Teaching For Progressive Social Change in The Reading and Literature Classroom

Teaching for Progressive Social Change
in the Reading and Literature Classroom
by
Anthony Owens
BA, University of California, Los Angeles, 1999
MFA, Bennington College, Bennington, VT, 2004
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty in the
School of Education in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of
Master of Education
University of Pittsburgh
2008
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Committee Signature Page
Committee Member____________________ Affiliation_____________________
________________________________
Date
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Abstract
The purpose of this discussion is to establish a theoretical and research basis for a
pedagogical approach in the reading and literature classroom that promises to help
promote progressive social change. The goal of such pedagogy, which can include
novice and struggling readers, many of whom may be at risk, is to teach more than just
basic reading comprehension or literary genres or terms. Teachers can include all
students in rich discussions about literature that can help them to develop the parallax of
vision which promises to promote upward mobility and social equality.
Extant theory and research suggests that such pedagogy for teaching reading
comprehension and literature has some salient features. The first is the use of open-
ended questions that guide students collaboratively to create their own meaning from
texts. Questions like Beck and McKeown’s (2006) Queries, used in their approach to
teaching reading comprehension called Questioning the Author (QTA), guide students to
share their in-process thinking about texts, building upon each others evolving
understandings in order to generate for themselves coherent and accurate mental
representations of texts as they read through them together. Such discourse about literary
texts is also exploratory in nature (Mercer, 2000). That is, via dialogue, students engaged
in QTA discussions think their ways through texts together. If carefully planned for by
the teacher, they can do so not only to help each other gist make and self-correct
misconceptions but also to constructively challenge and complicate each others’ possibly
monochromatic thus limited and limiting interpretations and evaluations of what they
read.
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Designed to help novice and struggling readers improve their reading
comprehension skills and strategies, QTA also inherently involves all 3 of the salient
questioning and discourse features identified above. Therefore, included is a sample of
planning for a QTA lesson that, because it reaches beyond gist making to include sharing
alternative inferences and evaluations, should promote both basic comprehension and
deeper, parallactic understanding. By planning for QTA lessons in the modeled way,
teachers can include novice and struggling readers in the process of building parallax of
vision. Doing so is in keeping with the spirit of inclusion and providing all students with
the best possible educational experiences and future prospects. The discussion ends with
a summary and recommendations for future research.

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Table of Contents
Chapter 1: The Basis for Teaching for Progressive Social Change in the Reading
and Literature Classroom .................................................................................................1
The Lads ...........................................................................................................................1
Ideological Common Sense ..............................................................................................2
Promoting Parallax of Vision for Progressive Social Change .........................................2
The Basis for and Salient Features of Pedagogy for Progressive Social Change ............6
Basis for ..................................................................................................................6
Salient Features of....................................................................................................6
Authentic Questions .....................................................................................7
Uptake ..........................................................................................................7
Exploratory Talk ..........................................................................................7
Discussion Questions .......................................................................................................8
Isabel Beck and Margaret McKeown’s Questioning the Author (QTA) .........................8
Chapter 2: Using QTA for Gist Making and Building Parallax of Vision .................10
Brief Introduction to QTA..............................................................................................10
Using QTA to Reach Beyond Gist Making ...................................................................12
Gist Making and Beyond via Authentic Questioning in QTA ...............................13
Gist Making and Beyond via Uptake in QTA .......................................................15
The Parallel and Recursive Nature of Thought while Reading: A Case for Blending
Gist Making and Literary Analysis Using QTA ............................................................17

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Table of Contents Continued
Texts that Invite Building Parallax of Vision: The Great Books Foundation’s Rubric .19
Texts that Support Extended Interpretive Discussions ..........................................21
Texts that Raise Genuine Questions for Adults as well as Students......................21
Texts that are Age and Grade Appropriate in Terms of Theme and Style ............21
Mercer’s Exploratory Talk .............................................................................................22
Disputation .............................................................................................................23
Cumulative Talk.....................................................................................................24
Exploratory Talk ....................................................................................................26
Exploratory Talk for Building Parallax of Vision in QTA ....................................27
Segmenting a Passage from a Novel for Gist Making, Interpretation, and Evaluation .27
Chapter 3: Conclusion .....................................................................................................39
Summary ........................................................................................................................39
Recommendations for Future Research .........................................................................40
Glossary of Terms ............................................................................................................41
References .........................................................................................................................46
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Chapter 1:
The Basis for Teaching for Progressive Social Change
in the Reading and Literature Classroom
The Lads
Paul E. Willis (1981) conducted an ethnographic study of how 12 working class,
secondary-school English boys ironically participated in their own oppression through
resisting the notion that a formal education will eventually culminate in meaningful and
satisfying professional employment, heightened social status, and upward mobility.
Willis describes “a complex process by which labor power of a certain kind [in this case,
dead-end, monotonous, manual labor in a workshop] is reproduced and reproduces itself”
(Feinberg, W., & Soltis, J., 2004, page 65) amongst the working class. “The lads,” as
Willis refers to them, viewed as bogus the promise of upward mobility through academic
achievement. Viewing their chances for upward mobility as virtually zero, they regarded
academic disciplines such as math and science as irrelevant to the sorts of unskilled,
monotonous “shop jobs” they “knew” that they would eventually inhabit. They
additionally shared with each other the sexist views that mental work is effeminate and
manual labor is masculine. Hence, in occupying those dead-end, unskilled labor jobs,
they were being men doing the sort of masculine and practical work men do; it is worth
noting that internalized gender biases, like those that Willis addresses in his study of the
lads, ingrained monochromatic views on race, and other such beliefs that can belong to
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one’s ideological stance and hence limit one’s own future prospects, may reach beyond
the sole Marxist concern over economic determinism, as Feinberg & Soltis (70) point out.
Ideological Common Sense
The lads ended up unconsciously and, most importantly for this thesis,
unquestioningly permitting ingrained ideologies to work against their own interests as
working class people. Fairclough (1989) referred to these unquestioned and self-
injurious ideologies as “ideological common sense” (2). This phrase seems most
appropriate, as the boys likely treated their social and political biases as common sense.
We don’t question things that we chalk up to common sense. Upward mobility for these
boys depended on the ability to objectively identify and then question such self-limiting
ideological assumptions, or internalized lenses for interpretation. Had they learned either
in school, at home, or in their communities to be what bell hooks (Jhally, 1997) termed
“enlightened witnesses” to the self-injurious political and social attitudes they harbored,
attitudes which ultimately functioned as glass ceilings for them, the boys might have
moved up a bit in society, or at least they would have given themselves a chance for
upward mobility. As Fairclough asserts, only when “one becomes aware that a particular
aspect of common sense is sustaining power inequalities at one’s own expense [does it]
cease to be common sense, and may cease to have the capacity to sustain power
inequalities, i.e., to function ideologically” (85).
Promoting Parallax of Vision for Progressive Social Change

