Constructing moments of insight: accounting for learning in classroom discussions on narrative fiction reading

ABSTRACT

This article explores booktalk situations in which student teachers discuss a narrative text and construct in situ accounts of learning when recalling their reading. This study contributes to knowledge about the role of narrative fiction in general educational practice, as well as to the understanding of situated constructions of learning. Video and audio recordings were made in a seminar involving two groups of five master’s students, and the situated interaction was analysed using discursive reception theory. The results show that students construct what are here called moments of insight: a social action constructing a significant shift in participants’ self-described cognitive or emotional development, related to the reading. Students construct themselves as having been changed as both teachers and learners, either through the reading experience or when reflecting upon that experience. This demonstrates both how booktalk enables students to reflect upon their reading and their own cognitive development, and how situated classroom interaction studies enable us to engage with student learning in a naturalistic setting. This has an impact on our view of narrative fiction in educational practice, as well as educational research methods and practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Booktalk
• classroom studies
• discursive reception research
• narrative fiction
• reader reception

1. Introduction: the use of narrative fiction in educational practice

The use of narrative fiction is common within all levels of education, from small children learning how to read with picture books, to adult education using film to learn about societal issues (e.g. Brown 2011). More specifically, within higher education, there is a history of writing about the meaning of narrative fiction for the development of empathy (see e.g. Bourg 1996; Jarvis 2018; Nussbaum 1997), as well as the effects of narrative fiction and storytelling on human experience and emotion (originating from, e.g. Richards [1929] 1956; Rosenblatt 1938). Thus, narrative fiction can be used, among other ways, in educational contexts as a tool to ‘connect private acts by different individuals into a shared experience’ (Jarvis 2018, 993), making the shared experiences of readers an important educational tool in understanding how we, and those around us, view the world and ourselves (Nussbaum 1997).

As Long (1986, 594) describes it, research on reading groups is a way of exploring different ‘consumers of culture’. However, rather than interviewing informants about their selection or appreciation of novels, the current study aims to understand the situated intersubjectivity of participants regarding their reception of reading narrative fiction (cf. Allington and Benwell 2012; Eriksson Barajas 2015). Thus, the current study asks how participants in a reading group display, account for, and argue aspects such as different readings of the same narrative fiction work (cf. Eriksson 2002; Wiggins 2017).

Other researchers have explored this situated use of narrative fiction in the interactional contexts of reading groups (e.g. Allington and Benwell 2012; Allington and Swann 2009; Rydén Gramner 2022), capturing the social practice of reading reception as it unfolds, using video cameras and audio recorders, and analysing interactions in minute detail. Fewer, however, have used these methods to explore the reception of narrative fiction specifically in educational settings. A notable early exception is Katarina Eriksson Barajas’s work with school pupils (Eriksson 2002; Eriksson and Aronsson 2004), in which she demonstrates, among other things, how pupils utilise booktalk. She focuses pedagogically on the social interaction between participants who have read the same work, and what is constructed from this interaction (Eriksson 2002; see also Chambers [1985] 2000), in order to construct and negotiate discourses around what being a (pupil) reader entails (Eriksson Barajas and Aronsson 2009), negotiations around stereotypes (Eriksson Barajas 2008), and more. The current article builds on this work by exploring the functions that booktalk can have in teacher education and what student teachers do when talking about their readings of a novel in a non-language-learning context. The current article offers a situated, small-scale study of this practice, exemplified by the reading reception of the novel Borderliners (Høeg 1994),¹ focusing specifically on how student teachers talk about, and construct, learning from their reading.

1.1. Aim of the study

The aim of the current study is to add to our knowledge about how student teachers utilise the reception of narrative fiction reading, or booktalk, as part of discussions regarding general didactics.

1.2. Research questions

To achieve the study’s aim, the following research questions were posed:

• What interactional actions emerge in student teachers’ booktalk?

• How do student teachers construct learning as an aspect of booktalk?

