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CONNECTING READER-RESPONSE THEORY, TEACHERS,
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CONNECTING READER-RESPONSE THEORY, TEACHERS,
AND CLASSROOM PRACTICE

By

Susan Elizabeth Steffel

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCIOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1993

ABSTRACT

CONNECTING READER-RESPONSE THEORY, TEACHERS,
AND CLASSROOM PRACTICE

By
Susan Elizabeth Steffel

Dr. Marilyn Wilson, Dissertation Director

Most previous research involving reader-response theory has
centered on the theory itself or on how it influences student
performance. My study uses the triangulation of three primary
sources: professional journals, and modified case studies, including
teacher questionnaires and follow-up interviews with ten secondary
teachers. I traced the presence of reader-response theory in the
journals WM Englishmgn and
W. My questionnaire was based on the 1981 Purves
study which found that classroom practices of teachers were greatly
influenced by their own past experience and training. Through the
teacher questionnaire and interview, I looked at individual reading,
school, and professional histories, attempting to determine how these
areas impacted their teaching. Additionally, I wanted to discover
what, if any, external factors entered into this equation and how the
teachers responded to them. Finally, I attempted to merge all of this
information, discovering to what extent reader-response has
influenced the secondary classrooms and what factors help to

implement or impede its use.

Susan Elizabeth Steffel

Results showed that reader-response theory is appearing in
these journals, although most articles focus on students. For those
teachers not reading these journals, the reasons vary. Most. apparent
was a lack of concern on the part of school systems and the journals
for the needs and continued professional growth of the teachers.
Still, these teachers are finding ways to incorporate reader-response
theory in their classrooms.

Overall, teachers felt frustrated, isolated, and pulled in
different directions. Few were confident in their own teaching and
indicated conflicting beliefs. Though aware of their students' need
for continued learning and reflection, few were able to apply these to
' themselves. Forced to teach in a system that does not acknowledge
their needs, I found, as did Purves, that these teachers fall back on
those behaviors most comfortable to them and often model their

classrooms on those they experienced as students.

Copyright by
SUSAN ELIZABETH STEFFEL
l 9 9 3

To my husband, Andy,
who continuously provided the
support, encouragement, and understanding
I needed.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to acknowledge all those who in some way contributed to this
project.

I wish to thank Dr. Keith Anderson, my first graduate
professor, who encouraged me to pursue this goal.

I am especially indebted to Dr. Stephen Tchudi, my teacher, my
mentor, and friend. As my advisor and former director, he guided
and nudged me throughout my school and professional life.

For their help in the preparation of this study, I gratefully
acknowledge the members of my committee: Dr. Sheila Fitzgerald, Dr.
Jay Ludwig, and Dr. Patti Stock. I appreciate their willingness to give
the time and effort required to serve on this committee.

A special thanks to Sheila Fitzgerald who offered continuous
feedback to my drafts in person, over the phone, and even as we
drove down the highway.

I wish to thank the ten teachers who volunteered to participate
in this study, not only for their time but also for their willingness to
share with me so much of their personal experience as readers and
teachers. Without them, this study would have been impossible.

A special thanks to special friends, Lucinda Martin and
Jacqueline Peek, who supplied me .with the much needed feedback

and computer expertise.

vi

Finally, I am deeply grateful to my dissertation director, Dr.
Marilyn Wilson, who has patiently and persistently encouraged me
throughout this journey. As always, I appreciate her help and her
friendship.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ xi
INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................. 1
Chapter

1. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ............................................................. 7

A. Theory and Related Research ............................................. 7
Reader-Response Theories ................................................. 7

Rosenblatt's Transactional Theory ................................. 15

Importance of Reader-Response ..................................... 17

Related Research .................................................................. 23

B. History ........................................................................................... 30

II. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY ...................................... 39

A. Journal Review ............................................................................ 39

B. Teacher Case Studies ................................................................. 41

Participants .............................................................................. 42

Questionnaire .......................................................................... 45

Interviews ............................................................................... 46

111. JOURNAL ANALYSIS .......................................................................... 50
Frequency ............................................................................................. 52
Distribution Among Journals ........................................................ 53
Authorship ........................................................................................... 54
Distribution Among Categories .................................................... 54

Annual Distribution .......................................................................... 57

Category Review ................................................................................ S9

1. Original Research ............................................................. 60

2. Explanation or Discussion and Theory ..................... 67

3. Description of Methods and Application ................ 73

VIII

Page

4. Classroom Practice ......................................................... 83

5. Reviews and Replies ...................................................... 87
Summary ............................................................................................... 91
IV. INTERVIEWS AND QUESTIONNAIRES ......................................... 93
Typical Teacher .................................................................................. 9S
Biographical Information ................................................... 95
Teacher as Student ............................................................... 96
Teacher as Reader ................................................................. 97
Teacher Training and Professional Affiliation .......... 98
Present Values and Methods in Teaching .................. 100
External Pressures ............................................................... 101
Case Studies ........................................................................................ 102
SchoolA ................................................................................... 102
Will ................................................................................ 102
IJnda .............................................................................. 105
Kathleen ........................................................................ l 10
Jan ................................................................................... 115
Conclusions: School A .................................................... l 19
SchoolB ..................................................................................... 120
VVarren ......................................................................... 120
Anne ............................................................................. 125
joan ............................................................................... 132
Conclusions: School B ................................................... 138
SchoolC .................................................................................... 138
Leigh ............................................................................. 138
Howard .......................................................................... 143

Sauy ................................................................................ 151
Conclusions: School C .................................................... 161
V. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS ............................................... 163
Conclusions ......................................................................................... 163
Implications ....................................................................................... 1 8 1
For Teacher Education Programs ................................... 182
For Schools ............................................................................. 185
For Professional journals .................................................. 190
Summary ...................................................................................... 192

ix

Page

APPENDICES ............................................................................................................... 194
Appendix A: UCRIHS Approval Letter ............................................... 194
Appendix B: Cover Letter ........................................................................ 195
Appendix C: Letter of Consent ............................................................... 196
Appendix D: Teacher Interview and Questionnaire ..................... 197
Appendix E: Sample Interview Questions ........................................ 204
Appendix F: Sample Interview Transcript ....................................... 205

BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................... 216

LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Figure 1- W:

Reader-Response Articles by Category .................................... 55
Figure 2- WWW:

Reader-Response Articles by Category .................................... 5 6
Figure 3. :

Reader-Response Articles by Category .................................... 57
Figure 4. Frequency of Reader-Response Articles by Journal ........... 5 8
Figure 5. Category of Original Research:

Frequency of Reader-Response Articles by Journal ........... 60
Figure 6. Category of Explanation of Theory:

Frequency of Reader-Response Articles by Journal ........... 6 8
Figure 7. Category of Description of Method:

Frequency of Reader-Response Articles by Journal ........... 7 3
Figure 8. Category of Classroom Practice:

Frequency of Reader-Response Articles by Journal ........... 8 3
Figure 9. Reviews and Replies:

Frequency of Reader-Response Articles by Journal ........... 8 8

xi

Introduction

There has always been a continuing discussion over the
teaching of literature in secondary classrooms involving a set of
central issues. The crux of the disagreement seems to focus on three
basic questions: what should be taught? how it should be taught? and
why?

These central issues include discussion over the content of
English classes. Should we teach literature as texts to be studied, and
should those texts include the canon or non-canonical literature? Do
we focus on the literature alone or include author biographies and
historical settings? How should we teach literature? Options range
from teacher lecture and student recitation to combined methods of
teacher-directed and small group work, to completely independent
study tutorials. Should teachers provide a plan of study, or should
students be allowed to develop their own? Should literature be
taught according to genres, chronology, or theme? Finally, why
should we teach literature? Are our goals motivated by social,
political, or religious agendas? Is our purpose to create better
citizens, promote critical thinking, foster personal growth, or simply
prepare students for college?

My interest in this study originated in my own twenty-year
teaching career. Throughout these years I remained in a constant
state of turmoil, never feeling quite comfortable or able to answer
these questions for myself. I began my teaching of literature by
following as a syllabus the table of contents provided in the twenty-

year-old classroom anthology.

2
This particular text began with the short story and moved

genre by genre through poetry, nonfiction, drama, and the novel.
And so I "taught" literature, using the historic overview introductions
and author biographies provided in the text. I was particularly
grateful for the study questions which followed each selection.
"Check for Understanding" questions focused on plot understanding
and critical analysis, and I remember struggling to teach symbolism
and allusion to students who really didn't care. There had to be a
better way. Even I was bored.

As I continued my professional studies, seeking answers or at
least information to help resolve my uncertainty, I changed my
instructional methods. One of the biggest changes for me was in the
teaching of literature. My introduction to the research on reader-
response theory allowed me for the first time to define my goals for
teaching literature, to re-evaluate my purposes in the classroom and
to align them with my purposes of personal reading. In teaChing
literature, my focus was often on the text--talking about the
meaning, the structure, the author's intent and background. Seldom
did I consider the role of the reader, so my students remained
divorced from their reading.

On the other hand, my personal reading reflected quite a
different attitude. I was not concerned with the critical analysis of
the text, although it often emerged. Most important was how my
reading related to me, because what I enjoyed most in my personal
reading was responding to it. I recognized myself in the characters.
I compared myself to others. I escaped into unknown worlds, and I

felt connected with them.

3
Reader response theory focuses on the relationship between

the reader and the text. Louise Rosenblatt believes "the reader
counts for at least as much as the book itself" (M vi).
Further, she believes we read because of our desire to relate to
others. Applying reader response theory in my classroom allowed
me to resolve this personal dichotomy. If my purpose in teaching
literature was to kindle a love of literature and reading in my
students, then my approach to literature in the classroom should
allow students to experience for themselves the joy of reading that
drew me to teaching in the first place. My attitude changed, my
methods changed, and I saw positive results in my classes.

On the other hand, the more I recognized my own change, the
more I became aware of lack of change in other teachers' classrooms.
My question, of course, was why? Was this research in reader-
response effective? Were current teachers informed on it? Where
and how was it transmitted? If teachers were aware of it, why
weren't they applying it in their classrooms? My study was a search
to discover the answers.

The answers to these questions give insight and provide
further understanding of the complex issues involved in the teaching
of literature in hopes that teacher educators, administrators, and the
teachers themselves can work together more effectively. Because I
believe that the teacher's classroom reflects a variety of input,
including personal reading, high school experience, teacher education,
and professional affiliation, my study attempts to discover what role
each of these plays. Although there have been a number of studies

that deal with reader-response in the classroom, most focus on its

4
effect on the student. A few look at one aspect of the teacher's role

such as teacher education or teacher as reader, but none combine
them, tracing as I have the teacher as reader from her preschool
experience through her present role in the classroom.

My study is based on the triangulation of the data from three
primary sources: professional journals, and modified case studies,

including teacher questionnaires, and follow up teacher interviews.

Through the journals WW English
Education, and the W31, I attempted to identify trends,

cycles, or specific topics specifically related to reader-response and
the teacher connection. Through the teacher questionnaires and
interviews, I looked at individual teacher histories, including their
personal reading, their experience as high school students, their
professional education, and professional affiliations in an attempt to
determine which of these areas had the greatest impact on their
teaching. Did they read the journals? Which ones? What was the
impact of their journal reading on classroom instruction? In
addition, I wanted to discover what, if any, external factors entered
into this equation and how the teachers responded to them. Finally,
I attempted to merge all of this information, drawing conclusions and
implications.

I have chosen the modified case study method in an attempt to
solicit the teachers' own perceptions of their situations. It is my
belief that the practitioners bring as much insight to the issues as do

the theorists, and I wished to hear their stories. As Elliot Eisner says

inIhLEnlixhtcncsLExct

5
It does not seem particularly revolutionary to say that it

is important to understand how teachers and classrooms
function before handing out recommendations for change.
Yet so much of what is suggested to teachers and school
administrators is said independent of context and often
by those ignorant of the practices they wish to improve.
If qualitative inquiry in education is about anything, it is
about trying to understand what teachers and children do
in the settings in which they work. (11)

I recognize the limitations of my study are numerous. The
information I received from my teachers was through them. I did
not observe their classrooms, so I am limited to what the teachers
said about what they did, not necessarily what actually goes on.
Another limitation involves the journal review. In limiting my
survey to the three National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)
publications, I am most likely missing some of the professional
sources that also impact these teachers. Third, my study, because of
confidentiality requirements, did not allow for my teachers to
interact with one another. It would have been interesting to observe
how these individuals related to reading and to each other in order
to see if they applied the same collaborative strategies they
encourage with their students. I rcognize that my findings are
limited to those ten teachers and that from them it is impossible to
generalize aboout all teachers. Given these limitations, I still believe
that my study provides important insight and begins to draw

connections among various areas of research.

6
The study begins with the related research that parallels

portions of my study and an historical review of the teaching of
literature, providing context for the present day teachers and their
classrooms. Next is a study of three professional journals: English
mutual. English—mam and WW
all published by NCTE, over a twenty-year time span, that looks at
issues in reader-response. The journal review is followed by case
studies of ten current classroom teachers of literature. Finally, I
describe findings and implications for schools, teachers, and teacher

educators.

Chapter One: Review of the Literature

Part A: Theory and Related Research

Reader-response is a complex, multifaceted term that needs
considerable explanation before using it throughout this dissertation.
The following explanation provides the reader with a better

understanding of this complex theory.

Reader-Response Theories
Perhaps more than any other, with the advent of Louise
Rosenblatt's work, W in 1938, the
transactional theory of reading has helped to define the goals of the
language arts classroom. Rosenblatt defines her transactional theory
of reading in the following way:
Through the medium of words, the text brings into the
reader's consciousness certain concepts, certain sensuous
experiences, certain images of things, people, actions,
scenes. The special meanings and, more particularly, the
submerged associations that these words and images
have for the individual reader will largely determine
what the work communicated to him. (Literature 30)
Reader-response theory is a critical theory that places more
focus on the stance that the reader takes toward the text. It values
what the reader brings to the text and how the dynamic interplay
between the reader and the text creates meaning. Response theory

views the meaning each reader constructs as growing out of an

8
emotional as well as aesthetic response to the text but is also

dependent at many levels on the reader's critical analysis of the text.

Unlike the Romantics who focused exclusively on the author's
intent, ignoring the reader and the text, the New Critics turned their
focus entirely on the text, ignoring both author and reader.
Rosenblatt suggests that both of these approaches are incomplete
because neither recognizes the reader's role in the process. Instead,
Rosenblatt's transactional theory recognizes the importance of all
three elements in the creation of meaning.

For Rosenblatt, the reader is actively involved in the process of
meaning making, not just a passive recipient. She is quick to note,
however, "emphasis on the reader's role does not in any way
minimize the importance of the text" (Rosenblatt, W 34).
Rather, transactional theory ”recognizes the text as a necessary, but
not sufficient, condition for any literary work of art" (83).

In transactional theory, the text serves a dual role. ”First, the
text is a stimulus activating elements of the reader's past experience-
-his experience both with literature and with life. Second, the text
serves as a blueprint, a guide for the selecting, rejecting, and
ordering of what is being called forth” (ll). Rosenblatt's
transactional theory combines both objective and subjective
response. New Criticism takes an objective stance, and because of
Rosenblatt's recognition of the reader's role, her theory is often
incorrectly criticized as being entirely subjective. It is perhaps this
simplistic view of her theory that creates the greatest

misunderstanding. Rosenblatt suggests her theory be called

9
"transactional criticism" to differentiate it from either objective

criticism or subjectivism (174).

In reality, transactional theory recognizes both the efferent and
aesthetic stances of the reader and, in fact, sees the reader as
operating on a continuum between the two. Rosenblatt cautions that
the aesthetic stance is not "a simple revery or train of free
associations" (29). Instead, "the concept of transaction emphasizes
the relationship with, and continuing awareness of, the text" (29).

Rosenblatt defines her theory of reading in the following
manner '

In broadest terms, then, the basic paradigm of the
reading process consists in the response to cues; the
adoption of an efferent or aesthetic stance; the
development of a tentative framework or guiding
principle of organization; the arousal of expectations that
influence the selection and synthesis of further
responses; the fulfillment or reinforcement of
expectations, or their frustration, sometimes leading to
revision of the framework, and sometimes, if necessary,
to rereading; the arousal of further expectations; until, if
all goes well, with the completed decoding of the text, the
final synthesis or organization is achieved. (54)

The context guides the reader in selecting appropriate
responses (75) but the reader must be prepared to act of those cues,
not just reflect them (83). "The reader's creation of a poem out of a
text must be an active, self-ordering and self-corrective process"

(11), and it is "the text itself [which] leads the reader toward this

l 0
self-corrective process" (11). Critical to this theory is the issue of

validity. In order to be valid, the response must be based on the
text. In this sense, transactional theory, as with the New Critics,
involves close reading of the text. Transactional theory, however,
involves close reading in conjunction with close attention to reader-
response, which must be justified and text-based. Reader's
interpretations must have a verbal basis in the text, may not be
contradicted by anything in the text, and may not ignore portions of
the text (115).

In addition to text-based validity, transactional theory also
offers the potential for unlimited examination of the text. "With the
aesthetic transaction as his fulcrum, the reader-critic can range as far
as he wishes, bringing to bear ever wider and richer circles of
literary, social, ethical, and philosophical contexts" (174).

Certainly, reader-response theory is a legitimate critical stance
that involves the successful merging of reader and text. It combines
objective. analysis of the text with the subjective response of the
reader. Meaning is created as reader and text transact with one
another, and is based on the reader's awareness of this process.
According to Rosenblatt, "The reader's attention to the text activates
certain elements in his past experience--extemal referents, internal
response--that have become linked with the verbal symbols.
Meaning, will emerge from a network of relationships among the
things symbolized as he senses them" (11).

Rosenblatt, however, is only one of the many theorists who
have been labeled reader-response, although Mailloux notes that

"reader-response was a label somewhat belatedly applied to the

l 1
work of such theorists as Holland, Wolfgang Iser, David Bleich, and

Stanley Fish rather than one adopted by the theorists themselves,
and that this term disguises considerable differences and
inconsistencies among the many writers to whom it has been
attached" (qtd. in Cahalan and Downing 305). Michael Riffaterre,
Iser, Fish, Holland, and Bleich, along with Rosenblatt, all believe in
some way the importance of response in the reading process.
Though each has ascribed to a specific point of theory, none has
merged the variant theories together as successfully as Louise
Rosenblatt.

Richard Beach categorizes reader-response theory according to
five various perspectives: textual, experiential, psychological, social,
and cultural (12mm 8). He describes these perspectives as
"moving from the specific to the global" 9), concerned with the
immediate response of the reader to the influence on meaning of
society and culture. Beach also set his five perspectives within an
historical framework, showing how the various approaches have
spawned others, and how they collectively add to the whole.

Beach sets the textual perspective in the 1920's with the works
of LA. Richards, Michael Riffaterre, and Wolfgang Iser. This
perspective focused on the reader's knowledge of text conventions
and how this knowledge assists in making meaning. Richards
believed that through their reading, readers acquire an intuitive
knowledge of how to read certain types of literature. By reading a
lot of mystery stories, or drama, or poetry, etc., the reader will
absorb a knowledge of conventions and eventually apply that

knowledge to the reading of the text. For Riffaterre, "competent

12
readers go beyond surface meaning" (Selden 119), and although

meaning still resides in the text, it cannot be described without
allowing for response. Iser sees the reader as an active participant
with the text. His reader is a "co-creator" who supplies what isn't
written (Tompkins vv) and fills in the blanks deliberately left by the
text (Cahalan and Downing 307). According to Ramon Selden, Iser
feels "the critic's task is not to explain the text as an object but rather
its effect on the reader" (112).

Rosenblatt's own experiential perspective appeared in the
1930's and shifted attention to subjective experience. Concerned
with both cognitive and aesthetic reading, she is interested in
describing the process of engagement and involvement in composing
meaning and the implications for the classroom. Although
formulated in 1938, Rosenblatt's work did not begin to impact the
field until the 1960's for several reasons, according to Carolyn Allen.
First, although Rosenblatt's primary interest was in literature, she
was also concerned with how it applies to education, unlike the other
theorists. Second, her theory was based on American thinkers
(Dewey, James) rather than European. And finally, "that as a woman
perceived to be dealing primarily with feelings, she was not given
the credibility in the literary critical establishment that even male
theorists were afforded" Beach, Team 50).

The 70's saw new developments as the work of Rosenblatt
began to influence others, including Norman Holland and David
Bleich, whose psychological perspective looked at how the develop-
mental cognitive level affects response. From a psychoanalytical

stance, Holland considers "the ways in which readers' subconscious

13
fantasy themes shape the meaning of their experience" (Beach,

1:391:31 94). He took the basic Freudian analysis of subconscious
elements of literary characters' actions and shifted it to the reader
(94). For Norman Holland, readers deal with literature the same way
as they deal with life, by developing a coping system which he calls
an "identity theme" and using this as a filter through which they
assimilate knowledge (Tompkins xix). Text is the other, and meaning
is created when the reader's self merges with the other.

In David Bleich's theory of "subjective criticism," meaning isn't
created by the individual or the text but through a negotiated
agreement of collective response (Tompkins xx). Bleich believes that
cognitive understanding is the result of subjective response, based on
the assumption that the ultimate motivation for readers is to
understand themselves (Selden 124). According to Beach, Bleich has
done the most to promote the value of emotional response (W
53).

The social perspective looks at how social roles (teacher-
student, individual-group) shape response. For Stanley Fish, the
reader's individual responses throughout the reading collectively
merge into a larger response. Meaning is not extracted from the text
but is the experience the reader has while reading (Tompkins xvii).
For this interpretive community, "the meaning of a text is a product
of one's own reading strategies operating in specific social contexts"
(Beach, 12.09.113.113. 106). Although the interpretive communities may
reflect different literary perspectives of feminism, Marxism, or
deconstructionism, Fish believes individuals buy into the belief

system of the group without doubt or reflection (Beach 107). They

l4
operate in the here and now without attention to history or opposing

viewpoints.

The cultural perspective recognizes that cultural attitudes,
including gender roles and attitudes, class, community, interests,
attitudes, and beliefs, shape response (Beach, 111911.913. 125). Where
the social perspective reflects the immediate social context, the
cultural perspective responds to the larger, historical context, though
both reflect the different contemporary literary perspectives (125).
David Bleich argues that "readers' responses reflect their
membership in these competing cultural communities" (125).

Louise Smith notes that both Holland and Bleich began as
prominent psychoanalytic critics (7) and have now moved on to the
idea of cultural criticism (Cahalan and Downing 309) where
knowledge is a negotiated agreement of collective responses, and
interest is more on the collaborative group than on individual
response (309). In spite of this shared belief in the community of
readers, Smith points out that neither Holland nor Bleich looks at
"how past readers might have experienced text" (74).

Though each of these perspectives concerns itself with
different aspects of the reader/text relationship, they all have in
common their ultimate interest in how readers make meaning.
Despite their different assumptions about meaning, these separate
theories intersect and overlap (Beach, Teacher's 9). Whether or not
they acknowledge the influence of Rosenblatt's work, looking from
the outside it is difficult to deny the contribution she has made since
the '30's. I will focus on Rosenblatt's transactional theory because I

feel it is most compatible with my study.

l 5
Rosenblatt's Transactional Theory

Literary criticism has gradually shifted its focus from author to
text to reader (Cahalan and Downing 6). The recent focus on reader
includes not only the theory of reader-response but other
contemporary theories of formalist, historical, psychoanalytic, and
feminist criticism. More than any other, it is Rosenblatt who sees the
link between the readers' real life experiences and the work and
encourages them to bring these experiences to the reading. For
many reader-response theorists, Louise Rosenblatt has been the
anchor or spokesperson, though not all acknowledge her role.
Recognizing the contribution of Rosenblatt, others have sought to
clarify her theory.

D.W.Harding in W has clarified three
conditions of reader-response. He states that it is "not passive but
active," that it "includes not only immediate but later effects," and
that "overt response (verbal, etc.) may indicate very little of the
inner response" (Squire 11). For the teaching of literature, this
implies that the focus of the study should be on the reader as well as
the text; however, the reader's response to reading may not be
immediately apparent, if ever.

Walter Slathoff in W discusses this
complex relation of reader and text. He states that it is important to
recognize that responding to literature involves emotional
transaction, and that these transactions do not exist separately. He
describes the reader in a dual role of spectator and participant,

recognizing that "even the most limited reader is capable of

l6
maintaining several simultaneous states of relation and feeling

toward a work . . (39).

Slathoff justifies the need for emotional response to literature
rather than just critical response by pointing out that one of the
purposes of literature is to affect the emotions. "For one thing,
literary works, unlike natural objects, are designed to affect the
emotions and to compel various sorts of involvement" (36). He
continues, "Moreover, the very meaning of a literary work depends
on emotional responses" (37).

Slathoff further argues the importance of reader-response and
the need for teachers to recognize that meaning does not exist solely
in the text. He goes on to point out that reader-experienced meaning
is a dynamic, changing entity that is not exact. He states, " . . .
literary works, however firmly designed, can exert only limited and
inexact control and guidance over even the most docile and
sympathetic reader," and that "whole areas of response can scarcely
be controlled at all" (60). .

Working Party Number Three of the Dartmouth Conference
best stated the purpose of teaching literature when it wrote, " . . . the
study of literature can in itself be a pdrt of the ultimate education
experience, for it is ultimately about human beings, what they are
like, what their values are, and how they behave; the study of this
dimension of English should form a central part of the experience of
teaching" (Squire 75).

Therefore, the purpose of teaching literature should reflect this
reader involvement. Slathoff states that nothing engages

consciousness in so many ways as reading (7), and D.W. Harding

17
states that "it is literature, not literary criticism, which is the subject"

(Squire 26). Slathoff forcefully states, "To limit our concern to
literary history or formal analysis . . . , to ignore problems of values
and human response, is to ignore the very qualities of literature
which have led us to be concerned with it in the first place" (Slathoff
24).

Importance of Reader Response

If, then, the purpose of our teaching of literature is to reflect
this belief in the importance of the combined emotional, aesthetic,
and analytic response of the reader, we need to examine our
classroom methods in order to evaluate to what extent our methods
reflect our goals. In the traditional classroom, Harding identifies
three basic modes of approach:

1. Each child having his own individual book

2. Literature as a group experience

3. Teacher presented material followed by
discussion (Squirel6).

This standard format of all students reading the same selection
from an anthology, and the teacher explaining it to the class is
precisely what most of today's teachers experienced, including those
I interviewed. For them there was no connection between school
reading and personal reading. In his foreword to Ms, Torn
Newkirk states, "The critical tradition, as applied to the classroom,
left too many students by the wayside. Students were expected to
adopt the formal style of argument without access to an informal

language of exploration; they were expected to make bricks without

l8
straw" (Andrasick XI). He asserts that to advocate reader-response

doesn't necessarily mean we must reject critical inquiry
(X).

Squire encourages the use of individualized reading, as opposed
to the entire class reading the same works, especially for the early
adolescent and beyond "because research has demonstrated that
most children during this period will read more books than at any
other time during their school careers" (18). Therefore, he continues,
"close reading and wide reading should not be thought of as quite
separate activities" (8), but experienced side by side.

In her book, W, Kathleen Dudden Andrasick points
out that most frequently we ask students to read in isolation, and
"rarely do we concentrate on teaching students how to compose
meaning as readers" (4). She sees the role of the teacher as two-fold:
"As literature teachers, the core of our enterprise is to first help
students recognize and value their personal connections and initial
readings. Next, we must help them acquire the strategies that foster
critical thinking" (6). We should design our literature curriculum to
encourage students to become responsible for their own reading and
meaning making. Instead, Andrasick states, "Many of us unwittingly
keep students dependent on us, rather than teaching them how to
operate independently" (34). She argues that teachers should strive
to make students aware of their own responses in reading and then
use those individual responses as the basis for analysis and
discussion. "By helping students examine their individual encounters
with texts and then compare them among themselves, we help them

develop some general principles of literary operation" (33).

1 9
Recognizing the emotional aspect of reading is critical if we

expect students to further their involvement with texts. Andrasick
believes that ignoring emotional responses produces readings that
are inadequate, because they recognize only half the literary

N

transaction (72). Andrasick further states, . our reading and our
teaching become clumsy if we plunge into literary analysis before
first allowing students (or ourselves) full opportunity to recognize
highly personal, often emotional, experiences with texts" (72).

If the response of the reader is crucial in her fully experiencing
the benefits of literature, how, then, should this response be
encouraged? For D.W. Harding, the role of listening is a key element.
"Since young children learn literature from hearing it, classroom
discussion of their responses should start from those activities that
arise from listening" (Squire 12). Reading-writing connections are
very important. Andrasick views them as similar processes used to
compose meaning, connect knowledge, and create order from chaos
(43). Writing is a powerful tool to help students not only understand
the texts they read but also their own responding process (43). She
further notes the additional value of reader-response. "Because
reader-response accepts hostility, boredom, and confusion as
legitimate reactions to texts, it diffuses the power of such negative
emotions. Students are free to operate more analytically once their
emotions have been released" (71).

Oral discussion also is important. The value for a reader, in
comparing her response to another's, is that it helps her formulate or
clarify her original response (6). Oral interpretation used in the

classroom also helps teachers identify problems and differences in

20
individual responses (19). Andrasick agrees that in hearing the

responses of others, students clarify and validate their own feelings
(80). James Britton is quick to note, however, that in an oral
discussion, silence does not always indicate lack of response (Squire
5).

In looking at literature response, it is also important to note the
role of creative response. Response to reading shouldn't be limited to
expository writing. Creative writing assignments used in conjunction
with literary study not only work to improve students' expository
writing but also improve their reading. According to Andrasick,
"Operating creatively as writers and readers, they begin to transfer
the structure and technique for one process to the other, often
unconsciously" (Andrasick 133). Creative response to literature
should not be limited to writing activities, but often ignored drama,
poetry, and fictional narratives should also be incorporated into our
literature classrooms as means to teach critical inquiry (13). Dramatic
response can take many forms, ncluding readers' theatre, chorale
reading, or role playing.

In his 1964 study. MW
W, James Squire discovered in studying over time the
responses of students to short stories that the more the students
were personally involved with the works, the more likely they were
to respond to their literary qualities. (64). What is the most effective
way to get them involved? Working Party Number Three of the
Darthmouth Seminar states, "If any single reform is needed in
English, it is the reintroduction of pleasure into what is done in the

English period" (74). Pleasure remains, however, a commodity that is

21
often in limited supply in the context of most classrooms. Students

must be encouraged to respond to literature and know that what
they bring to their reading is important. They must learn that
literature is not some dead medium but a living text brought to life
by their active participation with it.

Sadly, for many students this is not the case. Seldom are they
asked to respond personally to their reading or to connect their
experience to the work. "Many have learned to remain almost
entirely untouched by what they read" (Slathoff 170). Instead, they
have developed vocabularies for analysis and attitudes about
literature that discourage their response.

Andrasick acknowledges this flaw but offers possible solutions,
suggesting that we adopt classroom contexts that are collaborative
and social and more representative of the real world (21). In life, we
learn from one another. It is a mutual, active process, not a solitary,
passive one. Collaboration provides support, various viewpoints,
validation, and clarification.

Although in 1970, Slathoff felt that little had changed in the
way we think and talk about literature (169), I feel that in the
twenty years since, there have been some positive changes, a point
that I will address in my later chapters.

Steadily, Rosenblatt's theory as she applied it to the classroom
has been seeping into actual practice. No longer do Some teachers
feel that the meaning of a literary work exists solely within the text.
Transactional theory acknowledges that readers with their past
experience interact with the words on the page in order to create for

themselves unique meanings.

