Literature in a Middle School Classroom Culture of Civic Deliberation

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Civic Literacies: Reading and Writing for Public Engagement

Abstract

With a sociocritical approach to literacy (Gutiérrez, 2008), this study’s qualitative microanalysis of classroom activity and teacher work examines what opportunities and challenges arise as English Language Arts (ELA) teachers in a diverse urban middle school integrate civic learning with reading literature. Reading novels in class fostered civic learning in an unexpected way: teachers discovered that organizing literature study as a collective experience of narrative led to students negotiating and deliberating civic complexities. Beyond personal empathy-building (Kidd & Castano, 2013), the socially organization of classroom learning fostered an “imaginative local,” an embodied and figured interactional space for dialogue and deliberation about the textual storyworld in a way that engaged youths’ civic thinking (cf. Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998).

Author

• Paul FuChyun Lai, University of California - Berkeley