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In describing the “bargain struck” between most of the boys’ classmates and their
teachers at the school in Willis’ study, the bargain which the boys categorically rejected,
Feinberg & Soltis describe a transaction in which, in return for respect from their
students, the teachers impart “meaningful knowledge” (66) that will help make students
competitive on the job market, making “rewarding” work possible; rewarding work
presumably meaning something like high-status mental work, versus hard, manual,
repetitive, unskilled labor, like the shop work the boys now do. It is important to note
that Willis describes the teachers at this school as imparting knowledge.
The one way transmission, or imparting of “knowledge,” e.g., a teacher’s own
interpretations and evaluations concerning texts, for example, from teacher to students
can teach students not to question ideological common sense, thereby maintain status-quo
power differentials, as was the case for the lads. From a glut of didactic classroom
experiences over their academic careers, students infer that learning is a passive act, a
matter of storing and recalling meaning created by an expert other, whether that expert
other is a teacher or author. The teacher, already in possession of the one “correct”
answer, that answer being explicit information from the text or the teacher’s own
interpretation or evaluation, for example, merely seeks the consent of students. In
addition, the teacher chooses what’s important to talk about concerning texts being
studied. Here students don’t explore rich alternative interpretations they find interesting.
Texts have correct and incorrect interpretations and evaluations, according an expert. No
ambiguity exists, even when texts like Larry Watson’s (2007) Montana 1948 are studied.
In this novel, for example, the Native American reservation acts as a luminous corollary
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to other locals, both outward and inward, where similar acts of oppression, abuse,
exploitation, and marginalization occur. Hence, there are multiple valid interpretive
responses richly supported by the text for the following question: “in this story, what is
the reservation?” Also, although readers can logically and richly support the proposition
that this novel is the narrator’s own bildungsroman, it is also the story of how the
narrator’s father’s defies his own dictatorial father, the absolute head of a clan, why he
does so, and what the both positive and negative consequences are for doing so. Hence
another opportunity for sharing differing yet valid views about the characters arises when
one asks the following evaluative question: “who is the most important character in the
story?” When teachers ask questions like these, students can disagree and still be correct
while engaging in an intriguing and educational conversation around text.
Ideologies acting as hidden, underlying premises, or common sense, might
interfere with this healthy tendency toward parallactic interpretation and evaluation. For
example, Tierney and Pearson (1985) quote Doris Lessing describing how “odd it is” that
the letters she receives from fans about The Golden Notebook (1962) so often relay a one-
dimensional interpretation of her story. One fan sees only gender struggle in it, while
another sees only politics, and yet another interprets it as solely being about mental
illness. In part, the tunnel-vision interpretations of so many of her fans belie their
“biases, predispositions, and personal experiences” (Tierney and Pearson, 72), in other
words, their ideological common sense. Tierney and Pearson describe our by now
familiar common sense as adopting only a single stance or role toward a text (when
reading) or an audience (when writing). The monochromatic feminist, political, and
psychological “alignments” with Lessing’s tale of the above three readers result, Tierney
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and Pearson argue, in limited understanding of the text for the individual readers. In
other words, the two theorists conclude that reading or writing through the lens of only a
single alignment “interfere[s] with how well [Lessing’s 3 readers] negotiate
understanding” of her story (72). Their definition of superior understanding, or
successful text negotiation as they put it, can hence be seen as the achievement of
parallax of vision concerning a text, or the ability to simultaneously make several
varying, even oppositional, yet valid interpretations and evaluations of the same text. For
Tierney and Pearson, the more parallactic one’s vision of a text, the better one has
negotiated understanding of that text.
To illustrate this concept, imagine Lessing’s 3 letter writers getting together to
share their readings through the alternative yet complimentary reciprocal lenses of
gender, politics, and mental illness in order to complicate their individually limited
understandings of The golden Notebook, understandings limited by adopting only a single
alignment with the novel; e.g., female reader, republican reader, or psychologically
healthy reader, for example. The parallax of vision that would result, or the more
complex understanding of the text and its characters that Tierney and Pearson define and
privilege, has the potential to combat ideological common sense and hence possibly lead
to progressive social change. This is so because the 3 letter writers would learn that their
own understandings were valid yet reductionist, hence limited in nature. Imagine how
things might have turned out for the lads, had they come to such a realization about their
own reductionist interpretations and evaluations concerning mental work and the sort of
work men properly do.

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The Basis for and Salient Features of
Pedagogy for Progressive Social Change
In the case of reading comprehension, literacy being an important social
equalizer, Martin Nystrand (2006) cites his own prior research when claiming that
authentic, or open-ended teacher questions and uptake (follow-up questions that build on
student responses to cumulatively and collaboratively make meaning), “to the extent that
they were used, suppressed potentially negative effects of . . . variables such as track,
socio-economic status [SES], race, and ethnicity” on what Nystrand labels “instruction
and learning” (403). Nystrand elaborates by citing Ericson’s (2004) theory that static
macro factors in education such as socio-economic status, race, ethnicity, gender, and so
on are “composed of many single instances of local social interaction . . . aggregate[d]
across time,” becoming “global social facts” (159). Based on that premise, more and
more teachers in diverse locales helping students develop into enlightened witnesses can
promote progressive social change on a global scale. Hence any pedagogy for the
reading and literature classroom intended to promote progressive social change may
benefit from the use of authentic questioning and uptake.
In recent years there has been a widespread move away from oppressive and
toward democratic learning interactions around text in the reading and literature
classroom. These programs/approaches claim to include the following elements of
interpretive discourse (whether spoken or written) around texts that promise to promote
parallax of vision which can lead to progressive social change:

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1. authentic teacher questions (Applebee, N., Langer, J., Nystrand, M., &
Gamoran, A., 2003): open-ended questions that invite simultaneous alternative
and sometimes even conflicting interpretations of the same texts during classroom
discourse
2. uptake: an ongoing and cumulative process during discourse around texts “in
which a teacher’s [or a student’s] question [takes up] and [builds] on a student’s
previous comment, creating continuity [and building complexity of meaning] in
the discourse” (Applebee, et al., 2003)
3. Exploratory Talk / ET (Mercer, N., 2000): for the purposes of this discussion,
talk around a text that is exploratory in nature; in this particular case, ET is talk
that explores multiple, alternative interpretations and evaluations of the same
texts, resulting in less reductionist, more complex understandings. ET is also
accountable talk, meaning that it is evidenced by the text and well reasoned talk.
Without first asking authentic questions that invite differing interpretations and
evaluations, without then taking into account and building upon differing interpretations
and evaluations while collaboratively constructing more complex (less reductionist) or
layered understandings of texts, and without a consensus about what ought to constitute
this persuasive talk around text in the classroom, the parallax of vision which can lead to
progressive social change cannot evolve. In more concrete terms, such a discussion
about The Golden Notebook would have helped Lessing’s letter writers complicate each
others’ monochromatic, hence limited understandings of the novel. Such a discussion
about Montana 1948 might also result in the same reader identifying and accepting as
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valid the multiple external and internal manifestations of “the reservation” in the novel.
Perhaps most importantly, such classroom discourses throughout their education might
have helped the lads move up in society. At the very least, teaching for progressive
social change could have helped them develop less cynical beliefs about upward mobility
and also might have lead them to question their own sexist and self-limiting notions about
what constitutes masculinity.
Discussion Questions
As stated above, several research-based and widely used programs and
approaches to designing and implementing in the classroom such enlightening and
empowering discussions around texts already exist. One of these programs/approaches
has garnered much attention and acclaim in recent years: Questioning the Author / QTA
(Beck, I., & McKeown, M., 2006), an intervention for improving reading comprehension
via open discussion during, rather than after, reading. Of particular interest to this thesis
is how this approach to teaching reading comprehension fares in terms of promoting the
parallax of vision that promises to promote progressive social change for all students,
including novice and struggling readers in need of improving their reading
comprehension abilities. Therefore, the following section will very briefly introduce
QTA before answering the questions of central interest to this discussion:
1. What is QTA, and what is the purpose of a QTA lesson?

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2. How can teachers plan QTA discussions to enhance not only basic
comprehension (gist making) abilities but also to promote deep, parallactic
understandings of texts, themselves, and the world?

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Chapter 2:
Using QTA for Gist Making and Building Parallax of Vision
Brief Introduction to QTA
QTA is a during-reading approach to apprenticing novice or struggling readers in
creating for themselves clear and coherent understandings of what they read. In other
words, via QTA students learn to focus on the important versus the trivial events and
ideas in a text or to transform the status of textual events and ideas from trivial to
significant, organizing those events and ideas in a way the shows their interrelatedness or
coherence. Such a process sharply contrasts with, for example, the recall of isolated
textual information, the significance and interrelatedness of which students are either
unable to articulate or to understand, for the purpose of providing the teacher or a
standardized testing entity with evidence that students completed their reading
assignments or can remember what they read. The authors of QTA, Isabel Beck and
Margaret McKeown, base their approach to teaching reading comprehension on sound
theories and important and rigorous research studies in the fields of educational
psychology and reading comprehension. These theories and studies show that
discussion-based reading lessons which use coherent texts or use the teacher’s own
coherent revisions of incoherent informational texts, for example, provide students with
relevant background knowledge for comprehension, and pose a logical versus arbitrary
sequence of questions (17) have a strongly positive influence on comprehension.