22
In order to do this, classroom methods must change. Andrasick

warns that we must not only make our classrooms collaborative but
also experiential. She feels that teachers who are driven to cover a
certain amount of material in a period of time rather than to provide
meaningful, thought provoking experiences with it encourage their
students to respond superficially. Instead of viewing literature as
something worthy of reflection, students read only to acquire the
facts and information so necessary on objective tests (185).

In order for experiential classrooms to be effective, it is
necessary for their teachers to be participants, not simply directors
who stand on the sidelines. Teachers must also be readers and
writers who model their personal involvement with literature for
their students: "Students trained by teachers who are not
themselves readers and writers are likely to be limited by their
instructor's lack of experience" (Andrasick 186). Teachers must see
their own literacy as a requirement of their profession. "Teachers
must not neglect personal literacy in their dedication to student
competence. One informs the other" (186).

Andrasick urges teachers to continue their professional
training, especially in the areas of reading and writing theory. It is
not enough for them to know the literature with its historical
background, author biographies, and conventional interpretations.
"Teachers also need to know how readers make meaning, how texts
instruct readers on how to read and write them, and how readers
and texts are the products of cultural contexts for reading and
writing" (Andrasick 33). She continues, "If we are going to help

students join our club [of critical inquiry], we must change their old

23
beliefs and habits. We must teach them to accept variant readings of

the same text. We must show them that critical inquiry requires
both personal connection and critical distancing and that
shortchanging one limits the potential of the other" (40).

The importance of reader-response in the classroom is well
argued. Many have called for change and suggested how we might
effect that change. Success for that change seems to lie in the efforts
of the classroom teacher to merge personal attitudes toward reading

with professional approaches to literature.

Related Research

In searching the dissertation abstracts back through 1980, I
found only ten studies that somehow related to my own research.
Five of those studies focused on reader-response theory and how it
applied in the classroom, and five of the studies looked at the
teacher's role in the literature classroom, or how the teacher's
personal attitudes toward reading affected the classroom. None of
these ten studies combined the various aspects.

In 1986, Holt wanted to see if using a response-based approach
to literature would result in greater student involvement than the
traditional analytical approach. Her study used The Bear] by John
Steinbeck with 121 tenth graders split into a control group and an
experimental group. Holt found "the experimental group wrote a
significantly higher percentage of engagement/involvement
responses than the control group. The attitude scales show that the
experimental group was motivated to read, discuss, and enjoy the

novel more than the control group was" (3963).

24
Monseau, in 1986, studied a group of students and teachers

from two different schools who met outside of school for ten weeks
to discuss reading. Her study supports reader-response theorists in
their belief that literary appreciation begins with engagement. She
suggests an effective approach to literature that combines responsive
dialogue and Young Adult (YA) literature (816). Both Holt and
Monseau confirmed the positive motivational effect of student
engagement with text. While Monseau's study, unlike mine, included
the element of YA literature, it did find that outside of school, both
teachers and students responded to the same elements: character,
plot, theme, setting, and point of view (816), although their
vocabulary differed and the students were less sophisticated in their
responses.

These findings both concur with those of Gross, who in 1983
examined the relationship between public and private responses to
literature both in and outside of the classroom. She used four 11th
and 12th grade teachers and sixteen students and made tapes of
their responses to poems read outside of class. Although the
responses were done outside of class, Gross found that both students'
and teachers' expectations shaped the readings. The school and the
classroom communities set a context for individual reading that
unfortunately serves to separate the readers from their own
experience and response (773). Gross later concluded that neither
teachers nor students are aware of this artificial approach to
response. "Few students reflect on what they do when they respond
to a poem; most teachers are unaware of their students' responses.

Class discussions do little to further awareness" (773). If this study

25
is representative, reader-response theory is not making its way into

the classroom.

Another study in 1983 looked at the discrepancy between
responding to reading outside versus inside of the classroom. Hopp
found that the sharing of responses which occurred outside of school
did not occur inside of school and argued that the gap that exists
between the two .needs to be bridged. "The underlying assumption is
that responses--a connection-making process between readers and
books--should be shared in a school setting and that sharing may
result in heightened awareness of both the complexity and richness
of the portrayed human experience and the self" (3589).

Hogarty, in 1988, like Holt and Monseau, found that reader-
response practice in the classroom encourages students to
communicate, a skill which he points out is important to society, but
"Conversely, student-participants affirmed that silent classrooms and
classrooms that dictated one-directional communication hadn't
invited them into a social experience with literature" (2955). He
further discovered that this social experience was especially
sacrificed with poor readers whose reading focus was often reduced
to reading for facts or what Rosenblatt describes as efferent reading.

All of these studies address the benefits of using reader-
response theory in the classroom. They also support my
observations that how we read in school differs from how we read
outside of it. Neither students nor teachers are making this
connection. One study (Gross) even acknowledged that teachers were
unaware of this discrepancy, and Gross also asserted that the

artificial in-class response is carried over into our students'

26
approaches to their outside reading. Clearly, the role of the teacher

is critical in the literature classroom. The following studies look at
that role and how the teachers' own perceptions influenced their
methods.

In 1980, Webb made a year long holistic study of literary
responses of tenth graders with four teachers in a suburban senior
high school observing the effects of a newly designed response
theory curriculum. In her study, experimental and control groups
used the reader-response approach and the traditional approach,
respectively in their literature classes. Her findings assessed the
effects on both students and teachers. In terms of students, Webb
found no significant difference in reading achievement between
student control groups but found that those students in the
experimental classes developed more positive attitudes toward
literature (929). In evaluating the effect on the teachers, the results
were more dramatic. She discovered teachers "became aware that
spontaneous response is often personal and associative; however, it
was not as digressive as they anticipated" (929). The teachers
recognized that personal response is valuable for more than just pre-
reading activities, and they also became more aware of how their
own responses to the literature they taught differed from those of
their students (929). Apparently, teachers are more convinced of the
powers of response theory when allowed to experience it for
themselves over an extended period of time.

Another factor influencing teachers' performance was
considered in 1988, when Walker looked at the connection between

teachers' personal reading habits and their classroom approaches to

2 7
teaching literature. He looked at what kind of readers they were,

how these characteristics were revealed in their teaching, and what,
if any, were the apparent relationships among their traits as readers
and as teachers. From his data, Walker identified three theoretical
types of teacher-readers: the escapist, the pragmatist, and the
intellectual adventurer. He also identified three archetypal teaching
stances: the nurturer, the instructor, and the co-learner. He found in
his case studies of three high school teachers that "teachers are
primarily summer readers," and there is "an apparent dichotomy
between private reading and public duty to teaching the canon"
(1935). Walker found that his teachers often acknowledged the
connection between reading and writing but seldom modeled it or
applied it in their classrooms. Although these teachers differed in
their personal reading habits, the requirements of curriculum and
their shared perceptions of the profession made their teaching
differences less noticeable. Walker's study relates to my own in the
area of teacher as reader and points out that not only students but
teachers separate their school reading from their personal reading.
In another study focusing on teacher as reader, Atwell found
significant themes from reader response theory in teachers'
autobiographies as she studied three secondary English teachers and
the relationship between their personal reading and their literature
curriculums. Atwell concluded in 1988 that teachers were primarily
solitary readers and rarely shared private reading with others. Their
most pleasant memories of reading in childhood were outside of
school, and they had few memories of school reading except for

negative ones. Teachers did one thing on their own (response) and

28
practiced another in their classrooms (objective interpretation).

Atwell's research concluded that teachers were "fearful of reliving
conflicts [such as being told their interpretation was wrong] from
their own reading lives and of dealing with emotion and confusion in
reading responses in their own classrooms" (61). They used a
structured approach as a defense against feelings they experienced
themselves as readers. She also concluded that in addition to
personal reasons, there were cultural reasons such as standard
curriculum guidelines and traditions that encouraged teachers to
stick with the structured approach. In addition to discovering a
discrepancy between teachers' personal reading and school reading,
Atwell discovered that the teachers were unaware of the apparent
contradiction until this study. Their lack of awareness did not
appear to be by choice, for they all indicated that they were
interested in exploring it further. Atwell's study parallels mine in a
couple of ways. Like Walker, Atwell discovered a discrepancy in
teachers' approaches to reading. What I found also relating to my
study was that the teachers were unaware of this difference,
although Atwell did not attempt to discover why. She also looked at
those outside constraints that influenced teachers' classroom
methods. I will also look at this issue in my study.

Also in 1988, Zancanella concluded that teachers' personal
approaches to reading had only slight influence, if any, on their
teaching. Rather, teaching methods were dictated by external forces.
He stated, "The majority of time spent in the literature, classes was
spent on comprehension and on the learning of literary terms and

concepts. The imposition of standardized tests was found to be an

29
important influence on teachers' literature teaching which tended to

limit their ability to draw on their personal approaches to literature"
(3293). Again, this study reflects on the outside forces which dictate
curriculum.

My last study focuses on teachers' inability to incorporate
response theory in their classrooms, reflecting a personal approach to
reading that is in direct conflict with the New Criticism approach
learned in their own school experiences. In 1987, Kearney observed
a seventh-grade literature classroom as the teacher attempted to use
a response-centered approach. In her study of one teacher and four
students, Kearney found that philosophically, the teacher was closely
aligned with Rosenblatt and response theory, with the students
favoring an analytical stance "more consistent with more radical
reader-response critics: Fish, Bleich, and Holland" (52). She found
her students made little or no distinction between themselves and
the text, concluding, "The teacher found developing and teaching a
reader-response curriculum to be in conflict with her previous
literary training and often felt unprepared to evaluate responses that
challenged her concept of the text" (52). Kearney points out two
concepts, which I also address in my study. The teacher's previous
training did not reflect the current reader-response theory, and her
current grasp of theory was too recent and not sufficient enough for
her to comfortably apply it in her classroom. What Kearney does not
do is look at the issues that prevent or discourage the teacher from
staying current in the field.

From these studies, I draw the following conclusions: 1)

Although teachers view classroom and outside reading differently,

30
they aren't aware of this discrepancy; 2) Teachers are relying more

on critical analysis than response theory, probably because they
aren't adequately trained in response theory or at least don't feel
confident about their training; and 3) There are outside constraints
that influence a teacher's choice of classroom methods. Although
these ten studies support my hypotheses, none of them explores the
connections among the teachers, their education, and the outside
influences that affect them.

It is apparent that many of today's teachers are uninformed or
uncomfortable attempting to implement response methods in their
classrooms, but why? Historically, various curriculum models have
been espoused and practiced. Much of the problem exists because
literature's role in the curriculum has not been defined (Probst 195).
In order to understand literature's identity problem, it is necessary

to look at how we got here.

Part B: History

According to Arthur Applebee in W,
literature has only been included in the curriculum since the late
nineteenth century. Prior to the turn of the century, the focus on
English was dominated by the churches and society and then by the
colleges. Three instructional traditions were in place: the ethical
tradition, the classical tradition, and the non-academic tradition (I).

The ethical tradition linked religion with the teaching of
reading (11), and the chief aim of the early grammar schools was to
prepare clergy (Evans and Walker 2). The purpose of these schools

was socio-political in nature, serving to provide "unity to colonists

3 l
with a common tradition, common spirit of citizenship, and common

language" (Applebee, 1131111111 3).

The classical tradition of the 18th and 19th centuries was
influenced by colleges, and the secondary schools used this model to
prepare their students for college and higher education (3). The
trend was to prepare the mind for college by developing "mental
discipline" by focusing on the rigors of Greek and Latin (5).

The non-academic tradition was designed for all those "others"
who would not be attending college and had no need for secondary
preparation. English was taught at home or in "dame schools"
conducted by housewives in their homes (Evans and Walker 3). In
the early 1800's, Finishing Schools were in existence and focused on
an appreciative study approach, considered, however, second class
and not worthy of college (Applebee, W91 11).

When literature was added to the curriculum, approximately
100 years ago, the classical studies approach was applied. Literature
was studied with an emphasis on information, valuing both its
historical significance and its use in developing mental discipline.
From this approach of mental discipline came the switch to viewing
literature as a source of knowledge of our literary heritage (11). It
was believed that students would somehow profit from the study of
great traditions. Literature would have a positive effect on both the
students and society.

Although the schools approached literature from the
perspective of classical studies, many of the early socio-political goals
were continued and still exist today. Anne Ruggles Gere identifies six

primary reasons for teaching English, all related to the teaching of

32
literature, that people most frequently name: "to improve morality,

to prepare good workers, to create an elite, to produce good citizens,
to foster personal growth, and to offset inequality" (23). These
purposes or themes are found throughout the history of the schools.
Although consistently present, these purposes are almost impossible
to categorize chronologically because they occur in cycles. One or
several may take precedence over the others for a time, eventually
replaced by some others. Often, these purposes piggy-back one
another and almost cease to exist separately.

Gere states, "Protestant religious groups have connected
literacy with piety and devotion" (2). Religious texts offered
particular power, and the ability to read the Bible was essential to
salvation; therefore, reading represented a way to improve one's
moral standing. Later, the power of the Bible was transferred to
literature in general, and English took on the role of building
character and adding moral fiber.

With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, society changed
from a rural to an urban setting. People needed to be retrained to
meet the needs of the cities and the manufacturing jobs, and English
classrooms focused on function, including writing of business letters,
forms, and reading direction manuals and newspapers. Grammar
also became an important aspect of English, for in this new business
world, correctness mattered.

Preparation for college has always been a part of American
schools, and this concept was furthered by the standardized

curriculum developed by the Committee of Ten in 1894. Preparation

33
for college included college-like courses of lectures, literature

analysis, etc.

With the promotion of a democratic society came another
purpose of education. In order for a democracy to function
effectively, it is critical for the voting electorate to be literate. To
meet this need, classrooms promoted democratic themes which
focused on what it meant to be "American," and activities
emphasized decision making and the literacy skills needed to vote.

The study of English also fostered personal growth. Studying
English, specifically writing and the reading of literature, allowed
people to find themselves, become self-fulfilled, and lead happy
lives. Reflection, self-awareness, and connections with literature
were frequently used methods.

The final purpose was to offset inequality, and education is the
great leveler. In addition to the goal of raising education levels
towards that of the elite by promoting a common literary heritage,
the curriculum also included the politics of education and how to
interact with the world outside of the classroom.

To further clarify these multiple views and functions of
literature, it would be helpful to look at their development over time.
Terry Eagleton states that there are three stages of modern literary
theory: the Romantic, the New Critical, and the Response stages (qtd.
in Beach, M11111: 1).

The Romantic (or Old Criticism) concerned itself with matters
outside of the text and how they influenced meaning, and, in
particular, had a "pro-occupation with the author" (1). For the

Romantics, literature became "a reservoir of cultural values and a

3 4
source of moral strength" (Applebee, MIDAS. 22). The writer was
seen as having a higher knowledge and was, therefore, worthy of
greater attention. The influence of this period led to the
development of the high school canon (24), and preoccupation with
the question, "What does the author mean?" still affects our schools
today.

The New Critics also focused on meaning but believed that
meaning resided solely within the text, and considered the author
extraneous. A universal reader strove to arrive at the one true
reading of a text without the influences of time, society, or
personality.

From this New Criticism emerged two views. One viewed
literature as a work of art. I.A. Richards, however, believed in
developing a "psychology of literary judgement" (Corcoran 10) and
realized that in order to do so, it was necessary to study readers'
responses.

New Criticism put the text at the center of study but also made
the teacher the center of the classroom. With the role of explicator of
texts' meanings, the teacher had considerable power and authority.
There were other advantages, as well. The subject matter was seen
as an objective body of knowledge. There were clearly right and
wrong answers, and the material was easily tested and measured.
This paradigm still influences most of the secondary curriculum
today.

Other influence from New Criticism remains with far-reaching
negative consequences. New Criticism's quest for the true reading by

the perfect reader only served to create and promote a feeling of

3 5
inadequacy. The reader was always deficient and could never
achieve the perfect reading. "It is this sense of inadequacy of
personal felt response that has been the unintended but nevertheless
inevitable effect of four decades of teachers' emphasis on the reader
as critic as an appropriate role for pupils in school" (Corcoran ll).
Sadly, this feeling of inadequacy now affects both teachers and
students, since, at least sometime in their educational careers,
virtually all teachers today were students of New Criticism.

The next paradigm shift moves attention from the text to the
reader. Best clarified by the Dartmouth Conference in 1966, this
movement promoted a curriculum based on personal growth.
Although not without its turmoil and disagreement, "the emphasis in
educational thought shifted gradually away from knowledge of an
academic discipline toward the process of knowing and the dignity of
the individual" (Applebee, mm 236).

From this focus on the individual reader came the response
theorists who were concerned with making explicit how readers
make meaning. Teachers were now asked to somehow integrate the
three critical theories of the Romantic, the New Critic, and the
Transactional movements. The function of literature continues to
operate from this multiplicity of theories and goals.

Trends change along with the times. Social needs are
addressed, and the practice of teaching English changes to meet those
needs. At any point in time, several underlying reasons may be in
play. One reason may dominate, followed by another. The confusion
occurs because old trends don't disappear. New trends are simply

added to the old, and the result is a cumulative hodgepodge. Schools

3 6
and teachers bear the brunt of this confusion. Eager to answer
society's demands and to meet the needs of the students, teachers
often feel pulled in all directions and end up frustrated, trying to do
all and be all for everyone.

Regardless what the purpose of literature may be at any given
time, the determining of its function remains political. How it is
taught is determined by the agenda of those who make curricular
decisions about the role of literature. The moral focus was
determined by the churches. The business community wanted good
workers. Colleges determined what was considered elite, and
government wanted good citizens. The personal growth model
assisted people in enriching their lives through the process of self-
discovery, offsetting their unhappy working conditions, while the
quest for equality fought the status quo.

Not surprisingly, the ability of the schools to meet the demands
of these various political forces is further dictated by the
administrative decisions made outside of the classroom. Funding,
staffing, and scheduling all impact the success of the schools.

Funding for the schools has fluctuated dramatically in the last
fifty years, resulting in tougher times and more pressure. The
availability of money for schools is certainly affected by the
economic conditions, but not all decisions are economic. Funding also
falls prey to the political arena, and politicians have been accused of
using education and English education (literacy issues) specifically as
re-election issues. Literacy is awarded much lip service but little

money.

3 7

Since the Dartmouth Seminar of 1966, curriculum planners
attempted to balance the focus on intellectual discipline with the
concern of the emotional well-being of the student. Some questions
have been resolved, but many remain. There has been a change over
time in what we see as the function of literature; it no longer is
limited to utilitarian uses. Tompkins states, "T he first requirement of
a work of art in the twentieth century is that it should do nothing"
(Tompkins 210). Art need only exist for its own sake. Once again,
discourse is viewed as power, and language is the ultimate form of
power. Therefore, literature again is recognized as having the ability
to influence human behavior. With the acknowledgment of the
power of literature, it is logical that attention would also shift to the
role of the reader.

Given the history of the teaching of literature with its multiple
goals and paradigm shifts, it is no wonder that teachers feel conflict.
How do they sort out for themselves a working theory from this
fluctuating collection of thought? What have they drawn on and
what have they rejected? What role does reader-response play in
this process?

The purpose of my study is to determine the impact of reader-
response theory as reflected in twenty years' publication of reader-
response articles in selected professional journals. In addition, I will
also study two other dimensions through modified case study, the
teacher's personal reading history and professional education, and
the roles all three play in the teachers' approaches to literature in
the classroom. The theory of teaching of reading in the classroom

has changed dramatically over the last twenty years, recognizing the

3 8
interaction of reader and text. But has the evidence of that change in

the secondary schools been as dramatic?

Chapter Two: Research Design and Methodology

Reader-response theory and its implementation in secondary
English classrooms as the focus of this study raises several questions
that form the basis of this inquiry: 1) how do the current journals in
the field of English education support the concept of reader-response
theory and its implementation? 2) do teachers implement reader-
response theory and how do they accomplish it? 3) what difficulties
do these teachers face in their efforts to incorporate reader-response
theory? I have examined the instruction and beliefs of ten
individual teachers and the extent to which reader response theory

has been implemented in their classrooms.

Part A: Journal Review

I have chosen a modified case study approach, using a
combination of historical research and personal interviews. First, I
have traced the writing on reader-response theory in the current
professional journals, looking at what the literature says about
response, and what it says about teachers themselves as they
operate with reader-response approached to literature. Because I
was looking at how reader-response theory impacted the English
classroom, I limited my search to the journals published by and for
the National Council of Teachers of English, the major professional
organization for English teachers. Of those NCTE publications, I chose
WW. Wuhan. and WM
English

39

40
Reseaigh in 111: jlfieaghing of English (ME), with its focus on
classroom research, represents the latest research in the field.
W W focuses on the training of teachers, and
MW (EL) represents the concerns of the secondary English

classroom teacher.

I have traced the articles over the last twenty years and have
attempted to discern patterns. I chose a twenty-year time span for
two reasons. First, my own teaching career spans twenty years, and
second, the average number of years' experience for all teachers in
the United States is fifteen years, according to a current National
Education Association study.

Tracing the appearance of reader-response theory in the three
specified journals over this extended period rendered 291 articles:
29 articles in m, 12 in Engfifi, and the remaining 250 in EL
However, these numbers are somewhat influenced by the journals'
various publication frequencies and other limitations which I will
discuss in the next chapter.

In looking for patterns in the journals, I asked many questions.
How many articles deal with reader-response theory, and what are
their main concerns? How many focus on theory and how many on
practice? What, if any, patterns emerge in the number and focus of
reader-response articles in professional journals? I attempted to
further categorize the articles according to five purposes: original
research, explanation or discussion of research, description of method
or general application, classroom practice, including specific
activities, and reviews/replies of professional and classroom

literature.

41
Part B: Teacher Case Studies

Knowing, however, that even with a membership of over
100,000 members, the main organization of the English teachers,
NCT'E, represents less than 5% of all those teaching English, I also felt
it necessary to go to the actual teachers to gather firsthand
reflections. I have balanced my data from print sources with that
gathered from case studies based on interviews in three schools.
Through my interviews, I have compared what the literature says
about response with how the teachers view literature and how their
backgrounds impact this view.

My choice of the modified case study approach to these
questions was based on my own experience as a secondary teacher
and the problems I went through developing my own theory of
response. From this experience, I see a need for deeper
understanding of what actually happens on the high school level as
teachers attempt to merge conflicting theories in their teaching of
literature.

Seldom as a teacher did I have the opportunity to reflect,
discuss, or voice my opinion on issues related to pedagogy.
Therefore, I felt very strongly that it was important for me to go
directly to the classroom teachers and allow them to tell their own
stories.

I've chosen basic qualitative methods out the the belief that
questions are best studied in the context in which they occur. Case
studies have been done for a number of years, as many researchers
have successfully shown (Taylor, 1983; Graves, 1983; Rose, 1989;
Zancanella, 1991).

42
I've chosen the case study approach for a variety of reasons

and benefits. Not only does this method provide access to teachers'
personal approaches to reading, but also to their goals for the
teaching of literature and their definitions of literature, as well as
their methods and their insights about how they reflect on their
roles. It allowed me to see with greater understanding the reasons
for what I could only observe superficially. A basic assumption
underlying the case study approach is that one can best understand
the purposes and beliefs a teacher uses to structure her class by
using a combination of methods, one being direct discussion with the
teacher (Bogdan and Biklen 2).

The interviews were more thorough and personal and allowed
the teachers to provide their own contexts for their answers.
Teachers' own words provide a look into their own perception of
their teaching and learning processes that with other methods
wouldn't be available. 1

There has been much of research looking at how readers think
about their reading (Squire, 1964; Purves, 1968; Beach, 1983), but
these studies have focused on the student. These same questions
need to be asked about teachers. My study does not generalize for
all teachers but only for my select group, comparing and contrasting
these ten teachers in an effort to learn from what they've shared

with me.

Participants
In my study, I conducted personal interviews with ten

members of the English departments of three mid-Michigan public

43
school systems. The systems chosen for close study include a large,

urban high school, a suburban middle school, and a small rural school
which combines both junior and senior high. I chose the three types
of schools in an effort to sample a variety of locations which. are
reasonably representative of schools everywhere.

The large, urban school is one of three high schools in a city
with an approximate population of 250,000. The socio-economic
background is varied with all groups represented from low to high.
This school has fifteen English teachers and an enrollment of 1415
students with the following ethnic breakdown: 0% American Indian,
5% Asian, 45% Black, 6% Hispanic, and 43% White.

The suburban middle school is currently the only middle school
in a city with a population of 20, 216. The socio-economic
background of this city is primarily middle to upper-middle
professional. The school employs fourteen English teachers and has
an enrollment of 969 students. Although the city's census figures
indicate a population that is 90% White, the school's enrollment
represents a more varied ethnic mix, including 0% American Indian,
6% Asian, 4% Black, 21% Hispanic, and 69% White.

The rural school chosen is also the only junior-senior high
school in a town with a population of 1523. This town is primarily a
low to middle-class, blue collar/agricultural, bedroom community.
There are four English teachers and a student enrollment of 350
students. The ethnic makeup of both the community and the school
is virtually 100% White.

Before contacting the schools, I first had to submit my proposal

and questionnaire to the University Committee for Research

44
Involving Human Subjects (UCRIHS) at Michigan State University

whose function is to protect the confidentiality of the participants
and to insure that the research is ethically based. Copies of the
Human Subjects approval letter and my interview consent form are
included in the appendix. After UCRIHS approval, I contacted the
individual schools.

I began by submitting an application along with multiple copies
of my research proposal and questionnaire to the director of the
Office of Research and Evaluative Services for the large, urban
district. Once I received approval, I was free to contact the teachers
personally.

I began with a teacher in my selected school who agreed to
distribute my proposal and request for teacher participation. All
teachers were given the opportunity to respond. I then personally
contacted those interested teachers by phone and further explained
my study. If they agreed to take part, I distributed my
questionnaire with cover letter and signature form and set up
appointments for individual follow-up interviews.

In the urban school from a list of six names, four people agreed
to participate. Because of a medical emergency, one was forced to
drop out. The remaining three teachers were each interviewed
outside of school during their summer break. Two were interviewed
in their own homes, and the other in a local restaurant.

The procedure and selection process was somewhat less formal
in the other two schools. I contacted the principal of the suburban
middle school, who granted me permission over the phone. I then

spoke with one English teacher who also agreed to distribute my

45
proposal and collect names of interested teachers. From five

interested parties, four agreed to be interviewed. Three interviews
were conducted in the school at the end of the spring semester
during the teachers' planning periods, and the fourth took place at a
local restaurant over summer break. For personal reasons, one of
these participants found it necessary to withdraw from the study.

I also contacted the principal at the rural junior-senior high
school who granted permission over the telephone and agreed to
distribute my material and collect names. Four teachers (the entire
English department) agreed to participate. In this case, I went to the
school and met the teachers personally and scheduled interview
appointments. All four of these teachers were interviewed in their

school building but outside of their teaching duties.

Questionnaire

Gathering data from the schools included a questionnaire/
attitude survey completed by the individual language arts teachers.
This questionnaire included more specific questions relating to the
teachers' personal history and current classroom practice. These
surveys were followed by personal interviews, delving further into
their own informed thoughts and opinions which I will discuss
further in the following section.

My questionnaire is based on the 1981 study of Alan Purves,
Wm. In this study, Purves found that the
classroom practices of teachers were greatly influenced by their own
past experience and training. He discovered that the majority of

secondary teachers had been trained in English but not reading (19).

46
He also discovered that in addition to lacking this original training in

reading theory, "a large proportion appears not to keep up with the
latest trends in their field" (20). He found that compared to the
practice in the elementary school, in the secondary school, "the
variety of instruction becomes increasingly constrained" (24). The
secondary English classroom is dominated by whole class instruction,
recitation, and discussion (24). Purves also discovered that how
teachers approached the teaching of literature was influenced by
their own responses to it, as well as what they saw as their goals for
teaching it (38). Classroom practices were also affected by outside
constraints of the school curriculum brought about by school policy,
including imposed curriculums and the necessity of standardized
testing.

Based on Purves' findings, I divided my questionnaire into
three categories: teacher background, present values and methods in
teaching, and external pressures. I looked at the teachers' own
experience as secondary school students, their personal reading
habits, their professional affiliation and education, as well as what
they see as their goals in teaching literature. Also important to my
interview was their listing or clarifying of what, for them, are the
external pressures affecting their success. Copies of my
questionnaire, cover letter, and letter of agreement are included in

the appendix (Appendices B-D).

Interviews
The interviews, done in person, were relatively informal and

averaged about one hour in length. These interviews were designed

47
to follow up the questionnaires. All ten of the participating teachers

agreed to the interviews and participated enthusiastically.

The interviews took place during the late spring and early
summer and were completed within a four week time span, when
most teachers were either just finishing up the school year or just
beginning summer. I chose this particular time because the end of
the school year is often a time of reflection. People are tired but
often less rushed than in the fall or mid-year. I also didn't want to
wait until mid-summer when teachers tend to distance themselves
from the real frustrations of the classroom.

The settings were varied, but most interviews took place in the
teachers' own classrooms. Two interviews were done in the teachers'
homes, and two were done in a secluded area of a local restaurant.
Realizing the importance of fitting in with the teachers' regular
routine (Hammersley 49), all times and settings were the choice of
the individual teachers.

Interviews were also scheduled several weeks after the
teachers completed the questionnaires to allow the participants time
to reflect on their responses. According to Hammersley, this time to
reflect is an often neglected element of research (46).

In my interviews, I used a combination of directive and non-
directive questions, attempting to distinguish what aspects of reader-
response these teachers may be using. Are these teachers
encouraging students to respond on a personal level to their reading?
Are the concerns of the teacher focused on the students or on the
texts? Do teachers attempt to merge emotional response with critical

inquiry? Which response based methods are being used? Why are

48
these being used? How are they being used? If they aren't being

used, why not? What are the factors that impede their use?

Through my interviews, I gathered additional information on
specific approaches and techniques used by these teachers in their
classrooms. I wanted to discover what, if any, aspects of reader-
response theory have found their way into actual classroom practice,
primarily in literature classroom settings. I worded the questions in
such a manner that allowed me to identify the issues that prevent
teachers from implementing research. I also looked at ways selected
teachers are able to use research on response. The general categories
of questions included some of the following:

What kinds of ways do you have kids respond?

How much?

In school? Out of school?

In what ways do you encourage them to respond to what

they've read?

How do you assess that response?

On what theory do you base your practice?

What factors dictate your practice?

If you could, what changes would you make?

What factors inhibit those changes?

What positive changes do you see taking place?

What unique and innovative ways have you found to continue

in spite of surmounting problems?

What have you tried that worked?

What hasn't worked? Why not?

49
Does your district have a curriculum guide? Objectives?

How has your district been affected by the State of Michigan

guidelines (PA 25)?

Sample interview questions and a transcript of a sample
interview are included in the appendix (Appendices E and F).

The design of this study, therefore, looked at reader-response
theory through the publications over a period of time that had the
potential to affect the understandings and instructional practices of
classroom teachers. It investigated the extent to which reader-
response affected the classrooms of selected teachers through
questionnaires and interviews they completed. The purpose of this
interview was to give voice to those classroom teachers. For some, I
hope this study provides insight into some of the constraints that
affect them and other teachers like them. Through the compilation
of their answer and suggestions, I hope to provide a document that
will give credence to their opinions, help reduce those external

pressures, and allow them to be the most effective teachers they can.

Chapter 3: Journal Analysis

In my analysis of reader-response articles included in three of
the professional journals published by National Council of Teachers of
English. W W and
W I had expected to find a logical transmission of
theory from RIB through M to EL Unfortunately, I did not.
What I did find forced me to re-examine my assumptions and look
for new reasons.

