Class readers: exploring a different View from the bridge

Abstract

Using evidence from a single lesson, observed and videotaped, this article investigates the ways in which students in an inner London secondary school read Arthur Miller's A view from the bridge. Attention is paid to questions of pedagogy, particularly the teacher's creation of dialogic spaces within the lesson, and to how the students are positioned (and position themselves) as readers. Tensions are explored between the reading(s) that happen in the classroom and the assumptions about students' responses to literature that underpin the requirements of the GCSE examination for which the students are being prepared.

Notes

1. I am very grateful to Neville Gomes, the teacher whose classroom I have haunted for much of the past year, for his unfailing hospitality and generosity of time.

2. Students' names have been replaced by culturally appropriate pseudonyms.

3. See for example, two recent reports in The Guardian newspaper: one (Jeevan Vasagar, 19 June 2006) is headlined ‘Thousands march with family raided by police’, the other (Will Woodward, 27 June 2006), ‘Police have no right to rush into action on dubious intelligence, say most Muslims in poll’.