Literary Reasoning and Argumentation: Reconceptualizing Pedagogical Implications of the Domain

• In Event: Expanding Pedagogical Understandings of Literary Reasoning and Argumentation in Middle and High Schools: Project READI

Abstract

Common Core Curriculum State Standards draw attention to the importance of reading in the disciplines and argumentation. The research reported here comes from Project READi, an IES funded large-scale project addressing argumentation in the disciplines. This paper addresses READi’s foundational work in the domain of literature. This paper describes READi’s theoretically driven conception of the core constructs undergirding literary interpretation in middle and high school, the design of interventions in middle and high school that embody the core constructs, and the logic of the design of assessments that allow windows into the processes of both close reading and argumentation around literary texts. We argue that how we conceptualize the full dimensions of discipline specific problem solving – in this case literary interpretation among novice readers – influences our capacity to address policies and practices that can improve literacy outcomes, especially for students who are struggling. Central to this inquiry is the framework we have articulated for analyzing sources of text complexity in literary works.

Drawing from relevant literary theory (Scholes, 1985; Rabinowitz, 1987), basic research in generic and discipline specific comprehension (Snow, 2002; Lee & Spratley, 2009; Lee, 2011), and tenets of how people learn (Bransford et al, 1999), the core constructs include epistemology (texts as dialogic, as windows into the human experience, and attention to form); key concepts (moral/philosophical themes; historical contexts; intertextuality; critical theories); types of texts based on plot structures, poetic forms and character types; rhetorical dimensions (figuration, point of view, rhetorical devices); strategies. For each set of constructs we have identified progressions of complexity that were used in selecting text sets for interventions designed. Dimensions of literary text complexity include genre structure, prior knowledge required for themes; character types in terms of prototypicality and multi-dimensionality; problems of point of view; and author’s rhetorical tools.

The architecture of intervention designs include preparing students for the problems texts pose through gateway activities (establishing criteria for judging themes and character types) and cultural data sets (making everyday tacit knowledge of literary strategies public) (Lee, 2007); metacognitive routines for close reading (Schoenbach et al., 1999); using criteria for judgments of themes and strategies for analyzing rhetorical moves to construct literary arguments (Hillocks, 2011). Text sets in instructional units are organized around common interpretive problems (e.g. unreliable narration) and themes to provide repeated opportunities for argumentation (Smith & Hillocks, 1988). Assessments include rubrics that capture both generic (Toulmin, 1984) and literary argumentation.

Together these core constructs, framework for text complexity, and intervention architecture and assessments formed the bases for the research findings presented in the papers for this symposium.

Significance:
The frameworks for core constructs, intervention design and text complexity go beyond the current CCCSS and extant traditional measures of text complexity in ways specific to literature. Close reading and argumentation are enhanced by explicit modeling and practice with strategies specific to literary analysis not typically taught in middle and high schools. The architecture for teaching literary argumentation expands Toulmin’s model to address literary reasoning in middle and high school.

Authors

• Carol D. Lee, Northwestern University

• Susan R. Goldman, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Sarah Levine, National Louis University

• Teresa Sosa, Indiana University - IUPUI

• MariAnne George, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Joe Magliano, Northern Illinois University

• Stephen W Briner, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Rick Coppola, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Kathryn S. McCarthy, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Candice Burkett, University of Illinois at Chicago