To open her study, Campbell compares the touted, research-based benefits and the realities of literature circles in the classroom. She cites many researchers who have "identified significant advantages for using literature circles in the classroom," but seems to be of the opinion that literature circles in the classroom face "stilted conversations, resulting in students' reading responses from their role sheets. In these instances, students do not react to each other or question each other; instead, they simply give each other their answers" (Wolsey 2004). Wolsey, I think, really hits the nail on the head in regard to the contrived nature of book talks for class--on and offline. As Campbell's daughter realized, there will always be those students who take it seriously and those who don't. I think productive small-group literature circles are rare; it takes an anomalously well-established classroom community, the teacher to be hands-off (so that students don't feel they are merely given the responses the teacher expects, and so that student-driven inquiry actually takes place), but also enough scaffolding from the teacher that the students move forward with their discussion. And this, in my opinion, is both true of on and offline discussions.
Campbell, it seems, finds the same discrepancy between research findings that "threaded discussions fostered energetic interactions between students and their teachers..." (Kirk and Orr 2003) and the actual quality of student contributions. One study that tried to measure "level of cognition" in student responses to "teacher-generated, prompt-driven [online] discussion boards" found that "while students' cognition did not necessarily become more 'complex' over time, it did differ depending on teachers' prompts" (Thomas and Hofmeister 2002). This points to students doing exactly what's required of them and no more. If the teacher creates a complex prompt, the students will respond in kind. If not, I imagine they wouldn't go out of their way to. Another examined "students' discussion posts for negotiating affective, ethical, or critical stances in reading. The author concluded that students' online discussion did not demonstrate a sophisticated critical stance for reading" (Love 2006). Most of our cohort, I think, would have predicted such findings.
Campbell, though, concluded by agreeing with Kirk and Orr. IMHO, the biggest flaw with her study is that she follows graduate students--students who not only are highly experienced in literary discussion (and, presumably, at interacting politely), but also have opted in to this class. The professor in Campbell's study "did not dictate how many texts groups must read or lengths of texts." The only stipulation was that each group member must post once per day. Try implementing that in a high school classroom. Certainly, there will be some students who will write thoughtful posts and make an effort to respond to their peers; but I would imagine that many students would do the bare minimum, just like the boys in Campbell's daughter's in-class literature circle.
Campbell found that "All told, participants did not provide argumentative, analytic, essay-type posts; rather, their discussions were conversational and understanding was ongoing. Participants offered tentative ideas where they asked group members for feedback; their feedback then led to a tweaking of original ideas, with teach member adding original bits and pieces to a shared meaning." This, I think, is interesting. All of my experience in using threaded discussions for class has been at the college level, and all of it has involved essay-type posts, with very little organic interaction. When my English discussion sections would require a supplemental online discussion, it was usually for the purpose of creating a catalyst for the next face-to-face meeting. Sometimes the professor would create a prompt, but oftentimes we were just instructed to write our own reaction or questions, and then require us to comment on at least two of our peers'. (Much like the instructions for this class, although since all of our entries were visible in the same threaded discussion, we didn't feel compelled to make them so long. This was on UCLA's equivalent of Canvas, one of my existing examples. Does that count? I was a bit confused about the instructions on the syllabus.) We would tend to go through the motions of Campbell's "group harmony" ("I would have to agree with Lucy that...", etc. ) but it always seemed to be more for the purpose of coming up with a response with the least effort, and (usually shallow) politesse. However, I can see a discussion board sans-prompts as being useful to high school students in the way Campbell delineates--as a forum for them to be open about their confusions and present tentative ideas, eventually arriving at shared understanding; for them to make the shift from "this is my idea" to "here's what we think, but we're still working on it." Nevertheless, I think this could be equally likely to come of in-class literature circles. The stars would have to align for either to achieve that kind of vibe, but I don't think there's anything about an online forum that would be more likely to foster it.
Campbell does, though, bring up further benefits to the asynchronous format. Coffey had mentioned that it provides a space for marginalized (shy) students to have their voices heard, which Campbell agrees with. In fact, she reminded me that full-class, "face-to-face discussions are often dominated by small numbers of students." In my observations of full-class discussion last semester, I found that of all the participants, there were around 8 students who spoke twice each, 5 who spoke ten times, and 2 students who took around sixty turns each. This isn't simply a matter of students being shy; for a number of reasons, the first contributors to a discussion tend to dominate it; they are most likely to interrupt their peers, and treat the discussion like a dialogue between themselves and the teacher. The mindful teacher will try to compensate for this, but is typically unsuccessful in balancing the discussion; she will elicit those two contributions from several students, but rarely evens out turn-taking. An online discussion, though, is much more likely to have a balance of voices. Furthermore, while Coffey had mentioned the benefits of transcripts which online discussion allows for grading or metacognition, Campbell points out that they also provide a means for absentee students to "reengage with the conversation."
Finally--and possible most meaningfully, were students to really use threaded discussions to their fullest potential--"students could continue to revisit their ideas in a recursive thought process." Overall, Campbell's findings of what's going on with these grad students is promising, but I look forward to an equally qualitative study of a high school classroom.
