Encoding Youth: Popular Culture and Multicultural Literature in a Rural Context (original) (raw)
Related papers
Language is a universal phenomenon that is the foundation of human relationships to each other, ourselves, and the world around us—the avenue by which people create connections between what is personally and collectively experienced and the meaning made by reflecting upon said experiences; however, in a society in which the discourse of the powerful and privileged silences and delegitimizes all other discourse varieties, this essential meaning-making process is thwarted. This research details and analyzes the meaningful inclusion of community and cultural discourse varieties found within culturally relevant literature, and the impact that its inclusion had on historically underserved students from a predominantly Mexican and Mexican-American community whose previous relationships with reading were overwhelmingly negative.
Journal of Literacy Research, 2013
The aim of this article is to expand the dialogue about how contemporary scholarship on the intersections between youth, literacy, and popular culture might inform literacy teacher education. Specifically, this article is designed to (a) orient literacy teacher educators who may be somewhat unfamiliar with this particular line of scholarship to a few of its major concepts and K-12 classroom implications and (b) propose several ways this line of scholarship might open up possibilities for literacy teacher educators to help pre-service literacy teachers develop culturally responsive teaching practices. To address these goals, this article first provides an introduction to several common ways popular culture has been theorized. From this introduction, the article explains the following three concepts within contemporary scholarship that investigates youth engagement with popular culture: (a) popular culture as a site of identity formation for youth; (b) popular culture as a context for literacy development; and (c) popular culture as a vehicle for sociopolitical critique and action. In addition, this article illustrates pedagogical implications these concepts have for K-12 literacy education, including how literacy instructors adopt ethnographic stances toward youth engagement with popular culture to reposition youth and ascertain their popular culture funds of knowledge, bridge standard literacy curricula to students' popular culture funds of knowledge, and develop literacy curricula to facilitate students' sociopolitical critique and action. Finally, this article explores how this line of scholarship may open up spaces within literacy teacher education for K-12 pre-service literacy teachers to grapple with the politics of literacy pedagogy.
Youth Popular Cultures and Literacy (Teacher) Education
The aim of this article is to expand the dialogue about how contemporary scholarship on the intersections between youth, literacy, and popular culture might inform literacy teacher education. Specifically, this article is designed to (a) orient literacy teacher educators who may be somewhat unfamiliar with this particular line of scholarship to a few of its major concepts and K-12 classroom implications and (b) propose several ways this line of scholarship might open up possibilities for literacy teacher educators to help pre-service literacy teachers develop culturally responsive teaching practices. To address these goals, this article first provides an introduction to several common ways popular culture has been theorized. From this introduction, the article explains the following three concepts within contemporary scholarship that investigates youth engagement with popular culture: (a) popular culture as a site of identity formation for youth; (b) popular culture as a context for literacy development; and (c) popular culture as a vehicle for sociopolitical critique and action. In addition, this article illustrates pedagogical implications these concepts have for K-12 literacy education, including how literacy instructors adopt ethnographic stances toward youth engagement with popular culture to reposition youth and ascertain their popular culture funds of knowledge, bridge standard literacy curricula to students' popular culture funds of knowledge, and develop literacy curricula to facilitate students' sociopolitical critique and action. Finally, this article explores how this line of scholarship may open up spaces within literacy teacher education for K-12 pre-service literacy teachers to grapple with the politics of literacy pedagogy.
2016
Despite the fact that we teach English education at two very different geographically and socioculturally situated universities—one a mid-sized rural Midwestern university and the other a large urban Southern university— we discovered through extended dialogue that we both aim to make our methods courses safe spaces in which preservice teachers can consider and (de)construct their own identities as readers while preparing to teach literature in secondary schools across the United States and beyond. We realized that to create lifelong readers in those schools, we should begin with our preservice teachers’ identities as readers, knowledge of intertextuality, and considerations of reading as a social practice before asking them to become English teachers who connect their students to texts and to the world around them. And to do this, we use young adult literature and culturally responsive teaching. Notwithstanding the prevalence of adolescent fiction in popular culture (e.g., Harry Po...
Thein, A.H., Beach, R. & Johnston, A. (2017). Rethinking identity and adolescence in the teaching of literature: Implications for pre-service teacher education. In Hallman, H, (Ed.), Innovations in English language Arts teacher education (pp. 65-87). Castle Hill, Australia: Emerald Press.
If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information.
