Students' Identities and Literacy Learning

Sarah J. McCarthey, Ira

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135854775
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Educators will find in this book an opportunity to examine the multiple, dynamic identities of the students they instruct and to consider the ways in which all teachers and students are shaped by their social and cultural settings. The volume is the first to examine theories of identity and elementary literacy practices by presenting data in a teacher-friendly format. The chapters highlight the influences of school and, to some extent, home contexts on students' identities as readers and writers, and give numerous implications for practice. McCarthey collected data from three sites in which teachers implemented writing workshop and literature-based instruction in grades 3-6. This book focuses on the students in these sites, who were from diverse cultural and social backgrounds. By providing information about the contexts in which students read and wrote, McCarthey demonstrates the power of the teacher-student relationship, the importance of the classroom curriculum, and the influence of parents and peers on students.
Published by International Reading Association

CHAPTER 1

Situating Identity in Theory, Research, and Practice

Picture this classroom setting:

Forty-nine third and fourth graders are seated on the carpet listening to music and imagining a scene from Pedro’s Journal (Conrad, 1991). One teacher, Ms. Martin, reads aloud a chapter from the book and asks students to write a response in their logs. After 5 minutes of intense writing, students are called on to share their work. A second teacher, Ms. Allen, writes examples of descriptive language from the students’ logs on a chart. Both teachers respond to students after volunteers have read their work aloud.

David reads from the perspective of Pedro saying the cannons on the Santa Maria went “boom boom.”

[Ms. Martin writes boom boom on the chart.]

Ms. Martin:	Very nice. I certainly do like the way David started his passage with the sound of the cannons. What were the cannons doing, David?
David:	They were shooting to make the rest of the Santa Maria…[go down?]
Ms. Martin:	So what did they do? They went, and they got everything they possibly could use from the Santa Maria to build this new fort. There wasn’t readymade lumber there on the island, was there? So they used the timbers from the Santa Maria to build a fort. And then I can just see it out in the distance, can’t you? The cannon’s going to sink the rest of it. Very nice description. Emily.

Emily reads from the perspective of Pedro about being glad to leave, being “homeward bound” yet still keeping “adventure and my dream.”

Ms. Martin:	But I will still keep what?
Emily:	“my adventure and my dream.”

[Ms. Martin writes homeward bound. Ms. Allen calls on Nina.]

Nina reads softly, almost inaudibly.

Ms. Martin:

OK, Thomas. I really like the way most of you are sitting and listening for those juicy words. From the expressions on your face, I can tell that those words delight you too. I kind of pick up from your reactions to what people are reading. I want to thank those of you who are listening. Thomas.

Thomas reads from the perspective of Pedro, “I am worried the Santa Maria will come back and haunt me in my dreams.”

[Ms. Martin writes haunted on the chart.]

Ms. Martin:

Right. Geoffrey.

Geoffrey reads about Alonzo being “full of excuses” and getting a “taste of his own medicine.”

Ms. Allen:

Oooh—A taste of his own medicine. I love that. That would serve him right for leaving.

[Ms. Martin writes a taste of his own medicine and full of excuses on the chart, then calls on Rachel.]

Rachel reads about bumping into the other ship, “What will become of us?”

[Ms. Martin writes What will become of us? on the chart.]

Ms. Allen:

What will become of us? Good. I love questions at the end. Ana.

Ana reads so softly, she is inaudible.

Ms. Allen tells Ana the class could not hear her, and asks her to take her tissue away from her face.

Ana reads again.

Ms. Martin:

It reminds you of the journal you kept while reading the story. That is a nice reflection of your personal experience. Mandy.

Mandy reads from the perspective of Pedro, describing the scene.

Ms. Allen:

Good.

[Ms. Martin writes down three of the words Mandy uses—spied, thousands, and decided.]

During this teaching session, the teachers’ comments were filled with praise and encouragement; they pointed out specific features of students’ language, wrote down students’ words, and commented orally. However, certain students’ comments (e.g., David, Emily, Geoffrey, Rachel’s) were extended and valued, while others (e.g., Nina’s) were not. The teachers tended to implicitly value students who used descriptive or metaphorical language or asked questions at the end. The teachers’ differential responses to students reflected their implicit assumptions about what constituted an ideal student response. However, some students who were not accustomed to using colorful language may have found it difficult to write in a way that matched the teachers’ implicit expectations (Michaels, 1987). Those students’ responses did not fit the cultural model of what the teachers had defined as “normal and natural” for that classroom (Gee, 2001, p. 720). This, in turn, may have influenced how students constructed their literate identities in the classroom setting.

