Teaching for Progressive Social Change in the Reading and Literature Classroom

8/14/2019 Teaching for Progressive Social Change in the Reading and Literature Classroom

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Teaching for Progressive Social Change

in the Reading and Literature Classroom

by

Anthony Owens

BA, University of California, Los Angeles, 1999

MFA, Bennington College, Bennington, VT, 2004

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty in the

School of Education in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Master of Education


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University of Pittsburgh

2008


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Committee Signature Page

Committee Member____________________ Affiliation_____________________



________________________________

Date


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Abstract

The purpose of this discussion is to establish a theoretical and research basis for a

pedagogical approach in the reading and literature classroom that promises to help

promote progressive social change. The goal of such pedagogy, which can include

novice and struggling readers, many of whom may be at risk, is to teach more than just

basic reading comprehension or literary genres or terms. Teachers can include all

students in rich discussions about literature that can help them to develop the parallax of

vision which promises to promote upward mobility and social equality.

Extant theory and research suggests that such pedagogy for teaching reading

comprehension and literature has some salient features. The first is the use of open-

ended questions that guide students collaboratively to create their own meaning from

texts. Questions like Beck and McKeowns (2006) Queries, used in their approach to

teaching reading comprehension called Questioning the Author (QTA), guide students to

share their in-process thinking about texts, building upon each others evolving

understandings in order to generate for themselves coherent and accurate mental

representations of texts as they read through them together. Such discourse about literary

texts is also exploratory in nature (Mercer, 2000). That is, via dialogue, students engaged

in QTA discussions think their ways through texts together. If carefully planned for by

the teacher, they can do so not only to help each other gist make and self-correct

misconceptions but also to constructively challenge and complicate each others possibly

monochromatic thus limited and limiting interpretations and evaluations of what they

read.


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Designed to help novice and struggling readers improve their reading

comprehension skills and strategies, QTA also inherently involves all 3 of the salient

questioning and discourse features identified above. Therefore, included is a sample of

planning for a QTA lesson that, because it reaches beyond gist making to include sharing

alternative inferences and evaluations, should promote both basic comprehension and

deeper, parallactic understanding. By planning for QTA lessons in the modeled way,

teachers can include novice and struggling readers in the process of building parallax of

vision. Doing so is in keeping with the spirit of inclusion and providing all students with

the best possible educational experiences and future prospects. The discussion ends with

a summary and recommendations for future research.


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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Basis for Teaching for Progressive Social Change in the Reading

and Literature Classroom .................................................................................................1

The Lads ...........................................................................................................................1

Ideological Common Sense ..............................................................................................2

Promoting Parallax of Vision for Progressive Social Change .........................................2

The Basis for and Salient Features of Pedagogy for Progressive Social Change ............6

Basis for ..................................................................................................................6

Salient Features of....................................................................................................6

Authentic Questions .....................................................................................7

Uptake ..........................................................................................................7

Exploratory Talk ..........................................................................................7

Discussion Questions .......................................................................................................8

Isabel Beck and Margaret McKeowns Questioning the Author (QTA) .........................8

Chapter 2: Using QTA for Gist MakingandBuilding Parallax of Vision .................10

Brief Introduction to QTA ..............................................................................................10

Using QTA to Reach Beyond Gist Making ...................................................................12

Gist Making and Beyond via Authentic Questioning in QTA ...............................13

Gist Making and Beyond via Uptake in QTA .......................................................15

The Parallel and Recursive Nature of Thought while Reading: A Case for Blending

Gist Making and Literary Analysis Using QTA ............................................................17


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Table of Contents Continued

Texts that Invite Building Parallax of Vision: The Great Books Foundations Rubric .19

Texts that Support Extended Interpretive Discussions ..........................................21

Texts that Raise Genuine Questions for Adults as well as Students......................21

Texts that are Age and Grade Appropriate in Terms of Theme and Style ............21

Mercers Exploratory Talk .............................................................................................22

Disputation .............................................................................................................23

Cumulative Talk.....................................................................................................24

Exploratory Talk ....................................................................................................26

Exploratory Talk for Building Parallax of Vision in QTA ....................................27

Segmenting a Passage from a Novel for Gist Making, Interpretation, and Evaluation .27

Chapter 3: Conclusion .....................................................................................................39

Summary ........................................................................................................................39

Recommendations for Future Research .........................................................................40

Glossary of Terms ............................................................................................................41

References .........................................................................................................................46


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Chapter 1:

The Basis for Teaching for Progressive Social Change

in the Reading and Literature Classroom

The Lads

Paul E. Willis (1981) conducted an ethnographic study of how 12 working class,

secondary-school English boys ironically participated in their own oppression through

resisting the notion that a formal education will eventually culminate in meaningful and

satisfying professional employment, heightened social status, and upward mobility.

Willis describes a complex process by which labor power of a certain kind [in this case,

dead-end, monotonous, manual labor in a workshop] is reproduced and reproduces itself

(Feinberg, W., & Soltis, J., 2004, page 65) amongst the working class. The lads, as

Willis refers to them, viewed as bogus the promise of upward mobility through academic

achievement. Viewing their chances for upward mobility as virtually zero, they regarded

academic disciplines such as math and science as irrelevant to the sorts of unskilled,

monotonous shop jobs they knew that they would eventually inhabit. They

additionally shared with each other the sexist views that mental work is effeminate and

manual labor is masculine. Hence, in occupying those dead-end, unskilled labor jobs,

they were being men doing the sort of masculine and practical work men do; it is worth

noting that internalized gender biases, like those that Willis addresses in his study of the

lads, ingrained monochromatic views on race, and other such beliefs that can belong to


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ones ideological stance and hence limit ones own future prospects, may reach beyond

the sole Marxist concern over economic determinism, as Feinberg & Soltis (70) point out.

Ideological Common Sense

The lads ended up unconsciously and, most importantly for this thesis,

unquestioningly permitting ingrained ideologies to work against their own interests as

working class people. Fairclough (1989) referred to these unquestioned and self-

injurious ideologies as ideological common sense (2). This phrase seems most

appropriate, as the boys likely treated their social and political biases as common sense.

We dont question things that we chalk up to common sense. Upward mobility for these

boys depended on the ability to objectively identify and then question such self-limiting

ideological assumptions, or internalized lenses for interpretation. Had they learned either

in school, at home, or in their communities to be what bell hooks (Jhally, 1997) termed

enlightened witnesses to the self-injurious political and social attitudes they harbored,

attitudes which ultimately functioned as glass ceilings for them, the boys might have

moved up a bit in society, or at least they would have given themselves a chance for

upward mobility. As Fairclough asserts, only when one becomes aware that a particular

aspect of common sense is sustaining power inequalities at ones own expense [does it]

cease to be common sense, and may cease to have the capacity to sustain power

inequalities, i.e., to function ideologically (85).

Promoting Parallax of Vision for Progressive Social Change


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In describing the bargain struck between most of the boys classmates and their

teachers at the school in Willis study, the bargain which the boys categorically rejected,

Feinberg & Soltis describe a transaction in which, in return for respect from their

students, the teachers impartmeaningful knowledge (66) that will help make students

competitive on the job market, making rewarding work possible; rewarding work

presumably meaning something like high-status mental work, versus hard, manual,

repetitive, unskilled labor, like the shop work the boys now do. It is important to note

that Willis describes the teachers at this school as imparting knowledge.

