Reading in the Crawl Space: A Study of an Urban School’s Literacy-Focused Community of Practice

• In Event: The GED and Literacy Programs as Counterspaces to Schooling? Operationalizing What We Know

Abstract

Background and Objectives
The pressure to understand “what works” to advance adolescents’ reading development is enormous. Despite increasing attention on adolescent literacy in the past two decades, categorical reading underperformance among youth persists in schools nationwide (National Center for Education Statistics, 2010), and is worse in urban schools (Neild & Balfanz, 2006). We have learned much about promising reading programs and interventions for adolescent students in schools (Deshler, Palincsar, Biancarosa, & Nair, 2007; Slavin, Cheung, Groff, & Lake, 2008), yet few programs have demonstrated the capacity to take hold at scale. More research is needed to address the gaps in our knowledge about urban adolescent literacy development.

Theoretical Framework
Sociocultural perspectives on reading and writing challenge traditional notions of literacy as an individual, decontextualized activity comprised of discrete skills. Instead, studies that employ the sociocultural lens recognize the skills involved in literacy, but go further to illustrate how reading and writing are practices that are mediated by and developed through one’s interaction with the surrounding environment (Gee, 1990; Heath, 1983; Scribner & Cole, 1981; Street, 1984). Sociocultural perspectives on literacy suggest, therefore, that instead of looking at the effects of a discrete program, we must understand effective literacy practices in the context of school cultures—that is, more research is needed that illustrates the relationship between school structures and systems and the literacy practices that they frame.

Methodology
In this presentation, I draw on ethnographic observations and interviews with students and staff from a single urban and middle school context to describe how the school’s organizational and cultural features shaped everyday literacy activities. This site was ideal for conducting this research because of its demonstrated commitment to support students’ reading development over time (Author, 2009).

Findings
At Grant Street Secondary School (a pseudonym), organizational and sociocultural factors contextualized everyday literacy activities. Given the interplay of daily literacy activities and the larger school context, I argue that Grant Street’s reading culture reflected a literacy-focused community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998), that simultaneously attended to the domains of reading, the community of readers, and the practice of reading. At Grant Street, factors such as time and space for independent reading, teachers’ enthusiasm for young adult books, and apprenticeship in authentic reading tasks collectively contributed to notable outcomes in students’ reading development: students outpaced their peers nationwide on a standardized reading measure and they exhibited higher levels of reading motivation in comparison to similar samples reviewed in other studies. Furthermore, students saw themselves as readers and attributed their reading growth to the school’s concerted efforts to be a “reading school.” The school’s literacy-focused community of practice also facilitated a reading “crawl space” (Moses, 2005), whereby students were able to exert agency—in the form of choice, apprenticeship, and book recommendations—in an environment that held high independent reading expectations.

Significance
This research reconceptualizes our understanding of effective instructional practices for adolescents, emphasizing a multidimensional approach that highlights the role of reading as a social activity.

Author

• Chantal Francois, Rutgers University