I chose to analyze the professional journals for a number of
reasons. First, reviewing their content over a period of twenty years,
provided a context for what has been going on in the profession.
Second, because journals are the one thing that can be consistently
available to all, I wanted to determine how and to what extent they
were impacting the profession.

I was looking for several things. I wanted to see just how
much the topic of reader-response was addressed in these journals.
Did it appear, or was there a problem with it not being recognized? I
wanted to try to determine if there was a breakdown in the
information chain from researcher to classroom teacher. Question
one was "Is reader-response being written about, and is it appearing
in these professional journals?"

Question two involved looking at what types of articles
appeared and who were their intended audiences. Did the articles
discuss reader-response abstractly in terms of theory and research,

or did they focus in concrete terms on classroom application? Who

50

5 1
were the authors of these articles? Did most of the writing generate

from the university or secondary level?

Question three involved the classroom teachers themselves.
How much do teachers rely on journals? Did they read the journals?
Which ones? Were they aware of and informed about the current
theory? And then, if they were aware, how did they incorporate
their knowledge into their classrooms? If not, what were some of
the external pressures preventing them from doing so? Questions
one and two will be addressed in this section. Question three will be
addressed in the chapter four case studies.

Tracing the appearance of reader-response theory in the three
specified journals rendered 291 articles. Twenty-nine articles were
in m, 12 in M, and the remaining 250 in E1. I attempted to
further categorize the articles according to purpose. The categories
used were original research, explanation or discussion of research,
description of method or general application for classrooms,
classroom practice including specific activities, and reviews/replies.

I. The category of original research included those articles
describing primary research done by the author involving some
aspect of reader-response. Authors included researchers, scholars,
teacher educators, and classroom teachers. Articles included
descriptions of the studies, the results, and often implications for
teaching.

2. The second category, discussion of research and theory, was
comprised of those articles written by a third party not involved in
the original research project whose purpose was to further explain or

clarify the findings of the research. Sometimes these articles simply

52
reworked earlier findings in less technical language. Others debated

or questioned the validity of the findings, and still others took the
original research and attempted to discuss its relationship to other
research or its implications for the classroom.

3. The third category, description of method or application,
looked at the research and how it might be applied in the classroom.
Usually, these articles spoke in more general terms, discussing how
the research findings might impact curriculum, teaching methods,
teacher education, etc. Although these articles did discuss ways in
which reader-response research/theory could be or is being applied
in the classroom, they usually didn't offer specific activities or lesson
plans which demonstrated concrete application.

4. Hence, my fourth category was classroom practice, which
provides for the classroom teacher specific lesson plans or activities
that could be immediately tried in the classroom. Many of these
articles focused on specific units or titles and described actual lesson
plans and their results.

5. The final category of reviews and replies was created to
include those articles which didn't seem to fit in any of the other four
categories. These included reviews of books and articles dealing with
various aspects of reader response theory, or replies to earlier

letters, etc.

Frequency
By far, the majority of the articles were in W with
a total of 250 articles. This represented 86% of all articles published.

53
Forty-one articles, or the remaining 14%, were found in RE and

M combined.

In both RIE and M, the largest number of articles found in
any year was five. For each, the yearly average of articles was low.
RIE averaged 1.5 articles a year, and M averaged only .6
articles per year.

In contrast, MW averaged 12.1 articles a year. I feel
it is important in making this comparison to point out the difference

in frequency of publication among the three journals. Engiish

Education and WW appear four times
a year, while W appears eight times. Even accounting

for the difference in frequency, EL still had at least five times more
articles than either E11815! or RIE.

In addition to the differences in frequency of publication are
other factors. RIE and W tend to publish fewer but longer
articles. RIB and £112.31 both average 4-5 articles per issue. In
addition, ELLE! is limited to a maximum of 64 pages. E1, on the
other hand, carries a larger number of shorter articles, averaging

approximately 20 articles per issue, and has no page limitation.

Distribution Among Journals

Although the distribution was so uneven, I'm not sure that the
lack of articles in the college level journals necessarily indicates
either lack of research or lack of interest. If the intent of the
researchers is to put their finding in the hands of those who would
use it, the classroom teachers, then publishing findings in the English
Mai is the best choice with its primary readership made up of

54
secondary classroom teachers. R'_I‘_E_ has a smaller readership,

primarily from the university level. W has an even
more limited readership than RIR, its audience being the segment of

university professors who deal directly with teacher education.

Authorship

Interest in reader-response theory on the university level is
further indicated by its authorship. Of 280 articles who had authors
and affiliations listed, 158 or 56% were written by university people.
Secondary classroom teachers were not far behind, authoring 122
articles or 44%. When looking only at W, I found that
university and secondary authors were evenly represented with
nearly a 50-50 split. Clearly, both university and secondary
educators are involved in reader-response. I feel it is important to
note, however, that this university involvement is not necessarily
campus-wide. These authors represent only that portion of the
faculty directly involved in teacher education, which is not unusual,

considering the nature of these journals.

Distribution Among Categories

Moving from authors to topics, I attempted to discern what
areas of reader-response represented the largest interest. To do this,
I sorted all 291 articles according to the five categories previously
described. Original or primary research accounted for 32 articles or
11% of the total. Explanation or discussion of theory represented 23
articles or 8%, and reviews and/or replies to books or earlier articles

accounted for 13 articles or 4%. Not surprisingly, the two categories

55
having the largest number of articles were those that attempted to

translate theory into method. Description of method or general
application had 84 articles or 29%, and classroom practice including
specific activities numbered 140 or 49% of the total.

Separating journals and looking at their individual articles by
category rendered some interesting results. En 1i h E i n
showed a relatively even distribution among the categories of
explanation of research, description of methods, and classroom

practice (Fig. l).

4.
3.5
3

E 3~
52.5
'5 2
3

=1.~
E 5
5 1-
0.5‘

 

 

Descr 01
Methods
Class
Practice

Review/Reply _ _.

Research
Explan. of
Theory

Heme 1- mm: Reader-Response Article- by Cateeory

56
Reseaieh in ghe Teaehing 9f English fulfilled its emphasis on

research, with the clear majority of articles falling into the research
category. Interestingly, in spite of its singular focus on research, RTE
did publish several articles dealing with secondary discussion of

research and even classroom practice (Fig. 2).

dam”
001001

Number of Artlcles
0|

 

O

Descr of
Methods
CIase
Practice

i; 3:5

RevIew/ReP'Y

Flinn 2- WW: Render-Rum”
Articles by Category

Also keeping with its readership and focus was English Jeernai.
In an effort to disseminate research among practitioners, the
majority of El's articles fit the categories of description of method

and actual classroom practice (Fig. 3).

57

 

 

140 v '36
“120‘-
2
0 ..
E100
<
.- 80'
O
3 60
a
540
z
201.
01
g 3.: .55; 3 E
g 33?; 3% E i
t: E'- 82 n: E
a a?
6

mm 3. W Reader-Wm Article- by Cateeory

Annual Distribution

In examining the number of articles published according to the
year they appeared, I could draw no conclusions regarding
similarities among the three journals. Strong years did not coincide
with each other. In fact, in some cases, one journal's all time high
was another's all time low. Because 53W published so
few articles over the period from 1970 to 1991, it was impossible to
draw any conclusions about it, other than reader-response being a
low priority. The highest number of articles published in any given
year in M was two, and that occurred three times, in 1972,
1984, and 1988. Six years each produced one article apiece, and the

remaining thirteen years contained no articles at all.

 

5 8
Wench showed more definite

fluctuation in the number of articles published per year. Although
the highest frequency of articles numbered only four and five per
year, 1976 and 1985 were the peak years, respectively.
W showed the most defined surges in terms of
numbers of articles per year. Rather than showing moderate
fluctuations as the other two journals, El experienced dramatic highs
and lows, swinging from 2-5 articles per year all the way to 20-26
articles per year. Interestingly, the lowest year, 1976, with only two
articles was immediately followed by the highest year, 1977, with 26
articles. Other peak years were 1973 with 22 articles and 1988 with

21 (Fig. 4).

 

20<-~5~3-

d
O

 

Number of Artlclee
;

 

 

 

 

figure 4. Frequency of Reader-Response Articles by Journal

ilVI
am’

SIUC

59
Although there is no exact yearly correlation between Reeeaieh

WM and blew, it does appear that E1
is influenced by RE. Both of RTE's major peaks in 1976 and 1985

 

were followed by significant peaks in E1 in 1977 and 1988
respectively (Fig. 4).

What were some of the factors that influenced this pattern?
Social trends, the economy, education programs, and even journal
editorships may have played a role. The seventies showed an
interest in promoting reading. During this decade, 150 articles
appeared, 128 of them in the W. The eighties, however,
saw only 103 articles (86 in El). This represents a drop in numbers
of 32%. Part of the reason for this drop may be explained by the
shift in educational priorities from a focus on reading to a focus on
writing. Although I only analyzed two years of the nineties, 1990
and 1991, the numbers may indicate a returned emphasis on
reading. Seventeen articles appeared in 1991, but it is certainly too
early to make a prediction, and the increase is probably due to an
increased interest in literature reading and whole language

programs.

Category Review

In order to get a closer look at what was happening in these
three journals in the area of reader-response, I'll cover each of the
five categories separately. Because of the large number of total
articles, I have chosen only those which serve as representative

studies in each category and will limit my discussion to them.

 

 

._/—. _

60
Category 1: Original Research

Original research maintained a low but steady profile in
professional journals throughout my twenty-year survey. As earlier

stated, this category accounted for thirty-two articles. Eegiiih

mm published one, W published ten, and not
surprisingly. WW Published the

remaining twenty-one (Fig. 5).

UI

 

 

 

 

Number of ArtIclea

 

 

Figure 5. Category of Original Reaearch: Frequency of Reader-Reaponae
Articlea by Journal

Although most years averaged 1-2 articles a year, the mid-
seventies showed a real surge in numbers for both E1 and R_T_E_. In
1976, RE published four articles dealing with research, or 20% of
their total, and in 1977, E1 published five research related articles or
50% of its total. Interestingly, Engfldfs one article appeared in 1990.
I hope this may signal a new trend for this journal. The concept of
teacher as researcher is an important one, not only to encourage

classroom teachers to see their roles as active researchers but also to

give more credibility to the new methods. If teachers know and

 

61
understand the research behind the methods, they'll be more apt to

practice them.

The nature of the research addressed in the three journals
divided into three basic subcategories: l) the nature of response and
how readers make meaning, 2) the effects of applying reader-
response theory in the classroom, and 3) a discussion of the research
itself, including how to's and historical overviews.

Category one includes sixteen articles or 50% of the total
number of research articles. As one might expect, the majority of
these (14 of 16) appeared in RIB. The first division focuses on
metacognition, or how readers make meaning and how their own
awareness of the processes they use affects that meaning. These
studies worked with the students, spanning junior high through
college. All five of these studies concluded that the more aware
readers were about the steps they went through in their reading, the
deeper their understanding. All five studies also used some form of
oral response, either think alouds, interviews, or discussion to assist
the readers in exploring their own process.

Judith Langer (R13 1990) in working with seventh and
eleventh graders focused on how readers make meaning rather than
what the responses are. She discovered that students take four
major stances: attempting to make contact with the world of the text,
being caught up in the narrative of the story, reflecting on previous
knowledge, and distancing from the story and reacting objectively to
the content or reading experience itself. Langer suggested:

. . that meaning develops at two levels simultaneously.

First, student readers have different assumptions about

62
responding to literary versus non-literary texts, and

these affect the ways in which they orient themselves
toward creating their momentary understanding as well
as their views of the potential of each piece as a whole.
At the same time, the similarities in the processes
involved in responding across the different text types
indicate that the four stances represent a range of
meaning making options that underlie developing
understandings in general-~regardless of text type. (253)
Durrant, Goodwin, and Watson (Engfigi 1990) concluded that it
is important for students to discover what they've learned and how
they've learned it. They also found that students saw their initial
writing in response to literature as their final response rather than a
means of exploring or deepening their reactions, and although the
students used most of the reading strategies at one time or another,
they may not have been aware enough of them to use them when
reading alone. These authors suggest:
A clear pedagogical implication of this would seem to be
that teachers need to give pupils adequate time for
reflection. This means somehow overcoming the pressure
of the classroom, including having to rush to "cover" the
curriculum, which are all too often used by teachers as an
excuse for demanding premature formulation of
response. (Durrant et al. 217)
Susan Hynds (RIB, 1989) found that "bringing interpersonal
constructs to literature was strongly related to the tendency to read

outside of the classroom for personal reasons" (31). Hynds found, as

e1
re

If

16.
CD
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fif
lit:
Uni
W11
(1m
We'
SUC
Col

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63
did the other researchers, that students perceived personal reading

to be much different from school reading. They saw themselves as
"story-driven in their personal reading and information-driven in
much of their school-sponsored reading" (56). Furthermore, their
perceptions of school "influence not only their stances toward texts,
but their ability to respond in a variety of modes as well" (57).
Hynds concluded that kids saw reading as a practice for something
else, and that teachers must not only help them become better
readers, but also help them make personal connections with reading
and life.

Beds and Wells (R11; 1989) also found that "children and
teachers built meaning by working together" (26), and also
emphasized the need for teachers being informed of theory and
process. In their study, college students worked with small groups of
fifth and sixth graders in literature study groups which discussed the
literature together as opposed to the teacher asking questions for
understanding. The college students became co-learners but not
without some frustration at having to give up the traditional teacher-
questioner role. They found, however, that the younger students
were able to discuss the books and raise the issues on their own. The
success of these younger students even with the relatively untrained
college students as leaders raises the question of how much better
would the discussion be if the leaders are experienced and
knowledgeable?

Both teachers and students need to be aware that they respond
differently to different texts. It is this awareness of their own

reading processes that foster growth. Teachers need to work with

64
their students, helping them to reflect on their own reading and to

make connections.

The second strand of the research articles looked at ways
responses are affected and reasons for differences. A variety of
studies considered ways response was affected by physical,
geographic, and psychological input.

Petrosky, for example, (RTE 1976) concluded that a reader's
deep sense of identity influences her responses to the literature.
Campbell Ross (RIE I978) looked at whether students responded
more favorably to literature from their own geographic region than
to literature from another area but found that the "argument for
regional locality as a literary starting point was not supported in any
clear-cut manner" (305), and Angelotti, Behnke, and Carlile published
an interesting study in 1975 relating emotional response to literature
with physical response.

Teachers, therefore, must be aware of the many external

factors that influence response and the role that the reader's sense of

identity plays. These various factors will influence individual

readers differently, and teaching methods should take into account
tllis diversity.

The third strand of research looked at developmental
differences in readers and how these differences affect response.
B each and Brunetti (m 1976) found that the age of the character in
the reading selection as well as the age of the reader affected
re Slaonse. In 1978, Beach and Wendler later found that as readers
lT‘atured, they showed a shift from immediate surface feelings to

l
or‘g-range social or psychological beliefs and goals.

 

65
Jane Zaharias' study (RTE 1986) of 166 college students

confirmed Applebee's findings of 1977 "that students' preferred
patterns of response are strongly influenced by the nature of the
texts they rea " (64). Her study suggests that most research so far
has been students' response to one work and that more needs to be '
done in looking at how genre influences response.

In addition, developmental factors affect how readers respond,
both in terms of maturity and sophistication of response. Teachers
should keep in mind that student response is affected by their
maturity levels, as well as the nature of the texts they are assigned.

In the second research category, applying research techniques
in the classroom, there was a broad variety of topics, including
looking at one specific title, to a particular genre, to exploring the use
of the workshop approach. One study by Freimuth and Jamieson
used response technique to analyze the impact of the film "The
Lottery" on eleventh and twelfth graders in order to determine
whether the film versions had a desensitizing effect toward violence.
The study concluded that it did not, but the fact that the community
wanted to ban only the film, not the story, suggests that "the medium
may be more significant than the message to some individuals"
(243). Teachers should keep this in mind when selecting various
media.

Other studies (Vardell '83; Locking '76; Cooper and Odell '76)
looked at how students' responses and particularly how teachers'
questions broaden students' responses. Vardell found that
"traditional teaching practice does not provide opportunity for

carryover of the literary response to the composing process or vice

66

versa . . . As a corollary, constant opportunities to compose stories,

filtering the literary experience through an individual view, may

provide for greater understanding in responding to literature" (51).

These studies all indicate that the level of reader involvement

affects response and again indicate the need for informed teaching.

Lacking (RIE 1976) specifically concluded, "The nature of teachers'
questions has a significant impact on the manner in which their :11
students respond to literature" (275). ' 1

The third and final category of research articles includes

discussion of the topic of research itself, including how to's, problems
0f. historical overviews, and international comparisons. Also
included in this miscellaneous category was a list of suggestions for
Possible future research and an argument for its need. These articles
all maintained the need for more research in reader-response and

Offered convincing arguments through their variety of approaches

and information.
Alan Purves, for example, (E1 1974) examined the emphasis on

literziature of ten countries and charted them according to teaching
.method approach. He found that the United States was primarily
Impersonal and content-based in focus. Candida Gillis (El 1977) in a
study of English classrooms in the US. concurred with Purves. She
found that classroom activities included study questions, teacher
lectures, interpretation and analysis, and rarely included response

Cr . . . .
eatlve actrvrtres.
It is interesting that the majority of articles dealing with

Cl
as sl'oom research appeared in the EnglihLLeemai. Also interesting

67
is that the call for more research (mostly 1971-78), coincided with

the most research articles (1976-77).
In summary, most of the research stressed the importance of

meta-cognition, or how readers make meaning. Teachers need to be

aware of their own reading and how they make meaning for

Then they need to share that process with their

themselves.
It

students, assisting them to reflect on their own meaning making.

implies the need for being informed of theory and process and

allowing for reflection. Teachers not only need to reflect, but they

need to model this reflection for their student, providing within their
classrooms sufficient time and incentive to do so. Readers need to

make personal connections with their reading, and these articles

desc=l‘il:>ed the interpersonal nature of the reading process and how

meaning is made collaboratively.

Category 2: Explanation or Discussion of Theory
My second major category, explanation or discussion of theory,

to . . . . . . .
ugl'lly subdrvrdes llltO seven issues, including the role of literature,

dis . . . . . .
cussron of transactional theory, historical overvrews, satire of

p rage ht methods, other theories, defense of theory in response to
Op p 0Sition, and introduction of a new paradigm.

Discussion of theory contained 18 articles, 13 in Englishm
2 in Emu-sh mum-9n, and 3 in W

Th
ere was no real pattern of frequency (no year had more than

an

Qt‘lefl. Only 1-2 articles appeared any given year. I think it is
Si -

ghlficant that 13 of 18 (72%) appeared in the W

dis
8%trimming the primary research into practice (Fig. 6).

 

 

 

Number of Artlcles

 

 

Figure 6. Category of Explanation of Theory: Frequency of Reader-Reaponae
Articlea by Journal

The first issue focuses on the role of literature. There were
four articles (all in E1) which argued the power and purpose of
literature in humanizing us. G. Robert Carlsen (E1 1970) discussed
the stages of reading for young people and how literature "can excite
them . . . give tangible expression and form to their rebellion . . .
[and] can confront them and force them to consider the perennial
dilemma of being alive" (657).

This same year, Walter Loban (El 1970) further defended
literature as "the only contemplative art that is required by the
schools" (1086). He contended that many teachers and even critics
have "purged themselves of emotional involvement" (1086) and
argued that this detachment leads students to reject literature. He
stated three purposes of literature: self-understanding, imaginative

illumination, and a balanced perspective of life.

69 .
Bryant Fillion (El 1981) further argued that one must interact

on a personal level to derive benefits from literature. For Fillion, the
purpose of literature is also measured in the humanizing of its
readers. He stated, "To paraphrase James Moffett's seminal
comments about language, learning literature is not learning about
literature but learning how to use literature, as a source of
experience and as a resource for personal growth" (39-40).

Six articles continued this discussion, specifically focusing on
transactional theory and the work of Louise Rosenblatt. All of these
articles discussed how the use of response theory improves both
reading and writing. In his ERIC/RC8 report, Karl Koenke (Erigfid
1984) found Louise Rosenblatt to be the recognized authority by
most.

Louise Rosenblatt (R13 1985) herself authored one of the
articles, clarifying the differences between the terms "transaction"
and "interaction," which she said represented different paradigms.
She was bothered by the use of the terms interchangeably and
somewhat heatedly argued they are not synonyms. She stressed the
scientific background of "interaction," where objects act separately on
each other with the scientist looking on, and offered as an example
billiard balls. On the other hand, she defines transaction as "an
ongoing process in which the elements or parts are seen as aspects or
phases of a total situation" (98). Rosenblatt argued that the research
design of the old paradigm needs to be changed from linear to non-
linear and endorses an ethnographic method of research.

Several articles looked at the theoretical impact reader—

response theory has had in the classroom. Deanna Bogdan (Ragga

16X
Ra
the
ex]

2151

3101

70
1984) discussed the question of "what do we do with literary

criticism now that we have engagement with the text?" (67). And
Steve Judy (E1 1978) suggested we return our focus to the drama of
literature, "as Louise Rosenblatt has reminded us, literature is a
performing art, by which she means that not only does literature
'perform' for us, we perform on it--creating meaning, creating our
own drama--as we read the printed page" (7).

Three articles gave historic overviews of theory and discussed
what we have learned from it. They spoke to the issues involved in
this changing view of reading. Vinz and Kirby (El 1988) discussed
the current research on response and how it has transferred focus
from the writer and the text to the reader and the text. They
referenced Rosenblatt, Holland, Bleich, Richards, Purves, Corcoran and
Evans, Moffett, and others, concluding, "We are led to admit that the
text does not carry hidden messages or puzzles for us to solve.
Rather, text represents only a small part of the total experience that
the reader creates through collaboration with the writer in a shared
experience" (91). Based on the implications of the research, they
asked three central questions:

l."What are the traditional and habitual ways in which

students respond to literature?"

2."What evidence do their responses signal about the

cumulative influence teachers have on student response?"
3."Can we encourage a wider range of response and still help
students make meaning out of the text?" (91)

Arthur Applebee (RE 1977) answered their second question in

another ERIC/RC8 report by quoting a 1968 dissertation by James

71

David Weiss that stated, "the approach to literature adopted by the

individual teacher does affect the content of the response from that

teacher's pupils" (256). Applebee concluded:

Literary response is an extremely complex phenomenon;
when it is combined with the complexities of the
classroom situation the pitfalls for even the most
sophisticated investigation are many. As Purves and
Beach (1972) found in their general survey of research in
response to literature, reading interests, and the teaching
of literature, virtually every study can be faulted, but as
a body of research the findings converge to allow

generalizations stronger that any one of them. (264)

Several other articles continued to dispute response theory,

defending alternate theories of reading and the importance of

content knowledge. And finally, in contrast to the arguments over

which old paradigm is right, Constance Weaver (RE 1985) offered

the possibility of an altogether new paradigm. She discussed a new,

emerging scientific paradigm, that of an organism, a process, one that

is transactional and non-linear. Weaver compared this new scientific

paradigm to the new paradigms in reading and literary theory and

connected the two through the metaphor of dance used by quantum

physicists:

Just as the universe may be viewed as fundamentally a
dance of transient forms that sparkle in and out of
existence, so meaning, the poem, may be viewed as an
ever-fluctuating dance that occurs more or less

simultaneously on and across various levels: letters,

d0:
ser
thc
p05
uni
Wh

uni

the

dis

tv:
tea
all
on

em

C0111

Off

72
words, sentences, schemata; writer, text, reader; text,

reader, and context; the present reader with other
readers, past and present; and so forth; all connected in a
multi-dimensional holarchy, an interlocking network or
web of meaning, a synchronous dance in which there is
no clear distinction between what is and what

happens. (313)

Weaver argued that the mechanistic metaphor and model has
dominated Western thought for the last three centuries and has
served us well. It now needs to be changed to allow for new
thoughts and evolutions-—the organic model. She also offered the
possibility that both metaphors are simultaneously true. "The
universe itself is seen as fundamentally an organic process within
which mechanism operates . . . both are necessary dancers in the
universal dance" (314).

What is apparent in this second category is the argument over
the changing view of reading and the various paradigms. In this
discussion of theory, authors agree that response to literature is
affected by not only the genre and choice of literature, but may be
even more affected by the individual teacher's approach to it. If a
teacher believes that the value of literature lies in authorial intent
and further views the purpose in teaching literature as the passing
on of literary cultural heritage and creating sophisticated literary
critics, her classroom approach will likely be more textual-based. If,
however, she believes that the power of literature lies in its
connection with the reader, her approach will be more experiential

or response-based, an issue that I will look at in my teacher

73
interviews. My next category looks at some of the response-based

approaches being implemented in classrooms.

Category 3: Description of Method and Application

My third category, description of method or application, also
maintained a steady presence in the journals, accounting for a total
of 84 articles. RIE included two articles, Engfig, had three, and as one
might expect because of its purpose, E1 published the remaining 79

(Fig. 7).

 

 

 

 

Number or Artlclea

 

 

Figure 7. Category of Description of Method: Frequency of Reader-Reopen»
Artielea by Journal

Overall, the seventies had the largest trend with 48 articles or
57% of the total. The eighties showed a tapering off with 29 articles
or 35%. Although the eighties were somewhat flat, the last half of
the decade showed a slight increase in numbers into the early

nineties. Still too early to predict, this may signal a return in trends.

74
In this category of talking about response, the articles divided

into four areas of focus: the changing role of the teacher since coming
to the classroom and the transfer of authority to the student,
discussion of response theory and the benefit of reading workshop
approach, the history and development of response theory within the
profession along with reasons for confusion and disagreement, and
finally a discussion of why reader response has failed to play a
bigger role in the English curriculum coupled with pleas for change.

The first area contained 12 articles discussing the changing role
of the teacher. Many focused on the need for the teacher to see the
student, not the subject matter, as the focus. The teacher should
relinquish the traditional teacher control and allow students the
authority to shape their own discussions. As Robert 'C. Small (Epgfld
1972) states, "In the traditional English program, so often condemned
but so often still encountered, the teacher spoke as school-system
appointed authority on all matters of English" (151). This demands a
shift from a skills or knowledge-based curriculum to one that is
student-centered and requires training for both the teacher and
student.

John Rouse (Engfl 1988) described a teacher as "one who gives
not instruction but provocation" (88). This shifting role requires
some groundwork on the part of the teacher. It is neither normal
nor comfortable for teacher or students. Students must be trained in
the theory and vocabulary of response. They must also be convinced
of the value of their opinions and often trained in their ability to

form them.

75
Both teacher and students must view discussion of literature as

a collaborative and infinite process. Perhaps Phyllis A. Muldoon (El
1990) said it best in reflecting on her own experience in

restructuring her courses in order to teach students to think. "I have
had to change my role from that of a leader always on center stage to
that of a prober, guide, problem-poser, resource person, and
strategist. In these roles I help students increase their competence
as learners--not as parrots, empty pages, sponges, or quiet
stenographers. I, too, have become a learner" (35).

The second and largest area was on promoting response theory
and extolling the benefits of using a reader's workshop approach in
the classroom. Building on those articles which discussed the
transfer of authority from the teacher to the student, these articles
sought to further expand our understanding of response theory.
They further attempt to convince the reader (teacher?) of the
importance of restructuring the traditional curriculum. Because of
the effort required on the teachers' part to effect this change, those
arguments must be convincing.

Roderic Botts (El 1971) also felt that what we want our
students to be able to do and how we conduct our classes doesn't
match, believing the traditional classroom design makes students too
isolated and dependent on teachers. "The high school student
likewise learns that literature has nothing to do with life outside of
school--in spite of our efforts to relate literature to life. More often
than not he learns that literature is something contained in a book

too heavy to carry home at night" (Botts 90).

76
Carol Kuykendall (E1 1972) in a further discussion of James

Moffet's student centered approach and its importance to curriculum
design stated, "it is the structure of the subject that must be adjusted
to the structure of the learner, not the other way around" (716).

Jerome McGovern (E1 1972) discussed how we beat the joy out
of our students by having them read and discuss books and topics
before they're ready to or before they've experienced similar
situations themselves. He stated, "teachers seem intent on
destroying the idea of reading for the fun of it" (1190). He further
urged:

We must stop assuming that it is an absolute good for the
intelligent student to discuss the symbolic representation
of what he's experienced in reality, to manipulate the
concept of tragedy before he had a concept of his own
self. We must stop making young people sound as if they
have the wisdom of the ages. We must give back to them
what are the prerogatives of the young. (1190)

Other articles further endorsed the use of response as a
humanizing tool. "This human touch is much needed in our
classrooms; the relaxed comfortable atmosphere that real laughter
suggests and engenders is a significant element for the nurturing of
learning" (Milner 34). Joan Kelleher (E1 1975) further argued in
favor of individual instruction to counter the effect of a de-
personalized, high tech society. "If teachers encourage students to
question answers, rather than answer questions, the students quickly

see that learning is primarily their own responsibility" (30).

77
Clearly, authors of these studies feel that the role of the teacher

and the traditional concept of classroom must change. Twenty-two
of the articles in this category were directed at assisting the teacher
in accomplishing this overwhelming task (47%). New techniques
emerged including individualized reading, small groups, learning
centers, student/teacher conferences, problem solving, and role
playing. Response activities included projects, journal writing,
response logs, readers theatre, and other activity alternatives.

Suddenly, in incorporating response theory, the teacher is faced
with meeting the needs of thirty students at a time, all of whom are
at different levels of reading development and sophistication. The
teacher, to meet these individual needs, finds it necessary to juggle a
huge repertoire of techniques.

The confusion within the profession resulting from the influx of
all this new material was inevitable, and in this third area, fifteen
articles spoke to it. These articles represented a variety of
viewpoints, but most sought to lower the anxiety level of the
classroom teachers caught in the midst of this change.

James E. Miller, Jr. in his NCT'E Presidential Address of 1970
called for the profession to drop their debates over teaching
approaches to literature:

In literature, English teachers have been joined too long
in the battle over critical method, over whether to use a
historical-biographical approach or to use a critical-
analytical--or Freudian, or archetypal, or sociological.

All approaches are wrong: there should be plunges ahead

«immersion and total experiencing. English teachers

7 8
have kept their eyes trained too long on a series of classic

texts constituting the tradition, and have felt it their duty
in the preservation of the tradition to pound it somehow
into the heads and the hearts of their students; and very
little has penetrated the heads and even less the hearts.
The problem is where we have fixed our gaze. We must
turn from the text to the student, and we must consider
our primary task the education of his imagination--or, in
the Emersonian sense, the bringing of robust health to his
imagination (197). Let the "new kind of communication"
commence; let the "continuing dialog" begin. Let us start
our work together to restore health to the individual and
the collective imagination. (Miller 198)

The early seventies saw the profession less than united in its
methodologies and theories. Two years after Miller's address,
Douglas Frame (E1 1973) responded to the despair of those in the
profession. After attending a conference in Britain, he was dismayed
by the lack of focus and purpose in the profession:

It's just that if what I saw and heard is a representative
sample of what went on, teachers of English as a group
have lost any sense of identity; they can no longer
explain even to one another what it is they suppose
themselves to be doing or why. Worst of all, there seems
to be considerable reluctance even to admit the existence
of this identity crisis; many have simply given up. (231)
Vernon Smith (E1 1979) offered his personal perspective on the

English profession but apparently had also fallen victim to the

7 9
encroaching despair. "The 1977 NSSE Yearbook W

English confirms for me that there has been no revolution in the
teaching of English, nor is one expected in the remainder of this
century" (84).