The one way transmission, or imparting of knowledge, e.g., a teachers own

interpretations and evaluations concerning texts, for example, from teacher to students

can teach students not to question ideological common sense, thereby maintain status-quo

power differentials, as was the case for the lads. From a glut of didactic classroom

experiences over their academic careers, students infer that learning is a passive act, a

matter of storing and recalling meaning created by an expert other, whether that expert

other is a teacher or author. The teacher, already in possession of the one correct

answer, that answer being explicit information from the text or the teachers own

interpretation or evaluation, for example, merely seeks the consent of students. In

addition, the teacher chooses whats important to talk about concerning texts being

studied. Here students dont explore rich alternative interpretations they find interesting.

Texts have correct and incorrect interpretations and evaluations, according an expert. No

ambiguity exists, even when texts like Larry Watsons (2007)Montana 1948 are studied.

In this novel, for example, the Native American reservation acts as a luminous corollary


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to other locals, both outward and inward, where similar acts of oppression, abuse,

exploitation, and marginalization occur. Hence, there are multiple valid interpretive

responses richly supported by the text for the following question: in this story, what is

the reservation? Also, although readers can logically and richly support the proposition

that this novel is the narrators own bildungsroman, it is also the story of how the

narrators fathers defies his own dictatorial father, the absolute head of a clan, why he

does so, and what the both positive and negative consequences are for doing so. Hence

another opportunity for sharing differing yet valid views about the characters arises when

one asks the following evaluative question: who is the most important character in the

story? When teachers ask questions like these, students can disagree and still be correct

while engaging in an intriguing and educational conversation around text.

Ideologies acting as hidden, underlying premises, or common sense, might

interfere with this healthy tendency toward parallactic interpretation and evaluation. For

example, Tierney and Pearson (1985) quote Doris Lessing describing how odd it is that

the letters she receives from fans about The Golden Notebook(1962) so often relay a one-

dimensional interpretation of her story. One fan sees only gender struggle in it, while

another sees only politics, and yet another interprets it as solely being about mental

illness. In part, the tunnel-vision interpretations of so many of her fans belie their

biases, predispositions, and personal experiences (Tierney and Pearson, 72), in other

words, their ideological common sense. Tierney and Pearson describe our by now

familiar common sense as adopting only a single stance or role toward a text (when

reading) or an audience (when writing). The monochromatic feminist, political, and

psychological alignments with Lessings tale of the above three readers result, Tierney


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and Pearson argue, in limited understanding of the text for the individual readers. In

other words, the two theorists conclude that reading or writing through the lens of only a

single alignment interfere[s] with how well [Lessings 3 readers] negotiate

understanding of her story (72). Their definition of superior understanding, or

successful text negotiation as they put it, can hence be seen as the achievement of

parallax of vision concerning a text, or the ability to simultaneously make several

varying, even oppositional, yet valid interpretations and evaluations of the same text. For

Tierney and Pearson, the more parallactic ones vision of a text, the better one has

negotiated understanding of that text.

To illustrate this concept, imagine Lessings 3 letter writers getting together to

share their readings through the alternative yet complimentary reciprocal lenses of

gender, politics, and mental illness in order to complicate their individually limited

understandings ofThe golden Notebook, understandings limited by adopting only a single

alignment with the novel; e.g., female reader, republican reader, or psychologically

healthy reader, for example. The parallax of vision that would result, or the more

complex understanding of the text and its characters that Tierney and Pearson define and

privilege, has the potential to combat ideological common sense and hence possibly lead

to progressive social change. This is so because the 3 letter writers would learn that their

own understandings were valid yet reductionist, hence limited in nature. Imagine how

things might have turned out for the lads, had they come to such a realization about their

own reductionist interpretations and evaluations concerning mental work and the sort of

work men properly do.


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The Basis for and Salient Features of

Pedagogy for Progressive Social Change

In the case of reading comprehension, literacy being an important social

equalizer, Martin Nystrand (2006) cites his own prior research when claiming that

authentic, or open-ended teacher questions and uptake (follow-up questions that build on

student responses to cumulatively and collaboratively make meaning), to the extent that

they were used, suppressed potentially negative effects of . . . variables such as track,

socio-economic status [SES], race, and ethnicity on what Nystrand labels instruction

and learning (403). Nystrand elaborates by citing Ericsons (2004) theory that static

macro factors in education such as socio-economic status, race, ethnicity, gender, and so

on are composed of many single instances of local social interaction . . . aggregate[d]

across time, becoming global social facts (159). Based on that premise, more and

more teachers in diverse locales helping students develop into enlightened witnesses can

promote progressive social change on a global scale. Hence any pedagogy for the

reading and literature classroom intended to promote progressive social change may

benefit from the use of authentic questioning and uptake.

In recent years there has been a widespread move away from oppressive and

toward democratic learning interactions around text in the reading and literature

classroom. These programs/approaches claim to include the following elements of

interpretive discourse (whether spoken or written) around texts that promise to promote

parallax of vision which can lead to progressive social change:


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1. authentic teacher questions (Applebee, N., Langer, J., Nystrand, M., &Gamoran, A., 2003): open-ended questions that invite simultaneous alternative

and sometimes even conflicting interpretations of the same texts during classroom

discourse

2. uptake: an ongoing and cumulative process during discourse around texts inwhich a teachers [or a students] question [takes up] and [builds] on a students

previous comment, creating continuity [and building complexity of meaning] in

the discourse (Applebee, et al., 2003)

3.

Exploratory Talk/ ET (Mercer, N., 2000): for the purposes of this discussion,

talk around a text that is exploratory in nature; in this particular case, ET is talk

that explores multiple, alternative interpretations and evaluations of the same

texts, resulting in less reductionist, more complex understandings. ET is also

accountable talk, meaning that it is evidenced by the text and well reasoned talk.

Without first asking authentic questions that invite differing interpretations and

evaluations, without then taking into account and building upon differing interpretations

and evaluations while collaboratively constructing more complex (less reductionist) or

layered understandings of texts, and without a consensus about what ought to constitute

this persuasive talk around text in the classroom, the parallax of vision which can lead to

progressive social change cannot evolve. In more concrete terms, such a discussion

about The Golden Notebookwould have helped Lessings letter writers complicate each

others monochromatic, hence limited understandings of the novel. Such a discussion

aboutMontana 1948 might also result in the same reader identifying and accepting as


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valid the multiple external and internal manifestations of the reservation in the novel.

Perhaps most importantly, such classroom discourses throughout their education might

have helped the lads move up in society. At the very least, teaching for progressive

social change could have helped them develop less cynical beliefs about upward mobility

and also might have lead them to question their own sexist and self-limiting notions about

what constitutes masculinity.

Discussion Questions

As stated above, several research-based and widely used programs and

approaches to designing and implementing in the classroom such enlightening and

empowering discussions around texts already exist. One of these programs/approaches

has garnered much attention and acclaim in recent years: Questioning the Author / QTA

(Beck, I., & McKeown, M., 2006), an intervention for improving reading comprehension

via open discussion during, rather than after, reading. Of particular interest to this thesis

is how this approach to teaching reading comprehension fares in terms of promoting the

parallax of vision that promises to promote progressive social change for all students,

including novice and struggling readers in need of improving their reading

comprehension abilities. Therefore, the following section will very briefly introduce

QTA before answering the questions of central interest to this discussion:

1. What is QTA, and what is the purpose of a QTA lesson?


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2. How can teachers plan QTA discussions to enhance not only basiccomprehension (gist making) abilities but also to promote deep, parallactic

understandings of texts, themselves, and the world?


