Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird by Michael J. Meyer Read Free Book Online Page B

do not show a higher level of theoretical sophistication than answers posted by teachers at the middle school and junior high school level.
    Teachers should not be expected to engage their students solely in the abstract realm of critical literacy and literary theories, of course, and the absence of critical content in the answers posted by teachers in the To Kill a Mockingbird part of the Question & Answer section at eNotes.com should not be taken as an indication that the project of critical literacy has failed across the board. The project is worthwhile and, given more time and the creation of more resources tailored specifically to the needs of teachers of the novel at the secondary level, may very well produce more sophisticated students as well as new, insightful approaches to Lee’s novel. When it comes to To Kill a Mockingbird —or pretty much any other complex work, for that matter—there is always much more to say.
    Notes
    1. This essay may be the first to apply a simplified grounded theory approach to the To Kill a Mockingbird part of the Question & Answer section at eNotes.com, but it does not represent the first time that Lee’s novel has been mentioned in a study using grounded theory. At least two earlier studies have used grounded theory to explore the impact of different literary works on readers, including To Kill a Mockingbird . See the cited works by Els Andriga and by Caroline Clark and Carmen Medina.
    2 . I am not interested in taking part in the “persistent rhetorical wrestle” (Holton i) between the two cofounders of the grounded theory method, who now argue publicly over its methodology, but my approach draws more from the model of Barney Glaser than from the more highly complex one of Anselm Strauss and Juliet Corbin.
    Works Cited
    Andringa, Els. “The Interface between Fiction and Life: Patterns of Identification in Reading Autobiographies.” Poetics Today 25.2 (Summer 2004): 205–240.
    Bogdan, Robert C., and Sari K. Biklen. Qualitative Research for Education: An Introduction to Theory and Methods . Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998.
    Capote, Truman. The Grass Harp, a Play . New York: Random House, 1952.
    Clark, Caroline, and Carmen Medina. “How Reading and Writing Literacy Narratives Affect Preservice Teachers’ Understandings of Literacy, Pedagogy, and Multiculturalism.” Journal of Teacher Education 51.1 (January–February 2000): 63–76.
    Glaser, Barney G. The Grounded Theory Perspective: Conceptualisation Contrasted with Description . Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press, 2001.
    Glaser, Barney G., and Anselm L. Strauss. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research . Chicago: Aldine, 1967.
    Hagood, Margaret C. “Critical Literacy for Whom?” Reading Research and Instruction 41 (2002): 247–264.
    Holton, Judith A. “From the Editor.” The Grounded Theory Review 6.3 (June 2007): i–iii.
    Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird . 1960. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006.
    McLaughlin, Maureen, and Glenn De Voogd. “Critical Literacy as Comprehension: Expanding Reader Response.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 48.1 (September 2004): 52–62.
    Patton, Michael Q. Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods . 2nd ed. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990.
    Petry, Alice H., ed. On Harper Lee: Essays and Reflections . Knoxville: U Tennessee P, 2007.
    Roscoe, Will. Zuni Man-Woman . Albuquerque: U New Mexico, 1991.
    Smith, Marie K. Teaching Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” from Multiple Critical Perspectives . Clayton: Prestwick House, 2007.
    Strauss, Anselm, and Juliet Corbin. Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques . Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990.
    White, Edmund. The Beautiful Room Is Empty . New York: Knopf, 1988.
    Wimsatt, W. K., and Monroe C. Beardsley. “The Intentional Fallacy.” In The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of