 disagree with texts, to find them “disturbing” or “confusing.” And Greek authors’ have no more

or less authority on the great themes than the students themselves. Even in the driest lessons,

ones centered on AP prompts, Don reminds the students what the scorers are looking for, talking

at length about what AP scorers value. This implies that the “eight” that he predicts one answer

might get on the AP is subjective. His own assessment of the answer, or that of his students or a

different teacher, might be different.

This constant “subjectifying” in Don’s discussion of interpretation and assessment is also

evident in how he structures his lessons. In almost every class period, he includes elements of

lecture, whole-group discussion, small-group discussion and individual writing. He also

regularly meets one-on-one with students to discuss their progress in class. He asks students to

read their essays to and solicit feedback from their peers before turning the essays into him, so

that they can get multiple of perspectives on their work. I interpret this variety of instructional

configurations to be in line with the notion that there are many voices of authority in Don’s class.

While he provides mini-lectures in many classes, the majority of class time is devoted to whole-

group and small-group discussion. So while he has acknowledges that he has authoritative

information to share, he also places the great bulk of the interpretive work of the class on the

students. Even when many possible “answers” have been provided by the whole group, he then

asks students to work individually to determine which of the ideas generated by the class they

feel they could best support on their own ideas. In some units, he gives students an overall time

frame for reading a book, but asks them to determine how much they feel they should read each

night. He also has students choose which of four different books they will read for a unit on

modernism. This ceding of authority typical to the teacher is common to Don’s practice.

This lack of a universally-applied hierarchy – for how “good” students’ ideas are, for

133 which members of the class, authors, texts and sources should hold the most authority in Don’s

classroom – echoes the egalitarian view of texts seen in the life story interviews of reader-

centered, communion teachers. In Don’s reading life story, there is never an implication that the

childhood story or street signs or introductory French passage he describes are any less

significant to him that the “Primer of Existentialism” or The Sun Also Rises. Typical text-

centered, agency-orientated readers regularly established a hierarchy of texts and textual

authorities in their stories, and as we will see, in their classrooms.

Similarly, in the way that Don’s reading life story constantly interweaves literary

interpretation with personal memory, Don regularly asks his students to relate their lives to

themes in texts. Sometimes this is done over the course of a unit. With the Atwood and Plato,

Don asked students to extend a theme that they have explored in literature, in this case the origin

love, to their own personal understanding of the idea. Don also asks students to relate the

personal and the academic within more isolated interpretive moments in class. For example,

after reading a Maya Angelou story for homework, students are asked to “first give a summary,

then your reaction” to the story. Much like Don’s interwoven tales of personal and literary

meaning making, students easily integrate the two perspectives in their answers. A content

summary of Joe Louis’ historic fight in Angelou’s “Champion of the World,” quickly moves to a

heated discussion of how some African American figures are publicly viewed as models of the

entire African American community, how sports figures are more highly valued than other

prominent African Americans, and how Kobe Bryant’s rape trial has affected the African

American community. This discussion then moves to students’ personal associations with the

larger African American community. One student notes that while Maya Angelou cared deeply

about whether or not Louis won because there were so few successful African Americans

134 acknowledged by the dominant white culture, she has the privilege to feel indifferent about Kobe

Bryant’s situation.

I think it was serious at the time, since [Angelou] was at that time, but now, since black people as a whole have grown so far, if one person fails, you have more people to back you up, so it’s not like if one person fails, everybody fails.

Notable about this conversation is the frequency with which student disagree with one another. I

believe it is in part the stock placed in personal interpretation that allows students the confidence

to oppose their peers’ ideas. Rather than working from an understanding that the meaning of the

text resides in the text alone and is therefore best interpreted by literary scholars, these students

have been taught that literary interpretation is rooted in personal understanding. Each student is

an authority on her own life, and therefore speaks confidently when presenting an opposing

view. She is not undermining an interpretation determined by the literary establishment, but a

subjective one put forth by her peers with different life experiences and perspectives. Of course,

this is my interpretation of limited data. In future work I hope to interview students to

understand where such confidence in presenting opposing literary arguments comes from.

Much like Don’s literary interpretations that frequently reach the higher end of Hillock’s

hierarchy, in every class I observed, Don’s students make comments and ask questions that

include issues of authorial generalization or structural generalization, and much like Don’s life

story answers, the students’ discussion tends to be presented with evidence from their own lives

as well as being grounded in the texts. For example, the discussion of what Joe Louis

represented to the African American community engaged complex discussion of symbolism and

period, and such issues were explored both by retellings and interpretations of the story, as well

as associations with current cultural norms and personal feelings about race and community.

135 Brad

In Brad’s classroom, there are clear right and wrong answers. In the typical trajectory of

a unit or class, Brad begins by providing the correct interpretations for his students. For

example, in an essay exploring a theme, he first gives a presentation on “how you’re going to

interpret The Crisis” by Thomas Paine. He gives complex college-style lectures with power

point slideshows, with frequent reminders to students to take notes, so that they can inform the

students’ writing about the subject. In outlining how to write an essay for a department-wide

assessment, he explains, “if you follow these guidelines exactly as I’ve written them on the

board, you will do extremely well… If you follow these first three points, you will pass.” He

does a thorough job of working through the material with students, albeit almost always from his

own perspective, providing students with many real-world examples and stresses what is often

“hard” about understanding the ideas.

In contrast to Don’s idea that there are multiple correct interpretations of text, Brad

makes clear that there are a limited number of acceptable answers. His language enforces the

idea of precision. In a class about Pride and Prejudice, he asks students to, “tell me a few facts

about Mrs. Bennet and get your group to give me a couple of quotes from the text that would

accurately characterize Mrs. Bennet.” The use of terminology like “facts” and “accurately”

implies that there are objective ways to interpret the novel. His emphasis on going to the text for

answers has been characterized by Hines and others as being typical of the school of New

Criticism (Hines, 2001). This is echoed in text-based themes in Brad’s life story interview,

where he looks for “meaning latent in the book.”

Because few answers are acceptable in Brad’s classroom, the same ideas are repeated

over and over again. With this very assignment about Mrs. Bennet, Brad explains, “now you’ve

136 basically done this in your homework already; you just have to take it out and piece it together

on the board.” Later he tells students to copy “verbatim” from a previous homework assignment.

This is a substantially different approach to similar situations in Don’s classroom. When Don

asks students to take out their homework, he asks them to share their answers with their group

and collectively determine which answers are the most compelling. He encourages the idea that

there are multiple answers to an interpretive question, and while he tells students that some

answers are better than others, he does not place the authority for determining good answers in

the book or in the teacher, but rather with the collective of students.

In a different class, Brad departs from his typical teacher-centered classroom structure

and places the students in a circle. He asks the students questions about The Bluest Eye, and

then has the entire class go around in order in the circle and answer the question. Most student

answers include only a few words and a handful of answers are repeated again and again. After

the last student answers, he offers the class the correct interpretation. Some of his questions he

has clearly discussed in previous classes. For example, in the circle he asks students “who is

being indicted by the novel?” He does not define indicted, which suggests that this term, which

few teachers could assume their eleventh graders know, has already been discussed. Most

students answer “society,” which Brad confirms is the right answer after all students have given

their answers. Students did not attempt to engage one another’s answers in the circle, rather it

was clear that each answer was intended for Brad evaluation, not the other students.

In the Austen class, I believe I was given an example of how these agreed-upon answers

take shape in Brad’s classroom. Brad asks the students if Mrs. Bennet deserves their respect; if

“she was a worthwhile person.” This initially seemed to me like a reader-centered question

aimed at students’ personal reactions and opinions. Students raised a number of interesting and

137 nuanced answers, reaching many levels of Hillock’s hierarchy. Brad does not engage these

answers beyond short evaluative comments, such as “good” or “okay.” After several answers

have been presented, Brad says the following, “Until now we have presented Mrs. Bennet as

being a frivolous character whose only concern is matchmaking, and certainly matchmaking

seems to be a frivolous enterprise – I think most of us would probably agree with that – but I

think there might be something a bit more practical to Mrs. Bennet’s concern, something that has

a little more gravity, a little more meat to it.” This is interesting, as several students suggested

Mrs. Bennet’s actions were rooted in her concern about her family or daughters’ social standing,

and as such were respectable acts. Nonetheless, one student answered Brad’s “gravity” question

with a suggestion about Mrs. Bennet’s concern for her own respectability, a direct reference to a

suggestion Brad made earlier in the class. Brad dismisses this answer and does not solicit more

answers. Rather, he then leads the students through a series of “basic fact” questions about

different characters’ social standings. For example, “Would you say that Mr. Bigly is wealthy,

middle or lower class?” He then tells students if they are “accurate” or not. After a series of

similar questions about different characters’ class standing, Brad concludes that Mrs. Bennet’s

concern is about money and making sure her daughters marry a wealthy man.

This discussion is interesting on several levels. For one, the students seemed to me to

quite insightfully understand that there were issues of class at play, which are in part related to

money and wealth, but Brad does not build from the students’ discussions of class to his idea

about wealth, rather he presents his “answer” completely isolated from the students’ previous

answers. This is at odds with the typical communal/reader-centered approach I observed in Don

and others’ classroom where students’ and the teacher’s answers build from one another.

Brad’s classification of different characters as “wealthy, middle or lower class,” would

138 not be an accurate range of class possibilities for Victorian England. Part of the point of

Austen’s novel is to distinguish between bourgeois and aristocratic norms; the new industrial

class was making considerable amounts of money, but still lacked the “class” of the aristocracy,

but Brad seemed to miss this point. Further, the notion of a “middle class” is a very American

idea. Brad speaks often in his life story and clinical interviews of loving “texts with historical

context” and applying historical context to the reading of literature, and yet with this particular

book, which he claims to teach despite not liking the author or the book, he does not apply his

own frame of interpretation to the discussion. When teaching other authors, such as Thomas

Paine, Ford Maddox Ford and F. Scott Fitzgerald, he gives long lectures on the historical context

for the texts and integrates discussion of history throughout his classes on the literature. In

almost all other classes I observed, there was clear consistency between Brad’s personal reading

orientation and his pedagogical approach. I find it interesting that there is an inconsistency in

this case, perhaps because he taught something he did not like. If he is not personally compelled

by the text, he may abdicate his teacher-centered role and not apply his personal framework for

reading to the class.

Some of my most interesting interactions with Brad occurred between classes. After

observing him teach the morning class on The Bluest Eye, Brad told me that he was teaching

Austen later that day. He explains, “In [period] 7/8 you’ll see me teaching Austen. I hate

Austen, but I try not to impress my opinion on them too much, so you’ll see a very different

class, much more student-centered.” I asked him, “Have you seen a gender gap with which

students like it?” He replied, “No, no one likes it.”

I believe this can tell us a few things about Brad’s approach with students. When he feels

he is an authority on a subject, the class should be more teacher-centered. The implication here

139 is that he has the correct answer, so the most direct way of having students understand that

answer is to tell it to them. When Brad is less familiar and personally engaged with a text is

when students can take on the roles of interpreter, although even then it rarely seemed to happen.

He brought up this idea continually throughout his clinical interview at the end of the year. In

his answer to my first question, “what makes a good reading class?” he explains,

this is a bit selfish, but it makes a bit of a difference to have professional autonomy because that encourages the teacher to become an active reader themselves and be more interested in the curriculum. I mean I know I’m not too interested in, you know, I’m not too interested in teaching certain things, and I suppose my lack of enthusiasm can sap the enthusiasm of the class.

In Brad’s life story interview, he maintains a very clear agency, text-centered orientation.

He is focused on his direct interaction with texts, to the point where few others are mentioned in

the interview, and to the extent that he can work hard to determine the “true” meaning of the text.

Perhaps we can see his discomfort with teaching anything outside of his privileged set of

“important” and “seminal” works as symptomatic of his lack of a communal focus. He is not

interested in a community of readers or readers’ personal interpretations of the texts. Reading

for him, unlike Don or Sally, is not about creating a relationship with others, including his

students. Teaching, like reading, is about finding meaning “latent in the book,” and he is the

most appropriate person to facilitate that correct understanding for his students. If a text does not

personally appeal to him, he cannot find personal meaning in the experience of seeing how

students might engage the text, as he does not value personal, subjective interpretation.

It was also interesting to me that he understood that his class on The Bluest Eye, despite

having students in a circle and each presenting an answer, was “more teacher-centered.” I

wondered why he had the students re-arrange the class into a circle if the point was not to create

140 a student-centered class. This might be a case of a teacher adopting the superficial features of a

reform idea, without the underlying substance.

At the end of the life story interview, I asked a few pedagogical questions, including “do

you think of yourself as a teacher who reads or a reader who teaches?” He quickly explained

that he was a reader who teaches, saying,

I guess my favorite thing about teaching is definitely curriculum design, having my own learning, my development of questions, and lessons, and units, and structuring of new courses and things of that nature, that’s where I think I’m prime. That’s really, that’s what energizes me about teaching, it’s my own learning. I know I sound terrible. My second favorite thing is actually the teaching of students. You know, I really enjoy being with the students and teaching them things, conducting a class. My least favorite thing is definitely reading their work, cause I find it sometimes tremendously boring, and mundane, and frustrating. My absolute least favorite thing in teaching is students as individuals, like I don’t have much of an interest in their home lives, I don’t have much of an interest in what goes on. I don’t feel like that’s my job, I don’t really want, I’m not a social worker, I’m not a counselor, I’m not their friend, you know, I’m their academic teacher.

In many ways, Brad told me what to expect of his class in this very quote, before I had done my

observations. Indeed, his classes are about his interpretation, presumably because it is the right

interpretation, an idea echoed in his text-centered life story interview. His agency orientation

comes out as well. Even when he claims to be more student-centered, as with the Austen, or

when he uses student-centered techniques, such as configuring students in a circle or having all

students contribute, class is about his relationship with the text, not his students’ experience with

it. In this quote he describes himself as “conducting a class,” which implies a very teacher-

centered approach. He says that he “really enjoy[s] being with the students and teaching them

things,” which again, focuses on the teachers’ role. He does not mention student learning, or the

class and teacher learning together as a community, something all communal/reader-centered

teachers mention in their life story and clinical interviews.

141 Finally, Brad provides me with a good explanation of how the class is ultimately about

his personal experience with the text and how best to discuss it, rather than engage students with

it. He describes a time when his department chair observed him teach. At the end of the class,

the chair asked Brad,

what would stop you from taking what you did today in class, and tape recording it, and disseminating it to students in some sort of a visual way. And I said, excuse me what do you mean by that? And he said, do you really need your students to be here, do you need them? The answer that I came to was about ninety percent no, I don’t know, it makes me sounds really callous and cold…

Brad recognizes that there are other ways to engage students, ways he refers to as “gimmicks”

and “social work,” but he is tied to his approach. While it seems Brad believes that this comes

from his enjoyment of writing lectures rather than getting to know his students, I think it is at

heart because his notion of how to read texts does not necessitate getting to know his students.

This is not only a decision rooted in pedagogy, but in personal reading philosophy.

Sally

Observing Sally’s class for the first time was a dramatic surprise. Based on her reading

life story interview, I expected her to be a very reader-centered teacher, as her personal

orientation was so dramatically reader-centered. Instead, I encountered a very text-centered

classroom, where students’ personal meaning making was rarely given space or attention. Her

worksheets and quizzes were photocopied from teacher-handbooks and focused almost

exclusively on low-level literary issues, often asking for true-false answers or to explain “what

happened in the text.” Overall, there was an almost exclusive focus in on “what events take

place” and who different characters are. She explains what she expects of her student work,

saying, “it doesn’t need to be complicated, just a simple explanation of what happened.” This

142 almost exclusive focus on plot and characters reached into class discussion as well. In one class,

she had her students read summaries of chapters of The Odyssey. Students read these summaries

aloud, and her main focus was for students to pronounce the characters’ names correctly “as this

will make reading easier and is also very important to know.” Later, this class focused on

vocabulary that came from the text. These issues – pronunciation and vocabulary – do not even

register on Hillocks’ hierarchy. They are also rather dramatically at odds with the notion of

reading presented in her life story interview. In her personal interactions with literature, it serves

to create bonds between people and to act as a catalyst for starting new paths in life. In her class,

none of these interpersonal or “real-life” experiences play into the discussion of texts.

Sally has her regular class do far less group work than her honors class. I suspect this is a

matter of classroom management, but it seemed notable to me that her own way of engaging

texts – through groups of peers, friends and family – was only occasionally used, and when it

was, it was most often reserved for her higher lever students. She almost never refers students to

other books they have read in her class or others. The only time texts other than the focal text

are discussed are during a class when she presents a portion of the film, Saving Private Ryan.

The day following the film viewing involves students bringing in a newspaper article about the

Iraq war and the name of some piece of media that is about a twentieth century war. The

students engage in a very enthusiastic discussion about different kinds of media and films having

to do with war. This is not so surprising, perhaps, as Sally’s focus in college and pre-teaching

work was media studies. When I tell Sally that I think the next day’s class will be very

interesting, though, she says, “I doubt it. Often no one will bring anything, although it could be.”

On this particular day, she changed her lesson on the morning of my arrival. The second half of

class was spent watching the move, Saving Private Ryan. She explained, “I’ve decided, when

143 I’m banging my head against a wall, I’ll show a movie.” Despite an interesting conversation

leading up to the movie about what justifies war and what constitutes a text, her “viewing notes”

for Saving Private Ryan are exclusively plot and character based, engaging on the very lowest

end of Hillocks’ hierarchy.

During her last unit on Chaucer, Sally directed students into what seems like it should be

a student-centered activity. Students are asked to get into small groups and compare their

answers on a worksheet and collectively decide which answers are best. In reality, groups

usually asked one student to read her answers to the others, who copied them down. There was

no discussion of the intended themes of the group assignment: evidence and rationale for each

students’ answers. When I showed a few clips from this class to Sally and asked her if the class

met her objectives for students to discuss warrants and evidence, she answered that it did. When

prompted, she explains,

To be very honest my goals for this unit were for them just to get through the unit without any of us committing suicide. I just can’t, I have a really hard time teaching Chaucer. And, mostly because I don’t really enjoy the story, and um, probably because I haven’t studied them enough, you know, but um, so in a way, come to think of it, like reflecting on it, I think exercise like this, for this text, are my way of slugging through it with them.

I believe that this clear lack of both content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge

contributes to Sally’s inability to conduct a classroom as communally as she often professes to

want to.