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Chapter 2:

Using QTA for Gist Making andBuilding Parallax of Vision

Brief Introduction to QTA

QTA is a during-reading approach to apprenticing novice or struggling readers in

creating for themselves clear and coherent understandings of what they read. In other

words, via QTA students learn to focus on the important versus the trivial events and

ideas in a text or to transform the status of textual events and ideas from trivial to

significant, organizing those events and ideas in a way the shows their interrelatedness or

coherence. Such a process sharply contrasts with, for example, the recall of isolated

textual information, the significance and interrelatedness of which students are either

unable to articulate or to understand, for the purpose of providing the teacher or a

standardized testing entity with evidence that students completed their reading

assignments or can remember what they read. The authors of QTA, Isabel Beck and

Margaret McKeown, base their approach to teaching reading comprehension on sound

theories and important and rigorous research studies in the fields of educational

psychology and reading comprehension. These theories and studies show that

discussion-based reading lessons which use coherent texts or use the teachers own

coherent revisions of incoherent informational texts, for example, provide students with

relevant background knowledge for comprehension, and pose a logical versus arbitrary

sequence of questions (17) have a strongly positive influence on comprehension.


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Of particular interest here are the authentic questions used in QTA, questions

organized not according to taxonomies, or levels of thinking defined by Barrett (1967),

for example, but according to the logical organization of events and ideas of central

importance to the story [or any other genre of text] and their interrelationships (Beck &

McKeown, 15). This logical, or coherent, organization of the sequence of events and

ideas of central import to creating clear understandings of texts is planned for by the

teacher in a process called text segmenting. During this lesson-planning process which

precedes the group reading activity of QTA, the teacher reads the text, identifying

confusing, difficult, or telling and pivotal sentences or passages. For each of these

crucial points in, or segments of the text, the teacher creates initiating, open-ended

questions called Queries. Beck and McKeown define questions negatively as the sort

of closed-ended questions belonging to the I-R-E (Mehan, 1979) or mono-logic model of

instruction. In addition to Initial Queries, the teacher, having anticipated opportunities

for and threats to meaning making in the passage at hand, has on hand for timely and

strategic use during group reading at least one Follow-Up Query of an appropriate sort.

For example, anticipating a verbatim text response to an initial Query, the teacher can

follow up with thats what the author said, but what did the author mean (Beck &

McKeown, 57). Such a follow-up might prompt students to make inferences or offer

interpretations or evaluations. Basically, initiating, or very open-ended Queries invite

students to make meaning, and Follow-Up Queries, which are more specific yet still

open-ended, scaffold their efforts to do so. The plan is to pause during group reading at

these crucial junctures in a text for during-reading mini discussions that guide students

collaboratively to build accurate and coherent understandings of what they are reading


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Importantly, Beck and McKeown have designed an approach to teaching reading

comprehension that encourages teachers to reach beyond gist making by planning for

then guiding interpretive and evaluative mini-discussions during group reading. Indeed,

the work of initially thinking through the text to segment it for Query-driven discussion is

left to the end users of QTA themselves: usually reading teachers and specialists.

Beyond authoring Queries at the points in texts where threats to and opportunities for gist

making exist, threats and opportunities that must be addressed via discussion in order to

helping novice and struggling readers build basic comprehension, each teacher can decide

for him or herself where and why to use Queries in order to initiate and guide the sharing

of possible alternative interpretations or text-based evaluations. In other words, teachers

can plan for mini-discussions that will prompt readers to challenge and deepen each

others monochromatic understandings with valid and well reasoned interpretations and

evaluations. Importantly, because QTA helps struggling readers become better gist

makers, it has the potential for including them in the higher-level and more interesting

and rewarding business of literary analysis that more advanced readers enjoy and benefit

from. Crucially, as a reading intervention meant to help novice and struggling readers,

readers who often hail from low socio-economic or minority racial or ethnic

backgrounds, develop into competent ones, QTA planned for going beyond gist making

to include interpretation and evaluation, or literary analysis, can include them in reading

for deeper understand / parallax of vision.

Gist Making and Beyond via Authentic Questioning in QTA


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Of course, in the context of the current discussion, deepening understanding about

a text means collaboratively developing a parallax of vision through which to view it, in

order to help counteract the harmful social consequences of ideological common sense.

To combat ideological common sense, with proper planning, the mini-discussions that

take place during group reading in QTA can invite and synthesize a variety of alternative

yet convincing interpretations and evaluations of the same text, or parts of a text; a

characters identity, importance, social status, or hidden motives, for example, can be

understood through a variety of lenses, or cultural constructs, such as like masculinity /

femininity, poverty / wealth, straight / gay, white / Native American, or pragmatic /

idealistic, for example. Authentic QTA questions, or QTA queries, do open the door to

multiple perspective-taking. Consider the differences between query-driven and

question-driven discussions around texts:

A Comparison of Question-Driven and Query-Driven Discussions

Question-Driven Query-Driven

Student Responses

Brief answers In authors language

Longer, more elaborate answers In students language

Discussion Dynamics

Student responses are characterizedby unrelated bits of information

Little students engagement Product oriented All questions teacher-initiated

Students responses are part ofongoing connected discussion

High student engagement Process oriented Some questions student-initiated


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(Beck & McKeown, 41)

QTAs authentic questions, or Queries, are open-ended and part of a guided yet

naturalistic conversation around texts, so they give students room to respond at greater

length, in richer and more elaborate / diverse ways, and in relevant and connected ways.

Students can even learn to author their own Queries driven by their own interests and

perspectives. The purpose of Query-driven discussion is collaboratively to build meaning

by, for example, summarizing, interpreting, evaluating, and monitoring for and repairing

gaps in comprehension while reading for edification and entertainment. In contrast,

question-driven discussions, as Beck and McKeown define them, are characterized by

turn taking between teachers and students. Teachers use questions to elicit brief

responses in the words of the author, questions which test students by prompting them to

accurately mine texts for often unrelated bits of information, or questions which merely

seek student consent with the interpretations and evaluations of their teachers. Reading

becomes a game of trivial pursuit or merely quiet submission by students to the expert

ideas of their teachers. More importantly for the discussion at hand, one-dimensional and

possibly self-limiting ways of interpreting and evaluating texts of all sorts never come

into question.

Gist Making and Beyond via Uptake in QTA

It is important to acknowledge from the beginning that Beck and McKeown

originally intended that QTA be used to help students comprehend or get the gist of what

they read across the curriculum. QTA learning goals are accomplished through careful


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pre-planning by QTA teachers and various discussion moves via strategic Follow-Up

Query posing by teachers during mini-discussions around text segments that require

students to repair their own lapses in comprehension and collaboratively to build a

coherent representation of a text off of each others understandings. The process involves

students in sharing with each other their in-process thinking about texts during reading

for gist making. Sometimes the teacher must, though only as much as necessary, model

out loud his or her thinking through the complex ideas in texts or provide students with

additional information which is missing from the text but which is crucial for what Beck

and McKeown throughout the book refer to as grappling with text ideas, or gist

making. These QTA discussion moves are respectively called Modeling (98-100) and

Annotating (100-101). The rest of the discussion moves used in QTA discussions, for

which Follow-Up Queries are used, in one way or another involve the uptake of students

ideas.