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Of particular interest here are the authentic questions used in QTA, questions
organized not according to taxonomies, or levels of thinking defined by Barrett (1967),
for example, but according to “the logical organization of events and ideas of central
importance to the story [or any other genre of text] and their interrelationships” (Beck &
McKeown, 15). This logical, or coherent, organization of the sequence of events and
ideas of central import to creating clear understandings of texts is planned for by the
teacher in a process called text segmenting. During this lesson-planning process which
precedes the group reading activity of QTA, the teacher reads the text, identifying
confusing, difficult, or telling and pivotal sentences or passages. For each of these
crucial points in, or segments of the text, the teacher creates initiating, open-ended
questions called Queries. Beck and McKeown define “questions” negatively as the sort
of closed-ended questions belonging to the I-R-E (Mehan, 1979) or mono-logic model of
instruction. In addition to Initial Queries, the teacher, having anticipated opportunities
for and threats to meaning making in the passage at hand, has on hand for timely and
strategic use during group reading at least one Follow-Up Query of an appropriate sort.
For example, anticipating a verbatim text response to an initial Query, the teacher can
follow up with “that’s what the author said, but what did the author mean” (Beck &
McKeown, 57). Such a follow-up might prompt students to make inferences or offer
interpretations or evaluations. Basically, initiating, or very open-ended Queries invite
students to make meaning, and Follow-Up Queries, which are more specific yet still
open-ended, scaffold their efforts to do so. The plan is to pause during group reading at
these crucial junctures in a text for during-reading mini discussions that guide students
collaboratively to build accurate and coherent understandings of what they are reading
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while they are reading it. In a sense, QTA can be viewed as the externalization via
dialogue of the internal cognitive processes happening in the minds of strong readers as
they read for meaning: e.g., pausing when needed or desirable while reading in order to
paraphrase or summarize, repair gaps in comprehension, characterize, connect events and
ideas across a text, make inferences based on textual evidence, interpret or evaluate, or
just savor a particularly beautiful or intriguing passage, for example.
QTA is a reading intervention designed to apprentice struggling readers at gist
making a little at a time while reading, just like strong readers do, the product of which
might take the form of an accurate paraphrasing or summary of a text segment. Indeed,
when readers evidence comprehension of a segment of text being discussed in ways that
cohere with what they’ve already read and comprehended well, they are ready to resume
reading. Again, the primary purpose of QTA is to help novice and struggling students
learn how to read for gist, especially when reading non-literary texts. In their book, the
authors make specific recommendations concerning where and how often to segment
texts: for example, at “trouble spots . . . such as a preponderance of abstract language,
unfamiliar content, and transitions between paragraphs that are not particularly effective”
(64). While such points in texts threaten students’ abilities to comprehend the language
(to get the gist), they do not necessarily spark the interpretive or evaluative interests of
readers.
Using QTA to Reach Beyond Gist Making

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Importantly, Beck and McKeown have designed an approach to teaching reading
comprehension that encourages teachers to reach beyond gist making by planning for
then guiding interpretive and evaluative mini-discussions during group reading. Indeed,
the work of initially thinking through the text to segment it for Query-driven discussion is
left to the end users of QTA themselves: usually reading teachers and specialists.
Beyond authoring Queries at the points in texts where threats to and opportunities for gist
making exist, threats and opportunities that must be addressed via discussion in order to
helping novice and struggling readers build basic comprehension, each teacher can decide
for him or herself where and why to use Queries in order to initiate and guide the sharing
of possible alternative interpretations or text-based evaluations. In other words, teachers
can plan for mini-discussions that will prompt readers to challenge and deepen each
others’ monochromatic understandings with valid and well reasoned interpretations and
evaluations. Importantly, because QTA helps struggling readers become better gist
makers, it has the potential for including them in the higher-level and more interesting
and rewarding business of literary analysis that more advanced readers enjoy and benefit
from. Crucially, as a reading intervention meant to help novice and struggling readers,
readers who often hail from low socio-economic or minority racial or ethnic
backgrounds, develop into competent ones, QTA planned for going beyond gist making
to include interpretation and evaluation, or literary analysis, can include them in reading
for deeper understand / parallax of vision.
Gist Making and Beyond via Authentic Questioning in QTA

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Of course, in the context of the current discussion, deepening understanding about
a text means collaboratively developing a parallax of vision through which to view it, in
order to help counteract the harmful social consequences of ideological common sense.
To combat ideological common sense, with proper planning, the mini-discussions that
take place during group reading in QTA can invite and synthesize a variety of alternative
yet convincing interpretations and evaluations of the same text, or parts of a text; a
character’s identity, importance, social status, or hidden motives, for example, can be
understood through a variety of lenses, or cultural constructs, such as like masculinity /
femininity, poverty / wealth, straight / gay, white / Native American, or pragmatic /
idealistic, for example. Authentic QTA questions, or QTA queries, do open the door to
multiple perspective-taking. Consider the differences between query-driven and
question-driven discussions around texts:
A Comparison of Question-Driven and Query-Driven Discussions
Question-Driven Query-Driven
Student Responses
• Brief answers • Longer, more elaborate answers
• In author’s language • In student’s language
Discussion Dynamics
• Student responses are characterized • Students responses are part of
by unrelated bits of information ongoing connected discussion
• Little students engagement • High student engagement
• Product oriented • Process oriented
• All questions teacher-initiated • Some questions student-initiated

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(Beck & McKeown, 41)
QTA’s authentic questions, or Queries, are open-ended and part of a guided yet
naturalistic conversation around texts, so they give students room to respond at greater
length, in richer and more elaborate / diverse ways, and in relevant and connected ways.
Students can even learn to author their own Queries driven by their own interests and
perspectives. The purpose of Query-driven discussion is collaboratively to build meaning
by, for example, summarizing, interpreting, evaluating, and monitoring for and repairing
gaps in comprehension while reading for edification and entertainment. In contrast,
question-driven discussions, as Beck and McKeown define them, are characterized by
turn taking between teachers and students. Teachers use questions to elicit brief
responses in the words of the author, questions which test students by prompting them to
accurately mine texts for often unrelated bits of information, or questions which merely
seek student consent with the interpretations and evaluations of their teachers. Reading
becomes a game of trivial pursuit or merely quiet submission by students to the expert
ideas of their teachers. More importantly for the discussion at hand, one-dimensional and
possibly self-limiting ways of interpreting and evaluating texts of all sorts never come
into question.
Gist Making and Beyond via Uptake in QTA
It is important to acknowledge from the beginning that Beck and McKeown
originally intended that QTA be used to help students comprehend or get the gist of what
they read across the curriculum. QTA learning goals are accomplished through careful
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pre-planning by QTA teachers and various discussion moves via strategic Follow-Up
Query posing by teachers during mini-discussions around text segments that require
students to repair their own lapses in comprehension and collaboratively to build a
coherent representation of a text off of each other’s understandings. The process involves
students in sharing with each other their in-process thinking about texts during reading
for gist making. Sometimes the teacher must, though only as much as necessary, model
out loud his or her thinking through the complex ideas in texts or provide students with
additional information which is missing from the text but which is crucial for what Beck
and McKeown throughout the book refer to as “grappling with text ideas,” or gist
making. These QTA discussion moves are respectively called Modeling (98-100) and
Annotating (100-101). The rest of the discussion moves used in QTA discussions, for
which Follow-Up Queries are used, in one way or another involve the uptake of students’
ideas.
Importantly for this thesis, the discussion move called Recapping, used “when
students have come to a place in their construction of ideas that seem to suggest they get
it [i.e., get the gist]” and “are ready to move on in the text” (97), can be most useful for
encouraging the sharing and layering of alternative interpretations and text-based
evaluations to build understandings of texts that go beyond mere gist making. Instead of
coming to a consensus about one particular interpretation then moving on in the reading,
the teacher can acknowledge via Recapping the valid interpretation of one student before
asking for competing yet valid perspectives that will help everyone build an even deeper,
polychromatic understanding of the passage being discussed before moving on in the