The eighties found other professional leaders attempting to
identify reasons for lack of success. Dwight Burton (R1 1980) stated
that despite the traditional dominance of literature in the curriculum,
schools have never been very successful in teaching it (30). He
continued, "The major reason for these failings, I think, is that few
programs in literature are based on clear rationales, clear theories of
literature" (31).

In the mid-eighties, James R. Squire (E1 1985) discussed the
current lack of agreement in the purpose of English and the kind of
literary experience that students should have. He offered
suggestions for what teachers should do while waiting for a
redefinition, including a close look at the traditional literary canon:

What these illustrations suggest is the need for re-
examining the vast body of literature, established and
contemporary, to identify for young people living in our
post-technological age those works of the past and
present most likely to elicit rich literary response. The
selection taught to all children should not only meet
criteria of excellence, but should be those works likely to
speak most directly to all of our children. (Squire 210)

The end of the eighties continued the discussion of teacher
goals versus student goals. In 1988, Robert E. Probst claimed that

teachers still viewed their goals in terms of teaching skills and

80
strongly reasoned why those goals should be modified to reflect the

theories of Rosenblatt:
If we accept the idea that literature ought to be
significant, that readers have to assimilate it and work
with it, that transforming it into knowledge is more
significant than memorizing the definitions of technical
terms, then we need to find some ways of bringing
readers and the text together, and of forcing upon
readers the responsibility for making meaning of text . . .
But if meaning is a human act rather than a footlocker
full of dusty facts, then we must focus attention on the
act of making meaning rather than simply on the
accumulation of data. ("Dialogue" 38)

This most recent twenty year period was certainly a time of turmoil

and challenge.

The final area included nine articles which attempt to define
what are the roadblocks to professional change. Interestingly, all but
two articles accepted failure as a foregone conclusion.

Theodore W. Hipple addressed the roadblocks in his article,
"Eliminating the Negative in English Teaching" (El 1971), stating:

Literature is too rich, has too much to offer, to permit
our sacrilege by reducing it to the irreducible and then
testing on that. Let's focus our evaluative efforts on
broad ideas and, by doing so, allow students to make
differing responses to literature which we selected, after
all, because we wanted the literature to affect our
students. (375)

8 1
Charles Cooper (E1 1971) blamed both the collegiate

discouragement of personal response and also the secondary
teachers' basic misunderstanding of the adolescent audience.
Because of this misunderstanding of audience, Cooper felt secondary
teachers have attempted to teach their students as upper level
college students by using critical analysis. "Regrettably, many of
them have ignored their own intuitions about their audience and
about response to literature" (1063).

Other articles cited lack of training, lack of reading materials,
administrative control, and basic differences in teachers' views of the
purpose of teaching literature based on their professional
preparation and personal schooling experience. Suzanne Howell (E1
1977) stated, "Whether or not you accept the idea that student
response should play a greater role in the teaching/study of
literature depends on your concept of learning, of literature, and of
the human being" (42).

One article was a personal testimonial from Gary L. McLaughlin
(E1 1981) who found Rosenblatt's response theory helped him
connect and make sense of his own teaching theory. He stated that
response theory allowed him to sort through and make sense of what
he called a "shotgun approach to teaching" (22).

Although McLaughlin's testimonial was high praise, there was
an equally passionate article at the other end of the spectrum. Philip
Sbaratta (El 1978) discussed his experience of teaching an extension
class in a local high school and his being dismayed at discovering a
set of grammar tests, objective literature tests, and a set of

compositions graded only on correctness. His perception that the real

8 2
profession was reflected in the pages of EngRsiLjeninal was

shattered. He described himself transported back to his high school
experience of 1958. "I had been through this course myself--the
endless grammar tests, the pointless compositions, and the formulaic
literature tests. But so much has happened since 1958. The Engiim
Jenna], said so" (15). He continued, "And now I wonder how
indicative W is of what is going on in the average
English classroom. Maybe this classroom in a suburban high school is
the real world. Maybe not that much has really changed in the
teaching of English afterall" (15).

Sbaratta was distressed by this possibility and admitted that
he may have been overreacting based on one experience, but he was
clearly disillusioned and joined the ranks of those questioning the
profession.

In summary, the role of the teacher is clearly changing. The
classroom is slowly becoming collaborative. There is a shift in
authority from the teacher to the student, as well as a shift from a
knowledge or skills based to a process based curriculum. These
major shifts do not come easy. They require retraining of both
students and teachers. It takes time and requires risk. Goals do not
always match practice, and for many in schools, there is no
connection between literature and pleasure reading. All this change
creates disagreement, fear, frustration, and dismay, a point to be

discussed further in the interviews with teachers.

83

Category 4: Classroom Practice (Specific plans and
activities)

My fourth category, classroom practice, included those articles
which provide specific lesson plans and activities for teachers to
implement in their classrooms. This category was by far the largest
in the study with 140 articles. EngiiequnLnai published 136 of
those articles, EngljeLEeneajjen published 4, and mm

Wish published none. I was not surprised to discover

that E], accounted for 97% of the articles, given the journal's focus on

secondary classroom methods and pedagogy (Fig. 8).

 

 

 

 

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Figure 8. Category of Clauroorn Practice:
Frequency of Reader-Ream Articlea by Journal

The timeline again showed the seventies out producing the
eighties. The seventies included 65 articles; the eighties dropped off
to 52. Even though there was an overall decrease, the drop was less

significant than that in the category of research. Also, if the last two

84
years of the decade (1988-89) are dropped with their 19 respective

articles, there remain 25 articles which may be more indicative of
the decade.

The resurgence of articles in the last two years of the eighties
continues into the early nineties, with 1990 and 1991 producing 19
articles. I don't feel that this shift toward reader-response is cyclical
as many others have suggested about other educational trends.
Rather, I believe it is a slowly growing theory which may have
growth followed by a drop off, though never losing completely all the
ground gained. Despite its ups and downs, reader-response is
steadily growing, and only time will tell if my hypothesis is correct.
I hope these last four years indicate a positive trend and reflect a
renewed interest on the part of the profession in reader-response
theory.

Although all articles in this category focused on classroom
application of response activities, there were several topics that
emerged. In addition to describing specific activities, some authors
included their rationale for reader-response, still trying to convince
their doubting colleagues. There were 32 articles in this first group.
The second classification was the largest with 105 articles. These
included specific lesson plans and various activities. The third
classification discussed the topic of evaluation and assessment when
using response activities. Ironically, there was only one article that
addressed this topic.

Let me begin with the articles that combined activities with
rationale. Eleven articles promoted the need for subjective response

and encouraged the teacher to focus on the student rather than the

85
text. In an article entitled "Exploring Response to Literature" (Engfld

1972) Stephen Judy attempted to allay the fears of the classroom
teacher regarding the loss of critical analysis skills. He said, "I also
found, interestingly enough, that as the students became more
skilled at making personal responses, they tended to come back to
the matters of criticism that many teachers fear may be lost if one
emphasizes subjective reactions" (36). Ten other articles also
promoted beginning with personal response in responding to
literature and discussed the various advantages.

Larry Andrews (E1 1977) stated that any critical consideration
of the text must be considered in reaction to the reader:

Too much emphasis upon the text can leave little room
for a fifteen-year-old to become engaged in the
experience of literature . . . If we can accept our students'
overt responses to literature as statements of tentative
belief, as means of giving voice to the thinking process,
then discussions in literature classes become a setting for
the gradual shaping of responses. (60)

Alan C. Purves (EngEfi 1971) continued discussing the
importance of subjective response. "The raw, dumb response is not
to be shunned, but to be recognized as the well-spring of all that
could come from it” (119).

Most of the articles in stressing the importance of developing a
student's voice also mentioned the benefits of a growing mutual
respect between the teacher and the student.

The next subset included 17 articles that somehow emphasized

connections. Literature connections mentioned included those to self,

86
to others, to community, to history, and to other literature. They

stressed that encouraging students to reach out and connect with the
world makes literature come alive, and students see a purpose to it.
Many of these authors recommended starting with the familiar and
moving to the unfamiliar, and their literature activities were often
designed in thematic units to represent their intended connections.

Five articles focused specifically on the dynamics of the
reading/writing connection that are so adaptable with response. "I
realized that, in my classes, my students had been readers of
literature, but rarely had they been writers of literature" (Warawa
50). As Warawa implies, reading literature from a totally objective
approach can make for some dry reading. Reading and writing
should be integrated in order to derive the most benefits from each.

The second classification included those articles which simply
shared activities and lesson plans without providing rationale. As I
said before, these accounted for the majority of articles with 105 in
total. Fifty-five articles included plans with lists of multiple
response activities. These activities were often done in tandem with
others, and students were allowed to choose from possible offerings,
including small groups, individual reading, personal research, fiction
writing, journals, and creative dramatics.

Several other articles focused on a single response activity.
Small group work was the topic of four articles. Individualized
reading accounted for three, extended personal research, two, and
original fiction writing, two. The use of journals and reading logs was
discussed in twelve articles. I was most surprised in the area of

creative dramatics. Five articles focused entirely on the benefits of

87
reading aloud, and twenty articles decried the benefits of role-

playing, chorale reading, and readers theatre.

The final classification in this category dealt with the problems
of evaluation and assessment when using the reader-response
approach. How does a teacher translate a subjective response into
objective measurement? Sarah Snider (E1 1978) described her use of
a Likert Scale to measure affective response after her poetry unit,
although she admitted she uses it primarily to evaluate her own
future planning of lessons (38). The absence of articles dealing with
this topic do not indicate a lack of concern, but rather a lack of
answers. Again, the problem of assessment may stem from teachers'
incomplete understanding of the complex theory of reader-response.

In summary, the number of articles was greater in the
seventies than the eighties. Though less frequent, the articles
_ dealing with classroom practice were still heavy with rationale in an
effort to convince fellow colleagues of the value of reader-response.
Most articles also stressed subjective response, developing student
voice, and making reading and writing connections. The problems of

evaluation and assessment persist.

Category 5: Reviews and Replies

My final category, reviews and replies, includes reviews of
literature published both for professionals and students. This
category included only thirteen articles in the three journals over
twenty years. Although the frequency of articles was low, their
numbers were equally distributed between the two decades (Fig. 9).

 

 

 

 

 

Number of Articles

 

Figure 9. Reviews and Replies:
bequency of Render-Response Articles by Journal

The articles fell basically into four areas: reviews of Rosenblatt,
reviews of Purves, reviews of other selected professional literature,
and reviews of student literature, including anthologies and young
adult titles.

I created the first area for those authors who reviewed Louise
Rosenblatt's work directly. There were two reviews, both appearing
in 1980. The first review, written by Hugh Agee, appeared in English
Educatinn for Wm (1978). and the
second, by Linda Shadiow in W, reviewed MM
Mon (1976). This third edition of W
marked the anniversary of almost forty years since its first
appearance in 1938. Both reviews included high praise for her work
and its significance in the educating of teachers in the reading
process. Both reviews mention her going beyond the theoretical and
showing how her response theory translates into the classroom.
Shadiow (El 1980) stated, "There are certain books in my personal

library that I have come to personify as omnipresent teachers/

89
mentors rather that valued resources. WM,

Louise Rosenblatt's eloquent defense of the student-reader in my
classroom, is one of these" (75).

I formed a second category for the direct review of Alan C.
Purve8' study, WW One article in
W May 1974. contained two

separate reviews by Dwight L. Burton and Margaret J. Early. Both
reviews commented on Purves' surprising results which concluded
the schools have less impact on the development of reading interest
and ability than earlier thought.

Burton stated, "The central finding of the study undoubtedly
will leave many teachers of literature shaken, though perhaps we
should not be too surprised by it" (17). He continued, "Purves
concludes that the ability to comprehend or interpret literature is a
subset of reading ability, less the result of any particular school
curricular effort than the result of a favourable home and school
environment, and that interest, too, is largely the result of a
conducive home environment" (17).

Early added to the discussion by quoting Purves. "Where the
school has an effect is in the inculcation of a preferred set of
responses" (qtd. in Early 21). Both Burton and Early suggested that
we should do more follow up research in this area.

My third set included reviews of and responses to other
selected professional literature. Here, twenty-one books were
mentioned in seven articles, four in the early 70's, one in the early
80's, and two in the late 80's and early 90's. As with many of the

other categories of articles about response, the majority were found

90
in the early 70's. The most interesting was a list of significant

publications put together as a suggested list for summer professional
reading. In May 1971, W's list included twelve titles
published between 1964-1970, several of which deal with response,
including the work of Ken Goodman, John Dixon, Louise Rosenblatt, G.
Robert Carlsen, James Moffett, Walter Loban, Ken Macrorie, James R.
Squire, and others. These collected titles, perhaps ironically, remain
mainstays in professional reading.

My final area of reviews included those that directly review
literature for students, including literature series anthologies as well
as young adult titles. In the January 1985 issue of E1, Mark Gulesian
and Stephanie McConachie reviewed the three literature series of
Ginn, Macmillan, and McDougal Littel. They evaluated the eighth and
eleventh grade texts for each in terms of their inclusion of response
theory. Sadly, none rated outstanding. Macmillan fared the best.
Although it didn't include much response, the series at least
acknowledged it. Ginn also had some response activities, but the few
they had were placed at the end, rather than the beginning, of the
literature experience. McDougal Littel had almost entirely a critical
analysis focus. It is discouraging to find that in the mid-1980's, the
major publishers are still not responding to the response theory.
Clearly, the textbooks‘ focus on analysis has impact in the field. This
along with many other roadblocks will be discussed at greater length

in a later chapter.

91
Summary

In summary, reading ability is more a result of home
environment than school effort or curriculum. What school does
affect is how students respond, and much of that is influenced by the
adopted literature text. Sadly, literature series still do not reflect
response theory in their anthologies.

What does all of this mean for the classroom teacher? What
answers, if any, does this provide? First of all, in response to my
initial question, "Is reader-response being written about in
professional journals?" the answer is yes. Reader-response theory is
being addressed both in research and application. Although the
number of research articles was few (averaging 1.5 per year), they
were there.

I feel it is significant that the discussion of pedagogy in the
journal W was especially weak ( .6 per year). mid
plays a larger role in teacher education, and, therefore, should reflect
the concerns of the profession. Unlike the other two journals, M
did not focus more on reader-response in the seventies and then
drop off in the eighties but remained relatively consistent in its lack
of coverage. Does this indicate that our teacher education programs
still do not reflect the latest research? Does it indicate that W is
more concerned with composition than reading? Or possibly, those
involved in reader-response research and practice on the university
level recognize the need for articulation with secondary teachers, and
W provides this shared forum.

Second, what types of articles appeared, and who were their

intended audiences? Those articles written were predominantly

92
focused on classroom application. Many of the articles fell in the

realms of either the textual or experiential perspectives, or some
combination of both. The theory was there, but most often combined
as rationale for specific activities. With the majority of articles being
published in E1, the intended audience was the classroom teacher.
Authorship seemed to be evenly divided between secondary and
university levels. Few articles were co-authored, and I would like to
see more collaboration between professionals from both levels.
Question three looked at the primary intended audience for
these articles, the classroom teachers, and how they make use of the
journals. In the next chapter I look at ten individual teachers, their
reading histories, education, and professional lives. I look at what
impact response theory has had on their lives and their teaching, as
well as what they see as their primary goals and what they perceive

as roadblocks in their teaching of literature.

Chapter 4: Interviews and Questionnaires

In attempting to discover what effect reader-response theory
and other factors influenced classroom methods, I completed the
third strand of my research, the individual teacher questionnaires
and interviews (Appendices D and E). As I mentioned before, the ten
teachers I examined were from three mid-Michigan schools: one
rural, one urban, and one suburban. Each of the ten teachers
completed both the questionnaire and the follow-up interview.

Louise Rosenblatt, in her transactional theory of reading,
believes that readers bring past experience to the reading which
enters into the reader's transaction with the text in the process of
creating meaning. Therefore, teachers' own reading experiences
should be reflected in their teaching. Accepting this hypothesis, I
attempted to determine those factors which influenced teachers'
approaches to literature in their classrooms. I examined their
reading histories, their teacher education, their present methods, and
any external factors they felt impacted or limited their teaching. The
interviews covered the same general areas but allowed the teachers
to explain their answers and to tell their own stories using personal
anecdotes.

In the first area of the questionnaire, Biographical Information,
I asked the basic information of age, teaching experience, level of
education, etc. In their reading histories, I looked at participants'
own experiences with reading as secondary classroom students,
including the number of years English was required, basic curriculum

models, and usual methods of instruction. In addition to their

93

94
student experiences, I also looked at their present reading habits,

including how often they read for pleasure outside of class, what
types of reading they do, and how they approach or respond to this
personal reading. In this part of the study, I was attempting to
discover if their personal approaches to reading were similar to their
classroom approaches, recognizing the importance of personal
reading in legitimizing the emotional connections to reading that are
often not acknowledged. It is these emotional connections that allow
us to develop attachments, to love reading, and to become lifelong
readers.

Next, I examined their teacher education and professional
affiliations. Were the theories of reading and approaches to
literature that they were taught the same as those they experienced
as students, or were they different? How did their high school
experience compare to their college experience? If they were
different, which had greater influence on their teaching? I also
looked at professional affiliation, attempting to discover what effect,
if any, continued professional affiliation had on teaching methods.

Next, I looked at teachers' current classroom practice by asking
the participants to rate their goals for the teaching of literature. I
also asked them to identify their instructional methods, typical
response activities, presentation methods, and assessment methods.

Finally, I investigated possible external pressures such as lack
of time, isolation, administration, parents, student demands, SAT or
other tests, press and media, or state curriculum guidelines.
Teachers were asked to what extent they felt these or other external

factors interfered with or somehow affected their teaching.

95
Initially, I tallied all of the written questionnaires in order to

discover if there was a typical teacher portrait. Next, I separated the
participants by schools to see if there was a difference by location.
First, I will describe the results of the overall tally of the

questionnaire.

The Typical Teacher

Based on the results of the questionnaire, I've attempted to
provide a profile of the teachers in this study. Through the use of
this profile, the reader will be able to determine in what ways the
individual teachers meet or deviate from the norm. What are we
able to generalize about these ten teachers? Are there similarities
that consistently appear? I realize that I can only generalize for

these ten teachers, but hope that this provides insight for others.

Biographical Information

Survey participants ranged in age from 25-55, with my ”typical
teacher" being 45 years old. Of the ten teachers interviewed, seven
were female and three were male. Teaching experience ranges from
3-28 years for an average of 20 years. This compares with a
national average of 15 years and a Michigan average of 19 years'
experience. These teachers meet an average of 5-6 classes a day.
Individual student contact ran from 80-180 students per day,
averaging 118. Per hour, classes ranged in size from 18-35 for an
average of 24 students per class.

In addition to their regular teaching duties, teachers listed

professional responsibilities, including being department chair,

96
foreign language dual assignment, Health, Substance, and

Reproductive Health Coordinator, as well as various professional
affiliations.

Interests or hobbies beyond teaching included many activities
from movies to golf to fishing. The number one named hobby was
reading, named by nine out of ten participants.

In determining which factors influence teaching, I looked at
several areas, including the teacher as student. My hypothesis was
that teachers teach as they were taught. I also looked at their
personal reading habits to determine if they approached literature in
the same manner in and out of their classrooms. Professional
involvement and education became another focus. Did level of
education or professional involvement affect teacher performance?
And finally, what are the external pressures that enter into our

classrooms?

Teacher as Student

My average teacher's experience as a secondary English
student included class sizes of 27 in an English 9, 10, ll, 12
curriculum. This typical student was required to take four years of
English for which the primary focus was literature and grammar,
with composition running a close third. For most, literature and
composition were taught separately, and required literature classes
generated a short canon of 25 titles, six of which were Shakespeare.
Interestingly, three of the interviewees couldn't recall any titles.
They knew they had read several books, knew they had been

"classics,” but couldn't remember anything about them.

97
Literature covered in class was most often found in class

anthologies with an occasional novel or paper back used as a
supplement. Rarely were young adult novels used or any other
supplemental materials. The primary teaching method involved
lecture, followed by teacher-directed questions and discussion.

When asked as students to respond to literature, many recalled
being asked to summarize, answer study questions, and write essays.
Reading journals, personal writing, or creative dramatics were rarely
or never used. Occasionally, when students were directed to write in
conjunction with reading, most often it was study questions related
to content. Even so, in these writings, the emphasis was 50%
correctness and 50% content.

Their teachers' primary method of presenting literature was to
assign the material, usually with all students reading the same titles.
Most often, students were required to read outside of class. Only
occasionally was literature read aloud in class.

Students were evaluated on their reading most often with
objective tests and essay tests. Portfolios, surveys, teacher
conferences, and other alternate evaluation methods were rarely, if
ever, used.

In spite of this apparent impersonal/standardized approach,
the majority of teachers indicated that they had "special" English

teachers and cited those teachers' enthusiasm as the reason.

Teacher as Reader
In terms of personal reading, my typical teacher regularly

reads for pleasure outside of the classroom. Time spent ranges from

98
4-10 hours a week and averages 6.5 hours. Most pointed out that

their reading increased dramatically over the summer, and many
stated that they put pleasure reading on the back burner or felt
guilty about reading during the school year if there were other
important things to do.

Choice in personal reading regularly included novels,
magazines, and newspapers. Occasionally, they chose best sellers,
nonfiction, and poetry.

The reasons they gave for why reading gave them the most
pleasure included gaining new ideas, hope, or escaping reality. The
average teacher claims to regularly discuss pleasure reading with
friends, colleagues, and students, although most of this discussion
appears to be limited to the sharing of titles read rather than
personal response to them. She also regularly identifies with
characters, actions, or issues in her reading and relates readings to
earlier readings.

The definition of literature for these teachers ranged from "any

printed material” to ”prose or verse of significance."

Teacher Training and Professional Affiliations

Reflecting on their professional education, all indicated an
emphasis on literature. Most had methods classes but felt they were
not worthwhile. Methods classes involved designing lesson plans,
writing discussion questions, study questions, and literature exams.
All felt that their professors and the methods taught did not reflect

the realities of the classroom.

99
Most were not taught to teach writing, nor were they taught

how to teach reading. For the average teacher, the approaches to
literature learned in methods classes were not used by professors of
their literature classes.

Again, in spite of the general dissatisfaction with the quality of
their professional education, all indicated that they had a
memorable/outstanding teacher in their undergraduate experience.
At this level, the outstanding attributes were patience and personal
attention.

Because of their dissatisfaction with their teacher preparation
and their desire or need for realistic training, the majority have
pursued degrees or education beyond their bachelor degrees.
Although literature was again a major emphasis in this continuing
education, reading theory and writing theory were significantly
represented.

In addition to continuing their education, these teachers also
maintained professional involvement. All teachers are members of a
general teachers' association, in this case, Michigan Education
Association (MBA). In contrast, only half of those interviewed
currently belong to a subject matter teaching association, most often

National Council of Teachers of English (N C'I'E). The average teacher

only occasionally reads MW rarely reads English
Mitigation. and never reads WW Half

of the teachers attended some form of professional conference in the

last year.

100
Present Values and Methods in Teaching

My average teacher meets five classes a day, better than half
of those classes having a literature focus. The workload of preparing
lessons and grading papers averages 15-30 hours a week outside of
class.

When asked to rate eleven goals for the teaching of literature
from most to least important, there was surprising agreement. It is
important to recognize that although teachers rated bottom goals, it
doesn't necessarily mean these goals are unimportant to them. The
results are as follows:

Top four goals for teaching literature:

To teach help the students understand themselves and the

human condition

To encourage students to develop lifelong reading skills and

habits

To develop the critical faculties and analytic skill of the

students

To encourage students to view reading as a pleasurable activity
Bottom four goals for teaching literature:

To develop the students' ability to discuss the variety of

literary forms that are around them

To acquaint the students with their literary cultural heritage

To improve the literary tastes of students

To teach the students the history of literature

Clearly, the average teacher's goals are student centered rather

than content centered, but actual classroom instruction showed

101
several contradictions. My average teacher still modeled instruction

practices on personal experience (taught as they were taught) but
tended to include more student centered activities and flexibility.

Anthologies are still the primary source of literature, but
novels and paperbacks, including young adult material, are also
regularly used. Small group activities are regular features in the
classroom. Although strict lecture is used less often, still favored
methods include teacher led-discussion and questioning.

Favored student responses are reading journals and discussion.
Creative writing, summarizing, essays, and projects appear
occasionally, but creative dramatics, readers theatre, role playing,
etc. still are rarely, if ever, used.

Read alouds occur occasionally in presenting literature, but
most students still all read the same assigned material, and all read it
outside of class. Occasionally, students are allowed to choose from
selected material but are rarely allowed free choice.

My average teacher assesses student work primarily through
tests, discussion, and homework. Portfolios, surveys, and conferences

rarely are used.

External Pressures

My average teacher rarely meets with other colleagues to plan
the teaching of literature or just to share and discuss ideas. Students
regularly offer input about materials, but administrators, parents,
and other teachers rarely offer suggestions or complaints.
Occasionally, the average teacher adjusts her plans to these

complaints. The average teacher claims little pressure or influence

102
from press and media coverage, declining test scores, state

guidelines, or the back to basics movement. However, individual
comments, such as Leigh's comment about tests being developed by
non-teachers, or Howard's contention that his professional freedom is
somehow related to the school's high test scores, and that his
autonomy would disappear if for any reason the scores went down,
reflect an unquestionable defensiveness.

Next, I will present brief case studies of the ten classroom
teachers used in my study, combining information from their

completed questionnaires and personal interviews.

Case Studies

School A:

This small, rural school system is the only junior-senior high
school in this town with a student enrollment of 350. The town,
primarily a blue-collar, agricultural, bedroom community, has a

population of 1523.

Will

My first interview was with Will, who is forty-four years old
and has been teaching in this rural public school for 23 years. He
described his own high school experience as fairly traditional, with
the emphasis on expository writing--mechanics, grammar, and

vocabulary for three out of his four years.

103
The single focus on skills was so emphasized that Will states,

"so I really had a warped conception of what composition was when I
went to college. I had a hard time at first."

Will went into teaching in a roundabout manner. He enjoyed
his own high school experience and was a successful student.
Beginning with special education and moving to lithography, Will
zeroed in through two neighbors who happened to be English majors.
"I realized that I was interested in talking about literature and
reading it, and so I decided to change my major and go into English."

He discusses his early teaching years. "And I had no idea how
to teach writing, no idea how to teach reading. I was mostly teaching
as I had been taught, except that I was trying not to do some of the
things that these people [his teachers] were doing." Will felt so
frustrated, he almost left the profession. Instead, he ended up going
back to school and studied the teaching of English and media. It was
in these graduate classes that he finally regained the confidence as a
writer that he had lost in college.

Since this additional education, Will's theories of writing and
reading have changed. He believes that his school is doing a better
job in teaching basic reading skills. "I think that I have seen
students' reading levels get better."

He expresses his own theory of reading in the following
manner. "I think when you can relate to certain texts, you can get
insight on behavior. I think the more you read, the better you read,
and the broader you read, the more open you become to new ideas."

In spite of his students' improved reading skills, Will

acknowledges many changes in their attitudes. Students are reading

104
better but reading less. "I think kids are more sophisticated now in a

lot of ways because they watch so much t.v. But they don't read.
They don't read nearly as much as we used to. They read okay.
They choose not to read."

In terms of his own reading, Will is a steady reader, spending
8-10 hours a week reading non-fiction, magazines, and newspapers.
He states, "I read most of what I read with the ideas in the back of
my mind for the potential use of them." When questioned about
pleasure reading he admitted, "As far as pleasure reading, it's almost
when I think about it, that comes last, and I feel, sometimes, guilty
about it. It's like you're wasting time.”

Will confesses to leaving most of his pleasure reading for
summer but even then struggles with the guilt of reading for
pleasure, tending to choose works that are more challenging, more
work. Ironically, what he chooses as pleasure reading sometimes has
the opposite effect. He tells of his recent project, reading Joseph
Campbell's Wm. "After reading that, you don't really
care about reading for a while," he states.

Will has remained professionally involved. He is currently a
member of Michigan Council of Teachers of English and regularly
reads Wm. He also attends a yearly language arts
conference.

Will sees many external pressures affecting the classroom
teacher. He wishes more paperback books were available in the
school library and admits that programs like PA 25 and MEAP steal
from precious class time. He is optimistic about their intrusion,

however. "You tend to become complacent if you don't have

105
somebody that you have to rationalize what you're doing." He feels,

however, that most of his pressure is self-imposed, and that
perfectionism is a characteristic trait of the profession. As a teacher,
Will feels he is never totally prepared, can never do enough, and
always feels somewhat lacking.

Despite these negatives, Will would probably choose a teaching
career in English again. "I think it's probably more work than any of
the other areas, but there is more opportunity for variety, and more

control over what you're doing and how you do it. It's a challenge."

Linda

Linda is forty-nine and has been teaching for twenty-eight
years in this rural public school. She also describes her own high
school experience as fairly typical. Four years of English was
required, and curriculum focused on literature, composition, and
grammar. Although writing was regularly done in conjunction with
literature, that writing was most often essays, graded on grammar
and punctuation.

Linda always wanted to be a teacher. ”There was never any
doubt in my mind," she says. At first, she admits wanting to teach on
the elementary level but soon realized she preferred older students.
"Basically, I didn't want to be cooped up in a classroom all day with
the same thirty kids all the time, but I still thought I was meant to
be a teacher, and that's what I wanted to do. Because I liked reading
and English so much, I just gravitated toward English."

Early teaching years brought Linda 3 dose of reality. She

describes her teaching method as developing through trial and error

106
more than anything. "When I first started teaching, I thought I was

going to stand up in front of the high school classes and lecture like
my college professors had done, and I soon found out that didn't
work. And then I began to find out what kinds of things did work,
and so I tried different things with every class, every year."

Linda feels that students have changed over the course of her
career:

Most of my kids, the majority of them, just don't show
any interest at all, no matter what I do. I could stand up
here on my head, but they just don't seem to have the
enthusiasm for learning, and they certainly don't seem to
have the motivation to go beyond anything that I ask
them to do. If I give an assignment, they do the bare
minimum requirements of that assignment.

Linda admits her undergraduate education did not prepare her
for teaching. "Of my thirty-hour major, I'm going to say 26 of those
hours were literature, and four were grammar." Despite her
recognition of this early lack of training, Linda has not felt the need
for additional education beyond her BA. She explains that she
learned both subject matter and methods in her first years of
teaching from her more experienced colleagues. "I would have been
real happy if I could have walked into a situation and taught all
American Lit. classes. I would have been in seventh heaven, but as
it was, I was teaching one hour of American Lit., and the rest of the
time I was studying harder than the kids were."

Linda's goal for her students is for them to become lifelong

readers. Because of her own love of reading she tells them:

107
One of my greatest pleasures in my life is being able to

escape, sometimes the realities of life, the pain, the
suffering, the hard times when you're unhappy. To
escape into a novel, and sometimes just having that
reprieve from whatever it is will make you able to come
back and face that thing so much better, but you need to
have an escape mechanism that is a positive one, and I
can't think of anything more positive than reading.

According to Linda, people read for two main reasons, to be
informed and for pleasure.

Although she doesn't feel that teaching has changed that much,
Linda does feel that the students have changed a lot. She states that
much more of her time is spent disciplining rather than teaching. "I
don't teach that much differently than I did thirty years ago. I still
do the same things I've always done, it's just that I'm using up a lot
more of my teaching time disciplining than I ever did before, and
trying to maintain classroom control and management."

