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| What’s
After “What’s That?”: Preservice Teachers Learning to Ask Literary
Questions
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Shelby
A. Wolf
Erikka L. Mieras
Angela A. Carey
University of
Colorado at Boulder |
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This
year-long study analyzed 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 part of
an undergraduate course in children’s literature, 43 preservice teachers
read weekly to individually selected children. The purposes of the
assignment were (a) to expand the preservice teachers’ understandings
of response to literature by analyzing an individual child’s responses
over time and (b) to enhance their instructional strategies and critical
stances toward literature. Over time, preservice teachers’ question
types shifted in amount and content, moving from teacher dominance
to child-teacher dialogue. Within the dialogue, the preservice teachers
learned to create or at least reflect on a balance between comfort
and challenge. As the preservice teachers changed, the children changed
as well, moving from hesitancy to confidence, even to the point of
contradicting the preservice teachers. Additionally, the course emphasis
on questioning as well as on detailed field notes heightened preservice
teachers’ attention to the results of their own questioning strategies,
causing them to be more reflective about the content and consequences
of their queries. |
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JLR
v.
28 no. 4
1996
pp. 459–497 |
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