Susan Fields | Boston University (original) (raw)
Papers by Susan Fields
Reading & Writing Quarterly, 2019
This case study of teacher research explores the utility of framing the writing development of ad... more This case study of teacher research explores the utility of framing the writing development of adolescent writers in terms of their discursive identities and strategic behaviors. By merging our understandings of these frameworks, I argue that we can examine how adolescents' goals, values, and beliefs associated with writing inform the strategic behaviors they engage. The setting for this study was a university-based literacy clinic where Louis, a high-school freshman, was assigned to me, a former English teacher, for writing support. I drew from discursive identity and writing process theories to frame my instructional intervention. During the threeweek session, I guided Louis to write an editorial he submitted to a news outlet. Instruction focused on strategies to separate the processes of planning, drafting, and reviewing. Analysis revealed Louis' shifting perspective from the writing process as systematic to more exploratory. This study supports framing student literate profiles in terms of both their discursive identities and cognitive processes. This qualitative case study of teacher research explores the utility of framing the academic writing development of adolescent writers in terms of both their discursive identities and strategic behaviors. Louis, a freshman in high school, was assigned to me, a former middle school English teacher and tutor in the university-based writing clinic, for help with essay writing. Louis was described by his mother as being "reluctant to write," and he admitted to me during our first tutorial meeting, "I wouldn't say I like [writing] … It just seems to take time, and I can't seem to find the right words to put down. I just, sort of … I do it as something to be done." A rich talker, Louis communicated deep knowledge and thoughtful opinions about many topics and used mature vocabulary to express that knowledge; however, he experienced challenge when setting out to represent those thoughts in essay form: loosely connected sentences with little elaboration failed to support his main claims. As I tutored Louis, I viewed his writing profile in terms of both the goals, values, and beliefs he associated with essay writing and the ways in which those influenced his engagement of strategic behaviors. Typically treated as separate in the literature, I combined what I knew about discursive theories and cognitive processes to adopt what I call a discursive-cognitive lens in order to support his writing development. In this article, I present the results of the three-week case study (36 instructional hours) in which I was both teacher and researcher. First, however, I briefly
This dissertation presents a case study of analytical writing and identity development among dive... more This dissertation presents a case study of analytical writing and identity development among diverse, ninth grade adolescents enrolled in an alternative high school preparatory academy. Within the larger school context, the study examines the case of the writing classroom-specifically, the four-month literary analysis unit-and the students' writing development therein. First, I analyze the discourse of the writing classroom on developing interpretative statements about literature. Analysis shows that the teacher highlighted three aspects of literary reasoning to support five specific expectations for writing a literary interpretation. In particular, the teacher emphasized that students deepen their interpretative statements by analyzing literary techniques and themes. Second, I examine analytical essays to identify trends in student writing development over time. I show that students had to adopt a particular stance toward literary analysis in order to meet the teacher's increasing calls to make deeper interpretative statements-a stance that posed tensions for some students. Third, I analyze the data of eight focal students to explore those tensions. I show that students adopted one of three stances toward the discourse and use three focal students to describe vii those stances. Abraham ventriloquated through the discourse (i.e., he appropriated heuristics without full control over them) while Katarina passed on the discourse (i.e., she upheld personal observations of characters as points of connection to literary analysis), and Kianna made the discourse internally persuasive (i.e., she actively merged the discourse goals with her communicative goals). This dissertation further explores the cultural, historical, and social factors informing the students' stances and reveals how the internalization of a new discourse is highly variable and deeply personal. These findings complicate contemporary understandings of writing development as either the refinement of cognitive processes or the layered interactions of writer, culture and context. It also demonstrates the utility of using both sociocognitive and identity lenses to study the ways diverse adolescents take up dominant discourses within particular classroom contexts. Finally, the study raises questions about what it means when teachers ask students to adapt to dominant discourses without also providing them the space to adapt the discourse to meet their communicative needs. viii
Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 2021
Prior research on peer literacy teaching tends to be conceptualized as peer tutoring and often fo... more Prior research on peer literacy teaching tends to be conceptualized as peer tutoring and often focuses on the cognitive aspects of reading (e.g., skills, strategies). In this multiple case study, we draw on theories of identity and positioning to propose a conceptual shift from tutoring to mentoring to also describe the affective and relational dimensions of peer literacy teaching. In our analysis, we explore how two 11th graders positioned themselves as readers and mentors in a cross-age literacy mentorship class in a public high school in the northeastern United States. Data sources include mentor interviews, field notes, and artifacts. Our multiphase coding process identified three main themes: the importance of (a) texts and (b) relationships and reciprocity to mentors’ positioning, and (c) complexities of the mentor position. Findings suggest that school-based opportunities for youth to work collaboratively to understand their own and others’ reading processes may contribute in...
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2019
There's a difference between reading just to read and reading, like understanding what you're rea... more There's a difference between reading just to read and reading, like understanding what you're reading….When you like to read you have to understand what you're reading. You're really into [it]. You want to know more. And that's what I describe as passion. When you have passion for something you want to further your knowledge in that area. You want to know more. You want to continue to do it, especially when it's something like reading, which involves just a book, words, your brain. It doesn't involve a lot of physical stuff, but it's still powerful and it's still really important.