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reading. But should Recapping for building parallax of vision happen only after gist
making?
The Parallel and Recursive Nature of Thought while Reading:
A Case for Blending Gist Making and Literary Analysis Using QTA
Some issues of the nature of strong reading at the core of QTA instruction should
be addressed to answer this question. Beck and McKeown discuss the need for an
“interspersed,” or segmented QTA reading experience for students, an experience in
which all students learn to read like strong readers, “continually expending effort [while
reading, not after reading] to make sense of the text” (31), so that each important segment
of text is clearly understood and connected to the rest of the text as it is encountered.
Beck and McKeown stress that the main purpose for the interspersed reading experience
of QTA is to prevent novice readers from getting lost or forming local misconceptions
while reading that will accumulate into a global lack of gist-getting of the text as a whole
if students are left to read on their own (32). Elsewhere in the book, Beck and McKeown
liken teachers of reading to shepherds herding sheep, some of whom will always find any
holes in the fence and escape through them. The holes in the fence Beck and McKeown
refer to constitute not noticing or carefully enough considering the most important ideas
encountered while reading for gist, as well as occasionally getting lost or forming
misconceptions while reading.
For our purposes, we can view other gaping holes in the fence as missed
opportunities for deeply exploring multiple textually evidenced interpretations and

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evaluations during mini-discussion. Indeed, while planning for the lesson, in addition to
identifying segments of text that pose potential problems or opportunities for gist making,
the QTA teacher would also need to identify the segments of texts that contain the most
potential for sharing valid alternate interpretations and evaluations to help build deeper
understanding than just gist getting. The QTA teacher would then need to “articulate
Initiating Queries and potential Follow-Up Queries that [would] help students develop
[deep] understanding [i.e., parallax of vision] of the text ideas” (62) at those points in the
text. Synthesizing gist making with interpretation and evaluation, or high-level literary
analysis, is right in line with Beck and McKeown’s rejection of asking questions
organized by taxonomies of thought in favor of the more logical and holistic organization
of thoughts that goes on in the minds of competent readers while reading for meaning, or
the in-process thought of competent readers. It may be argued by some that the more
basic comprehension that Beck and McKeown address in their book and approach
precedes literary analysis including interpretations and evaluation, but that notion seems
contrary to the idea that meaning making while reading does not happen in a neat and
taxonomical way. For example, by page 32 of a 200-page novel, we may begin to
interpret the significance of a recurring metaphor well before we have ironed out all the
complex inter-relationships between characters already introduced. Similarly, we may
still be in the process of forming a clear notion of the setting of a story when we begin to
make high-level inferences based on textual evidence concerning the motives of certain
characters. Such active reading and writing processes, including both gist making and
literary analysis, occur in a parallel, recursive, and complimentary fashion (Kucer, 1985).
Exploring reading and writing as parallel processes in meaning making, Kucer tentatively
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proposes “ several strategies for the construction of propositional meaning during reading
or writing,” carefully pointing out that the strategies identified are “reciprocal and
recursive in nature. Each affects and is affected by the others” and that “the strategies are
not utilized in a sequential, step-by-step fashion, but instead are capable of running in
parallel or simultaneously” (329). Concerning interpretation while reading, The Great
Books Foundation (1999) likewise argues that
complete mastery of the facts is not necessary to begin the process of
interpretation. Interpretation begins with the questions we ask ourselves as we
read. Why does a character act in a certain way? Why does the author include a
particular detail? Why do things turn out as they do? What does a certain word
mean in context? As we develop answers to such questions, we get a better sense
of how the parts of the work fit together and what the work means. (42)
Hence, reading and writing for meaning are sloppy endeavors that cannot be broken
down into their constituent parts and discreetly reordered by complexity of thought to
neatly fit a taxonomical scheme, a reality that Beck and McKeown acknowledge early on
in their book.
Texts that Invite Building Parallax of Vision:
the Great Books Foundation’s (1999) Rubric

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Acknowledging the parallel and recursive nature of meaning making while
reading and writing, a process which involves gist making, interpretation, and evaluation,
certain kinds of texts likely have greater potential than others for making QTA a more
powerful tool for building parallax of vision. QTA was largely designed for use with
expository texts across the curriculum, which many younger students can struggle to
comprehend, although Beck and McKeown show how it can be used and acknowledge its
successful use with narrative texts and even poetry. However, when used with a novel
like M.T. Anderson’s (2002) Feed, considered a literary masterpiece by many, students
can find plenty of opportunities to reach beyond gist making and share valid alternative
interpretations and evaluations with each other, thereby complicating or deepening each
others understandings. Because masterful literary works like Feed engage students with
controversial concepts and socio-cultural phenomena that relate directly to their own
lives, lifestyles, ideological stances, and worlds, such books make teaching for
progressive social change very doable. This novel certainly fares well when vetted using
select bullet points relevant to this discussion from the rubric that The Great Books
Foundation designed for evaluating the worthiness of titles for Shared Inquiry (SI)
discussions. SI is “a method of mainly interpretive reading and discussion [in which]
participants,” collaboratively, as in QTA, “explore possible responses to interpretive
questions raised by a text—questions for which the text suggests more than one
answer” (my bold, 4). As with QTA, SI teachers “guide students to give full
consideration to the ideas of others, weigh the merits of opposing arguments, and modify
their initial opinions as the evidence in a text demands” (4). According to The Great
Books Foundation, texts appropriate for SI discussions must . . .

21
i) “Support extended interpretive discussions” (30) by
(1) Being rich in ideas not explicitly articulated by authors
(2) Suggest multiple interpretations that can be “supported with evidence
rather than merely being a matter of personal opinion” (30) via writing
that is “thematically complex and cohesive.” As in QTA, textual cohesion
is crucial for building coherent mental representations of texts.
ii) “Raise genuine questions for adults as well as students” (30)
(1) Texts must be “puzzling and thought provoking” (30) in a way that
generates interest and doubt in teachers’ as well as in students’ minds,
doubts over the answers to authentic interpretive questions because of the
potential for parallactic responses and the rich textual evidence that
promotes them. Such doubt differs from confusion over texts which
perhaps presume too much background knowledge on the part of readers
or that contain a lot of abstract language or difficult transitions between
ideas. A good example of such a text is Montana 1948. This novel
prevents readers from making easy distinctions between Mercer County
whites and Native American inhabitants of the reservation in the story,
thereby generating doubt, or meaningful ambiguity, in the minds of all
readers, both teachers and students alike.
iii) “Be age/grade appropriate” in terms of “theme and style,” not
readability level (30)

22
(1) Unlike with QTA, in SI students should always encounter the original
words of the author; SI teachers should never modify or rewrite texts to be
more coherent or “to meet a controlled vocabulary,” for example. (31). As
long as theme and style are age/grade appropriate, no such need exists,
according to The Great Books Foundation. (31)
One more quality to look for in a literary text is good craftsmanship or artistic merit.
That is to say, the form as well as the content should be telling and in sync or in dialogue
with each other. Literary texts like these are perhaps the most coherent texts of all,
providing students with a plethora of both literal and figurative linguistic evidence often
of a highly concentrated nature on which to base their understandings. Furthermore,
because well crafted literary texts are both thought provoking and pleasurable to read,
they have a positive influence on both the reading comprehension and the affective
domains of reading. In our quest to promote comprehension and parallax of vision, we
must find ways to help students enjoy reading.
Mercer’s Exploratory Talk
Having argued that QTA by design meets two of the three criteria (authentic
questioning and uptake) needed for building deep versus limited understanding of texts
and for building the parallactic vision that may promote progressive social change, the
third criteria can be addressed. Understanding what Mercer means by the phrase
Exploratory Talk, or thinking together through language to explore ideas, involves first
23
knowing what it is not: it is not disputation, in which those involved become aggressive,
defensive, and uncooperative with each other. In Disputational Talk, alternative
perspectives “compete with rather than compliment each other” (97), as in the following
author-provided “cooperative yet uncooperative” courtroom exchange between Oliver
North and an interrogator investigating The Iran / Contra Scandal in the 1980’s named
Nields (89). Here the disputation is subtle but clear:
Nields:
Did you suggest to the Attorney General that maybe the diversion memorandum
and the fact that there was a diversion need not ever come out?
North:
Again, I don’t recall that specific conversation at all, but I’m not saying it didn’t
happen.
Nields:
You don’t deny it?
North:
No.
Nields:
You don’t deny suggesting to the Attorney General of the United States that he
just figure out a way of keeping this diversion document secret?
North:
I don’t deny that I said it. (89)