Importantly for this thesis, the discussion move called Recapping, used when

students have come to a place in their construction of ideas that seem to suggest they get

it [i.e., get the gist] and are ready to move on in the text (97), can be most useful for

encouraging the sharing and layering of alternative interpretations and text-based

evaluations to build understandings of texts that go beyond mere gist making. Instead of

coming to a consensus about one particular interpretation then moving on in the reading,

the teacher can acknowledge via Recapping the valid interpretation of one student before

asking for competing yet valid perspectives that will help everyone build an even deeper,

polychromatic understanding of the passage being discussed before moving on in the


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reading. But should Recapping for building parallax of vision happen only after gist

making?

The Parallel and Recursive Nature of Thought while Reading:

A Case for Blending Gist Making and Literary Analysis Using QTA

Some issues of the nature of strong reading at the core of QTA instruction should

be addressed to answer this question. Beck and McKeown discuss the need for an

interspersed, or segmented QTA reading experience for students, an experience in

which all students learn to read like strong readers, continually expending effort [while

reading, not after reading] to make sense of the text (31), so that each important segment

of text is clearly understood and connected to the rest of the text as it is encountered.

Beck and McKeown stress that the main purpose for the interspersed reading experience

of QTA is to prevent novice readers from getting lost or forming local misconceptions

while reading that will accumulate into a global lack of gist-getting of the text as a whole

if students are left to read on their own (32). Elsewhere in the book, Beck and McKeown

liken teachers of reading to shepherds herding sheep, some of whom will always find any

holes in the fence and escape through them. The holes in the fence Beck and McKeown

refer to constitute not noticing or carefully enough considering the most important ideas

encountered while reading for gist, as well as occasionally getting lost or forming

misconceptions while reading.

For our purposes, we can view other gaping holes in the fence as missed

opportunities for deeply exploring multiple textually evidenced interpretations and


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evaluations during mini-discussion. Indeed, while planning for the lesson, in addition to

identifying segments of text that pose potential problems or opportunities for gist making,

the QTA teacher would also need to identify the segments of texts that contain the most

potential for sharing valid alternate interpretations and evaluations to help build deeper

understanding than just gist getting. The QTA teacher would then need to articulate

Initiating Queries and potential Follow-Up Queries that [would] help students develop

[deep] understanding [i.e., parallax of vision] of the text ideas (62) at those points in the

text. Synthesizing gist making with interpretation and evaluation, or high-level literary

analysis, is right in line with Beck and McKeowns rejection of asking questions

organized by taxonomies of thought in favor of the more logical and holistic organization

of thoughts that goes on in the minds of competent readers while reading for meaning, or

the in-process thought of competent readers. It may be argued by some that the more

basic comprehension that Beck and McKeown address in their book and approach

precedes literary analysis including interpretations and evaluation, but that notion seems

contrary to the idea that meaning making while reading does not happen in a neat and

taxonomical way. For example, by page 32 of a 200-page novel, we may begin to

interpret the significance of a recurring metaphor well before we have ironed out all the

complex inter-relationships between characters already introduced. Similarly, we may

still be in the process of forming a clear notion of the setting of a story when we begin to

make high-level inferences based on textual evidence concerning the motives of certain

characters. Such active reading and writing processes, including both gist making and

literary analysis, occur in a parallel, recursive, and complimentary fashion (Kucer, 1985).

Exploring reading and writing as parallel processes in meaning making, Kucer tentatively


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proposes several strategies for the construction of propositional meaning during reading

or writing, carefully pointing out that the strategies identified are reciprocal and

recursive in nature. Each affects and is affected by the others and that the strategies are

not utilized in a sequential, step-by-step fashion, but instead are capable of running in

parallel or simultaneously (329). Concerning interpretation while reading, The Great

Books Foundation (1999) likewise argues that

complete mastery of the facts is not necessary to begin the process of

interpretation. Interpretation begins with the questions we ask ourselves as we

read. Why does a character act in a certain way? Why does the author include a

particular detail? Why do things turn out as they do? What does a certain word

mean in context? As we develop answers to such questions, we get a better sense

of how the parts of the work fit together and what the work means. (42)

Hence, reading and writing for meaning are sloppy endeavors that cannot be broken

down into their constituent parts and discreetly reordered by complexity of thought to

neatly fit a taxonomical scheme, a reality that Beck and McKeown acknowledge early on

in their book.

Texts that Invite Building Parallax of Vision:

the Great Books Foundations (1999) Rubric


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Acknowledging the parallel and recursive nature of meaning making while

reading and writing, a process which involves gist making, interpretation, and evaluation,

certain kinds of texts likely have greater potential than others for making QTA a more

powerful tool for building parallax of vision. QTA was largely designed for use with

expository texts across the curriculum, which many younger students can struggle to

comprehend, although Beck and McKeown show how it can be used and acknowledge its

successful use with narrative texts and even poetry. However, when used with a novel

like M.T. Andersons (2002) Feed, considered a literary masterpiece by many, students

can find plenty of opportunities to reach beyond gist making and share valid alternative

interpretations and evaluations with each other, thereby complicating or deepening each

others understandings. Because masterful literary works like Feedengage students with

controversial concepts and socio-cultural phenomena that relate directly to their own

lives, lifestyles, ideological stances, and worlds, such books make teaching for

progressive social change very doable. This novel certainly fares well when vetted using

select bullet points relevant to this discussion from the rubric that The Great Books

Foundation designed for evaluating the worthiness of titles for Shared Inquiry (SI)

discussions. SI is a method of mainly interpretive reading and discussion [in which]

participants, collaboratively, as in QTA, explore possible responses to interpretive

questions raised by a textquestions for which the text suggests more than one

answer (my bold, 4). As with QTA, SI teachers guide students to give full

consideration to the ideas of others, weigh the merits of opposing arguments, and modify

their initial opinions as the evidence in a text demands (4). According to The Great

Books Foundation, texts appropriate for SI discussions must . . .


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i) Support extended interpretive discussions (30) by(1)Being rich in ideas not explicitly articulated by authors(2)Suggest multiple interpretations that can be supported with evidence

rather than merely being a matter of personal opinion (30) via writing

that is thematically complex and cohesive. As in QTA, textual cohesion

is crucial for building coherent mental representations of texts.

ii) Raise genuine questions for adults as well as students (30)(1)

Texts must be puzzling and thought provoking (30) in a way that

generates interest and doubt in teachers as well as in students minds,

doubts over the answers to authentic interpretive questions because of the

potential for parallactic responses and the rich textual evidence that

promotes them. Such doubt differs from confusion over texts which

perhaps presume too much background knowledge on the part of readers

or that contain a lot of abstract language or difficult transitions between

ideas. A good example of such a text isMontana 1948. This novel

prevents readers from making easy distinctions between Mercer County

whites and Native American inhabitants of the reservation in the story,

thereby generating doubt, or meaningful ambiguity, in the minds of all

readers, both teachers and students alike.

iii) Be age/grade appropriate in terms of theme and style, notreadability level (30)


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(1)Unlike with QTA, in SI students should always encounter the originalwords of the author; SI teachers should never modify or rewrite texts to be

more coherent or to meet a controlled vocabulary, for example. (31). As

long as theme and style are age/grade appropriate, no such need exists,

according to The Great Books Foundation. (31)

One more quality to look for in a literary text is good craftsmanship or artistic merit.