In the following chapters, I draw from classroom data to explore the impact of classroom practices on students’ identities as literacy learners. The next section situates literate practices, like those described in the previous scene, within larger discussions about the nature of identity, the role of language in identity, and the relationship between power and knowledge.

Reconsidering Identity

Tensions between conceptualizing identity as a process rather than as a category have provoked extended discussions in the literature (e.g., Yon, 2000). Traditional views have focused on identity as a unified, cohesive essence belonging to an individual whose core unfolds or develops in stages (Erikson, 1968). In contrast, social constructivist and postmodern perspectives have emphasized the constructed and dynamic nature of identity. Mead (1934) recognized the self as the result of symbolic interaction with significant others. Postmodernists have taken the perspective that identity is less coherent than social interactionists proposed, and have theorized that identity is multiple, fragmentary, and contradictory (Yon, 2000).

Sarup (1996) defines identity as “a construction, a consequence of interaction between people, institutions, and practices” (p. 11). Mishler (1999) suggests that identity is relational, that is, individuals make claims about who they are by aligning or contrasting themselves with others. Identity, then, can be viewed as a process that is constructed in relation to others’ perceptions (Tatum, 1997). Anzaldúa (1999) stated this view quite cogently, “We are clusters of stories we tell ourselves and others tell about us.”

Aronowitz and Giroux (1991) maintain that aspects of identity such as race, social class, and gender that previously were considered more essentialist in nature can be considered partial, local, and contingent on the situation. Egan-Robertson (1998) extends this view to define identity as “the intersection of a myriad of complex sociological factors (e.g., race, class, gender)” within the historical moment (p. 455). In his study of Canadian urban youth, Yon (2000) found that students constructed their identities “in relation, and often in opposition, to the constraints imposed by gender, race, and culture” (p. 122). In her study of 30 working-class young women of Latina, African American, and European American descent at an alternative high school, Weiler (2000) established that the identities of young women from particular social class or racial and ethnic groups were far from unitary or homogeneous. She found that gender identity was fluid in that young women placed different values on schooling, future employment, marriage, and children; and that there were differential effects of schooling processes on their identity construction.

Because identity is the intersection of features at any given moment, our selves may be inconsistent or even in contradiction with one another (Belsey, 1980). We can take on different identities depending on the social setting, yet there are relationships among our different selves (Gee & Crawford, 1998). Bakhtin (1981) suggests that we engage in internal dialogues that are the result of the many voices we have encountered in the past. These internal dialogues are often sites of struggle, and through these dialogues we are able to construct and reconstruct ourselves. Sarup(1996) echoes this view by defining identity as “a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings blend and clash” (p. 25).

The Role of Language

Language plays a key role in the process of identity construction. Belsey (1980) argues, “It is through language that people constitute themselves” (p. 59). Because language and identity are linked, Gee (1990) explains that language is more than a set of rules for communication; it is an “identity kit” that signals membership in particular groups. He suggests that “Discourses” include “ways of being in the world, or forms of life which integrate words, acts, beliefs, attitudes, social identities, as well as gestures, glances, body positions and clothes” (p. 142). Primary discourses are learned initially within the home and family, while secondary discourses are learned from being apprenticed to many groups and institutions. Discourses are communities of practice, and cultural models within a community define what counts as normal and what is considered deviant (Gee, 2001).

Bakhtin (1981, 1986) theorizes that inner speech is modeled on social discourse; inner speech consists of dialogues conducted with imagined audiences drawn from the many voices a person has encountered. An utterance is always responding to preceding utterances and anticipating succeeding ones, even if the speakers are temporally, spatially, or socially distant. The utterance focuses on concrete action within a particular context, yet is shaped by national languages, social languages, or speech genres (Wertsch, 1991). Bakhtin (1986) suggests,

The unique speech experience of each individual is shaped and developed in continuous and constant interaction with others’ individual utterances. This experience can be characterized to some degree as the process of assimilation—more or less creative—of others’ words…. Our speech, that is, all our utterances (including creative works), is filled with others’ words, varying degrees of otherness or varying degrees of “our-own-ness,” varying degrees of awareness and detachment. These words of others carry with them their own expression, their own evaluative tone, which we assimilate, rework, and re-accentuate. (p. 89)

