Moving Beyond Interpretive Monism: A Disciplinary Heuristic to Bridge Literary Theory and Literacy Theory

In this essay, authors Todd Reynolds, Leslie S. Rush, Jodi P. Lampi, and Jodi Patrick Holschuh provide a disciplinary heuristic that bridges literary and literacy theories. The secondary English language arts (ELA) classroom is situated at the intersection between literary theory and literacy theory, where too often literary theory does not include pedagogical practices and literacy theory does not take disciplinary differences into account. Reynolds and coauthors propose an English Language Arts heuristic for disciplinary literacy to guide teachers toward embracing student-led interpretations. They explore the connections among the Common Core State Standards, New Criticism, and the ELA classroom and focus on the prevalence of interpretive monism, which is the belief that only one interpretation is appropriate for students when reading a literary text. The essay explicates a heuristic for ELA literacy that centers on students actively creating interpretations of and transforming literary texts. By embracing this heuristic, the authors assert, teachers can focus on student-led interpretations of literary texts and thus empower their students.