The Many Faces of Gertrude: Opening and Closing Possibilities in Classroom Talk

The authors examine classroom discussions of Hamlet in two distinct and separate contexts. They display contrasting patterns of discourse to highlight the influence of a classroom's interpretive norms on students' opportunities for critical readings of literature. The excerpts of classroom talk focus on how two teachers and their students constructed Queen Gertrude's character and illustrate how classroom discourse can shape students' understandings of literature and of literary characters. The authors suggest that the nature of students' participation in classroom discussion is based on their construal of the classroom culture, and they raise questions about the roles that teachers play in creating that culture. Opening possibilities for students to raise questions of compelling interest, to initiate topics of substance, and to consider the complexity and ambiguity of plight and motive requires a constellation of classroom supports. After exploring the patterns of interaction and their different results in the two classrooms, the authors suggest strategies for supporting students' developing literary thinking as well as their emerging critical perspectives of social power and position.