That is to say, the form as well as the content should be telling and in sync or in dialogue

with each other. Literary texts like these are perhaps the most coherent texts of all,

providing students with a plethora of both literal and figurative linguistic evidence often

of a highly concentrated nature on which to base their understandings. Furthermore,

because well crafted literary texts are both thought provoking and pleasurable to read,

they have a positive influence on both the reading comprehension and the affective

domains of reading. In our quest to promote comprehension and parallax of vision, we

must find ways to help students enjoy reading.

Mercers Exploratory Talk

Having argued that QTA by design meets two of the three criteria (authentic

questioning and uptake) needed for building deep versus limited understanding of texts

and for building the parallactic vision that may promote progressive social change, the

third criteria can be addressed. Understanding what Mercer means by the phrase

Exploratory Talk, or thinking together through language to explore ideas, involves first


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knowing what it is not: it is not disputation, in which those involved become aggressive,

defensive, and uncooperative with each other. In Disputational Talk, alternative

perspectives compete with rather than compliment each other (97), as in the following

author-provided cooperative yet uncooperative courtroom exchange between Oliver

North and an interrogator investigating The Iran / Contra Scandal in the 1980s named

Nields (89). Here the disputation is subtle but clear:

Nields:

Did you suggest to the Attorney General that maybe the diversion memorandum

and the fact that there was a diversion need not ever come out?

North:

Again, I dont recall that specific conversation at all, but Im not saying it didnt

happen.

Nields:

You dont deny it?

North:

No.

Nields:

You dont deny suggesting to the Attorney General of the United States that he

just figure out a way of keeping this diversion document secret?

North:

I dont deny that I said it. (89)


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In this exchange, Ollie North certainly is not being hostile towards the interrogator, yet he

doggedly and defensively refuses to admit wrongdoing, defending himself and perhaps

others in the Regan Administration from criminal convictions. During discussions

around texts in the classroom, its unlikely that readers are lying about their alignments

toward texts to defend themselves, alignments they may be unaware of and which hence

may be acting as ideological common sense. Even so, the example of Disputational Talk

above aptly captures the aggressive (Nields), defensive (North), and uncooperative

characteristics of a sort of talk that does not a) constitute thinking together through

language and b) cannot contribute to building deep, parallactic understandings of texts.

Mercer identifies another sort of talk that actually does constitute thinking

together through language, unlike Disputational Talk, but that still will not foster building

parallax of vision via the exploration of valid alternative interpretations and evaluations.

In what Mercer calls Cumulative Talk, discussion participants build on each others

contributions, add information of their own, and in a mutually supportive, uncritical [my

bold] way construct together a body of shared knowledge and understanding (97), such

as a monochromatic interpretation or evaluation about text. In the following author-

provided example, three white students cooperatively construct a single argument from a

single alignment against affirmative action scholarships and what they deem as special

treatment (98) of minorities at a university:

B:

So its just . . . their advantages just keep adding up, their grade advantages . . .

C:


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Yeah, thats true. They do have more time to relax because they dont have to

work. You know, like everyone else does to pay off their loans.

B:

. . . cause theyre just getting money

C:

I feel really bad about this, because like we sound like racists or whatever, and I

really dont think I am.

B:

. . . I really dont think Im racist, I just think that . . .

K:

Its just a very unfair society that were living in today. (98)

Removed from the exchange above are transcript coding marks (brackets, indentations,

underlines, and so on) , marks that Mercer uses with transcripts throughout his book to

show, in this case, how these students engage in in-process thinking together;

contributions to the discussion by individual students that trail of or give way to other

student s end with ellipses instead. Although they are thinking together through

language, Mercer points out that, rather than enabling them to explore the complexities of

their topic together from multiple perspectives, this kind of talk enables the students not

only to gather collective support for their views, but also jointly to define their

[monochromatic versus polychromatic] argumentative stance in a way that avoids the

possible [my bold] and undesirable attribution of being racist (98). Hence, Cumulative

Talk allows these students to avoid challenging their own ideological common sense to


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building parallax of vision. It is this possible attribution of racism that contains the most

potential for critical exploration that might combat the ideological common sense these

students evidence in their discussion. Their talk only welcomes and accumulates

convergent versus divergent ideas on the subject of affirmative action from the

perspective of those who dont directly, although may indirectly, benefit from it.

In Exploratory Talk, on the other hand, students think together through language

that welcomes and accumulates / synthesizes valid and divergent ideas about texts and

society. Instead of avoiding the possible attribution of racism during a discussion of the

justice of affirmative action and its social repercussions, students would steer into that

particular ice berg,1

as my graduate advisor at the University of Pittsburgh often put it.

Doing so forces them to grapple, as Beck and Mckeown say, with the ideological

common sense fueling the Cumulative Talk cited above. Readers engaged in exploratory

discussions learn that there are two or more valid responses or positions, and that such

conflicting positions coexist in the form of deeper, more complex understandings.

Crucially, readers engaged in Exploratory Talk also learn what constitutes validity during

discussions around topics and texts: e.g., reasons are given for proposals, be they

convergent or divergent ones, reason is visible in the talk, and knowledge is made

publically accountable in an exchange in which partners engage critically but

constructively with each others ideas (98). In effect, when truly building parallax of

vision in the reading or literature (or any) classroom, discussion participants respectfully

yet often passionately and accountably grapple with ideas rather than dispute each other

1The idea of the metaphor is that, had the crew of the Titanic steered her straight into the berg rather

than trying to skirt it, the ship would likely not have sunk. The berg here is complexity of thought and

sinking is shallow or limited understanding.


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aggressively or defensively. To engage in Cumulative Talk is to gloss over potentialities

for exploring unpleasant attributions or alternative perspectives or to minimize

individual differences of perception or judgment for the purpose of building a joint

identity (102). To engage in Exploratory talk, on the other hand, with its explicit

reasons, criticisms, and evaluations, participants must not be primarily concerned with

protecting their individual or joint identities and interests, [as were the lads,] but instead

with discovering new and better ways of jointly making sense (102-103).

Exploratory Talk for Building Parallax of Vision in QTA

Once students through Exploratory Talk seem to have successfully negotiated the

gist of a segment of text, the QTA teacher often Recaps and then resumes the group

reading. Only if the teacher segments the text and Queries students during discussions to

go beyond gist making will QTA involve Exploratory Talk that deepens and complicates

understanding. In order to help students build the deeper understanding at issue, teachers

need to ask Queries like what have we learned here at points in the text ripe for being

read through multiple lenses. The following segmented passage from Feedillustrates the

process.

Segmenting a Passage from a Novel for Gist Making,

Interpretation, and Evaluation


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The following segmented passage from Feedis one of the most important in the

novel. It presents rich opportunities for both gist making and building deep

understanding via discussing possible alternate interpretations and evaluations. Hence, it

is segmented for both gist making and literary analysis. At such busy crossroads for

major ideas in texts, the teacher ought to slow down the QTA lesson, in order to take as

much time as necessary to help students negotiate deep understanding of the rich

language under their noses.

