THE READER, THE TEXT, THE CONTEXT - AN EXPLORATION OF A CHOREOGRAPHEDRESPONSE TO LITERATURE

Much current theory about response to literature stresses the reader's active role in constructing meaning, with reader, text, and context a ffecting the responses of individual readers (Beach, 1993). Response t o literature, like most classroom interaction, tends to take a linguis tic form. In a supportive classroom environment, however, a range of r esponse media can potentially mediate students' transactions with lite rature. The present exploratory study used stimulated recall to elicit a retrospective account from two alternative school students who chor eographed a dance to depict their understanding of the relationship be tween the two central characters in a short story. In their account th ey indicate that in composing their text they (a) initiated their inte rpretation by empathizing with the characters, (b) represented the cha racters' relationship through spatial images and configurations, and ( c) used the psychological tool of dance to both represent and develop their thinking about the story. Their thought and activity were furthe r mediated by the social context of learning, including the communicat ion genres of the classroom, their own interaction, their teacher's in tervention, and the stimulated recall interview itself. Their account illustrates the way in which reader, text, and context participate in a complex transaction when readers construct meaning for literature. T heir experience also illustrates the ways in which the values of an in structional setting influence the extent to which learners may take ad vantage of the psychological tools available to them for growth.