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Literacy Partners
by Kierstin Giunco, Christine Leighton, and Kayla Balthazar
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Kierstin Giunco, literacy teacher at a Boston independent school, is interested in fostering critical thinking through representative curriculum. Christine Leighton, Associate Professor of Education at Emmanuel College, is interested in collaborating with teachers to foster literacy development in multilingual and multiracial classrooms. Kayla Balthazar, preservice teacher at Emmanuel College, is interested in cultivating diverse learning environments. This work was funded by the 2019 MRA Sylvia D. Brown Scholarship.
Nineteen fifth-grade students sat in a circle participating in a guided read aloud led by their teacher, Kierstin. Kierstin selected Fish in a Tree (Hunt, 2015) as a way to help students make personal connections to the protagonist, a fifth grader who found reading challenging. Students seemed engaged with the text, and then, Keon (all student names are pseudonyms), a student of color, raised his hand and asked, “Is the main character Black?” During the subsequent discussion, Kierstin realized that despite her efforts to use texts students would find relevant, she needed more selections that incorporated students’ racial and cultural backgrounds. She decided to make this a top priority. Kierstin knew literature should provide opportunities to learn about others and reflect students’ backgrounds and cultures. In reviewing her texts, she realized they still mostly featured White main characters, as do many books in U.S. classroom libraries (Gangi, 2008). As she started searching for more representative options, she came across wonderful titles, but found they were only in stock in the outskirts of the city’s libraries. Thus, Kierstin was left knowing the right next step but thwarted by lack of accessibility to culturally representative texts so essential to reading comprehension, development, and engagement. This study explains her efforts to resolve this problem of practice.
Perspective
This work is grounded in the belief that “the matter of what students read is a make-or-break
dimension of literacy-based learning” (Ivey, 2010, p. 20). Teachers’ decisions around text selection matter for students’ literacy outcomes because students are more likely to be engaged when
reading text they find relevant (Ivey & Johnston, 2017; Feger, 2006). This is consequential given that reading engagement predicts reading achievement and mediates other factors such as opportunity gaps associated with lower socio-economic status (Guthrie, J.T., Schafer, W. D., & Huang, C., 2001). Reading engagement is a complex and multidimensional construct. Engaged readers are often defined as “motivated to read, strategic in their approaches to comprehending what they read, knowledgeable in their construction of meaning from the text, and socially interactive” (Guthrie, Wigfield, & Yu, 2012, p. 602). Research often focuses on behavioral, cognitive and emotional components of overall academic engagement (e.g., Fredericks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004), exploring how students participate, exert effort, and react to texts and tasks. Agentic engagement, students’ intentional efforts to influence the flow of instruction, recently has been validated as a fourth aspect of engagement (Reeve, 2013; Reeve & Tseng, 2011). Moreover, students display their engagement, including reading engagement, within complex social contexts (Ivey & Johnston, 2013), highlighting the essential role teachers play in creating instructional spaces and selecting relevant texts that allow students to work together to deeply engage with reading. Children need access to two types of books, window and mirror texts, as coined by Bishop (1990/2015). The former allows students opportunities to learn about others, while the latter allows them to see themselves in the books they are reading. Gangi (2008) found White students have a higher probability of finding mirror texts in classroom libraries than students of color creating unequal opportunities for students to make the personal connections so imperative to reading proficiency (Gangi, 2008) and personal growth (Ivey & Johnston, 2017). To provide equity, teachers must ensure there are numerous culturally relevant texts in the classroom. Teachers should consider several
factors when selecting these texts including: (a) character’s ethnicity, age, gender, language background; (b) setting in regards to location/ time; (c) text genre, and; (d) reader’s background/experiences (Ebe, 2012). These selections need to be wide ranging as teachers cannot always predetermine what a student may find relevant (Ivey & Johnston, 2017). Additionally, the text genres available to students play an equally important role (McNair, 2016). Often, texts teachers consider culturally representative are classified as historical fiction; but, if students primarily see themselves reflected in past events their current and future potential are limited (Gangi, 2008). Rather than seeing themselves within Black History Month collections and depictions of oppression (Gangi, 2008), students need to see themselves in varying contexts and settings more relevant to their daily lives. Moreover, teachers must ensure that their selections allow students to see themselves as
professionals in various settings across all socioeconomic groups (McNair, 2016).
When students read culturally responsive texts their literacy outcomes increase. For example, Ebe (2010) found that when third-grade students were provided two stories of equitable reading levels, student comprehension was higher with the culturally relevant texts. This occurred because students were able to create meaning better aligned with the story when they had parallel experiences; as students’ reading proficiency grew so did their ability to transfer these skills to new texts. Additionally, Feger (2006) found ninth-and tenthgrade students demonstrated critical reflections and higher levels of self-efficacy when they read culturally relevant texts, leading to higher text-totext connections and engagement. Moreover, teaching with culturally relevant texts is interwoven with culturally relevant pedagogies that emphasize group collaboration (Gangi, 2008). Teachers who prioritize meaningful student conversation grounded in representative texts enable students to make deeper personal connections; increasing student engagement, comprehension, and, in turn, higher levels of critical thinking (Ebe, 2012, Feger, 2006, Ivey & Johnston, 2017,). Through these interactions, students’ social imagination is activated and empathy is transferred to their daily lives (Ivey & Johnston, 2017). Teachers are essential members of these conversations as they facilitate deeper analysis and further conversation (Ivey & Johnston, 2017). These conversations are fruitful in-person (Ivey & Johnston, 2017), as well as remotely through dialogue journals (Feger, 2006). With this in mind, Kierstin set out to explore her students’ academic engagement during instruction that prioritized the use of culturally responsive texts, student choice, and peer collaboration. She applied for the 2019 MRA Sylvia D. Brown Scholarship and received funding to purchase a wide selection of culturally representative texts for these purposes. Her research questions were: ● In what ways do students demonstrate engagement when provided daily opportunities to read, write, and discuss representative texts of their choice with a literacy partner? ● How do their classroom interactions align with their own understanding of their engagement during literacy instruction?