1.3. Understanding the world and self through reading

Literary scholars have long argued over how to understand narratives, as well as their effects on the reader (Bruner 1986; Richards [1929] 1956; Ricoeur 1984; Rosenblatt 1938). Ricoeur’s (1984) concept of mimesis theorises the relationship between the act of writing, the text, and the act of reading in a circular manner. He argues that the narrative is a series of imitations of action, making up the plot (1984, 54), which must be ‘reconfigured’ through the act of reading – an act that forces the reader to understand the plot in terms of their own social world, through reference. Thus, Ricoeur’s mimesis is ‘a redescription, rather than a reflection, a chain of interpretive processes rather than an echo or an imitation’ (Felski 2008, 84). Felski claims further that, as readers:

[w]e are eternally enmeshed within semiotic and social networks of meaning that shape and sustain our being. Hence, it makes no sense to conjure up some notion of things as they really are – some higher attitude stripped bare of all symbolization and sense-making – against which we could measure the truth claims of the literary work. (Felski 2008, 85)

Therefore, it is not the truth of the relationship between the text and ‘reality’ that is essential for the reading experience, but the way in which the reader interprets this relationship. The reading experience forces us to interpret the text in line with our prior knowledge and beliefs – not only about the world, but also about ourselves. We relate our reading to our experiences of the world (Cochran-Smith 1984; Felski 2008), and when we see ourselves in how others are described in fiction, we simultaneously realise our own lack of uniqueness (Felski 2008). Thus, fiction prompts us to see ourselves in a new light. Discursive reception research (Eriksson Barajas 2009, 2015) is a development of discursive psychology (see, e.g. Wiggins 2017; Wiggins and Potter 2007) and conversation analysis (see, e.g. Hoey and Kendrick 2018; Hutchby and Wooffitt 2008), in which the empirical and analytical focus is directed towards reading as a social event. This perspective can be used to discover ‘what the literature conversation itself can be used for’ (Eriksson Barajas 2009, 131, my transl.).

By utilising a discursive perspective, not only is the direct reception of the novel understood, but also how, in their talk about the novel, participants construct themselves and interact with others […] Discursive psychology provides systematic tools and terms to analyse talk that is useful for literary researchers primarily involved with fiction. (Eriksson Barajas 2009, 134–137, my transl.)

Thus, this perspective gives the researcher access to participants’ situated constructions of their reading of the novel, enabling the researcher to study the social actions that participants construct in their talk about fiction (Eriksson Barajas 2015). For example, they can identity constructions ‘in terms of co-construed positionings […] discursively in terms of reader positions, rather than in terms of fixed reader identities’ (Eriksson Barajas and Aronsson 2009, 282). The current study utilises this perspective to explore how student teachers socially construct their novel reading in a peer group (cf. Allington and Benwell 2012), where they make space for interactional social actions wherein participants’ knowledge and ideas can come into play, and their understanding of their reading can be explored in negotiation with others (Eriksson Barajas 2015).

As an example from an educational context, in their study of 40 pupils and five teachers in grades 4–7, Eriksson and Aronsson (2004) empirically demonstrate how readers make connections between experiences of the world and experiences of the text. The researchers demonstrate that it is difficult to probe life-to-text or text-to-life intertextual connections (Cochran-Smith 1984) in school booktalk. This is because students may resist making personal connections to novels, and it can be difficult for the teacher to ‘make’ students make these connections – creating dilemmas for teachers trying to utilise fiction. Nevertheless, Eriksson and Aronsson’s (2004) study demonstrates that the reading of narratives is a possible way of studying ‘personhood’ (Bruner 1986, 41); we can study readers’ responses to texts, and their constructions of those texts, to learn about the readers themselves and how they view the world. When we put fiction into the hands of our students, we empower them to transfigure themselves through the act of reading, becoming ‘shaped by what they read, even as they cannot help but impose on texts what they already know’ (Felski 2008, 87). In the current study, I explore how situated reading groups construct this shaping of the reader (i.e. themselves) through their talk about a novel.