Doug What most characterized Doug’s teaching to me was how different his approaches were

to his IB and regular classes. While his IB classes engaged complex literature from around the

world, I never saw him teach a typical literary text, such as a novel or poetry, to his regular-level

144 classes. In the first class I observed, regular-level students read over examples of descriptive

writing that they and their peers had previously written. During the second class I observed,

students dissected a cartoon as a text. Few texts discussed in any of Doug’s classes, a good

indication of literary complexity in other teachers’ classes, however, students his IB classes go

more in depth with each text in this class than in other teachers’ classes; the regular students do

not. In non-IB classes, textual critique includes spelling and grammar and whether student has

remembered to include their name at the top of the page, whereas IB students delved into one

another’s texts with same literary complexity as they engaged the literature from the course.

Doug’s IB classes resemble college seminars, where students and teacher collaborate to

direct the path of the discussion, discussions which almost always scored high on Hillocks’

hierarchy. In the regular classes, Doug is generally responsible for what is discussed and when,

establishing more of an authoritative role over the students, which stood in contrast to the more

egalitarian IB classes. In IB discussions, Doug regularly acknowledges his own subjective

perspective often, prefacing comments, with “Well, what I believe…” He does not stake out his

own subjective stance this explicitly in any of his regular classes.

Doug was one of the only teachers to share responsibility with his students for the

direction discussions would take. This egalitarian, subjective stance was only present in his IB

classes. His interplay of text-centered and reader-centered discussion was most evident in IB

classes. Consistently engaging in high levels of the literary hierarchy was only present in the IB

classroom. This presents a particularly interesting case. In all of the ways I’ve outlined here,

Doug teaches in line with his personal reading orientation. He is balanced between text- and

reader-centeredness. He story is mixed between communal and individualistic approaches. His

life story presented high levels literary complexity. All of this clear consistency, however, is

145 only present in the IB classes.

There are several explanations for this. First, as his life story was so explicitly affected

by his experience with the IB curriculum, it should not be a surprise that he teaches IB in line

with his personal reading orientation; the two are intimately connected. Perhaps somewhat

unsettling, however, is that this approach – not just curricular, but more generally affecting his

pedagogy – does not cross over to other classes.

Another explanation may reside in the text-centered elements of Doug’s reading life

story. He consistently created a hierarchy of literature for himself. He distinguished that which

he grew up loving and reading – fantasy, science fiction, graphic novels – from the literature he

learned to love by teaching IB. He echoes this hierarchy in his clinical interview, in fact

repeating a line he used in his life story interview. When asked how he plans for an IB lesson

about Palace Walk, he explains,

…especially when you are dealing with really high quality literature, which when you're dealing with IB everything is very dense. It’s very much filet mignon, not hamburger, you know? (M: right, right). It’s very right, dense stuff and so therefore, you know, you can read it over and over and over again and you are always going to find new layers, new wrinkles (M: yeah) and each, you know one of the great things about teaching these sort of rich texts is that you learn more and you understand more about them each time you read them.

His pedagogical statements here are very consistent with the kind of literary discussion he

presents in his life story interview, in fact his answer integrates discussion of his reading as a

teacher, as well as reader. When I ask him about planning a regular class dissecting student

writing in terms of tone, however, his explanation is quite different. Rather than discussing both

his own and his students’ process for literary meaning-making, he wonders how many of his

students are “mentally engaged” and refusing to think. He explains,

…you know getting them all to sort of sit there and all of them read it, I don’t know, I

146 mean I think most of them are probably up there reading it and checking it out. But how many of them are like actually mentally engaged with it and thinking you know, ‘wow I wonder what that tone is’ versus like, ‘alright I’ll sit here and be quiet and put my eyes on the screen but I’m not going to think’, um but, you know the kids who were participating, uh, were sort of, you know, grappling with it and, uh, and dealing with it.

I suspect that Doug’s strong belief in literary hierarchy, coupled with his pedagogical choices,

affect his attitude towards his classes. As he so clearly values complex literature, one tack might

have been to teach such literature to his regular class as well, perhaps spending more time on

each text and offering more extensive scaffolding than with his IB class. Instead, he does not

offer such complex literature to his regular classes, and hence it seems that he approaches these

classes quite differently than his IB classes. His personal orientation no longer holistically

applies to his pedagogical approach.

Summary

In this chapter I’ve presented two cases where teachers’ personal and pedagogical

orientations are consistent, and two cases where they diverge. In Sally’s case, it appears that she

may lack the pedagogical content knowledge to enact her personal orientation in the classroom

setting. In Doug’s case, it appears that his belief about students’ ability may limit the influence

of his personal orientation for some of his lesser-achieving students. Not surprisingly, this

suggests that personal orientations to reading are only one factor among many that affect

teachers’ instruction. Nonetheless, as there were such clear connections between teachers’ life

stories and their pedagogy in three of these cases, personal orientations to texts does seem to be

one important factor relating to classroom instruction. Further, students’ talk generally mirrors

their teachers’ talk in classrooms. A next important step in the research is to understand how

147 different factors, such as beliefs about students, pedagogical content knowledge, and personal

orientation to texts, cluster in different ways to promote certain affects on instruction.

148 Chapter Six: Students’ Reading Orientations

While those of us in the field of teacher education believe deeply that what teachers know

and believe affects their instruction and that instruction affects student learning, the relationship

between teachers, teaching and students is rarely straightforward. As we analyze teachers in new

ways, it is important explore how our new understanding extends to students.

This section of the study attempted to extend my analysis of teachers’ personal reading

orientations to students. That is, I wanted to know if teachers’ personal orientations were

communicated – explicitly or implicitly – to students, and if over the course of the year, students

adopted elements of their teachers’ orientations to reading. I was also curious to see if certain

reading practices in students were aligned with particular reading orientations in teachers.

Results

After conducting the entire study and analyzing the qualitative data, I decided that of the

original one hundred eighty one questions on the student survey, one hundred eight related to

codes I had found through qualitative methods. I grouped questions according to these codes,

then tested the validity of these groups using Cronbach’s Alpha for the pre- and post- test scores.

The results are below and confirm a balance between statistically robust codes and codes that are

relevant to the qualitative findings.

149

Variable Item Cronbach’s Alpha – Pre-test Items

Cronbach’s Alpha – Post-test Items

Inclination to read during free time

.600 .605

Inclination to read alone. .699 .692 Inclination to read as part of a community of familiars

.841 .884

Sense of reading as part of a larger societal practice

.812 .846

The extent to which the student is reader-centered

.785 .763

The extent to which the student is text-centered

.785 .773

Inclination to seek out challenging reading experiences

.850 .835

Mastery reaction to challenging reading material

.709 .782

Personal reading experiences that reached the “basic” level of Hillocks’ hierarchy.

.830 .790

Personal reading experiences that reached the “complex” levels of Hillocks’ hierarchy.

.857 .853

Personal reading experiences that reached the “meta” levels of Hillocks’ hierarchy.

.713 .725

Academic reading experiences that reached the “basic” level of Hillocks’ hierarchy.

.597 .754

Academic reading experiences that reached the “complex” levels of Hillocks’ hierarchy.

.744 .774

Table 7: Cronbach’s Alpha

Once I grouped my variables, I created correlation matrices among the variables at pre-

and post-test stages to get a sense of the data as a whole. These descriptive statistics include the

means of pre- and post-test scores (tables 2 and 3), the t-tests including the level of significance

(table 4), and the d-effect size, using Cohn’s d (table 5), which measures the effect size of each

question cluster.

150 Pre-test Correlations

Free Time

Com

munal

Individual

Personal

Basic

Personal

Com

plex

Personal

Meta

Reader-

Centered

Text- C

entered

Seek

Challenge

Mastery

Reaction

Challenge

Academ

ic B

asic

Academ

ic C

omplex

Pearson 1 Sig. (2-tailed)

Free Time

N 298 Pearson .390** 1 Sig. (2-tailed)

0

Communal

N 298 298 Pearson .406** .450** 1 Sig. (2-tailed)

0 0

Individual

N 298 298 298 Pearson .466** .431** .592** 1 Sig. (2-tailed)

0 0 0

Personal Basic

N 298 298 298 298 Pearson .455** .564** .516** .625** 1 Sig. (2-tailed)

0 0 0 0

Personal Complex

N 298 298 298 298 298 Pearson .376** .479** .302** .348** .449** 1 Sig. (2-tailed)

0 0 0 0 0

Personal Meta

N 298 298 298 298 298 298 Pearson .397** .658** .478** .623** .697** .364** 1 Sig. (2-tailed)

0 0 0 0 0 0

Reader-Centered

N 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 Pearson .454** .682** .518** .534** .679** .712** .663** 1 Sig. (2-tailed)

0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Text-Centered

N 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 Pearson .349** .490** .413** .362** .441** .417** .418** .523** 1 Sig. (2-tailed)

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Seek Challenge

N 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 Pearson .244** .435** .200** .237** .340** .342** .348** .437** .224** 1 Sig. (2-tailed)

0 0 0.001 0 0 0 0 0 0

Reaction to Challenge

N 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298

Pearson .146* .168** .141* .263** .244** 0.106 .234** .251** .179** .163** 1 Sig. (2-tailed)

0.012 0.004 0.015 0 0 0.068 0 0 0.002 0.005

Academic Basic

N 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 Pearson Correlation

.218** .291** .289** .387** .442** .236** .345** .405** .263** .178** .582** 1

Sig. (2-tailed)

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.002 0

Academic Complex

N 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 298 **.Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *.Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

Table 8: Pre-test Correlations

151

Post-test Correlations

Free Time

Com

munal

Individual

Personal

Basic

Personal

Com

plex

Personal

Meta

Reader-

Centered

Text- C

entered

Seek

Challenge

Mastery

Reaction

Challenge

Academ

ic B

asic

Academ

ic C

omplex

Pearson 1 Sig. (2-tailed)

Free Time

N 286 Pearson .466** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) 0

Communal

N 285 285 Pearson .444** .395** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) 0 0

Individual

N 285 285 285 Pearson .396** .320** .513** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) 0 0 0

Personal Basic

N 285 285 285 285 Pearson .398** .499** .463** .565** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) 0 0 0 0

Personal Complex

N 285 285 285 285 285 Pearson .363** .507** .287** .247** .493** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) 0 0 0 0 0

Personal Meta

N 284 284 284 284 284 284 Pearson .416** .591** .440** .600** .688** .335** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) 0 0 0 0 0 0

Reader-Centered

N 285 285 285 285 285 284 285 Pearson .479** .751** .497** .478** .684** .659** .681** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Text-Centered

N 283 283 283 283 283 283 283 283 Pearson .380** .529** .362** .335** .377** .443** .410** .550** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Seek Challenge

N 283 283 283 283 283 283 283 283 283 Pearson .355** .521** .307** .190** .397** .348** .419** .512** .276** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) 0 0 0 0.001 0 0 0 0 0

Reaction to Challenge

N 282 282 282 282 282 282 282 282 282 282 Pearson 0.08 0.093 .163** .289** .160** 0.085 .147* .150* 0.07 .133* 1 Sig. (2-tailed) 0.178 0.118 0.006 0 0.007 0.154 0.013 0.012 0.237 0.026

Academic Basic

N 283 283 283 283 283 283 283 283 283 282 283 Pearson .237** .286** .275** .421** .362** .189** .306** .325** .255** .184** .598** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) 0 0 0 0 0 0.001 0 0 0 0.002 0

Academic Complex

N 283 283 283 283 283 283 283 283 283 282 283 283 **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

Table 9: Post-test Correlations

152

Paired Samples Test

Paired Differences

95% Confidence

Interval of the

Difference

Mean

Std.

Deviation

Std.

Error

Mean Lower Upper t df

Sig. (2-

tailed)

Pair 1 PREFREETIME -

POSTFREETIME

.01197 .49605 .03552 -.05809 .08203 .337 194 .737

Pair 2 PRECOMMUNAL -

POSTCOMMUNAL

.22962 .51785 .03718 .15629 .30295 6.176 193 .000

Pair 3 PREINDPURSUIT -

POSTINDPURSUIT

.06229 .60070 .04313 -.02278 .14735 1.444 193 .150

Pair 4 PREPERSBASIC -

POSTPERSBASIC

.05790 .51728 .03714 -.01535 .13115 1.559 193 .121

Pair 5 PREPERSCOMPLEX -

POSTPERSCOMPLEX

.13670 .53276 .03825 .06126 .21214 3.574 193 .000

Pair 6 PREPESRMETA -

POSTPESRMETA

.19257 .67708 .04874 .09644 .28870 3.951 192 .000

Pair 7 PREREADCTRD -

POSTREADCTRD

.06366 .51508 .03698 -.00928 .13660 1.721 193 .087

Pair 8 PRETEXTCTRD -

POSTTEXTCTRD

.10632 .47403 .03421 .03885 .17380 3.108 191 .002

Pair 9 PRESEEKCHAL -

POSTSEEKCHAL

.23503 .63014 .04548 .14533 .32473 5.168 191 .000

Pair 10 PREREACTCHALMAST -

POSTREACTCHALMAST

.06457 .65992 .04775 -.02962 .15876 1.352 190 .178

Pair 11 PREACADBASIC -

POSTACADBASIC

.07378 .54360 .03923 -.00360 .15117 1.881 191 .062

Pair 12 PREACADCOMPLEX -

POSTACADCOMPLEX

.12912 .59763 .04313 .04405 .21420 2.994 191 .003

Table 10: Paired-Samples Test

153

Descriptive Statistics Pre-test Post-test

N Mean Standard Deviation N Mean

Standard Deviation

Cohn's d Effect Size

Read in free time 225 2.3278 0.61515 212 2.3156 0.60391 0.020014571 Read within community 225 2.6387 0.54229 211 2.4246 0.61111 0.370591121 Read alone 225 1.8152 0.68868 211 1.7599 0.65314 0.082396466 Personal reading - Basic 225 1.5511 0.66353 211 1.4937 0.57724 0.092300252 Personal reading - Complex 225 2.1881 0.65178 211 2.054 0.63307 0.208718191 Personal reading - Meta 225 2.7276 0.7314 210 2.5601 0.68646 0.236152973 Reader-centered 225 2.0397 0.66692 211 1.9803 0.6147 0.092618333 Text-centered 225 2.0976 0.6538 209 1.9936 0.57419 0.169027659 Seek reading challenges 225 2.4411 0.79866 209 2.2303 0.73174 0.27522054 Mastery reaction to reading challenges 225 2.291 0.62537 208 2.2354 0.69408 0.084163501 Academic reading - basic 225 1.3633 0.48693 209 1.2791 0.41793 0.185567401 Academic reading - complex 225 1.4639 0.51985 209 1.3569 0.49787 0.210224922

Cohen's d = M1 - M2 / σpooled

Table 11: Descriptive Statistics Including Effect Size

154 Finally, I tested my hypotheses using inferential analyses. As I discussed in my methods

section, I hypothesized that students of more reader-centered teachers may become more reader-

centered over the course of the year, and that, likewise, students of more text-centered teachers

may become more text-centered over the course of the year. I also hypothesized that teachers

whose classroom discussion regularly reached higher levels of Hillock’s taxonomy may

influence their students to increase the complexity of their reading, both in and out of school. I

suspected that students of agency-oriented teachers may have higher “reading as an individual

pursuit” scores by the end of the year, and similarly, that students of communally oriented

teachers may become more communal in their reading habits. Finally, I hypothesized that

students of text-centered teachers may not seek out challenging material and may not attempt to

read through challenging material.

In order to test to test my hypotheses I conducted an analysis of variance (ANOVA) for

the pretest to determine if teachers get significantly different students at the beginning of the

year, an ANOVA for the post test to see if students ended the year significantly different from

one another, a repeated measures ANOVA to see which teachers’ students changed the most

over the course of the year, and an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), to test significant changes

over the course of the year when adjusting for the pre-test scores.

The student survey was organized using a Likert scale. A score of “1” corresponded with

“usually,” “2” with “sometimes,” “3” with “rarely,” and “4” with “never.” Hence the lower the

score, or movement in a negative direction, indicates a stronger association with the variable.

The survey results come from six teachers’ classrooms, two teachers from each school in

the study: Don and Sally from Greenwood, Samantha and Lucy from Cantor, and Nancy and

Kelly from Highland West. To help interpret the results in line with my hypotheses, I’ve created

155 a table summarizing my results from chapter four, where I outlined teachers’ personal reading

orientations.

Teacher School Communal/ Agency

Reader-/Text- Centered

Literacy Complexity

Don (DZ) Greenwood Communal Reader High Sally (SS) Greenwood Communal Reader Low Samantha (SA) Cantor Communal Reader High Lucy (LH) Cantor Communal Reader High Nancy (NB) Highland West Agency Reader Low Kelly (KW) Highland West Agency Balanced Moderate

Table 12: Teacher Results Summary

Based on this summary of my qualitative findings and my hypotheses, I expected to find

Don, Samantha and Lucy’s students to have communal and reader-centered tendencies towards

reading, with high levels of literary complexity. I expected Nancy and Kelly’s students to be

focused on themselves as individuals in their reading orientations and to express lower levels of

literary complexity. Nancy’s students would be more reader-centered in their reading habits and

Kelly’s students would be more balanced between a text-centered and reader-centered

orientation. Based solely on her reading life story interview, I would have hypothesized that

Sally’s students would be highly communal and reader-centered in their reading orientations, but

because of her more text-centered instruction, I was less certain about this outcome.

The following tables include the Pre-test ANOVA, which measures where each teachers’

students began the year according to the question clusters, the Post-test ANOVA, which

measures where the students ended up at the end of the year, the Repeated Measures ANOVA,

which measures the change for each population from the beginning of the year to the end of the

year, and finally the ANCOVA table, which shows the level of change for the students over the

course of the year adjusting for where each population began the year.