Regarding her personal reading, Linda much prefers pleasure
reading over all other. "If it isn't pleasure reading, I will read
through it as fast as I possibly can . . . If I'm pleasure reading, on the
other hand, then I just take my time and really enjoy it. She, too,
saves most of her pleasure reading for summer. "In fact, I kind of
resent it when school starts, and I have to give up my pleasure
reading because I simply don't have time to do it."

Linda has chosen not to be professionally involved. Although
she belonged to NCTE for the first 2-3 years of her career, she is no
longer a member. She occasionally reads MW at school

108
but rarely reads other professional journals or materials. In the last

year, she has attended several general conferences or training
sessions, although she has not attended any related to English or
language arts teaching. She remembers English conferences in
California and states, "I don't know if Michigan has an English
teachers' convention; if they do, I've never been to it."

Linda sees many external pressures affecting the profession
and admits to feeling pulled in different directions. PA 25 and the
emphasis on basic exit skills trouble her because they tend to lose
focus on the larger life skills:

Now, you could try to teach them as many of the basics as
you can, but I still say you've go to work in those values
and the work ethic and all of that kind of thing right in
while you're teaching your English and hope that when
they get out of here, maybe they're not going to have
English skills that are very good, but maybe they'll be
able to do something else and show some responsibility.

Linda has not succumbed to internal conflict and credits her
administration and community. "I don't feel the internal conflict
because I'm going to keep on doing it the way I want to, the way I
believe, until somebody says I can't do it anymore or until I reach
retirement or whatever comes first, but we are lucky here in that the
administration and the community have been so supportive of
anything that we've done."

She feels schools could help by reducing class size to allow for
more individual instruction. "If you could work one-on-one with

students more often, you are going to accomplish more." She is also

109
intrigued by a local professional development school system,

"because they do have a day where . . . departments actually get
together and say, 'Hey, this is what's going on here. How could we
improve it, or how could we make it better?‘ There are a lot of
things that could be done if we could meet by department regularly,
and we don't."

Time is a critical factor, both in her teaching day and her daily
life. Linda wishes universities would assist teachers in a number of
ways. "I wish they would send some guidelines out to the schools
showing what they expect of incoming freshmen, say in the English
department." She continues:

They might also be able to offer some seminars in
different types of method instruction for particular
things. Why not have different seminars around the
state? Like on Saturdays where somebody could just go
for one or two hours and see a presentation of a method
on how to do this particular thing, and then these people
could take it back to the classroom and try it.

Although sometimes overwhelmed by its frustrations, Linda
has questioned her choice but is committed enough to her goals to
choose teaching English again. "I would love to teach a subject that
the kids took because they wanted to take it, not because they had to
take it, . . . but yet I think I can teach more about life and values and
things of that sort through my English classes, and I'm dedicated

enough to the idea that I still want to do that."

110
Kathleen

Kathleen, who is forty-two years old, has been teaching for
nineteen years in this rural school system. Her own high school
experience was a traditional one of English 9, 10, ll, 12. The
primary focus was on literature and grammar which were taught
separately. Kathleen remembers enjoying the study of grammar. "I
actually liked it, but I don't teach it. But I was good at it, so it was

fun.

Literature consisted primarily of critical analysis of short
stories, followed by "objective tests, discussion, occasional essay tests,
and always the homework." She continues, "My writing background
was virtually nil until I got into a philosophy class my senior year.
Then I was expected to know how to write, and, of course, I didn't."
She recalls, "I have a vivid memory of my high school education in
general of being extremely boring and falling asleep in classes and
like I said about not having any relevance to what we were talking
about." 6

Kathleen feels she came to teaching through a limited number
of choices. "In the era that I grew up, I saw girls as having three
choices. They could get married and have babies, they could become
a nurse, or they could become a teacher, and if they had children,
both of those things went out the window. So, I couldn't really stand
the sight of blood when I was a child so I went into teaching."

Early in her teaching career, Kathleen remembers, "I do
remember doing a lot of grammar in the beginning, and literature
was basically answer the question, which was recalling what we

learned type of questions."

l 1 l
Reflecting on her undergraduate education, Kathleen

remembers a heavy emphasis on literature, or as she says, "the study
and memorization of various genres." Her methods classes did not
prepare her to teach either writing or reading. She vaguely
remembers discussion of lesson plans. "I remember writing these
lesson plans and looking at them and at the time thinking, 'Well, this
is really nice. Look how well I've written lesson plans.‘ And then
actually being in the teaching profession and saying this is absolutely
ridiculous."

Kathleen decided to return to school because as she says, "I
went back because I really felt that I needed more education." She
remembers being introduced to the writing process, not just in
theory but also in practice. "It was like WOW! Where actually they
had you doing the writing, you actually participating so that you
could understand what a kid would go through in a process, or what
a student would have to do, so you internalize the process so it would
put you in a better position to help someone else through the
process."

Kathleen described her theory of reading in the following way.
"Reading enables you to look at yourself. First of all, reading gives
you knowledge, which I love knowledge, and I love to know all that I
can possible know about a variety of subjects . . . I think reading is
fun. I think reading should be fun."

In terms of her own reading, Kathleen separates her pleasure
reading from her school reading:

I guess during the school year I need to read a lot of

things that I need to read, that I have to read, that are

1 12
either for discussion in class or material I need to maybe

do this a better way or whatever . . . All that is stuff I
have to do, so when the summer comes, I seriously enjoy
junky stuff. Anything I can get my hands on. It is fun
that I don't have to be a critical reader about, that I can
just be a fun reader.

Kathleen also feels guilty about reading for pleasure during the
school year, though not in the summer, when she regularly reads 6-8
hours a week. "If I allow myself to read for pleasure, something else
will go, and I feel—~I really wish I weren't like that--that I could just
read to have fun, but during the year, I feel compelled, well, if I have
'x' amount of time, I should be doing this."

Kathleen is not currently a member of any subject matter
professional association, nor has she attended any conferences,
although she occasionally reads MW at school:

The W went through some phases. I paid
my money for a few years. I belonged for, I don't know,
eight or ten years, and then I just got tired of it. Some
articles absolutely to me had no relevance at all to my
experience, and it was a lot of people making themselves
feel good by writing an article in the W and
getting it published. We have it here [at school], so I
don't have to do that, and I don't see any benefit for me
to pay all that money to belong to National Council of
Teachers of English.

She has, however, attended a variety of teacher in-service and

professional development sessions. She recalls the last English

1 13
conference she attended, along with some reasons for her present

lack of attendance:
I went to a conference probably in Grand Rapids about
four years ago, and that was the last one I've been to. A
lot of them they have during spring break and I'm not
around. We have in our school, or district, we don't have
money to do that. You maybe have one conference. You
get one hundred dollars if you're the first one to apply, so
you have to pick and choose what it is you want to do,
otherwise you pay for it out of your pocket.

When asked about external pressures affecting classrooms,
Kathleen is quick with a list, including lack of time and resources,
pressure to provide for special needs, lack of parental involvement,
and class size. She, too, feels that time for sharing with colleagues is
essential. "I wish that we had time or mandatory time to get
departments. What we really need is a department. We're supposed
to be teaching this, this, and this, but how we do it, no one says. So,
you can do whatever you want, but how I look at it is, as teachers,
we are our own best resources, and we could do a lot of sharing
which we really do not have time to do."

She also is concerned about the emphasis on testing and the
resulting negative press:

. . . because I think I'm very sensitive to, and I think

most teachers, are, how people view education. We are
obviously not in it for the money. We are in it because
we feel like we are doing something that is important and

relevant and useful for other people, and when you get

l 14
media criticism, saying these kids can't read, these kids

are illiterate, they can't write, they can't do this. So then
you say, "All right, what is it that we are doing wrong
that we could do better to make it so?" You've really got
to be careful because people are really apt to criticize,
and they never hear about the success stories that are
when kids get out of an educational system. We only
hear about the failures.

Kathleen feels that schools could help by providing teachers
with more time to reflect. She is not only sensitive to the general
criticism of the profession but also feels the pressure to always do
more. "Yes, and that's why I don't have time to read. I do feel the
pressure to do it all, and I feel the pressure each year." The biggest
drawback to teaching English, for her, is the grading of papers. "To
do it right takes time, and I feel like I never do it right enough. I
should have assigned one more paper, or if I could have spent more
time on, you know." Part of this internal struggle has resulted in
Kathleen's pulling back from teaching English. Now, she only teaches
English half-time. "That's why I went back and picked up an
undergraduate degree in health education after teaching for 11 or 12
years, because I just couldn't do English full-time and keep my
sanity."

Kathleen also suggests that universities could do more to help
schools, both in their preparation of new teachers and in providing
assistance to current teachers. She suggests the faculty regularly
come back to the secondary classrooms in order to stay in touch with

today's realities. She also suggests that universities make it easier

1 15
for teachers to come back for more education by offering more night

and weekend sessions.
Despite Kathleen's criticisms of the profession, it is clear that
she loves what she does, is passionately committed to it, and would

choose teaching as a career again.

Jan

Jan is forty-one years old and has been teaching 17 years. She
has taught in three different systems, the last ten in this rural school
system.

Jan also had a traditional high school experience. Students
were tracked either college bound or practical and were required to
take three years of English. Primary focus in her college bound
classes was literature, composition, and grammar. Jan's experience
differs from her colleagues in a number of ways. Jan recalls that
reading and writing were usually combined, and she also recalls
small group work, projects, and individual teacher conferences,
although these activities were limited to the later classes.

Jan thinks she chose to teach English because she loves
literature and because her teachers modeled such enthusiasm and
made the subject matter come alive.

Her undergraduate preparation for teaching "mostly dealt with
facilitating discussion of literature, preparation of questions, study
guides, and exams." W was used in teaching
writing, and for reading, it was standardized tests and miscue
analysis. Jan feels that she learned most of her real training during

her student teaching experience.

1 16
Once Jan started teaching, she, too, felt the need to return to

school. "I saw a real need as I started to teach that in junior high
and high school. Kids are not done learning about reading. We just
cut it off and say, 'Now we do literature.‘ But there's more to it than
that, and some kids need a lot of help, and so I wanted to specialize
in that."

Since she began her career, she sees many changes in students:

There is a positive change in the sense that kids are more
willing to be individuals and speak their minds, but I
think there is more negative in the sense that kids are
not willing to work really hard . . . It's like they want
everything just given to them the easy way, and they are
too busy to do some hard work. Of course, they can tell
you about last night's T.V., but they are too busy to do
the homework and you're supposed to excuse all that.

It's like there is not self-discipline.

She says these changes have been frustrating. "I think that a
lot of times, it's left to the schools to try to teach these kids some
values of hard work and education, and I don't think we can do it
all."

Jan's goal for her students is to get them to recognize the
importance of reading. "Because there is so much they can learn on
their own with reading, and if they can't read, they're going to miss
out on the world."

In terms of her own reading, Jan says she reads because, "I
love to put myself in different places around the world in different

periods of time. It's just wonderful to experience that." Though she

1 I?
loves to read, Jan admits pleasure reading comes last, and she ends

up putting most of it off until summer:
I'm so busy reading books for the kids, trying to decide
what books to use when they come out, new and
professional reading. I don't have a lot of pleasure time.
It's my "before I go to sleep'" reading. And that's all it is.
Now, in the summer, I tackle some real good fiction and
biographies, and some non-fiction, because I can enjoy it,
I have the time, and I can stay awake!

Jan insists that she doesn't feel guilty about her pleasure
reading because it comes after all her other responsibilities. "That's
my time, and it's not anytime until everybody's in bed, and my
children are asleep. It's basically been my choice of either sleeping
or reading."

Jan is not currently a member of any professional organization
but occasionally reads W, or the International Reading
Association (IRA) journals. In the last year, Jan has also attended a
statewide reading conference.

Jan often feels pulled in different directions between her goals
of developing "lifelong readers" and that of teaching the elements of
literature:

I would like to concentrate in junior high on reading
strategies and enjoyable reading, pleasure reading. And I
try to do that as much as I can, but I feel like I'm
obligated to prepare kids to get into the high school
literature classes and deal with the elements of

literature, and be able to be familiar with the terms,

l 18
know how to apply those somewhat to stories, so that's

the problem.

She sees a variety of external pressures, including budget
constraints and lack of planning time. "Material wise, it would be
wonderful to be able to run across a new book and just be able to get
it." She also thinks it would be helpful for teachers to meet and
discuss common goals. "That would be wonderful, but we don't do
it," she says. "We don't have time."

Jan addresses the issues of testing and PA 25:

I think that if we're careful about what we do with these
things, it will be positive for our kids coming out of high
school, being able to function. However, if they just
throw all these to use and say, "Do them," and then they
change their minds a month or two later, which they've
been doing, it makes it very frustrating. I think that
there are some basics we're skipping. We're into higher
level thinking skills, which is great, but so many of the
kids we are working with higher level thinking skills
don't seem to be functional on paper. And we need to
deal with that part. So in that sense, it's making us more
accountable, outcome base wise. I think that's good. I
don't know how we're going to accomplish it all, but it's
good.

Teacher testing is another issue that concerns Jan. She's
concerned because of all she's heard about the tests being outdated
and developed by people outside of the profession. "When I hear

things like the teacher test that the state was coming out with that

l 19
were not even made by people in the profession, out-dated material

that they're being tested on that we're not even being taught in the
teacher education anymore, that's real frustrating. That's stupid."

Jan also feels that universities could assist teachers by keeping
their methods classes current. "I think that any college instructor
who is teaching a methods class in the school of education should
spend a marking period or more every couple of years in a high
school or a junior high and know what it's really like to deal with
what we deal with, with different kids and the backgrounds they
come from."

In spite of all the drawbacks and frustrations, Jan would
definitely choose teaching again, "because I love literature first of

all."

Conclusions: School A

In summary, all four of these teachers went into teaching
because they personally love reading. They all strongly believe in
the power and the beauty of reading, but all relegate their own
personal pleasure reading to summer. Although their goals state that
they want students to become lifelong readers, they insist on
separating school reading from pleasure reading.

Each of these teachers had very traditional school experiences,
and they seem to fall back on the familiar teacher-centered
approach.

All are lacking in professional support and personal confidence,
and most seem to have developed coping strategies rather than

integrated, personal theories of teaching. Their professional

120
education focused on content and skills; therefore, it is not surprising

that most felt the need to return to school to help make sense of it
all. Those returning to school began their professional journeys and
gained some confidence and direction, for the first time experiencing
for themselves the reading and writing processes.

Though off to a good start, much of these teachers' progress
was stalled because they did not have the needed support,
personally or financially, to maintain the professional involvement

necessary for continued growth.

School B:

This large, urban school has an enrollment of 1415 students
and is one of three high schools in a city with an approximate
population of 250,000. This school reflects a mix of both socio-

economic and ethnic backgrounds.

Warren
Warren is fifty-four years old with 24 years teaching
experience. His last 21 years of teaching have been at a large, urban
high school. He has also experienced what he refers to as a
traditional high school experience and remembers a steady diet of
literature, study questions, and objective tests:
There are only two English classes that I can really
remember, one English lit. class, and I don't remember
the teacher's name, but I remember she cried each time
she read Keats out loud. And then I had a course that

was unusual for its time because it was a two hour block

121
of history through literature. And for each period in

American history, we had to read the chapter in the
American history text, one biography, and one work of
historical fiction. This was all group oriented, all
discussion, and that was it.

Warren also describes how he entered the teaching profession
in a roundabout manner. "I sort of fell into teaching. Sort of zig-zag
and swerve." Positive experiences in his own education and a
temporary teaching position on the college level convinced him that
he'd enjoy teaching English. He remembers personal, positive
experiences with literature and memorable professors on the college
level.

Warren feels his undergraduate methods classes left him ill-
prepared for the classroom. Teaching writing consisted of modeling
essays, and the teaching of reading was not addressed:

I've taught American lit. using an anthology and English
lit. using an anthology, because pretty much that was the
way I was taught. I mean we used anthologies. In terms
of attitude, I probably really didn't learn to read

literature until I was in the latter years of college and in
the first years of graduate school. When I learned to
read it myself, or at least found a different way of
reading it, that's when my training, if you will, actually
began.

He, too, returned to school for advanced education and

continues to read on his own.

122
He sees the changes in the profession as positive. "I think the

changes are positive. We have a lot more room as teachers to do
things. One of the difficulties of teaching, especially teaching lit., is
that there are so many other media that are distracting the
students." He continues:
The students tend to treat literature as fluff, or as not
very important. So my goal this last year was to say,
"Hey, wait a minute. There is structure here. There is
meaning. There's a whole bunch of stuff that you should
be aware of before you decide this is nonsense." I want
them to be searchers after wisdom, and I think lit. is one
of the ways we can develop this attitude.

Warren thinks his positive attitude toward literature came
from college and graduate school, but questions the overall purpose
of it. "I'm not sure what lit. is, and I'm not sure why we teach it,
what we should be teaching about it, and I just question the whole
thing. It has something to do with the imagination, and it has
something to do with somehow expressing the age in which it is
written." He continues, "If we teach literature to help students deal
with their own lives, there might be things they should be reading
instead of lit. to help them with their own lives."

In terms of his own reading, Warren discusses his choices:
That's hard to say because what I most enjoy reading
nowadays is history and biography, and I think, in some
senses, the reason I read biography is that I have a
history of my own, and I'm trying to see if my history

matches up to anybody else's. And then the literature

123
that I read, I guess I read most because I enjoy seeing

how authors do things. I guess I suppose I read for
escape, but I don't think I really do. In one sense, I'm
always kind of not "on duty," but I'm kind of tuned in to
the artistry of it all.

Warren insists that he doesn't feel guilty about his pleasure
reading but confesses that his professional reading comes first. "The
professional reading I do almost as soon as I get home from school,
and then later on, after everything else in kind of done, then I get to
do the real pleasure reading."

Warren is also professionally involved, citing memberships in
NCTE, Alan, and MCTE. Although he regularly reads a number of
NCTE professional journals, Warren hasn't attended a professional
conference in the last year.

He sees a variety of external issues affecting today's classroom
teacher. His primary conflict involves a conflict of goals:

If we really believe in reader-response theory, then what
we probably ought to do is give them [students] a bunch
of books and say, "Read them, and when you think you
have something to say, write an article or an essay and
let me read it." And I'm committed to that. On the other
hand, there is another side to me that says when a kid
leaves a course called American Lit., he should know the
names of ten authors and poets, and then he should be
able to cite 15 titles and give you a brief synopsis, and if
the only way we're going to do that is by me talking

about it, then so be it.

124
Of external pressures he says, "We're bombarded by the public,

and the press, and the media, and by Advanced Placement
requirements." When asked about PA 25, he responds, "I don't think
we ever left a skills based curriculum, so I don't think these things
are forcing us back to anything. I think teachers like to think that
we're under all this pressure, but it's pressure we've been under all
along."

He sees the push to the non-traditional curriculum as another
pressure. "The biggest pressure on us now, I think, is the pressure
that comes from the apparent conflict between the canon and the
non-canon with the tremendous pressure on us to be multicultural,
etc., without any support from other departments. We're running
the risk of playing a game with ourselves. I don't think literature is
necessarily the way into those cultures."

Warren feels that one of the most helpful things a school can do
for its teachers is to provide time for them to meet together to share
and learn from one another:

I've seen these little programs where they have a school
within a school, and what I've observed was that there
was tremendous benefit to the teachers involved just to
sit and kind of do case management. If you had
evaluated the program in terms of had these students
done better, I would probably say probably not. But
these teachers did a helluva lot better. They had a much
better year having sat and talked and discovered I'm not
the only one having trouble with Johnny Smith. I think

the kind of inquiry groups running at [a local

125
PDS] are essential. Because in most occupations now, my

observation has been that maybe teachers might be the
only people who do the kind of work they do without any
consultation with other teachers.

Maybe it's this lack of opportunity to share that fosters his own
frustration. Warren isn't at all sure that literature can be taught.
When talking to a whole class or in groups, he says, "I get this uneasy
feeling that something funny is happening. I don't know what it is to
teach lit. Now it seems to me, you can do well with teaching writing,
but I know if ever I were to do that full-time, I'd have the same
reaction. There are occasions when I think it'd be nice to teach math.
Then I could do all the reading I wanted to do on my own."

Like Will, Warren questions his own success. "I don't feel I've
done as good a job as I should be, because sometimes what I think
has happened to me is that I've fallen between two stools."

In spite of his conflicts and doubts, Warren maintains a
positive attitude and insists he'd choose to teach if he had it to do all
over again. "One of the satisfying things is that the English
department at any school is the heart of the school. We have the

flexibility and the room to move in a variety of directions."

Anne

Anne is forty-nine years old and has taught 26 years, the last
21 at the same large urban district. Her own high school experience
consisted of four years of regular English with an emphasis on
literature. In fact, she doesn't remember writing in high school at all,

except to answer study questions. She says of her classes, "Most of

126
them were simply lecture and answer the questions at the end of the

literature, although one exception was a ninth grade teacher I had
who got us into some project work with Shakespeare. And she had
us participate in things, but after that, it was pretty much the
traditional."

Anne claims she began her teaching career earlier than normal,
when in the second grade her school was cut back to half-days. "I
would go in the afternoon in first grade and help the teacher teach
other kids to learn to read, and I just thought it was the most fun
thing in the world. So I decided in second grade I was going to be a
teacher. I don't know what my real reasons were, but I never
changed my mind."

Anne's undergraduate degree is in history, and she spent her
first nine years teaching social studies. At that time, she decided to
go back to school to complete an English minor, and that's how she
ended up teaching English. "Once I began getting certified in English,
I found out that I really liked it."

She admits her first experience teaching English was
challenging. "The first year I taught English, I really did not know
what I was doing." Instead of feeling hampered by her own lack of
undergraduate English background, Anne feels her late switch to
English is a benefit:

I think the thing I really believe is one of my strengths
as an English teacher is that I wasn't subjected to

undergraduate literature courses or writing courses or
whatever, that approached it in the way that "I am the

teacher, I know the answers, and you will mouth back

127
my answers." I missed out on all of that, and I came at

teaching English from the point of view that I was a
reader, and I was a writer, and I loved reading, and I
loved all of that, and so once I went back to school, I
mean, I still didn't know the first year that a kid couldn't
write a complete sentence.

Anne continued her own education, and it was in this graduate
school experience that she first felt confidence. She speaks of a
particular writing workshop course, "and that is first time in my
whole life, I was about 31 when I took that course, that I ever felt
that I was a writer. I got so much affirmation in that class. I had
never gotten any positive stuff about writing."

Having now earned her doctorate, Anne reflects on the teaching
profession and the supposed changes it has undergone. She doesn't
think there has been as much change as everyone thinks:

Now, I think the thing that's changed, especially in
“English, is the awareness of writing as a process. That
you cannot expect kids to write perfectly the first time
through. That isn't the purpose of writing, and I think
we've broadened what we see literature as being. But as
far as kids, I can remember from 26 years ago, there
were kids that didn't care about learning, there were kids
that tried to get out of doing work, there were kids who
were problems. People glamorize and glorify what the
old days were, and they weren't really that much
different. We still have to motivate kids, get them

involved in stuff, before they'll do anything.

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She continues discussing changes in students. "I do feel,

though, that one difference, especially with the urban poor, is that
they do not see that education provides them a way out. They do not
see that there's any hope through education because of the role
models around them, and those kids drop out mentally a lot faster."

A positive change that Anne identified is in teacher attitude:

I think the change in attitude about what English is a
very, very positive one. And I think the part, to me,
that's negative is that there's still a group of people that
feel that students should perform, no matter what. That
if a teacher sits at a desk, doesn't do anything to
stimulate the kid, that it is the child's fault if they don't
achieve. I guess it's the group of people that feel that
teaching is not an interactive forum is the negative thing,
but I think that, generally, the tide that's sweeping the
country and looking at reform, etc., they are recognizing
the interactive nature of teaching and the process of
getting kids involved.

Anne's attitude toward reading came from her mother, who is
also a reader and helped to foster that interest in her. Anne becomes
very animated when asked about why she loves to read. "Because
it's exciting to me. It's exciting to think about peOple and the way
they respond to things. It's exciting for me to learn new things. It's
exciting to get involved in other life issues, and it's just been a huge
part of me ever since I was a kid."

She feels her goal for teaching literature is to help students

make a personal connection with it:

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The absolute biggest reason we teach literature is for kids

to make contact with the literature and to look at the
impact it has on them, how they respond to the people in
the literature and the ideas in literature, and I think it's a
clarifying thing for them, as far as measuring themselves
against other people in the world, because all of us cannot
go out and be a part of gangs, or be part of upper-middle
class families, or be part of whatever, and I think
literature provides those kinds of experiences for kids.

So, one of my biggest goals is for them to make a
connection between their lives and the literature and to
come away with a recognition that the literature has

some kind of impact on them.

Anne is a voracious reader and insists most of her reading is
pleasure reading. She's able to fit in professional, informational, and
pleasure reading partly because she watches no television:

I read all the time. Sometimes, if I get something done,
then I'll allow myself to read a book, but I usually feel
like it's so closely tied in with my profession, the more
books I know, the more I can tell kids about books, and
so, to me, it's like a part of my job, and so I just, if I get
into a book, can read a book in an evening, three hours at
a time. And I usually read a book before I go to bed, too,
but sometimes, if I get a good one, then I don't go to
sleep, so I don't like that either.

Anne has long been an active member of professional

organizations, including NCTE, MCTE, ALAN, and IRA. She regularly

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reads a number of professional journals, specifically mm,

W, Signal, and W. She also attends and
participates in a number of professional conferences, four in the last
year.

Anne feels frustrated by the continued conflict of goals for
those within the profession. "I have a real problem with people who
feel they are teaching literature to present their point of view, to
show people what literature means, instead of helping them discover
what it means. You narrow what they come away with, and they see
literature as a piece of content to be responded to, not something
wonderful that they can make contact with and that will have an
impact on their lives."

It is this professional conflict that frustrates her:

I think the only time I feel pulled in different directions
is that I realize that in my school, the way I teach, I am
in a minority. Most people are not as excited about
teaching as I am. Most people don't want to try new
things, and I realize that there is some disapproval of
what I do on the part of some members in English who,
perhaps, question that I don't do vocabulary lists every
week and those kinds of things. And some of them don't
feel I cover things enough, like drilling literary terms in
them. But I've always had really strong support from the
administration and parents, so I don't feel the pull.

In spite of these daily conflicts which test her resolve, Anne
remains positive. "Sometimes I think, 'Am I really preparing these

kids? or am I really doing this, or am I really doing that?‘ and I

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question it mildly but not very much because I usually can see how

kids react to what I'm doing."

When speaking of external pressures affecting the profession,
Anne says:

I guess I feel that we've already been through this once.
I remember in the 70's, the back to basics movement and
the articles in Newsweek, and I think that was basically
devastating to the English profession, and I think it set us
back years because it again validated that worksheets
were a good way to go, that teaching grammatical skills
out of the context of writing was a good way to go, and
teachers that like that structure and like the easy way
out of having a daily lesson plan by opening the
Warriner's books, they were affirmed. _

She also spoke about the increased testing. "I really think, too
often, testing drives what we teach." Anne isn't terribly concerned
because she sees the tests getting better. "The way I see testing
going, though, is they're not just testing little measurable increments,
like what is a preface or prefix or whatever, and they're trying to
test more on meaning, and I see that, especially in Michigan, the way
testing is going. It's getting better and not worse."

Anne suggests schools could assist teachers in several ways.
First, she says, "I think one of the things that schools can do is that
the principal really has to set the tone in the building that we are
really interested in learning. We're not just interested in quiet, well-
controlled classrooms." She also feels that greater availability to

materials, like books, would really help. Third, she feels that more

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time should be made available for teachers to meet together and

share professional concerns. "And I think one of our biggest
problems is that we don't talk to each other, and we don't interact.
That if there was a common time when we could each talk about
what we're doing, what our goals are, how it's working, how we're
involving kids, that would really, really help."

Without a doubt, Anne would choose teaching all over again.
"Yes, I still absolutely love it. I think it's a field that's fresh every
year. You can use different materials. We're not tied to a content."
She continues, "I think the reason I'm still happy as a teacher is I
don't feel I'm there to give information. I feel I'm there to learn as
much as the kids are, and I learn tremendous amounts from them

every year-~and so it's still fun."

Joan

Joan is forty-seven years old and has taught 25 years, the last
21 in this large, urban district. Joan describes her own high school
experience. "The teachers often used reading outloud, sometimes
reading homework assignments and trying to relate the literature to
the author's life. And, of course, how the literature reflects the lives '
of the students in the class." Her experience differs from my other
teachers, possibly because Joan attended a private boarding school
rather than public school. Reading and writing were taught together,
and Joan regularly experienced a variety of literature and response
methods, including projects such as videotaped recreations of scenes,
photo essays, and dramatic presentations. She regularly wrote in

response to literature and was allowed choice in what she read.

133

Joan discusses how she became a teacher:

I went into teaching because when I went to college,
colleges were segregated, and the college that I went to
was a teacher's college. And I never thought of doing
anything else. I was going to go to college, and I was
going to be a teacher. Luckily, I learned to like it. It
wasn't something that I necessarily planned, and I

wanted to get a job when I got out of school, and I'm sure
that's happened to a lot of people, and that's why we're in

the mess we're in.

Of her preparation for teaching, Joan admits:

Joan,

I don't feel like I was trained to teach. The only way that
I would say that my education helped me had to reflect
on my high school experience, and this was things I was
introduced to, and sources I was introduced to. And
maybe undergraduate, some of the courses that I took
that introduced me to different pieces of literature and
different types of literature and how to approach that
literature. But when I went to graduate school, it was
more of a sharing kind of thing.

too, returned to graduate school. She says:

I took courses that I thought would help me in the
classroom, and I also took courses that were required in
order to get those degrees. But I stopped, obviously,
because I found out I wasn't really gaining anything. I
wasn't looking for methods. I came from the South, and I

noticed discipline problems when I got here, and I

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wanted courses that would confirm what I was doing, and

I didn't find that. But I still had to take those courses
just to get a degree, just to finish a program.

Joan said in her questionnaire, "I wanted to obtain more
knowledge. I quit when I realized that I was better off than most of
my professors."

Joan discusses how the profession has changed and sees those
changes as having both positive and negative results. "They've [the
schools] gotten away from using the grammar books so much. That's
one change. Now, I don't think students are as well prepared
because they have all of these electives that they can use in place of
English, for example, drama instead of English, when I think drama
ought to be a part of the English curriculum." Joan explained that she
would prefer the English curriculum to be integrated. She continues,
"This change is good for some students, but for the majority, I think
that it's a detriment in many ways. They're just not prepared to go
on."

Joan sees changes in the students, as well. "They're not as
motivated, and I don't think it's all their fault. I think you get what
you expect from students and not much is expected of them."

Joan's positive attitude toward reading came from her family,
especially her grandmother. "She was a reader, and I just watched
her and my mother."

Joan has multiple goals for her teaching. "My main goal is to

allow students to take things from literature, some characterization

from literature, and see how that's reflected in their own lives . . . I

135
think that if students can relate the literature to their own lives, then

they're going to want to read more."

Joan's biggest disappointment in teaching is racism. "1 think
that most teachers are basically racists without knowing that they
are. It's institutionalized. There's racism and prejudice, and the
prejudice, I guess, is what I see the most because all students get
that, regardless of race. The only kids that school systems seem to
be concerned about are the middle class kids, and kids who have
parents who care. The other kids are just falling by the wayside."

When discussing her personal reading, Joan says:

I like to read novels that I haven't read before. I like re-
reading, too. I don't have a lot of time to read magazines
or [unclear]. It's usually assignments that I've given my
students, or every now and then, I can start a book and
go back to it a month later. I read the newspaper
everyday, and that's to see what's going on. I have to
read at night in order to go to sleep, so it's pretty much
what's on the night stand, sometimes continuous things,
sometimes it's just whatever's there. I read the journals
when I get them every month.

