“It’s Basically Trading Reads for Likes”: Black Girls Reading and Writing Across Classroom and Online Contexts

• In Event: Black Literacies: Centering BlackCrit and Listening to Black Students' Experiences

Abstract

Findings show that Black girls are still voluntarily using technology to find and create spaces to affirm and nurture their literacies and identities as readers and writers inside and outside the classroom. Using Street’s (2011) theory of ‘multiple literacies’ the author examined how features of classroom and online contexts for writing constructed or constrained opportunities for Black girls to leverage their cultural capital as readers and writers. Qualitative analysis of classroom observations, fieldnotes, student writing, and interviews revealed themes of constraint in the classroom, and use of technology to construct high-interest literary environments, equitable relationships, and social and cultural capital development through literary exchange. These findings suggest the need for community-centered and technology-enhanced social approaches to writing instruction.

Author

• Heather Hill, Cleveland State University