Abstract of

“What Is This Literachurch Stuff Anyway?”: Preservice Teachers' Growth in Understanding Children's Literary Response

Shelby A. Wolf

Angela A. Carey

Erikka L. Mieras

In this yearlong study, the authors analyze the effects of using carefully assisted case studies to prepare preservice teachers to be more knowledgeable and skilled in supporting children's response to literature. As a part of a class assignment for an undergraduate course in children's literature, 43 preservice teachers read to and kept careful field notes on individually selected children. Drawing upon their field notes and final papers as well as the course lecture notes, handouts, activities, and assigned readings, our analysis reveals intriguing patterns that mark shifts in the preservice teachers' perspectives on literary response. The teachers began the study with relatively low expectations. In their initial, comprehension-based view of response, they privileged the text over their case study child. Over the course of the study, however, the teachers moved towards a vision of literary response that highlights interpretation over comprehension. Their broadened expectations emphasized the affective, personal, and social nature of literary discussion which privileges intertextual connections between the text on the page and the texts of readers' lives. Here we argue for a side-by-side model of children's literature instruction—with the university course on one side and the case-study children on the other—moving from the more distanced study of children in articles and books to the here and now of working with real children who will comment on, challenge, question, and/or silently resist preservice teachers' efforts to engage them in literature. Thus, a university course infusion of new research ideas with multiple, though distanced, examples must be balanced with authentic, literary interaction with children, if we expect to see preservice teachers shift from limited, comprehension-based expectations to broader interpretive possibilities for literary engagement.

Abstract from Wolf, S.A., Carey, A.A., & Mieras, E.L. (1996). “What Is This Literachurch Stuff Anyway?”: Preservice Teachers' Growth in Understanding Children's Literary Response. Reading Research Quarterly, 31(2), 130–157. doi: 10.1598/RRQ.31.2.2