Student Perceptions of Reading Engagement: Learning From the Learners

© 2004 INTERNATIONAL READING ASSOCIATION (pp. 202–213) doi:10:1598/JAAL.48.3.2

J O U R N A L O F A D O L E S C E N T & A D U L T L I T E R A C Y 4 8 : 3 N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 4202

Susanna W. Pflaum, Penny A. Bishop

Student perceptions of reading engagement:Learning from the learners

Student perceptions of reading engagement:Learning from the learners

Student drawings serve as a window on

perceptions about engagement with

learning.

Constructivist educators are not sur-prised that “what is taught is not neces-sarily what is learned” (Pollard,Thiessen, & Filer, 1997, p. 5). What islearned is what students take fromtheir experiences, not only as shown intests and performances but also interms of how students process their experiences.Students’ experiences of reading in school are thebuilding blocks for learning how to read and read-ing to learn. How students perceive reading inschool has the potential of informing teachersabout practice on many levels and in several con-tent areas. “Teachers themselves need to knowmore about varieties of student experience if theyare to educate a wide variety of students reallywell” (Erickson & Schultz, 1992, p. 471).

In this article we look at the ways middleschool students in the United States perceiveschool reading experiences. The use of drawingwith interview provided a way for us to reach stu-dents and examine their thinking about schooland helped us gain deeper understanding of theirperceptions of school—deeper than we wouldhave by either drawings or interviews alone. Thewords and drawings of 20 Vermont middle school

students illustrate the practices the students iden-tified as important. The students identified timesof reading engagement and times when not en-gaged; they voiced powerful and specific reactionsto each.

We begin by looking at twodrawings by Samantha shown inFigure 1. (All student and schoolnames are pseudonyms.) Samantha isa 12-year-old sixth grader at TownSchool who has a history of schoolsuccess. Both her drawings depictedexperiences in social studies class. Her

first drawing was in response to our request todraw about a time when she was deeply engagedin learning; the second was a time when she wasdetached. Samantha competently filled the paperswith her clear images. In the first drawingSamantha is the girl on the right coming up be-hind the computer who asks, “Can I help?” Sheexplained later that they were part of a group andwere looking up information on the Internet towrite reports and to prepare plays. The drawingdepicts Samantha’s desire to help the other girlfind good information. The girls are on eitherside of the centered and substantial element, thecomputer.

As was typical in our work with these middleschoolers, the conversation between Samantha andone of the authors began with the drawings. Whenasked about her drawings, she explained her pref-erence for collaborative reading experiences.

Pflaum may be contacted at2766 Windham Hill Road,

West Windham, VT 05359,USA. E-mail

[email protected]. Bishop teaches at theUniversity of Vermont,

Burlington, USA.

Well, I feel that when I’m working in a group and not

in the textbooks that I learn the most. ’Cause the text-

books. Some people they don’t follow it. They put

stuff in words and ways that you can’t really under-

stand it....

Samantha’s representation of textbook reading,

the second drawing, was a time when she said

everyone was on the same page. She shows the

book through her eyes and includes the teacher’s

voice in the comment in the upper left.

Interviewer: OK, so why have you put this here?

What is it about this activity that is neg-

ative for you?

Samantha: Well, when she says to open your books,

we all have to open our books and just

look at this and she asked someone to

start reading and when you’re reading...

Interviewer: Out loud?

Samantha: Out loud to the whole class. And you

think, “Oh great, if I mess up I have to

get every word right.” And just when

you’re reading you’re just thinking

about yourself.... I think when you’re re-

searching by yourself and with your

friends on the Internet, it’s much more

fun and this isn’t my favorite thing to

do.

Interviewer: So, it’s not reading that causes you tofeel this way, it’s the circumstances ofthe reading? Like being on stage?

Samantha: Yeah. It’s not just that, too. It’s just theyput it in a way that’s hard to understandit and so when you’re reading you’relike, “Hey wait a minute. I don’t reallyget this.” But once you like see it on theInternet on different websites and whenyou read it in different books, you kindof get to know it better and.... When I’mjust reading by myself I find that I canpay attention to the book easier andwhen I’m working with my friends onthe Internet, I can talk to them and ask,“What sites have you seen?” But whenyou’re doing this you can’t ask anyquestions. And you can’t...talk. You justhave to listen to the reader. It’s just notfun for me.