156

Variables Don (DZ) Kelly (KW) Lucy (LH) Nancy (NB) Samantha (SA) Sally (SS)

-.3942* (KW) .3942* (DZ) 0.1771 (DZ) .4363* (DZ) 0.1194 (DZ) 0.0813 (DZ) -0.1771 (LH) 0.2171 (LH) -0.2171 (KW) 0.0422 (KW) -0.2748 (KW) -.3128* (KW) -.4363* (NB) -0.0422 (NB) -0.2593 (NB) 0.2593 (LH) -0.0577 (LH) -0.0957 (LH) -0.1194 (SA) 0.2748 (SA) 0.0577(SA) 0.317 (SA) -0.317 (NB) -.3550* (NB)

Read in free time

-0.0813 (SS) .3128* (SS) 0.0957 (SS) .3550* (SS) 0.0381 (SS) -0.0381 (SA) -0.2626 (KW) 0.2626 (DZ) 0.0196 (DZ) .4087* (DZ) 0.0678 (DZ) -0.1034 (DZ) -0.0196 (LH) 0.2431 (LH) -0.2431 (KW) 0.146 (KW) -0.1949 (KW) -.3660* (KW) -.4087* (NB) -0.146 (NB) -.3891* (NB) .3891* (LH) 0.0482 (LH) -0.123 (LH) -0.0678 (SA) 0.1949 (SA) -0.0482 (SA) .3409*(SA) -.3409* (NB) -.5121* (NB)

Read within community

0.1034 (SS) .3660* (SS) 0.123 (SS) .5121* (SS) 0.1712 (SS) -0.1712 (SA) -0.2503 (KW) 0.2503 (DZ) -0.1008 (DZ) 0.3374 (DZ) -0.0597 (DZ) 0.0932 (DZ) 0.1008 (LH) 0.3511 (LH) -0.3511 (KW) 0.0871 (KW) -0.31 (KW) -0.1571 (KW) -0.3374 (NB) -0.0871 (NB) -.4382* (NB) .4382* (LH) 0.0411 (LH) 0.194 (LH) 0.0597 (SA) 0.31 (SA) -0.0411 (SA) .3971* (SA) -.3971* (NB) -0.2442 (NB)

Read alone

-0.0932 (SS) 0.1571 (SS) -0.194 (SS) 0.2442 (SS) -0.1529 (SS) 0.1529 (SA) -0.2695 (KW) 0.2695 (DZ) 0.0743 (DZ) .4069* (DZ) 0.0497 (DZ) 0.2788 (DZ) -0.0743 (LH) 0.1953 (LH) -0.1953 (KW) 0.1374 (KW) -0.2198 (KW) 0.0093 (KW) -.4069* (NB) -0.1374 (NB) -0.3327 (NB) 0.3327 (LH) -0.0246 (LH) 0.2045 (LH) -0.0497 (SA) 0.2198 (SA) 0.0246 (SA) 0.3573 (SA) -0.3573 (SA) -0.1281 (NB)

Personal reading - Basic

-0.2788 (SS) -0.0093 (SS) -0.2045 (SS) 0.1281 (SS) -0.2291 (SS) 0.2291 (SA) -.5453* (KW) .5453* (DZ) 0.1183 (DZ) .5207* (DZ) -0.0576 (DZ) 0.2074 (DZ) -0.1183 (LH) .4270* (LH) -.4270* (KW) -0.0245 (KW) -.6029* (KW) -.3378* (KW) -.5207* (NB) 0.0245 (NB) -.4025* (NB) .4025* (LH) -0.1759 (LH) 0.0892 (LH) 0.0576 (SA) .6029* (SA) 0.1759 (SA) .5783* (SA) -.5783* (NB) -0.3133 (NB)

Personal reading - Complex

-0.2074 (SS) .3378* (SS) -0.0892 (SS) 0.3133 (SS) -0.265 (SS) 0.265 (SS) -0.3651 (KW) 0.3651 (DZ) 0.0496 (DZ) 0.353 (DZ) -0.153 (DZ) -0.0561 (DZ) -0.0496 (LH) 0.3155 (LH) -0.3155 (KW) -0.0121 (KW) -.5182* (KW) -.4212* (KW) -0.353 (NB) 0.0121 (NB) -0.3034 (NB) 0.3034 (LH) -0.2027 (LH) -0.1057 (LH) 0.153 (SA) .5182* (SA) 0.2027 (SA) .5061* (SA) -.5061* (NB) -.4091* (NB)

Personal reading - Meta

0.0561 (SS) .4212* (SS) 0.1057 (SS) .4091* (SS) -0.097 (SS) 0.097 (SA) -.4489* (KW) .4489* (DZ) 0.2267 (DZ) .5442* (DZ) 0.1304 (DZ) 0.1587 (DZ) -0.2267 (LH) 0.2223 (LH) -0.2223 (KW) 0.0953 (KW) -0.3185 (KW) -0.2903 (KW) -.5442* (NB) -0.0953 (NB) -0.3175 (NB) 0.3175 (LH) -0.0963 (LH) -0.068 (LH) -0.1304 (SA) 0.3185 (SA) 0.0963 (SA) .4138* (SA) -.4138* (NB) -.3855* (NB)

Reader-centered

-0.1587 (SS) 0.2903 (SS) 0.068 (SS) .3855* (SS) -0.0283 (SS) 0.0283 (SA) -.4964* (KW) .4964* (DZ) 0.1598 (DZ) .5497* (DZ) 0.0488 (DZ) 0.0731 (DZ) -0.1598 (LH) 0.3366 (LH) -0.3366 (KW) 0.0533 (KW) -.4476* (KW) -.4233* (KW) -.5497* (NB) -0.0533 (NB) -.3899* (NB) .3899* (LH) -0.1111 (LH) -0.0868 (LH) -0.0488 (SA) .4476* (SA) 0.1111 (SA) .5009* (SA) -.5009* (NB) -.4766* (NB)

Text-centered

-0.0731 (SS) .4233* (SS) 0.0868 (SS) .4766* (SS) -0.0243 (SS) 0.0243 (SA) -0.1573 (KW) 0.1573 (DZ) -0.0349 (DZ) 0.3445 (DZ) -0.2668 (DZ) -0.1842 (DZ) 0.0349 (LH) 0.1923 (LH) -0.1923 (KW) 0.1872 (KW) -0.4242 (KW) -0.3415 (KW) -0.3445 (NB) -0.1872 (NB) -0.3794 (NB) 0.3794 (LH) -0.2319 (LH) -0.1492 (LH) 0.2668 (SA) 0.4242 (SA) 0.2319 (SA) .6113* (SA) -.6113* (NB) -.5287* (NB)

Seek reading challenges

0.1842 (SS) 0.3415 (SS) 0.1492 (SS) .5287* (SS) -0.0827 (SS) 0.0827 (SA) -0.2167 (KW) 0.2167 (DZ) 0.3141 (DZ) .4894* (DZ) 0.0849 (DZ) 0.048 (DZ) -0.3141 (LH) -0.0974 (LH) 0.0974 (KW) 0.2726 (KW) -0.1318 (KW) -0.1687 (KW) -.4894* (NB) -0.2726 (NB) -0.1752 (NB) 0.1752 (LH) -0.2292 (LH) -0.2661 (LH) -0.0849 (SA) 0.1318 (SA) 0.2292 (SA) .4044* (SA) -.4044* (SA) -.4413* (NB)

Mastery reaction to reading challenges

-0.048 (SS) 0.1687 (SS) 0.2661 (SS) .4413* (SS) 0.0369 (SS) -0.0369 (SA) -0.0924 (KW) 0.0924 (DZ) 0.224 (DZ) 0.0897 (DZ) 0.0317 (DZ) 0.1654 (DZ) -0.224 (LH) -0.1316 (LH) 0.1316 (KW) -0.0027 (KW) -0.0607 (KW) 0.0731 (KW)

Academic reading - basic

-0.0897 (NB) 0.0027 (NB) 0.1343 (NB) -0.1343 (LH) -0.1923 (LH) -0.0585 (LH)

157 Variables Don (DZ) Kelly (KW) Lucy (LH) Nancy (NB) Samantha

(SA) Sally (SS)

-0.0317 (SA) 0.0607 (SA) 0.1923 (SA) 0.058 (SA) -0.058 (NB) 0.0757 (NB) -0.1654 (SS) -0.0731 (SS) 0.0585 (SS) -0.0757 (SS) -0.1338 (SS) 0.1338 (SA)

-.2736* (KW) .2736* (DZ) 0.1373 (DZ) .3796* (DZ) 0.2724 (DZ) .3449* (DZ) -0.1373 (LH) 0.1363 (LH) -0.1363 (KW) 0.1061 (KW) -0.0011 (KW) 0.0713 (KW) -.3796* (NB) -0.1061 (NB) -0.2424 (NB) 0.2424 (LH) 0.1352 (LH) 0.2076 (LH) -0.2724 (SA) 0.0011 (SA) -0.1352 SSA) 0.1072 (SA) -0.1072 N(B) -0.0348 (NB)

Academic reading - complex

-.3449* (SS) -0.0713 (SS) -0.2076 (SS) 0.0348 (SS) -0.0724 (SS) 0.0724 (SA) Table 13: Pre-Test ANOVA Table

From looking at the pre-test ANOVA table, it is clear that not all populations of students were

beginning the year with similar reading habits and orientations. Greenwood’s students read

significantly more than Highland West’s students. This itself is an interesting finding, as it goes

against conventional wisdom30 that students in the “low income” neighborhood where

Greenwood is situated (http://research.cps.k12.il.us/resweb) would read less often outside of

school that their “middle and upper class” counterparts (Highland West school website) at

Highland West.

Also clear from the pre-test ANOVA is that Nancy’s classes are significantly less likely

to want to read within a community setting, such as with their parents, friends or classmates, and

significantly more likely to want to read alone than the students of other teachers. The students

of Nancy and her Highland West colleague, Kelly, are significantly less likely to attend to

complex and “meta” literary concepts when reading in their personal time. Both Nancy’s and

Kelly’s classes began the year less likely to be either reader- or text-centered in their personal

reading habits than their counterparts at the other schools. Finally, Nancy’s students began the

year significantly less likely to seek out literary challenges or have a mastery orientation to

literary challenges than many of their peers at the other schools in the study. Don’s students

began the year significantly more likely to read texts in academic settings in a complex way. 30 In the last twenty years, many researchers (i.e. Bronfenbrenner, Heath, Sonnenschein) have shown that socioeconomic status in and of itself does not predict out-of-school literacy practices.

158 Many of the trends from the pre-test ANOVA present themselves again in the post-test.

Nancy and Kelly’s students are significantly less likely read in their free time than several other

groups of students, and Nancy’s students are significantly less likely to read as part of a

community. Nancy’s students are significantly less likely to read at a complex level, and

Nancy’s and Kelly’s classes are both less likely to read at a “meta” level than several other

teachers’ students. Samantha, Don and Sally’s students are all significantly more likely to read

at a “meta” level than other groups of students. Nancy’s students appear to be less likely to be

either reader-centered or text-centered than other students in the study. Her students continue to

be significantly less likely to seek out literary challenges or have a mastery-orientation towards

difficult reading.

159

Variables Don (DZ) Kelly (KW) Lucy (LH) Nancy (NB) Samantha (SA) Sally (SS)

-0.3027 (KW) 0.3027 (DZ) 0.7238 (DZ) 1.0789 (DZ) -0.0006 (DZ) 0.5778 (DZ) -0.0886 (LH) 0.214 (LH) 0.0886 (KW) .4438* (KW) -0.3032 (KW) -0.0574 (KW) -.4438* (NB) -0.1411 (NB) -0.214 (NB) 0.1 41 (LH) -0.0892 (LH) -.3601* (LH) 0.0006 (SA) 0.3032 (SA) -0.3551 (SA) 0.3551 (SA) -.4443* (NB) -0.146 (NB)

Read in free time

0.0574 (SS) .3601* (SS) 0.0892 (SS) .4443* (SS) 0.0568 (SS) -.5012* (SA) -0.2825 (KW) 0.2825 (DZ) -0.2442 DZ) .6054* (DZ) -0.3762 (DZ) -0.0511 (DZ) -.3847* (LH) -0.1022 (LH) .3847* (KW) .3229* (KW) 0.2527 (KW) -.3336* (KW) -.6054* (NB) -.3229* (NB) 0.1022 (NB) 0.2207 (LH) -0.0298 (LH) -.4358* (LH) -0.2527 (SA) 0.0 298 (SA) -0.2207 (SA) .3528* (SA) -0.1321 (NB) -.6566* (NB)

Read within community

0.0511 (SS) .3336* (SS) 0.1321 (SS) .6566* (SS) -.3528* (SS) -0.3038 (SA) 0.4028 (KW) -0.0122 (DZ) -0.1206 (DZ) 0.1506 (DZ) -0.0876 (DZ) -0.2222 (DZ) 0.0122 (LH) 0.1084 (LH) -0.1084 (KW) 0.1628 (KW) -0.0754 (KW) -0.21 (KW) 0.1206 (NB) -0.1628 (NB) -0.2712 (NB) 0.2712 (LH) 0.033 (LH) -0.1016 (LH) -0.1506 (SA) 0.0754 (SA) -0.033 (SA) 0.2382 (SA) -0.2382 (NB) -0.3728 (NB)

Read alone

0.0876 (SS) 0.21 (SS) 0.1016 (SS) 0.3728 (SS) 0.1346 (SS) -0.1346 (SA) 0.122 (KW) -0.122 (DZ) -0.094 (DZ) 0.2412 (DZ) -0.0762 (DZ) -0.0052 (DZ) 0.094 (LH) -0.028 (LH) 0.028 (KW) .3631* (KW) 0.0457 (KW) 0.1168 (KW)

-0.2412 (NB) -.3631* (NB) -0.3351 (NB) 0.3351 (LH) 0.0177 (LH) 0.0888 (LH) 0.0762 (SA) -0.0457 (SA) -0.0177 (SA) 0.3174 (SA) -0.3174 (NB) -0.2464 (NB)

Personal reading - Basic

0.0052 (SS) -0.1 168 (SS) -0.0888 (SS) 0.2464 (SS) -0.0711 (SS) 0.0711 (SA) -.3530* (KW) .3530* (DZ) 0.0808 (DZ) .5146* (DZ) 0.0178 (DZ) 0.0499 (DZ) -0.0808 (LH) 0.2721 (LH) -0.2721 (KW) 0.1616 (KW) -0.3351 (KW) -0.3031 (KW) -.5146* (NB) -0.1616 (NB) -.4337* (NB) .4337* (LH) -0.063 (LH) -0.031 (LH) -0.0178 (SA) 0.3351 (SA) 0.063 (SA) .4967* (SA) -.4967* (NB) -.4647* (NB)

Personal reading - Complex

-0.0499 (SS) 0.3031 (SS) 0.031 (SS) .4647* (SS)) -0.032 (SS) 0.032 (SA) -.4462* (KW) .4462* (DZ) 0.2024 (DZ) .5178* (DZ) -0.0141 (DZ) -0.0019 (DZ) -0.2024 (LH) 0.2438 (LH) -0.2438 (KW) 0.0716 (KW) -.4603* (KW) -.4480* (KW) -.5178* (NB) -0.0716 (NB) -0.3155 (NB) 0.3155 (LH) -0.2165 (LH) -0.2042 (LH) 0.0141 (SA) .4603* (SA) 0.2165 (SA) .5319* (SA) -.5319* (NB) -.5197* (NB)

Personal reading - Meta

0.0019 (SS) .4480* (SS) 0.2042 (SS) .5197* (SS) -0.0123 (SS) 0.0123 (SA) -0.2251 (KW) 0.2251 (DZ) 0.1271 (DZ) .4810* (DZ) 0.0703 (DZ) -0.0596 (DZ) -0.1271 (LH) 0.098 (LH) -0.098 (KW) 0.2559 (KW) -0.1548 (KW) -0.2847 (KW) -.4810* (NB) -0.2559 (NB) -0.3539 (NB) 0.3539 (LH) -0.0568 (LH) -0.1867 (LH) -0.0703 (SA) 0.1548 (SA) 0.0568 (SA) .4107* (SA) -.4107* (NB) -.5406* (NB)

Reader-centered

0.0596 (SS) 0.2847 (SS) 0.1867 (SS) .5406* (SS) 0.1299 (SS) -0.1299 (SS) -0.3019 (KW) 0.3019 (DZ) 0.1551 (DZ) .5408* (DZ) 0.0791 (DZ) 0.0452 (DZ) -0.1551 (LH) 0.1468 (LH) -0.1468 (KW) 0.2388 (KW) -0.2228 (KW) -0.2567 (KW) -.5408* (NB) -0.2388 (NB) -.3857* (NB) .3857* (LH) -0.076 (LH) -0.1099 (LH) -0.0791 (SA) 0.2228 (SA) 0.076 (SA) .4616* (SA) -.4616* (NB) -.4955* (NB)

Text-centered

-0.0452 (SS) 0.2567 (SS) 0.1099 (SS) .4955* (SS) 0.0339 (SS) -0.0339 (SA) -0.1222 (KW) 0.1222 (DZ) 0.2524 (DZ) .5175* (DZ) -0.0192 (DZ) -0.15 (DZ) -0.2524 (LH) -0.1302 (LH) 0.1302 (KW) .3954* (KW) -0.1414 (KW) -0.2722 (KW) -.5175* (NB) -.3954* (NB) -0.2652 (NB) 0.2652 (LH) -0.2716 (LH) -0.4024 (LH) 0.0192 (SA) 0.1414 (SA) 0.2716 (SA) .5368* (SA) -.5368* (NB) -.6675* (NB)

Seek reading challenges

0.15 (SS) 0.2722 (SS) 0.4024 (SS) .6675* (SS) 0.1308 (SS) -0.1308 (SA)

-0.1839 (KW) 0.1839 (DZ) 0.3868 (DZ) .5115* (DZ) -0.0097 (DZ) -0.1378 (DZ) -0.3868 (LH) -0.2029 (LH) 0.2029 (KW) 0.3276 (KW) -0.1936 (KW) -0.3216 (KW) -.5115* (NB) -0.3276 (NB) -0.1247 (NB) 0.1247 (LH) -0.3965 (LH) -.5246* (LH) 0.0097 (SA) 0.1936 (SA) 0.3965 (SA) .5212* (SA) -.5212* (NB) -.6493* (NB)

Mastery reaction to reading challenges

0.1378 (SS) 0.3216 (SS) .5246* (SS) .6493* (SS) 0.1 281 (SS) -0.1281 (SA) 0.0087 (KW) -0.0087 (DZ) 0.0728 (DZ) -0.013 (DZ) 0.0832 (DZ) 0.1037 (DZ) Academic -0.0728 (LH) -0.0815 (LH) 0.0815 (KW) -0.0042 (KW) 0.0919 (KW) 0.1124 (KW)

160 0.013 (NB) 0.0042 (NB) 0.0857 (NB) -0.0857 (LH) 0.0104 (LH) 0.031 (LH)

-0.0832 (SA) -0.0919 (SA) -0.0104 (SA) -0.0962 (SA) 0.0962 (NB) 0.1167 (NB) reading - basic

-0.1037 (SS) -0.1124 (SS) -0.031 (SS) -0.1167 (SS) -0.0205 (SS) 0.0205 (SA) 0.054 (KW) -0.054 (DZ) 0.1262 (DZ) 0.1058 (DZ) 0.0829 (DZ) 0.1444 (DZ) -0.1262 (LH) -0.1801 (LH) 0.1801 (KW) 0.1598 (KW) 0.1369 (KW) 0.1984 (KW) -0.1058 (NB) -0.1598 (NB) 0.0203 (NB) -0.0203 (LH) -0.0433 (LH) 0.0183 (LH) -0.0829 (SA) -0.1369 (SA) 0.0433 (SA) 0.0229 (SA) -0.0229 (NB) 0.0386 (NB)

Academic reading - complex

-0.1444 (SS) -0.1984 (SS) -0.0183 (SS) -0.0386 (SS) -0.0615 (SS) 0.0615 (SA)

Table 14: Post-test ANOVA

While the pre- and post-test ANOVAS give us a good sense of snapshots from the

beginning and end of the year, the Repeated Measures ANOVA provides some sense of how

significant any changes were from September to June. Again, I hypothesized that students would

move more in line with their teachers’ personal orientations.

