25th Annual Student Research Conference
Paradigm Shift in the Secondary English Classroom: What Literacy Educators Should Be Doing
Julianna K. Taylor♦
Dr. Barbara Price, Faculty Mentor
This research describes how the literacy classroom fulfills the historical purposes of democratic public education. The paper explains and discusses the transformative power of reading as transaction and writing as dialogue, concluding that the student-centered, response-based, transactive and dialogic literacy classroom builds an adolescents understanding of self and community, and fulfills the larger purposes of democratic education in improving quality of student life. In research application, John Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath stands as an exemplary transactive text for the secondary English classroom. After an explanation of this texts appropriateness, a resource list and unit plan are included, putting into practice the foundational purposes of education as well as the theories presented in this thesis. Ultimately, this paper calls all secondary English educators to re-focus on what should be most important in the secondary classroom: improving quality of life for students through developing their understanding of self and other.
Keywords: Literacy, Transaction, Dialogic, Response-Based, Student-Centered, Adolescent, Self, Community
Topic(s):Education
English
American Studies
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 302-4
Location: VH 1000
Time: 2:00