Joan pauses for a minute and then says, "I would say it's
mostly professional reading or the newspaper. That's about it."

With Joan, time is a limiting factor in her reading, and she
usually feels guilty about her personal, pleasure reading. "I don't

have the time," she states.

1 3 6
Joan has long been a member of NC'I'E and regularly reads

MW and W, although she has not attended a
professional conference in the last year.

In her own career, her primary conflict is an internal one, and
often Joan feels pulled in different directions:

I teach advanced composition . . . , and the students are
not advanced composition students. And I feel like I
have to get them where they need to be, but at the same
time, I'm told, "You teach advanced composition, and they
fail. So what?" I can't buy into that. Don't lower your
standards. And I feel like I'm lowering my standards if I
allow these kids to fail. I know about where I want them
to be, and I have to start at a place so I can't get them to
where I want them to be at the end of the year. So that's
a conflict--a constant worry, too. I don't feel like the
standards are as high as they used to be, and I think
people are too comfortable with that.

External pressures involve lack of planning time and the
emphasis on testing. "I think that English teachers ought to teach
three classes a day. That's not going to happen, though. Teachers
teach three classes a day and plan the rest, and so you can get all the
writing in so you don't have to spend the whole weekend reading
papers."

When discussing the return to a skills based curriculum, Joan
says:

That frightens me. I think it does have an influence on

us; it has a negative influence on us. I think tests are

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biased; however, now I'm wondering what group is hurt

the most. I think that teachers are beginning to teach to
the test, and students will not learn as much and be as
open. And it does frighten me that, perhaps, we will go
back to the basics, and what that means is that you don't
have that variety anymore. You don't have time, in fact.
You have to go through the grammar book the whole
year.

Joan feels that teachers meeting together to simply discuss and
share would be beneficial but doesn't believe that collaborative
planning works. "We tried for two years to get all the advanced
composition people together just to decide on what we were going to
do, and it doesn't work."

For Joan, schools could help, "by weeding out those people who
don't care about kids. Weeding out those teachers who will not go
the extra step, teachers who won't speak to kids in the hall, the
teachers who are afraid to be in the building, teachers who are there
for a paycheck. I know that sounds awful coming from a teacher
but . . . "

At the close of the interview, Joan reflects on the interview
experience and again expresses the concerns raised by the interview
itself. "This has been very frustrating because you have to reflect on
the way you want it to be and the way it is, and that's an awful
conflict." Despite her frustrations, Joan insists she would choose

teaching again.

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Conclusions: School B

All three of these teachers are highly experienced and
sophisticated. All three have advanced education beyond their
masters degrees. They have also all maintained a strong professional
involvement, and here is where the difference may lie.

These three teachers chose teaching at least partially because
of their own love of reading, although they, too, have some difficulty
justifying their personal reading. All three, however, have made
professional reading a priority.

Through their ongoing professional involvement, they continue
to develop personal theories of reading. Though not always feeling
successful in the classroom, they are more secure in their confusion
than those in the rural school, possibly because of the sense of
identity and belonging provided by their professional memberships.
Their confidence was more evident, and their attitudes more

reflective than reactionary.

School C:

This suburban middle school is currently the only middle
school in a city with a population of 20,000. The school's enrollment
of 969 students has a somewhat mixed ethnic background and comes
from a socio-economic background that is primarily middle to upper-

middle professional.

Leigh
Leigh is a forty-two year old middle school teacher with 19

years teaching experience, 17 in this suburban school district. She

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describes her own high school experience as purely traditional, with

English 10, 11, and 12. Classes focused on literature, composition,
and grammar, and reading and writing were taught separately.
"Mainly, we read and answered questions out of packets, and then
the next day, she would ask us questions. Oh, I remember once we
had a great poetry unit, and the only thing she asked? us was to
match up the poet and the name of the poem. That was it!"
Discussion was used "to simply check up to make sure we'd done our
work."

Leigh discusses the concept of pleasure reading:

It was just a whole separate entity. That was so separate
from what we had to do at school. Now when I think
back on it, even some of the classics that might have been
enjoyable, they were given to us so early. We weren't
ready for it. I remember our so-called classic in tenth
grade was We]; which I just re-read this year to
see why I had to read this book, and I still don't have a
clue. So then, reading became like this task to prove you
were intelligent.

Sadly, Leigh states, "If anything, my high school teachers
probably did the most to make me not like reading."

Ironically, her unpleasant high school experience is one of the
reasons Leigh chose to teach. "I guess I went into it because I
wanted it to be different. I wanted kids to love what I did at home,
crammed in my bedroom reading books. I want to tease them with

the possibilities. I want them to see how much fun it can be."

140
Having taught both high school and middle school, Leigh much

prefers middle school. "In middle school, I can do anything I want to
do. There's a lot more flexibility and a lot more creativity than high
schools."

As with my other interviewees, Leigh feels her undergraduate
methods classes did not prepare her for the classroom. "I was
trained to teach Milton, Chaucer, Shakespeare, 19th century English
lit., 18th century English lit. Contemporary lit. went all the way up to
like Ernest Hemingway-~pretty much literature. Oh, and they threw
in transformational grammar. That was big at the time. By the time
I got to this school, the book wasn't even published anymore, so that
was really helpful." Leigh also felt the need to return to school for
more training, completing her masters in English education.

Her own attitude toward reading developed outside of school,
and her love of reading didn't connect with school until she was in
college. "Books had nothing to do with school probably until my
freshman year in college, when suddenly we were reading stuff that
was wonderful (and spending time in classes tearing it apart, and
thinking about it, and relating it to what was going on in the world,
and suddenly, it was really exciting again."

Leigh states her goal for students in the following way.
"Hopefully, to find stuff that kids are interested in that's at a higher
level so they have to start making some jumps. Having them see
that literature can relate to stuff that they're doing everyday in their
lives."

In terms of her own reading, Leigh balances informative,

professional, and pleasure reading. She admits that newspapers

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come first, pleasure reading comes next, and academic professional

reading comes after that. Leigh wishes she had more time to read
for pleasure but often must wait until summer. "I wish I could do
more personal reading during the school year, but after you've read
25 essays, you don't feel like reading anymore."

Currently, Leigh does not belong to any professional
organizations, although she occasionally reads WM and
W at school. She also attended two professional
conferences or inservices in the last year.

Leigh has constantly struggled with the conflict within the
profession over purpose and method. "My biggest disappointment is
how many people I work with have bought into the system. That
there's never a challenge to not do what's always been done before.
Everybody was doing what everybody else was doing, and there was
a whole lot of pressure [for me] to change." Recently, Leigh's school
has hired a couple of new teachers and she says, "It's taken some
[pressure] off, and I think it helps me feel better about what I do,
and that everybody's lined up on one side of the table, and I'm on
the other side."

New colleagues, greater maturity, and her role as a parent
together have helped to bolster her confidence, so she no longer feels
pulled in different directions. "I no longer apologize to parents. I
finally just decided that I don't do it [teach grammar] because I don't
do it, and I know it doesn't work. I don't have to have 57 authors
behind me to say that's true."

Addressing other issues within the schools, Leigh feels schools

could assist teachers in a number of ways. First, she feels that

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classroom teachers should be given more autonomy in how the

textbook budget is spent. She also feels that time for teachers to

share would be a benefit:
True one-on-one sharing might be good. I find a lot of
times I'm giving out tons of stuff and not getting much
back. That's really frustrating, and I think that's what
happens with a lot of teachers. And I hear about districts
where they do that and do it really well, but so far I
haven't seen that here, and I guess that's why we have
lightheaded English meetings here because there's such a
dichotomy, either in what people philosophize about what
they do, or what they actually do in their classrooms. It
just makes it real difficult.

When asked about external pressures affecting the profession,
Leigh's animation turned to militancy. She's angry that those outside
of the profession are again imposing standards on it. "The people
who were trying to tell me how to be a better English teacher
weren't in the classroom."

She's especially upset over the MEAP and the increased
emphasis on testing. "The thing that appalls me about it is . . . they
took 3-4 pages out of a social studies textbook and asked the kids 52
questions on it, which I think is unforgivable. First of all, the stuff
was so boring, if they really thought a seventh grader should know
any of it was kind of appalling, and then that they bothered to ask
52 questions on four pages of reading, I thought, was a unique
punishment." Leigh continues, "I think the people that create testing

materials are not the people in the front lines, and when they do ask

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us to come in and let them know what we think about their

questions, they don't listen anyway! Maybe it is time English
teachers got together and did their own PR on the kind of test they
should write."

Her passion for her subject matter, for her students, and for
her profession comes through. Clearly, Leigh's committed to teaching
and would choose it again. "I feel good about what I do, and I won't

change."

Howard
Howard is fifty-five years old and has taught for 26 years,
currently in this suburban middle school. As he recalls, his was a
traditional high school experience with a required English 9, 10, 11,
and 12 curriculum. His English classes focused on literature, writing,
and grammar. Literature was read mostly from anthologies and
occasional supplemental novels. Classroom approach was standard as
well. "I think the teacher pretty much put out the issues, and we
responded to them verbally. I don't recall a great deal of interaction
from student to student. It was more directed from student to
teacher."
Howard discusses his teacher education experience:
I had a general methods class, Principles of Teaching,
which was applicable to just about any subject matter
area, but then I also had a series of teaching courses--
teaching of reading, teaching of social studies, teaching of
art, and a few other of these things. While that was

helpful in terms of getting started in teaching so I could

144
go into a classroom and do something, I don't find that it

was helpful over the long term. It's important that you
go into teaching, I think, with a certain naiveté about
what's going on, and that way you can focus on being a
classroom teacher. But once you're there a while, other
issues come to the fore and you change, and you change
things, and you change the way you do things in the
classroom. And so, where I am today and the reason I do
things today, be it in literature or other areas, is mainly
because of my experience in the classroom.

Howard has continued his education, although not in English,
completing his doctorate in another field. He sees many
disappointing changes, both in the profession and in the students:

I've got several disappointments. One is I have such a
broad span of ability levels that I have to deal with
running from third grade to eleventh grade. I can't do
that. I cannot do that. That's very frustrating. Another
disappointment and obstacle is the whole testing mode
that we're in. That, I've said, has narrowed what we do
and will continue to do so. Another disappointment has
been--it's frustrating to deal with kids who don't want

to come to school and do school, and that's an ongoing
thing. But I have classes where 2 or 3 students can trash
the class as best they can, and that limits what I do. In
other words, just knowing they are there limits the type
of activity I do. For example, I do very little discussion in

class because it becomes too difficult, for me, to maintain

145
just basic rules of discussion, so I don't do it. And that's

based on, again, the behavior of maybe 3 or 4, and that's
too bad. That's a shame.

Howard discusses his personal attitude toward reading and its
relatively late development. "You know, I don't recall it being there
through high school, and even after high school I don't recall it being
there. But somewhere in the interim from high school-J didn't go to
college until I was 23 years old--and somewhere in that interim, I
think I started to read more and just that reading got me interested
in more reading. Then once I hit college, why then I did quite a bit
of reading, mostly required, but that was okay." That, coupled with a
memorable college teacher, may have influenced him to choose
teaching as a career. "On the college level, I had an English teacher
that really impressed me and helped me, and I think it was patience,
as well as he had a high standard, explained things well, and
generated interest, as well. Just an all-around good teacher. And
that was noticeable to me, and I think I responded positively to that.
It was a good experience."

For Howard, teaching English at the middle school level
demands many goals. "Literature, at least in my case, is only part of
the week. I try to devote one day a week to it, and then we're only
talking about a 45 minute period, which then gets further reduced in
time, so it's a major part of the program but only one of several
things we focus on." He continues:

My objective tends to be the structure of literature,
different kinds. For example, I'll start with fables and go

to myths and then short stories, and then the novel. To

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deal with it by the structure of that writing, but also

because I really come down heavy that literature has a
message for us. And when you ask students (7th grade)
what the story's about, they'll give you the plot, but they
don't give you the theme. See, that is really tough for
them. So that's one reason why I start out with fables
because it's got the moral to the story. But that is really
hard, and I think that some 12-year—olds are not that
capable of abstract thinking.

He insists that his primary goal, to develop critical/analytical

skills, ties into the testing phenomenon:

And there's no doubt about it. We've been very impacted
by and influenced by the fact that our test scores show
up in the newspaper every year and along with all the
other districts and that has to look good. And we are
focusing and narrowing, actually, our focus in literature
and in areas on what does the test show and how that is
reported? And that's too bad, but that's going to happen
as testing statewide, nationwide becomes more and more
of a factor. I think it's devastating for education, but it's
probably positive for politics, so we will do that for a
while.

When asked about the value and purpose of reading, Howard

responded:

I don't know that I've thought out a theory necessarily,
but I guess I would think along the lines that a lot of

people have had a lot of great thoughts prior to our

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getting here, and we get to share that with them. And

what a wonderful way of doing it. I find it a little
difficult to share that kind of a belief with my seventh
graders at this point. I can share it with them but they
don't buy into it. I'm finding that the novels we're
reading are too slow for them. They want much faster
paced stuff, and I'm not going to blame television, but
television is extremely fast, and so we get into a novel
like WWW, wonderful novel, a lot
of wonderful things in it, and they become very passive
with it. It doesn't move for them. W
ms, perfect for this age level, family values, do it all
yourself, sticking to a task, commitment, moves slowly.
It's a concern of mine . . . As far a reading being
pleasurable, I always want to impart that in some way,
and so my kids read 32 books a year. That's an
assignment, but they're books of their choice, and so we
have the girls reading the romance novels and the boys
reading the sports paperbacks. And I want them to have
that kind of recreational exposure, and even though they
are turned off by, perhaps, textbook reading, at least they
have that, and they're carrying a book and that's
important.
In terms of his own reading, he says, "I mostly read for
information, and I enjoy that, and so when I read books, I'll read in
the area of philosophy or theology, that kind of thing and not so

much current novels. Pop novels I tend not to read." He chooses

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informational reading as pleasure reading. He admits to saving some

of his reading for summer where he can read without distraction. "I
do read throughout the school year, but, yes, I do save some for the
summer when we at our house set aside a time every day for
reading. And we really enjoy that, and you get toward the end of the
summer and you've really done a lot of purposeful reading."

Professionally, Howard is a member of Phi Delta Kappa and
reads the Kama journal. He has not attended a professional
conference in the last year.

Howard no longer feels pulled in different directions. "We've
been given a lot of freedom in this school system, at least on this
level, to do what we want to do. No pressure. And again, I attribute
that to the fact that our [test] scores are high. I think as soon as our
scores drop, we will hear from other powers, other levels. But
because our scores are up, and they can stay up, they give us pretty
much free hand, and I appreciate that, so I'm not pulled one
direction or another."

His internal conflicts often result now from external pressures.
"I don't like teaching just for the test. That creates frustration in me,
and again, I would like to do more, of course, than what I do and
probably every teacher would say that. But you feel constrained by
some of these other things, behavior things, that I encounter, and so
that is a frustration." He specifically names Public Act 25 and
political meddling as disruptive. "I don't see any positive in it, I
really don't. I think it's, again, politically based, and I think it's going
to have, overall, negative results." Although he sees it as harmful,

Howard feels we can't really do anything about it:

149
It's one of these waves that comes through. It's going to

play itself out on shore, and that could take a decade to
do. But it will, I mean this is not necessarily where we're
going to be 10 years from now. This will play itself out
as all these things do. Somewhere down the road here, in
5 or 6 years, the data will start coming in, and it will be
saying that this is wrong. That this is negative, that this
is not what we really want from schools.

Howard continues:

In education, we have the practitioners and the
educationists, who politicians become a part of that, and
if there's some problem with our trade agreements or
industrial outputs, they immediately have to formulate
some response, and their only responses are these
programmatic responses which are limiting. But it
makes headlines, and it makes news, and today, people's
major source of information is TV news.

Howard sees all educational trends as based more on what's
good for politics, not what's good for kids, "and that's another of my
big disappointments over the years. I've seen so much good research
shoved aside and replaCed with what I call 'faddism' in education
because it looks good, and we've got to do it."

Another issue Howard feels strongly about is the
mainstreaming of special needs students. He describes how special
needs classrooms have been dismantled, and how we used to believe
that these students needed highly trained professionals, and now

they're assigned to the general classroom teacher. Howard feels this

150
only adds to the problems already faced in the classroom. "I think

that's an area that really needs to be re-thought and be addressed.
But it's political, and the schools are not going to address that, at least
not in the next couple of years."

Howard feels he has sufficient planning time to do what he
needs to do. He doesn't feel a need for more time. Neither does he
support time for colleagues to share. "I think that's good to do
occasionally, but we, here, want teachers to be different. And if you
do too much of that, you know, you begin to look a lot alike, and we
don't want that. We want teachers to be different and to operate
classrooms differently."

Though he may not discuss his concerns with his peers, Howard
is constantly reflecting and assessing his own performance. "I think
about teaching and education all the time, I really do. That may
sound strange to an outside person, but I think about it all the time.
I'm constantly watching, listening, whenever I can, looking for ideas
and assessing what I'm doing. Is it working? Is it not working?
What are the results? That's what I call a slow heat, but it's
occurring constantly, and I'm probably my biggest critic."

On coping with all the pressures, Howard says:

Teachers will often do what gets them through the day,
and you have to, in spite of it all, or whatever you say
and do, and how much you talk about it. And I really
believe most teachers I've met in my 25 years in
education have wanted to do a good job and have tried to
do a good job, but to use an old term, the bottom line, I

guess, too, with many kids is that the teacher will do

151
what gets them through the day. And that doesn't mean

it's bad. Often, good things happen to get you through the
day, too.

He admits that even he has succumbed to the pressure. He
stated that he used to be much more creative in the classroom, but
he got too much flak from parents, so he gave in. He now includes
vocabulary and spelling, purely for appearance. "80 things look like
it's school," he says. He realizes that the kids don't learn the
vocabulary except short term, but he gave in to those external
pressures. He copes by maintaining his own pleasure reading outside
of school.

Sadly, Howard has made his own personal choices, but even
with his frustrations and disappointments, he insists he would choose
teaching again. "I still think in spite of its problems, that it's a great,
great profession. And it's right for me. You know, it's not right for
everybody, but it's right for me, knowing who I am, and that's been a
long time coming, finding out who I am. I enjoy the atmosphere. I
think there are a lot of good people in education, and they're
stimulating. They're idea people, and they're thinkers, and yet
they're patient and compassionate people, too. It's a good work

environment."

Sally

Sally is twenty-five years old and has been teaching for three
years, the last year in this suburban system. Sally also recalls her
high school experience. Because she changed schools between 9th

and ‘10th grades, Sally experienced distinctly different English

152
curriculums. "In ninth grade, we did our reading on our own. We

did some discussion in class. The teacher related her personal
experiences, and then the study guide type of things. After that, my
tenth grade teacher was not an English teacher and did not know
how to teach English, and so she just had us read things and answer
questions, and that's all we ever did." Eleventh and twelfth grades
followed the same pattern, except that each semester required an

artistic project related to literature. Sally recalls, "I really don't

-.— ._-_ m "m,
i

remember that we did much of anything, but if we didn't write, if we
wrote anything, it was an answer to an essay question on a test and
even that was rare. Mostly, tests were objective. We wrote a
research paper in 11th grade, but that's about the only writing I
remember doing grades 10-12."

Sally joins others who chose to teach after their own negative
high school experience. "I thought I could do it better. I think every
teacher thinks that, though. At least every kid that I've ever had in
my class thinks they could do it better than I can, too. I decided I
was going to be a teacher, though, in first grade and never changed
my mind except for a few moments in sixth grade, but that was my
main goal in life."

Maybe because Sally's professional education is so recent, she
has a more positive view of it:

I think my training really prepared me to do a lot of

what I have to do, unlike a lot of education students have
said, at least in my hearing, because I listened to things
people had to say, instead of poo-pooing them, or because

I found the ways that they would apply instead of saying,

153
"well, this isn't real experience." Because I don't think

you have to learn everything through real experience. I
truly don't believe that because if we did, this world
would be in a lot of trouble. I have to also say that part
of the reason I was prepared as well as I was is because I
did have a lot of fieldwork, and so those kids who don't
get much fieldwork really do have a legitimate
complaint. The classroom theory is great, and it does
work but only if it's used in conjunction with the other. I
feel like I came out prepared to teach my goals. That was
partly because I had to enumerate those goals going in,
basically, what do you want to have kids to get out of
literature? And knowing that from the very start, I was
able to pick and choose along the way that which is going
to help me reach that goal. And somewhere in the college
experience, somebody has to do that for kids. Otherwise,
they won't know how to pick and choose from the
information that's presented.

In spite of her recent education, Sally is back in school herself.

When asked why she's returned to school, she responds:

I suppose there's a very real threat that I have to have a
certain number [of credits] to keep my teaching
certificate, but aside from that, I really enjoy taking
classes. To me, it's a stress reliever to be the student, and
I really enjoy learning. And I even get frustrated, I find,
even on the college level, that other people in the class

complain so much about the way things are done because

154
even some of them are teachers themselves. I just like

somebody there, providing me with opportunities to
think about things that I haven't thought about before.
Even though Sally's a relative newcomer to the field, she
alreadysees dramatic changes in the profession:
When I got out of college, I got out ready to use all these
ideas about empowering kids in literature and freedom of
choice and options and reading theory and all that kind of
stuff. And my first year in . even though I was
mainly a history teacher, I was also viewing myself as a
language teacher. My first year there, everything was
pretty calm, My second year they got into outcomes
based education, and they picked that up real fast, and
by October there were people going to conferences, by
November the science curriculum was being written in
outcomes objectives, by January they'd sent six teachers
to Minnesota for a week. I mean it was just
overwhelmingly, rapidly fast that they decided they were
moving toward outcomes based, and I'm going, "Wait a ‘
minute! I'm just trying to figure out how to use this stuff
that I got out of college with, and you're telling me the
trend is already changing?" And then when I transferred
to . what I saw was people who had picked up
on ideas twenty years ago and left them alone for twenty
years to see if they would work instead of changing them,
and that appealed to me, but then again, I found out that

had problems of its own. I see that there is a need for

155
change, so people's attempts to change is positive, but I

see our rapid shifts and frequent trends as very
damaging to education because nothing ever stays in
place long enough. I think society wants here and now.
It doesn't understand that in the educational process, you
have to give something twenty years to figure out if it
works because that's the time it takes to create a whole
human being, and I don't think people understand that.

Sally states her goals for teaching literature emphatically:
I think first and foremost, you have to be able to see
yourself in literature. Why would anybody sit down to
write except to express their own experiences and try
and reach out and connect with other people? So that has
to be your number one goal, and out of that fall all these
other things, like you make people who enjoy reading,
and critical thinkers who are able to see these
connections between their lives and other people's lives,
and what that means in terms of empowering people to
change, to change the world. I'm really into
empowerment and really haven't found a way to
empower students as much as I'd like through literature,
but that is probably one of my, that has to be secondary
to the goal of seeing that. Yes, we're reaching out, we're
touching, we're communicating, but what's the purpose
behind that? To empower people to do something.

In terms of her personal reading, Sally reads for a variety of

reasons. "There are times when I go sit in my room and read

156
something that I know every English teacher in this world would

frown upon just because I want to escape. And there are times when
I don't want to escape. I'm not stressed out or anything. I really feel
like thinking, so I'll read something that challenges my thinking, or
sometimes I really need an emotional outlet so I'll choose something
that I know is going to tap into things I need to deal with." She
continues:
I don't read as much as I should for information, unless I
need to for a specific reason. Which is one of the reasons
I keep taking classes because then I have to. I tend to
get my news through news- broadcasts and radio, like NPR
news is my main news source, so I don't even read many
newspapers. But 1 do a lot of reading that is both
pleasure and professional at the same time. I read a lot
of young adult, so I know what's out there so I can
recommend it to kids, but I enjoy reading it, and I would
like to write it, so l mean that taps into personal,
professional at both times.

Although it appears that Sally never stops reading, she still
feels guilty about taking the time for pleasure reading. "I do a lot of
it in the summer, and I do feel guilty about taking the time to do it
which is why I actually read a lot of young adult lit. during the
school year and more of the adult stuff in the summer." She
continues:

Rationally, I don't [feel guilty], but I think that there's a
conscious choice. I tend to be a workaholic, and I tend to

feel like I always need to be working, and so that has a

157
lot to do with it. During the school year, I think that

probably is the main source of guilt. And I even got up
this morning, and I read fljhg Kitchen God's Wife for a
couple of hours before I came here, and I even felt bad,
like why wasn't I doing something to prepare for school
next year? So I do have that work-driven thing.

Sally is currently a member of NCTE and ALAN, her NCTE
membership dating back to her undergraduate days. She reads
mm but admits to often saving them for summer reading.
She has also attended a professional language arts conference in the
last year.

Sally recognizes many issues affecting the profession. One of
her biggest challenges is that of juggling priorities:

I find it very difficult to balance the need to recognize
kids as individuals and care about them as individuals,
first of all, because there's so many of them, and I always
feel like I'm failing somebody in that category. On top of
looking at them as individuals and their individual
differences, it's very difficult for me to deal with helping
them keep up in class and still structure an educational
environment. If my main goal is to educate them, and
after 45 minutes a day with them, here's my main goal of
education. But how much time do I give to treating them
as individuals and talking to each one of them, and etc.,
etc. And out of classtime counts the same way. If I
choose to go to a volleyball game to see them play, that's

time away from my planning or grading. I haven't found

158
a way to cope yet, and I just wish society would decide

what it wants out of our educational system. Does it
really want people who are involved in the kids' lives, or
does it really want people to educate them because
they're sending mixed messages.

She says she feel perpetually pulled in different directions:
Always! I end up trying to pull so many different needs,
and so many different goals, so many different ways of
doing things, that I'm always occasionally pulling in
something, and I'm never deciding if that's good or bad.
That just doesn't give a focus, but it uses a little bit of
everything to expose kids to as many different things as I
can expose them to. And I find that kids are real
ambivalent themselves about what they want. They
want it to be easy, and they don't want to have to work
which is human nature, but they want some real specific
goals because they need that thing to feel proud of
themselves for having accomplished. But my teaching
style is not real task, skill oriented, like most. My goals
tend to be broader and more general, and so some of
these kids get real frustrated, so then I'm pulled by them
to find something where they can do that. And by
parents who want specific things in the curriculum.
Parents are real active in this district.

Other external issues that concern her include standardized

testing and curriculum:

159
There does need to be some need to standardize

curriculum to a certain extent so we know at what level
what things are taught. And I have to say that the state
curriculum guidelines that are coming out are fairly I
general and do allow for a lot of that, and so I don't feel

real threatened by those. I think whoever made those

IE.”

has a clue. Once they start to get more behavior oriented,

”“mfi

that becomes a problem because different teachers are
best at teaching different skills, and somebody along the
line, hopefully, gives kids some of the things that they
need and can grow and build on. It's also a threat when
you start trying to measure education in terms of
outcomes because that is the least of education. The most
of education is what happens in your mind, the mental
gymnastics, so to speak. When I give a test, for example,
I'm rarely measuring students' past acquisitions. The
tests are another learning experience. Take what you
know at this point and build with it and go further,
which is why a lot of kids really don't do well on my
tests, and I don't give very many because they are
another activity in mental gymnastics. They're not a
"what-did-you-learn? Spit-it-back-at-me." And when
we reduce education to that, we reduce it to about 10% of
what it should be.

For Sally, one of the biggest ways schools could help is by

providing the time for her to assess what she's doing:

 

160
I rarely have time to pause and reflect. I think if I had

more time to pause and reflect, I wouldn't feel so
overwhelmed. I also wouldn't feel so unsuccessful most
of the time, which I have to confess, as a teacher, I have
very rarely felt successful. Occasionally, something will
strike you, and that'll make you feel successful; like I was
making a bulletin board for my kids and I had them
bring in their favorite piece of writing. And this was
probably in February, and it took the whole while to put
everybody's favorite piece of writing on that wall. But
when I stood back and looked at it, I saw how many
different types of writing we had done. There were
poems up there, there were newspaper articles, there
was a constitution up there, there was a narrative up
there. That was kind of a forced reflection that I noticed.
But you don't get many of those. That was just kind of a
chance thing. I guess I try to measure, unfortunately,
and I have to keep myself from doing this, you tend as a
teacher, it's natural, to measure in terms of whether or
not the kids like you. And that is deadly.

When asked whether she'd again choose teaching, this intense

young teacher struggles before answering yes:

That's a tough question. I chose to go into English, and
I'm not entirely sure why. I guess because I love to read
and write. History was my last thought ever, and I had
to pick a minor, and it was getting real close to the line,

and I wasn't going to be able to graduate in four, and my

161
parents weren't going to help me if I didn't graduate in

four years, so I just said, "Okay, I'll just do history, even
though I hate history." And I discovered that I'd been
very poorly taught history in high school. Also, I came to
love history and decided that history had a lot of keys to
empowerment and perhaps even more than language
arts. And so with empowerment being one of my major
goals for people, I don't know . . . there's a balance [with

history and language arts] somewhere for me there.

Conclusions: School C

All three of these teachers have also continued their education,
but two have since discontinued their professional involvement.
Leigh and Howard, the experienced teachers, have a real frustration
which seems to stem from external pressure from their school and
community to excel and conform. Howard admits to giving in to the
pressure; Leigh insists on bucking the system but feels intense
isolation in her quest.

Sally, although the newcomer, also feels this external pressure
and constantly feels overwhelmed by her desire to do it all. For
Sally, the educational experience was different. Her relatively recent
schooling allowed her to be much better informed of current
educational theory at the beginning of her career.

Like Leigh, Sally chose to teach in an effort to effect change.
Both felt that they could do it better than their teachers did. Perhaps

it is this need that drives them to continue to fight.

162
All three of these teachers value pleasure reading, though they

incorporate it differently into their classrooms. While Howard seems
to have totally separated his personal life and reading from his
profession, Leigh and Sally continue struggling to reach a
compromise. Leigh has pretty much established a working balance,
but Sally's professional responsibilities continue to rule her life.

I will further look at these ten teachers, their lives, educations,
and theories in an attempt to discover connections between these
and their classrooms along with the implications for education in my

final chapter.

Chapter 5: Conclusions and Implications

Reader-response theory has been defined as the reader's
construction of meaning through the transaction with the text. For
Rosenblatt, the meaning of literature exists neither entirely in the
text nor in the mind of the reader but is created through their
transaction with one another:

A novel or poem or play remains merely inkspots on
paper until a reader transforms them into a set of
meaningful symbols. The literary work exists in the live
circuit set up between the reader and text: the reader
infuses intellectual and emotional meanings into the
pattern of verbal symbols, and those symbols channel
thoughts and feelings. Out of this complex process
emerges a more or less imaginative experience.
(Rosenblatt, Literature, 25)

The role of the teacher, according to Rosenblatt, is to help
improve the young reader's "capacity to evoke meaning from the text
by leading him to reflect self-critically on this process" (26). As the
reader grows, so does his ability to respond, combining emotional,
cognitive, and aesthetic dimensions into a unified creation.

Traditionally, education has been thought of as the transfer of
knowledge from one to another, but reader-response works against
this notion. Reader-response allows students to be active rather than
passive agents both in their own learning and in assessing their own
growth. In order to assist in this growth, teachers must also

experience this growth and reflect on their own learning process.

163

 

164
Reader-response theory allows for growth and empowerment for

students and teachers. Its benefits should not be limited to one
group but applied schoolwide.