Variables Don (DZ) Kelly (KW) Lucy (LH) Nancy (NB) Samantha (SA) Sally (SS)

-. 3680* (KW) .3680* (DZ) 0.1328 (DZ) .3810* (DZ) 0.0598 (DZ) 0.013 (DZ) -0.1328 (LH) 0.2352 (LH) -0.2352 (KW) 0.013 (KW) -.3083* (KW) -.3551* (KW) -.3810* (NB) -0.013 (NB) -0.2482 (NB) 0.2482 (LH) -0.0731 (LH) -0.1199 (LH) -0.0598 (SA) .3083* (SA) 0.0731 (SA) .3212* (SA) -.3212* (NB) -.3680* (NB)

Read in free time

-0.013 (SS) .3551* (SS) 0.1199 (SS) .3680* (SS) 0.0468 (SS) -0.0468 (SA) -0.255 (KW) 0.255 (DZ) 0.1932 (DZ) .4763* (DZ) 0.1495 (DZ) -0.0929 (DZ) -0.1932 (LH) 0.0618 (LH) -0.0618 (KW) 0.2214 (KW) -0.1055 (KW) -.3479* (KW) -.4763* (NB) -0.2214 (NB) -0.2832 (NB) 0.2832 (LH) -0.0437 (LH) -0.2861 (LH) -0.1495 (SA) 0.1055 (SA) 0.0437 (SA) .3269* (SA) -.3269* (NB) -.5692* (NB)

Read within community

0.0929 (SS) .3479* (SS) 0.2861 (SS) .5692* (SS) 0.2424 (SS) -0.2424 (SA) -0.1222 (KW) 0.1222 (DZ) -0.1155 (DZ) 0.1911 (DZ) -0.0808 (DZ) -0.0722 (DZ) 0.1155 (LH) 0.2377 (LH) -0.2377 (KW) 0.0689 (KW) -0.203 (KW) -0.1944 (KW) -0.1911 (NB) -0.0689 (NB) -0.3066 (NB) 0.3066 (LH) 0.0348 (LH) 0.0433 (LH) 0.0808 (SA) 0.203 (SA) -0.0348 (SA) 0.2719 (SA) -0.2719 (NB) -0.2633 (NB)

Read alone

0.0722 (SS) 0.1944 (SS) -0.0433 (SS) 0.2633 (SS) -0.0085 (SS) 0.0085 (SA) -0.0629 (KW) 0.0629 (DZ) -0.0114 (DZ) .3091* (DZ) -0.0145 (DZ) 0.133 (DZ) 0.0114 (LH) 0.0743 (LH) -0.0743 (KW) 0.2462 (KW) -0.0774 (KW) 0.0701 (KW) -.3091* (NB) -0.2462 (NB) -.3205* (NB) .3205* (LH) -0.0031 (LH) 0.1444 (LH) 0.0145 (SA) 0.0774 (SA) 0.0031 (SA) .3236* (SA) -.3236* (NB) -0.1761 (NB)

Personal reading - Basic

-0.133 (SS) -0.0701 (SS) -0.1444 (SS) 0.1761 (SS) -0.1475 (SS) 0.1475 (SA) -.4323* (KW) .4323* (DZ) 0.1079 (DZ) .4970* (DZ) -0.0143 (DZ) 0.1241 (DZ) -0.1079 (LH) .3244* (LH) -.3244* (KW) 0.0647 (KW) -.4466* (KW) -.3082* (KW) -.4970* (NB) -0.0647 (NB) -.3891* (NB) .3891* (LH) -0.1221 (LH) 0.0162 (LH) 0.0143 (SA) .4466* (SA) 0.1221 (SA) .5112* (SA) -.5112* (NB) -.3728* (NB)

Personal reading - Complex

-0.1241 (SS) .3082* (SS) -0.0162 (SS) .3728* (SS) -0.1384 (SS) 0.1384 (SA) -.3957* (KW) .3957* (DZ) 0.0933 (DZ) .3913* (DZ) -0.1124 (DZ) -0.0583 (DZ) -0.0933 (LH) 0.3024 (LH) -0.3024 (KW) -0.0045 (KW) -.5081* (KW) -.4541* (KW) -.3913* (NB) 0.0045 (NB) -0.298 (NB) 0.298 (LH) -0.2057 (LH) -0.1516 (LH) 0.1124 (SA) .5081* (SA) 0.2057 (SA) .5037* (SA) -.5037* (NB) -.4496* (NB)

Personal reading - Meta

0.0583 (SS) .4541* (SS) 0.1516 (SS) .4496* (SS) -0.0541 (SS) 0.0541 (SA)

161 -.3231* (KW) .3231* (DZ) 0.1893 (DZ) .5101* (DZ) 0.1114 (DZ) 0.0543 (DZ) -0.1893 (LH) 0.1338 (LH) -0.1338 (KW) 0.1869 (KW) -0.2118 (KW) -0.2689 (KW) -.5101* (NB) -0.1869 (NB) -0.3207 (NB) 0.3207 (LH) -0.0779 (LH) -0.1351 (LH)

-0.1114 (SA) 0.2118 (SA) 0.0779 (SA) .3987* (SA) -.3987* (NB) -.4558* (NB)

Reader-centered

-0.0543 (SS) 0.2689 (SS) 0.1351 (SS) .4558* (SS) 0.0571 (SS) -0.0571 (SA) -.3886* (KW) .3886* (DZ) 0.1484 (DZ) .5199* (DZ) 0.0585 (DZ) 0.0521 (DZ) -0.1484 (LH) 0.2402 (LH) -0.2402 (KW) 0.1313 (KW) -.3301* (KW) -.3365* (KW) -.5199* (NB) -0.1313 (NB) -.3715* (NB) .3715* (LH) -0.0899 (LH) -0.0963 (LH) -0.0585 (SA) .3301* (SA) 0.0899 (SA) .4614* (SA) -.4614* (NB) -.4678* (NB)

Text-centered

-0.0521 (SS) .3365* (SS) 0.0963 (SS) .4678* (SS) 0.0064 (SS) -0.0064 (SA) -0.12 (DZ) 0.12 (DZ) 0.0995 (DZ) .4049* (DZ) -0.1462 (DZ) -0.1806 (DZ)

-0.0995 (LH) 0.0205 (LH) -0.0205 (KW) 0.2849 (KW) -0.2662 (KW) -0.3006 (KW) -.4049* (NB) -0.2849 (NB) -0.3054 (NB) 0.3054 (LH) -0.2457 (LH) -0.2801 (LH) 0.1462 (SA) 0.2662 (SA) 0.2457 (SA) .5511* (SA) -.5511* (NB) -.5855* (NB)

Seek reading challenges

0.1806 (SS) 0.3006 (SS) 0.2801 (SS) .5855* (SS) 0.0344 (SS) -0.0344 (SA) -0.1912 (KW) 0.1912 (DZ) .3481* (DZ) .4830* (DZ) 0.0383 (DZ) -0.0485 (DZ) -.3481* (LH) -0.1569 (LH) 0.1569 (KW) .2918* (KW) -0.1529 (KW) -0.2397 (KW) -.4830* (NB) -.2918* (NB) -0.1349 (NB) 0.1349 (LH) -0.3097 (LH) -.3966* (LH) -0.0383 (SA) 0.1529 (SA) 0.3097 (SA) .4446* (SA) -.4446* (NB) -.5315* (NB)

Mastery reaction to reading challenges

0.0485 (SS) 0.2397 (SS) .3966* (SS) .5315* (SS) 0.0868 (SS) -0.0868 (SA) -0.0711 (KW) 0.0711 (DZ) 0.1635 (DZ) 0.0494 (DZ) 0.0677 (DZ) 0.1435 (DZ) -0.1635 (LH) -0.0924 (LH) 0.0924 (KW) -0.0217 (KW) -0.0034 (KW) 0.0724 (KW) -0.0494 (NB) 0.0217 (NB) 0.1141 (NB) -0.1141 (LH) -0.0959 (LH) -0.02 (LH) -0.0677 (SA) 0.0034 (SA) 0.0959 (SA) -0.0182 (SA) 0.0182 (NB) 0.0941 (NB)

Academic reading - basic

-0.1435 (SS) -0.0724 (SS) 0.02 (SS) -0.0941 (SS) -0.0759 (SS) 0.0759 (SA) -0.1652 (KW) 0.1652 (DZ) 0.1452 (DZ) .2580* (DZ) 0.1846 (DZ) .2528* (DZ) -0.1452 (LH) 0.02 (LH) -0.02 (KW) 0.0928 (KW) 0.0194 (KW) 0.0876 (KW) -.2580* (NB) -0.0928 (NB) -0.1129 (NB) 0.1129 (LH) 0.0394 (LH) 0.1076 (LH) -0.1846 (SA) -0.0194 (SA) -0.0394 (SA) 0.0734 (SA) -0.0734 (NB) -0.0053 (NB)

Academic reading - complex

-.2528* (SS) -0.0876 (SS) -0.1076 (SS) 0.0053 (SS) -0.0682 (SS) 0.0682 (SA) Table 15: Repeated Measures ANOVA

What becomes clear as we look at the tables is how several teachers’ students did move

in line with their teachers’ reading orientations in several ways. Nancy and Kelly were the most

agency-oriented teachers, and indeed their students generally moved away from communal

reading experiences. Further, their students were generally less complex in their literary

thinking, less likely to devote free time to reading, and less likely to seek out literary challenges.

The opposite holds true for two of th most communal teachers, Don and Sally. Below I describe

these results in more detail. As we can see from the table and the chart that follows, Don’s

students became significantly more likely to read in their free time over the course of the year

compared to Kelly and Nancy’s students, who became significantly less likely to read in their

free time than several groups.

162

Figure 5: Change in “Reading in Free Time” Scores

Nancy’s students became significantly less likely to read in a communal setting in personal

reading habits, whereas Sally’s students made a significant shift towards being more communal

in their reading.

163

Figure 6: Change in “Reading as Part of a Community” Scores

Kelly and Nancy’s students also became less likely to attend to basic, complex or “meta” level

attributes of texts when reading, whereas Don, Sally and Samantha’s students became more

likely to read in complex and “meta” ways over the course of the year.

164

Figure 7: Change in “Personal Reading, Complex” Scores

Nancy’s students became significantly less likely to be reader-centered in their approaches to

texts compared to their peers at other schools. Nancy’s students, along with Kelly’s students,

also became significantly less likely to text-centered than their peers.

165

Figure 8: Change in “Reader-Centered Orientation” Scores

Figure 9: Change in “Text-Centered Orientation” Scores

166

Finally, Nancy and Kelly became significantly less likely than their peers to seek out

reading challenges or respond to reading challenges with a mastery-orientation.

Figure 10: Change in “Seek Reading Challenges” Scores

167

Figure 11: Change in “Mastery Reaction to Reading Challenge” Scores

Finally, Don’s students became significantly more likely to read in complex ways when reading

in school that than rest of the students.

168

Figure 12: Change in “Academic Reading - Complex” Scores

When I performed the ANCOVA analysis, several of the significant results from the

repeated measures ANOVA were mediated.

Variables Don (DZ) Kelly (KW) Lucy (LH) Nancy (NB) Samantha (SA) Sally (SS)

-0.087 (KW) 0.087 (DZ) -0.045 (DZ) 0.163 (DZ) -0.06 (DZ) -0.133 (DZ)

0.045 (LH) 0.131 (LH) -0.131 (KW) 0.076 (KW) -0.146 (KW) -.220* (KW) -0.163 (NB) -0.076 (NB) -0.208 (NB) 0.208 (LH) -0.015 (LH) -0.088 (LH) 0.06 (SA) 0.146 (SA) 0.015 (SA) 0.223 (SA) -0.223 (NB) -.296* (NB)

Read in free time

0.133 (SS) .220* (SS) 0.088 (SS) .296* (SS) 0.074 (SS) -0.074 (SA) -0.107 (KW) 0.107 (DZ) .278* (DZ) .317* (DZ) 0.176 (DZ) -0.067 (DZ) -.278* (LH) -0.171 (LH) 0.171 (KW) .210* (KW) 0.069 (KW) -0.174 (KW) -.317* (NB) -.210* (NB) -0.039 (NB) 0.039 (LH) -0.102 (LH) -.346* (LH) -0.176 (SA) -0.069 (SA) 0.102 (SA) 0.141 (SA) -0.141 (NB) -.385* (NB)

Read within community

0.067 (SS) 0.174 (SS) .346* (SS) .385* (SS) .244* (SS) -.244* (SA) 0.157 (KW) -0.157 (DZ) -0.189 (DZ) -0.145 (DZ) -0.1 (DZ) -.302* (DZ) 0.189 (LH) 0.032 (LH) -0.032 (KW) 0.011 (KW) 0.057 (KW) -0.145 (KW) 0.145 (NB) -0.011 (NB) -0.043 (NB) 0.043 (LH) 0.089 (LH) -0.113 (LH)

0.1 (SA) -0.057 (SA) -0.089 (SA) -0.046 (SA) 0.046 (NB) -0.157 (NB)

Read alone

.302* (SS) 0.145 (SS) 0.113 (SS) 0.157 (SS) 0.203 (SS) -0.203 (SA)

169 .321* (KW) -.321* (DZ) -0.193 (DZ) -0.1 (DZ) -0.126 (DZ) -0.125 (DZ) 0.193 (LH) -0.129 (LH) 0.129 (KW) .221* ( KW) 0.195 (KW) .196* (KW) 0.1 (NB) -.221* (NB) -0.092 (NB) 0.092 (LH) 0.066 (LH) 0.068 (LH)

0.126 (SA) -0.195 (SA) -0.066 (SA) 0.026 (SA) -0.026 (NB) -0.024 (NB)

Personal reading - Basic

0.125 (SS) -.196* (SS) -0.068 (SS) 0.024 (SS) -0.001 (SS) 0.001 (SA) -0.1 (KW) 0.1 (DZ) -0.026 (DZ) 0.206 (DZ) -0.006 (DZ) -0.056 (DZ) 0.026 (LH) 0.126 (LH) -0.126 (KW) 0.106 (KW) -0.105 (KW) -0.156 (KW) -0.206 (NB) -0.106 (NB) -0.232 (NB) 0.232 (LH) 0.021 (LH) -0.03 (LH) 0.006 (SA) 0.105 (SA) -0.021 (SA) 0.211 (SA) -0.211 (NB) -.262* (NB)

Personal reading - Complex

0.056 (SS) 0.156 (SS) 0.03 (SS) .262* (SS) 0.05 (SS) -0.05 (SA) -0.224 (KW) 0.224 (DZ) 0.174 (DZ) .316* (DZ) 0.085 (DZ) 0.043 (DZ) -0.174 (LH) 0.05 (LH) -0.05 (KW) 0.092 (KW) -0.139 (KW) -0.181 (KW) -.316* (NB) -0.092 (NB) -0.142 (NB) 0.142 (LH) -0.089 (LH) -0.131 (LH) -0.085 (SA) 0.139 (SA) 0.089 (SA) 0.231 (SA) -0.231 (NB) -.273* (NB)

Personal reading - Meta

-0.043 (SS) 0.181 (SS) 0.131 (SS) .273* (SS) 0.042 (SS) -0.042 (SA) 0.033 (KW) -0.033 (DZ) -0.056 (DZ) 0.106 (DZ) -0.056 (DZ) -0.179 (DZ) 0.056 (LH) 0.023 (LH) -0.023 (KW) 0.139 (KW) -0.023 (KW) -0.145 (KW)

-0.106 9 (NB) -0.139 (NB) -0.162 (NB) 0.162 (LH) 0 (LH) -0.123 (LH) 0.056 (SA) 0.023 (SA) 0 (SA) 0.162 (SA) -0.162 (NB) -.285* (NB)

Reader-centered

0.179 (SS) 0.145 (SS) 0.123 (SS) .285* (SS) 0.122 (SS) -0.122 (SA) -0.039 (KW) 0.039 (DZ) 0.049 (DZ) .214* (DZ) 0.031 (DZ) -0.011 (DZ) -0.049 (LH) -0.01 (LH) 0.01 (KW) 0.175 (KW) -0.007 (KW) -0.05 (KW) -.214* (NB) -0.175 (NB) -0.165 (NB) 0.165 (LH) -0.017 (LH) -0.06 (LH) -0.031 (SA) 0.007 (SA) 0.017 (SA) 0.183 (SA) -0.183 (NB) -.226* (NB)

Text-centered

0.011 (SS) 0.05 (SS) 0.06 (SS) .226* (SS) 0.043 (SS) -0.043 (SA) 0.056 (KW) -0.056 (DZ) 0.173 (DZ) .273* (DZ) 0.073 (DZ) -0.178 (DZ) -0.173 (LH) -0.229 (LH) 0.229 (KW) .328* (KW) 0.128 (KW) -0.123 (KW) -.273* (NB) -.328* (NB) -0.1 (NB) 0.1 (LH) -0.1 (LH) -.351* (LH) -0.073 (SA) -0.128 (SA) 0.1 (SA) 0.2 (SA) -0.2 (NB) -.451* (NB)

Seek reading challenges

0.178 (SS) 0.123 (SS) .351* (SS) .451* (SS) 0.251 (SS) -0.251 (SA) -0.008 (KW) 0.008 (DZ) 0.184 (DZ) 0.237 (DZ) -0.121 (DZ) -0.242 (DZ) -0.184 (LH) -0.175 (LH) 0.175 (KW) 0.229 (KW) -0.13 (KW) -0.251 (KW) -0.237 (NB) -0.229 (NB) -0.053 (NB) 0.053 (LH) -.305* (LH) -.426* (LH) 0.121 (SA) 0.13 (SA) .305* (SA) .358* (SA) -.358* (NB) -.479* (NB)

Mastery reaction to reading challenges

0.242 (SS) 0.251 (SS) .426* (SS) .479* (SS) 0.121 (SS) -0.121 (SA) 0.07 (KW) -0.07 (DZ) 0.035 (DZ) -0.069 (DZ) 0.057 (DZ) 0.053 (DZ)

-0.035 (LH) -0.105 (LH) 0.105 (KW) 0.002 (KW) 0.127 (KW) 0.123 (KW) 0.069 (NB) -0.002 (NB) 0.104 (NB) -0.104 (LH) 0.021 (LH) 0.018 (LH) -0.057 (SA) -0.127 (SA) -0.021 (SA) -0.125 (SA) 0.125 (NB) 0.122 (NB)

Academic reading - basic

-0.053 (SS) -0.123 (SS) -0.018 (SS) -0.122 (SS) 0.003 (SS) -0.003 (SA) 0.16 (KW) -0.16 (DZ) 0.03 (DZ) -0.074 (DZ) 0.072 (DZ) 0.061 (DZ) -0.03 (LH) -0.19 (LH) 0.19 (KW) 0.086 (KW) .232* (KW) .221* (KW) 0.074 (NB) -0.086 (NB) 0.104 (NB) -0.104 (LH) 0.042 (LH) 0.031 (LH) -0.072 (SA) -.232* (SA) -0.042 (SA) -0.146 (SA) 0.146 (NB) 0.135 (NB)

Academic reading - complex

-0.061 (SS) -.221* (SS) -0.031 (SS) -0.135 (SS) 0.011 (SS) -0.011 (SA) Table 16: ANCOVA Table

Kelly and Nancy’s students became significantly less likely to read in their free time

compared to Sally’s students, who became more likely to do so. Don’s and Sally’s students

became significantly more likely than other teachers’ classes to read within a community.