2. Methodology

The following sections describe the context in which the study took place, the participants, the novel they read, the classroom activity, and the methods by which data was collected and analysed.

2.1. Context of study and participants

The participants in the current study are a mixture of ten master’s students studying either the Special Needs Training Programme, or the Special Educational Needs Coordinator Programme, at a university in southern Sweden. The student teachers, one man and nine women, have different teaching backgrounds working with different age groups of pupils. They are all attending their respective programmes as add-ons to their teaching degree to enable them to work with special needs pupils in their respective educational fields (everything from preschool to upper secondary school). Within the two-year programme, they choose a specialisation of either mathematics, literacy, or developmental language disorder. Regardless of specialisation, all students take the current course, which takes place early in the programme. No information was collected on what specialisation individual students had chosen. The course they are taking focuses on learning perspectives, as well as cognitive, communicative, social, and emotional development.² The student teachers were tasked with reading the Swedish translation of the novel De måske egnede (Høeg 1993, Eng: Borderliners, 1994) at home, taking notes, and then discussing it during an in-class seminar. This seminar, and the content of the course, did not focus on the teaching of novel reading as teacher training (i.e. literary didactics), nor literacy, but rather the primary goal of the seminar was to discuss the ideas and characters that are central to the novel and the meaning of these in the context of general didactics and learning perspectives.

2.2. Borderliners

Borderliners (Høeg 1994) is a fictional story about the central character Peter and his life as depicted during two different time-periods: as a teenager during the 1970s at the Biehl boarding school outside Copenhagen, and in the present day as an adult author reflecting upon his past experiences, as well as his present-day relationships with his wife and daughter (only referred to in the novel as ‘the woman and the child’). The reader follows young Peter, a child from a broken home who is banished to the boarding school and forms a bond with two other children, Katarina and August, who are similarly troubled, mentally and socially, throughout their childhood. Together, the trio uncover what they deduce to be a pedagogical and sociological experiment that the school is conducting to make the socially and educationally troubled youths conform to traditional Danish educational (and social) standards. Meanwhile, the narrator (Peter as an adult) reflects upon his schooldays, relating the experiences of his youth to his present-day family situation, and being a husband and father. These narratives are also interspersed with philosophical reflections upon the ‘essence of time’ (Danius 1995, 14) as an aspect of control and assessment at the school (e.g. a large clock in the hall being a central recurring aspect). The novel incorporates several real-life places, as well as Danish educational ideas of the 1960s and 1970s (see, e.g. Lindegaard 2002; Schmidt 2009), but is not, in itself, autobiographical.

In the current study, this novel was chosen by the class teacher, because she deemed it interesting to tie in with the educational theme of special needs education, and ideas around relationships, philosophy, and language. As far as I was able to determine, this seminar discussion is the only use of this (or any) narrative text throughout this course.

2.3. The group discussions

For the seminar, the teacher divided the ten students into two discussion groups. They were first encouraged to write down their ideas about the novel individually on post-it notes, which the teacher then grouped on the whiteboard under the headings ‘Time’, ‘Emotions and relationships’, and ‘Assessment’ – themes that are also prominent in the novel. The students were then encouraged to discuss their readings of the novel for the remainder of the seminar (approx. 1 hr 30 mins), using either these themes or other aspects that they wanted to talk about. Finally, the teacher rounded off the seminar with a few minutes of whole-class talk about the group discussions. The discussions were recorded using video cameras and audio recorders. In total, three hours of unique data material were used as a basis for the analysis. Cameras were placed so as not to be intrusive to participants, and, throughout the videos, they seem untroubled by the recording (cf. Mondada 2006).

