Outside, inside, and all around the story: Struggling first-grade readers build literary understanding through dramatic response to literature

The benefits of drama have been reported extensively in educational research literature; however, few studies provide an in-depth analysis of how drama is used in literacy instruction for young, struggling readers. The focus of this study is: How do struggling first-grade readers build literary understanding through discussions before, during, and after drama activities? Literary understanding has been traditionally understood as the knowledge of narrative elements; however, this study takes a broader view of literary understanding, in which cognitive, emotional, social, and expressive factors are considered. The theoretical framework of this study drew upon theories and research about process drama, social constructivist approaches to learning, reader-response theories, research on discussions in classrooms, and how these theories impact and inform instruction for struggling readers. This seven-month descriptive, qualitative, and naturalistic study was based upon a constructivist research paradigm, which emphasizes the emergent nature of interpreting data from multiple measures and within specific social contexts. The site of the study was an elementary school in a rural-suburban area outside of a major city in Pennsylvania and involved 10 first-graders who had been identified for the school's reading support program. Children's talk before, during, and after drama activities was recorded. In all, 18 drama activities were fully transcribed, and 8 were partially transcribed. Other data sources included teacher interviews, classroom observations, fieldnotes, and reflective memos. Analysis of the data was an evolutionary process of discovering recurrent patterns according to a three-step process of open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. Through the constant comparative method, significant categories in the data arose. The findings of this study indicated three conceptual categories of literary understanding: (1) textual responses; (2) personal responses; and (3) social responses. A grounded theory of literary understanding differentiated and connected the three categories by the stances that the children assume during drama as they: (1) enter into the story world; (2) immerse themselves in the story world; and (3) transform the story world. This study suggests that young, struggling readers are capable of demonstrating rich understandings of children's literature on multiple levels as they imaginatively generate, enact, and transform their own understandings.