Identifying and Constructing Struggling Readers: The Powerful Interaction of Social and Instructional Contexts Across Secondary Classroom Spaces

• In Event: Disciplinary Literacy and Learning From Text: Now You See It, Now You Don’t

Abstract

Purpose:
This paper examines the relation between school contexts and the construction of ‘struggling readers.’ Despite increasing public concern regarding the number of American youth who are identified as experiencing reading difficulty, relatively little research has examined the extent to which these students’ skill/struggle varies across secondary school spaces and the ways school contexts mediate literacy learning. I present findings from a school-year-long qualitative study examining how instructional and social contexts interacted to support and/or constrain ‘struggling’ high school readers as they navigated different classroom spaces. In this paper, I focus on how disciplinary literacy instruction—instruction that foregrounded disciplinary ways of reading, writing, thinking, arguing (Moje, 2008)—mediated youths’ reading skills, practices, and identities.

Perspectives:
I draw on adolescent literacy research that has examined the role of context in learning. Although many youth have difficulty with school literacy practices, they enact sophisticated literacy practices in out-of-school contexts (e.g., Alvermann et al., 2007; Black, 2006; Moje, 2000). Other studies have demonstrated the important role that different school contexts play in youths’ literacy learning (e.g., Hinchman & Zalewski, 1996; Leander & Lovvorn, 2006; Moje et al., 2004). Dillon (1989) and Hall (2007) found that struggling readers, in particular, enacted more and less proficient reading practices and identities across different classroom settings. More research is necessary to understand how different school contexts mediate struggling youth readers and how contexts might be optimized to support deep literacy learning.

Methods and Data Sources:
The study took place in a large, comprehensive high school with the lowest scores and highest poverty rate in the district and county. Focal participants were 8 ninth graders identified as having reading difficulty. I shadowed them across U.S. history, algebra, and reading intervention classes. I conducted multiple interviews with focal participants, 14 classroom peers who were identified as highly proficient readers, and 9 teachers. In total, I analyzed over 425 hours of classroom observation, students’ school/reading achievement data, behavior and attendance records, and student work samples. Throughout the year, I used Constant Comparative Analysis (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to identify themes and patterns across data sources.

Results:
I found that students, teachers, and administrators’ interactions with particular classroom contexts (i.e., instructional and social) and institutional contexts appeared especially important in not only identifying reading difficulty, but also producing ‘struggling readers.’ As students moved across classroom spaces, social contexts (e.g., student-teacher interactions) and instructional contexts (e.g., disciplinary literacy instruction) interacted to mediate students’ reading proficiency/difficulty. Particularly important was the extent to which literacy instruction was present, rigorous, and disciplinary and the extent to which instructional interactions were situated in trusting, caring interactions among all classroom participants. Findings suggest that the interacting effect of trusting relationships and quality disciplinary literacy instruction was more powerful than either good relationships or good instruction alone.

Significance:
This study contributes to a deeper understanding of how students’ interactions with secondary contexts mediate reading and, thus, how schools might disrupt the positioning of young people as struggling readers and facilitate deep disciplinary literacy learning for all students.

Author

• Julie E. Learned, University at Albany - SUNY