In this passage, Titus, the narrator, describes how he and his friends try to get free

Coke by exploiting a promotion the company is running, where if you talk about the

great taste of Coca-Cola to your friends like a thousand times, you [get] a free six pack of

it (158). He and his friends get together to try to bilk the company out of as much free

soda as they can. But his new friend, Violet, rather than rattling off made up slogans for

the great taste of Coke as planned, expresses herself poetically about the feel of the

carbonated soft drink going down her throat then follows up with an attempt at

intellectual conversation about acquiring a taste for things that are initially unpleasant and

how such tastes begin in life. Her attempt receives a cold reception from Titus friends,

as well as his compassion. While discussing this passage and the powerful socio-

cognitive and linguistic evidence it offers those reading for deep understanding, students

should reach beyond gist making to explore valid and alternative interpretations and

evaluations before reading onward. Because the passage below is a microcosm of the

macrocosm of the novel, helping readers more deeply understand it will help them in

their quest to explore the nature of the feed and its consequences for all throughout the

novel.


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The entire planning process for a QTA lesson that reaches beyond gist making is

extensively modeled here, including identifying major ideas in the passage and also

opportunities for sharing alternative interpretations and evaluations (above and below);

segmenting the text; developing Initiating Queries to launch a discussion; [anticipating]

how students may respond; and [developing] potential Follow-Up Queries to help focus

and move the discussion forward (Beck & McKeown, 69). The wording for many of the

Queries asked below is that which Beck and McKeown suggest throughout their book.

Keep in mind that too much discussion of a passage as short as the one segmented below

will normally disrupt the flow of reading for students and likely also go over like a ton of

bricks. Yet not many passages in a novel will prove as crucial as the one from Feed

segmented below for negotiating deep understanding of a text as a whole. QTA this

intensive ought only to be reserved for passages as busy with major ideas and as pregnant

with potential for building parallax of vision as the one below. It is also important to note

that the discussions planned for below reach out across the novel wherever connections

can and should be made. The passage itself then acts as a catalyst for discussions that

account what students have already read, thereby helping them to build a coherent mental

representation of the text as a whole which includes deep understanding:

Violet said, I love the great feeling of Cokes carbonation going down my

throat, all the pain, like . . . She waved her hands in the air and looked at the

ceiling, trying to think of something. She said, Its like sweet gravel. Its like a

bunch of itsy-bitsy commuters running for a shuttle in my windpipe.1 Everyone


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was looking at her. I could feel them chatting each other, saying that was stupid.

I sat nearer to her. I put my hand on her back.2

She was saying, Sometimes I try to think back to the first time I ever had

coke. Because it must have hurt, but I cant remember. How could we ever have

started to enjoy it? If somethings an acquired taste, like, how do you start to

acquire it?3 For that matter, who gave me coke the first time? My father? I

dont think so. Who would hand a kid a Coke and think, Her first one. Im so

proud.How do we even start?4

There was a long, silent part.

Then Marty said, Yeah. That may have cost us a few. Hey, how about

the great foaming capabilities of coke?

And then we were onto this whole thing, about Coke fights and Coke

floats, and Coke promotions, and we went on and on and on, but Violet didnt say

anything else, just ssat there silently.5 (161-162).

1) Gist: Students should recognize the figurative, even poetic way Violet expressesherself, and that she seems interested in actually having a conversation about

Coke, rather than just rattling off slogans to bilk the Coca-Cola Co. out of free

soda. A teacher might askwhat do you make of Violets observations?

Anticipating responses that dont focus on the exceptional and startling nature of

her language and thinking and what they tell readers about Violet, the teacher

might follow up with what do Violets way of speaking and thinking here tell us

about her?


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Interpretation: Since a few of Titus friends begin the game by rattling off

slogans for Coke just before Violet takes her turn, the teacher can ask students

so far, how does Violets contribution to the game compare or contrast to Titus

friends and why? Students responses might address differences in motives,

morality, or class; unlike Titus and his friends, Violet and her family are poor.

Confronted with silence or confusion as response, the teacher might follow up by

asking what does her contribution to the game so far say about her motives /

values / background in comparison or contrast to theirs?

Evaluation: Before reading on, students could also briefly share and explore their

evolving judgments of Violet and Titus friend at this point, doing so in ways that

are accountable to the text. Readers can stand in the shoes of, or adopt an

alignment with, the characters, who are evaluating each other in this passage. A

Follow-Up Query anticipating short I like or I dont like responses or

responses that digress into irrelevant topics, a danger of evaluation (The Great

Books Foundation, 44) during discussions, could ask students to elaborate using

textual evidence: tell us more about why you feel that way? Importantly, how

Titus and his clique judge Violets eloquence and critical thinking is of central

importance to understanding from nearly the moment she is introduced to readers.

2)

Gist: Here readers should see that Titus consoles Violet by moving nearer to her

and putting his hand on her back, in the face of his friends negative reaction to

her. Since the meaningfulness of his behaviors must be inferred, this is a classic

example of a hole in the fence that QTA is meant to patch. A good Query to start


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off with might be whats happening here? If responses dont evidence that

students understand why Titus moves closer to Violet and puts his hand on her

back, the teacher can follow up with whats Titus doing here?

Gist: In addition, the teacher should make sure that students understand why

Titus consoles Violet. If no one does so in response to the Initiating Query above,

the teacher can follow up with how are things going for Violet here, socially

speaking? By negotiating this inference during the discussion, students

acknowledge that the seeds of a problem have been planted (Beck &

McKeown, 69).

Interpretation: Also, the teacher can further follow up with why does Titus

console Violet in this way? Titus subdued but noticeable gesture may evidence

his attempt to show allegiance both to his friends and to Violet, his attempt to be

on both sides at once. Later in the novel, being on both sides proves problematic

for him.

3) Gist: Here Violet brings up the major concepts of acquired tastes and howpeople begin to acquire them. Students should grasp the meaning of this phrase,

which has implications for all the characters in the world of the novel; they

quickly acquire and as quickly abandon tastes for what corporations pedal via the

feed signal, including absurd fashion fads, such as dressing up like the residents

of retirement homes or riot goers (in riot-wear). They even begin to treat the

worsening lesions on their bodies (a particularly gory consequence of the feed) as

fashionable, adorning and highlighting them. The teacher might initiate


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discussion by asking whats Violet talking about here? Anticipating verbatim

text response, for example, the teacher could follow up with yes, but what does

she mean by acquired taste? The teacher can also ask students to name some of

the distasteful or painful things that the characters have acquired a taste for

throughout their lives in the story so far.

Interpretation: Students should respond to the complex question that Violet asks:

how do the characters in the world of this novel begin to acquire tastes for

things that may be unpleasant or even painful? Many valid responses are

possible. In their responses, students might bring up the conditioning of the

characters into uncritical consumers who will buy almost anything as one way

that acquired tastes come about; via consumer profiling (define if necessary), the

corporations in the story constantly bombard the characters with targeted

advertisements through the feed. If students dont bring up this point, the teacher

can follow up with what about the influence of the feed signal? Peer pressure

and acceptance is another motivating factor in taste acquisition, especially for the

teen characters of the novel such as Titus, who is very self-conscious about

whether his friends and peers will admire his new car, for example; if students

dont bring this topic up on their own, the teacher could follow up with what

about the influence of others: e.g., family, friends, and peers? A conflict theorist

perspective might yield the following interpretive questions: what corporate

values have these characters internalized; how aware of this internalization of

corporate values are Titus and his friends; how aware is Violet of it; and what

are the rewards or consequences of this internalization process?


