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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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