Building reading resilience: re-thinking reading for the literary studies classroom

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of 'reading resilience': students' ability to read and interpret complex and demanding literary texts by drawing on advanced, engaged, critical reading skills. Reading resilience is a means for rethinking the place and pedagogies of close reading in the contemporary literary studies classroom. Our research was across four Australian universities and the first study of its kind in the Australian context. We trialled three working strategies to support students to become consistent and skilled readers, and to equip teachers with methods for coaching reading: 'setting the scene' for reading, surveying students on their reading experiences and habits, and rewarding reading within assessment. We argue that the nature and pedagogy of close reading has not been interrogated as much as it should be and that the building of reading resilience is less about modelling or outlining best practice for close reading (as has traditionally been thought) and more about deploying contextual, studentcentred teaching and learning strategies around reading. The goal is to encourage students to develop a broad suite of skills and knowledge around reading that will equip them long term (for the university and beyond). We measured the effectiveness of our strategies through seeking formal and informal student feedback, and through students' demonstration of skills and knowledge within assessment.

Why read?

“…We need to make explicit our assumptions about how students should read in this particular context. We probably need to coach them throughout their degrees to build what Douglas, Barnett, Poletti, Seaboyer, and Kennedy (2016) call reading resilience, the skills, strategies, and habits of mind required to succeed as readers of difficult texts within and beyond the academy.…”

Xenolexia's positivity: the alterity of academic writing and its pedagogical implications

“…Relations between writer and text reproduce neither conventions not identities, instead changing through the complex, shifting relations that pertain between material bodies which affect each other. Its positivity challenges the perceived or constructed deficit which implies that students are basically passive entities (see for instance Badenhorst et al 2015;Douglas et al 2016;Henderson, op.cit).…”

Reading, engagement and higher education

“…What kind of reading is 'engaged' reading? The 'reading resilience' project (Douglas et al, 2016) has explored this question in relation to an intention to develop 'advanced, engaged, critical reading skills' (p. 245) in literary studies undergraduates. The desirability of critical and close reading is elaborated in detail, and a relational element of engagement is established in relation to Brower's (1962) work on teaching literature: the 'essential difference is between engagement and display' (Douglas et al, 2016, p. 258); rather than asking students 'to memorise for examination purposes the teacher's own rhapsodic readings' (p. 258), Brower advocates a 'mutual demonstration society ' (1962, p. 10) in which teacher and student 'are fully prepared to say something meaningful to each other' (pp.…”

“…It therefore constitutes a dialogue between literary studies and educational studies. In literary studiesboth in the practice of interpretation and in the teaching of literaturethere is the question of how to ensure a literary engagement, or how to encourage acts or events of 'engaged reading' (Douglas, Barnett, Poletti, Seaboyer, & Kennedy, 2016). The paradox of 'pedagogical engagement' in higher education is that engagement can be offered in opposition to superficial or 'instrumental' approaches to learning, and yetin light of claims that the 'engaged' student is the 'successful' studentthe promise of engagement invites instrumentalisation or strategic thought.…”