All participants in the study were adults (>18 years old) and gave their written consent to participate in accordance with the code of ethics prescribed by the Swedish Research Council (2017). Participation in the study was voluntary and the teacher formed a third group of similar size, consisting of the students who opted not to take part in the study, so that they could complete the task in the same way as the other groups. The names of all participants have been removed for reasons of confidentiality and replaced with pseudonyms. During the seminar, only the group-discussion portion was recorded, to enable participants who had opted out to still be able to take part in the whole-class introduction and closing discussion.

The data provided in the article is naturalistic, by which is meant ‘records of what people actually do’ (Wiggins and Potter 2007, 78). This provides a perspective that enables a study of situated classroom work, while avoiding the researcher having ‘set the stage’ for the interaction through the introduction of materials, or by telling the teacher what to do (cf. Allington and Swann 2009). In this study, the teacher was in complete control of the aim of the seminar, the choice of novel, and the activities during the seminar; these activities would have been undertaken in more or less the same way even if the study had not taken place (cf. Wiggins and Potter 2007).

During repeat viewing of the total data set, a pattern emerged of sequences in which student teachers referred specifically to their reading experiences, or a reading reception event (e.g. ‘When I read this part … ’). During these instances, participants often related the text-world of the novel to their real-world experiences, thus in a sense ‘bringing to light the extra-textual information they needed in order to make innertextual sense’ (Cochran-Smith 1984, 173). Since the aim of the study was to explore interactions around fiction and student teachers’ constructions of learning, this phenomenon was considered a relevant starting point: when constructing a reading reception event, what do student teachers do?

In total, a collection consisting of 24 excerpts of this type of sequence was compiled. These excerpts, the shortest at 27 seconds and the longest at 8 minutes and 40 seconds, totalled 30 minutes and 23 seconds. While investigating interactional aspects such as intonation, repetition of phrases and words, and upgrades, the excerpts provided here were analysed systematically and repeatedly, using a participant-oriented perspective, asking how a certain action – in this case a reading reception event – is performed (Eriksson Barajas 2015; Wiggins 2017).

Analytically, one of the most featured interactional aspects of these excerpts was different types of assessment – student teachers expressing a value judgement about the novel in some way – either a subject-side assessment (e.g. ‘I liked the part with … ’) or an object-side assessment (e.g. ‘The part with … was good’) (Edwards and Potter 2017). Assessments of these kinds ‘each serve different functions within the talk’ (Allington and Benwell 2012, 220; see also Edwards and Potter 2017), prominently relating to experiences as either individual or shared by the group as common knowledge (cf. Edwards and Mercer 1987). After close transcription (see Jefferson 2004, and Appendix 1), the excerpts were analysed in more detail to determine the functions that these assessments might have in relation to learning. It was here that the moments of insight were found.

2.3.1. Moments of insight

The central analytical focus of this article thus grew inductively out of the analytical process of watching and re-watching the recordings, and analysing participants’ constructions of their reading reception and how they relate these reading experiences to their everyday studies, teaching, and personal lives, bringing the text world of the novel to the life world of the students, or vice versa (cf. Cochran-Smith 1984; Eriksson and Aronsson 2004; Felski 2008). In the current article, I have chosen to focus on how participants talk about reading having affected them somehow, similar to what Denzin (1989, 70) describes as ‘epiphanies, […] interactional moments and experiences which leave marks on people’s lives’. Cole and Throssell (2008, 181) suggest that ‘issues such as love and hate may be explored through literature as they stir up and affect the participants in learning’. Thus, it is relevant to explore how participants describe these emotional ‘stirrings’ as important in their constructions of the reading experience. Since ‘epiphanies’ (Cole and Throssell 2008; Denzin 1989), as well as narrative ‘turning points’ (Schiffrin 2003; Strauss 1959), seem to be terms used for more life-changing experiences, I have instead called these instances moments of insight; pieces of talk in which participants construct a moment in their reading reception as having made a cognitively or emotionally relevant change in them – however large or small.

