Understanding Reading From the Inside: Centering a Classroom Community’s Co-Constructions of Reading

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 3:05 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Sensemaking: Multiple Perspectives and Multiple Contexts (Table 38)

Abstract

A settled Science of Reading (SoR) oversimplifies the reading process (Milner, 2020). In elementary classrooms, the SoR often disregards how classroom communities co-construct reading as a cultural concept. This ethnographic case study investigated guided reading instruction in a third-grade classroom to understand how reading and the participants’ lived reading processes were co-constructed as cultural norms. Data included participant observations of guided reading instruction, interviews, fieldnotes, artifacts, and a researcher journal. Findings shared in this presentation focus on two core cultural norms: (1) reading is not an attention-sustaining act, and (2) reading is about the words. Findings revealed discrepancies between stated values and the co-constructed culture. Implications include understanding classrooms as communities with their own cultural understandings, not as science labs.

Author

• Meghan Valerio, Canfield Local Schools