In looking at the impact of reader-response theory on our
schools and attempting to draw conclusions from my study, it is
necessary to return to the original three questions focused on the
categories of professional journals, teacher histories, and external
pressures to determine the role reader-response theory plays in

each.

 

Question One: Is reader-response theory being written
about in these professional journals and to what extent?

Overall, my findings are encouraging. Regarding the presence
of reader-response theory in professional journals, the evidence is
clear. Both theory and application are thoroughly covered in almost
three hundred articles. These articles are also readily accessible, the
vast majority of them (250) published in the W whose
primary audience is secondary teachers. The articles are also reader
friendly. Most (78%) are classified as description of methods and
classroom practice. Reader-response is defined primarily from the
experiential framework. Theory is discussed in non-technical terms
and is specifically tied in with specific classroom activities. Most of
the articles focus on praxis, the working out of theory through
classroom instruction.

Repeated through this literature are several key findings:

1. The more aware readers are about the steps they go through

in their reading, the deeper their understanding. It is not

165
sufficient to decode; readers must understand how they

negotiate meaning.

2. This understanding of learning or metacognition requires
reflection. It is necessary for teachers to provide time

within their classrooms that allows students to reflect and
think about their own reading process.

3. There is a need for teachers and students to work together.
Meaning is also created through interaction and discussion.
Teachers can provide the assistance students need in their
meaning making experience.

4. A reader's deep sense of identity influences her responses to
literature. The more confident a reader, the more likely she
is to allow herself to bring in personal elements that assist in
meaning making.

5. The role of the teacher is changing to that of co-learner. This
change can be threatening to the teacher because it demands
that much of the authority of the classroom be shared with
the students.

6. The battle of method and goals results in an identity crisis.
Belief in one approach to reading and trained in another, the
classroom teacher often is confused about just what should
be taught.

7. Schools affect methods of response rather than reading
ability. Studies have shown that students approach reading
from the same critical stance used in most classrooms even

after they are out of school.

166
8. Methods of response are influenced by texts used. Because

of the schools' reliance on anthologies, students often think

of literature in terms of study questions dealing with genre

and literary terms.

9. Literature anthologies are not reflecting response theory.

Primarily, anthologies are organized historically or by genre,

and focus on textual understanding and analysis. Teachers

feel comfortable with these texts because they are in effect
the same as the texts they used as students twenty-five

years ago.

All of these findings indicate the need for informed teaching.
However, most of the discussion of reader-response occurred in the
seventies, just as many of today's teachers came out of school. By
the time these teachers began their professional affiliations, reader-
response articles appeared less frequently. Interest didn't
necessarily wane, but other issues took precedence, simply reflecting
a periodic change of focus. The decade of the eighties resulted in
fewer articles than the seventies, but since the late eighties, articles
are becoming more frequent which may indicate a renewed interest.

The material in the journals is there. For whatever reason,
some teachers have chosen to not make use of it. In my study, only
four teachers regularly read W, and only fifty percent
regularly read any professional journals at all. In fact, according to
recent estimates, of the approximate 100,000 presently teaching
English, less than 5% currently are members of the National Council
of Teachers of English. I will speculate about some of the possible

reasons for this lack of involvement later in this chapter; however,

167
those who have remained involved seem to have a broader view of

the profession, a clearer personal philosophy, and a greater self-
confidence than those who have not, which leads to my next

question.

Question Two: What is the teachers' knowledge of current
response theory, and is it incorporated into their
classrooms?

The answer to this question is not quite so positive. Of those

teachers I interviewed, less than fifty percent regularly read English

Journal. Only one reads Won. and none read 82mm
111mm. Several other professional journals were
mentioned (IRA. Mm. Weaning) but were only read by

one or two of the participants. Whatever their knowledge of reader-
response, these teachers seem to be getting it through a source other
than professional journals.

In looking at the teachers themselves, I looked at the role of
reading in their lives, both on the personal side and the professional.
I was hopeful that for teachers, especially English teachers, the
distinction between the two may blur, but what I discovered was
that their reading remained distinctly separate through their
educational and professional lives.

Though all came to teaching through a personal love of reading,
none of them connected that joy of books with their own experience
as a student. Ninety percent had a traditional high school experience,

teacher directed and information based. Even Joan who attended a

168
progressive private school recalls a literature canon and emphasis on

writing correctness.

This traditional experience extended into college. The focus for
eighty percent was a standard literature background using a critical
analysis approach. Only Sally, newest to the field, had professional
undergraduate education emphasizing theory. For the others,
methods classes were few or outdated. Even those who did receive
professional methods classes as part of their undergraduate program
were not exposed to reader-response. None of the methods taught
was integrated into their other English classes.

It's not surprising then that nine out of ten of these teachers
returned to school for additional education. While three of those
didn't feel that graduate school met their needs, the remaining seven
did benefit from their experience. However, even in graduate school
where they were introduced to response theory, these teachers
discovered that the required literature classes did not incorporate it,
still clinging to the critical analysis approach of their undergraduate
days.

There are many reasons for this lack of movement away from
New Criticism despite the presence of the multiple post modern
theories. As Cahalen and Downing note, " 'Theory' is just one more
subject to be 'covered' according to the 'field coverage' principles
which Gerald Graff and others described. In short, the traditional
scholarly models still operate as powerful constraints on the
dissemination of the very pedagogical alternatives being
recommended by those authors" (4). According to Cahalen and

Downing, New Criticism remains attractive for teachers "because once

169
its method (involving the preeminence of the textual form and the

literary devices within it) was 'mastered,‘ classroom teaching became
an art at which teachers enjoyed being better 'bankers' than students
and could avoid doing much extratextual homework" (6). They
continue:
The problem as we perceive it, is that introductory
courses are still often taught in this fashion even by
teachers who have not read New Critics in years, or
haven't needed to read them because the New Critical
doctrines have been so deeply naturalized as the
professional "unconscious" of literature departments. (7)
It is apparent through all strands of my research that for most,
the focus of their educational experience has been on the material to
be covered in the classroom rather than on. the person facilitating
that classroom:
Research in reading, no matter what else it has
demonstrated, has found the teacher to be a most
important--perhaps the most important--factor in
educational process. Theoretical movements come and
go, but change comes slowly. In the classroom, teachers
often fall back on the ways of their own teachers, because
of lack of practical implementation of new theories or
because of fear of failure in trying new methods.
(Rosenblatt, W xi)
It is no wonder that these teachers have been unable to merge
their separate views of personal reading and school reading. Never

in their professional careers have they seen response theory applied.

170
They may have read it, discussed it, even viewed it, but if they

haven't lived it, they haven't really learned it. They've only gone
through the motions. They maintain this inconsistency between the
theory they espouse and the practice they prescribe for their
students. This behavior also has political ramifications; through
saying but not doing, these teachers are still in power.

It is apparent that modeling and personal experience are
extremely important. These teachers came to reading early, and
their attitudes were fostered by family members who modeled
positive reading practices for them. Modeling was also important for
many in their choice of profession. Either they had a memorable
teacher who was sensitive, caring, and personable whom they
wanted to emulate, or their teacher was memorable for negative
reasons and was someone they knew they could outperform. Even in
these examples of modeling, it is important to note the distinction
that these teachers make between personal reading and school ‘
reading.

Given the role that modeling had for these ten teachers, what
can be said about the model they are now providing for their
students? Nine out of ten state that their primary goal for their
students is to create lifelong readers. Yet, nine out of ten admit that
personal pleasure reading is their last priority. They leave it for
summer or squeeze a few pages in before falling asleep. Even then,
nine out of ten feel guilty about reading for enjoyment, which
perhaps more than anything reflects in their classrooms. They
divorce personal reading themselves, and it carries over into their

classrooms. Few share their own reading interests with their

17 1
students on a regular basis. For a variety of reasons, most are not

modeling their own number one goal.

Instead, their classrooms reflect a mixed theory approach,
inculcated with the beliefs of the New Critics but drawn to the logic
and power of response. Teachers may use response activities one
day and analysis activities the next, volleying back and forth without
understanding their connections. Often, as Tom Newkirk points out,
teachers mistakenly believe that reader-response and critical
analysis are "two opposing ideas," and to advocate one, one must
reject the other (Andrasick x). Transactional theory, however, views
them both as necessary parts of the whole. It is this incomplete
understanding of reader-response theory that creates conflicts for
teachers. Louise Rosenblatt states, "Few teachers of English today
would deny that the individual's ability to read and enjoy literature
is the primary aim of literary study. In practice, however, this tends
to be overshadowed by preoccupation with whatever can be
systematically taught and tested" (Lnem 64-5). She later
continues, "The tendency to hold on to old attitudes, on the one hand,
is opposed by the struggle, on the other hand, to find fresher and
more completely satisfying patterns" (257). No wonder these
teachers feel pulled in different directions and sometimes
overwhelmed. If they haven't been able to merge. their separate
views of reading in their professional lives, how can they hope to
integrate them in their classrooms?

The teachers I interviewed deal with this struggle and are at
various levels of merging theory with practice. In reviewing my two

sources of collection, the teacher questionnaires and follow up

172
interviews, it was clear that for these teachers their goals and

personal beliefs do not always connect. As Rosenblatt states,
"Conscientious teachers often thus unwittingly defeat their long-term
aims by classroom methods, day-to-day assignments, and devices for
evaluation" (68). I will now look at five teachers whose classrooms
reflect at least partial merging of theories.

Will, in his interview, indicates a reading theory based in
response. "I think when you can relate to certain texts, you can get
insight on behavior . . . I think the more you read, the better you
read, and the broader you read, the more open you become to new
ideas." His questionnaire, however, indicates a more traditional
classroom approach. Will regularly uses anthologies and teacher
directed discussion. Most reading is done outside of class, and
students are assigned the same material and rarely given choice.
Although use of anthologies and teacher selected material doesn't
mean response can't be used, by allowing students choice, we
provide them with a vested interest in their own learning. Teacher
directed discussion can also generate genuine student response, but
as Robert C. Small suggests, students are more likely to be
responding to the teacher's response than their own reading
(Karolides 17). Evidence of a merging of response theory with other
approaches in Will's classroom can be seen in the way he pairs
regular use of reading journals with study questions, focusing of both
aesthetic and efferent reading. Will also combines methods of
assessment, using objective tests, homework, projects, teacher

conferences, and portfolios.

173
Kathleen also indicates a response approach to reading in her

interview but admits her difficulty in extending that connection into
her classroom. "I also look into reading in terms of myself, in terms
of the lives of my children, in terms of the relationships with my
students. I think reading is fun. I think reading should be fun.
Unfortunately, I haven't figured our how to make all the things that
kids are supposed to read fun." Kathleen, however, has made gains
in merging response theory with practice. Her questionnaire
indicates that she regularly uses paperbacks and novels rather than
anthologies, although most of the reading is assigned. Her students
regularly read the same material outside of class but often discuss it
in small groups. Kathleen uses both reading journals and study
questions in her daily activities. The journals serve as the basis for
sharing and generating class discussion. Methods of evaluation are
more traditional, relying primarily on objective and essays tests and
rarely on portfolios or observation.
Warren balances his classroom with a combination of activities.
In his interview he expresses his own struggle between the two
theories of response and critical analysis:
If we really believe in reader-response theory, then what
we probably ought to do is give them a bunch of books
and say, "Read them, and when you think you have
something to say, write an article or an essay and let me
read it," and I'm committed to that. On the other hand,
there is another side to me that says, when a kid leaves a
course called American Lit., they should know the names

of ten authors and poets, and then they should be able to

174
cite fifteen titles and give you a brief synopsis, and if the

only way we're going to do that is by me talking about it,
then so be it.

This mixed view is also apparent in Warren's questionnaire. He
regularly uses anthologies as well as paperbacks and novels. Teacher
directed discussion is balanced by small group work. Although most
of the reading for class is assigned and completed outside of school,
students are occasionally offered choice. Warren's methods of

evaluation rarely include objective tests but primarily depend on

“J“ “I‘M-N-

essay tests, occasionally augmented with portfolios, projects, and
teacher conferences.

Anne is perhaps the most successful of my teachers in her
attempts to incorporate response theory into her classroom. She
states, "So, one of my biggest goals is for them to make a connection
between their lives and the literature and to come away with
[recognition] that the literature has some kind of impact on them."
Her questionnaire indicates regular use of anthologies, paperbacks,
and young adult literature. Students regularly read the same
assigned material outside of class. In class, small group work
combines with whole class discussion. Activities include reading
journals, creative writing, projects, and readers theatre, and students
are evaluated through essay tests and projects. Anne is the one
teacher in my study who did not have the traditional undergraduate
English preparation based on critical analysis, and she feels that this
plays an important role in her approach to teaching. This view that
English majors are somehow crippled or at least analytically

indoctrinated is shared by Ogle Burks Duff who notes, "They have

175
been educated to interpret, analyze, evaluate (all efferent concepts),

but not to feel. Is there any wonder that many of our high school
students see literature as something only to interpret and analyze?"
(Karolides 218). Anne believes that missing that indoctrination has
allowed her to avoid many of the conflicts experienced by her
colleagues. "I think the reason I'm still happy as a teacher is I don't
feel I'm there to give information. I feel I'm there to learn as much
as the kids are, and I learn tremendous amounts from them every
year."

Leigh also combines approaches is her classroom. In her
interview she states that her goal is to encourage students to connect
with what they read. "Hopefully, to find stuff that kids are
interested in that's at a higher level so they have to start making
some jumps. Having them see that literature can relate to stuff that
they're doing everyday in their lives." She continues, "I want to
tease them with the possibilities. I want them to see how much fun
it can be." Leigh's classroom reflects these goals while maintaining
traditional ties. She regularly mixes use of anthologies, paperbacks,
and young adult literature. Activities range from whole class to
small group. Leigh regularly reads aloud to her students, though
most reading is assigned for out of class. Projects are regularly used
as well as essay tests and homework, but conferences and creative
dramatics are not.

All of these teachers assign reading to be completed outside of
class. Most are not providing time for reading within their

classrooms, which may suggest that talking about reading is separate

from and more important than the reading itself. These teachers

176
assume implicitly that the reading has occurred before it is covered

in class, and that is not necessarily wrong, but to encourage or
promote the value of reading, we should make it important enough
to rate class time.

For some, how they approach literature is influenced by the
courses they're assigned to teach. Literature survey courses demand
one approach; genre studies, another. However, even accounting for
these influences, these teachers weren't confident that they were
doing the right thing.

Given the various kinds of reader-response theories and these
teachers' own lack of time to reflect, it is no wonder that there is
confusion among them, and that they are experiencing difficulty in
sorting through all the information.

This personal conflict extends beyond their separate
classrooms. It affects their individual goals and creates professional
conflict over whose goals are correct, current, or necessary. Their
teaching is more directed by their experience and education than
their personal goals. These teachers have handled this conflict
within the profession in a number of ways. Some have quietly given
in as Howard who resorts to teaching spelling and vocabulary for the
sake of appearance. Others have made peace or simply cope. Will
and Joan continue to push themselves and their students harder.
Kathleen has reduced her English teaching to half-time. Linda
refuses to change but is unhappy over her lack of results, and Leigh
remains angry over outside pressures but determined not to give in.
Many balance uncomfortably on the edge. Jan introduces the classics

in her readers workshop. Warren questions the whole purpose of

177
teaching literature, and Sally still tries to do it all, unable to limit

priorities. For these teachers there is no clear mission, and they look
to the outside to provide direction in lieu of a single, coherent,
personal philosophy. In fact, this single philosophy may be an
impossibility in the teaching of English with such a mix of theories

and goals and need not reflect negatively on these teachers.

”"13,

Least frustrated by these differences are those who have

remained professionally involved. In this study, fifty percent of the

pk MF*“+MAO--“an
I. __ . " .4, . .

teachers maintain professional memberships, read professional
journals, and attend professional conferences. Although this figure is
well above the national average, it still isn't ideal.

Education, as any profession, demands our staying current.
Those who remain professionally involved are more philosophic
about changes in the profession and continued external pressures.
They tend to adjust to change, not place blame, and resist
questioning themselves. Those not involved are more frustrated by
and defensive about those external pressures. Blame is placed on
students, parents, society, and government, and these teachers seem
less sure of themselves and what they're doing. Part of the problem
may be that the teachers have only a limited definition or
understanding of response theory, limited to a superficial, emotional
response. They don't understand that emotional, personal response
is only the first step in responding to literature that combines with
critical response. In lieu of a complete understanding, they are
unable to take it through critical analysis. As Stephen Judy states:

The Dartmouth Seminar helped many English teachers

see that there is a considerable need in the schools to

178
provide young people with more opportunities to

examine literature in personal terms. However, a great
many undergraduates (and, one might add, experienced
teachers) have initial difficulty approaching literature
this way, because as waste], graduates of W]
literature programs, they have lost their capacity to
respond to literature in personal ways. These are the
students who have "done well" in school and college
literature classes. They are skilled in formal "classroom
criticism," and quite understandably, they are reluctant
to abandon conventional classroom talk about books in
order to plunge into more creative kinds of

responses. ("Exploring Response"33-34)

Clearly, professional involvement provides positive benefits for
those who take advantage of it. It provides continued education,
affirmation, and community. Within it, members are challenged,
cheered on, and encouraged to reflect. Professional conferences
allow members to participate in a community of fellow educators,
sharing as individuals and benefiting from the group. As Kathleen
Dudden Andrasick notes, this continued education is imperative.
"Students trained by teachers who are not themselves readers and
writers are likely to be limited by their instructors' lack of
experience" (186). She continues, "Teachers must not neglect
personal literacy in their dedication to student competence. One
informs the other" (186). In addition to this lack of personal literacy
are other issues which affect teacher performance, as discussed in

my third question.

179
Question Three: What are some of the factors that limit or

impede the use of response theory in the classroom?
External pressures affect all of my teachers, though not as

much as I had predicted. Government regulations, testing, public

pressure, and funding were important issues for all, but each teacher

kept coming back to the same issues: time and support. Nine out of

ten said emphatically that they could use more time. All felt

pressure to do more and were frustrated at their inability to do it all.
They said they could use more time to plan and to meet with H.

other teachers just to share. Professional journals are not being read -

at least in part because these teachers just don't have the time;

however, the teachers in my study offered several other reasons.

Leigh, who teaches middle school, stated that she dropped her

membership some years ago because she didn't feel mm

addressed the issues important to that age group. Since then, she

has not renewed her subscription. While for some it was an matter

of time, for others, cost was a factor. None of my teachers indicated

that they didn't have a need for professional information; they

simply rationalized their actions. Kathleen, however, may have been

the most honest in her reasons for not reading the journals, "

some of the articles absolutely to me had no relevance at all to my

experience, and it was a lot of people making themselves feel good

by writing an article in the W and getting it published."
Her comment may reflect an important point on the part of

many practitioners. These classroom teachers in their own struggles

operate in solitary classrooms and function alone. Many feel isolated,

defensive, and bombarded by new and conflicting theories. How

1 80
they choose to make sense of all this is a matter of survival. Perhaps

it is this basic insecurity that keeps them from using what seems to
be just another source of new frustrations. Subconsciously, they may
be avoiding one more demand on an already overloaded system.

It may also be that their lack of confidence and feelings about
their lack of success are only reinforced by reading articles written
by or about teachers who only meet with success in their classrooms.
As I recall, out of close to 300 articles dealing with reader-response, .
there were only two or three that expressed doubt, uncertainty, or h
described failed programs. These few articles stood out from the
others, and I remember my mixed reactions. First, I was critical of
the authors for adding more fuel to an already negative fire. Then,
more honestly, I admitted to myself how I have felt similar
frustrations and doubts. I realized that nowhere is it appropriate or
acceptable for teachers to voice concerns, difficulties, or a sense of
inadequacy. This unspoken rule often results in teachers turning
inward rather than reaching out, or worse yet, dropping out
altogether.

Because of the nature of the school environment which
promotes isolation on the part of the teachers, rather than sharing, I
suspect teachers often fall victim to professional jealousy and in an
effort to spare their already fragile egos throw up protective walls
around themselves. By avoiding journals and professional
conferences, these teachers allow themselves to remain insulated but
safe from seemingly more successful peers.

The demands of teaching English took over their lives, and

most of their outside time was spent grading papers and planning.

181
Several mentioned favorably the scheduled professional time at a

local professional development school. They feel isolated and alone
in their classrooms, especially those who are not members of a
professional organization.

Ironically, it may be that the one thing that keeps them from
quitting is the lack of time to think about it. Conversely, had they
more time to reflect, they'd feel better about themselves and what

they're doing.

Implications

Clearly, the demands on English teachers are great. Even
though there may already be too many demands placed on them,
there are advantages to incorporating response theory. Initially,
there may be more work on the part of the teachers to restructure
their classrooms, but the payoff is in the students' increased interest
and involvement as well as their own. The value of reader-response
theory is that it allows readers to become active agents in the
creation of meaning. It promotes connection between the reader and
the text. It encourages reflection, implies larger connections, and
encourages sharing. It views literature as the human artifact that it
is, not an unchanging body of knowledge to be mastered.

The concepts need to be applied not only to the literature but
to the teachers' lives as well. If we truly want our teachers to be
effective, we must meet the same needs for them that we wish them
to meet for their students. As Ogle Burks Duff says, "If we want
students to recognize the confluence of the cognitive and affective

domains in the literary experience--to transact with the poem--our

182
pedagogical approach must be modified. Humans not only think,

they feel. The reader-response experience provides an opportunity
for all of us to learn what it means to be a human being by providing
us the opportunity to experience a range of encounters with life
through. the aesthetic stance" (Karolides 218).

Assisting in developing, encouraging, and maintaining this
opportunity for change involves teacher education programs, the
schools, and the professional journals. It is true that there are also
many factors outside the educational system that impact teachers;
however, I will limit my remarks to these three which most directly

affect teachers and the implications for each.

Teacher Education Programs

Schools need to modify teacher education programs so that
teachers and pre-service teachers are allowed to experience the
application of reader-response theory. All of the teachers in this
study experienced traditional literature classrooms, and nine of these
ten earned undergraduate English degrees with an emphasis on
literature from the perspective of New Criticism. These literature
classes focused on knowledge about the text and rarely, if ever,
connected those texts to either the students themselves or the
teaching of literature. As Susan Florio-Ruane states, "Classroom
discourse about academic subjects is de-contextualized in the sense
that it is often about knowledge unconnected to authentic contexts of
its development and use" (5). Teacher education needs to help the
teachers connect with the literature and with themselves. We need

to encourage them to examine their attitudes toward literature,

183
reading, and learning. "We have found that future teachers with

whom we worked often were unaware of the values and beliefs they
brought to the classroom" (Hammersley 210). Without clear
knowledge of their own underlying assumptions, teachers often
operate in a confusing world of mixed goals.

Too often, university English departments still operate with the
study of literature separate from the study of teaching methods, and
there is no real incentive to change because, in universities,
scholarship is more highly valued than teaching. "The professional
and institutional structure of the literary discipline amply rewards
scholarly research through conferences, journals, and books. In
contrast, few institutional structures reward pedagogical practices or
answer the educational needs of teachers" (Cahalan and Downing 3).
As I have said before, the traditional model persists because it
provides a clear pedagogy and an exact content, and it is so ingrained
in the system that we often practice it without consciously
recognizing it as such. Cahalan refers to it as the "professional
'unconscious' of the literature departments" (3).

This focus needs to change. I'm not saying that literature
departments need to be dismantled, only that they should
incorporate more than one critical approach to literature and include
those such as reader-response that recognize the role of the reader
and the importance of metacognition. The many new contemporary
theories which are currently popular on many campuses have in
their premises a reliance on reader-response theory, although some
may not acknowledge it. As Cahalen and Downing note, "As diverse

as theoretical developments have been, they share a common

184
emphasis on the centrality of readers and their culture in

interpreting literary texts" (ix). Acknowledging this balance of the
important roles of reader and text, teachers will feel less anxiety
about recognizing the importance of the reader in their own lives and
classrooms. As Alan Purves states:
The attitudes that need to be developed are those that
allow a prospective teacher to give up many of those w
comforts traditionally associated with the teacher's role 1
and to accept an open classroom, in which the teacher “‘
allows the students to express themselves and exchange
the variety of their responses. It is difficult for the
student teacher, deservedly apprehensive, to give up the
security blanket of a desk, of lecturing, of being right, and
of grades. ("Inside" 120)
This is true for experienced teachers as well. If teachers are
offered more than a single approach to literature as well as an
opportunity to explore their own values and beliefs and reflect upon
them, they will be more apt to integrate their conflicting views and
recognize in themselves, possibly for the first time, a level of
competence.
As Elliot Eisner suggests, there are many benefits to teachers
having full understanding of both content and pedagogy:
One is that full command of the ideas one is teaching can
free one to take on all comers--responses to questions
and statements by students can be treated with style if

one knows one's intellectual turf . . . What does

competence mean to those of us interested in the

185
improvement of teaching? To what extent is it likely that

a teacher will have pedagogical grace if the teacher does
not have a firm grasp on the content to be taught?
Psychologists often study teaching as if it were a
contentless process. Can teaching be effectively studied
that way? Can one teach for transfer if one does not see
the connections through which such transfer is

made? (Eisner 134)

Those changes begun in teacher education programs need to be
continued as teachers move into the new setting of the schools.
Teacher education programs must begin to address the continued
needs of the professional, not limiting their focus to the needs of the
pre-service teachers but following them out of the universities and
into their classrooms, providing that much needed support and sense
of ongoing education. Professors of professional methods classes
need to maintain their connections with the public schools, spending
time both observing and teaching alongside of their students. This
university presence will only help the schools in their own efforts to

assist teachers.

Schools

What can the schools do to help? First, they need to provide
support, both personally and professionally for their teachers. They
also need to provide leadership and encouragement. Fifty percent of
the teachers no longer read professional journals or attend
conferences, and the most frequently cited reasons were lack of time

and personal cost.

186
O Ironically, most of the journals articles were published in the

seventies, just as most of these teachers were entering the
profession. As new teachers, time was limited and so were personal
resources. By the time they settled into their careers and finished
graduate school, the trend had changed, and response theory
appeared less frequently in the journals.

Coming into the eighties, the economy also changed, and school
budgets felt the crunch. No longer was there money available for .5;
professional development, and many schools found it necessary to L
have teachers pay for conferences and subscriptions out of their own
pockets. Lack of time and money were the reasons most often given
for teachers lack of participation.

As noted earlier, schools do not have much effect on reading
ability, but they do affect methods of response that students use
when reading literature. Alan Purves in W
notes, "When one turns to response to literature, one finds a clear
indication that patterns of response are learned in secondary school"

(106). He continues, "If they are learned, they appear to have been
taught, if not as a conscious part of the curriculum, at least as part of
a 'hidden agenda' " (106). Herber and Herber name "quality of school
textbooks, the nature of instruction that teachers provide, and the
opportunities for meaningful practice" as the three essential factors
for extending student literacy (Davidson 69). This need for

extending literacy applies to teachers as well as students. It is this
lack of concern for the extended growth of teacher literacy that

results in the reliance on textbooks.

187
Rather than teachers, Wilkenson states, "Textbooks are the

organizing elements of the curriculum and the driving force in
instruction" (Karolides 82). Textbooks drive the curriculum, the
schedule, and the budget. As they did for me, anthologies determine
approach, limit selection, and dictate method. The cost of textbooks,

particularly literature anthologies, is one area that has multiple

effects. Money spent on anthologies is not available for

‘ 3

supplemental materials or teacher professional development. In her

.F“"-‘“”‘"

interview, Leigh comments on her school's recent $2,800. purchase of
new anthologies. "Do you know how many paperbacks I could have
bought with that money?" Leigh is outraged that so much money
was wasted on a set of books that she doesn't use anyway, all
because of a school policy that says that each student must be
provided with his/her own book. For Leigh, it is only a sad
misappropriation of money; for others, anthologies play an even
bigger role. Because of the exorbitant cost of anthologies, many
schools insist that their teachers use them and restrict curriculum
accordingly. Schools need to allow their teachers to make their own
professional choices and then support those choices.

Teachers also need time to share and to reflect. If reflection is
necessary for students, and their learning is dependent on this, then
it only follows that teachers need the same opportunity. Schools
could help by adjusting the school's schedule to provide time within
the day for teachers to meet, share, and plan. As Marilyn Hanf
Buckley states:

To teach literature with poise and confidence, teachers

need to experience and internalize the subject. If the

188
institute aspires for a different teaching of literature,

then new ways of literature must first become part of the
teacher, not just part of the curriculum. Change the
teacher, the institute hypothesizes, and then students will
change accordingly. The challenge of teacher education,
therefore, is to bring about the teachers' personal re-
knowing of curriculum. (Karolides 46)

Schools should also recognize the need for professional growth.

fl‘fi‘-; 5L. . .

This is not a selfish luxury but a necessity that benefits the teachers
and the students. Professional growth needs to apply to
administrators as well as teachers. Administrators must provide
leadership not only through support but also by example,
demonstrating their own professional growth. As Wilkerson states,
"Principals have an obligation to be informed and knowledgeable in
the same areas expected of teachers" (Karolides 84). He continues,
"The need for ongoing and relevant staff development for teachers
and administrators is a crucial one. Development of a shared
commitment to a philosophy of instruction and implementation of
instruction consistent with that philosophy require knowledge,
experience, and support" (84). Schools must guarantee an adequate
amount of money that would allow their teachers to attend their
respective professional conferences and encourage their teachers to
become more involved as presenters and committee members.
Schools should also maintain professional libraries. This, too,
requires a commitment of time and money.

Despite the frustrations of teaching, all of these teachers insist

that they would choose teaching again. All are sincerely dedicated,

189
love their field, try hard, and want to do a good job. They also want

to do better. None has totally dropped out and is only going through
the motions. If they didn't care, they wouldn't have agreed to
participate in this study. However, dedication and concern are not
enough. These teachers can't do it all on their own. As Buckley says,
"Rosenblatt's contention that no one can make meaning for readers
other than the individual readers themselves, can be extended to M
suggest that no one can make a 'new' teacher other than the teachers 1, “
themselves" (Karolides 49). She continues: 1
Teaching is a behavior, deeply rooted and in action more
spontaneous than reflective, so change is primarily
psychological. It involves not so much a change of mind
as a change of heart . . . And without the change of heart,
it is my observation that teachers will continue repeating
their established patterns of instruction whether or nor
they intellectually adopt a new curriculum idea or
verbally boast of academic acquaintance with this
modern theorist or that. (49)
Secondary schools need to provide time and opportunity for teachers
to read journals, reflect, incorporate, and share with peers. Schools
must create situations that encourage and, in fact, make it necessary
for teachers to verbalize their thoughts. Most of the teachers in this
study are unable to make connections between theory and practice.
Their inability to articulate their own pedagogical theories suggests
that they have lacked opportunities to do so. Schools can assist by

providing time for their teachers to develop personal theories and

take ownership of them. Also necessary is continued professional

190
development, helping teachers to feel empowered in the face of

external pressures. And finally, literacy needs to be the
responsibility of all disciplines, not just the realm of English
departments. All of these issues and others need to be addressed in

the professional journals.

Professional Journals
Journals are only one way to disseminate information and a i,
passive one at that. It is apparent from my study that professional L
journals alone are not the answer. In terms of topics, these journals, I
particularly Engjd and Eli seem to be influenced by their focus on
composition. This focus may reflect the profession's natural trend
toward composition or may be an effort to counter the impact of the
literature focus of past. Regardless, professional journals should
attempt to offer a balanced and integrated emphasis on all areas of
language arts, including reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
In terms of readership, these journals as representing their
professional organizations need to do more to recruit a larger
readership, possibly by making their institutional memberships more
attractive. At this date, institutional memberships are significantly
more expensive than individual memberships. As more and more
individual teachers feel the need to limit expenses, it is even more
important that their schools provide professional resources. The one
resource that can be consistently available to all is journals.
In addition, as indicated in this study by both the journal
review and the teacher case studies, there is a need to do more with

assessment. It need to be asked why was there such a lack of

191
articles dealing with assessment of reader—response? Journals

should address the issue of evaluation and assessment in light of
current theory, providing alternatives to often state mandated
testing procedures.

