Patricia Enciso

WHY ENGAGEMENT IN READING MATTERS TO MOLLY

I examined the form and substance of Mollys engagement in reading as she read and responded to familiar and unfamiliar texts, with friends and by herself. I collected data through participant observation in the classroom and the Symbolic Representation Interview (SRI; Edmiston (Enciso) 1990), a research method that asks the reader to create and manipulate paper cutouts representing him‐ or herself and story characters. Data analysis showed that Molly used a wide range of engagement strategies when reading her favorite story among her peers and during the SRI. In contrast, when she read unfamiliar texts on her own or in the context of the SRI, she struggled to create and sustain similar engagement strategies. Despite her flat reading of unfamiliar stories, she was able to recall her engaged reading experiences and recognize herself as a reader within them.

‘Is that what you really want?’: a case study of intracultural ensemble-building within the paradoxes of ‘urbanicity’

Ensemble-building is a practice within drama education that is understood to be a powerful metaphor for democratic living. However, this ongoing work in classrooms also demands that teachers understand and enact a broad, interrelated range of knowledge, skills, and values that support participants’ encounters with conflict and representations of change. In this sense, ensemble-building is not simply about getting along, but embodies an ‘intracultural’ practice of ‘living together’ while learning and using creative strategies for ‘fighting together’. In this qualitative case study of ensemble-building as an intracultural practice we present the key forms of knowledge, skills and values that two teachers enacted to create conditions for trust and knowledge production with a group of African American students at a racially segregated urban secondary school and a collaboration between this group and multi-ethnic and multi-racial university students in a theatre arts programme. Their work, and the work of ensemble, we argue, is shaped by and within the intersections of ‘urbanicity’ where urban life is recognisable and lived beyond the boundaries of urban centres through the paradoxical conditions of rigidity and creativity, stability and mobility, and anonymity and visibility.