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=Transactional Responsiveness and the Teaching of Literature=

Cultivating Love and Wisdom through Orwell's //1984//
====Welcome to Abena, Andrew, Sam, and David's Inquiry Text Wiki. On this page you will find a short introduction about how the principles put forth by Jeffrey D. Wilhelm and Bruce Novak in their book //Teaching Literacy for Love and Wisdom: Being the Book and Being the Change// can be put into action through George Orwell's //1984.// Use the tabs on the right to navigate through the pages and explore our thoughts and ideas in more detail.====

As you read through the Conceptual Framework page, it will become clear that Wilhelm and Novak envision an ELA curriculum guided by principles of social responsibility, compassion, and genuine coexistence. For them, the English classroom is a place where students have the opportunity to explore their relationship with and role within the world around them. Through interacting with the world of ideas represented in literary texts, students are able to develop a more complete sense of their own identities while discovering how they fit into the global community. Along the way, of course, they come to understand the value of such communities through small-scale experiences with their classmates.

The Ultimate Purpose page puts forth what Wilhelm and Novak see as the end result—the desired outcome of teaching for love and wisdom. While such language implies an end or a finishing point, those notions are not entirely appropriate because the authors hope the result will be a changing and evolving sense of responsiveness and responsibility. Through their many experiences in the classroom, students continually reinvent themselves as they outgrow former selves. Existentially speaking, this sense of being as becoming informs much of how the authors imagine teaching the ELA curriculum: There is always personal growth to be realized through interactions and experiences with those different from oneself. It also becomes evident on this page how Orwell’s dystopian vision of isolation and dehumanization in //1984// raises the kinds of questions about humanity that are fundamental to Wilhelm and Novak’s vision of ELA.

The Process and Methodology page describes in a broad sense how students learn within the framework the authors imagine. The central idea of this page is to explore how best to create the kinds of experiences that result in students’ transactional responsiveness. Wilhelm and Novak assert that addressing the three dimensions of transactional responsiveness—evocative, connective, and reflective—is essential for bringing about the kind of learning they hope students will experience through studying literature. On this page, an explanation of each dimension is accompanied by a description of what that particular approach might look like when teaching //1984.//

The @Outcomes page summarizes a list of potentially desired outcomes when practicing transactional responsiveness in the context of //1984//. Using backward design as a model for learning distinctions, the outcomes are grouped according to knowledge, abilities, and understandings. While knowledge and abilities are desirable, understandings are paramount for continued personal and social growth, as understandings encompass the foundation of principles that students will practice and apply in social contexts. Literature functions as a transactional space for the acquisition of knowledge and principles, but the ultimate desired outcome is for students to extend the scope of their learning to understandings that exist and are relevant beyond the safe, transactional space of literature.

The @Product or Performance page outlines a series of activities, assignments, and rituals that will facilitate and demonstrate students’ knowledge, ability, and understandings. Products and performances are categorized according to the three transactional dimensions, with each emphasizing a specific type of product/performance. The evocative dimension seek to stimulate and demonstrate students’ prior knowledge and interests so that they have a personal foundation for future learning—this is accomplished through frontloading. The connective dimension results in demonstrations that build relationships with authors (and others as a consequence). The final demonstration results from the reflective dimension, or written reflections evolved into ideal social interactions and relationships.

The Teaching page demonstrates the practical application of products and performances—in the context of //1984//—that will achieve the desired outcomes of students who are coming to understand their identities and roles in a global context and community.