Performance as the Foundation for a Secondary School Literacy Program: A Bakhtinian Perspective

Tensioning interpretive authority during dialogic discussions of literature

“…As Landay (2004) noted in her drama-based inquiry, as students tried on multiple, sometimes competing discourses, they developed new ways of interacting with each other and with texts. We add to this insight the importance of Adam's "borrowing" of students' discourses as he selectively assimilated new ways of participating during literary discussions, which functioned to support students' exploration of non-traditional (Aukerman, 2007) perspectives on the text and mediation (Miller, 2003) of text-based understandings (" [I]n Beowulf, you want the human to win over the creature.…”

“…The tendencies to which Bakhtin refers are the centripetal and centrifugal forces that are inherent in discourse. As Landay (2004) noted: "Language moves in multiple directions simultaneously: in perpetual tension between centripetal and centrifugal forces-the tendency to unify, centralize, fix, formalize, privilege, and create norms-and the tendency to invent, innovate, vary, expand, and specialize" (p. 108). Dialogic discussions of literature constitute, then, a compelling classroom space in which to analyze how language moves between these two tendencies, how students and teachers work with speech that moves discussion in centripetal and centrifugal directions, and what the instructional affordances of such movement might be.…”

Authoring Professional Identities: Immigrant and Refugee Women's Experiences in an Early Childhood Teacher Education Program

“…If dialogue is the basis for composing internally persuasive discourses, then language can create disadvantage for these students. Furthermore, since discourse is embedded in the heteroglossia, students who are new to Canada do not have full access to the traditions and meanings of these words, approaches, and ideas (Landay, 2004). Phrases and words such as "learning through play" and "childcentred practice" present as abstract ideas that have been reified into a context-bound set of practices confronting immigrant and refugee students as "alien" (Fleer, 2003;Wenger, 1998).…”

When Statues Come Alive: Teaching and Learning Academic Vocabulary Through Drama in Schools

“…In the discipline of educational research, scholars such as Landay () and Ball and Warshauer Freedman () have argued that top‐down methods of teaching authoritative discourses are ineffective and, at best, teach a superficial apprehension (Landay, ) and, more importantly, do not permit students to use words in a way that is sincere and personal enough to facilitate their own “ideological becoming” (Bakhtin, as cited in Matusov, , p. 218). In Landay's () empirical study of an out‐of‐school literacy course for culturally diverse adolescents, she found that the combination of being part of a dramatic ensemble and engaging in performance‐based literacy activities allowed students to “try on [authoritative] discourses” in ways that provided “the possibility of future thoughtful and selective assimilation” (p. 114). That is, although students were exposed to and taught authoritative discourses (in classic literature), it was participating in individually created performances featuring their own internally persuasive discourses that enabled them to appropriate and use academic forms of language.…”