Interestingly, Don’s students also became less likely to read alone compared to Sally’s students.

170 Kelly’s students became significantly more likely to attend to basic features of a text when

reading during personal time. Sally’s students became significantly more likely to read in

complex ways when reading in their personal time. Don’s and Sally’s classes became

significantly more likely to attend to “meta” issues when reading in their personal time. Sally’s

classes became significantly more likely to read in reader-centered ways, whereas both Don’s

and Sally’s classes became significantly more likely to read text-centered ways as well. Don’s,

Kelly’s and Sally’s classes all became significantly more likely to seek out literary challenges.

Sally’s and Samantha’s students became significantly more likely to have a mastery orientation

to different reading experiences. Finally, Kelly’s students became significantly more likely to

read in complex ways when reading for school.

Discussion

The findings from the student surveys reveal several interesting trends. Don and Sally,

among the most reader-centered and communal in their approaches to reading, tended to have

high student scores in these areas. Similarly, Kelly and Nancy, among the most agency-oriented

readers, had students who moved away from communal approaches and favored individualistic

ones. In these ways, it appeared that there was some support for my initial hypotheses.

In line with my qualitative findings with the Reading Life Story analysis, these teachers’

students seemed to cluster based on school. In almost every graph generated from the Repeated

Measures ANOVA, pairs of teachers from each school cluster together, especially at the

beginning of the year. While this clearly mediates the significant findings for the post-test

scores, it also reveals something interesting about the school communities. I began the study

believing that each individual teacher had a unique approach that would be the primary influence

171 over her students’ learning over the course of the year. That these six teachers seem to cluster

together when their personal orientations to texts and their students’ orientations to texts are

analyzed seems to suggest that these English departments have a cohering nature for both

students and teachers. It is unclear to what degree these teachers are drawn to departments that

seem like a good fit with their personal orientations or if the nature of the departments shapes the

teachers overtime. This could be explored in a longitudinal study that examined both the

individual reading life stories of English teachers, along with the collective practices and shared

artifacts of the department as a whole: department meetings, shared curricula and texts, planning

sessions, professional development.

In addition to examining the intra-departmental practices, I am curious to explore how

these cohesive departments affect students. Again, a longitudinal study that followed students

from freshman year to senior year could follow how different teachers in the department “bring

up” students in line with what appears to be somewhat shared orientations to reading.

Another interesting finding focuses on Sally. I was least certain about my hypotheses

about Sally. While she was among the most reader-centered and communal-oriented reader of

the participants, the level of her content knowledge seemed low, as her interviews revealed little

literary complexity, and her teaching style seemed at odds with her personal orientations to

reading. While I hypothesized that students would move towards a similar reading orientation as

their teacher, I suspected that this would happen through instruction that somehow – implicitly or

explicitly – conveyed that personal orientation. As Sally’s instruction seemed so at odds with

her personal orientation, and doubted that her personal orientation would have any effect on

students.

In fact, the ANCOVA showed that when adjusting for where students began the year,

172 Sally’s students made significant strides in almost every category, except for attending to basic

textual elements during academic reading, which ironically is precisely what I believed I was

seeing in my observations of her classes: very basic, text-centered instruction.

I have no clear rationale for how Sally’s students made such significant gains in

communal and reader-centered directions, despite the instruction I observed. It is possible that

the six classes I observed were somehow not representative of her instruction during the rest of

the year. It is also possible that somehow her personal orientation was conveyed to students in

ways in which I did not know to measure and have not been able to discern when re-watching

video of her instruction.

Another observation that arose from the teacher surveys was that text-centeredness and

reader-centeredness are not necessarily related indirectly. That is, one can become more reader-

centered and text-centered in their approach to reading. This certainly makes sense. A reader

can become more attentive in general in their reading, which makes them more attuned to both

the reading experience, as well as the text itself. I had originally hypothesized that as a reader

paid more attention to the experience of reading or focused more carefully on the text itself, that

focus would come at the expense of the “other” kind of reading.

When both of these measures become weaker over time, that is, when students become

less reader-centered and less text-centered, as with Nancy’s and Kelly’s students seen in the

Repeated Measures ANOVA, I am curious as to what is happening with those students. Is it

simply the opposite of my previous explanation? Are these students becoming less attentive

readers in general? It is also possible that my analysis is insufficient, that the two clusters – text-

centered and reader-centered – do not account for something I have not measured, another kind

of reading. I believe that open-ended interviews with these students may reveal any approaches

173 to reading that I have missed with this analysis.

Finally, I was also interested that different teachers seemed to have significantly different

effects on their students in terms of which students were reading outside of the classroom during

their personal time. This is of particular interest to me, because unlike the range of reading

orientations, where different teachers have different orientations that may or may not be

conveyed to students, all of these teachers read in their free time and enjoy reading in their free

time. This could mean that somehow some teachers value passing this on to their students more

than others, even though it is something they believe strongly for themselves, or that some

teachers are much better at conveying the importance of reading in their free time than others. In

light of this finding, I revisited to my initial life story interviews and the end-of-year clinical

interviews. In the life story interviews, all of the teachers explicitly revealed themselves to be

book lovers and enjoy reading in their free time. During the clinical interview at the end of the

year, however, when I asked these teachers to tell me what long-terns goals were embedded in

their reading instruction, not one teacher mentions wanting her students to become “life long

readers” or read in their personal time. I am curious about this disconnect and would like to

address it directly with teachers in future iterations of the study.

The quantitative analysis in this study served two functions. It both confirmed findings

from other elements of the study, such as the cohesiveness of different school departments, as

well as pointing to gaps in my understanding of the data. In the case of the later, these gaps have

revealed areas of future qualitative study. I believe it is this qualitative/quantitative conversation

that can ultimately provide the most interesting and compelling findings.

174 Chapter Seven: Conclusion Chapter Seven: Conclusion

While conclusions that arise from exploratory studies such as this are rarely definitive

and universally applicable, I do believe that my work has contributed in important ways to

ongoing conversations in the fields of teacher education, English education and reading research.

Further, my findings have a range of implications, beyond contributing to our knowledge within

these fields, as I believe the study offers suggestions for methodology, theory and practice. In

addition, the study raises important questions to pursue in future studies. In my literature review,

I discussed the many studies I have used as foundations for my own thinking. In this chapter, I

discuss the ways in which my study can lay the groundwork for future work in the field.

Summary of Important Findings

I designed this study to answer three questions: one, what are teachers’ personal

orientations to literature; two, how do these personal orientations relate to teachers’ pedagogy;

and three, how are students affected by teachers with different personal orientations? I

hypothesized that certain kinds of literary stances might be aligned with particular pedagogical

approaches, which in turn, might have specific effects on students.

As there are so many ways to interact with texts, the first question was particularly wide

open. One of my first steps was to understand what about teachers’ personal orientations to

reading was worth knowing. Which characteristics of teachers’ relationships with reading

distinguish teachers from one another, and which elements of these personal orientations may

have implications for pedagogy and student learning?

My analysis of the Reading Life Story interviews was not straightforward. Over many

iterations and analysis of several variables that did not appear to distinguish teachers from one

175 another in meaningful ways, I determined four meaningful codes for the Reading Life Story

interviews: the extent to which a teacher is agency-oriented or communion-oriented, the extent

to which a teacher is text-centered or reader-centered, how balanced or extreme the life story was

in relation to these codes, and how complexly the stories engaged literary discussion. As few

studies have explored teachers’ personal orientations to reading, determining that these codes

were useful was an important first step in beginning to draw the landscape of teachers’ personal

reading lives. Applying the agency and communion codes to teachers’ reading lives was a

particularly novel development. While issues of literary complexity and text-centeredness were

being used in a new context in this study, that of teachers’ personal relationships with reading,

they were well-used elements of analysis in other areas of reading research. Using the frames of

agency and communion to understand teachers and reading suggests that a life course framework

from the fields of personality psychology and human development has a meaningful place in

research on teachers.

Using these codes in my analysis of the Reading Life Stories, I came up with four

findings. First, I found connections between an agency orientation and text-centeredness, and

between a communal orientation and a focus on the reading experience surrounding the text.

Along these lines, it was surprising to see how many teachers in the small sample were agency-

oriented, considering that teaching is often aligned with characteristics, such as generativity,

present in those who are more communally-oriented. Second, teachers who were more

communion-oriented seemed to gravitate to urban schools, often with explicit social justice

missions, while the agency-centered readers seemed to favor the academic freedom of the

suburban school. These first two findings may tell us something about the nature of reading.

My interviews with teachers were explicitly about reading. Almost all of my questions related to

176 teachers’ interactions with different types of text. Yet, despite restricting the context of this data

source to information about reading, my findings about teachers seemed to be related to how

these individuals lived their lives in larger ways outside of texts. As I mention earlier in the

dissertation, this raises the stakes for English teachers. If how we relate to literature is a proxy

for how we engage the world around us, then English teachers are never simply teaching about

words, plots, characters or symbols, they are conveying ideas about how to relate to others. How

we instruct young people to interact with texts may be a vehicle for how youth interact with the

world around them.

Within my Reading Life Story analysis, I also found that three teachers with the most

balanced orientations, in the middle of the agency/communion spectrum, seemed to be

influenced by one another and the departmental curriculum in ways that were not evident with

the teachers who clustered at either end of the spectrum. This suggested that a balanced life

story might allow for more openness to appropriating new ideas.

Finally, teachers’ interviews varied substantially in their literary complexity. While it

does not seem that literary complexity has any relationship to other variables explored in the

interviews, the number of types of books a teacher read correlated with the depth of the literary

richness with which she discussed the texts. Further, in the analysis the teachers’ instruction, it

became clear that those teachers with the most complex literary discussions in the Reading Life

Story interviews engaged students in the most complex literary discussions in class and they

discussed the greatest number of texts in class, frequently engaging intertextual analysis.

To answer the second question, how teachers’ personal orientations relate to their

pedagogy, I analyzed multiple episodes of four teachers’ instruction. Two instructors were

highly communion- and reader-centered, one teacher was highly agency- and text-centered, and

177 one teacher was balanced between the two. Three of these four teachers taught in ways that were

consistent with their personal reading orientations. One of the reader-centered teachers

discussed reader-centered themes more than any other teacher. The text-centered teacher spoke

exclusively of text-related themes in his class. The teacher who was balanced in his personal

reading orientation between text- and reader-centeredness engaged both text- and reader-centered

themes, often using reader-centered discussion to promote text-centered understanding. The

fourth case was an anomaly; while her personal orientation was extreme in its reader-

centeredness, the six classes I observed were very text-centered. I believe a major cause of this

disconnect relates to her lack of knowledge of literary complexity. It is possible that she does

not have the content knowledge or pedagogical content knowledge to teach in line with her

personal habits and outlook.

In order to address how students are affected by teachers with different personal

orientations, I surveyed students about their personal and academic reading orientations at the

beginning and at the end of the year. Several important findings came out of this quantitative

portion of the study, which analyzed two hundred eighty two students from six teachers’

classrooms. My hypothesis that students would move in the direction of their teachers’ personal

reading orientations was confirmed in several areas. For example, the two most agency oriented

teachers had students who became significantly less likely to read in group settings. These two

teachers also had some of the least complex Reading Life Stories, and their students became less

likely to engage texts in complex ways or seek out and pursue reading challenges. Interestingly,

their students became significantly less likely to read in their free time over the course of the

year. The two teachers with the most literary complexity in their reading life stories had students

who became significantly more likely to read in complex ways compared to their peers in the

178 other classes I studied. Two of the most communion-oriented teachers both had students become

significantly more likely to read in group settings.

In line with my qualitative findings with the Reading Life Story analysis, these teachers’

students seemed to cluster based on school, which revealed something interesting about the

school communities. As I mention in chapter six, I began the study believing that each

individual teacher had a unique approach that would be the primary influence over her students’

learning over the course of the year. That these six teachers seem to cluster together when their

personal orientations to texts and their students’ orientations to texts are analyzed seems to

suggest that these English departments have a cohering nature for both students and teachers.

There were also a few surprises in this data. Sally, whose life story was extremely

reader- and communion-centered but who taught in very text-centered ways, seemed to have

students conform to her personal reading orientations, despite her teaching style. The ANCOVA

showed that when adjusting for where students began the year, Sally’s students made significant

strides in almost every category, except for attending to basic textual elements during academic

reading, which ironically is precisely what I believed I was seeing in my observations of her

classes: very basic, text-centered instruction.

Methodological Contributions

As few studies have examined teachers’ lives outside of the classroom or attended to

teachers’ lives before they entered the classroom or university, I had to be creative in my study

design. I believe that using the Life Story interview allowed me to holistically capture

significant influences on teachers’ reading lives. While the use of narrative is hardly new in the

field of teacher education, this particular kind of structured narrative proved useful in a variety of

179 ways. The interview encouraged teachers to think outside of the classroom walls and to consider

early interactions with texts alongside recent experiences. As my study has showed that personal

reading orientations relate to reading instruction and student learning, researchers and teacher

educators need ways to both understand and help teachers revisit these former sites of meaning

making. The Reading Life Story interview seems to provide a window into these often private,

but clearly meaningful corners of teachers’ lives.

While the Reading Life Story interview provided a wealth of meaningful data, many of

my conclusions were drawn from connections between interview data and the other data sources.

My interest in understanding the complex ecology of teachers’ reading lives was only possible

by using a range of methods. The Reading Life Story, along with the classroom observations,

video-based clinical interview, teacher questionnaire, and student questionnaire provided a useful

network of data sources that not only triangulated findings, but brought out relationships between

different aspects of the teachers’ lives that had not previously been associated.

Theoretical Contributions

While ecological models of inquiry have been used successfully to investigate students’

lives, educational research has yet to apply this theoretical framework to the study of teachers’

lives. Adopting a Cultural Modeling Framework for studying teachers captured important sites

of literary meaning making that have gone relatively unnoticed until now. Ultimately, the

outcomes of this study supported the underlying claim that teachers’ lives matter when it comes

to instruction and student learning. Just as students make literary meaning for themselves

through a range of out-of-school contexts and experiences, English teachers engage literary

practice and thinking outside of schools. Further, English teachers have long histories with texts,

180 and only by looking longitudinally at teachers’ lives can we appreciate the complexity of their

current literary understanding and practice.

Implications for Practitioners

That personal orientation often appears to be related to instruction suggests that those of

us who aim to influence instruction, such as teacher educators, curriculum designers, policy

makers and administrators, may need to do more than address instruction in order to precipitate

real change. If instruction is related to personal orientations to literature that have taken lifetimes

to develop, we may need to create room in professional development, curricular trainings, and

teacher education to have teachers revisit these important sites of meaning making. We must

also leave room in our approaches to helping teachers for learning about our teachers. We

cannot assume that a one-size-fits-all approach will work for all teachers, regardless of how

much we “train” them. We must create flexibility in our policies and curricula that allow for

meaningful adaptations in line with teachers’ personal approaches. If we ignore that teachers

have personal approaches to text, we will continue to be surprised by the “lethal mutations” to

what seemed to be promising reform.

Future Directions for Research

With every new twist and turn of this study, I discovered new opportunities for research.

Each answer to a question generated new questions. There were several ways in which I felt I

could improve on future iterations of a similar study, as well as ways in which I could apply a

similar empirical frame to new contexts.

If I try to recreate a similar study in order to confirm and extend my current findings, I

181 plan to add to the current study in a variety of ways. First, as with the case of Sally, there were

several instances where I felt pedagogical content knowledge was an important factor, yet I had

no direct measure for this variable. I would like to include a read-aloud protocol to complement

the other data sources and shine light how on this aspect of teacher knowledge may interact with

other variables under investigation. Along these same lines, I felt limited by how little I knew

about each teacher’s students. While I had observational data from classrooms and answers on

the student questionnaire, I felt that a deeper understanding of how students engaged texts could

help elucidate the relationship between the teacher’s personal reading orientation and her

students’ reading orientations. As with the teachers, a read-aloud protocol could help shed light

on this. As I mention in several previous chapters, the cohesive nature of each department

surprised me. I would like to understand this finding better by attending to departments more

closely by observing department meetings, professional development, and possibly hiring

practices, and by analyzing shared artifacts, such as standards and curricula. Additionally, as

departments seemed to share similar characteristics, looking for change over one year’s time for

each student may be too limited a time frame to understand how students may come in line with

their teachers’ reading orientations. Ideally I would like to follow students over several years’

time, beginning with freshmen year.

There are several new directions in which I am compelled to take this work. Although I

found a great range of reading orientations within English departments, I am curious how

teachers in other reading-heavy disciplines, such as social studies and science, may compare to

English teachers. In fact, my original intention with this study was to compare English teachers

and social studies teachers, though I decided to limit myself to English teachers once I saw how

much variability there was within that one population.

182 Finally, I would like to pursue a companion study on teachers as writers. Again, this was

an early interest of mine, but I was persuaded to study teachers as readers simply because there is

so little writing instruction in schools to observe. I suspect that to gather enough data on

personal writing orientations and their effects on instruction and student learning, I would have

to find a selective group of teachers who were particularly interested in writing, perhaps through

the National Writing Project, and begin my inquiry there.

* * *

Ultimately in this work I have tried to show how teachers’ lives matter. If we care about

what students learn in the classroom, we must trace a line back from student learning, to their

teachers’ instruction, to how their teachers came to understand the content they teach. While this

line is circuitous, it holds important information for those of us who care to shape how teachers

teach and what students learn.

