New Collaborations: Literature Discussions on Diverse Children's Literature in Privileged White Spaces

• In Event: 61.018 - The Power in the Word: Critical and Conscious Examinations of Text

Abstract

Responding to the AERA’s call to consider how scholars and educators can maintain hope in this ‘post-truth’ era, this paper examines classroom discussions between economically privileged White students and their teacher in response to Ghost, Jason Reynolds’ 2016 book about an urban Black teenager. Drawing on Erickson’s micro-ethnography of interactions (2004), we analyzed the students’ perspective taking (Thein, Beach, & Parks, 2007) on the inequities that arise as the result of racial and class prejudice. In general, the White students avoided engagement with the sociopolitical themes in the text, but there were several ways in which the discussion offered invitations to engage with these themes, giving the teacher an opportunity to turn the discussion in a critical direction.

Authors

• Saba Khan Vlach, The University of Texas at Austin

• Laura A Taylor, Rhodes College