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Evaluation: Students can share their judgments and opinions of consumer

profiling, billboards, pop-up windows for products and services, spam, flyers

from stores received in the mail, and telemarketing calls. The teacher can also

encourage students to personally connect by asking has advertising like this ever

made you grow to want things you did not find appealing to begin with? Explain.

Such a question puts students in Violet and the other characters shoes.

Answering such a question about oneself furthermore promotes the self-

awareness that combats ideological common sense. It should be noted that,

although the above question is closed ended, the exhortation to explain responses

make it an authentic cue for Exploratory Talk.

4) Gist: Here Violet implies a judgment without explicitly stating it. It could beworded as introducing a child to his or her first Coke is a terrible thing to do.

Who would admit to doing such a thing? The teacher can initiate discussion for

making this crucial inference for basic comprehension by asking now what is

Violet saying? Anticipating verbatim quotation of Violets words as responses,

the teacher can follow up with yes, thats what Violet says, but what does she

mean?

Evaluation: The teacher can invite divergent opinions here bay asking is Violet

right? Is giving a child his or her first Coke such a bad thing to do? Explain.

This is an ideal point in the passage for sharing alternative evaluations that can

help students explore the moral implications of consumerism, not only in the


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world of the book, but in the real world. That real-world connection is what can

help student become aware of and combat ideological common sense.

Gist: Teachers should also lead students to relate Violets disapproval of

introducing a child to his or her first Coke to the implanting of the feed device,

which is mainly a tool for selling and shopping, into the brains of babies. The

teacher could therefore askhow does this fit in with what we already know about

this society? Anticipating trouble connecting ideas across the text, the teacher

could follow up with how does Violets opinion relate to the feed?

Interpretation: Certainly, opinions can vary as to how analogous giving a child

their first Coke is to implanting a device into the brains of newborns, a device

meant to create consumer profiles that are used constantly to bombard people with

targeted advertising throughout their lives. Here teachers can lead students to

debate the relationship by asking how related are the acts of giving a child his or

her first Coke and implanting the feed device into the brains of newborns? This

segment also offers students the valuable opportunity to explore and become

aware of how social status, for example, shapes our values and how we interpret

our world. To do so, the teacher could guide students to explore whether or not

and why Violets low-income status leads her to exaggerate the ill effects of

giving a child his or her first Coke by asking given what you already know about

her, why might Violet in particular feel so negatively about giving a child his or

her first Coke? Likewise, the teacher can guide students to discover how the

wealthy status of other characters may lead them to deemphasize the harm done

by giving a child his or her first Coke and by implanting the feed into the brains


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of newborns by asking how might the upper-middle and upper-class status of

Titus and his clique affect their judgments concerning the effects of implanting the

feed device into the brains of newborns?

Evaluation: Sparked by the connection between giving a child his or her first

Coke and implanting the feed device into the brains of newborns, the teacher

could encourage students to share their judgments concerning the feed with each

other by asking how good or bad is the feed for people in the world of this

novel? Students who argue that its not all bad could cite the ability to share

memories with others and to find whatever information or products one needs in a

flash of desire for it. Others might argue that such instant gratification has

harmful effects on the minds and the morals of the characters. Those who do

could connect back to Violets theory that everything is better if you [delay] it,

and her belief in the importance of self control (Anderson, 143). If those

emphasizing the negative effects of the feed on people dont bring up Violets

theories as textual support for their claims, the teacher could follow up with how

does your opinion match up with Violets theories on the subject on page 143?

5) Gist: students should infer that the others decline Violets invitation to engage inan intellectual and critical conversation, whose goals go far beyond bilking the

Coca-Cola Co. out of free Coke; the textual evidence for the declination being

Martys criticism, directed to the group rather than to Violet, that she may have

cost us a few six packs (161) and his resumption of the slogan rattling (163).

The teacher could initiate discussion by asking Now whats happened?


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Anticipating verbatim text response, the teacher could follow up with what do

you make of Martys observation and the silence of the others? Note that the

latter Queries can easily lead to interpretive and evaluative exchanges as to the

motives of Marty and the others which go far beyond gist making. Hence, it is

important to note that the placement of Queries, not just the wording, determines

whether they trigger gist making and / or literary analysis.

Gist: Students should infer that Violets silence signals her discomfort at having

been declined, likely signaling hurtful feelings of rejection. Her silence also

likely signals her disinterest in rattling off coke slogans. The teacher could

initiate discussion of Violets feelings by asking what does Violets silence

mean? If students dont get the gist, the teacher can follow up with how does

Violets silence relate to Martys comments and the reaction of the others to what

she has said? To guide students to grasp that Violet may not have any interest in

rattling off slogans for free soda, the teacher can also follow up with given what

you know of Violet up to this point and her conversational interests, what does

her silence following Martys comments mean?

Interpretation: A helpful and interesting topic for interpretive discussion at this

point can be the form of the whole of the passage just discussed in segments, with

the thoughtful and critical content of Violets language and ideas begin met with

rejection and disruptions of slogan rattling. This exchange strongly resembles

what goes on in the minds of those living with the feed implant, the signals of

which are constantly disrupting any attempts at sustained and critical thought with

cheap slogans for goods and services. Indeed, Titus narrative is often interrupted


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by chapters whose content consist entirely of feed advertisements. These feed

chapters also often contain a lot of garbled and scrambled thoughts which are at

times wildly incongruous, likely resembling the scrambled thoughts of the

characters. The teacher can initiate high-level discussion of this theme, which can

be support with both the form and the content of the language throughout the

novel, by asking what do you make of the form of this passage? If students

fail to make the connection with the feed chapters and whats going on in the

minds of the characters living with the feed signal in their heads, the teacher can

follow up by asking how does this external, linguistic exchange between Violet

and the others resemble the thinking of characters receiving the feed signal?

Resistance to the idea of the form of this passage and the feed chapters resembling

the minds of the characters may not seem very interesting or valid, so the teacher

may not want to encourage opposing views concerning the form of the novel and

its implications. When talking about form in Feed, a little Cumulative Talk can

benefit students in creating for themselves an understanding of the choices

Anderson has made as a creative writer.

Evaluation: Certainly, however, students can share their judgments of the artistic

choices that Anderson makes in his novel, which are well evidenced in the form

and content of the language of this passage. The teacher can initiate discussion of

this subject by asking how do the artistic or formal choices of the author affect

your understanding and enjoyment of his tale? A related topic is the choice of

the science fiction genre to tell the tale. Students can share their judgments as to


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the effect the genre has on understanding and enjoyment if the teacher asks how

do you feel about Anderson using the science fiction genre to tell his tale?

Chapter 3: Conclusion

Violet fails at her attempt to initiate some form of Exploratory Talk with Titus

and the others in his band. She fails at her attempt to share her in-process, critical

reflections and observations about Coke and the feed and to explore these ideas via

conversation with Titus and the others. Her failure underscores how difficult true

dialogue which seeks to get students to challenge and complicate their own reductionist

and monochromatic ideas, values, and ideologies can be to initiate and sustain. Her

failure evidences how difficult it is to counteract the feed of ideological common sense.

Yet that is what reading and literature teachers who want to help their students combat

the ideological common sense that can limit their prospects in life must try to accomplish

in their classrooms.

This discussion has sought to . . .