Interviewer: And that’s quite different, too, from theother picture where everybody is...

Samantha: Like happy to be there and happy tohelp.

About the text, she also said,

I kind of read it like if we’re going to have a test thenext day. I read it again by myself and I find that itworks better by myself. And sometimes I get con-fused.... I end up going back and reading it again and

Student perceptions of reading engagement: Learning from the learners

J O U R N A L O F A D O L E S C E N T & A D U L T L I T E R A C Y 4 8 : 3 N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 4 203

F i g u r e 1S a m a n t h a ’ s e x p e r i e n c e s

Time of engagement Time of disengagement

kind of finding where this paragraph where I need toread is and looking for the information I need.

Samantha presented strong reactions tothese two reading experiences. Her drawings werethe source (the start) for the conversation thatfollowed. They were the frame of reference as de-tails and elaborations were added through talk.With the first drawing she showed and talkedabout how she was eager to talk to and questionher peers. What she expressed served as an exem-plar of engaged reading, as defined by Guthrieand Anderson (1999).

Reading should be conceptualized as an engagement.Engaged readers not only have acquired reading skills,but use them for their own purposes in many con-texts. They possess beliefs, desires, and interests thatenergize the hard work of becoming literate. Fromthis perspective, motivation and social interactions areequal to cognitions as foundations for reading. (p. 17)

Samantha’s example of not being engagedtold us more about her perceptions of the schoolexperience. The significance of the static book shepictured became meaningful as she talked aboutthe practices involved. She was put off by beingisolated and not interacting with others. She didnot find the language of the text particularly ac-cessible either; she was aware of the audience, andshe read simply for the tests. Alvermann (2002)contrasted the literacy experiences of today’s ado-lescents with the academic literacy of the class-room. She pointed out that school reading tendsto privilege books over other media; by contrast,adolescents are interested in different media, par-ticularly hypermedia. Much of Samantha’s delightwith the social context of group work and withthe exploratory world of the Internet and her dis-couragement with the text reading illustrated suchpreferences.

In the remainder of this article, we examineother drawings and other comments. The firstsection describes the techniques we used to con-duct the study. The next section focuses on stu-dents’ experiences of read-alouds and silent,

independent reading. We then turn to a discus-sion of oral reading, which many students identi-fied as a practice associated with not beingengaged. The final section includes commentsand observations about other school readingpractices and speculations on student perceptionand its potential for enhancing pedagogy for ado-lescent students.

The studyWe invited middle school students from fourschools in different Vermont communities to talkand draw about their school experiences.Although the student group reflects the lack ofethnic and racial diversity of Vermont, we did ob-tain a group of 20 young adolescents, grades 4through 8, who differed in other ways. Teachersnominated students they thought would be will-ing to meet with one of us; lists from differentclasses were combined and stratified for genderand academic achievement level as indicated byteachers. Five students were randomly selectedfrom each school. We stratified the schools interms of socioeconomic status (an important fac-tor in Vermont schools), size, and geographicregions. The following school building classifica-tions represented variation as well.

Town School was a middle-sized (N = 300pupils), K–6 school located in the center of atown where the median income was aboutUS$41,000. At this friendly, busy school, multiageclasses were being eliminated for older studentsduring the period of this study.

Village School was a very small, rural (N =100) K–6 school with multiage classes and consid-erable teacher freedom in curricular decisions.The median income was about US$46,000.

Mountain School was a grades 6–8 school (N= 275) that had a traditional, departmentalizedjunior high school configuration. Families hadlived in the town for many generations. The me-dian income of about US$35,500 was the lowestof the towns in the study.



Main Street School was large (N = 1,112)with a smaller unit for grades 5 through 8. Themiddle school had a student-centered, interdisci-plinary approach. The median income wasUS$73,000.

School and individual contextual data areclearly important and are provided here. In thisstudy, because we sought student perceptions oftheir school lives, we do not refer to the labels andcategories that make up the norms of school. Inthis way the students’ experiences emerge withoutthe interpretations that come with test scores orschool reports. Ultimately, whether a student is agreat reader or one who struggles, we felt theirpersonal experiences of times of engagement andlack thereof would yield important information.

