Literacy Learning on the Edge of Meaning: High-Poverty Students’ Reading Achievement and Attitudes Toward Shakespeare

• In Event: Literacies, Learning, and Drama: Engaging Multiliterate Knowledge Through Action Within Possible Worlds

Abstract

Across urban schools in the U.S. Midwest, reading achievement is determined by an end of year assessment and a ‘cut score’ for different levels of proficiency. In addition, subgroups of student populations, especially ESL and Special Education, are expected to show ‘annual yearly progress’; which requires students to substantially exceed their previous year’s score. These benchmarks are rarely achieved and reading education continues to be organized around skills-based and testing-oriented drills in an effort to meet these goals. By contrast, a two-year teacher professional development program implemented in two Midwestern U.S. urban school districts with 32 teachers (3rd -12th grade), envisioned reading in the way actors learn the meaning and interpretation of a text: through ‘rehearsal room’ practices (Gartside & Grainger 2009). The program also engaged all teachers and students in the study of Shakespeare’s plays. Trained by educators from the Royal Shakespeare Company in England, these and other rehearsal room practices became the repertoire of strategies teachers and students employed as they grew increasingly familiar with and enthusiastic about Shakespeare’s plots, actions, characters and language.

Drama-based literacy research drama usually focuses on a single case or classroom, offering provocative descriptions of the ways multimodal approaches enable students to see one another and themselves as meaning-makers, as insightful interpreters of complex themes and character relationships, and as willing readers of diverse literary texts (Wolf 2006; Wilhelm & Edmiston 1998; Schneider et al 2007). Our research includes similar accounts of students’ engagement and literary insights; however, the funders of the program and school district administrators wanted to know if students’ attitudes toward Shakespeare and reading were changed by their participation in this program; and whether their achievement would improve in relationship with their experiences as ‘rehearsal room readers.’

This presentation reports on the findings from a student attitude survey administered to 2700 students (Shakespeare and comparable, no-Shakespeare classrooms) in two high to moderate poverty school districts at the beginning and end of the 2010-2011 school year. In addition, state standardized testing data and teacher-documented assessments were collected and analyzed for patterns in students’ reading achievement.

Findings are very encouraging, given the radical change in pedagogy and focus on a complex, seemingly ‘foreign’ text; which suggests that multimodal approaches to reading a difficult text, can effectively engage students in the discipline and dispositions of close reading and literary interpretation (Lee 2007). In one high poverty middle school, the special education subgroup achieved AYP for the first time in the school’s testing history. The eighth grade reading scores in this school improved by almost 20% from the previous year. Across survey findings, students who studied Shakespeare believed that it is not difficult to understand (60%); it is fun (81%); helped students learn something about themselves (20%-55% varied by age group); and they developed greater confidence in their ability to share their ideas with others (48-52%). In addition students’ perceptions of themselves as readers trended toward a view that they enjoy reading in school and like to be challenged by what they read.

Author

• Patricia E. Enciso, The Ohio State University