183

Appendix A: Reading Life Story Interview

184 READING LIFE STORY INTERVIEW

This is an interview about the story of your life experiences with reading. I am asking you to play the role of storyteller about your own life - to construct for me the story of your own past, present and what you see as your own future, in regards to reading. Teacher's lives vary tremendously, and they make sense of their own reading experiences in a variety of ways. Our goal is to begin the process of making sense of how teachers interpret their own reading experiences. Therefore, we are collecting and analyzing the stories of teachers' experiences with reading and looking for significant commonalties and significant differences in those stories people tell us. In telling a story about your life, you do not need to tell me everything that has ever happened to you. A story is selective. You should concentrate on material in your own life that you believe is important in some fundamental way - information about yourself and your life which says something significant about you and how you have come to be who you are. Your story should tell how you are similar to other people as well as how you are unique. Our purpose in these interviews is to catalogue people's life stories so that we may eventually arrive at some fundamental principles of life-storytelling as well as ways of categorizing and making sense of life stories constructed by healthy adults living at this time in history and in this place. This interview is for research purposes only, and its sole purpose is the collection of data concerning people's life stories about reading. The interview is divided into a number of sections. In order to complete the interview within, say, an hour and a half or so, it is important that we not get bogged down in particular sections. I will guide you through the interview so that we can finish it in good time. I think that you will enjoy the interview. Most people do. Questions? II. Critical Events I would like you to concentrate on a few key events that may stand out in bold print in your life story. A key event should be a specific happening, a critical incident, a significant episode in your past set in a particular time and place. It is helpful to think of such an event as constituting a specific moment in your life story which stands out for some reason. Thus, a particular conversation you may have had with your mother when you were 12-years-old or a particular decision you made one afternoon last fall might qualify as a key event in your life story. These are particular moments set in a particular time and place, complete with particular characters, actions, thoughts, and feelings. A very difficult year in high school, on the other hand, would not qualify as a key event because that would take place over an extended period of time. I am going to ask you about 8 specific life events. For each event, describe in detail what happened, where you were, who was involved, what you did, and what you were thinking and feeling in the event. Also, try to convey what impact this key event has had in your life story, and what this event says about who you are or were as a reader. Please be very specific here.

185 Questions? Event #1: Peak Experience A peak experience would be a high point about reading in your life story -- perhaps the high point. It would be a moment or episode in the story in which you experienced extremely positive emotions, like joy, excitement, great happiness, uplifiting, or even deep inner peace. Today, the episode would stand out in your memory as one of the best, highest, most wonderful scenes or moments in your life story having to do with reading. Please describe in some detail a peak experience, or something like it, that you have experienced some time in your past. Tell me exactly what happened, where it happened, who was involved, what you did, what you were thinking and feeling, what impact this experience may have had upon you, and what this experience says about who you were or who you are as a reader. [Interviewer should make sure that the subject addresses all of these questions, especially ones about impact and what the experience says about the person. Do not interrupt the description of the event. Rather ask for extra detail, if necessary, after the subject has finished initial description of the event.] Event #2: Nadir Experience A "nadir" is a low point. A nadir experience, therefore, is the opposite of a peak experience. It is a low point in your life story having to do with reading. Thinking back over your life, try to remember a specific experience in which you felt extremely negative emotions, such as despair, disillusionment, fear, frustration, guilt, etc. You should consider this experience to represent one of the "low points" in your reading life. Even though this memory is unpleasant, I would still appreciate an attempt on your part to be as honest and detailed as you can be. Please remember to be specific. What happened? When? Who was involved? What did you do? What were you thinking and feeling? What impact has the event had on you? What does the event say about who you are or who you were as a reader? Event #3: Turning Point In looking back on one's life, it is often possible to identify certain key "turning points" -- episodes through which a person undergoes substantial change. Turning points can occur in many different spheres of a person's life -- in relationships with other people, in work and school, in outside interests, etc. I am especially interested in a turning point in your understanding of yourself as a reader. Please identify a particular episode in your life story that you now see as a turning point. If you feel that your reading story contains no turning points, then describe a particular episode in your life that comes closer than any other to qualifying as a turning point. [Note: If subject repeats an earlier event (e.g., peak experience, nadir) ask him or her to choose another one. Each of the 8 critical events in this section should be independent. We want 8 separate events. If the subject already mentioned an event under the section of "Life Chapters," it may be necessary to go over it again here. This kind of redundancy in inevitable.] Event #4: Earliest Memory

186 Think back now to your childhood, as far back as you can go. Please choose a relatively clear reading memory from your earliest years and describe it in some detail. The memory need not seem especially significant in your life today. Rather what makes it significant is that it is the first or one of the first memories you have about reading, one of the first scenes in your life story as a reader. The memory should be detailed enough to qualify as an "event." This is to say that you should choose the earliest (childhood) memory for which you are able to identify what happened, who was involved, and what you were thinking and feeling. Give us the best guess of your age at the time of the event. Event #5: Important Childhood Scene Now describe another memory from childhood, from later childhood, that stands out in your mind as especially important or significant in terms of reading. It may be a positive or negative memory about reading. What happened? Who was involved? What did you do? What were you thinking and feeling? What impact has the event had on you as a reader? What does it say about who you are or who you were as a reader? Why is it important? Event #6: Important Adolescent Scene Describe a specific event from your teen-aged years that stands out as being especially important or significant with respect to reading. Event #7: Important Adult Scene Describe a specific event from your adult years (age 21 and beyond) that stands out as being especially important or significant for you as a reader. Event #8: One Other Important Scene Describe one more event, from any point in your life, that stands out in your memory as being especially important or significant in regards to reading. III. Life Challenge Looking back over your life and interactions with reading, please describe the single greatest challenge that you have faced. How have you faced, handled, or dealt with this challenge? Have other people assisted you in dealing with this challenge? How has this challenge had an impact on your life story? IV. Influences on the Life Story: Positive and Negative

187 Positive Looking back over your life story, please identify the single person, group of persons, or organizaton/institution that has or have had the greatest positive influence on your life as a reader. Please describe this person, group, or organization and the way in which he, she, it, or they have had a positive impact on your story. Negative Looking back over your life story, please identify the single person, group of persons, or organization/institution that has or have had the greatest negative influence on your reading story. Please describe this person, group, or organization and the way in which he, she, it, or they have had a negative impact on your story. V. Stories and the Life Story You have been telling me about the story of your reading life. In so doing, you have been trying to make your life into a story for me. I would like you now to think a little bit more about stories and how some particular stories might have influenced your own life story. From an early age, we all hear and watch stories. Our parents may read us stories when we are little; we hear people tell stories about everyday events; we watch stories on television and hear them on the radio; we see movies or plays; we learn about stories in schools, churches, synagogs, on the playground, in the neighborhood, with friends, family; we tell stories to each other in everyday life; some of us even write stories. I am interested in knowing what some of your favorite stories are and how they may have influenced how you think about your own life and your reading life story. I am going to ask you about three kinds of stories. In each case, try to identify a story you have heard in your life that fits the description, describe the story very briefly, and tell me if and how that story has had an effect on you, as a reader. Television, Movie, Performance: Stories Watched Think back on TV shows you have seen, movies, or other forms of entertainment or stories from the media that you have experienced. Please identify one of your favorite stories from this domain -- for example, a favorite TV show or series, a favorite movie, play, etc. In a couple of sentences, tell me what the story is about. Tell me why you like the story so much. And tell me if and how the story has had an impact on your reading life. Books, Magazines: Stories Read Now think back over things you have read -- stories in books, magazines, newspapers, and so on. Please identify one of your favorite stories from this domain. Again, tell me a little bit about the story, why you like it, and what impact, if any, it has had on your reading life. Family Stories, Friends: Stories Heard

188 Growing up, many of us hear stories in our families or from our friends that stick with us, stories that we remember. Family stories include things parents tell their children about "the old days," their family heritage, family legends, and so on. Children tell each other stories on the playground, in school, on the phone, and so on. Part of what makes life fun, even in adulthood, involves friends and family telling stories about themselves and about others. Try to identify one story like this that you remember, one that has stayed with you. Again, tell me a little bit about the story, why you like it or why you remember it, and what impact, if any, it has had on your reading life. VI. Alternative Futures for the Life Story Now that you have told me a little bit about your past, I would like you to consider the future. I would like you to imagine two different futures for your life story. Future Chapters First, please describe a future chapter in your reading life. That is, please describe what you would like to happen in the future for your reading story, including what goals and you might accomplish or realize in the future. Please try to be realistic in doing this. In other words, I would like you to give me a picture of what you would realistically like to see happen in the future chapters and scenes of your life story. [Note to interviewers: Try to get as much concrete detail as possible.] VII. Personal Ideology Now I would like to ask a few questions about your fundamental beliefs and values and about questions of meaning and spirituality in your life. Please give some thought to each of these questions. These questions, unlike the previous ones, do not have to specifically relate to reading. 1. Consider for a moment the religious or spiritual dimensions of your life. Please describe in a nutshell your religious beliefs or the ways in which you approach life in a spiritual sense. 2. Please describe how your religious or spiritual life, values, or beliefs have changed over time. 3. How do you approach political and social issues? Do you have a particular political point of

189 view? Are there particular issues or causes about which you feel strongly? Describe them. 4. What is the most important value in human living? Explain. 5. What else can you tell me that would help me understand your most fundamental beliefs and values about life and the world, the spiritual dimensions of your life, or your philosophy of life? VIII. Life Theme Looking back over your entire life story as a story with chapters and scenes, extending into the past as well as the imagined future, can you discern a central theme, message, or idea that runs throughout the reading story of your life? What is the major theme of your reading life story? Explain. IX. Other What else should I know to understand your life story as a reader? X. Additional Questions What does being a "good reader" mean to you? What do you think it takes for a student to be good at reading? Do you have goals for your students as readers? If so, what are they? Do you consider yourself a teacher of reading? If so, what are your strengths and weaknesses as a teacher of reading? Would you say you teach as a reader or read as a teacher?

190

Appendix B: Teacher Survey

191 Name

School

Date

Teacher Questionnaire Instructions: Please answer every question, leaving no omissions. For each question, only one letter should be circled, unless indicated otherwise. If you ever feel that a particular question’s framework does not allow you to accurately express your answer, please circle the answer that comes closest to how you feel, and then please add your own comments to clarify your answer. Feel free to use the back of the paper. Professional Background: 1) How many years have you taught, including this year?

a) 1 b) 2 or 3 c) 4-6 d) 7-10 e) 10-20 f) more than 20

2) Which one of the following best represents the amount of schooling which you have had? a) Less than a bachelor's degree b) Bachelor's degree c) Bachelor's degree with some graduate work d) Master's degree e) PhD f) EdD

3) In which subject(s) did you major in college? (Circle two only if you double-majored) a) English b) Comparative Literature c) Journalism d) Speech and/or Drama e) Critical Theory f) Linguistics g) Humanities h) Writing i) English Education j) Education k) Psycology

192 l) Other (please specify)

4) In which subject(s) did you minor in college? (Circle more than one only if you had more than one minor) a) No minor b) English c) Comparative Literature d) Journalism e) Speech and/or Drama f) Critical Theory g) Linguistics h) Humanities i) Writing j) English Education k) Education l) Psychology m) Other (please specify)

5) In which subject, if any, do you have a graduate degree? a) No graduate degree b) English c) Comparative Literature d) Journalism e) Speech and/or Drama f) Critical Theory g) Linguistics h) Humanities i) Writing j) English Education k) Education l) Psychology m) Other (please specify)

6) If you have no graduate degree, but you have taken some graduate courses, in which subjects chiefly have they been? a) Have graduate degree b) No graduate courses c) English d) Comparative Literature e) Journalism f) Speech and/or Drama g) Critical Theory h) Linguistics i) Humanities j) Writing k) English Education

193 l) Education m) Psychology n) Other (please specify)

7) Have you had any of the following jobs previous to your teaching job? (Circle more than one, if it applies) a) Publishing b) Administration c) Writing d) Non-for-profit e) Service industry f) Homemaker g) Other (please specify)

8) How long did you hold other jobs previous to your current teaching position? a) I did not have another job b) 1 year c) 2-3 years d) 4-5 years e) 5-10 years f) over 10 years

9) Have you ever taken any courses devoted wholly or chiefly to the teaching of reading at the high school level? a) No courses b) One course c) More than one course d) Am not certain

10) Have you ever taken any courses devoted wholly or chiefly to the teaching of English at the high school level? a) No courses b) One course c) More than one course d) Am not certain

11) How recently have you taken any course specifically on the teaching of reading at the high school level? a) Never b) 1-3 years ago c) 4-6 years ago d) 4-10 years ago e) over 10 years ago

194

A C T I V I T Y

T Y P E

12) How well prepared, on the whole, do you consider yourself to be for giving instruction in reading at the high school level? a) Very well prepared b) Well prepared c) Fairly well prepared d) Rather poorly prepared e) Very poorly prepared

13) How recently have you attended any conference specifically devoted in whole or in considerable part to problems of teaching reading at the high school level? a) Never b) 1-3 years ago c) 4-6 years ago d) 4-10 years ago e) over 10 years ago

14) What type of professional development have you participated in that was devoted wholly or

largely to reading in the last five years? And who organized or sponsored the activity? (please check the appropriate boxes)

ORGANIZER/SPONSOR English dept. School District State Textbook/

Curricula Company

Testing Service

University Other (please specify)

Curriculum training/

demonstration

Lecture or discussion led by a reading

specialist

Teacher workshop or

institute

Teacher-run program (like a book club)

Lesson demonstration

University Coursework

Other (please specify)

195 15) How often have you engaged in any of the above activities?

Never A few times in my career

Once a year Once a semester

Once a month Once a week

Curriculum training/

demonstration

Lecture or discussion led by a reading

specialist

Teacher's workshop or

institute

Teacher-run program (like a

book club)

Lesson demonstration

Coursework

Other (please specify)

16) What was the purpose for engaging in these activities?

Personal Interest

Professional Elective, taken

for credit

Professional Elective, not

taken for credit

School-mandated

District-mandated

State-mandated

Curriculum training/

demonstration

Lecture or discussion led by a reading

specialist

Teacher's workshop or

institute

Teacher-run program (like a

book club)

Lesson demonstration

Coursework

196 Other (please

specify)

17) What is the longest any of the above activities lasted?

One session One week One month One Semester One Year > One year Curriculum

training/ demonstration

Lecture or discussion led by a reading

specialist

Teacher's workshop or

institute

Teacher-run program (like a

book club)

Lesson demonstration

Coursework

Other (please specify)

Personal Background:

18) Approximately how often do read a book? a) Once a year b) 2-6 times a year c) 7-11 times a year d) Once a month e) Once a week f) More than once a week

In your "downtime," how likely are you to do the following: 19) Read a book

a) Very likely b) Possible c) Rarely d) Never

20) Read a magazine

197 a) Very likely b) Possible c) Rarely d) Never

21) Read the newspaper a) Very likely b) Possible c) Rarely d) Never

22) How often will you and a friend, family member, or co-worker read the same book on purpose? a) Often b) Occasionally c) Rarely d) Never

23) How active are you in a book club? a) Not at all b) Occasional member c) Regular member d) Member of more than one

24) What are the last five books you have read? (please list) a) ________________ b) ________________ c) ________________ d) ________________ e) ________________

25) Do you have any books that you have planned to read this year? If so, please list a) ________________ b) ________________ c) ________________ d) ________________ e) ________________

How often do you select a book according to the following criteria… Often Sometimes Rarely Never 26) Based on a review ...................................................... 1 2 3 4 27) Based on a friend, family member

or co-worker's recommendation.................................. 1 2 3 4 28) Based on a casual read in the book store..................... 1 2 3 4 29) Based on what you know about the author.................. 1 2 3 4

198 30) Based on a movie adaptation ...................................... 1 2 3 4 31) Based on a award ....................................................... 1 2 3 4 32) Based on what you know about other books

in the genre ................................................................ 1 2 3 4 33) Based on what you know about other books

written in the same country ........................................ 1 2 3 4 34) Based on what you know about other books

written in the same period .......................................... 1 2 3 4 35) Based on updating your "cultural literacy"

(i.e. "it's a book every well-read person should know) 1 2 3 4 36) Based on an interest in the topic or setting of

the book ..................................................................... 1 2 3 4 37) Other (please specify)

............. 1 2 3 4

38) How often do you read a newspaper? a) Never b) Less than once a week c) A few times a week d) Once a week e) Every day f) I read more than one a day

When you read a newspaper, how often do you read the following sections? Often Sometimes Rarely Never 39) News.......................................................................... 1 2 3 4 40) Sports......................................................................... 1 2 3 4 41) Home or fashion......................................................... 1 2 3 4 42) Health ........................................................................ 1 2 3 4 43) Editorial ..................................................................... 1 2 3 4 44) Financial .................................................................... 1 2 3 4 45) Comics....................................................................... 1 2 3 4 46) Classifieds.................................................................. 1 2 3 4 47) Movie, music or other cultural event listings .............. 1 2 3 4 48) Book, movie, art or music reviews ............................. 1 2 3 4 49) Horoscope or advice columns..................................... 1 2 3 4 50) Crossword puzzle....................................................... 1 2 3 4 51) Something else? (please specify) ............. 1 2 3 4

About how many of the following types of magazines do you look at on a regular basis? >1/week 1/week 1/month few/year none 52) News...................................... 1 2 3 4 5 53) Fashion .................................. 1 2 3 4 5 54) Cultural.................................. 1 2 3 4 5 55) Political.................................. 1 2 3 4 5

199 56) Literary .................................. 1 2 3 4 5 57) Sports..................................... 1 2 3 4 5 58) Travel .................................... 1 2 3 4 5 59) Cooking ................................. 1 2 3 4 5 60) Religion ................................. 1 2 3 4 5 61) Technology ............................ 1 2 3 4 5 62) Local...................................... 1 2 3 4 5 63) Special Interest....................... 1 2 3 4 5 64) Other (please specify) ......... 1 2 3 4 5

How often have you read the following types of books in the last year, if at all? Often Sometimes Rarely Never 65) Literature of the canon ....................................1 2 3 4 66) Popular literature.............................................1 2 3 4 67) Romance .........................................................1 2 3 4 68) Science Fiction................................................1 2 3 4 69) Historical Fiction ............................................1 2 3 4 70) Memoir ...........................................................1 2 3 4 71) Mystery...........................................................1 2 3 4 72) Humor.............................................................1 2 3 4 73) Biography/Autobiography...............................1 2 3 4 74) Recreation or entertainment.............................1 2 3 4 75) Current affairs/Political ...................................1 2 3 4 76) History............................................................1 2 3 4 77) Inspiration or religion......................................1 2 3 4 78) Science or social science .................................1 2 3 4 79) Reference........................................................1 2 3 4 80) Manuals (for cooking, operating, fixing, building, etc) .......................................1 2 3 4 81) Poetry .............................................................1 2 3 4 82) Drama.............................................................1 2 3 4 83) Essays .............................................................1 2 3 4 84) Other (please specify) ........1 2 3 4