1. build a theoretical and research foundation for pedagogy that can promoteprogressive social change by combating ideological common sense

2. identify the salient features of such pedagogy: 1) authentic questions, 2)uptake, and 3) Exploratory Talk

3. and provide an example of lesson planning for such an approach toteaching reading and literature


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In addition, in keeping with the research by Kucer and others cited above, research which

claims that the cognitive processes and strategies involved in creating coherent

representations of texts run in parallel to each other and are recursive rather than

sequential and taxonomically distinct, QTA was chosen as the vehicle for teaching for

progressive social change. QTA is used to help students improve their gist making

capabilities, yet since QTA possesses the three salient features of the sought-after

pedagogy, when carefully planned for it can help students reach beyond gist making to

deepen their understandings of text, self, and world. In so doing, and in keeping with the

spirit of inclusion, QTA can invite novice and struggling readers into the Exploratory

Talk around literature that promises to brighten the future prospects for all students in our

society.

Future experimental research could explore the effectiveness of QTA explicitly

and systematically planned and implemented to encourage students to reach beyond gist

making in order to build parallax of vision. In addition to measuring the resulting depth

of understanding, or level of parallactic understanding of the text that results, teachers

and students could be surveyed for their opinions of QTA planned in this way. Such self-

reported data could bring to the fore some unexpected reactions or issues for

consideration. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, pretest and posttest data could be

compared in order to determine the effect of such pedagogy for progressive social change

on students self-awareness of their own ideological beliefs. The elements of the

planning and implementation of the QTA lessons which contributed the most to such

blooming self-awareness might also be identified.


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Glossary of Terms

Alignments (Tierney & Pearson, 1985): different stances or roles that can be adopted

toward the same text: i.e., the lads saw their school as a place to be emasculated or

effeminized because they had adopted a certain sexist alignment, or lens, through which

to read their school and schooling in general. Similarly, if one reads a story told through

the eyes of a child, the text invites one to adopt that role and identify with the child

character while reading. This role adoption in turn has an influence on understanding and

interpretation. When a staunch conservative watches CNN, for example, the conservative

adopts a hostile alignment with the text, seeking out leftist ideas to criticize through the

lens of her conservative ideology. She may conclude that CNN is biased against

Republicans.

Authentic questions (Applebee et al., 2003): open-ended interpretive questions

Coherence (Beck & McKeown, 2006): the logical organization of the sequence of events

and ideas of central import to gist making from a text

Construct meaning together: learners make gist and share different interpretations of

the same text with each other in order to develop not just basic comprehension but deep

understandings of texts


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Glossary of Terms Continued

Economic determinism (Feinberg & Soltis, 50-51): The theory that the economy and

economic laws (the processes and stages of the centralization of capital) in capitalist

societies determine the course of events in human history

Enlightened witnesses (Jhally, 1997): those who question ideological common sense by

adopting differing stances and roles (alignments) or ways of seeing texts through multiple

lenses; i.e., those with parallax of vision

Gist making: building basic comprehension of a text, evidenced by the ability to

summarize or paraphrase accurately

Hidden curriculum (Giroux & Penna, 1983): power differentials in society and the ways

in which they can either be legitimated hence reproduced (e.g., in the form of ideological

common sense) or challenged in subtle and implied ways in schools: for example, the

recitation model of teaching, in which students are encouraged to remain passive, docile,

and uncritical, can legitimate and reproduce social inequalities, thereby impeding

progressive social change

Ideological common sense (Fairclough, 1989): this term is related to the Marxist notion

of false consciousness, or the adoption by members of a subordinate class of ideological

beliefs belonging to the dominant class, beliefs which serve to preserve the power


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differentials in society: e.g., when a worker, however begrudgingly, enthusiastically, or

consciously, shares the points of view and values of the owner, who may believe that

keeping the business, and businesses in general, solvent and profitable first and foremost

hinges upon cutting employee pay and benefits and demanding that employees work long

hours. In this way, the worker remains docile, productive, and cheap for the boss, and

progressive social change (in this case, upward mobility) is thwarted. When such a

situation arises, the boss has established hegemony over the worker, or a preponderance

of influence and authority (Feinberg & Soltis, 50). In short, members of the subordinate

classes harbor ideologies that work against their own self interest, and such ideologies

can go beyond economic ones to include self-injurious sexist and racist ideologies, as in

the case of the lads.

I-R-E (Mehan, 1979): when teachers adopt a single alignment, Initiate questions (thereby

choose the topic of importance or interest for discussion), seek the correct Response (the

correct recall of information from a text or the teachers own interpretation or judgment

of a text), then Evaluate that response for correctness. This is a dominant form of the

pedagogy that Paolo Freire (1972) referred to as the banking system of education, or the

pedagogy of the oppressed. Lecturing is a similar sort of teacher-to-student transmission

of knowledge.


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Lenses: different alignments toward a text or lenses through which a text is or can be

interpreted, including differing beliefs about and preoccupations with race, ethnicity,

gender, psychology, class (power relations), economics, and so on.

Parallax of vision: the well-developed facility to adopt multiple alignments with the

same text (interpret the same texts in different and sometimes oppositional ways) in order

to gain deeper understanding (Tierney & Pearson, 1985) of it

Pedagogy of the oppressed: Paolo Freire (1972) likened transfer (from teacher to

students) instruction such as I-R-E and lecturing to the teacher depositing funds into bank

accounts. The metaphor illumines Freires Marxist outlook because it suggests that such

pedagogy serves to indoctrinate members of the subordinate classes in the beliefs and

ideologies which work against them and in favor of members of the dominant classes,

thereby preserving the status-quo power differentials that further enrich the dominant

classes. Hence, schools act as tools of the state used to combat progressive social

changed.

Progressive social change:loosely defined in this thesis as increased awareness of ones

own ideological stances or beliefs that may lead to upward social mobility


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References

Anderson, M.T., (2002). Feed. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press.

Applebee, A., Langer, J., Nystrand, M., & Gamoran, A., (2003). Discussion-based

approaches to developing understanding: Classroom instruction and student

performance in middle and high school English.American Educational Research

Journal, 40 (3), 685-730.

Barrett, T.C., (1967). Goals of the reading program: The basis for evaluation. In T.C.

Barrett (Ed.),In the evaluation of childrens reading achievement. Newark, DE:

International Reading Association.

Beck, I., & Mckeown, M., (2006).Improving comprehension with questioning the

author: A fresh and expanded view of a powerful approach . New York:

Scholastic.

Erickson, F., (2004). Talk and social theory: Ecologies of speaking and listening in

everyday life. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Fairclough, , N., (1989).Language and power. New York: Longman.

Feinberg, W., & Soltis, J., (2004). School and Society. New York: Teachers College

Press.

Freire, P., (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguin.

Giroux, H. & Penna, A., (1983). Social Education in the Classroom: The Dynamics of

the Hidden Curriculum. The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. Eds.

Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing

Corporation, 1983, 100-121.


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References Continued

Jhally, S., (1997). bell hooks: Cultural criticism and transformation. Education Media

Foundation.

Kucer, S., (1985). The making of meaning: Reading and writing as parallel processes.

Written Communication, 2 (3), 317-336.

Lessing, D., (1962). The Golden Notebook. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Mehan, H., (1979).Learning lessons. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Mercer, N., (2000). Words and minds: How we use language to think together. London:

Routledge.

Nystrand, M., (2006). Research on the role of classroom discourse as it affects reading

comprehension.Research in the Teaching of English, 40 (4), 392-412.

The Great Books Foundation., (1999).Introduction to shared inquiry: A handbook for

junior great books leaders. Chicago: The Grea

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