Literacy Research and Instruction, 2019
Despite evidence that youths' literacy practices and identities are important contributors to lit... more Despite evidence that youths' literacy practices and identities are important contributors to literacy learning, studies of secondary literacy instruction often focus on understanding classroom storylines from the perspectives of teachers and schools. The purpose of this case study was to examine how one youth, Leo, shaped the storyline of his one-on-one literacy tutorials by attending to his deviations from his tutor's storyline. Framed by theories of identity, agency, and positioning, findings indicate that deviations were acts of agency that manifested as collaborative authoring or improvisation and provided insights about Leo as a reader, writer, and person. Findings highlight the situated and collaborative nature of meaning-making and the importance of theoretically grounded literacy instruction that attends to how students negotiate their positions in relation to teachers' storylines.
Journal of Literacy Research, 2018
Secondary literacy instruction often happens to adolescents rather than with them. To disrupt thi... more Secondary literacy instruction often happens to adolescents rather than with them. To disrupt this trend, we collaborated with 12th-grade “literacy mentors” to reimagine literacy teaching and learning with 10th-grade mentees in a public high school classroom. We used positioning theory as an analytic tool to (a) understand how mentors positioned themselves and how we positioned them and (b) examine the literacy practices that enabled and constrained the mentor position. We found that our positioning of mentors as collaborators was taken up in different and sometimes unexpected ways as a result of the multiple positions available to them and institutional-level factors that shaped what literacy practices were and were not negotiable. We argue that future collaborations with youth must account for the rights and duties of all members of a classroom community, including how those rights and duties intersect, merge, or come into conflict within and across practices.
Purpose To describe the role one classroom writing community played in shaping students’ understa... more Purpose To describe the role one classroom writing community played in shaping students’ understandings of the analytical writing genre; and to discuss the impact the community had on students’ developing academic writing identities. Design/methodology/approach While research has demonstrated the impact of classroom writing communities on student writing practices and identities at the elementary level (Dyson, 1997) and for secondary students engaged in fiction writing (Halverson, 2005), less is known about the role classroom writing communities may play for secondary students who are learning to write in academic discourses. This chapter explores the practices of one such classroom community and discusses the ways the community facilitated students’ introduction to the discourse of analytical writing. Findings The teacher turned the classroom writing community into an authentic audience, and in so doing, he developed students’ understandings of the analytical writing genre and thei...
Reading & Writing Quarterly, 2019
This case study of teacher research explores the utility of framing the writing development of ad... more This case study of teacher research explores the utility of framing the writing development of adolescent writers in terms of their discursive identities and strategic behaviors. By merging our understandings of these frameworks, I argue that we can examine how adolescents' goals, values, and beliefs associated with writing inform the strategic behaviors they engage. The setting for this study was a university-based literacy clinic where Louis, a high-school freshman, was assigned to me, a former English teacher, for writing support. I drew from discursive identity and writing process theories to frame my instructional intervention. During the threeweek session, I guided Louis to write an editorial he submitted to a news outlet. Instruction focused on strategies to separate the processes of planning, drafting, and reviewing. Analysis revealed Louis' shifting perspective from the writing process as systematic to more exploratory. This study supports framing student literate profiles in terms of both their discursive identities and cognitive processes. This qualitative case study of teacher research explores the utility of framing the academic writing development of adolescent writers in terms of both their discursive identities and strategic behaviors. Louis, a freshman in high school, was assigned to me, a former middle school English teacher and tutor in the university-based writing clinic, for help with essay writing. Louis was described by his mother as being "reluctant to write," and he admitted to me during our first tutorial meeting, "I wouldn't say I like [writing] … It just seems to take time, and I can't seem to find the right words to put down. I just, sort of … I do it as something to be done." A rich talker, Louis communicated deep knowledge and thoughtful opinions about many topics and used mature vocabulary to express that knowledge; however, he experienced challenge when setting out to represent those thoughts in essay form: loosely connected sentences with little elaboration failed to support his main claims. As I tutored Louis, I viewed his writing profile in terms of both the goals, values, and beliefs he associated with essay writing and the ways in which those influenced his engagement of strategic behaviors. Typically treated as separate in the literature, I combined what I knew about discursive theories and cognitive processes to adopt what I call a discursive-cognitive lens in order to support his writing development. In this article, I present the results of the three-week case study (36 instructional hours) in which I was both teacher and researcher. First, however, I briefly