As mouthpieces for professional organizations, journals need,
perhaps, to become more political in their stand against uniform
testing. Journals should re-examine their previous policy of
separating professional and political concerns. Professional
organizations are very active in their opposition to standardized
testing, and it is time for their journals to more adamantly reflect
this position.

But most closely connected with reader-response theory is the
fact that in these journals, too little attention has been given to
teachers. Journals need to address this lack of focus on the teacher
as an integral part of the learning process. It is neither selfish nor
unprofessional to address the concept of teachers as learners and
their needs in this evolving role. If one truly believes in the
response-based theory of learning, then the teacher becomes a co-
learner. Almost all of the research and articles in my study dealt
with the student learner, materials, and methods, not the teachers,
their strengths and their problems. How teachers struggle with their
own conflicting beliefs, how they adapt and attempt to make sense
for themselves, how they feel about themselves in this process are
all questions that need to be addressed in professional journals.
Teachers need to read about others' experiences as they struggle
with the same difficulties; they need to know they are not alone. The

teachers in my study felt isolated and alone in their frustrations. It

192
would be helpful if journals, as literature, offered a means for

teachers to connect with each other and to share their multiple
perspectives. Learning is collaborative, and as Hammersley says, "In
short, we come to see ourselves in part as others see us. The self is
thus also a social construction, the results of persons perceiving
themselves and then developing a definition through the process of
interaction. This loop enables people to change and grow as they

learn more about themselves through this interactive process" (35).

Summary

There are many reasons why reader-response is so slow to be
incorporated in the schools. Professional journals play only one role.
If change is really going to take place, teachers need to feel
empowered to effect that change, and I don't feel that they currently
do. As we know is true for our students, expectations affect
achievement. If we wish teachers to behave as professionals, then
we need to treat them as such. Maybe then teachers will come to
view themselves with confidence. Teacher education programs must
modify their curriculums to reflect the broader view of current
theory. Schools need to provide support and let teachers know that
they are more important than test scores. Through promoting
teacher literacy, schools help teachers build the confidence that
allows them to remain firm against external pressures. And
professional journals need to recognize the teacher as an individual
with questions and needs, not simply as someone incidental to

student learning.

193
Overall, schools and the other various components of the

educational system need to work together to provide an environment
that recognizes the need for collaboration and reflection for teachers
as well as students. Time in school is well spent for professional
development and sharing. Outside of school, time can be set aside for
conferences or teacher support groups, sponsored by schools,
universities, professional organizations, or just the teachers
themselves.

For teachers, if their own school experience was traditional, and
college was traditional, then the demand for continued education is
great. We need to recognize this need in ourselves and others.
Education is truly a lifelong process, but if educators themselves
don't believe, practice, or model it, then we only perpetuate the

status quo.

APPENDICES

Appendix A

UCRIHS Approval Letter

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

 

OFFICE Of VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH EAST LANSING 0 MICHIGAN 0 4.83440“
AND DEAN OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

 

June 25, 1992

Susan B. Steffel
4521 Oakwood Dr.
Okenos, HI 48864

RE: CONNECTING READER RESPONSE THEORY, TEACHERS, AND CLASSROOON PRACTICE, IRB
I92-261

Dear Ms. Steffel:

The above project is exempt from full UCRIHS review. The proposed research
protocol has been reviewed by a Ienber of the UCRIHS coInittee. The rights and
welfare of human subjects appear to be protected and you have approval to conduct
the researc .

You are reminded that UCRIHS approval is valid for one calendar year. If you
plan to continue this project beyond one year, please lake provisions for
obtaining appropriate UCRIHS approval one Ionth prior to June 24, 1993.

Any changes in procedures involving human subjects must be reviewed by UCRIHS
prior to initiation of the change. UCRIHS Iust also be notifed promptly of any
problems (unexpected side effects, complaints, etc.) involving huIan subjects
during the course of the work.

Thank you for bringing this project to aw attention. If I can be of any future
help, please do not hesitate to let we know.

‘9'

Sincerely,

David E. wright, Chair

University Conni in Research Involving
Human Subjects (UCRIHS)

DEN/pi-

   
   
   

° I

cc: Dr. Marilyn Iilson

194

Appendix B

Cover Letter

May 1992

Under the direction of Professor Marilyn Wilson of the Michigan
State University English Department, I am interested in studying
current classroom practices in the teaching of literature, specifically
the extent to which teachers are using reader response theories in
the teaching of literature.

I intend to try to determine to what extent teachers' professional
training, personal values of reading, and outside constraints impact
their teaching of reading/literature in the classroom.

For each cooperating teacher, the study consists of one taped
interview where the teachers will discuss their thoughts on reading
both in and out of the classroom. The interviews will also focus on
those external pressures that the teachers see as affecting their
success. A copy of the questionnaire is included.

The significance of this type of study is that it will give voice to the
classroom teachers. For some, I hope this study provides insight into
some of the constraints that affect them and other teachers like
them.

If we are to improve our effectiveness in the teaching of reading, we

must understand those issues, both internal and external, that affect
teacher performance. This study is a step in that direction.

Sincerely,

Susan B. Steffel

195

Appendix C

Letter of Consent

I have freely consented to take part in a study being conducted by
Susan Steffel under the supervision of Dr. Marilyn Wilson, Associate
Professor of English, English Department, Michigan State University. r

The study has been explained to me, and I understand the
explanation that has been given to me and that my participation will
involve an interview of approximately one hour.

I understand that I am free to discontinue my participation in the
study at any time without penalty.

I understand that the results of the study will be treated in strict
confidence. Neither interviewees nor school systems will be named.
If I wish, I may select a pseudonym to be used in the reports;
otherwise, one will be assigned to me. Within these restrictions,
results of the study will be made available to me at my request.

I also understand that the purpose of this research and any reports
about it will in no way be used to evaluate the quality of my
teaching.

I understand that my participation in the study does not guarantee
any beneficial results to me.

I understand that, at my request, I can receive additional
explanation of the study after my participation is completed.

Signed

 

Date

 

196

Appendix D

Teacher Interview and Questionnaire: Part One

I-Wflfi
AW

1.

2.

9.

Name
Age

Number of years teaching? Where?

. What subjects have you taught?

What subjects are you currently teaching?

How many students do you see per day?

. What is the average number of students you see per hour?

Describe your typical student.

Other careers or responsibilities?

10.Interests or hobbies beyond teaching?

B. W( refer to your own secondary school experience)

1. What was the average size of your English classes?

2. What type of curriculum did your high school follow? ( Eng. 9,10,11,12;
Electives, etc.)

3. How many years of English were you required to take?

4. What would you describe as primary focus of your secondary English classes?
(Lit. Comp. Reading Speech Drama Grammar Other)

5. How were literature and writing taught ? Separately Together

6. What English courses were required, if any?

7. What major works or novels did you read?

8. How often were the following used in your class instruction?

Anthologies regularly occasionally rarely

Novels regularly occasionally rarely

197

198

Paperbacks regularly
Young Adult novels regularly
Duplicated supplemental literature regularly
Printed drill material regularly
Indiv./Programmed material regularly
Study guides regularly
Small group activities regularly
Small group discussion regularly
Individual conferences with students regularly
Audio-visual materials regularly
Field trips and special projects regularly
Lectures regularly
Questioning regularly
Discussion regularly

occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally

9. In your own response to literature, how often did you use the following

activities?
Reading journals regularly
Summarizing regularly
Study questions regularly
Essays regularly
Creative writing regularly
Projects regularly
Drama regularly
Readers theatre regularly
Role playing regularly
Choral reading regularly
Discussion regularly

10. In presenting literature, how often did your teacher

Ask students to read aloud regularly
Read aloud to the students regularly
Have students read silently in class regularly
Have students read outside of class regularly
Have all students read the same material regularly
Have groups reading different material regularly
Have each student use different material regularly
Assign material to student regularly
Allow student to choose from selected

material regularly

Allow student completely free choice

in selecting materials regularly
11. How often did you write for class? regularly
12. What type of writing was most often assigned?

13. What was emphasized about writing?

occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally

occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally

occasionally

occasionally

occasionally

rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely

rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely

rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely

rarely

rarely

rarely

_;’l

essay tests
essays
discussions
projects
portfolios

attitude surveys
confs. with teacher

homework
observations

199

15. Did you have any "special" English teachers?

14. What methods were used for your evaluation?
objective tests

regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly

occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally

What made them special?

CW

1. Do you read for pleasure outside of the classroom?

regularly occasionally
2. About how many hours a week?
3.What type of material do you read?
novels regularly occasionally
best sellers regularly occasionally
nonfiction regularly occasionally
magazines regularly occasionally
poetry regularly occasionally
newspapers regularly occasionally

4. What do you enjoy most about your pleasure reading?

5. Do you ever discuss your pleasure readings with others, including other
students as well as friends? regularly occasionally

In what way? With whom?

rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely

rarely

rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely

rarely

6. Do you ever identify with the characters. the actions, or the issues you read

about? regularly occasionally

7. Do you relate readings to earlier readings?

regularly occasionally

8. How do you define "literature"?

DIIIH IEE'IEEEI"
1. What was the major emphasis of your undergraduate English degree?
2. Did you have methods classes? What did they consist of?
3. How were you originally taught to teach writing?

4. How were you trained in the teaching of reading?

rarely

rarely

200

. Were the approaches to lit. you were taught in your methods classes used in the

literature classes you took?
Did you have an outstanding or memorable teacher in your undergrad major?

What made him/her special?

. Have you had any training in your major field beyond your B.A.? How much?

What did this training consist of?
( literature writing reading other)

10. What was your primary reason for taking advanced training?

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

l6.

17.

18.

If you have had post graduate training in English, what was the major emphasis
of the coursework?
literature
literacy issues (reading and writing)
methods

Are you a member of a general teachers association or union?

Are you a member of a subject matter teaching association? Which?
NCI‘E MCI‘E ALAN IRA MLA Other

How long have you been a member?
How often do you read periodicals or journals about teaching?
regularly occasionally rarely
Which ones?
How often do you read subject related periodicals or journals?
regularly occasionally rarely

Which ones?

During the last year. have you attended any professional conferences related to
your field?

How many? What were they?

201

Teacher Interview and Questionnaire: Part Two

II. Waiting
1. How many classes do you teach per day?
2. In how many of those do you use or teach literature?

3. About how many hours a week do you spend preparing lessons in school?
Outside of school?

4. About how many hours a week do you spend grading papers in school?
Outside of school?

5. Listed below are a number of goals for teaching of literature. Rank each goal in
order of its importance to you as a teacher, with ONE being m1 important and
ELEVEN being least important.

_To improve the literary tastes of students

_To teach the students the history of their literature
To acquaint the students with their literary cultural heritage
_To help the students understand themselves and the human condition

_To develop the students' ability to discuss the variety of literary
forms that are around them

___To develop the critical faculties and analytic skills of the students
_To develop the students' ablility to use their language

_To show the students the ways by which language affects their
response to events

_To encourage students to develop lifelong reading skills and habits
_To encourage students to view reading as a pleasurable activity

_To develop the student's ability to find answers to personal questions
through reading

6. How often are the following used by you in your class instruction?

Anthologies regularly occasionally rarely
Novels regularly occasionally rarely
Paperbacks regularly occasionally rarely
Young Adult novels regularly occasionally rarely
Duplicated supplemental literature regularly occasionally rarely
Printed drill material regularly occasionally rarely
Indiv./Programmed material regularly occasionally rarely

Study guides regularly occasionally rarely

202

Small group activities

Small group discussion

Individual conferences with students
Audio-visual materials

Field trips and special projects
Lectures

Questioning

Discussion

regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly

occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally

rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely

7. In having students respond to literature, how often do you use the following

activities?

Reading journals
Summarizing
Study questions
Essays
Creative writing
Projects
Drama

Readers theatre
Role playing
Choral reading
Discussion

8. 1n presenting literature, how often do you

Ask students to read aloud

Read
Have
Have
Have
Have
Have

aloud to the students

students read silently in class
students read outside of class

all students read the same material
groups reading different material
each student use different material

Assign material to student
Allow student to choose from selected

material

Allow student completely free choice

in selecting materials

9. In assessing your students' work,
how often do you use the following
methods?

objective tests
essay tests
essays
discussions
projects
portfolios

attitude surveys
confs. with teacher

regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly

regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly

regularly

regularly

regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly
regularly

occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally

occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally

occasionally

occasionally

occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally
occasionally

rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely

‘ rarely

rarely
rarely
rarely

rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely

rarely

rarely

rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely
rarely

"n‘A u..
a} th—
A
a

203

homework regularly occasionally rarely
observations regularly occasionally rarely

111. W

1. How often do you meet with other teachers to
plan the teaching of literature? regularly occasionally rarely
share and discuss ideas? regularly occasionally rarely

2. How often do other teachers suggest
that you do certain things? regularly occasionally rarely

3. How often do administrators pressure
you to do certain things in teaching
literature? regularly occasionally rarely

4. How often do administrators dictate

methods? regularly occasionally rarely
materials? regularly occasionally rarely
grading methods? regularly occasionally rarely

5. How often do parents pressure you
to cover (or not cover) certain

material? regularly occasionally rarely
question your methods? regularly occasionally rarely
demand certain practices? regularly occasionally rarely

6. How often do students tell you
what they want or don't to read? regularly occasionally rarely

7. How often do you adjust to their
complaints or requests? regularly occasionally rarely

8. Has the decline in SAT scores
affected your teaching in any way? regularly occasionally
rarely

9. Has press and media criticism
affected you teaching of literature? regularly occasionally rarely

10. Has the back to basics movement
affected your teaching of lit? regularly occasionally rarely

11. Have the state determined

guidelines (e.g. PA 25) affected
your curriculum? regularly occasionally rarely

NW

Please feel free to comment on any of the above issues or on any additional issues
you feel are pertinent.

10.

11.
12.

13.

14.
15.

Appendix E

A Sample of Typical Interview Questions

In what ways did your training prepare or not prepare you for
teaching?

In what ways has teaching changed since you've begun?

What do you see as the biggest change? Do you view it as positive or
negative?

Have the students changed? the parents?

In terms of this ongoing debate of how to teach English, do you feel
conflict (pulled in two directions) in terms of what you want to do
versus what you're being asked to do?

Can you draw any conclusions about your own experience as a student
in secondary school and why you went into English?

Why did you choose to teach English?
Would you choose it again?
What is the biggest drawback to teaching English?

In terms of your personal reading habits, would you say your outside
reading is mostly for pleasure. for information, or professional?

Tell me as best you can your theory of reading.

What are some of the ways schools could help you in the teaching of
literature and reading?

Is there anything you would change or do differently if you had the
time?

What are some of the ways in which you measure your own success?

How important do you think modeling is in the classroom?

204

Appendix F

Sample Interview' Transcript

Rant—I

Q. In terms of your own high school experience, what were the
primary methods you were taught literature?

A. Most of the emphasis seemed to be on mechanics. I can
remember writing, in fact, I still have it--one long,
autobiographical paper. Other than that, I can't remember
doing any other papers to speak of for this woman. The
sophomore teacher, she was into forensics, so she was more
into speaking than she was in writing, but she really knew her
grammar. Junior year we did more literature and less
grammar. Senior year was all literature. It's called College
English. She even gave us a college number, and she lectured
everyday like a college teacher would lecture from a notebook
that she would read the same lecture from for the last 10-15
years. We took notes. Basically, they were notes on the
reading. I did find the notes one time. In fact, I still have
those, too, somewhere.

What is it in us that makes us keep these?

A. We did more writing for her, but her great love in composition
was vocabulary. And so the bigger the words you used, the
more exhilarated she became, and so I really had a warped
conception of what composition was when I went to college. I
had a hard time at first.

Q You said that discussion was used regularly in the classroom.
How would you define discussion?

A. Class discussion in terms of--she would ask a question. When I
say directed, I wouldn't say it was with the senior class, it was
with the other classes. She used to read the questions at the
end of the reading. It was directed.

205

206

In terms of reading, pretty much all your reading was assigned.
Did you get any choice or free choice for book reports or
projects? How about a reading list?

Yes, I can remember doing a book report on Legs! 91 the Flies
that she was captured by and kept for a long time that she
used to show other classes. I also have that. It wasn't very
good now that I look back on it. We used to buy books a lot.
We were encouraged. I don't think we ever got any credit
outside of class, but it was a regular thing to buy paperbacks if
she would order them and allow us to do book reports on them.

What did your book reports involve? Format?

Yes, she gave us a pretty extensive format of questions to

answer, and as I recall, my book report on LQELQLJIILEHQS was
7 or 8 pages. A lot of summary.

In terms of your personal reading outside of the classroom,
what do you enjoy most about your pleasure reading? Why do
you read 10 hours a week outside of school?

Sometimes I'm reading material to use in the school- nonfiction
and fiction.

In your personal reading, is there a breakdown between
pleasure reading, reading for information/utilitarian reading
(news, etc.), and professional reading?

I read a lot more in the summer. But I tend to take things up
that are more challenging, more work. A few years ago I got
that Joseph Campbell's AtlaLeLMythelegy , and I've been
trying to read my way through five volumes of that. After
reading that, you don't really care about reading for a while.
It's kind of a struggle.

How would you define "literature"?
I would say it's just the writings of the culture.
In terms of your memorable teachers, were they positive or

negative? Why? Did it have to do with their teaching or with
them personally?

207

I can remember my English teachers, but I wouldn't say in
terms of memorably positive. They did things that I wouldn't
do or that I've vowed not to do when I made the decision. Not
that I disliked these particular people, even in light of what I
knew when I graduated from college, which was very little.
Michigan State had no program to speak of for preparing to
teach English. The methods class was the only class that dealt
with applying English to the classroom, which was the
Education Methods class. And all we did was prepare
imaginary lesson plans for imaginary classes. And I had no
idea how to teach writing, no idea how to teach reading. I was
mostly teaching as I had been taught, except that I was trying
not to do some of the things that these people were doing. It
took - I almost got out of the profession until about 1973, when
I got back into meaningful theories.

Do you have any mentors in the profession? Who are the
people (professionals, practitioners, theorists) on whom you
base your methodology?

'73 was the year, I don't know if it was the first or second
course in that program where they offered that collection of
media and teaching English as a second language and writing. I
had felt really insecure about my writing after being lauded for
years in school. I can remember my first paper in college was
a D- because I had done what this other teacher had told us to
do. And it wasn't until this class that I regained my confidence
as a writer.

What kind of training do you have beyond your BA? What
kinds of courses did you take and why? What was the major
emphasis?

Most of my training, the training I was interested in, was
writing. Ken Macrorie came and spoke at a workshop, and I
attended a conference that he had at Western [Michigan
University] over one weekend. John Bennett, I went to a
conference that he was at Michigan State. And I read a lot of
those English teachers who influence Britton. But I also was
introduced to Britton. The Moffett and the K-12 curriculum. I
happen to stumble on things like the Boynton book, mm
W. I have a feel for what I'm doing.

208

M

Q. How much do you teach literature? What are your goals for
teaching literature?

A. I have probably four classes. American Lit. is strictly
literature, and English II is probably 60% of literature or more.

Q In rating your goals, why did you choose those you rated the
top three?

A. For American Lit., I would say one of the main ones is to
aquaint students to their literary cultural heritage, but I
wouldn't say that's necessarily what I'm trying to do in the
other two classes. I wouldn't even put it that high. I think
critical and analytical skills in general. I use a lot of variety in
my methods, but it depends on what we are doing and what
materials are covered. '

Q. In what ways did your training prepare or not prepare you for
teaching? What were you trained to teach versus what you
actually ended up teaching?

A. I was good at English lit.; I knew English lit. I was ready to
teach that because most of my college classes were English lit.
I knew English lit. fairly well, but as far as teaching methods -
no. I think common sense has a lot to do with if you survive in
the classroom. I had a lot of common sense, enough to know
that a lot of the crap they taught us in the education classes
would never be applicable. Enough to probably land me C's in
most of those classes. I didn't have an underlying theory
concept of what I was doing. I think when I began, I thought
all these students were learning literature like little college
students, and I was teaching them to analyze difficult pieces of
literature as I wished my high school teachers had done for me
but couldn't do, or had never tried to do. And I found the
results not very good. A lot of my students couldn't read very
well. They weren't interested in anything I was interested in.
The writing we did was all expositional. They really weren't
ready for that, but see at the time, I believe that was the only

eeee

209

kind of writing we could do other than a little creative stuff,
and that was all fluff and wouldn't count.

How has teaching changed since you've been in it?

Well, I think that mostly the theories applying to composition
and to reading. And as the theories have changed, so have the
methods for obtaining results changed.

Do you see that as positive or negative?
I think it's positive. I've seen positive results here.
Have the kids changed during your teaching tenure?

Yes, they've changed. Behavior wise, they've changed a lot.
Kids do things now that twenty years ago they wouldn't even
have been in school. I mean, I had a girl get up today, second
hour, apparently somebody walked by the door. There's some
kind of a feud going on. He made some gesture or something,
and now I heard he claimed she gave him the finger, but he
came to the door as I was turned, and he sort of mouthed a
message to her about her, some kind of illicit profession she
was a member of, and she got a confirmation about what had
been said and screamed down the hall, "F**K YOU!" You know,
condoms occasionally are turning up on the floor. Things that
when I was in school, teachers would have been hospitalized
from trauma of - the kids do that kind of stuff. I think kids
are more sophisticated now in a lot of ways because they watch
so much t.v. But they don't read. They don't read nearly as
much as we used to. They read okay. They come over from
the elementary with them reading at level pretty much.
Reading hasn't been a problem here for a long time. They do a
good job. They choose not to read. The only things that boys
will read are magazines and the sports section. Some girls read
a little more. I have a couple readers now in my 5th hour class
that I would say they read everything. I tell them something,
and they'll go home and read it overnight. But they're rare.
They just don't read. That's why the use of Me:
has been such a trauma in class because nothing is short. They
complain.

210

Can you draw any conclusions about your own experience in
secondary school and why you went into teaching?

First, actually, I wouldn't say my schooling was frustrating in
high school. I enjoyed it. I got a lot of notoriety. I was a big
man on campus. I was a good student, so it wasn't that. It was
just that it could have been better. That's probably the first
time I've thought about it since I graduated, to tell you the
truth. Why would I teach English? Why would I start out in
special ed. for the emotionally disturbed? I was interested in
psychology, and when I went to the orientation and Michigan
State, the guy said 7 years. No, I can't, I couldn't picture
myself going to school for 7 years. At least 7 more after
graduating. So I said what can I apply interest in psychology
to? And they said get into special ed. for the emotionally
disturbed. After a year of that, 1 was. And I really didn't take
that many courses, which is the department that I would have
been marooned in forever, and, I don't know, the education
department - it was like they are on one page and you're on
another page, and I never seemed to be able to figure out how
to help catch up to them. But I could never, so I got out. In
fact, then I decided that I was going to become an apprentice
lithographer, so I got married at the end of my freshman year.
I did that for about 6 months, and I decided that's not what I
wanted to do, so I started going to LCC full-time at night taking
the required courses- sociology, humanities. And about the
spring of that would have been '67. Actually, there was
somebody living in the apartments that I lived in that was an
English major, and he was just getting ready to graduate, and
there was another woman that was a major, too, and I don't
know. I realized that I was interested talking about literature,
reading it, and so I decided to change my major and go into
English. Take two years of foreign language and all that.

Would you choose to go into English again, at this point?

If I were to stay in teaching, I think so. I think it's probably
more work than any of the other areas, but there is more
opportunity for variety, and you have more control over what
you're doing and how you do it. It's a challenge.

In terms of the ongoing debate of how to teach English, getting
into some of the external pressures, do you ever feel like

211

you're pulled in different directions according to what your
goals are, what your theories are, what you want to do, and
what you're being asked to do?

Well, I think sometimes you can't help but be influenced by
criticism about what students are coming out of high school
knowing or not knowing. You're compelled in some ways to
address that. But I would say in general, I feel pretty free to
choose my curriculum. You tend to become cemplacent if you
don't have somebody that you have to rationalize what you're
doing. If I could do what I wanted, and to be perfectly honest,
I did go through a period of that for a while. I think I see
changes in my approach where a few years ago I may have
taken every Friday and had students work on projects.
Basically, it was a blow-off day and every day before vacation.
And then I started thinking, we have a lot of days off, and
they're not really working on these projects, they're mostly
screwing around, and so I sort of buckled down and decided to
get the most out of every class day. I don't care when it is, so
now they know whenever they ask me for a party or anything
like that. If we can accomplish anything in class, we will. And
I think that might have been influenced by the administrator,
but it was sort of a realization on my part, too, how much
farther we could be, how much more material we could cover.
Because I don't think, when kids are screwing around, nothing's
getting done.

What would be some of the ways that schools could help you,
in terms of your teaching of literature and reading? What
would you change or do differently if you had the time? How
could schools assist you?

Probably a better library - make paperbacks more available.
I've been acting as the department chair, and I realize now
how much money goes into just maintaining a certain level of
paperbacks. I'm using paperbacks in American Lit. that were
purchased in 1974-75, and when I was teaching 8th grade, we
were constantly replacing books because kids weren't taking
care of them. So we've been trying to convert over to perma-
bound paperbacks and hope that they'll last longer, but
textbooks don't seem to last as long. I don't think they're as
well made.

212

How about time? Planning time? Do you think it would be
helpful, productive for teachers to meet and discuss common
goals, department planning, English teacher stuff? Just to
share?

One other teacher that I talk to at lunch quite often. She is the
only other teacher that I discuss what I'm doing with very
often. And I like that.

How do you measure you own success, not necessarily the
success of the kids? Do you have any gauges of assessment?
Do you pause to reflect? How do you determine what you keep
and what you change?

Well, I don't have any gauges, clear-cut gauges of assessment
because you do it by a general field of what I've accomplished.
I've kept my students generally successfully mastered certain
things I wanted them to do. Have they shown, in general, skill
advancement, depending on which class. I get bored a lot using
the same material, so I change things from one year to the
next. I may use some of the same things, but even though I do
that, I always get the feeling - it's like the anecdotes I've told
them, like they've heard it before, so they know it like I'm
cheating on them. I don't really think about it like that, but I
can't imagine how my senior English teacher could read from
the same spiral bound notebook year after year. It would be
like you're not advancing. I think part of her approach was
that she was trying to make it like a college class because I
don't recall that many classes when I was in school that were
pure lecture. Hers was, but I think she had graduated from
Michigan State, and she wanted us to experience what it was
like to take notes and be lectured to. We did two term papers,
one each semester. That's what your whole grade rested upon.
I mean, if you didn't do the term paper, you failed the class.
But you also had to pass the test which was supposed to be
difficult. She was rigorous, but I wouldn't say she had a great
deaL

Could you verbalize or define for me you own theory of
reading? Why read?

Well, I haven't had the courses in psycho-linguistics in teaching
of reading. I've had some excerpts in the reading it had

213

influenced, for example, I teach vocabulary. I'll only give them
about a list of ten words a week, and we'll go over them every
day in class. And they do seem to learn a lot better than they
ever have before. And that was just something that a kid has
to see a word 13 times before he learns it, so... But in terms of
theory in reading, I think that I have seen students reading
levels get better. When I started here, I had 5 or 6 seniors that
couldn't read and several at the third grade level. And for a
period of years, as this system improved, the level went up. I
discovered that they had a better grasp of language skills. I
started using Frank O'Hare's sentence combining book back in
1974 when I first came, and I had classes that struggled and
had a terrible time. Since the 80's, I'll pull out this book, and
I'll use it like with a group of sophomores I have now, and they
zip through those exercises. They have no problem at all. I
don't think they've had that much background in sentence
combining. My suspicion is because they do read and they
read fairly well, they have a better intuitive grasp of written
language. As far a personally speaking or psychologically
speaking, I think when you can relate to certain texts, you can
get insight on behavior. I think you can. Well, it's your
linguistic math. It's so much broader. I think it - the more you
read, the better you read, and the broader you read, the more
open you become to new ideas.

Do you think that testing is going to affect us in terms of going
back to skills based and segmented, or not?

I think they would have to fire everyone in the profession to
go back to skills-based. Back to basics just depends on what
your definition of basics is. P.A. 25 is workable with what we
do. I think it has a lot of emphasis of oral skills which we have
gotten completely away from, and maybe we should get back
to. Certainly, some of the language you hear from some of
these kids nowadays. Well, yes, they really have poor speaking
skills in front of people. One of the mothers that teaches one of
the English classes was saying how she noticed that at the
National Honor Society Induction, that they all mumbled into
their scripts and didn't look into the crowd. I used to spend a
couple of weeks a year when I had another Basic English class
in which they had to prepare their little speeches, and really it
was fun because it didn't require a lot of preparation on my
part, and the kids would come up with some amazing speeches.

214

The courses changed, they got redefined, the curriculums have
changed, and I'm stuck with MEAP which takes almost two
weeks of my year up. And along with the other distractions, I
find it hard to set out - plus our composition text doesn't really
have anything on public speaking. But I remember a girl one
time that must have graduated in mid-70's. In order to make
these kids do speeches, you had to be tough about it. You had
to say, if you don't do the speech, you flunk. And she got up,
and she cried and couldn't do it. And she got up the second
speech, and she cried, but she finished it, and she pretty much
sobbed and wavered through the rest of it. And then she came
up to me one year at graduation a couple of years after she got
out of school and said, "You know, making me get up and
speak was probably one of the best things that could have
happened to me." She got a job at a real estate office and
became a secretary or a receptionist or something, but before
she had been shy when dealing with people, she thought that
had been important to her. In that sense, maybe sometimes
this will cause you to re-examine what you are doing. I'm not
threatened by what someone outside of the profession wants.
It's those who are really kind of ignorant and they're pushing
things that we know are outdated and useless. I had a parent
come in, and we were talking about compositions, and he said,
"I think you should teach the kids penmanship." And I said, "I
really don't see that as my domain." And he said, "No, you
should at least assign one paper with all the matter on
penmanship." And I said, "Well, the trends toward learning to
write better are using a word processor." And he said, "Well,
someday they'll have to use their handwriting." Even the
portfolios will be misused and abused. Schools that have
money will hire somebody to keep portfolios for the students.
School that don't have money will pile it on the teachers.
They're already trying to load it on us. They wanted us to
become mentors. I'm not a mentor, I'm a teacher, and I'm not
going to be responsible for what goes into someone's portfolio.
And then there's no guarantee when they get done that
anybody will give a damn. That McDonald's will say, "Bring in
your portfolios. I want to see if you have it."

You indicated that you used reading journals in your classes.
Could you briefly explain how they're used? Do you base class
discussion on those writings?

215

Well, it depends. For example, a difficult reading assignment I
may ask them to write something pertaining to what they read.
I may ask them to do some magic from what they've read,
become a character, or write a letter, or write a diary. And for
poetry, when we are reading poetry in class, we'll look at a
certain concept like imagery and give them a journal
assignment to write a poem, and then the next day, we'll have
them for participation read their masterpieces. We talk a lot,
but it depends on the class. I have a group of bright kids 6th
hour, but everything's funny. They're never serious about
anything. They're getting to the point where some of them are
going to be seniors next year.

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