"Silence Has a Way of Speaking": Presence, Absence, and Proximity in Middle School Literature Circles

• In Event: Cosmopolitical Approaches to Intersectional Readings of Literature

Abstract

Objectives
This paper explores the ways Grade 8 students, teacher candidates, and researchers in a multi-year collaborative project grapple with the “tension between standing apart and being fully involved” (Gallagher, 2008, p. 67) in their conversations about identity and injustice. In particular, we examine the ways youth and teachers collectively negotiated their roles and responses as they participated in literature circle discussions anchored by two young adult novels, Eleanor & Park (2012) and The Hate U Give (2017).

Theoretical framework
We turn to critical literacy scholars and practitioners who draw upon personal experiences and responses as materials for reading the word and the world (e.g. Christensen, 2009; Freire, 1975/2010; Janks, 2010). Building on Author et al.’s (2019) cosmopolitical framework, which centers the “political negotiations that take place as readers’ social worlds are brought to bear in the collective production of meaning” (p. 180), we adopt what Cochran-Smith & Lytle (2009) call an “inquiry stance” to reflect on the ways students and teachers participate in shared readings of “controversial” and “sensitive” works of young adult fiction. Building on Gallagher’s (2008; 2018) reflections on proximity, alongside Boldt’s (2019) reflections on presence and attunement, we explore the affective, intellectual, and political labor of collective meaning-making.

Methods and data sources
Data for this paper are primarily drawn from two hour-long literature circle discussions involving Grade 8 students, teacher candidates from Author 2’s literacy teaching methods, and members of our research team. Transcripts of these discussions, along with students’ and teacher candidates’ written and verbal reflections, analytic memos, and final inquiry projects, were analyzed using a constant comparative approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1998).

Results
Students and teacher candidates raised challenging, often unresolvable questions about identity and inequality as they shared personal responses and real-world connections in their literature circle discussions. These conversations were marked by intense and sometimes conflicting intellectual and affective flows, and punctuated by both lingering silences and overlapping viewpoints to which students and teacher candidates alike expressed various responses. Reflecting on these discussions, one teacher candidate told us they were “worried about some of the [books’] more mature content” and wondered how to grapple with subjects like anti-Black racism, police brutality, and domestic violence alongside middle school students. Another admired the “grace with which students talked about racism and cultural appropriation,” even as they expressed uncertainty about how to participate in the dialogue and disappointment about extended moments of silence.

Scholarly significance
This paper attends to the granular intellectual and affective labor required when students and teachers “engage in the political work of listening to, cooperating with, and participating in interpretive and political struggles alongside others” (Author et al., 2019, p. 187). Their discussions and reflections offer points of entry to consider how presence, absence, and proximity shape the teaching-research encounter and generate productive tensions from which teachers and researchers can learn to adopt more fluid and responsive roles.

Authors

• Ty Walkland, University of Toronto

• Rob Simon, University of Toronto