We met the students individually in privatespaces in their schools during the school day. Thedrawing and interview sessions were each aboutan hour long. We tape-recorded and transcribedall interviews. The protocol was semistructured:We began by asking students to describe a typicalday; they then drew a time when engaged inlearning and talked about it, then drew and dis-cussed a time when they were not engaged, andthen talked about ideas for school reform. In sec-ond interviews, during the beginning of the nextschool year, we asked, “What are some of the dif-ferent ways you read, in reading class and the oth-er subjects? How have you learned more aboutreading?” The additional interview data enrichedand confirmed our preliminary understandingsof the students’ perceptions of school reading.

In these interviews, the students revealedtheir prior successes and failures, their preferredways of experiencing curriculum and pedagogy,and their thoughts about learning. In both inter-views, they referred to recent and past events. Thestudents talked about the classroom social struc-tures. They were respectful of their teachers andschools; indeed, overall, these students seemedrelatively pleased with their school lives. Theytalked about and depicted times when readingwas central.

While surveys are effective for gathering

data about learner attitudes, strategies, and pref-

erences toward reading (e.g., Ivey & Broaddus,

2001), drawing is also a useful tool for exploring

students’ perceptions. Drawing has a history of

being used as a form of intelligence testing in

children (Goodenough, 1926) and as an indicator

of the development of cognitive and drawing

ability (Golomb, 1992). A few researchers have

used drawing as a way to study students’ percep-

tions of school experiences. Some have used

drawing as a means for measuring student expe-

rience of school reform (e.g., Bebell, 2001; Chula,

1998; Haney, Russell, Gulek, & Fierros, 1998) or

reactions to large-scale testing (Haney, Russell, &

Jackson, 1997). Other authors studied percep-

tions of teachers (Weber & Mitchell, 1995).

Among those who have used drawing, few have

combined them with interview as Robert Coles

(1990, 1995) did in his books about children’s re-

sponses to crisis and compelling moral issues.

We felt the combination of the nonverbal

drawing with talk in the interview provided

methodological strengths. Although a few stu-

dents expressed concern about their ability to

draw, they were reassured by our explanations

that we were interested in their thinking, not their

artistry. The middle schoolers chose specific

times for their drawings, and they connected

those times to experiences over a longer period.

The drawings focused the talk; in turn, the talk

elaborated the meaning of the drawings. In this

process, the drawings became objects from which

the students gained perspective on their experi-

ences. More important for applications to teach-

ing, drawing maintained the students’ experience

as the focus; as a result, the students controlled

the content of the interviews. The small sample

size, combined with the ethnographic method,

resulted in an in-depth and qualitative study of

student perceptions of engagement. We mean to

highlight the importance of different students’

perceptions, not to generalize these experiences to

other students.



Engaging reading experiencesLike the sixth graders in the Ivey and Broaddus(2001) report, the students spoke warmly abouttwo kinds of reading: teacher read-alouds andsilent, independent reading. These activities arecommon elements of classroom reading and ap-peared often in the interviews.

Although students did not draw about read-alouds, several spoke in passing of this practice ascommon in their school days. Charlie, a fifthgrader at Town Elementary, in his typically un-adorned and direct way, said, for example,

Charlie: My teacher reads to us and we listen.

Interviewer: This year?

Charlie: Yes. All years.

Several other students made similar comments.

At Mountain School, according to Cory,grade 7, “The whole team would meet…and wedo like announcements and maybe Mr. H, it’susually him, he’d read a book or maybe a shortstory.” Teachers at both Village and TownElementary Schools were reading Holes (Sachar,1998). Two girls voiced similar, favorableperspectives.

Linzzy: Yes. We all like it. We figure out allthese things.

Stacey: It was really good.

Charlie, when asked whether he preferred read-alouds to silent reading, said, “Have her [theteacher] read it to the class. It’s easier.” Generally,these students seemed to appreciate when theirteachers read to them.

Shelley, a high-achieving eighth grader atMountain School (where more traditional ap-proaches were used), however, had a more nega-tive experience with a teacher reading expositorymaterial: “In geography and most of the days wejust, like, our teachers will sit there and read outof the book or something and it’s just really bor-

ing and it’s hard to, like, concentrate on it becauseit’s so boring.” While read-alouds may supportreading growth for younger students in regard tocomprehension and vocabulary growth (Dreher,2000), its value for older students needs furtherexploration. Ivey (2003) suggested an importantlink between read-alouds used as a model forreading and careful selection of interesting “infor-mational text connected to your own curriculumstandards” (pp. 812–813). Shelley would probablyappreciate more contextualized reading.