24
In this exchange, Ollie North certainly is not being hostile towards the interrogator, yet he
doggedly and defensively refuses to admit wrongdoing, defending himself and perhaps
others in the Regan Administration from criminal convictions. During discussions
around texts in the classroom, it’s unlikely that readers are lying about their alignments
toward texts to defend themselves, alignments they may be unaware of and which hence
may be acting as ideological common sense. Even so, the example of Disputational Talk
above aptly captures the aggressive (Nields), defensive (North), and uncooperative
characteristics of a sort of talk that does not a) constitute thinking together through
language and b) cannot contribute to building deep, parallactic understandings of texts.
Mercer identifies another sort of talk that actually does constitute thinking
together through language, unlike Disputational Talk, but that still will not foster building
parallax of vision via the exploration of valid alternative interpretations and evaluations.
In what Mercer calls Cumulative Talk, discussion participants “build on each other’s
contributions, add information of their own, and in a mutually supportive, uncritical [my
bold] way construct together a body of shared knowledge and understanding” (97), such
as a monochromatic interpretation or evaluation about text. In the following author-
provided example, three white students cooperatively construct a single argument from a
single alignment against affirmative action scholarships and what they deem as “special
treatment” (98) of minorities at a university:
B:
So it’s just . . . their advantages just keep adding up, their grade advantages . . .
C:
25
Yeah, that’s true. They do have more time to relax because they don’t have to
work. You know, like everyone else does to pay off their loans.
B:
. . . cause they’re just getting money
C:
I feel really bad about this, because like we sound like racists or whatever, and I
really don’t think I am.
B:
. . . I really don’t think I’m racist, I just think that . . .
K:
It’s just a very unfair society that we’re living in today. (98)
Removed from the exchange above are transcript coding marks (brackets, indentations,
underlines, and so on) , marks that Mercer uses with transcripts throughout his book to
show, in this case, how these students engage in in-process thinking together;
contributions to the discussion by individual students that trail of or give way to other
student s end with ellipses instead. Although they are thinking together through
language, Mercer points out that, rather than enabling them to explore the complexities of
their topic together from multiple perspectives, “this kind of talk enables the students not
only to gather collective support for their views, but also jointly to define their
[monochromatic versus polychromatic] argumentative stance in a way that avoids the
possible [my bold] and undesirable attribution of being racist” (98). Hence, Cumulative
Talk allows these students to avoid challenging their own ideological common sense to
26
building parallax of vision. It is this possible attribution of racism that contains the most
potential for critical exploration that might combat the ideological common sense these
students evidence in their discussion. Their talk only welcomes and accumulates
convergent versus divergent ideas on the subject of affirmative action from the
perspective of those who don’t directly, although may indirectly, benefit from it.
In Exploratory Talk, on the other hand, students think together through language
that welcomes and accumulates / synthesizes valid and divergent ideas about texts and
society. Instead of avoiding the possible attribution of racism during a discussion of the
justice of affirmative action and its social repercussions, students would “steer into that
particular ice berg,”1 as my graduate advisor at the University of Pittsburgh often put it.
Doing so forces them to grapple, as Beck and Mckeown say, with the ideological
common sense fueling the Cumulative Talk cited above. Readers engaged in exploratory
discussions learn that there are two or more valid responses or positions, and that such
conflicting positions coexist in the form of deeper, more complex understandings.
Crucially, readers engaged in Exploratory Talk also learn what constitutes validity during
discussions around topics and texts: e.g., reasons are given for proposals, be they
convergent or divergent ones, “reason is visible in the talk,” and “knowledge is made
publically accountable” in an exchange in which “partners engage critically but
constructively with each others ideas” (98). In effect, when truly building parallax of
vision in the reading or literature (or any) classroom, discussion participants respectfully
yet often passionately and accountably grapple with ideas rather than dispute each other
1
The idea of the metaphor is that, had the crew of the Titanic steered her straight into the berg rather
than trying to skirt it, the ship would likely not have sunk. The berg here is complexity of thought and
sinking is shallow or limited understanding.
27
aggressively or defensively. To engage in Cumulative Talk is to gloss over potentialities
for exploring unpleasant attributions or alternative perspectives or to “minimize
individual differences of perception or judgment” for the purpose of building “a joint
identity” (102). To engage in Exploratory talk, on the other hand, “with its explicit
reasons, criticisms, and evaluations, participants must not be primarily concerned with
protecting their individual or joint identities and interests, [as were the lads,] but instead
with discovering new and better ways of jointly making sense” (102-103).
Exploratory Talk for Building Parallax of Vision in QTA
Once students through Exploratory Talk seem to have successfully negotiated the
gist of a segment of text, the QTA teacher often Recaps and then resumes the group
reading. Only if the teacher segments the text and Queries students during discussions to
go beyond gist making will QTA involve Exploratory Talk that deepens and complicates
understanding. In order to help students build the deeper understanding at issue, teachers
need to ask Queries like “what have we learned here” at points in the text ripe for being
read through multiple lenses. The following segmented passage from Feed illustrates the
process.
Segmenting a Passage from a Novel for Gist Making,
Interpretation, and Evaluation

28
The following segmented passage from Feed is one of the most important in the
novel. It presents rich opportunities for both gist making and building deep
understanding via discussing possible alternate interpretations and evaluations. Hence, it
is segmented for both gist making and literary analysis. At such busy crossroads for
major ideas in texts, the teacher ought to slow down the QTA lesson, in order to take as
much time as necessary to help students negotiate deep understanding of the rich
language under their noses.
In this passage, Titus, the narrator, describes how he and his friends try to get free
Coke by exploiting a promotion the company is running, “where if you talk about the
great taste of Coca-Cola to your friends like a thousand times, you [get] a free six pack of
it” (158). He and his friends get together to try to bilk the company out of as much free
soda as they can. But his new friend, Violet, rather than rattling off made up slogans for
the great taste of Coke as planned, expresses herself poetically about the feel of the
carbonated soft drink going down her throat then follows up with an attempt at
intellectual conversation about acquiring a taste for things that are initially unpleasant and
how such tastes begin in life. Her attempt receives a cold reception from Titus’ friends,
as well as his compassion. While discussing this passage and the powerful socio-
cognitive and linguistic evidence it offers those reading for deep understanding, students
should reach beyond gist making to explore valid and alternative interpretations and
evaluations before reading onward. Because the passage below is a microcosm of the
macrocosm of the novel, helping readers more deeply understand it will help them in
their quest to explore the nature of the feed and its consequences for all throughout the
novel.
29
The entire planning process for a QTA lesson that reaches beyond gist making is
extensively modeled here, including identifying major ideas in the passage and also
opportunities for sharing alternative interpretations and evaluations (above and below);
segmenting the text; developing “Initiating Queries to launch a discussion; [anticipating]
how students may respond; and [developing] potential Follow-Up Queries to help focus
and move the discussion forward” (Beck & McKeown, 69). The wording for many of the
Queries asked below is that which Beck and McKeown suggest throughout their book.
Keep in mind that too much discussion of a passage as short as the one segmented below
will normally disrupt the flow of reading for students and likely also go over like a ton of
bricks. Yet not many passages in a novel will prove as crucial as the one from Feed
segmented below for negotiating deep understanding of a text as a whole. QTA this
intensive ought only to be reserved for passages as busy with major ideas and as pregnant
with potential for building parallax of vision as the one below. It is also important to note
that the discussions planned for below reach out across the novel wherever connections
can and should be made. The passage itself then acts as a catalyst for discussions that
account what students have already read, thereby helping them to build a coherent mental
representation of the text as a whole which includes deep understanding:
Violet said, “I love the great feeling of Coke’s carbonation going down my
throat, all the pain, like . . .” She waved her hands in the air and looked at the
ceiling, trying to think of something. She said, “It’s like sweet gravel. It’s like a
bunch of itsy-bitsy commuters running for a shuttle in my windpipe.”1 Everyone

