Previous L1 and L2 research on inferential comprehension has tended to follow a quantitative orientation. By contrast, L2 research on critical reading is qualitative and tends to ignore inferences. This paper presents a qualitative, design-based study of a critical reading intervention focused on promoting generative rhetorical inferences and investigating co-adaptation and emergence of new meaning-making capacities. Complexity theory (CT) constructs were used to research processes of co-adaptation between the participants' comprehension and the teacher-researcher's understanding of learning and instructional needs. Identification of attractor states and control parameters in classroom discourse were used to explore unpredicted factors influencing the participants' inferential comprehension and further refine the intervention. The results indicate that rhetorical genre knowledge acted as a control parameter driving the students' comprehension to attractor states characterized by implausible inferences, and that this knowledge explains the emergence of pragmatic meaning (rhetorical inferences) from semantic meaning. The paper illustrates the usefulness of CT constructs in doing design-based research qualitatively in a manner that informs both theory and practice.
complexity theory; design-based research; genre; inferential comprehension; critical reading; EFL