Campbell, it seems, finds the same discrepancy between research findings that "threaded discussions fostered energetic interactions between students and their teachers..." (Kirk and Orr 2003) and the actual quality of student contributions. One study that tried to measure "level of cognition" in student responses to "teacher-generated, prompt-driven [online] discussion boards" found that "while students' cognition did not necessarily become more 'complex' over time, it did differ depending on teachers' prompts" (Thomas and Hofmeister 2002). This points to students doing exactly what's required of them and no more. If the teacher creates a complex prompt, the students will respond in kind. If not, I imagine they wouldn't go out of their way to. Another examined "students' discussion posts for negotiating affective, ethical, or critical stances in reading. The author concluded that students' online discussion did not demonstrate a sophisticated critical stance for reading" (Love 2006). Most of our cohort, I think, would have predicted such findings.
Campbell, though, concluded by agreeing with Kirk and Orr. IMHO, the biggest flaw with her study is that she follows graduate students--students who not only are highly experienced in literary discussion (and, presumably, at interacting politely), but also have opted in to this class. The professor in Campbell's study "did not dictate how many texts groups must read or lengths of texts." The only stipulation was that each group member must post once per day. Try implementing that in a high school classroom. Certainly, there will be some students who will write thoughtful posts and make an effort to respond to their peers; but I would imagine that many students would do the bare minimum, just like the boys in Campbell's daughter's in-class literature circle.
Campbell found that "All told, participants did not provide argumentative, analytic, essay-type posts; rather, their discussions were conversational and understanding was ongoing. Participants offered tentative ideas where they asked group members for feedback; their feedback then led to a tweaking of original ideas, with teach member adding original bits and pieces to a shared meaning." This, I think, is interesting. All of my experience in using threaded discussions for class has been at the college level, and all of it has involved essay-type posts, with very little organic interaction. When my English discussion sections would require a supplemental online discussion, it was usually for the purpose of creating a catalyst for the next face-to-face meeting. Sometimes the professor would create a prompt, but oftentimes we were just instructed to write our own reaction or questions, and then require us to comment on at least two of our peers'. (Much like the instructions for this class, although since all of our entries were visible in the same threaded discussion, we didn't feel compelled to make them so long. This was on UCLA's equivalent of Canvas, one of my existing examples. Does that count? I was a bit confused about the instructions on the syllabus.) We would tend to go through the motions of Campbell's "group harmony" ("I would have to agree with Lucy that...", etc. ) but it always seemed to be more for the purpose of coming up with a response with the least effort, and (usually shallow) politesse. However, I can see a discussion board sans-prompts as being useful to high school students in the way Campbell delineates--as a forum for them to be open about their confusions and present tentative ideas, eventually arriving at shared understanding; for them to make the shift from "this is my idea" to "here's what we think, but we're still working on it." Nevertheless, I think this could be equally likely to come of in-class literature circles. The stars would have to align for either to achieve that kind of vibe, but I don't think there's anything about an online forum that would be more likely to foster it.
Campbell does, though, bring up further benefits to the asynchronous format. Coffey had mentioned that it provides a space for marginalized (shy) students to have their voices heard, which Campbell agrees with. In fact, she reminded me that full-class, "face-to-face discussions are often dominated by small numbers of students." In my observations of full-class discussion last semester, I found that of all the participants, there were around 8 students who spoke twice each, 5 who spoke ten times, and 2 students who took around sixty turns each. This isn't simply a matter of students being shy; for a number of reasons, the first contributors to a discussion tend to dominate it; they are most likely to interrupt their peers, and treat the discussion like a dialogue between themselves and the teacher. The mindful teacher will try to compensate for this, but is typically unsuccessful in balancing the discussion; she will elicit those two contributions from several students, but rarely evens out turn-taking. An online discussion, though, is much more likely to have a balance of voices. Furthermore, while Coffey had mentioned the benefits of transcripts which online discussion allows for grading or metacognition, Campbell points out that they also provide a means for absentee students to "reengage with the conversation."
Finally--and possible most meaningfully, were students to really use threaded discussions to their fullest potential--"students could continue to revisit their ideas in a recursive thought process." Overall, Campbell's findings of what's going on with these grad students is promising, but I look forward to an equally qualitative study of a high school classroom.
E-Money,
ReplyDelete"Most of our cohort," indeed. I also found the findings [So much discovery...] less than illuminating [...and yet so little.] I was quite confused about the researcher's choice to report on fourth grade literature circles in the first place. Of course they were disappointing. The kids were NINE. Anyway, looking past that blip and trying to imagine what may likely be a slightly less successful outcome of digital lit circles in highs school classes than Bowers-Campbell observed in her community college level students, I still think the article does a decent job making an argument in favor of the online discussion forum, in that it outlines an activity that could hold real potential for one big goal for us as teachers of students who may not be motivated readers, that is, as you mention, it could--more easily than traditional discussions and other activities--get students engaged in literature and discussions regarding literature in a genuine fashion, thereby encouraging as well reading fluency and stamina. If we hold these to be our priorities over deeply analytical work, I think discussions online could be a great instructional resource for us (given that the material resources preexist it, of course.)
But about those "stilted" in-class conversations, those've got to stay. Kids need to learn to deal with or power through (with purpose) those silences that make them so uncomfortable. I, for one, do not intend to let student leave my classroom thinking the "awkward turtle" routine is a reasonable response to momentary quiet in group discussion. No.