Out of the 24 original excerpts displaying moments of insight, four excerpts from one group are presented below as an exploratory study. As this interactional phenomenon is new, I am sure that other types of ‘moments’ could be found in future studies, and this article is not intended to display an exhaustive list. However, it was deemed an interesting phenomenon to start exploring and to present here (cf. Hoey and Kendrick 2018). As a study with a small sample size, it was not considered an issue to present data from only one group – the results from both groups are similar, and as the study does not make generalist claims, the presented excerpts were considered the most appropriate to present to readers due to their quality and clarity. The interactions in the presented excerpts are representative of the phenomenon as it occurs throughout this material. The student teachers are named ‘students A – E’ for reasons of confidentiality, in accordance with the ethical guidelines of the Swedish Research Council (2017). The original Swedish language is given in bold text in the excerpts, and translations are given below each line, where necessary (e.g. short phrases such as ‘m’ and ‘hm’ have not been translated). For a full transcription key, see Appendix 1.

2.4. Constructing an individual reading reception event as a communal moment of insight

In the following excerpt, B reports a reading reception event prior to the seminar:

Excerpt 1. MBord1-cam1–1, 05:40–05:59

B reports a situation in which she ‘discussed with [her] husband, [she] thought it was completely fascinating by [sic!] how much and how conflicted one can be about time’ (01). We learn nothing more about what the husband is supposed to have contributed to this new moment of insight that B has experienced, but she uses a real-life concrete and personal moment (Cochran-Smith 1984) to construct her insight, perhaps making it into a personal one (referring to her husband), rather than a professional one. She makes a subject-side assessment of her fascination and then verbalises her conflict with time, whereupon she formulates it multimodally (Goodwin 2000, 2013), by shaking her head while saying ‘I had a real one of those’ (07–09), and completing the action by snapping her fingers in front of her face in a gesture of sudden awakening. The following ‘nah I have to stop that so(h)me(h)ho(h)w’ (09) further verbalises the insight that has ‘snapped’ her out of her previous state of mind.

As a subject-side assessment, this insight is constructed as important to the speaker (Edwards and Potter 2017). The moment of insight is put into concrete terms in three ways: the first is the way in which B makes an explicit text-world reference (Cochran-Smith 1984), through her reporting of a reading reception event via the theme of the novel (i.e. reporting on the act of reading); the second is her real-life reference (Cochran-Smith 1984) to a reading reception event in discussing the book with her husband, when she comes to realise that she is conflicted about time; and the third is her multimodal public display (Goodwin 2000, 2013) of what this realisation means to her – snapping her fingers visualises the swiftness and significance of the insight, that she needs to ‘snap out’ of her regular way of thinking. The shaking of her head and accompanying laughter (09) – or ‘interpolated particles of aspiration’, to use Potter and Hepburn’s (2010) term – and her smile during the last part of the utterance, displays a disbelief in these ‘pointless conflicts’, and could further function to mask the embarrassment of self-discovery, as well as the discomfort of having to change who you are or your outlook on things (cf. Jefferson 1984).

This first excerpt demonstrates what is emphasised as a personal insight, something that B makes publicly, communally, relevant for her fellow participants. In the following example, a moment of insight is constructed as professionally relevant, starting with C, a moment later during the same discussion:

Excerpt 2. MBord1-cam1–1, 06:00–06:06

C presents this reading reception event as an ‘eye-opener’, further qualifying it as ‘a pretty useful eye-opener … just becoming aware of it’ (01–03) – something that B further upgrades as ‘very [useful]’ (02) (cf. Allington and Benwell 2012). Thus, the moment of insight constructed here is related to the mind (in Swedish, the literal translation of ‘tankeställare’ would be closer to ‘thought stopper’). This is also produced as individual, as something that ‘I felt’, but as she continues, she makes this publicly, professionally, relevant to the group:

