The Development of Interpretive Talk and Literary Reasoning in High School Classrooms Studying Poetry

• In Event: Roundtable Session 113
  In Roundtable Session: Learning Through Poetry and Aesthetic Based Art and Design

Abstract

Poetry has the potential to enhance students’ pleasurable experiences with literary texts as well as enhance their ways of engaging in the complex demands of literary reasoning. This study examines how students in 2 urban high school classrooms construct interpretations of poems during the enactment of a designed curriculum. It focuses on the development of interpretive talk among 6 small groups of students across 6 weeks’ time and describes how students develop expectations, understandings, and strategies for responding to a culturally diverse collection of modern and contemporary poems. Findings describe what characterizes students’ interpretive talk and what perspectives on adolescents’ literary reasoning development this supports. Implications for the teaching of poetry to high school students will be discussed.

Author

• Michael Barber, Northwestern University