What do you remember best after you've read a book? Often Sometimes Rarely Never 85) Plot .................................................................1 2 3 4 86) Characters .......................................................1 2 3 4 87) Feelings you had while reading .......................1 2 3 4 88) Images ............................................................1 2 3 4 89) Language ........................................................1 2 3 4 90) Structure and form ..........................................1 2 3 4 91) Information (i.e. historical, cultural) ...............1 2 3 4

200 92) Other (please specify) ........1 2 3 4 How often do you use the following sources to get information about current events, public affairs and the government? Often Sometimes Rarely Never 93) Newspapers.....................................................1 2 3 4 94) Magazines.......................................................1 2 3 4 95) Radio ..............................................................1 2 3 4 96) Television .......................................................1 2 3 4 97) Family, friends, co-workers.............................1 2 3 4 98) The internet.....................................................1 2 3 4 99) How often do you use the services of a library?

a) Often b) Sometimes c) Rarely d) Never

How often do you read books for the following purposes? Often Sometimes Rarely Never 100) Relaxation....................................................1 2 3 4 101) Inspiration....................................................1 2 3 4 102) Because the book is popular .........................1 2 3 4 103) To learn about a place, person or

time period...................................................1 2 3 4 104) Self-help ......................................................1 2 3 4 105) To join in a social activity

(i.e. a book club) .........................................1 2 3 4 106) To be able to discuss it with friends,

co-workers, family, etc. ...............................1 2 3 4 107) Considering it for teaching 1 2 3 4 108) It was a gift ..................................................1 2 3 4 109) Other (please specify) ........1 2 3 4

How often do you read in the following places? Often Sometimes Rarely Never 110) Home ...........................................................1 2 3 4 111) Work............................................................1 2 3 4

201 112) Public transport/carpool ...............................1 2 3 4 113) Bookstore.....................................................1 2 3 4 114) Library.........................................................1 2 3 4 115) Café/restaurant .............................................1 2 3 4 116) Other (please specify) ........1 2 3 4

How often do you read a group of books according to the following categories? Often Sometimes Rarely Never 117) By same author ............................................1 2 3 4 118) Of the same genre ........................................1 2 3 4 119) From the same region of the world ...............1 2 3 4 120) From the same time period ...........................1 2 3 4 121) About the same topic....................................1 2 3 4 122) Other (please specify) ........1 2 3 4

How often do you go to a bookstore for the following reasons? Often Sometimes Rarely Never 123) To buy something specific............................1 2 3 4 124) To buy a present...........................................1 2 3 4 125) To browse ....................................................1 2 3 4 126) To read from books ......................................1 2 3 4 127) To read magazines .......................................1 2 3 4 128) To find a book to buy for yourself ................1 2 3 4 School/Teaching Information: 129) What is the enrollment in your school?

a) 0-499 b) 500-999 c) 1000-1499 d) 1500-1999 e) over 2000

130) In what kind of area is your school located? (use your own judgement for the first 4 groups.) a) Rural b) Suburban c) Small town d) Large town e) City (for uniformity, anything over 60,000)

202 131) How frequently are meetings of the English department held at your school?

a) Never b) Once or twice a year c) Three or four times a year d) Five or six times a year e) More or less monthly f) More or less weekly

During your English department meetings, what do you do? Often Sometimes Rarely Never 132) Discuss students ..................................................1 2 3 4 133) Discuss curriculum..............................................1 2 3 4 134) Discuss educational/pedagogical theory ..............1 2 3 4 135) Discuss individual teachers' lesson/unit ideas ......1 2 3 4 136) Take care of administrative tasks.........................1 2 3 4 137) Plan vertically (across grade levels) ....................1 2 3 4 138) Discuss personal issues .......................................1 2 3 4 139) Share personal interests .......................................1 2 3 4 140) Other (please specify) ...............1 2 3 4

141) How often is assistance given to individual English teachers in your school to help them

in their teaching of reading (assistance given by reading specialist, curriculum director, department chair, and/or other such persons)? a) Regularly, as a part of the reading program at the school b) Regularly, based on individual need or request c) Occasionally d) Rarely e) Never f) Am not certain

142) Is a description of the instruction of reading in the English program of your school written down in some form, such as a teachers' guide, course of study, syllabus, school handbook, etc? a) Yes b) No c) Am not certain

143) In your opinion, how thoroughly developed and properly sequential is the written description of the reading program? a) There is no such written description b) It is generally quite good c) It is fairly good d) It is poor e) Am not certain

203

144) How closely do you feel your own reading program reflects the reading program description or department expectation in your school? a) Very closely b) Fairly closely c) Moderately d) Somewhat poorly e) Poorly f) Not sure

145) Who/what is responsible for developing the reading program in your school? a) The English department as a whole b) The faculty as a whole c) The textbook/curriculum committee d) The English department chair, reading specialist, or other such person e) A curriculum or textbook f) Individual teachers each for their own classes g) There is no program

146) How closely do you follow the reading program prescribed for your school? a) Exactly b) Closely c) Selectively d) Barely e) Not at all f) There is no reading program

147) In your opinion, how effectively does the reading program in your school meet the needs for reading instruction of your school's student body? a) Very well b) Moderately well c) Poorly d) Am not certain e) There is no reading program

148) Is a description of the instruction of reading in the English program of your district written down in some form, such as a teachers’ guide, course of study, syllabus, school handbook, etc? a) Yes b) No c) Am not certain

149) In your opinion, how thoroughly developed and properly sequential is the written description of the district reading program? a) There is no such written description

204 b) It is generally quite good c) It is fairly good d) It is poor e) Am not certain

150) How closely do you feel your own reading program reflects the reading program description or department expectation in your district? a) Very closely b) Fairly closely c) Moderately d) Somewhat poorly e) Poorly f) Not sure g) There is no district-wide description or expectation

151) Who/what is responsible for developing the reading program in your district? a) The English department as a whole b) The faculty as a whole c) The textbook/curriculum committee d) The English department chair, reading specialist, or other such person e) A curriculum or textbook f) Individual teachers each for their own classes g) There is no program

152) How closely do you follow the reading program prescribed for your district? a) Exactly b) Closely c) Selectively d) Barely e) Not at all f) There is no program

153) In your opinion, how effectively does the reading program in your district meet the needs for reading instruction of your school's student body? a) Very well b) Moderately well c) Poorly d) Am not certain e) There is no program

154) How effectively, in your own evaluation of yourself, do you feel you meet the needs for reading instruction of the students you teach? a) Very well b) Moderately well c) Poorly

205 d) Am not certain

155) How often are standardized reading tests given to all students in your school? a) Never b) Annually c) Twice a year d) More than twice a year e) Am not certain

156) Are scores from standardized tests made available to English teachers for the students whom they teach? a) No b) Yes, routinely c) Yes, by request d) Am not certain e) No such tests are given

157) Do you use your students test scores to help plan for reading instruction? a) Every year, for all students b) Every year, for some students c) Occasionally d) Never e) Scores are not made available

158) Approximately what percent of the students entering the first year of the school are two or more grades below their proper reading level? (Use your best guess if you are not certain.) a) 10% or fewer b) 11% - 25% c) 26% - 50% d) 51% - 75% e) Over 75% f) Am not certain

159) At what grade level does the average entering first-year student in your school read? a) At or above proper grade level b) 1-2 years below grade level c) 3-4 years below grade level d) 5 or more years below grade level e) Am not certain

160) Which of the following socioeconomic class groupings best represent that of the majority of the students in your school? a) Mostly lower class

206 b) Mostly middle class c) Mostly upper class d) Mixture of a &b e) Mixture of b & c f) Equal mixture of all g) None of these

161) How many reading specialists (that is, persons hired specifically for their expertise in the field of field of teaching reading) are included on the faculty of your school or visit your school regularly? a) None b) One c) Two or three d) Four or five e) More than five

162) To what extent has the reading specialist provided individual assistance to you to help you improve your teaching of reading? a) To a great extent b) To a moderate extent c) To little or no extent d) There is no reading specialist

163) To what extent has the reading specialist provided assistance to the English teachers in group sessions to help them improve their reading program? a) To a great extent b) To a moderate extent c) To little or no extent d) There is no reading specialist

164) Is there a teacher in the department who is known to have a specialty in reading instruction? a) Yes, several, including the department chair b) Yes, several, but not the department chair c) Yes, the department chair d) Yes, someone other than the department chair e) No

165) To what extent has this teacher provided individual assistance to you to help you improve

your teaching of reading? a) To a great extent b) To a moderate extent c) To little or no extent d) There is no teacher with a reading specialty

207 166) To what extent has this teacher provided assistance to the English teachers in group

sessions to help them improve their reading program? a) To a great extent b) To a moderate extent c) To little or no extent d) There is no teacher with a reading specialty

167) Are students in English classes divided into ability groups; and, if so, are such ability groupings based, at least in part, on students' scores on standardized tests? a) There are no ability groupings b) There are ability groupings, and they are based at least in part on standardized test scores c) There are ability groupings, and they are not based on standardized test scores d) There are such groupings, but I do not know the basis of the groupings e) There are such groupings, and they are based on teacher recommendation

168) Do you yourself group students in your English classes in any way for the instruction of reading? a) Never b) Rarely c) Occasionally d) Regularly

169) If you group your students, on what chiefly do you base your groupings? a) Diagnostic tests b) Scored on standardized reading tests c) My personal judgement d) Combination of a, b & c e) Does not apply

170) Does the school have any requirements that the student must meet before being promoted from one year to the next? a) Yes b) No c) Am not certain

171) If the school has any requirements that the student must meet before being promoted from one year to the next, how is the promotion determined? a) By standardized test scores b) By grades c) By my personal judgement d) By other means e) By a combination of a, b & c f) Am not certain g) Other (please specify) h) There are no such requirements

208

172) Please write out a general outline of your year-long curricular plan for either the current school year for one of your classes:

September October November December January February March April May June

209

173) In your courses, do you include study of reading newspapers and/or other periodicals?

a) Yes, continually, through out the year b) Yes, one isolated unit c) Yes, on occasion to supplement the literature d) Yes, on occasion when something important has happened in the news e) Yes, on occasion, to answer a student's question/curiosity f) Rarely g) Never

174) In your courses, do you include study of advertisements, photographs or cartoons? a) Yes, continually, through out the year b) Yes, in one isolated unit c) Yes, on occasion to supplement the literature d) Yes, on occasion, to answer a student's question/curiosity e) Rarely f) Never

175) In your courses, do you include study of film, television or radio programs? (Beyond just showing a movie.) a) Yes, continually, through out the year b) Yes, in one isolated unit c) Yes, on occasion to supplement the literature d) Yes, on occasion, to answer a student's question/curiosity e) Rarely f) Never

176) In your courses, do you include study of semantics, rhetoric or speech?

a) Yes, continually, through out the year b) Yes, in one isolated unit c) Yes, on occasion to supplement the literature d) Yes, on occasion, to answer a student's question/curiosity e) Rarely f) Never

177) In your courses, do you include critical reading of non-fiction prose, (other than units on newspapers and/or periodicals)? a) Yes, continually, through out the year b) Yes, in one isolated unit c) Yes, on occasion to supplement the literature d) Yes, on occasion, to answer a student's question/curiosity e) Rarely f) Never

210 178) In your courses, do you include the study of methods of reading for the purpose of

studying, such as the Survey Q4R method? a) Yes, continually, through out the year b) Yes, in one isolated unit c) Yes, on occasion to supplement the literature d) Yes, on occasion, to answer a student's question/curiosity e) Rarely f) Never

179) In your courses, do you include the study of methods of research? a) Yes, continually, through out the year b) Yes, in one isolated unit c) Yes, on occasion to supplement the literature d) Yes, on occasion, to answer a student's question/curiosity e) Rarely f) Never

180) In your courses, do you emphasize word study (e.g., study of roots, prefixes, suffixes, etymology, etc.)? a) Yes, continually, through out the year b) Yes, in one isolated unit c) Yes, on occasion to supplement the literature d) Yes, on occasion, to answer a student's question/curiosity e) Rarely f) Never

181) In your courses, do you deliberately and systematically attempt to expand your students' vocabularies? a) Yes, continually, through out the year in vocabulary lessons b) Yes, continually, through out the year to supplement literature c) Yes, in one isolated unit d) Yes, on occasion in a vocabulary lesson e) Yes, on occasion to supplement the literature f) Yes, on occasion, to answer a student's question/curiosity g) Rarely h) Never

182) In your courses, do you include the study of non-traditional literature, such as music lyrics, comics, or popular magazine articles? a) Yes, continually, through out the year b) Yes, in one isolated unit c) Yes, on occasion to supplement the literature d) Yes, on occasion, to answer a student's question/curiosity e) Rarely f) Never

211

183) To what extent are your daily lessons guided by a year-long plan? a) Always b) Usually c) Occasionally d) Rarely e) Never

184) To what extent are your daily lessons guided by student inquiries and questions? a) Always b) Usually c) Occasionally d) Rarely e) Never

185) To what extent are you daily lessons guided by events in the news, community or school? a) Always b) Usually c) Occasionally d) Rarely e) Never

186) How do you plan your year-long curriculum? Always Sometimes Rarely Never

a) According to district/state standards .......................... 1 2 3 4 b) According to department policy.................................. 1 2 3 4 c) According to textbook or anthology

teacher guide .............................................................. 1 2 3 4 d) According to my own judgement ............................... 1 2 3 4 e) According to a curriculum guide

(other than a textbook or anthology) .......................... 1 2 3 4 f) According to the literature available

to me to teach ............................................................. 1 2 3 4 g) I do not plan a year-long curriculum........................... 1 2 3 4

187) In your classes, do you use any texts or other materials specifically designed for the development of reading skills? (In answering this question, please do no include literature texts in your consideration.) a) Regularly b) Occasionally c) Rarely d) Never

188) To what extent is it true that it is through your teaching of literature (poetry, fiction,

212 drama, and literary nonfiction) that you teach reading skills? (you may circle more than one) a) Completely b) Mostly, and aided with materials geared specifically for developing reading skills c) Mostly, and aided with other forms of prose, such as articles from periodicals d) Mostly, and aided with non-traditional forms of texts, such as music lyrics e) Literature comprises a small portion of lessons geared directly towards reading skills f) Not at all

189) To what extent do you administer reading inventories to your students to determine their reading interests? a) Regularly b) Occasionally c) Rarely d) Never

190) To what extent do you allow access to a classroom library or distribute lists of good books to students? a) Regularly b) Occasionally c) Rarely d) Never

191) To what extent do you require students to keep "reading records," i.e. lists of books which they have read voluntarily, over a long period of time? a) Regularly b) Occasionally c) Rarely d) Never

192) How often do you read articles or books concerning reading instruction and reports of research on reading? a) Regularly b) Occasionally c) Rarely d) Never

The following set of questions is concerned with various aspects of reading involved in the study of literature. To what extent in your teaching of literature do you deliberately and systematically attempt to develop the following abilities and/or understandings? 193) Ability to determine the author's purpose in the work as a whole and in various parts of

the work?

213 a) To a great extent b) Somewhat c) A little bit d) Not at all e) Am not certain

194) Understanding that the sentiments, beliefs, and attitudes expressed by the narrator or other characters are not necessarily the actual sentiments, etc. of the author? a) To a great extent b) Somewhat c) A little bit d) Not at all e) Am not certain

195) Ability to relate the various parts of the literary work to one another? a) To a great extent b) Somewhat c) A little bit d) Not at all e) Am not certain

196) Ability to relate different works of literature to one another through theme? a) To a great extent b) Somewhat c) A little bit d) Not at all e) Am not certain

197) Ability to relate different works of literature to one another through historical period and/or geographic region of the author's origin? a) To a great extent b) Somewhat c) A little bit d) Not at all e) Am not certain

198) Ability to detect a theme in a particular work? a) To a great extent b) Somewhat c) A little bit d) Not at all e) Am not certain

199) Ability to understand a lesson or moral of a particular work? a) To a great extent

214 b) Somewhat c) A little bit d) Not at all e) Am not certain

200) Recognition and interpretation of figurative language? a) To a great extent b) Somewhat c) A little bit d) Not at all e) Am not certain

201) Recognition of the tone (i.e. ironic) of a literary work? a) To a great extent b) Somewhat c) A little bit d) Not at all e) Am not certain

202) Ability to project oneself imaginatively into the work and to participate vicariously in the experiences and feelings of the characters? a) To a great extent b) Somewhat c) A little bit d) Not at all e) Am not certain

203) Ability to relate the literature to one's own life experience? a) To a great extent b) Somewhat c) A little bit d) Not at all e) Am not certain

204) Ability to appreciate language use (such as syntax, alliteration, simile, etc.)? a) To a great extent b) Somewhat c) A little bit d) Not at all e) Am not certain

205) Ability to uncover and understand literary or historical allusion in a particular work? a) To a great extent b) Somewhat c) A little bit

215 d) Not at all e) Am not certain

216

Appendix C: Student Survey

217 your teacher's name your class period

your name

date

Student Reading Questionnaire - Circle the number that is truest about you.