Many students specified silent, independentreading as common in their school experiences.They showed the conditions of silent, independ-ent reading that led to their perceptions of its be-ing engaging. Nad’s drawing revealed that hisengagement was private, a time of being “lost” inthe book—essentially disappearing into it. Astrong reader but struggling with math, 11-year-old Nad (from tiny Village Elementary) told us hehad moved several times prior to this school yearbut now, in this multiage class, was much happier.His drawing (Figure 2) expressed the quiet andsecurity of this experience.



F i g u r e 2R e a d i n g s i l e n t l y

Nad explained, “I like...I just like...I alwaysdo good silent sustained reading. I’m always fo-cused when I’m reading.” Nad said he enjoyed thequiet atmosphere of the room at these times ofSustained Silent Reading (SSR). “Yeah...It’s niceand quiet. I always like...I like.... Some people arestill making noise ’cause they’re like working onsomething maybe. And I always like to go to thequietest place in the school, well, as I can.”

Others also said that silent reading support-ed their concentration. Although two gradesahead of Nad and at Mountain School, expressiveLaurie found that independent reading helpedher focus. “’Cause you can read what you want,that’s what everybody is doing. You’re not havingto, like, concentrate from all the noise and stuffgoing on. It’s just nicer.” Another seventh graderat that school, Cory, said he liked the fact therewere no assignments. “I think I like independentreading the most because I like not having tothink of what I’m going to write down like in lit-erature.” And Amy, a serious student at VillageElementary, had a unique way of showing herpreference for independent reading: “I love read-ing to my head.”

Lance, a fifth grader at Town Elementarywho was strong in reading but not in math, likeNad, also favored his time of independent read-ing, as shown in Figure 3. “OK, this is one of thefirst books I’ve read this year.... I chose this bookbecause it’s one of the better ones I’ve read.Because it was kind of short and I like shortbooks. And it was suspenseful. It’s a series book.I’m reading the eighth now.” Here he was refer-ring to the events pictured. Lance has includedhis friend walking over to him with his book.Lance was permitted to read an entire series, andso connected deeply with the characters. Theteacher allowed him to choose, one of the tenetsof independent reading. For him, SSR allowedtime and quiet for personal pleasure—and morepractice in reading. This solitary experience ofreading that Lance and others described is whatmany of us do as a matter of course; time in

school for such reading is meant to entice more

students into doing it.

Choice, pursuing personal preferences, qui-

et, and not having to write were conditions that

led to these students’ engagement in silent read-

ing. When she was in the fourth grade, Linzzy

showed that she was missing two of these condi-

tions. A strong, confident student at Village

School, Linzzy chafed because she felt she had no

choice and because she had to complete repetitive

writing assignments. In her second drawing, of a

time when not engaged, Linzzy depicted herself at

her desk with her book and other materials (see

Figure 4). Two of the other nearby students had

similar objects before them attesting to a com-

mon requirement. She represented herself as

leaning over the book and her papers, saying,

“Oh, man” in anticipation of a long period of

silent reading.

Well. I usually love to read but.... Our teachers will as-

sign us books that we need to read, like, they’ll ask us

to read books. And I, like, sometimes I don’t like the

books they assign us to read. And that’s when I get re-

ally bored because I’m reading books I don’t like to

read. But for, like, two or three hours, like well, like,

two hours I’ll be sitting.... And halfway through the

book, they’ll say, “Do a book report,” and then at the

end of the book, “I want you to do a book report.”



F i g u r e 3I n d e p e n d e n t r e a d i n g t i m e

Given the length of time in silent reading(probably not two hours as Linzzy said), onewould want clear benefits. In speculating on thebroader effects of various forms of silent, inde-pendent reading on achievement (summarizingquantitative studies), the National Reading Panelconcluded,

There are few beliefs more widely held than thatteachers should encourage students to engage in vol-untary reading and that if they did this successfully,better reading achievement would result.Unfortunately, research has not clearly demonstratedthis relationship. In fact, the handful of experimentalstudies in which this idea has been tried raise seriousquestions about the efficacy of some of these proce-dures. (National Institute of Child Health and HumanDevelopment, 2000, p. 3-27)

What shall we make of this conundrum—on the one hand students who are engaged whenreading silently and independently, preferably inbooks of their choice, and on the other a lack ofevidence of positive impact on reading achieve-ment? The answer, of course, may be that inde-pendent reading is a necessary motivator for

engaged reading but still is not sufficient as a totalreading program for many young adolescents. Welooked further, hoping to find other reading ex-periences that would support reading achieve-ment and found one mentioned often that isneither engaging nor likely to support growth—oral reading.

