If we are all on an exploratory path towards enriched knowledge shouldn’t the vehicle that carries us vary as widely and vividly as the differences in ourselves?  Despite making hypothesis, claims, and conclusions throughout our educated and professional careers we’re all merely clawing at anything we can get beneath our nails on a continuous and changing investigation towards an indefinite destination.

Sherry Linkon’s The Visible Knowledge Project says it beautifully when she explains her approach to critical reading “with the underlying assumption that the significance of “meaning” of any text, then, pursues the identification of these multiple layers and meanings.”  So, where do we begin?  Meghan Short told an apt anecdote above about she’s experienced her students searching simply for the “right” answer.  Linkon goes on to challenge us to debunk our own assumptions and break apart the frameworks of mistaken intentions we’ve received throughout our learning lives.  Not only do we form bad mental habits of searching for the “right” answer, but we are finitely limited by the stretch of time in which we are expected to learn.  There are many unfortunate truths to reckon with and it is hard not to come away feeling a little discouraged by the odds which are stacked against us as students and teachers, institutionally as well as personally. 

If we are to embark on the new exploration that Sherry is proposing it seems that, like many others, she is proposing a paradigm shift in our thinking of how learning is measured.  Specifically, how we are to tangibly prove that students are exploring, reflecting, and contextualizing that which they read and may eventually write…. This is the new scaffolding on which our institutions may be able to re-inspire the intrinsic value of learning.  I very much love her idea of the research portfolio.  Finally, a specific idea to try!!!  Specifically, the portfolio would be a less formalized interaction between reader and text (and vice-versa) and therefore would encourage the journey and not the destination mentality that would allow students to get to know the process of critical reading and introduce their own writing as a form of reciprocal action where a grade is not begging the answer of the “right” answer.

At a certain point, Linkon notes that the fact that her students “liked” the project was not fully what she intended.  To this, I ask the question:  Does the teacher’s intention outweigh the student’s?  After all, if the students are practicing the “Defining Critical Reading Practices” outlined in our other reading: Self-awareness, recursivity, inquisitiveness, connectivity, and open-ended synthesis, then what does it really matter?  The student’s intercommunication with texts results in learning.  The fact that they enjoyed it at all is a triumph over apathy and signifies the value gained from engagement.