Considering Reading Capital in Two Low-Income Families

• In Event: Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: It’s a Two-Way Street: Understanding the Interactional Nature of Students, Teachers, and Reading

Abstract

Over a five-year period, literacy practices and school reading success are explored for two young children in low-income immigrant families. While both children attended the same first grade classroom, over the past five years, their academic progress has been very different. Bourdieu’s theoretical constructs of capital and field are applied to reading and writing to reveal how literacy is differentially conceptualized and used in two immigrant families. In particular, we explore what immigrant students bring to classrooms and explore how complex combinations of resources that come together in particular ways contingent on the social spaces or fields children inhabit.

Authors

• Rohany Nayan, University of North Carolina - Charlotte

• Catherine F. Compton-Lilly, University of Wisconsin - Madison