Excerpt 2, ctd. MBord1-cam1–1, 06:04–06:15

Using the theme of time from the novel, C further explains that ‘time passes and one is trapped in a system somehow that one hasn’t reflected upon perhaps’ (05–11), which makes her moment of insight more jarring, since it loosens one from this ‘system’ and allows one to further explore the constraints of everyday life. C’s closing of this line indicates her previous lack of awareness of this system – again referencing the novel, the characters’ conflict with the school system, and initial lack of awareness of their situation – and how the self-reflection that the novel has encouraged in her has increased her awareness of this. Here, she switches from using ‘I’ in line 1, to using the communal ‘one’ throughout the rest of the excerpt, constructing her experiences as something that it is not only C who is experiencing (it is not ‘I’m trapped in a system’). Thus, C’s moment of insight stems from her personal experience of reading the novel, but she acknowledges that the phenomenon of being ‘trapped in a system’ is a communal one that the participants share (Edwards and Mercer 1987) – not only as practising teachers (and previously students) in the local school system, but perhaps also in the national school system as a whole. This is further supported by the way in which B displays her continued agreement throughout the excerpt (Allington and Benwell 2012).

In summary, we have observed how participants make their reading reception events relevant as moments of insight; firstly, as relevant to the individual participant, but then further developed into a communal, professional aspect of interest to the group as teachers. In the following, we observe what the participants then take from these insights.

2.5. A moment of insight contributing to cognitive change

In this section, I demonstrate how the participants then continue from their initial moment of insight to construct what they are taking away from this insight, gained from the reading reception event. B explains:

Excerpt 3. MBord1-cam1–1–04:57–05:10

B’s final lines here bring the reading reception event full circle, showing that her central insight here is that ‘it is of course not really about time, it is of course about what I choose to do’ (03–05) with time. Thus, she is highlighting the fact that this theme in the novel has meaning for her that extends beyond the novel, onto the decisions she makes in her life and in her teaching (cf. Felski 2008). Inspired by the novel, she constructs a situated idea of time as a relevant meaning-making aspect that is transferable from novel to classroom. She further underlines the importance of this realisation by emphasising that she wrote it down (08), an action demonstrating the educational relevance of this aspect – in line with the teacher’s instruction to write things down in order to remember them and talk about them later.

In the following excerpt, B is explaining how the theme of time in the novel became a ‘big deal’ for her, and she relates the reading experience to her own life:

Excerpt 4. MBord1-cam1–1–04:41–04:56

In this excerpt, B initially reports thinking ‘a lot- to me it became a big deal this thing with time’ (01, my emphasis), presenting the aspect of time as an important, thought-provoking topic. Then, she again emphasises her moment of insight as a pause in her own cognitive train of thought through the construction of ‘actually I noticed’ (03), and goes on to qualify this with ‘how much you yourself have to deal with time in one’s life, all the time, how one relates to time’ (03) – again making this personal experience into a common one (Edwards and Mercer 1987).

Thus, the excerpts in both of the above sections are examples of moments of insight, in which a participant addresses a topic for discussion by referring to the reading reception event as one that has had an emotional or cognitive impact on them in some way. Both B and C refer to their thoughts and ideas about the concept of time, and how reading and talking about the novel has broadened their ideas about time and how they think about their everyday activities, as well as the activities of those around them (they may, of course, be referring both to the commonality of the reading group and to teachers in general) (cf. Felski 2008). They provide experiences of the ‘shock’ of reading, and make connections between the novel and real life (Cochran-Smith 1984; Felski 2008), relating the plot to their own ‘story’ (Ricoeur 1984). Their realisations are about the impact of time on their everyday activities, and also on their way of thinking about their profession and their personal lives. Hence, stories that start out as student teachers reporting on their reading reception become stories of self-realisation and the effect that the reading has had on their self-awareness as both teachers and learners (cf. Eriksson Barajas and Aronsson 2009).

2.6. A lack of insights implies a lack of learning

Finally, I have included an excerpt in which, instead of reporting on their own reading experiences, the student teachers refer to another student teacher group (in a previous year group) who had read the same novel, but reported experiencing a lack of interest in it. As the participant student teacher groups found the novel engaging, they reflect upon why there might be such a difference in the experiences of the two groups. It should, of course, be noted that the actual experiences of the ‘other group’ are not available to us, but the focus here is rather on what the studied student teacher group makes of this.

