Premium
Slaying Monsters: Students’ Aesthetic Transactions With Gothic Texts
Author(s) -
Del Nero Jennifer Renner
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
the reading teacher
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.642
H-Index - 50
eISSN - 1936-2714
pISSN - 0034-0561
DOI - 10.1002/trtr.1551
Subject(s) - reading (process) , feeling , psychology , thematic analysis , dynamics (music) , order (exchange) , unit (ring theory) , mathematics education , contrast (vision) , pedagogy , aesthetics , qualitative research , linguistics , social psychology , sociology , art , computer science , social science , philosophy , finance , artificial intelligence , economics
This study employed case study methodology and design research to examine what aesthetic transactions (readers’ thoughts, feelings, associations, etc. that arise during a text encounter) students constructed in response to texts in a Gothic studies reading unit created by the author. The study was conducted in a seventh‐grade reading classroom. Thematic analysis was used to analyze participant data. The findings revealed that participants constructed myriad aesthetic transactions of meaningful connection and imaginative contrast with the Gothic unit texts. Participants enhanced these transactions and formed new ones as a result of pedagogical practices that also nurtured their construction of aesthetic transactions. As a result of these dynamics, participants gleaned academic, personal, and global understandings. The findings suggest that prioritizing students’ construction of aesthetic transactions is critical in order for academic reading to be a meaningful experience that educates the whole person.