This dissertation presents a case study of analytical writing and identity development among dive... more This dissertation presents a case study of analytical writing and identity development among diverse, ninth grade adolescents enrolled in an alternative high school preparatory academy. Within the larger school context, the study examines the case of the writing classroom-specifically, the four-month literary analysis unit-and the students' writing development therein. First, I analyze the discourse of the writing classroom on developing interpretative statements about literature. Analysis shows that the teacher highlighted three aspects of literary reasoning to support five specific expectations for writing a literary interpretation. In particular, the teacher emphasized that students deepen their interpretative statements by analyzing literary techniques and themes. Second, I examine analytical essays to identify trends in student writing development over time. I show that students had to adopt a particular stance toward literary analysis in order to meet the teacher's increasing calls to make deeper interpretative statements-a stance that posed tensions for some students. Third, I analyze the data of eight focal students to explore those tensions. I show that students adopted one of three stances toward the discourse and use three focal students to describe vii those stances. Abraham ventriloquated through the discourse (i.e., he appropriated heuristics without full control over them) while Katarina passed on the discourse (i.e., she upheld personal observations of characters as points of connection to literary analysis), and Kianna made the discourse internally persuasive (i.e., she actively merged the discourse goals with her communicative goals). This dissertation further explores the cultural, historical, and social factors informing the students' stances and reveals how the internalization of a new discourse is highly variable and deeply personal. These findings complicate contemporary understandings of writing development as either the refinement of cognitive processes or the layered interactions of writer, culture and context. It also demonstrates the utility of using both sociocognitive and identity lenses to study the ways diverse adolescents take up dominant discourses within particular classroom contexts. Finally, the study raises questions about what it means when teachers ask students to adapt to dominant discourses without also providing them the space to adapt the discourse to meet their communicative needs. viii
Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 2021
Prior research on peer literacy teaching tends to be conceptualized as peer tutoring and often fo... more Prior research on peer literacy teaching tends to be conceptualized as peer tutoring and often focuses on the cognitive aspects of reading (e.g., skills, strategies). In this multiple case study, we draw on theories of identity and positioning to propose a conceptual shift from tutoring to mentoring to also describe the affective and relational dimensions of peer literacy teaching. In our analysis, we explore how two 11th graders positioned themselves as readers and mentors in a cross-age literacy mentorship class in a public high school in the northeastern United States. Data sources include mentor interviews, field notes, and artifacts. Our multiphase coding process identified three main themes: the importance of (a) texts and (b) relationships and reciprocity to mentors’ positioning, and (c) complexities of the mentor position. Findings suggest that school-based opportunities for youth to work collaboratively to understand their own and others’ reading processes may contribute in...
Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 2019
There's a difference between reading just to read and reading, like understanding what you're rea... more There's a difference between reading just to read and reading, like understanding what you're reading….When you like to read you have to understand what you're reading. You're really into [it]. You want to know more. And that's what I describe as passion. When you have passion for something you want to further your knowledge in that area. You want to know more. You want to continue to do it, especially when it's something like reading, which involves just a book, words, your brain. It doesn't involve a lot of physical stuff, but it's still powerful and it's still really important.
Literacy Research and Instruction, 2019
Despite evidence that youths' literacy practices and identities are important contributors to lit... more Despite evidence that youths' literacy practices and identities are important contributors to literacy learning, studies of secondary literacy instruction often focus on understanding classroom storylines from the perspectives of teachers and schools. The purpose of this case study was to examine how one youth, Leo, shaped the storyline of his one-on-one literacy tutorials by attending to his deviations from his tutor's storyline. Framed by theories of identity, agency, and positioning, findings indicate that deviations were acts of agency that manifested as collaborative authoring or improvisation and provided insights about Leo as a reader, writer, and person. Findings highlight the situated and collaborative nature of meaning-making and the importance of theoretically grounded literacy instruction that attends to how students negotiate their positions in relation to teachers' storylines.
Journal of Literacy Research, 2018
Secondary literacy instruction often happens to adolescents rather than with them. To disrupt thi... more Secondary literacy instruction often happens to adolescents rather than with them. To disrupt this trend, we collaborated with 12th-grade “literacy mentors” to reimagine literacy teaching and learning with 10th-grade mentees in a public high school classroom. We used positioning theory as an analytic tool to (a) understand how mentors positioned themselves and how we positioned them and (b) examine the literacy practices that enabled and constrained the mentor position. We found that our positioning of mentors as collaborators was taken up in different and sometimes unexpected ways as a result of the multiple positions available to them and institutional-level factors that shaped what literacy practices were and were not negotiable. We argue that future collaborations with youth must account for the rights and duties of all members of a classroom community, including how those rights and duties intersect, merge, or come into conflict within and across practices.
Purpose To describe the role one classroom writing community played in shaping students’ understa... more Purpose To describe the role one classroom writing community played in shaping students’ understandings of the analytical writing genre; and to discuss the impact the community had on students’ developing academic writing identities. Design/methodology/approach While research has demonstrated the impact of classroom writing communities on student writing practices and identities at the elementary level (Dyson, 1997) and for secondary students engaged in fiction writing (Halverson, 2005), less is known about the role classroom writing communities may play for secondary students who are learning to write in academic discourses. This chapter explores the practices of one such classroom community and discusses the ways the community facilitated students’ introduction to the discourse of analytical writing. Findings The teacher turned the classroom writing community into an authentic audience, and in so doing, he developed students’ understandings of the analytical writing genre and thei...