Reconceptualizing Comprehension: Mapping Transformations in the Intellectual Qualities of Young Children’s Reading

• In Event: Reading as Possibility: Constructing a New Theoretical and Empirical Foundation for Equity and Imagination in Reading Education

Abstract

Development, Rogoff (1990) has argued, is “multidirectional, rather than aimed at a specified endpoint in a unique and unidirectional course of growth” (p. 12). If so, then mapping developmental changes in reading must account for this complexity. This paper presents a framework for considering reading development that: a) honors all student textual sensemaking rather than focusing on right answers (Author, 2013; Lewis, 1993); b) locates consistent dimensions of growth where educators can teach and observe for change across time (Miller & Goodnow, 1995); and c) replaces assumptions about uniformity in reading competence with an emphasis on divergent pathways that signal growth (cf. Dyson, 2002; Rogoff, 1990). It elaborates on six concrete areas for students’ development as textual sensemakers, drawn from contemporary literacy scholarship (e.g., Ballenger, 2004; Freebody, Luke, & Gilbert, 1991; Hall, 2012; Nystrand & Gamoran, 1991):
1. Intellectual curiosity.
2. Social agency.
3. Intellectual identity.
4. Flexibility in sensemaking.
5. Intellectual integrity.
6. Dialogic engagement.

The paper highlights divergent developmental pathways (Rogoff, 1990) in these areas by analyzing a case (Dyson & Genishi, 2005) of change across time in two students, both from the same second-grade bilingual (Spanish/English) classroom in an under-resourced urban school. Drawing on 25 discussion and interview transcripts from my year-long ethnographic study of dialogically organized text discussions in this classroom, I coded instances where I saw evidence of participation that mapped onto one or more of the above areas for the focal students, Dalia and Rafael. I found that each child changed as a reader across all six dimensions, but also that observed growth in each area looked quite different in each child. Table 1 provides a sampling of those findings.

The paper closes by arguing that, by coalescing around such a framework and making a public case for it, scholars may be able to present a counter-narrative that successfully rivals the current emphasis on narrow comprehension measures (Zacher Pandya, 2011).

Author

• Maren S. Aukerman, Stanford University