Seeking a Balance: Discussion Strategies That Foster Reading With Authorial Empathy

Abstract

This study investigates the extent to which students' use of different discussion strategies fosters a balance between attending to the technical elements of authored texts and responding empathetically. Because small‐group discussion is a common approach to literary study, the analysis focuses on two small‐group discussions of “Charlie Howard's Descent,” Mark Doty's poem about the murder of a young gay man by other young men in his community. The two discussions were parsed into episodes that were scored according to the extent that they displayed balance. Then, each student turn was analyzed in terms of the discussion strategies employed. The analysis suggests that the strategies of searching for meaning, contextualizing, and interpreting contribute to the most balanced readings. Noting author's craft can lead to overly technical readings, although it has the potential to be paired with other strategies to facilitate a more balanced discussion.

Relações entre leitura e empatia: Uma revisão integrativa da literatura

“…Pesquisadores das áreas da psicologia e linguagem têm, nos últimos anos, apontado para uma importante associação entre ler narrativas ficcionais e experiências emocionais LEITURA E EMPATIA (Aram & Aviram, 2009;Brett, 2016;Karniol, 2012). Entre as possíveis experiências emocionais, a empatia -em seus componentes cognitivo e afetivo -destaca-se como uma das habilidades mais desenvolvidas pela leitura (McTigue et al, 2015).…”

“…Bostic (2014) Os resultados de muitos dos estudos selecionados para esta revisão sugerem que a leitura de textos narrativos exerce influência socializadora nos estudantes, especialmente no desenvolvimento da habilidade de empatia -em seus componentes afetivo e cognitivo (Guarisco & Freeman, 2015;Venegas, 2019). Além disso, destaca-se que a leitura, envolvendo um trabalho com a empatia como parte do currículo escolar, por parte de estudantes do ensino fundamental, também resulta em melhorias no clima escolar (Brett, 2016;Schonert-Reichl et al, 2015), aperfeiçoando o rendimento de discentes que estão sendo alfabetizados -nas séries iniciais (Karniol, 2012;Merga, 2017). Um outro fator que merece destaque é que os estudantes passam a se engajar mais com os temas das aulas -especialmente os pré-adolescentes e adolescentes, uma vez que a empatia cognitiva é encontrada de forma mais consistente em adolescentes do que em crianças -, com seus colegas e com seus professores, pois passam a entender a perspectiva deles, descentrando-se do seu próprio ponto de vista (Bostic, 2014;Newstreet et al, 2018).…”

The relationship between reading and empathy: An integrative literature review

“…The results of many of the studies of this review suggest that reading narrative texts plays a socializing role among students, especially favoring the development of empathy -in its affective and cognitive components (Guarisco & Freeman, 2015;Venegas, 2019). Also, implementing reading while promoting empathy as part of schools' curricula of elementary school improves school climate (Brett, 2016;Schonert-Reichl et al, 2015) and the performance of early grade students being literate (Karniol, 2012;Merga, 2017). Another factor that deserves to be highlighted is that students become more engaged with the topics discussed in class -especially pre-adolescents and adolescents, considering that cognitive empathy is more consistently found among adolescents than among children -, with their peers and teachers, because they start to understand others' perspectives, detaching from their own points of view (Bostic, 2014;Newstreet et al, 2018).…”

“…In recent years, researchers from the psychology and language fields have noted a significant association between fictional narratives and emotional experiences (Aram & Aviram, 2009;Brett, 2016;Karniol, 2012). Among possible emotional experiences, empathy -with its cognitive and affective components -stands out as one of the skills most frequently developed by reading (McTigue et al, 2015).…”

“…Most of the studies addressing the topic considered in this review were intended to investigate whether empathy can be developed by reading fiction texts and contribute to the performance of students in text comprehension (Bostic, 2014;McTigue et al, 2015) and verify the factors that may be associated with empathy as a result of reading fiction texts (Brett, 2016). Most of the studies only collected the students' self-reports to examine how empathy was developed by reading fiction texts (Venegas, 2019).…”