Ideologies of Identity in Adolescent Fiction
2012
Walton's place and steered me through the dissertation's completion. He was standing by at that time of crisis and mourning, and I must add that he has been standing by as a supportive friend for over a decade. We are engaged in an ongoing conversation about literature and culture, a conversation that helped lay the groundwork for this study. Finally I am grateful to my husband, Dick, who assisted me in large and small ways and offered support when I felt swamped by real or imagined difficulties. A Note on Usage In this study the term "Black" is used to mean all peoples of African descent. People of mixed African and European descent come under this heading since they generally face the same problem as other Blacks in the United States and other Western nations. The term is capitalized because it refers to a specific population, the peoples historically connected by the Black diaspora. In recent years the term "White" has taken on a similar meaning, referring to people of European descent. We now find "White" used in books, conferences, and college courses that specifically focus on a field called White studies. I capitalize the term when it designates or implies an ethnic population, but not in instances where the "color line" is the primary connotation (as in "white supremacy," "white racism," "white hegemony" and so on). In such value-oriented fields as history, sociology, and art, labels become quickly outmoded; the usages in this book reflect current self-definition within groups as well as my own preferences. Malcolm Cowley has noted how literature is less abstract than other art forms and more socially relativistic. He writes: Literature is not a pure art like music, or a relatively pure art like painting and sculpture…. Instead it uses language, which is a social creation…. The study of any author's language carries us straight into history, institutions, moral questions, personal stratagems, and all the other aesthetic impurities or fallacies that many new critics are trying to expunge. 4 The kind of "impurities" Cowley refers to are compounded in children's literature because cross-generational activities tend to be purposeful-purposeful in directions beyond an interest in artistic form. A move into youth culture on the part of creative artists is, among other things, a move in the direction of culture maintenance or culture change. This point is but a logical extension of the findings of such sociologists as Peter L.Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The sensitive approach suggested here has enabled Kelly and others to answer important questions about the literature of the past and about those who produced and circulated it. But this inside view of the publishing world is available in Books: The Culture and Commerce of Publishing by Lewis A.Coser, Charles Kadushin, and Walter W.Powell. 17 In the field of Black studies, Nancy Larrick checked on the quantity of children's books about Blacks and reported on her findings in "The All-White World of Children's Books." 18 The Council on Interracial Books for Children did The Aesthetic Focus The formal features in a text either empower or enfeeble it. Eloquence, clarity, textural richness, strength of characterization, plausibility of plot-these are among the elements that can give a text an almost autonomous sense of strength. On the other hand, circumstances surrounding the reading experience, as well as reading readiness, have a lot to do with what makes a text compelling in a child's eyes. Children seem able to make something out of nothing, or conversely, remain oblivious to the most manifest literary delights. Peter Hunt sees this problem as inherent in the art form: Unlike other forms of literature, which assume a peer-audience and a shared concept of reading (and which can therefore acknowledge, but play down, the problem of how the audience received the text) children's literature is centered on what is in effect a cross-cultural transmission. The reader, inside or outside the book, has to be a constant concern, partly because of the adult's intermediary role, and partly because whatever is implied by the text, there is even less guarantee than usual that the reader will choose (or be able) to read in the way suggested. 20 But irrespective of this unpredictability in the young reader, the generalization still holds that formal qualities need to be treated as a Introduction xxi significant cultural variable. In earlier eras, this variable was discussed by literature specialists in terms of high art or high culture. Now theorists treat high art (more inventive art) and low art (more formulaic art) as two points on a continuum. They see the reader as able to make use of both. From this perspective (developed by John Cawelti in "Notes Toward an Aesthetic of Popular Culture"), 21 a historian can examine a range of cultural uses and meanings in a work. The high art dimension-formal elements that impact on meaning-will not be neglected. The critic will engage in the close reading that uncovers patterns, ironies, resonances, and the kinds of spontaneity and inventiveness that often make a work memorable over time. The case for aesthetic sensitivity and analysis in children's literature has been made by Lois R.Kuznets. She advocates cultural pluralism combined with the approach of the New Critics-that is, the scrutiny of the structure created by an author out of plot, characterization, theme, imagery, symbolism, point of view, and time and space projections. 22 The historian needs this perspective because it is a way to discover a certain kind of wholeness in a literary object, and that wholeness affects the synthesizing that is the historian's job. However, the very elements that loom large in a New Critic's dissection are highly culture-bound. The formalistic elements that Kuznets sees as a prerequisite to discussion of a book's political (i.e., rhetorical) level changes somewhat if one is referring to a Black aesthetic, a Hispanic aesthetic, and so on. The cultural specificity of the work is not its political content alone; it is also part of its stylistic content. In "Towards a Black Aesthetic," Hoyt Fuller writes about nuances of style and speech in the works of Black writers-distinct qualities that come directly out of the Black world. 23 Summarizing his sense of a Black aesthetic, Julian Mayfield writes: "[It is] our racial memory and the unshakable knowledge of who we are, where we have been, and springing from this, where we are going." 24 Addison Gayle Jr. has noted that "a critical methodology has no relevance to the Black community unless it aids men [sic] in becoming better than they are." 25 The Council on Interracial Books for Children makes a related point when it argues that when books cause children harm and pain, "one can hardly talk about their 'beauty'; the inner ugliness of their racism…corrupts the very word itself." 