Usually Sometimes Rarely Never

1) I read books in my free time ....................................... 1 2 3 4

2) I read magazines in my free time................................ 1 2 3 4

3) I read newspapers in my free time.............................. 1 2 3 4

4) I read comic books in my free time ............................ 1 2 3 4

5) I read other stuff in my free time ................................ 1 2 3 4

6) I surf the internet in my free time ............................... 1 2 3 4

7) I watch T.V. in my free time....................................... 1 2 3 4

8) I listen to music in my free time ................................. 1 2 3 4

When I read in my free time, I choose something to read that… Usually Sometimes Rarely Never

9) A friend recommended ................................................ 1 2 3 4

10) My teacher recommended ........................................... 1 2 3 4

11) I found on my own....................................................... 1 2 3 4

12) I saw other people reading .......................................... 1 2 3 4

13) I read a review about ................................................... 1 2 3 4

14) I saw at a library or bookstore and liked the look of . 1 2 3 4

15) My friends also read .................................................... 1 2 3 4

16) I saw the movie ............................................................ 1 2 3 4

17) I heard someone talk about ......................................... 1 2 3 4

218

When I read for English homework, I pay attention to… Usually Sometimes Rarely Never

18) What happens in the story (the plot) .......................... 1 2 3 4

19) The names of the characters ........................................ 1 2 3 4

20) What the characters are like ........................................ 1 2 3 4

21) How the story relates to my life.................................. 1 2 3 4

22) The setting.................................................................... 1 2 3 4

23) The author's point ........................................................ 1 2 3 4

24) The imagery ................................................................. 1 2 3 4

25) The narrator's voice ..................................................... 1 2 3 4

26) The moral or lesson of the story ................................. 1 2 3 4

27) The language ................................................................ 1 2 3 4

28) The dates or order of when things take place............. 1 2 3 4

When I read in my free time, I pay attention to… Usually Sometimes Rarely Never

29) What happens in the story (the plot) .......................... 1 2 3 4

30) The names of the characters ........................................ 1 2 3 4

31) What the characters are like ........................................ 1 2 3 4

32) How the story relates to my life.................................. 1 2 3 4

33) The setting.................................................................... 1 2 3 4

34) The author's point ........................................................ 1 2 3 4

35) The imagery ................................................................. 1 2 3 4

36) The narrator's voice ..................................................... 1 2 3 4

37) The moral or lesson of the story ................................. 1 2 3 4

38) The language ................................................................ 1 2 3 4

39) The dates or order of when things take place............. 1 2 3 4

219

I like it best when I read… Usually Sometimes Rarely Never

40) A complete novel ......................................................... 1 2 3 4

41) A complete play ........................................................... 1 2 3 4

42) A poem ......................................................................... 1 2 3 4

43) A short story................................................................. 1 2 3 4

44) A newspaper article ..................................................... 1 2 3 4

45) A magazine article ....................................................... 1 2 3 4

46) A section of a novel ..................................................... 1 2 3 4

47) A section of a play ....................................................... 1 2 3 4

48) A summary of a novel ................................................. 1 2 3 4

49) A summary of a play ................................................... 1 2 3 4

50) Critique of a novel, play poem or short story ............ 1 2 3 4

51) Information about an author or poet ........................... 1 2 3 4

52) The history surrounding a piece of writing ................ 1 2 3 4

When I read for English homework, I expect my teacher to ask me questions about… Usually Sometimes Rarely Never

53) What happens in the story (the plot)........................... 1 2 3 4

54) The names of the characters ........................................ 1 2 3 4

55) What the characters are like ........................................ 1 2 3 4

56) How the story relates to my life.................................. 1 2 3 4

57) The setting.................................................................... 1 2 3 4

58) The author's point ........................................................ 1 2 3 4

59) The imagery ................................................................. 1 2 3 4

60) The narrator's voice ..................................................... 1 2 3 4

61) The moral or lesson of the story ................................. 1 2 3 4

62) The language ................................................................ 1 2 3 4

63) The dates or order of when things take place............. 1 2 3 4

64) The themes of the story ............................................... 1 2 3 4

220

When I read for English homework, I expect my my teacher to… Usually Sometimes Rarely Never

65) Quiz me on what I know ............................................. 1 2 3 4

66) Test me on what I know .............................................. 1 2 3 4

67) Ask the class what they didn't understand ................ 1 2 3 4

68) Ask me questions to see if I did the reading .............. 1 2 3 4

69) Ask the class what was hard ....................................... 1 2 3 4

70) Ask the class what was interesting ............................. 1 2 3 4

71) Ask the class what we like the best ............................ 1 2 3 4

72) Ask the class to write a reaction to the reading ......... 1 2 3 4

73) Fill out worksheets on the reading.............................. 1 2 3 4

74) Talk to the other students about the reading .............. 1 2 3 4

75) Write an essay about the reading ................................ 1 2 3 4

I like it best when I… Usually Sometimes Rarely Never

76) Read at home by myself .............................................. 1 2 3 4

77) Read at home with a family member.......................... 1 2 3 4

78) Read outside of school with a friend .......................... 1 2 3 4

79) Read in school by myself ........................................... 1 2 3 4

80) Read in school, one-on-one with my teacher............. 1 2 3 4

81) Read in school, together with the whole class ........... 1 2 3 4

82) Read in school, together with a small group.............. 1 2 3 4

83) Read in school, together with one other student ........ 1 2 3 4

84) Read aloud in school ................................................... 1 2 3 4

85) Read silently in school ............................................... 1 2 3 4

86) Talk about what I've read with a friend...................... 1 2 3 4

87) Talk about what I've read with a family member ...... 1 2 3 4

88) Talk about what I've read with my teacher ................ 1 2 3 4

89) Write about what I've read in a journal ...................... 1 2 3 4

221

When I don't understand something I've read, I… Usually Sometimes Rarely Never

90) Skip ahead .................................................................... 1 2 3 4

91) Read it again................................................................. 1 2 3 4

92) Ask a friend for help.................................................... 1 2 3 4

93) Ask the teacher for help............................................... 1 2 3 4

94) Ask someone in my family for help ........................... 1 2 3 4

95) Look back at notes from class..................................... 1 2 3 4

96) Look up information in a textbook, dictionary

or other book .................................................................. 1 2 3 4

97) Look up information on the internet........................... 1 2 3 4

98) Stop reading ................................................................. 1 2 3 4

I think it's important for me… Very Pretty Sort of Not Important Important Important Important 99) To read a lot of books................................................... 1 2 3 4

100) To be a good reader ...................................................... 1 2 3 4

101) To read certain books ................................................... 1 2 3 4

102) To know the names of certain writers ......................... 1 2 3 4

103) To know the names of certain books ........................... 1 2 3 4

104) To enjoy reading ........................................................... 1 2 3 4

105) To read what other people have read........................... 1 2 3 4

106) To read what my teacher tells me to............................ 1 2 3 4

107) To read often ................................................................. 1 2 3 4

108) To know what happened in certain books................... 1 2 3 4

109) To learn things from books .......................................... 1 2 3 4

110) To enjoy reading ........................................................... 1 2 3 4

111) To feel close to characters in books............................. 1 2 3 4

112) To understand the author's point in books................... 1 2 3 4

222

I like to read books that … Usually Sometimes Rarely Never

113) Are easy to understand ................................................. 1 2 3 4

114) Are a little hard to understand...................................... 1 2 3 4

115) Are really challenging .................................................. 1 2 3 4

116) Are about things I already know about ....................... 1 2 3 4

117) Are about new things or places.................................... 1 2 3 4

118) Are about people like me ............................................. 1 2 3 4

119) Are about people who are different than me............... 1 2 3 4

120) Are written by authors I'm familiar with..................... 1 2 3 4

121) Are about topics I know a lot about............................. 1 2 3 4

122) My friends are reading or have already read............... 1 2 3 4

123) My family is reading or has already read.................... 1 2 3 4

124) Other people think are "important books"................... 1 2 3 4

125) Are really complicated ................................................. 1 2 3 4

126) Take a lot of thinking ................................................... 1 2 3 4

127) Remind me of people I know....................................... 1 2 3 4

128) Teach me about people I've never met ........................ 1 2 3 4

129) Other people are talking about (on TV, on the train) . 1 2 3 4

130) Are about characters I like ........................................... 1 2 3 4

131) Teach me about history ................................................ 1 2 3 4

132) Make me think about my place in the world............... 1 2 3 4

When you read a newspaper, how often do you read the following sections? Usually Sometimes Rarely Never

133) News ............................................................................. 1 2 3 4

134) Sports ............................................................................ 1 2 3 4

135) Home or fashion .......................................................... 1 2 3 4

136) Health ........................................................................... 1 2 3 4

137) Editorial ....................................................................... 1 2 3 4

138) Financial ....................................................................... 1 2 3 4

139) Comics.......................................................................... 1 2 3 4

223 140) Classifieds .................................................................... 1 2 3 4

141) Movie, concert or other cultural event listings .......... 1 2 3 4

142) Book, movie, art or music reviews ............................. 1 2 3 4

143) Horoscope or advice columns ..................................... 1 2 3 4

144) Crossword puzzle......................................................... 1 2 3 4

About how often do you read the following types of magazines? Usually Sometimes Rarely Never

a) News ............................................................................ 1 2 3 4

145) Fashion ....................................................................... 1 2 3 4

146) Cultural ....................................................................... 1 2 3 4

147) Political ....................................................................... 1 2 3 4

148) Literary ....................................................................... 1 2 3 4

149) Sports .......................................................................... 1 2 3 4

150) Travel .......................................................................... 1 2 3 4

151) Cooking ...................................................................... 1 2 3 4

152) Religion ...................................................................... 1 2 3 4

153) Technology ................................................................. 1 2 3 4

154) Local ........................................................................... 1 2 3 4

155) Special Interest ........................................................... 1 2 3 4

In your free time, how often have you read the following types of books in the last year? Usually Sometimes Rarely Never 156) Important Literature ................................................... 1 2 3 4

157) Popular literature ....................................................... 1 2 3 4

158) Romance ..................................................................... 1 2 3 4

159) Science Fiction ........................................................... 1 2 3 4

160) Historical Fiction ....................................................... 1 2 3 4

161) Memoir ....................................................................... 1 2 3 4

162) Mystery ....................................................................... 1 2 3 4

163) Humor ......................................................................... 1 2 3 4

164) Biography/Autobiography ........................................ 1 2 3 4

165) Current affairs or history ........................................... 1 2 3 4

166) Inspiration or religion ................................................ 1 2 3 4

224 167) Science or social science ........................................... 1 2 3 4

168) Reference .................................................................... 1 2 3 4

169) Manuals (for cooking, fixing, building, etc ) ............ 1 2 3 4

170) Poetry............................................................................ 1 2 3 4

171) Drama ........................................................................... 1 2 3 4

172) Essays ........................................................................... 1 2 3 4

What do you remember best after you've read a book? Usually Sometimes Rarely Never

173) Plot ............................................................................... 1 2 3 4

174) Characters .................................................................... 1 2 3 4

175) Feelings you had while reading ................................. 1 2 3 4

176) Images ......................................................................... 1 2 3 4

177) Language ..................................................................... 1 2 3 4

178) Lessons or Morals ....................................................... 1 2 3 4

179) Information (historical, scientific, cultural) ............. 1 2 3 4

180) The way it was written ................................................ 1 2 3 4

225

Appendix D: Agency & Communion Codes and Examples

226

Code/Theme Description Example from Reading Life Story Agency: Achievement/ Responsibility

“The protagonist…reports substantial success in the achievement of tasks, jobs, instrumental goals, or in the assumption of important responsibilities.”

I finished reading Joyce’s Ulysses, and it was course, you know, anytime you read any text of that magnitude, it’s sort of an Everest in the sense for a reader…I actually finished, what I felt at the time, was probably the best paper I had written, because to me it demonstrated a thorough understanding of the work that I had done reading, as a reader…The fact that was actually able to wrap my head around it and to be able to say something that I felt like was somewhat intelligent about the topic on a piece of paper, to me, really meant a lot.

Agency: Power/Impact “The protagonist asserts him- or herself in a powerful way and thereby has a strong impact on other people or on the world more generally.”

I never really thought of myself as being a fluent reader…but because this was the first time that I had been in a group of people who weren't fluent readers, and showing them that skill that I had, and, you know, seeing that it inspired them.

Agency: Self-insight “The story protagonist attains a clear, new, and important insight about him or herself through the event. As a result of this experience, the protagonist feels that he or she has become wiser, more mature, or more fully actualized as a person.”

He asked us to list books that we’ve read, great books, books that we’ve read that were really good…So this big list goes on the board and I look up at the list and I’m like, there’s no black people on this list, there’s no women on this list. So I’m trying to think of some books that I’ve read that would diversify the list that’s on the board and I can’t think of any books that I’ve read that would diversify that list!... my cultural identity was not necessarily, it was important to me, but it wasn’t something that I saw in a practical sense… I didn’t necessarily locate that and like cultural things, like what I read, and what I, you know, like how that influenced me, and I didn’t, and I don’t think it became an issue until that class, and that point of time, when I saw that on the board…Because, then after that, of course, African American, Latino, Native American literature, I kind of started reading all these different things to kind of open it up, what I read.

Agency: Status/Victory “The protagonist attains a heightened status or prestige among his or her peers, through receiving a special recognition or honor or winning a contest or competition. The implication in SV is that status or victory is achieved vis-à-vis others.”

It was just such a huge undertaking, writing was so hard and that it all came down to how long I read these texts in the first place. Anyway, our teacher handed them back with a scowl on her face, she was a woman that intimidated us but made up work so hard. She said that nobody in the class did even close to what she wanted, and she said except for one paper, and she held it up. I was thinking what if this was mine, like

227 could it be mine, but this was the moment that defined whether or not I was a confident student, or wanna-be inferior one. And she said that KW did it perfectly, she said that I wish you guys could all read hers, she did exactly what I wanted, she has very few revisions, and she handed it to me and looked me in the eye and said “wonderful.”

Communion: Love/ Friendship

“A protagonist experiences an enhancement of love or friendship toward another person.”

…I mentioned I have a stepdaughter, and we’ve taken a lot of driving trips my husband, her, and I and we always read. We either get books on tape, but more often we read to each other…because reading is so often a very private and solitary activity that when it makes a connection between myself, and especially someone that I’m already so close to, it’s a very strengthening thing.

Communion: Dialogue “A character in the story experiences a reciprocal and non-instrumental form of communication or dialogue with another person or group of others.”

Growing up, again this is high school friend, who was very smart, and she would always go to the library to get books. Libraries are nice, and I’m really glad we have them, but I don’t like libraries, I don’t like borrowing a book, I’d rather buy it, even if I end up not liking a book, which is pretty rare. I’m a book collector. So this isn’t one particular instance, but I remember having lots of conversations with her about this, why would you spend your money to do that, you can just go get it at the library.

Communion: Caring/Help “The protagonist reports that he or she provides care, assistance, nurturance, help, aid, support, or therapy for another, providing for the physical, material, social, or emotional welfare or well-being of the other. Instances of receiving such care from others also qualify for CH.”

And then I got the quiz back and I got a D on it and I never had a D. And so I was really upset by it and I can remember not being able to focus in class, I was so upset because she gave it back at the beginning of class. And at the end she said she wanted to see me, and I was like “Oh, no, this is awful.” And she said, “you know this. I know that you know this I can tell from the way you are in class you just didn’t demonstrate that on the quiz…you can still definitely get an A in this class, but I know that you know this.” And, just even that little encouragement was enough that, by the next time I got an A and I ended up with an A in the class.

Communion: Unity/ Togetherness

“Whereas the communal themes of LF, DG, and CH tend to specify particular relationships between the protagonist and one or a few other people, the theme of Unity/Togetherness captures the communal idea of being part of a larger community.”

…she loaned me the book I never gave it back; it became part of my personal library. Um, you know, it’s, it’s a share and a knowledge that if I read a book that’s really good I want to tell somebody else about it. I want them to also read it. I want to have a conversation about it…I saw it kind of as a community of, of readers, people also want

228 to read things, just like you. Like, well I know you like the Hobbit so you’re going to like these other books too so just go ahead and go get them and go read those too.

229

Appendix E: Literary Codes and Examples

230

Code/Theme Example

Text-centered: Basic stated information Information drawn directly from the text with no inferences required.

…we were reading Gabrielle García Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. I got to the end, like I was really, I was totally sucked into the book, as much as it frustrated me to have to go back to look at the stupid family tree to figure out which character was it really that I was thinking about in the moment, because they are all the same…

Text-centered: Implied relationships Information gleaned from the text as a result of local or global inferencing.

Brutus, uh, has someone else stab him to die. And, it, and how that that showed his cowardice, and, um…Yea, Cassius, Cassius I think actually falls on his own sword, where as Brutus has one of his henchman actually run him through… Or something like that, and it got me to see that, you know, the author had made a choice about how they committed suicide to say something about the character.

Text-centered: Structural generalization Making a structural generalization “require[s] that a reader explains how parts of the work operate together to achieve certain effects” (Hillocks, 19XX).

…so I fell in love, and I was so like confounded by the fact that Bernice’s cousin had set this up the entire time, and that apparently, Fitzgerald had intended for us to figure it out, since Ms. Grunholtz is now pointing out all the clues, that I was like, F. Scott Fitzgerald is great… it was also the first time that somebody had pointed out to me that, and I wasn’t thinking that, thinking of it as like authors intent, but that author’s do things intentionally, and it’s not just a story that comes out kind of, comes out, the final edition isn’t what comes out the first time. You know like, authors can manipulate stuff, and they do.

Text-centered: Authorial generalization Understanding authorial generalizations requires the reader to glean the author’s larger point from the text as a whole.

And what’s been very interesting in the clone wars novels, and why some of them are almost literary, is that it looks at what that would do to someone. What war…they’re very anti-war, in that they show the horrors of war and they specifically how the horrors of war are taking these people who spent their whole lives focused on peace into becoming killers and how that’s changing them and destroying them, in one way or another. And that’s…[a] more complex and sophisticated adult theme, then just you know the hero against the bad guys to save the day… All the clone war stuff there have been good guys and bad guys on both sides, um, and the cost of war and how it’s damaging to everybody.

Reader-centered: Knowing about ourselves Knowledge about oneself is new personal insight that comes about as a result of reflection on the themes presented and inspired by the text.

He assigned us to read On the Road by Jack Kerouac… I have never felt like I was similar to anyone. I was adopted and that might be part of why, but I never felt in my immediate family, I never felt like I belonged in my community, I never felt like I belonged, I never felt like I belonged at school. So this was, here was a person whose being, I was being taught about this person who wrote this book by someone who saw me as an individual, and who respected that. And then this guy who wrote this book, was just like, “Ok I’ll see you

231 later” and he just kind of left this place that he didn’t really feel comfortable, and sought out others who felt that same sense of displacement and they made their own community that was, you know went from here and here and everything in between. I really thought that that was really cool…

Reader-centered: Knowing about others Knowledge about others is new knowledge about other people, either those represented in the text or with whom the reader read the text, as a result of reading the text.

…reading that book sort of changed my whole life, like the path of my whole life, because…well it planted the seed of wanderlust in me and like it was you know very soon after that went on my first driving trip and I’ve taken probably a dozen driving trips around the country and my understanding of the way people relate to other people in the larger community of this country and the world came from reading that book.

Reader-centered: Knowing about contexts Knowledge about contexts involves understanding the multiple contexts, be they social, historical or geographic, which are represented by the text.

…So, I think it was during fifth grade, we used to, we got on this kick of the Civil War, and during that time I read, Uncle Tom’s Cabin… and Gone with the Wind for sure, and I think there was, for some reason, I want to say that there was a third book, and it may been because like Roots had just come out then, the miniseries, or North and South, but there was something going on in pop-culture around the Civil War. Kristine, from our school library now, checked out Gone with the Wind…

Reader-centered: Knowing about cultures and societies

Knowledge about cultures and societies is provided by texts that introduce the reader to new cultures and societies different from those of which the reader is already a part.

…my parents had some “Time Life” hardcover like special edition books in the cabinet in the bathroom. I don’t know why they were there, I don’t know why they got them, but there was like one that was like World War II, one that was on like, basically it was like bizarre and gruesome murders, one that was like, all kind of horrific things, and there would be, you know they were photo journals, so these like amazing black and white photos, and then this story that would go along with it. I remember it was almost like sneaking in to get it out, like when I finally discovered it, like sneaking into the cabinet, and pulling it out, and then being fascinated. Reading about World War II, and the Nazis, and the holocaust, and Hitler…

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