Summary of the Project

This project stretched over several semesters, through multiple offerings of a course called "Reading the U.S. Cultural Past" (formerly 19th-Century American Literature). The focus of this phase of work was on student reading practices. I became very interested in learning more about how students generate initial meanings from their reading, and how what tools they use (or don't use) in order to make their rereading generative and productive. more...

Four Features of the Pedagogical Design

Some Sources For Ideas that Have Influenced Me

VKP Glossary: I have found the writings on "constructivism" and "cognitive apprenticeship" particularly useful.

Taking Learning Seriously: An excellent and important article about learning by Lee Shulman, President of the Carnegie Foundation.

Key Findings

• Students' reading protocols tend to jump from first level observations of form, imagery, and tone, to higher level claims about meaning. more...



• Students lack a method for proceeding with interpretations under uncertainty. more...



• Students need to learn (and practice) deferring meaning. I came to call this a "protocol for deferral." more...

Building a Schematic of Student Reading

The schema of reading protocols grew out of an exercise we do at Georgetown with faculty that we call the Learning Activity Breakdown. The idea is to identify a learning activity, however defined, and enumerate all the steps that someone has to do well in order to accomplish the task. Then we ask faculty to identify the obstacles to each of the stages. The schematic is linked below.

Learning Activity Breakdown
This is a schematic of student reading protocols. On the left you will see the list of steps or stages for the completion of a learning activity I have identified as "reading a literary text in order to generate interesting questions." On the right, you will see what I consider to be key "obstacles" to each of these steps or protocols.

A Hypertext Course Portfolio in American Literature
An earlier study of American Literature and the use of new media, that I wrote.

Examples of Student Work: Novice

• This is an example of a "first reader" posting that is "average" or novice. It emphasizes plot and talks about the characters as if they were people. It shows little distance from the text as a cultureal construct. (click in "more... " to see sample.)