26 Young People and Audience Response Theory Reader response theory springs from a new level of solicitude for the reader. It involves an exploration of how a reader makes meaning from a text, and the intent underlying such exploration includes the idea that meaning should be beneficial. This welcome human focus is combined with a generalization from gestalt psychology: that the mind handles holistic configurations better than fragmented ones. A One job for historians is to discover why such specific protective strategies are necessary-why classic publications denied Blacks dignity, distorted the quality of the African heritage, and provided a convenient channel for hate feelings. These issues have been insufficiently analyzed by theorists; however, historian Samuel Pickering Jr. points critics in a direction that could lead to a more pluralistic practice. He notes that many children's books (being structurally simple) do not warrant multiple close readings. He says that "close readings are often less valuable than broad readings which examine both the text and the world beyond." 32 This perspective is seen as advantageous for all types of critics: 1. A study of the white supremacy myth is not an antiquarian exercise. In April of 1987, a grand jury indicted fifteen individuals for alleged criminal actions associated with white supremacist beliefs. Each person was affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan or Aryan Nations-groups implicated in the "killing of blacks, Jews, Federal officials, [and] journalists…," and committed to creating an all-White nation in the northwest corner of the United States
Online Submission, 2011
This paper revolves around the great potential that children's literature and traditional literature may display in social transformation, when associated with the school curriculum. Displaying a role as an important element in children's education and establishing a connection between school and out of school contexts, children's literature can give a huge contribution to the building of identity and comprehending of diversity. This will surely reflect itself in a social performance guided by principles of solidarity and equity among different socio-cultural groups. No social transformation occurs exclusively at a school level, but notwithstanding all the relative significance assigned to school in our current society. School is still the area where a more accurate guidance can be given and therefore its social responsibility has not decreased. According to this line of thought, we believe that literature also displays an extremely relevant role in the transmission of principles. There are feelings and emotions predominantly present in these texts, which when educators articulate them with a constructive praxis, they provide a crucial dimension in building identity and in the way we see each other as referred by Hetherington (1998): "in the contemporary world… flows of images, information, ideas and people cross the societies… These flows generate new hybrid cultures". School frequently struggles with finding strategies to deal with these changes, mainly within contexts where immigration has a stronger significance. We support the idea that children's and traditional literature may display an important role while dealing with these issues. Mediterranean people versus Northern peoples, East versus West, Europe versus Africa… are "consecrated" opposites, questioned by several thinkers like Edward (2003) and mainly from the middle of the 20th century onward. Are these opposites pre-concepts reproduced or destroyed in children's literature and in traditional literature? This paper aims at developing this topic/issue and putting forward some pedagogic suggestions.
Linking the Word and the World through Multicultural Literature The idea of linking the world of the classroom to the worlds of our students is nothing new in education. More than a hundred years ago educational pioneer John Dewey (1901) highlighted the importance of centering learning in the worlds of children. Throughout the 20th century scholars such as Paulo Freire of Brazil and Gloria Ladson-Billings in the United States encouraged educators to embed pedagogical practices in the existential experiences of students (Freire, 1970) and to create lessons that increased cultural competence amongst historically marginalized students (Ladson-Billings, 1994). When we are able to link the world of the classroom to the lives of students we increase motivation, engagement, achievement, and relevance and we promote active learning that stimulates curiosity, creativity, mutual understanding, and the social awareness needed to foster empathy, tolerance, and engaged citizenship. However, it isn't always so easy to translate these ideas into practice in the multi-faceted America of the 21st century. A world filled with languages and cultures and constantly changing demographics in our schools, but also a world filled with new technologies, new ways of acquiring and transmitting language that have radically changed the way we live. While it may seem intuitive to us in our everyday lives that the world is rapidly changing, we must also acknowledge that our discipline can often be resistant to these changes. That presents a tension between our ideas and our instincts and the mandates and standards that we live and work within. In this brief essay, we play out some of these contradictions and tensions as they relate to the teaching of multicultural literature as we play out what it has meant for us in our forty collective years of teaching and working with literacy teachers to link the teaching of literature to the worlds of our students. We talk about what this means in terms of the selection of the texts that we teach, the theory of reading that we promote, the writing we ask students to do, and finally how we link the lessons learned inside of the classroom to action in the world around us. How We Choose the Texts We Read We need a broader array of stories in our classrooms because children need to see themselves in the stories they read. As Henry Louis Gates said, we write ourselves into being (Gates, 1992). Through the stories we share we affirm ourselves and our existence as unique and varied as our existences may be. So, when we say that children need to see themselves in the stories that they read we mean that literally and figuratively. In a diverse selection students will see others who come from similar frames of reference culturally, geographically, ethnically, etc. But students should be able to identify across these simple markers to see those with whom they would have