Reader-based and teacher-centered instructional tasks: Writing and learning about a short story in middle-track classrooms

Journal of Literacy Research, Mar 1996 by George E Newell

Retrospective interviews allow the researcher to study how instruction shapes composing and learning processes and redefine the researcher's role as one of coparticipant who supplies assistance to the participating student, creating situations in which learning can be observed as students work within the zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978). This methodology allows us to study the effects of instruction by examining the processes of teaching and learning - a necessary first step in articulating the principles of an effective reader-based framework for literature instruction. The Present Study

Accordingly, this study examined how two instructional modes (reader-based and teacher-centered) fostered literary understanding among middle-track students with a range of academic ability. Additionally, procedures for employing retrospective interviews were developed to examine the effects of literacy instruction on writing, reasoning, and learning processes. Two questions focused the research:

1. How did the two sets of instructional tasks - reader-based and teachercentered - shape students' written responses to and later understanding of a short story as indicated by literary response statements contained in the analytic essays and posttests of story understanding? 2 To what extent did the case-study students' retrospective interviews provide further insight into the differing patterns of story understanding and literary response across the two sets of instructional tasks? Method Participants and Site

An experienced English teacher, Elizabeth Jordan,1 and I cooperatively planned two instructional units representing each of the two sets of tasks to be used in each of her two middle-track loth-grade classes - 45 students in all. Jordan, who has a background in special education, reading, and secondary English, had been teaching loth-grade English for 5 years at the time of the study. A key reason for selecting Jordan for the project was her consistent use of both small-group and teacher-led discussions in her literature instruction and her interest in exploring the consequences of various instructional activities. Because Jordan wanted to prepare students for the demands of academic writing and for college entrance, her curriculum for the two participating loth-grade classes also included instruction in analytic writing about literature.

The 45 participating students, who were predominantly white and middle class, attended a comprehensive suburban high school in the south-central United States with a student population of about 1,loo. The students were in phase 3 English classes in a five-phase curriculum, with phase 5 considered by the school as the most academically challenging, and phase 1 considered remedial. According to Jordan (and confirmed by the principal), the phase 3 classes are the most heterogeneous classes in the school, with a large portion of the students likely to attend 4-year colleges upon graduation. However, grade point averages for all 45 students in Jordan's two classes ranged from i.o8 to 3.15 (on a 4.oo scale), suggesting a truncated ability range with a grade point range without extremes.