Oral readingWidely used since the beginning of formal educa-tion, round-robin sequential oral reading prac-tices, of the sort Samantha describes at the start ofthis article, have been central to classroom peda-gogy. In the words of the authors of the NationalReading Panel report, however, these activities“have been criticized as boring, anxiety provoking,disruptive of fluency, and wasteful of instructionaltime, and their use has been found to have little orno relationship to gains in reading achievement”(National Institute of Child Health and HumanDevelopment, 2000, p. 3-11). Unfortunately, sev-eral young adolescents talked about just such ex-periences; in the process, they told us why oralreading was not helpful for them.

A student at Village Elementary, Amy, a re-flective, intellectually curious sixth grader, talkedabout oral reading in social studies. UnlikeSamantha, who did not appreciate oral reading ofsocial studies, Amy said that she needed to learnto read orally better, but we noted some realambivalence.

We each read a paragraph, or a page, out loud. And itjust helps, it helps me because I’ve read a lot in myhead. I don’t read out loud much. So this is really....When I read out loud I kind of stutter and I kind ofstumble over words and stuff.

While she believed oral reading was a skill sheneeded, she said she comprehended better in thesilent mode.

Amy: Well, sometimes.... Well when I’m read-ing to myself, I can, like, remember. Ican kind of, like, have a voice in my



Figure 4Diseng agement w ith classwor k

head that it’s the voice that fits the book.But when I’m reading out loud I can’tmake the voice that fits what I’m read-ing. So I can’t remember it. I’m just try-ing to think. I’m kind of making apicture because I’m reading faster and Iget what’s going on, so I get the picturelike....

Interviewer: You can’t do that when you are orallyreading?

Amy: Well, no, it just doesn’t go fast enough.

When reading to herself, Amy found “thevoice that fits the book;” a strong reader, she wascalling on strategies and making images, and shefelt she needed to read fast enough to do that.Georgia, a 12-year-old at Main Street School, alsoneeded the speed of silent reading:

Because you can read at your own pace instead of hav-ing to either go too fast or too slow ’cause otherpeople—like when you’re in a group sometimes it willgo really slow or it can go too fast where you can’t un-derstand everything that’s going on.

Nad had thoughts about pace and oral reading.

If I go at my own pace really the books seem better tome. Because some kids in my group they don’t readwith any expression. And they read really slowly eventhough I understand that they can’t read as well but...Ireally, I like to just read alone.

In such situations, Laurie said,

When other people are reading, I tend to read aheadand stuff.... A lot of the people in my class take it liter-ally, are really slow readers and stuff. I don’t know. Ilove to read and so I just like to read right ahead andthen finish it.

Given the long history of professional ad-vice against the practice of oral reading, it wassurprising to hear from these students of its cur-rent use. Perhaps, if their teachers were to hearthe students’ voices, they would see that oralreading is an obstacle to comprehension, and they

might modify their instruction to allow moresilent and interactive reading experiences. Therewas one student, however, who favored some oralreading. Jacob, a seventh grader at MountainSchool, said he liked, indeed needed, oral reading.“Just because I don’t really like reading a lot and Ican listen. So I can read and listen and do both.”Jacob was a less successful reader who indicatedhe needed multiple senses to comprehend. Ifteachers were aware of students’ perceptions, theycould structure differential instruction. Studentslike Jacob who don’t like to read and need to hearas well as read might do that. Others might readsilently.

Reading strategiesAre the techniques of silent, independent reading;read-alouds; and oral reading (for students likeJacob) enough to help students meet the readingdemands of secondary school? Research showsthat students’ comprehension is helped by certaincombinations of reading strategies such as imag-ing, using mnemonic techniques, self-monitoring,using graphic organizers, asking and generatingquestions, learning story structure, summarizing,using prior knowledge, and, particularly, applyingmultiple strategies (National Institute of ChildHealth and Human Development, 2000). Pressley(2002) stressed the value of strategies such as pre-dicting, questioning, imaging, seeking clarifica-tion, using prior knowledge, summarizing, andinterpreting (p. 280). Teachers should model asthey read, challenge (scaffold) students, helpthem apply the strategies, and talk explicitlyabout strategy use. Because middle school–ageyoungsters are asked to read text with increasingcomplexity, the question of the need for instruc-tion in strategies for comprehending a variety oftext types takes on some urgency.

