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COPYRIGHT 2004 International Reading Association Inc.
Student drawings serve as a window on perceptions about engagement with learning.
Constructivist educators are not surprised that "what is taught is not necessarily what is learned" (Pollard, Thiessen, & Filer, 1997, p. 5). What is learned is what students take from their experiences, not only as shown in tests and performances but also in terms of how students process their experiences. Students' experiences of reading in school are the building blocks for learning how to read and reading to learn. How students perceive reading in school has the potential of informing teachers about practice on many levels and in several content areas. "Teachers themselves need to know more about varieties of student experience if they are to educate a wide variety of students really well" (Erickson & Schultz, 1992, p. 471).
In this article we look at the ways middle school students in the United States perceive school reading experiences. The use of drawing with interview provided a way for us to reach students and examine their thinking about school and helped us gain deeper understanding of their perceptions of school--deeper than we would have by either drawings or interviews alone. The words and drawings of 20 Vermont middle school students illustrate the practices the students identified as important. The students identified times of reading engagement and times when not engaged; they voiced powerful and specific reactions to each.
We begin by looking at two drawings by Samantha shown in Figure 1. (All student and school names are pseudonyms.) Samantha is a 12-year-old sixth grader at Town School who has a history of school success. Both her drawings depicted experiences in social studies class. Her first drawing was in response to our request to draw about a time when she was deeply engaged in learning; the second was a time when she was detached. Samantha competently filled the papers with her clear images. In the first drawing Samantha is the girl on the right coming up behind the computer who asks, "Can I help?" She explained later that they were part of a group and were looking up information on the Internet to write reports and to prepare plays. The drawing depicts Samantha's desire to help the other girl find good information. The girls are on either side of the centered and substantial element, the computer.
As was typical in our work with these middle schoolers, the conversation between Samantha and one of the authors began with the drawings. When asked about her drawings, she explained her preference for collaborative reading experiences.
Well, I feel that when I'm working in a group and not in the textbooks that I learn the most. 'Cause the textbooks. Some people they don't follow it. They put stuff in words and ways that you can't really understand it....
Samantha's representation of textbook reading, the second drawing, was a time when she said everyone was on the same page. She shows the book through her eyes and includes the teacher's voice in the comment in the upper left.
Interviewer: OK, so why have you put this here? What is it about this activity that is negative for you?
Samantha: Well, when she says to open your books, we all have to open our books and just look at this and she asked someone to start reading and when you're reading ...
Interviewer: Out loud?
Samantha: Out loud to the whole class. And you think, "Oh great, if I mess up I have to get every word right." And just when you're reading you're just thinking about yourself.... I think when you're researching by yourself and with your friends on the Internet, it's much more fun and this isn't my favorite thing to do.
Interviewer: So, it's not reading that causes you to feel this way, it's the circumstances of the reading? Like being on stage?
Samantha: Yeah. It's not just that, too. It's just they put it in a way that's hard to understand it and so when you're reading you're like, "Hey wait a minute. I don't really get this." But once you like see it on the Internet on different websites and when you read it in different books, you kind of get to know it better and.... When I'm just reading by myself I find that I can pay attention to the book easier and when I'm working with my friends on the Internet, I can talk to them and ask, "What sites have you seen?" But when you're doing this you can't ask any questions. And you can't ... talk. You just have to listen to the reader. It's just not fun for me.
Interviewer: And that's quite different, too, from the other picture where everybody is ...
Samantha: Like happy to be there and happy to help.
About the text, she also said,
I kind of read it like if we're going to have a test the next day. I read it again by myself and I find that it works better by myself. And sometimes I get confused.... I end up going back and reading it again and kind of finding where this paragraph where I need to read is and looking for the information I need.
Samantha presented strong reactions to these two reading experiences. Her drawings were the source (the start) for the conversation that followed. They were the flame of reference as details and elaborations were added through talk. With the first drawing she showed and talked about how she was eager to talk to and question her peers. What she expressed served as an exemplar of engaged reading, as defined by Guthrie and Anderson (1999).
Reading should be conceptualized as an engagement. Engaged readers not only have acquired reading skills, but use them for their own purposes in many contexts. They possess beliefs, desires, and interests that energize the hard work of becoming literate....
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
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