30
was looking at her. I could feel them chatting each other, saying that was stupid.
I sat nearer to her. I put my hand on her back. 2
She was saying, “Sometimes I try to think back to the first time I ever had
coke. Because it must have hurt, but I can’t remember. How could we ever have
started to enjoy it? If something’s an acquired taste, like, how do you start to
acquire it? 3 For that matter, who gave me coke the first time? My father? I
don’t think so. Who would hand a kid a Coke and think, ‘Her first one. I’m so
proud.’ How do we even start?”4
There was a long, silent part.
Then Marty said, “Yeah. That may have cost us a few. Hey, how about
the great foaming capabilities of coke?”
And then we were onto this whole thing, about Coke fights and Coke
floats, and Coke promotions, and we went on and on and on, but Violet didn’t say
anything else, just ssat there silently. 5 (161-162).
1) Gist: Students should recognize the figurative, even poetic way Violet expresses
herself, and that she seems interested in actually having a conversation about
Coke, rather than just rattling off slogans to bilk the Coca-Cola Co.™ out of free
soda. A teacher might ask “what do you make of Violet’s observations?”
Anticipating responses that don’t focus on the exceptional and startling nature of
her language and thinking and what they tell readers about Violet, the teacher
might follow up with “what do Violet’s way of speaking and thinking here tell us
about her?”
31
Interpretation: Since a few of Titus’ friends begin the game by rattling off
slogans for Coke just before Violet takes her turn, the teacher can ask students
“so far, how does Violet’s contribution to the game compare or contrast to Titus’
friends and why? Students’ responses might address differences in motives,
morality, or class; unlike Titus and his friends, Violet and her family are poor.
Confronted with silence or confusion as response, the teacher might follow up by
asking “what does her contribution to the game so far say about her motives /
values / background in comparison or contrast to theirs?”
Evaluation: Before reading on, students could also briefly share and explore their
evolving judgments of Violet and Titus’ friend at this point, doing so in ways that
are accountable to the text. Readers can stand in the shoes of, or adopt an
alignment with, the characters, who are evaluating each other in this passage. A
Follow-Up Query anticipating short “I like” or “I don’t like” responses or
responses that digress into irrelevant topics, a danger of evaluation (The Great
Books Foundation, 44) during discussions, could ask students to elaborate using
textual evidence: “tell us more about why you feel that way?” Importantly, how
Titus and his clique judge Violet’s eloquence and critical thinking is of central
importance to understanding from nearly the moment she is introduced to readers.
2) Gist: Here readers should see that Titus’ consoles Violet by moving nearer to her
and putting his hand on her back, in the face of his friends’ negative reaction to
her. Since the meaningfulness of his behaviors must be inferred, this is a classic
example of a hole in the fence that QTA is meant to patch. A good Query to start
32
off with might be “what’s happening here?” If responses don’t evidence that
students understand why Titus moves closer to Violet and puts his hand on her
back, the teacher can follow up with “what’s Titus doing here?”
Gist: In addition, the teacher should make sure that students understand why
Titus consoles Violet. If no one does so in response to the Initiating Query above,
the teacher can follow up with “how are things going for Violet here, socially
speaking?” By negotiating this inference during the discussion, students
acknowledge that “the seeds of a problem have been planted” (Beck &
McKeown, 69).
Interpretation: Also, the teacher can further follow up with “why does Titus
console Violet in this way?” Titus’ subdued but noticeable gesture may evidence
his attempt to show allegiance both to his friends and to Violet, his attempt to be
on both sides at once. Later in the novel, being on both sides proves problematic
for him.
3) Gist: Here Violet brings up the major concepts of “acquired tastes” and how
people begin to acquire them. Students should grasp the meaning of this phrase,
which has implications for all the characters in the world of the novel; they
quickly acquire and as quickly abandon tastes for what corporations pedal via the
feed signal, including absurd fashion fads, such as dressing up like the residents
of retirement homes or riot goers (in riot-wear). They even begin to treat the
worsening lesions on their bodies (a particularly gory consequence of the feed) as
fashionable, adorning and highlighting them. The teacher might initiate

33
discussion by asking “what’s Violet talking about here?” Anticipating verbatim
text response, for example, the teacher could follow up with “yes, but what does
she mean by “acquired taste?” The teacher can also ask students to name some of
the distasteful or painful things that the characters have acquired a taste for
throughout their lives in the story so far.
Interpretation: Students should respond to the complex question that Violet asks:
“how do the characters in the world of this novel begin to acquire tastes for
things that may be unpleasant or even painful?” Many valid responses are
possible. In their responses, students might bring up the conditioning of the
characters into uncritical consumers who will buy almost anything as one way
that acquired tastes come about; via consumer profiling (define if necessary), the
corporations in the story constantly bombard the characters with targeted
advertisements through the feed. If students don’t bring up this point, the teacher
can follow up with “what about the influence of the feed signal?” Peer pressure
and acceptance is another motivating factor in taste acquisition, especially for the
teen characters of the novel such as Titus, who is very self-conscious about
whether his friends and peers will admire his new car, for example; if students
don’t bring this topic up on their own, the teacher could follow up with “what
about the influence of others: e.g., family, friends, and peers?” A conflict theorist
perspective might yield the following interpretive questions: “what corporate
values have these characters internalized; how aware of this internalization of
corporate values are Titus and his friends; how aware is Violet of it; and what
are the rewards or consequences of this internalization process?

34
Evaluation: Students can share their judgments and opinions of consumer
profiling, billboards, pop-up windows for products and services, spam, flyers
from stores received in the mail, and telemarketing calls. The teacher can also
encourage students to personally connect by asking “has advertising like this ever
made you grow to want things you did not find appealing to begin with? Explain.
Such a question puts students in Violet and the other characters’ shoes.
Answering such a question about oneself furthermore promotes the self-
awareness that combats ideological common sense. It should be noted that,
although the above question is closed ended, the exhortation to explain responses
make it an authentic cue for Exploratory Talk.
4) Gist: Here Violet implies a judgment without explicitly stating it. It could be
worded as “introducing a child to his or her first Coke is a terrible thing to do.
Who would admit to doing such a thing?” The teacher can initiate discussion for
making this crucial inference for basic comprehension by asking “now what is
Violet saying?” Anticipating verbatim quotation of Violet’s words as responses,
the teacher can follow up with “yes, that’s what Violet says, but what does she
mean?”
Evaluation: The teacher can invite divergent opinions here bay asking “is Violet
right? Is giving a child his or her first Coke such a bad thing to do? Explain.”
This is an ideal point in the passage for sharing alternative evaluations that can
help students explore the moral implications of consumerism, not only in the
35
world of the book, but in the real world. That real-world connection is what can
help student become aware of and combat ideological common sense.
Gist: Teachers should also lead students to relate Violet’s disapproval of
introducing a child to his or her first Coke to the implanting of the feed device,
which is mainly a tool for selling and shopping, into the brains of babies. The
teacher could therefore ask “how does this fit in with what we already know about
this society?” Anticipating trouble connecting ideas across the text, the teacher
could follow up with “how does Violet’s opinion relate to the feed?”
Interpretation: Certainly, opinions can vary as to how analogous giving a child
their first Coke is to implanting a device into the brains of newborns, a device
meant to create consumer profiles that are used constantly to bombard people with
targeted advertising throughout their lives. Here teachers can lead students to
debate the relationship by asking “how related are the acts of giving a child his or
her first Coke and implanting the feed device into the brains of newborns? This
segment also offers students the valuable opportunity to explore and become
aware of how social status, for example, shapes our values and how we interpret
our world. To do so, the teacher could guide students to explore whether or not
and why Violet’s low-income status leads her to exaggerate the ill effects of
giving a child his or her first Coke by asking “given what you already know about
her, why might Violet in particular feel so negatively about giving a child his or
her first Coke?” Likewise, the teacher can guide students to discover how the
wealthy status of other characters may lead them to deemphasize the harm done
by giving a child his or her first Coke and by implanting the feed into the brains
36
of newborns by asking “how might the upper-middle and upper-class status of
Titus and his clique affect their judgments concerning the effects of implanting the
feed device into the brains of newborns?”
Evaluation: Sparked by the connection between giving a child his or her first
Coke and implanting the feed device into the brains of newborns, the teacher
could encourage students to share their judgments concerning the feed with each
other by asking “how good or bad is the feed for people in the world of this
novel?” Students who argue that it’s not all bad could cite the ability to share
memories with others and to find whatever information or products one needs in a
flash of desire for it. Others might argue that such instant gratification has
harmful effects on the minds and the morals of the characters. Those who do
could connect back to Violet’s theory that “everything is better if you [delay] it,”
and her belief in “the importance of self control” (Anderson, 143). If those
emphasizing the negative effects of the feed on people don’t bring up Violet’s
theories as textual support for their claims, the teacher could follow up with “how
does your opinion match up with Violet’s theories on the subject on page 143?”
5) Gist: students should infer that the others decline Violet’s invitation to engage in
an intellectual and critical conversation, whose goals go far beyond bilking the
Coca-Cola Co.™ out of free Coke; the textual evidence for the declination being
Marty’s criticism, directed to the group rather than to Violet, that she “may have
cost us a few” six packs (161) and his resumption of the slogan “rattling” (163).
The teacher could initiate discussion by asking “Now what’s happened?”