Excerpt 5. MBord1-cam1–6, 06:02–06:25

The participants talk about the other group who had read the same novel not ‘at all’ having been able to ‘take [the novel] to heart’ (08), and having ‘not understood’ (11) it, due to what E describes as a lack of ‘experience’ (SW: ‘erfarenhet’, i.e. the experience a person gathers throughout their life, 11), independent thinking, and experiences (SW: ‘upplevelser’, i.e. the immediate experiences during an event, 14). These things, E argues, are required in order ‘to be able to get into it’ (literally, ‘to put yourself into it’ (19)). Here, the group constructs these aspects (‘getting into it’, ‘take it to heart’, ‘understanding’) as readers having moments of insight around the novel, similarly to how they previously reported on their own reading reception events. They argue that another group’s lack of moments of insight, their lack of the desired shock value of the novel (cf. Felski 2008), comes from a lack of a certain amount of ‘life experience(s)’ and ‘independent thinking’.

A lack of moments of insight in the other group is thus suggestive of a lack of learning; since no change has occurred in the readers, no shock has been felt, no epiphanies experienced, no turning points reached, the student teachers could be arguing here that their friends have not learned anything. Thus, reporting moments of insight becomes a way for the participant readers to lay claim to learning in relation to their fictional reading reception events. These student teachers report to each other how the reception of reading has changed them, and contrast this with a group that has not ‘got into it’, and thus, not been changed and not learned anything.

3. Concluding discussion

Although the current study is small in scale, its results demonstrate a meaning-making interactional action that I have called a moment of insight (MoI), a social action wherein the participants socially construct a cognitive or emotional change in themselves, something that, in this case, they attribute to the reading of a novel. These insights are presented as self-reported learning experiences relevant to the educational context of teacher training, and student teachers’ own development. MoIs are a way to learn about what students ‘already know’ (Felski 2008, 87), as evidenced by how students construct both the text and themselves. Accounting for this ‘change’ through the reading reception experience can be seen as accomplishing something socially that the act of reading a good novel could be discursively expected to do – change you (Felski 2008, Richards [1929] 1956; Ricoeur 1984). The reader will, of course, note that this current study does not explore the actual cognitive change or student learning – this is beyond the scope of the paper – but rather the self-reported social action of claiming a type of learning. However, this is in line with the ideas of general educational development – to account, in some way, for a change in yourself, is also to socially construct yourself as a learner (see, e.g. Edwards and Mercer 1987; Mehan 1979).

MoIs are important constructions of transformation, or interactional turning points (cf. Schiffrin 2003; Strauss 1959), in conversations about reading, because: 1) they mark moments in, or ideas from, the novel as especially important for the reader, emotionally and cognitively; and 2) they enable the reader to construct themselves temporally as developed readers, in relation to a time before they had the insight, and a time after – thus enabling the participant to talk about themselves as an un/knowledgeable other. These timeframes make it possible for readers to explain earlier readings, misunderstandings and misconceptions, something one likes that later turns out to be detestable, and so on (cf. Blomberg and Börjesson 2013; Wallner et al. 2024). In this way, the participants were able not only to construct meaning from their past experiences, but also to reflect upon what the future might hold in store for them, and what future MoIs might come – something that I have yet to explore.

Although my interest in the current study is educational contexts and reader response, it should be noted that this differs somewhat from studies of pedagogical stylistics, in which the linguistic study of the text itself is the focus (see, e.g. Hall 2023). The students in this study are not engaging with the style of the text, but rather with the philosophical ideas and concepts presented in, and through, the characters and their actions. Although the study touches upon ideas around reader interpretation, style is not the focus here (see, e.g. Bex 1999; Clark and Zyngier 2003). Furthermore, as this study emphasises the interactions between the students, rather than the actions of the teacher or the interactions between teacher and students (cf. Zyngier and Fialho 2010), I do not have data on, nor can I make any claims about, pedagogical choices, or style, in this study.

