The Key Bookstore
White paper
June 6, 2023 DRAFT
Abstract
It would be hard to understate the value of reading today. American and global society
depends on the flow of information and interactions with texts. Public schools commit
tremendous resources and energy to ensuring students develop necessary literacy skills
to survive and thrive socially and economically. The 2013 National Assessment of
Education Progress (NAEP) indicates some promising improvements among eighth-grade
readers, although overall literacy rates remain low (over fifty percent of grade eight
readers score below proficiency in reading in the US). The State of Connecticut passed a
“Right to Read Act” in 2021 to systematize instruction aligned with the science of
reading (Public Act No. 21-2). But reading happens at home and in the community as
well. The focus of this paper is to explore a community program that supports and
enhances schools’ efforts to develop a culture of reading, individual reading identity, and
the literacy achievement of children and adults, in and out of school.
Introduction
Reading and literacy serve multiple purposes. These include gathering information,
learning new information, exploring new ideas, and entertainment. Reading for understanding
is important. Reading for pleasure is important. Reading, although developed in script around
5,500 years ago (Wolf & Barillai, 2009), is a fundamental activity of being human. Before
alphabet texts, before visual texts, humans read bodies, faces, sensations, landscapes, weather,
signs (real and imagined), arcs of experiences, and memories. The process involved in reading
includes looking for patterns and oddities in the “text,” whether a facial expression, a sound, or
a feeling, and try to make sense of them both. It is how humans survive. It is how humans
organize and contextualize themselves in the world around them. “Reading the world thus
precedes reading the word “(Friere, 1983). Alphabet text is unique in that it preserves past
experiences and projects other possible experiences. With the invention of writing, humans can
virtually participate in anything they dream up. The ramifications for ongoing personal growth
and understanding are significant. Reading also gives a lot of pleasure. It is both functional and
entertaining.
Reading value
Academically, reading is important to success. There is a significant correlation between
reading comprehension and math and science learning reflected in the Programme for
International Student Assessment (PISA) (Akbash, et. al, 2016). Complex reading
comprehension is a good predictor of scholastic achievement (Meneghetti, et. al, 2006).
Reading capacity may be more predictive of success than parents’ occupation and special
education support (Savolainen, et. al, 2008). Reading attitude is also a significant predictor of
reading comprehension and academic achievement (Bastug, 2014). Reading is fundamental to
constructing meaning in a world defined by ready-access to information that requires constant
updating and downloading into one’s personal learning continuum (Pretorius, 2002).
In public schooling, learning to read is based on the five pillars of reading instruction and
learning: phonemic awareness, phonics, comprehension, fluency, and vocabulary. Along with
writing and numeracy, teaching kids to learn to read (and then read to learn) is the primary
charge of schools.
There are complex reasons why American schools do it well and not well (Frankel,
2016). In either case, school-based reading instruction typically falls short of attending to the
necessary conditions for reading, which include developing one’s own reading identity and
reading culture (Ripp, 2018). Reading identity and reading culture are hard to measure in any
standardized way, so they don’t make it into the Common Core State Standards or state-
mandated tests like the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) or Partnership for
Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), SAT, or ACT. But they are necessary
(Moje & Luke, 2009). Knowing oneself as a reader, the conditions under which one reads well
with intention, precede comprehension and understanding deep enough that it leads to action,
the literacy cycle.
Literacy
Literacy is a cycle that includes an expressive act following the reading proper, the
processing period in which one figures out the text (text includes alphabet, visual, auditory,
emotional, and tactile encounters). It is what you do with reading, not having read, that counts
(Gallagher, 2009). Consider fluency and comprehension, two pillars of reading instruction, as
measures of reading ability. In fluency, there is evidence a reader is gaining understanding of
the text as they read aloud, say, in their tone and rhythm of speech, indicating comprehension.
Lacking fluency, one might “read” words on a page by have little understanding of them, even
as they get to the end of a sentence they don’t know where they started. As a perpetual cycle,
literacy must include an actionable feature in the reader’s overall process whereby the reader
gains processed information from the reading—that is, correlating new knowledge gained in
reading against categories of past experience and knowledge—and follows with an expression
of either reinforced or new understanding in action: application or adaptation to present
knowledge.
Reading without action belies the functional purpose of any reading in the first place,
which is to gain deeper or new understanding. Even when the purpose is entertainment, one
reinforces and adapts to new circumstances that titillate the known.
Reading Culture and Reading Identity
Reading identity—what, where, when, why, and how one engages texts—considers the
contextual situation of the literacy acts in which one engages (Alvermann, 2001) and is evident
more in what one does with a reading than any sense of self (Gee, 2000). The context includes
reading culture—the background experience, values, and broad aims that bring one to a
literacy task in the first place—and the agency one exerts to participate in literacy activities.
Reading culture and reading identity are iterative; they flow back and forth. Identity is the
result of a discursive negotiation between conception of self and execution of self, of thinking
and doing, imagining and being. A lot of choice is involved (Frankel, 2016). With such agency in
play, reader identity influence engagement and motivation (Abodeeb-Gentile & Zawilinksi,
2013), which are vital to comprehension. Engagement and motivation parley into greater
chances of action, the inherent final stage of literacy, which includes internalizing new
information and adapting background knowledge, perceptions, and ways of knowing and doing
in the world.
