Browsing by Subject "Reader Response"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    De-emphasizing gender in talk about texts:literature response, discussion, and gender within a classroom community of practice.
    (2012-05) Brendler, Beth Monica
    Drawing on and reexamining theories on gender and literacy, derived from research performed between 1974 and 2002, this qualitative study explored the gender assumptions and expectations of 19 preservice and practicing secondary language arts teachers in a graduate level adolescent literature course. The theoretical framework was structured around a social constructionist lens, including reader response, gender, and communities of practice theories. The methodology employed ethnographic methods, as well as critical discourse analysis and conversational analysis techniques. This four-month study examined the ways the participants learned in a classroom community of practice and how that functioned. It also explored the ways class members identified with or resisted gender expectations in their book discussion groups and how their individual communities of practice may have influenced those expectations. It looked at the kind of discourses that were maintained and disrupted in the discussion groups, as well as the participants' responses to literature within the classroom community, and within their personal blogs and written responses. The group conversational dynamics provided an additional lens on gender beliefs and power relations. The participants showed diversity within gender that suggested that their varied communities of practice, including this classroom community of practice, most likely influenced their gender beliefs and their response to literature.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Graphic novels and multimodal literacy: a reader response study.
    (2009-02) Hammond, Heidi Kay
    Graphic novels are fiction or nonfiction books presented in comic book format that require multimodal literacy for understanding. To determine how students make meaning of and respond to a graphic novel, 23 twelfth grade students in a political science class read American Born Chinese twice. This study employed qualitative methods based on reader-response theory. Types of data collected included oral and written responses of students, student reading questionnaires, teacher and student interviews, observations as recorded in researcher field notes, and student created comics. Responses were coded through a process of reduction and interpretation. Results indicated that reading a graphic novel was a new experience for the majority of participants and they enjoyed the book. With the introduction of comics conventions and further development of multimodal literacy skills, students acquired new knowledge on a second reading of the book. Evidence from this study supports the benefits of teaching comics conventions and reading graphic novels as part of the curriculum to improve multimodal literacy skills.