Nevertheless, the results presented here indicate a connection between the social situatedness of the student teachers and their focus within the text being read – a connection that the participants themselves display in their talk (cf. Long 1986). The focus of the student teachers’ course is the study of learning and development – its communicative, social, and emotional aspects – and participants primarily talk about educational and relational topics in the novel, stemming from the instructions given by the teacher. They also relate this to their own personal situations as student teachers, teachers, parents, and spouses. This demonstrates the ability of the novel and its readers to make connections between the text world and the life world, and between the private and the professional (Cochran-Smith 1984; Eriksson and Aronsson 2004). Thus, participants are seen to reconfigure and construct the narrative by relating it in terms of their social world (cf. Ricoeur 1984). Hence, the personal life-world connections are vital to student teachers’ displays of learning and development (cf. Eriksson 2002; Eriksson and Aronsson 2004). As Rosenblatt (1938, 214–215) writes, ‘[literature] enables the youth to […] know intimately, more intimately perhaps than would be possible in actual life, many personalities. [Sharing] vicariously their struggles and perplexities and achievements’. Although the current study is small in scale, the results suggest something important about what student teachers can do with narrative fiction, and how they construct narratives together around their own learning and learner identity – making what would otherwise be viewed as individual readings of a text into a collective reading, which is publicly available (cf. Jarvis 2018).

Any claim about whether narrative fiction reading enables students to express themselves differently than when reading theoretical books is outside the scope of the current study; however, I consider MoIs to be a valuable tool as we continue to explore how students in different branches of education read and talk about fiction. Methodologically, MoIs allow us to study and draw upon students’ situated reports of learning. This enables us to discuss issues such as teacher professionality and what being a teacher means, through the study of fiction portraying the profession (cf. Rydén Gramner 2022; Wallner et al. 2024). In future studies, this interactional aspect can be further explored through the situated practice of learning in, for example, cross-comparative professional education fields (Wallner et al. 2024), and more. Utilising narrative fiction allows participants to present their reception in a practical way as broadening, or realising, their perspective on the world, and learning about others, and about themselves (cf. Nussbaum 1997; Rosenblatt 1938). Talking about a fictional novel enables student teachers to make claims about their own learning and teaching, as well as the learning and teaching of others, brought forth through displays of MoIs. They express this by saying that ‘reading this changed me’ – an experience that all teachers and students should strive for.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to extend his deepest thanks to the FEEL research group and the Discourse group at Linköping University for their comments on earlier drafts of this text, as well as thanks to reviewers and the editor of CD for their hard work in giving suggestions for improvements on the text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In the current study, the student teachers read the Swedish translation of the novel (Høeg 1995).

2. Due to reasons of anonymity, it has not been possible to directly cite any course plan or other documents from the course.

Appendix 1

- Transcription conventions (after Jefferson 2004)

Table

(.)	Indicates hearable pause shorter than 0.2 seconds.
(X.X)	Indicates a pause of X.X seconds.
?	(in speaker column) Indicates unknown speaker.
?	Indicates rising intonation.
.	Indicates falling intonation.
,	Indicates continuing intonation.
=	Indicates latching, i.e. talk without any pause.
(())	Embeds description of non-verbal activity as well as author’s comments.
[]	Indicates beginning and end of overlapping speech.
(guess)	Indicates a guess of what is being said in unclear speech.
underlined	Indicates emphasis of word or syllable.
:	Indicates prolongation of the preceding sound, each : is the equivalence of 0.2 seconds.
-	Indicates sudden stop in speech.
CAPITALS	Indicates talk louder than surrounding talk.
º º	Embeds talk quieter or softer than surrounding talk.
> <	Embeds talk produced faster than surrounding talk.