Bakhtin (1981) describes two ways of assimilating social discourse by the individual: (1) “reciting by heart” and (2) “retelling in one’s own words” (p. 341). Reciting by heart involves using another’s words in the form of models, rules, and directions. This is an inflexible kind of assimilation fused with authority that is transmitted not transformed, thus it is called “authoritative discourse” (p. 342). Retelling in one’s own words is more flexible and responsive, making it possible to originate an idea (Emerson, 1983). Intellectual growth in the form of “internally persuasive discourse” results from the struggle between these two forms of assimilation (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 342). The internally persuasive word is “half-ours and half-someone else’s” (p. 345), yet it is not static and isolated, but rather a part of a creative process that can be applied to new situations. Bakhtin further describes “single-voiced” discourse as direct, unmediated, and imitative, whereas “double-voiced” discourse (p. 65) is filled with words of others, but speakers use the others’ discourse for their own purposes (Morson & Emerson, 1990).

Because the word is “half-ours and half-someone else’s” (Bakhtin, 1981), a concept referred to as “ventriloquation” (Holquist, 1990; Wertsch, 1991, p. 59) and is continually shaped by interactions with others, issues of power and authority come into play. Social structures that give order are enduring and invisible in the normal course of life and control to a great extent what individuals can and cannot do (Lemert, 1997). School, as a significant social structure, serves to sort students in ways that reproduce existing inequities. Bourdieu (1977, p. 19) theorizes that “cultural capital” serves as symbolic credit in which one learns to enact signs of social standing and thus provides some students with higher social standing than others. Exams, rewards, and disciplinary procedures act to ensure success for those who already possess capital, resulting in cultural reproduction (Levinson & Holland, 1996). School knowledge is internalized through “habitus” (a set of dispositions), and what appears to be natural and neutral are oppressive practices that are political and historical in nature (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 19). Gender, culture, and social class are aspects of the hierarchy that influence the social context; the sense that individuals make of a situation depends on their relative position in that social structure (Lemke, 1989). Mainstream dominant discourses such as those practiced by middle-class whites privilege those who have mastered particular ways of speaking and exclude those who have not (Gee, 1990). However, because humans are agents, they can respond to dominant discourses by adapting speech patterns to the dominant class (Foley, 1990), or by resisting, yet also reproducing, existing structures (Willis, 1977), or by reconstructing themselves within particular spaces (Dressman, 1997).

Power and Language in the Classroom

Power is the means through which social structures sort people, “the determining force that causes some people to get less and some more of whatever is considered desirable in a social world” (Lemert, 1997, p. 127). Ideological power, projecting one’s practices as universal and common sense, is exercised through discourse; those who have power can use coercion or consent to exercise and maintain power. Individuals make sense of their reality and social positions as the domains of the interactional, ideological, and local intersect through language and text. Although individuals occupy subject positions and are thus constrained by particular discoursal rights and obligations, as social agents they are also active and creative, combining discourse types to meet ever-changing situations. Therefore, “power is won, held, and lost in social struggles,” and “discourse is the site of power struggles” (Fairclough, 1989, p. 74).

Power is constituted through language at both the macrolevel of the institutions and within local classrooms. Classrooms have normative patterns or scripts for defining appropriate behaviors, and as cultural spaces, classrooms are the sites of tension and conflicting beliefs (Gutierrez, Baquedano-Lopez, & Turner, 1997). Oppressive practices can occur when teachers assume that students share the same cultural practices they do and impose their scripts on students. However, students can “re-key” the teacher script by creating a counterscript that disrupts the teacher’s (Gutierrez, Rymes, & Larson, 1995, p. 459). Although some re-keying is not successful because the teacher will not abandon the teacher script, other forms of disruption can result in the teacher and student meeting in a shared space: the “unscripted third space” (p. 459). This third space emerging from the conflict allows student inter...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Note From the Series Editors
• Review Board
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Situating Identity in Theory, Research, and Practice
• Chapter 2: Appropriation, Resistance, and Transformation in a Writing Workshop
• Chapter 3: Appropriating, Resisting, and Transforming Norms in a Literature-Based, Multiage Classroom
• Chapter 4: Appropriation, Resistance, and Transformation in Reading Workshop and Reading Renaissance
• Chapter 5: Understanding Students Within Their Social Contexts
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index