Tensions Past, Present, and Future: Using Literature to Promote Social Awareness and Literacy in Children

• In Event: Defending Childhood: Toward a Broader View of Early Education

Abstract

OBJECTIVE
Educators have sought to prevent prejudice and promote social awareness in children through classroom instruction that directly engages students in understanding the causes of social issues such as racism. Yet when can we really expect young students to be developmentally ready to understand and resolve matters that adults struggle with? We investigate the normative patterns among students of different ages to absorb on their own the meaning of the lessons in prosocial literature.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
We used a constructive developmental approach focused on perspective-coordination theory (Selman, 2003; Selman & Dray, 2003) to evaluate the quality of young students’ social (cultural norms and expectations) and reading comprehension (factual information, vocabulary words, inference) (Banks, 1995, Bigler, 1999, Pfeifer, Brown & Juvonen, 2007; Dray & Selman, 2011).

METHODS
We used both emic and etic methods to analyze students interpretations of texts, read or read aloud to them, depending on age. Our stimuli was the picture book Freedom Summer (Wiles, 2001), the story of a young White boy and his best friend, John Henry, who is Black, living in the Deep South during the Civil Rights Movement. When desegregation arrives, the boys are thrilled that they can swim in the town pool together, but discover that it has been filled with tar. The boys are crushed, but then comforted by being able to enter a store together and John Henry finally buys his own ice pop. The research team read the book to small groups of first to fifth students (N=107) who were predominantly Black. Researchers asked students to verbally answer questions regarding their comprehension of the text and awareness of social issues involved (e.g. racism).

DATA
Students’ verbal answers to two open-ended comprehension questions (factual comprehension and social awareness and perspective-taking) were recorded. All responses were coded by the research team.

RESULTS
Students’ responses were clustered into three levels showing awareness of racism as significant in plotline, accompanied by a developmental trajectory of increasing awareness over time: Limited Awareness (1), Emergent Awareness (2), Developed Awareness (3). Around 50% of the first grade sample demonstrated Limited Awareness, but this decreased steadily to around 0% among fifth grade responses. Developed Awareness responses had the opposite pattern, capturing 42% of third grade responses, up to 83% in fifth grade. Responses to the second question measuring perspective-taking reflected struggle: Around 60% of first grade responses demonstrated Limited Awareness of racism or segregation as significant, and awareness improved only marginally across grades.

SIGNIFICANCE
Even if a student’s understanding of factual historical events and the motivated actions of those living in the past improves over time, an understanding of the meaning of these differences in far-away times and places must not be assumed to be part of the deeper comprehension skills of younger students. To effectively use literature as both a literacy and ethical development tool, the teacher must bear in mind not only the promotion of the comprehension of the text, but also the awareness each child has of the social world.

Authors

• Robert L. Selman, Harvard University

• Janet Kwok, Harvard University