Making Meaning, Making Selves: Constructing Social and Academic Identities and Text Interpretations During Comprehension Instruction

• In Event: Roundtable Session 26
  In Roundtable Session: Positioning Language, Identity, and Content in the Classroom

Abstract

This roundtable paper reports ongoing analysis from research on how one fourth grade bilingual teacher (Author 2) and her students discursively positioned one another over the course of one school year to construct and/or contest social and academic identities as they negotiate textual meaning during reading comprehension instruction (CSI). Ethnographic approaches to data collection were employed, and analysis approaches include recursive open coding, microethnographic discourse analysis of videorecorded observation data, and analysis of students’ comprehension growth along side identity trajectories. This paper presents initial findings related to two focal students’ identity trajectories and text comprehension.

Authors

• Lara J. Handsfield, Illinois State University

• Patricia Valente, McLean County Unit 5 Schools

• Aline Andre, Illinois State University