“You Can’t Read Without Something to Read About”: Sociocultural Dimensions of Reading in Kindergarten

• In Event: Becoming a Reader: Centering Students' Experiences for Meaningful Literacy Research and Just Repair

Abstract

Current early reading assessments typically focus on skills like phonemic awareness, letter naming, and letter-sound correspondence (Aukerman & Chambers Schuldt, 2021; Yoon, 2015). Without additional information about young children’s knowledge and practices related to reading, these assessments can narrow how we conceptualize the work of learning how to read (Aukerman & Chambers Schuldt, 2021; Yoon, 2015). This paper aims to document a more holistic picture of the work of learning how to read. Guided by sociocultural theories of learning and literacy (Gee, 1989, 2001; Health, 1983; Nasir et al., 2021; Nasir et al., 2020), we studied students’ perspectives and experiences of reading across a school year in one kindergarten classroom.

The research team conducted three photograph-based interviews (Carter Ching et al., 2006; Clark- Ibáñez, 2004; Einarsdottir, 2014; Luttrell, 2010; Orellana, 1999) with 22 students in one kindergarten class (i.e., fall, winter, spring). Our interview protocol built on the school’s practices related to pedagogical documentation (Falk, & Darling-Hammond, 2009). During each data collection window, students took turns being the “documenter of the day.” They used iPads to take photographs of objects, places, and interactions related to reading. A member of the research team conducted an interview with students during the following school day. Students selected which photographs, if any, they wanted to discuss. When a student selected a photograph to talk about, the interviewer asked them to describe the image, their reason for taking the photograph, and how it was connected to reading or learning to read. Each interview lasted approximately 5-8 minutes. They were audio recorded and transcribed. To analyze the interviews, researchers generated codes and categorized the photographs based on what the students shared about them.

Students’ photographs demonstrated the larger social context of their reading instruction as inherently significant to them across the school year. For example, several photographs included: the classroom schedule that communicated the activities for the day, their classmates’ pictures and names, student work that contained personal stories, and objects/locations in the classroom related to the act of reading/writing. Comparing fall and spring interviews revealed how students increasingly articulated learning to read as socially situated. In the fall, students typically explained that their photographs were related to reading because “it has words.” Interviews from the spring show students ascribed social meaning to photographs of the same objects (e.g., “because words help you read”). In the spring, students also articulated their understanding of reading as connected to their identification as a reader, especially when it came to talking about their growth as a reader.

The findings illustrate students’ knowledge of reading as a social and cultural activity. Students increasingly attended to how they applied their knowledge of letters and words as well as purposes for reading and generating their own texts. Beyond knowledge of isolated reading skills, these types of insights can provide researchers and educators with a more complete understanding of how students become readers as they engage with instructional activities, classroom resources, and other people in the classroom and school (Nasir et al., 2020).

Authors

• Nicole A. Mancevice, University of California - Los Angeles

• Amanda Giuliano, University of California - Los Angeles