Reading identity comprises how the literacy cycle is engaged:
Encounter text agency in selecting what, where, when, and why
Correlate with present knowledge
Process text apply the five pillars of reading instruction strategies in
consideration of why
Make a claim; formulate categorical correlatives in language
Expressions of text internalize, share, speak, and act, which may include
Adapting one’s thinking and way of knowing
Apply reinforced or new ways of knowing and doing
• Ask questions
• Infer
• Compare & contrast
• Synthesize
• Evaluate
These expressions of the text also take place in the processing of the text that lead to
comprehension, but following the reading they are recontextualized within and applied to the
readers’ world (Parker, 2022). Identities are constantly reforming (Hall, 2012). Cultural norms
reinforce and shift, readers’ contexts change, and personal needs and wants resituate readers’
approaches to texts and impact what, where, when, why, and how they engage. Or not.
As a gateway to knowledge and empowerment that has immeasurable value to build
and transform lives, literacy achievement is rightly at the forefront of educational efforts. When
we encounter research about its worth to students in school, we most often hear about
transactional benefits: students get better grades, students achieve well on standardized tests,
students do better in college, students get better jobs (Ladson-Billings 2021; Milner, 2015). But
it holds definitive power for the able reader beyond next-step academic and economic
achievement. Echoing Freire, Milner notes we can teach students “to critique, challenge, and
change the word and world they (will) live in” (87). Quality literacy development is
empowering.
Historical precedent
Reading culture and reading identity are keys to literacy development. There is historical
precedent for developing reading culture and reading identity outside of schooling proper in
the Black Literacy Societies popular through the turn of the nineteenth century. These societies
were locally formed reading and writing organizations that promoted literature, literacy, and
intellectual pursuits within the Black community (McHenry, 2002). Starting before the abolition
of slavery and building in popularity soon after, they played a significant role in the cultural,
intellectual, and social development of the Black community and provided space for Black
writers, thinkers, and artists to connect, share their work, and engage in critical discussions
about literature, history, and social issues. Literary associations gave formerly enslaved people
and their descendants access to “one way of definitively asserting a positive, learned identity
far removed from the intellectual poverty associated with slavery” (141). Learning and
improving one’s intellectual and empathic capacities for critical thinking, evaluation, synthesis,
and autonomy, of which reading is the most efficacious means to achieving, was highly
conscribed and thus highly prized during and soon after slavery. Every southern state but
Kentucky outlawed education for enslaved people prior to their emancipation. Literary societies
served as cultural and identity formation sites and platforms for fostering creativity, preserving
cultural heritage, and challenging systemic barriers faced by Black writers and creatives.
Between 1880 and 1920, literacy rates among Black Americans skyrocketed from thirty
percent to 80 percent, largely as a result of Black literary societies creating safe spaces for
engaging in readings and debates about multimodal texts (McHenry, 2002). What did they do to
be so successful? Motivation is inferentially evident. But other considerations are worth
exploration. For example, early Black Literary Societies focused on “the performative aspects of
literary learning,” that is, reading texts together and engaging in discourse around it (54). And
they made clear their aim was not merely accessing information through literacy. Participants
were expected to practice disciplining the mind to engage critical thinking. Freedom’s Journal,
the first Black American newspaper, “encouraged its readers to consider themselves and
assume the responsibilities of citizens” (101) and “to become active participants in the goals of
a national society by taking part in literary activities” (102). Literacy is a democratic act of
participant citizenship, and the collective value of shared discourse and development versus
individual competition becomes a feature element of reading culture. Empowering and
engendering agency are among the deepest values of reading culture, which are put into action
through literacy practices that culminate in shared expressions.
Gholdy Muhammad, educational researcher and lecturer on using Black Literacy
Societies as a framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy, credits the societies
with calibrating dreams and ideals (2020). “Within these organizations,” she says, “Black people
were taught self-discipline with a focus on making one’s heart open, loving, and pure” (24).
Reading events were referred to as “pursuits” (28), indicating they are procedural and not
terminal acts. Here is the core of a reading culture: self-discipline, collectivism, openness,
empowerment, and love.
One’s reading identity, as reflected in the literary societies of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, includes perseverance (self-discipline), persistent referential check with
the community (collectivism), willingness to change one’s mind (open-hearted and open-
mindedness), choice and autonomy (agency), and a lifelong commitment to learning for the
sake of oneself and one’s community (love). Muhammad concludes that the goal gleaned from
these societies is not to develop reading skill for the sake of reading prowess alone, to achieve
well on sequentially more challenging academic assessments that purportedly predict further
academic success and inferentially economic success, but for readers “to gain the confidence to
use learning as a personal and sociopolitical tool to thrive in this world and to help them know
themselves” (68). Structured community efforts to support reading instruction in schools can
take up these tenets of reading culture and reading identity to celebrate and appreciate
multiple perspectives, share and learn, and develop deepening love for reading as a personal
pursuit and as a joy.
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