Eckert’s work “Bridging the Pedagogical Gap: Intersections Between Literary and Reading Theories in Secondary and Postsecondary Literacy Instruction”

In Lisa Schade Eckert’s work “Bridging the Pedagogical Gap: Intersections Between Literary and Reading Theories in Secondary and Postsecondary Literacy Instruction” she examines the gap between secondary and postsecondary strategies concerning the teaching of literary theory and the teaching of reading strategies. Basically, she’s trying to convey that there is a disconnect between the “conception and teaching of reading and interpretation” in secondary and postsecondary schooling. Almost 50% of college professors believe that their students aren’t well prepared for college-level demands; however, only 15% of highschool teachers think this. This illustrates perfectly how there is some kind of disconnect between ideas pertaining to literacy and literature instruction amongst K-12 and higher educational classrooms. Eckerts ultimate goal is to use “specific concepts in literary theory” (111) to fill in the gap between Secondary and Postsecondary literature curricula which tends to separate the teaching of reading and the teaching of literature.
So what exactly is going on here? Well, Eckert asserts that as students moving from Language Art classes, associated with primary and intermediate level schooling, to secondary and postsecondary literature classes, aren’t prepared for the “textual content” which becomes “increasingly complex”. Secondary school teachers and college professors expect students to be able to understand the text and take an interpretive stance on it, but, they don’t explicitly give them the tools to do so. Students are trained to understand reading as a way to decode words, but, “they do not speak the language of critical literary interpretation” (111). Because of this students often come to class “expecting-even requiring-teachers to explicate nuances of the text for them” (111). They haven’t been prepared enough to understand the text critically on their own so the teacher must lay it out for them. To say the least, because this gap between reading strategies and literary interpretation exist students are forced to leap from reading to interpretation, straight away, which often leads them to be ill-prepared for college.
One of the main things that’s creating this gulf between highschool and college literacy instruction is the definition of what reading is and what it includes. Is reading simply an unconscious activity that doesn’t involve interpretation which Scholes assumes (112)? Or is reading actually a set of interpretive strategies that are the shape of reading which Fish believes (112)? Scholes thinks that interpretation is separate from reading, “it’s a higher skill than reading” (112). Highschool English teachers, therefore, should be more concerned with teaching reading as a largely “unconscious activity” and let college level classes deal with interpretation. But, Fish sees reading as something that is formulated by interpretation, the two aren’t separate, but, and integral part of eachother. Therefore, reading and interpretation should be taught in highschool since they are one in the same. These differences in ideas about reading and literacy cause rifts between highschool and college classrooms because there are so many ideas about what should and should not be included in the classroom curriculum when it comes reading pedagogy.
Eckert thinks that by integrating a “theoretical approach” to reading we can bridge the gap between highschool and college ideas concerning literature and literacy. Eckert see reading strategies implemented in highschool and college as “intentional plans that enable readers to construct meaning” (113). With this said, she believes that teachers of English, at any level, are already teaching reading skills and literary theory whether or not they’re linking it with a theoretical perspective or ideological approach (113). Eckert thinks that by teaching literary theories as a way to understand the reading in a classroom, college or highschool, it “scaffolds literacy/literature instruction, encouraging students to consider using a theoretical approach to construct meaning from a text as an intentional plan” (113). She does not see the teaching of literacy interpretation and reading as separate pedagogies like Scholes, but, more like Fish, as “crucial points of intersection” which “provide the opportunity to link concepts of reading and interpretation for students and teachers” (113).
Eckert believes that by teaching literary theory in secondary classrooms it allows students to be more critical readers, which in essence better prepares them for the demands of college. “I concluded through my own investigation of the efficiency of teaching literary theory in general secondary English classrooms and college settings, that making diverse theories of literary interpretation explicit in the practice of teaching literature at all educational levels not only builds on students prior knowledge of textual situations but also encourages them to expand their repertoire of strategies to comprehend increasingly complex and diverse material in a variety of media” (113). By using critical theory as a way to construct meaning from a text, students can begin to “clearly conceive and articulate a response” (113) to it. Using literary theory as a way to comprehend readings of literature engages the students in “authentic reading situations”, it allows students to make a smooth transfer of skills from the secondary classroom into literature courses at a college level.
Eckert’s main point of her whole essay is to emphasis that the key to bridging the pedagogical gap between literacy and literature instruction “is in explicitly teaching literary theory as a reading strategy to scaffold the transfer of reading skills to more advanced coursework which…research has shown to be effective with students in the general English classroom” (116). She see this as an effective way to bridge the divide between secondary and college classrooms because it gives students a more diverse “repertoire” of strategies for analyzing dimensions of meaning in literature. This helps them structure and formulate an articulate response to the text. She wants this to become a method which would encourage reading and make it a venue for inquiry and engagement with the text (116).
I think Eckert definitely has something important to say. I’ve felt the disconnect between how I have experienced reading in highschool and how I now experience it in college. Reading in highschool consisted of me reading a text and then writing an essay about it , which usually was nothing more than a summary and possibly my response to the text. In college I’m asked to think more “critically” about the text; to understand its symbols, metaphors, allegories, and themes. And not only must I understand the popular readings of the text but I must make my own meanings with evidence to back it up. This is always difficult, but now that I’ve been introduced to literary theory I’m able to better understand a text by looking through a critical, literary lens and gaining new meaning from it. I wish that I would have been introduced to the concept of literary theory in highschool, at least a little bit, because I know, if I was, I could have understood the texts more and probably enjoyed them much better.