The Research Questions
The research questions guiding this study were: 1.) What role does the teacher play in a literature discussion group comprised of struggling readers?, and 2.) How do the teacher’s questions affect the literature discussion group conversations?
Methodology
Site and participants. This research study was conducted in a 10-12 grade high school in a Midwestern city with a population of approximately 90,000. The high school was located in the center city. The racial composition of the student population was 65.9% white, 24.8% African-American, 4.4% Hispanic, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 0.4% American Indian, and 4.5% Asian (DESE, 2007).
The participants in this study were Mrs. Molly Adams (all names are pseudonyms) and four high school students. Molly, a Caucasian in her thirties, had taught Literacy Seminar at Roosevelt High School for 10 years. Molly’s students participated in literature discussion groups twice during the academic year, once during the fall and again during the spring. I observed the spring literature discussion unit. Molly’s students were split into four literature discussion groups. Each group met
once a week for four weeks for an
average of 35 minutes, and Molly
was present for each discussion. I
chose the group reading The Color
Purple to study.
Three of the students were females (Annie, Sarah, and Emma), and one was male (Kevin). All of the females were sophomores--two were Caucasian and one was African-American. The male was a senior and African-American. Annie was a quiet young woman when she was a member of the whole class but had quite a lot to say during the literature discussions. She told me her older sister helped her learn to read and The Color Purple was a good book. Emma was a ‘social butterfly’ and loved to write things on the board for Mrs. Adams. Sarah was shy but shined when she shared a new word she had learned from her father. She took pride in her big vocabulary. Sarah did not say much during the group discussions, but when she did contribute, most of what she said was thoughtful and moved the conversation forward. Kevin was quiet and respectful and sometimes lost track of the conversation due to a traumatic brain injury he suffered in the fifth grade. He was the only group member who had seen the movie of The Color Purple and had already read the book.
Data Collection and Analysis
I used three data collection strategies: interviews with students and the teacher, transcripts of the literature discussion group’s conversations, and documents/artifacts (e.g. teacher assignments, reading schedules, teacher scoring guides, student assignments, etc.). I spent six weeks with the participants based on the teacher’s literature discussion unit schedule. One week was spent in the classroom to learn more about the setting and conduct interviews, four weeks were spent observing and recording the literature discussions, and one week was spent conducting follow-up interviews.
All field notes, expanded observation notes, transcripts from recorded interviews and literature discussions, documents, and artifacts were used for data analysis. First, I analyzed the data by focusing on chunks of the conversations I had transcribed.
Shannon Cuff is in her fourth year as an Assistant Professor of Literacy Education at Park University. Prior to her career in higher education, she taught American Literature at Willard High School in Willard, Missouri.
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