Research to Practice: Cognitive Criticism and Novel Study

How do you engage the adolescent learners in novel study? Do you access student background knowledge? Prepare them with vocabulary ahead of time? Give them non-fiction readings to determine their schema?

Recently, neuroscientists are starting to come out with their findings on the adolescent mind, and literary theorists are connecting with them. From this connection, cognitive criticism has developed as a new way of thinking about how we teach literature and how students read literature. Its basis didn't develop from empirical studies and doesn't support teaching students to look only at the facts of a novel. Instead, cognitive criticism has developed as a framework for expanding student schema and teaching them the skills necessary to develop empathy, decision making, perception, and reasoning. At the same time, it acknowledges the importance of developing language and memory because language and the above skills help to expand a student's schema. Cognitive criticism isn't a way of reading literature, but rather "a way of thinking about literature" (Nikolajeva, 2014, p. ). One element of technology that, based on my reading of the research, could help our students to record their thoughts, develop vocabulary, recognize literary codes, and expand their schemas through a culminating themes project is an online space called blendspace. Using the latest research on cognitive criticism and engagement practices, if in an ELA classroom the learners make sustained interactions with a fictional text and their own background knowledge, then there will be continued engagement, increased understanding of themes, and more connections to the world that student’s live in.

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