Resisting and Persisting: Identity Stability Among Adolescent Readers Labeled as Struggling

• In Event: 46.086 - Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: 46.086-9 - Roundtable 3

Abstract

This work grows from a study that presented a counter narrative depiction of struggling adolescent readers as resisting readers, young people who act with intention as they respond to expectations inherent in classrooms as communities replete with student and teacher expectations grounded in respective positions of power and privilege. The project examined the influence of a Young Adult Literature course on participants’ reading identities, revealing how these adolescents, each of whom was identified as a “struggling reader,” explored and enacted reading identities of their choosing and assumed agency as readers. The proposed presentation explores how participants demonstrated a persistence of identity when they negotiated forces attempting to contradict these developing identities, examining questions of how participants persisted as they resisted.

Authors

• Wendy J. Glenn, University of Connecticut

• Ricki Ginsberg, University of Connecticut

• Danielle King, University of Connecticut