We were mindful of Durkin’s (1978/1979)observations that in middle-grade classes therewas very little instruction in comprehension incontrast to time spent on assessment, but wethought that the focus on reading strategies and



increased interest among local teachers since herstudy might have created a change in this regard.Pressley and Wharton-McDonald (1997) demon-strated little direct teaching of helpful strategies;still, we expected to find reference to strategy in-struction in our data. When we reviewed thetranscripts, however, there was only limited evi-dence of instruction in strategies. We did noteabove that Samantha reread and considered in-formation needed for her reports and Amy madeimages to improve her comprehension; whetherthese girls used strategies as a result of instructionor self-teaching was not clear. We probed for in-formation about strategy use and instructionwith all the students and were struck by how littlethey perceived them as being taught. One excep-tion was Laurie, who reported learning aboutcharacter maps.

Laurie: I feel they’re kind of stupid, and thenthat’s the hero’s journey thing. Youwrite all the stuff that builds up to likethe big climax, the big like frustrationpoint in the story.

Interviewer: Looks like you haven’t gotten to theclimax.

Laurie: I guess not. I don’t know. I’m soconfused.

On the other hand, in response to the inter-viewer’s queries—“But when you are trying tofind out about Egypt, how do you know how toread to get information? And how do you knowwhat’s important information and what’s not?”Lance responded:

Lance: Look in the index.

Interviewer: And how did you learn to look in theindex?

Lance: I think it was from my mom.

The following exchange is from an interview withCharlie.

Interviewer: So how do you learn to read like a text-book? Do you have classes?

Charlie: Yeah. If we see a word and we don’t

know it, we ask the teacher, and the next

time we see it, we remember what the

teacher said.

The kinds of questions asked of students

made a difference to their comprehension; some

students were aware that certain questions guided

them to greater understanding. Stacey, a serious

student at Town School, described how she

learned when she was talking about teacher-led

reading groups.

Because the teacher asks us questions about the book.

And we have to answer them. And we get more and

more into it.... We have to write inferences and write

why, like, why we wrote the inferences.

During our follow-up interviews, when

talking about the conferences on her reading held

in her new, fifth-grade class, Linzzy was more cer-

tain and specific about the role of questions that

required her to construct answers from the literal

meaning.

Linzzy: I don’t know, she asks the kind of ques-

tions that don’t really come out in the

book. Like...not they’ve stated, “Treat

was left by the monks under the bridge.”

Not, like, “How did Treat get there?”

They just came out and said that. But

the kind of questions that were kind of

beneath the surface.

Interviewer: Beneath the surface?

Linzzy: Yeah.... You need to understand what

you are reading and you need to figure

things out to answer the questions.

Other students spoke of questions, too, but

in ways that were reminiscent of Durkin’s (1978/

1979) observations of questions as assessment

rather than as invitations to think more deeply.

For example, Cory (Mountain School) said, “We

have, like, readings and we have to answer ques-

tions,” and Georgia (Main Street School) had this

to say:



Georgia: We just basically we read to a certainchapter and then we have questions thatwe do. Sometimes we’ll get a paper on itthat might ask questions about thebook.

Interviewer: Do you talk about it?

Georgia: Yep. We have discussions about it, andsome people can ask questions aboutwhat’s going on in the book and thingslike that.

Some students felt that grouping for readingwas an important part of their school reading ex-periences. Shelley said she liked small groups be-cause “you can talk.” She said, “And sometimes wehave, like, paired reading. Well, like, if it’s not,like, a silent work time we get to pick a partner wewant to read with and we get to read the samebook.”

Several students mentioned literaturegroups, for example, a fifth grader from TownSchool named Wildflower.

Wildflower: The whole group is reading the samebook and we all have different jobs.

Interviewer: What’s your job?

Wildflower: My job right now is Passage Master. Ifind passages in the book that I like andI want to discuss with the group.

Paula, an eighth grader, reported on a literaturegroup experience at Main Street School.

