Cultivating Upstanding Democratic Citizens in the English Classroom: Reader-Response and Teaching the Conflicts Pedagogies
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In Stealth Democracy, Elizabeth Theiss-Morse and John R. Hibbing demonstrate that the majority of American citizens are unable to properly engage in conflict because they do not take the perspective of others seriously. Louise Rosenblatt’s vision for the English classroom in Literature as Exploration seeks to address these democratic problems, arguing that students must develop (1) critical thinking skills, where students can reflect on their own positions, and (2) a robust moral imagination, where students can imagine the perspective of someone different from them. This thesis examines and assesses two pedagogical candidates for fulfilling that Rosenblatt’s vision. The first is a variation of “reader-response theory” that aims to address the criticisms against traditional reader-response for being too self-focused and atheoretical. The second is Gerald Graff’s “teaching the conflicts,” which aims to prepare students for conflict by exposing students to conflicts surrounding literature and having students read opposing critical essays about a text. To conduct this study, I taught two 9th Literature classes for four weeks during a summer program, and I taught one class (n = 12) using a critical and multicultural variation of reader-response, and the other (n = 14) using teaching the conflicts. In analyzing the classroom discourse, I found traces of Rosenblatt’s vision fulfilled. While students in reader-response did less well with textual engagement than teaching the conflicts, it did better than its critics claim and facilitated impressive and meaningful personal discussions among students. Students in teaching the conflicts had fewer opportunities for personal engagement than reader-response, but they excelled in cultivating rigorous textual discussion and cultivating critical thinking skills. Both pedagogies are also educationally worthwhile insofar as they facilitate impressive student-to-student discussion.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | June 4, 2016 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Quach, Jeremy |
|---|---|
| Primary advisor | Willinsky, John |
| Advisor | Levine, Sarah |
Subjects
| Subject | English Education |
|---|---|
| Subject | Literature |
| Subject | moral imagination |
| Subject | Graduate School of Education |
| Subject | high school English |
| Subject | Breakthrough |
| Subject | Louise Rosenblatt |
| Subject | dialogic |
| Subject | student uptake |
| Subject | student discussion |
| Subject | multicultural literature |
| Subject | democracy |
| Subject | textual engagement |
| Subject | teaching the lenses |
| Subject | education |
| Subject | teaching the conflicts |
| Subject | reader-response |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Quach, Jeremy. (2018). Cultivating Upstanding Democratic Citizens in the English Classroom: Reader-Response and Teaching the Conflicts Pedagogies. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/hg019qq5133
Collection
Undergraduate Honors Theses, Graduate School of Education
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- Contact
- jquach@alumni.stanford.edu
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