Approaches toward Meaning in Low- and High-Rated Readers. Report Series 2.20.

This study compared the meaning-making approaches of traditionally judged above and below average readers. It sought to better understand the nature of the students' approaches to literary understanding and to differentiate them from the approaches toward understanding that characterize more discursive, informationgetting kinds of reading. In all, 144 protocols were analyzed from 24 students (twelve 7th graders and twelve 11th graders, half in each class judged as above and half as below average performers). Over several weeks, each student engaged in six think-aloud . essions during which time they read two short stories, two poems, one science passage, and one social studies passage. All think-alouds were tape recorded and transcribed to permit qualitative datadriven analyses of students' language and thought as evidence of their processes of interpretation. Findings suggest that there is an interesting similarity in better and poorer readers' overall approaches toward meaning. They seem to move from a search for initial ideas into a meaning development mode at similar points in their reading. However, the quality of their envisionments differs markedly, and this difference seems to be influenced by their differing expectations about the kinds of understandings they would gain from each kind of reading experience. From early on, the better readers seemed to set a primary purpose for reading (to engage in a literary experience or to gain discursive understanding) and these expectations guided the kinds of information they sought and the meanings they developed. In contrast, the poorer readers seemed less aware of the different representations that were appropriate for each particular type of reading. While they arrived at discrete local meanings, there was no overriding end toward which they were building, leading them to create more fragmented envisionments from which they were more easily dislodged. Approaches Toward Meaning in Lowand High-Rated Readers Judith A. Langer University at Albany, SUNY This study is one of a series I have undertaken at the National Research Center on Literature Teaching and Learning in an attempt to better understand the learning and teaching processes involved in the study literature as well as the similarities and differences in approaches to meaning development higher and lower rated readers make during literary readings (where readers attempt to live through the experience) and during discursive readings (where their primary goal is to gain information, clarify a point, or extend their knowledge of a topic or idea). The work grows from a constructivist view of reading holding that meaning resides in the reader who is guided by both the text which serves as an available guide and by past experiences and knowledge (Anderson, 1984; Spiro, 1980). It also builds on related work by literary theorists and language researchers who seek to understand how students interpret as well as structure the language they read (Fillmore, 1981; Fish, 1989; Iser, 1978; Langer, 1986). Although these various works differ in the relative contribution they ascribe to the text and author in meaning development, all consider reading to be a personally active, meaning-creating experience during which understandings grow and change over time in response at least as much to readers' personal and cultural experience as to the texts they are reading. Reading as Envisionment-Building In my work, I argue that if we are to better understand the ways in which poorer as well as better readers go about constructing meanings from text, we need to focus on the act of meaning itself, during the process of students' envisionment-building (Langer, 1985; 1986; 1987; 1989; 1990; Langer, Bartolome, Vasquez, & Lucas, 1990). Envisionments are text-worlds -the ideas, images, questions and hunches that fill a person's mind during eve -y reading, writing, speaking, or other experience where people gain and share knowledge through language (Fillmore, 1981; Kay, 1987; Langer, 1985, 1987). For reading researchers, the word envisionment refers to the understanding a person has about a text, whether it is being read, written, discussed, or tested. What is important is that an envisionment is subject to change at any time as ideas unfold and new ideas come to mind. For example, envisionments change as a reading progresses because as new information is read some ideas are no longer important, some are added, and some are reinterpreted. Each envisionment includes what the reader does and does not understand at a particular point in time, as well as the reader's momentary suppositions about how the whole piece will unfold. Even after the last word has been read and the book closed, the reader is left with an envisionment that is also subject to change, with additional thought, other reading, or discussion. This vantage point provides one way to examine the act of meaning-development in all readers, including those who perform more poorly than their classmates, and for whom lack of literacy often becomes a barrier to success both in and out of school.