37
Anticipating verbatim text response, the teacher could follow up with “what do
you make of Marty’s observation and the silence of the others?” Note that the
latter Queries can easily lead to interpretive and evaluative exchanges as to the
motives of Marty and the others which go far beyond gist making. Hence, it is
important to note that the placement of Queries, not just the wording, determines
whether they trigger gist making and / or literary analysis.
Gist: Students should infer that Violet’s silence signals her discomfort at having
been declined, likely signaling hurtful feelings of rejection. Her silence also
likely signals her disinterest in rattling off coke slogans. The teacher could
initiate discussion of Violet’s feelings by asking “what does Violet’s silence
mean?” If students don’t get the gist, the teacher can follow up with “how does
Violet’s silence relate to Marty’s comments and the reaction of the others to what
she has said?” To guide students to grasp that Violet may not have any interest in
rattling off slogans for free soda, the teacher can also follow up with “given what
you know of Violet up to this point and her conversational interests, what does
her silence following Marty’s comments mean?”
Interpretation: A helpful and interesting topic for interpretive discussion at this
point can be the form of the whole of the passage just discussed in segments, with
the thoughtful and critical content of Violet’s language and ideas begin met with
rejection and disruptions of slogan rattling. This exchange strongly resembles
what goes on in the minds of those living with the feed implant, the signals of
which are constantly disrupting any attempts at sustained and critical thought with
cheap slogans for goods and services. Indeed, Titus’ narrative is often interrupted
38
by chapters whose content consist entirely of feed advertisements. These “feed
chapters” also often contain a lot of garbled and scrambled thoughts which are at
times wildly incongruous, likely resembling the scrambled thoughts of the
characters. The teacher can initiate high-level discussion of this theme, which can
be support with both the form and the content of the language throughout the
novel, by asking “what do you make of the form of this passage?” If students
fail to make the connection with the feed chapters and what’s going on in the
minds of the characters living with the feed signal in their heads, the teacher can
follow up by asking “how does this external, linguistic exchange between Violet
and the others resemble the thinking of characters receiving the feed signal?”
Resistance to the idea of the form of this passage and the feed chapters resembling
the minds of the characters may not seem very interesting or valid, so the teacher
may not want to encourage opposing views concerning the form of the novel and
its implications. When talking about form in Feed, a little Cumulative Talk can
benefit students in creating for themselves an understanding of the choices
Anderson has made as a creative writer.
Evaluation: Certainly, however, students can share their judgments of the artistic
choices that Anderson makes in his novel, which are well evidenced in the form
and content of the language of this passage. The teacher can initiate discussion of
this subject by asking “how do the artistic or formal choices of the author affect
your understanding and enjoyment of his tale?” A related topic is the choice of
the science fiction genre to tell the tale. Students can share their judgments as to
39
the effect the genre has on understanding and enjoyment if the teacher asks “how
do you feel about Anderson using the science fiction genre to tell his tale?
Chapter 3: Conclusion
Violet fails at her attempt to initiate some form of Exploratory Talk with Titus
and the others in his band. She fails at her attempt to share her in-process, critical
reflections and observations about Coke and the feed and to explore these ideas via
conversation with Titus and the others. Her failure underscores how difficult true
dialogue which seeks to get students to challenge and complicate their own reductionist
and monochromatic ideas, values, and ideologies can be to initiate and sustain. Her
failure evidences how difficult it is to counteract the feed of ideological common sense.
Yet that is what reading and literature teachers who want to help their students combat
the ideological common sense that can limit their prospects in life must try to accomplish
in their classrooms.
This discussion has sought to . . .
1. build a theoretical and research foundation for pedagogy that can promote
progressive social change by combating ideological common sense
2. identify the salient features of such pedagogy: 1) authentic questions, 2)
uptake, and 3) Exploratory Talk
3. and provide an example of lesson planning for such an approach to
teaching reading and literature

40
In addition, in keeping with the research by Kucer and others cited above, research which
claims that the cognitive processes and strategies involved in creating coherent
representations of texts run in parallel to each other and are recursive rather than
sequential and taxonomically distinct, QTA was chosen as the vehicle for teaching for
progressive social change. QTA is used to help students improve their gist making
capabilities, yet since QTA possesses the three salient features of the sought-after
pedagogy, when carefully planned for it can help students reach beyond gist making to
deepen their understandings of text, self, and world. In so doing, and in keeping with the
spirit of inclusion, QTA can invite novice and struggling readers into the Exploratory
Talk around literature that promises to brighten the future prospects for all students in our
society.
Future experimental research could explore the effectiveness of QTA explicitly
and systematically planned and implemented to encourage students to reach beyond gist
making in order to build parallax of vision. In addition to measuring the resulting depth
of understanding, or level of parallactic understanding of the text that results, teachers
and students could be surveyed for their opinions of QTA planned in this way. Such self-
reported data could bring to the fore some unexpected reactions or issues for
consideration. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, pretest and posttest data could be
compared in order to determine the effect of such pedagogy for progressive social change
on students’ self-awareness of their own ideological beliefs. The elements of the
planning and implementation of the QTA lessons which contributed the most to such
blooming self-awareness might also be identified.