Actually I’m in a larger group that Mr. A is teaching...but usually you just, like, talk about what’s going onand what you’ve read, like, that night or, like, someproblems in that chapter or something like setting,characters and stuff.

Another eighth grader at Main Street, an ad-vanced student, Anthony, said students chosetheir literature class.

Like currently the one I’m in, Mr. H. is doing it, it’snot one book. We’re reading a lot of short stories. Hetitled it the Twilight Zone and kind of.... We’re work-

ing with human strengths and lack of humanstrengths.

Anthony made it clear that the literature studywas conceptually organized. Though present intheir school experiences, literature groups werenot portrayed in student drawings as times ofengagement or lack thereof.

What can we make of these perceptions ofthe relative frequency of techniques such as read-alouds; independent, silent reading; answeringquestions; oral reading; and literature groupscompared with the absence of much representa-tion of direct teaching of reading strategies? Eventhough read-alouds and silent reading are engag-ing, they are probably not sufficient for middleschool students. The solution lies in balance. Weconcur with Pressley’s (2002) notion that youngadolescents need experience with independent,silent, free choice reading and also with the ex-plicit teaching of skills and, especially, the combi-nation of strategies taught in ways that helpstudents practice their use.

The recent report issued by the RANDCorporation (Snow et al., 2002) called attentionto this issue:

Research has shown that many children who read atthe third grade level in grade 3 will not automaticallybecome proficient comprehenders in later grades.Therefore, teachers must teach comprehension explic-itly, beginning in the primary grades and continuingthrough high school. (p. 10)

This major research review and interpretationhighlighted the need for strategy instruction to be taught explicitly, especially for poorcomprehenders.

In shaping reading instruction for middle-grade students that is engaging and also enhancescritical comprehension, knowing about studentperception is important. Teachers who know howindividual students perceive and understand class-room events could adapt to their needs. If Laurie’steacher knew that she thought character maps



were unhelpful, even stupid, he or she would be ina much stronger position for redesigning instruc-tion to show Laurie more about how these tech-niques could deepen knowledge of characters andcharacter development. If Nad’s teacher under-stood the importance of a quiet environment toNad’s reading engagement, he might turn more ofhis attention to matters of classroom climate. Ifthe teachers who use oral reading were to heartheir students’ complaints that it hinders, nothelps, comprehension, they might use those per-ceptions as important indicators.

More generally, class discussion and sharingof perceptions, especially using drawing, couldprovide opportunities for learning. Reflections onhow students gather information from readingwould be opportunities for learning from one an-other. If students saw Samantha’s picture andheard her talk about the value of reading materialoff the Internet for her reports and plays, theymight consider how one decides what informa-tion to use. If her peers heard about Amy’s voicein her head, they might discuss aspects ofmetacognition and reading. Linzzy’s talk of ques-tions that led her to consider the meaning be-neath the surface could be a chance to comparequestions. If classrooms were open to talk abouthow new ideas and experiences were perceived,students could learn from one another, teacherscould design strategy instruction that meets stu-dent needs, and confusion and misunderstandingcould be avoided.

Given the traditional power relationshipsbetween teachers and students, however, it wouldbe incorrect to imply that it would be easy tomove into open sharing of student perceptions.Students hide their thoughts, of course, asJackson (1960/1990) pointed out, and as manyothers have noted. Cook-Sather (2002), a strongadvocate of listening to students, cautioned that itis essential to react to what we hear from stu-dents; otherwise there is a reversion to the sameold power relationships. As a result, it is necessaryto be deliberate and intentional when encourag-

ing student perceptions. We are mindful that suchinteraction is delicate.

Though this is an initial exploration, we in-tend to follow up to find whether the use ofdrawing is a technique for teachers to use in initi-ating helpful talk with their students. We expectthat, as was the case for our 20 students, as stu-dents draw their own experiences and as they talkwith peers and teachers about those pictures,their drawings will become increasingly impor-tant to them and to others. As objects that tellstories that are neither right nor wrong, the draw-ings stimulate reflection about process. The draw-ings and the talk around them foster reactions inwhich the uniqueness of each student’s percep-tions is honored. The material of the drawingsand talk provides educators with valuable infor-mation that is useful to fit reading instruction tostudent needs.

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Documents

Student Perceptions of Reading Engagement: Learning From the Learners