Towards new literary discourse: Reconstructing teaching and learning in the secondary English classroom

In this study I investigate efforts to move towards new literary discourse in an Advanced Placement English class. The study assumes traditional literary discourse in a secondary classroom limits learning by taking for granted a single interpretive framework and by emphasizing the transmission of knowledge. Contemporary literary and critical theories, in contrast, support multiple interpretive frameworks and the construction of knowledge. The study seeks to understand the processes and consequences of reconstructing teaching and learning along lines in harmony with a discourse and underlying epistemology more congruent with contemporary theory. The study is a qualitative investigation of a classroom in which the new discourse culture is the subject. The study is also a classroom curriculum innovation, in which the move towards a new literary discourse involved exploration of Reader-response, Feminist Criticism, and Deconstruction theories. Attempts to discover forms of talk and social interaction congruent with them accompanied introduction of these theoretical frameworks. Data collection strategies included audio tapes of discussions, portfolios of student writing, and a teacher-researcher journal. Three perspectives emerged as central to the analysis: my own stance as a teacher attempting radical change, the ways students altered conventional classroom discourse to co-construct knowledge through talk with their peers, and the responses of individual students to the course as a text. Enacting the stance of radical teacher created a tension between teaching the new curriculum and retaining the prerogatives of a traditional teacher. Parallel to my own tension were students\u27 uncertainties about the need for and function of new theoretical frameworks, which not only legitimated multiple interpretations but called also for a previously unsanctioned personal response. As part of their efforts to understand and use new literary theories, students attempted to integrate and recast concepts from their previous literature instruction. Students also developed forms of exploratory and recursive talk more congruent with the new theoretical frameworks. More open participation structures and the new social organization of the class led to patterns of domination by male students who tried to reinstate more traditional forms of discourse and analysis. Examination of individual cases revealed that students\u27 prior knowledge and patterns of school success as well as their beliefs about literature teaching and learning governed their diverse responses to new ways of talking and writing about literary texts. The study has implications for transforming literary discourse, for the role of inquiry in the professional development of teachers, and for further research