41
Glossary of Terms
Alignments (Tierney & Pearson, 1985): different stances or roles that can be adopted
toward the same “text”: i.e., the lads saw their school as a place to be emasculated or
effeminized because they had adopted a certain sexist alignment, or lens, through which
to read their school and schooling in general. Similarly, if one reads a story told through
the eyes of a child, the text invites one to adopt that role and identify with the child
character while reading. This role adoption in turn has an influence on understanding and
interpretation. When a staunch conservative watches CNN, for example, the conservative
adopts a hostile alignment with the text, seeking out leftist ideas to criticize through the
lens of her conservative ideology. She may conclude that CNN is biased against
Republicans.
Authentic questions (Applebee et al., 2003): open-ended interpretive questions
Coherence (Beck & McKeown, 2006): the logical organization of the sequence of events
and ideas of central import to gist making from a text
Construct meaning together: learners make gist and share different interpretations of
the same text with each other in order to develop not just basic comprehension but deep
understandings of texts
42
Glossary of Terms Continued
Economic determinism (Feinberg & Soltis, 50-51): The theory that the economy and
economic laws (the processes and stages of the centralization of capital) in capitalist
societies determine the course of events in human history
Enlightened witnesses (Jhally, 1997): those who question ideological common sense by
adopting differing stances and roles (alignments) or ways of seeing texts through multiple
lenses; i.e., those with parallax of vision
Gist making: building basic comprehension of a text, evidenced by the ability to
summarize or paraphrase accurately
Hidden curriculum (Giroux & Penna, 1983): power differentials in society and the ways
in which they can either be legitimated hence reproduced (e.g., in the form of ideological
common sense) or challenged in subtle and implied ways in schools: for example, the
recitation model of teaching, in which students are encouraged to remain passive, docile,
and uncritical, can legitimate and reproduce social inequalities, thereby impeding
progressive social change
Ideological common sense (Fairclough, 1989): this term is related to the Marxist notion
of false consciousness, or the adoption by members of a subordinate class of ideological
beliefs belonging to the dominant class, beliefs which serve to preserve the power
43
differentials in society: e.g., when a worker, however begrudgingly, enthusiastically, or
consciously, shares the points of view and values of the owner, who may believe that
keeping the business, and businesses in general, solvent and profitable first and foremost
hinges upon cutting employee pay and benefits and demanding that employees work long
hours. In this way, the worker remains docile, productive, and cheap for the boss, and
progressive social change (in this case, upward mobility) is thwarted. When such a
situation arises, the boss has established hegemony over the worker, or “a preponderance
of influence and authority” (Feinberg & Soltis, 50). In short, members of the subordinate
classes harbor ideologies that work against their own self interest, and such ideologies
can go beyond economic ones to include self-injurious sexist and racist ideologies, as in
the case of the lads.
I-R-E (Mehan, 1979): when teachers adopt a single alignment, Initiate questions (thereby
choose the topic of importance or interest for discussion), seek the correct Response (the
correct recall of information from a text or the teacher’s own interpretation or judgment
of a text), then Evaluate that response for “correctness.” This is a dominant form of the
pedagogy that Paolo Freire (1972) referred to as the banking system of education, or the
pedagogy of the oppressed. Lecturing is a similar sort of teacher-to-student transmission
of knowledge.
44
Lenses: different alignments toward a text or lenses through which a text is or can be
interpreted, including differing beliefs about and preoccupations with race, ethnicity,
gender, psychology, class (power relations), economics, and so on.
Parallax of vision: the well-developed facility to adopt multiple alignments with the
same text (interpret the same texts in different and sometimes oppositional ways) in order
to gain deeper understanding (Tierney & Pearson, 1985) of it
Pedagogy of the oppressed: Paolo Freire (1972) likened transfer (from teacher to
students) instruction such as I-R-E and lecturing to the teacher depositing funds into bank
accounts. The metaphor illumines Freire’s Marxist outlook because it suggests that such
pedagogy serves to indoctrinate members of the subordinate classes in the beliefs and
ideologies which work against them and in favor of members of the dominant classes,
thereby preserving the status-quo power differentials that further enrich the dominant
classes. Hence, schools act as tools of the state used to combat progressive social
changed.
Progressive social change: loosely defined in this thesis as increased awareness of one’s
own ideological stances or beliefs that may lead to upward social mobility
45
Shared Inquiry (The Great Books Foundation, 1999): a copyrighted curriculum for
designing and implemented open-ended interpretive discussions around texts in the
classroom
Text: anything, any person, institution, law, and so on, that is or can be interpreted
Uptake (Applebee et al., 2003; Beck and McKeown, 2006): the process of
acknowledging the various valid gists, interpretations, and evaluations of texts that
students bring to the discussion of them and then synthesizing or layering those
contributions into an evolving and ever more complex understanding of a text being
collaboratively constructed
46
References
Anderson, M.T., (2002). Feed. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press.
Applebee, A., Langer, J., Nystrand, M., & Gamoran, A., (2003). Discussion-based
approaches to developing understanding: Classroom instruction and student
performance in middle and high school English. American Educational Research
Journal, 40 (3), 685-730.
Barrett, T.C., (1967). “Goals of the reading program: The basis for evaluation.” In T.C.
Barrett (Ed.), In the evaluation of children’s reading achievement. Newark, DE:
International Reading Association.
Beck, I., & Mckeown, M., (2006). Improving comprehension with questioning the
author: A fresh and expanded view of a powerful approach. New York:
Scholastic.
Erickson, F., (2004). Talk and social theory: Ecologies of speaking and listening in
everyday life. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Fairclough, , N., (1989). Language and power. New York: Longman.
Feinberg, W., & Soltis, J., (2004). School and Society. New York: Teachers College
Press.
Freire, P., (1972). Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguin.
Giroux, H. & Penna, A., (1983). “Social Education in the Classroom: The Dynamics of
the Hidden Curriculum.” The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. Eds.
Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan Publishing
Corporation, 1983, 100-121.

47
References Continued
Jhally, S., (1997). bell hooks: Cultural criticism and transformation. Education Media
Foundation.
Kucer, S., (1985). The making of meaning: Reading and writing as parallel processes.
Written Communication, 2 (3), 317-336.
Lessing, D., (1962). The Golden Notebook. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Mehan, H., (1979). Learning lessons. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Mercer, N., (2000). Words and minds: How we use language to think together. London:
Routledge.
Nystrand, M., (2006). Research on the role of classroom discourse as it affects reading
comprehension. Research in the Teaching of English, 40 (4), 392-412.
The Great Books Foundation., (1999). Introduction to shared inquiry: A handbook for
junior great books leaders. Chicago: The Great Books Foundation.
Tierney, R.J., & Pearson, P.D., (1985). Chapter 4: Toward a Composing Model of
Reading. Contexts of reading. Carolyn Hedley and Anthony Baratta (Eds.).
Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corp.
Watson, L., (2007). Montana 1948: A novel. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions.
Willis, P., (1981). Cultural Production Is Different from Cultural Reproduction Is
Different from Social Reproduction Is Different from Reproduction. Interchange
on Educational Policy, 12 (2-3), 48-61.

Teaching For Progressive Social Change in The Reading and Literature Classroom

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Teaching For Progressive Social Change in The Reading and Literature Classroom

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Teaching for Progressive Social Change

in the Reading and Literature Classroom

BA, University of California, Los Angeles, 1999

MFA, Bennington College, Bennington, VT, 2004

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty in the

School of Education in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Committee Signature Page

Committee Member____________________ Affiliation_____________________

Committee Member____________________ Affiliation_____________________

Committee Member____________________ Affiliation_____________________

vision which promises to promote upward mobility and social equality.

understandings in order to generate for themselves coherent and accurate mental

Designed to help novice and struggling readers improve their reading

questioning and discourse features identified above. Therefore, included is a sample of

a summary and recommendations for future research.

and Literature Classroom .................................................................................................1

The Lads ...........................................................................................................................1

Ideological Common Sense ..............................................................................................2

Promoting Parallax of Vision for Progressive Social Change .........................................2

Basis for ..................................................................................................................6

Salient Features of....................................................................................................6

Authentic Questions .....................................................................................7

Exploratory Talk ..........................................................................................7

Discussion Questions .......................................................................................................8

Brief Introduction to QTA..............................................................................................10

Using QTA to Reach Beyond Gist Making ...................................................................12

Gist Making and Beyond via Authentic Questioning in QTA ...............................13

Gist Making and Beyond via Uptake in QTA .......................................................15

Gist Making and Literary Analysis Using QTA ............................................................17

Table of Contents Continued

Texts that Support Extended Interpretive Discussions ..........................................21

Texts that Raise Genuine Questions for Adults as well as Students......................21

Mercer’s Exploratory Talk .............................................................................................22

Exploratory Talk ....................................................................................................26

Exploratory Talk for Building Parallax of Vision in QTA ....................................27

Chapter 3: Conclusion .....................................................................................................39

Recommendations for Future Research .........................................................................40

Glossary of Terms ............................................................................................................41

The Basis for Teaching for Progressive Social Change

in the Reading and Literature Classroom

Paul E. Willis (1981) conducted an ethnographic study of how 12 working class,

secondary-school English boys ironically participated in their own oppression through

satisfying professional employment, heightened social status, and upward mobility.

dead-end, monotonous, manual labor in a workshop] is reproduced and reproduces itself”

Ideological Common Sense

unquestioningly permitting ingrained ideologies to work against their own interests as

inequalities, i.e., to function ideologically” (85).

Promoting Parallax of Vision for Progressive Social Change

that Willis describes the teachers at this school as imparting knowledge.

The one way transmission, or imparting of “knowledge,” e.g., a teacher’s own

interpretation or evaluation, for example, merely seeks the consent of students. In

while engaging in an intriguing and educational conversation around text.

Ideologies acting as hidden, underlying premises, or common sense, might

reading) or an audience (when writing). The monochromatic feminist, political, and

single alignment “interfere[s] with how well [Lessing’s 3 readers] negotiate

understanding” of her story (72). Their definition of superior understanding, or

parallax of vision concerning a text, or the ability to simultaneously make several

negotiated understanding of that text.

To illustrate this concept, imagine Lessing’s 3 letter writers getting together to

understandings of The golden Notebook, understandings limited by adopting only a single

work men properly do.

The Basis for and Salient Features of

Committee Member Affiliation_

Committee Member Affiliation_

Committee Member Affiliation_