Literacy’s Schrödinger’s cat: capturing reading comprehension with social annotation

ABSTRACT

As an internal process, documenting reading comprehension has remained challenging. This paper presents three case studies that explore the transactional practices of literacy education graduate students as they read and annotate assigned texts in an online, asynchronous class. Social annotation tools give multiple students simultaneous access to the same text and allow them to interact with one another, which positions literacy as a social practice. Findings illuminate the different approaches participants engaged in to interact with the text and their peers, with regard to comprehension strategies, critique, and community interaction. Implications offer insight for teacher educators on assessing teacher reading comprehension through social annotation.

KEYWORDS:

• Social annotation
• higher education
• metacognition
• comprehension
• criticality
• teacher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brittany Adams

Brittany Adams is an assistant professor of literacy education at SUNY Cortland. Her research interests include critical literacy, children's and young adult literature, and the preparation of culturally sustaining teachers.

Nance S. Wilson

Nance S. Wilson is a professor of literacy education at SUNY Cortland. Her research includes work with metacognitive technological pedagogical content knowledge and building pre-service teachers’ critical digital literacies.

Tess Dussling

Tess Dussling is an assistant professor in the child study department at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn. Her research interests include early reading interventions for English language learners, literacy teacher education, and critical literacy education.

Elizabeth Y. Stevens

Elizabeth Y. Stevens is an associate professor of teacher education at Roberts Wesleyan College. Her research interests include teacher identities, literacy teacher education, and multiliteracies.

Ann Van Wig

Ann Van Wig is an Assistant Professor at Eastern Washington University. Her research interests include culturally responsive teaching, achieving readers and intervention, site-based reading clinics, and preservice teacher education.

Jennie Baumann

Jennie Baumann is a doctoral student at Michigan State University. She is interested in preservice teachers' preparation in literacy and family engagement in literacy practices.

Shuling Yang

Shuling Yang is an assistant professor at East Tennessee State University. She focuses on young children’s language and literacy development, as well as pre- and in-service teachers in reading.

Gillian E. Mertens

Gillian Mertens is an assistant professor of literacy education at SUNY Cortland. Her research foci are new and critical literacies, credibility assessment, and intervention design.

Jane Bean-Folkes

Jane Bean-Folkes is a faculty member in the Education Department at Marist College. Her research interests include multilingual classrooms, written academic language, African American Language, and sociocultural and sociolinguistic perspectives of education.

Linda Smetana

Linda Smetana is a professor in the College of Education and Allied Studies at California State University East Bay. Her research interests include literacy teacher education, response to intervention, generative technology, and strategies for struggling readers.