Making sense of events in literature and life through collaboration

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this conceptual paper is to make the case for the value of fostering collaborative sensemaking in responding to literature. Drawing on examples of classroom interactions in 6th-, 8th-, 11th- and 12th-grade classrooms, it proposes methods for teachers to foster collaborative sensemaking. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on theories of “participatory sensemaking” (Fuchs and De Jaegher, 2009), transactional literary response (Rosenblatt, 1994) and “comprehension-as-sensemaking” pedagogy (Aukerman, 2013), this paper conceptualizes collaborative sensemaking to illustrate how teachers foster making sense of texts through sharing responses based on lived-world experiences, understanding the use of literary techniques and understanding events in students’ own lives. Findings Given that this is not an empirical study, there are no findings. The discussion of students’ sensemaking practices in responding to classroom texts, suggests the importance of teachers creating open-ended response events in which students collaboratively support each other in making sense of characters’ actions and events, as opposed to having to conform to teachers’ predetermined agendas. Practical implications Analysis of the classroom discussions suggests the importance of building students’ trust in the process of sensemaking itself, fostering adoption of alternative perspectives as central to sensemaking and using activities for students’ translating or rewriting events in texts to co-create texts with authors. Originality/value This paper explores the importance of teachers engaging students in open-ended, sensemaking response events based on attending to “in-between,” dialogic meanings through sharing emotions, alternative perspectives and related experiences to enhance students’ engagement in responding to literature.

“Live within the messiness”: how a digitally mediated inquiry community supported ELA teachers in cultivating adaptive repertoires

“…Developing adaptive repertoires: Improvisation and empathy in discussion facilitation A central inquiry question that has emerged in our work together is how teachers develop and deploy adaptive repertoires in facilitating online literature discussions to adjust their practices (Corno, 2008) according to the needs and conditions that arise in the moment during students' collaborative sensemaking about texts (Beach et al, 2017), whether these are on-the-fly adaptationssuch as intervening to redirect a discussion's focus when a student veers off topicor more thought-out adaptationssuch as adjusting instructional practices to accommodate the shift to virtual learning that occurred with onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We think of these adaptations as being a core part of teachers' "repertoires of practice," and we are interested in how teachers learn to make these shifts, shaped by their beliefs, values and socialization into the teaching profession (Gutiérrez and Rogoff, 2003).…”

Expanding Meaningfulness in Literacy Research: Possibilities of a Relational Perspective

“…Continuing with adolescent’s relational activity with and within text, Beach (2017a, 2017b) as well as Fjallstrom and Kokkola (2015) used the rewriting of fictional narratives to reposition readers concretely within texts, through voicing characters. These descriptive studies differ somewhat from Fecho (2013) and Wissman (2009, 2011) in that the purpose of composing was comprehension rather than relating to, and understanding, self and others.…”

“…As selves-in-text, students enacted relationships between self and characters as well as between self and self-in-text. In addition, students in Beach’s work (2017a) composed reflections on the experience of rewriting narratives, giving them a different self-position at a further layer of distance from which to “view” and relate to self and others.…”

Students' Use of Languaging in Rewriting Events from The Things They Carried

“…She then had the students select a specific event from a story in the novel to collaboratively work in pairs to re-write that event based on adopting one of the character's perspectives to create their own version of the event (Beach, 2017). This engaged the students in rewriting activities that involve students in employing their own languaging to portray interactions between characters (Fjällström & Kokkola, 2015;Yang, 2016).…”