Methods
Context
This study took place in a fifth-grade English Language Arts (ELA) classroom in an independent urban Catholic PreK-6 school, serving 213 students (138 Black, 63 Multiracial, 7 White, 1 Asian, 4 unknown) with 21.5% Hispanic and 2% English learners. The fifth--grade classroom included 19 students ranging in age from 10 years, 6 months to 11 years, 6 months. Instruction occurred daily for 75 minutes.
Participants
At the time of the study, Kierstin, a licensed elementary teacher, was the fourth- through sixth-
Table 1.
Exemplar Texts
Genre Title
Biography Brown Girl Dreaming
Realistic Fiction Amina’s Voice
Sports Fiction
Mystery Stat Schooled
Mr. Chickee’s Funny Money
Fantasy Black Panther: The Young Prince
Historical Fiction Inside Out and Back Again
Graphic Novel Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur Author
Jacqueline Woodson
Hena Khan
Amar’e Stoudemire
Christopher Paul Curtis
Ronald L. Smith
Thanhha Lai
Amy Reeder
grade ELA teacher. This was her second year teaching and her first year teaching fifth grade. Kayla was a former elementary school teacher, an associate professor of education at a partnering college, and served as Kierstin’s literacy coach. Fourteen of the nineteen students received
parental consent to participate in the larger study, and four students were purposefully selected for this analysis based on the range of engagement Kierstin saw during whole-class instruction prior to the study. Keon frequently demonstrated academic engagement during whole-class instruction and Reina showed consistent
engagement during small-group instruction, while their self-selected literacy partners, Aaron and Briana, were less visibly engaged during both participant structures.
Instruction
The Sylvia D. Brown Scholarship was used to purchase two copies of 63 culturally representative texts. Genres included fantasy, biography, poetry, graphic novels and historical fiction; yet, the highest quantity of texts were realistic fiction. Kierstin asked students to list three literacy partners they thought would encourage them to be productive; she then matched students to one partner on their list. Texts were grouped by topic (e.g., entrepreneurship, friendship, coming of age, adventure) into bins for students to explore with their partners and then indicate their top three choices. Table 1 includes the books that Kierstin’s
students marked as high interest. The pairs met to establish expectations for reading their text and create a teacher-approved reading schedule. Over six weeks, students independently read their texts and discussed them with their literacy partners through journals and discussions.
Data Sources
Data sources included partner journals,
partner discussions, and student interviews.
Partner Journals
During the unit, students wrote back and forth with their literacy partner about their reading using a framework adapted from Feger’s (2006) teacherstudent dialogue journals. Students were asked to write a minimum of: one sentence responding to their partner’s question, four sentences responding to their reading, and one question for their partner to answer. After six weeks, Keon, Briana, and Reina had five entries each, and Aaron had three due to absences. We dropped Keon’s fourth journal entry from analysis, as it repeated his third entry since Aaron had not yet responded. Thus, we analyzed their three exchanges, as well as a final entry for Keon. Reina and Briana had five exchanges, but the last was at the unit’s end when they started to read a new text. Reina had only read a chapter and Briana had not yet read it so they discussed their previous books. We dropped this exchange, resulting in four entries each for analysis.
Partner Discussions
Once a week, students discussed their reading with their partner in a minimally teacher-directed dialogue for approximately 10 minutes. Due to issues with technology, not all discussions could be adequately described and needed to be dropped from analysis. We were able to transcribe and analyze two partner discussions between Keon and Aaron and three between Reina and Briana.
Interviews
Adapted from an interview protocol from Toppel (2015), Kayla interviewed participants at the end of the unit. Students were asked about their
hobbies/interests, topics they enjoyed reading/ writing about, their literacy strengths and weaknesses, and their preferred way to work with others (e.g., small groups, partners, whole class). All interviews were transcribed.
Data Analysis
Partner journals and transcribed discussions were collaboratively coded by the three authors to benefit from their varying professional backgrounds (i.e., classroom teacher, education faculty, pre-service teacher) and to reach agreement via collaboration and discussion (Smagorinsky, 2008). Guided by Reeve (2013), we defined engagement as including behavioral, agentic, cognitive, and emotional aspects and created a coding scheme and scale related to these four aspects (See Table 2). Analysis took place in several phases. First, journals and discussions were reviewed for evidence of engagement and, if present, were coded for the type of engagement. Next, students received a score (0-3) for behavioral, agentic, and cognitive engagement; and emotional engagement was coded as being present or absent. To triangulate the findings, the authors collaboratively coded interviews and noted statements that demonstrated behavioral, agentic, cognitive, and emotional engagement.
Results
Academic Engagement
In the section that follows we explore results
Table 2.
Engagement Codebook
Engagement Type Characteristics Scale
Behavioral
Agentic
Cognitive
Emotional ● Follows directions ● Completes the task ● Goes beyond the assignment demands 0: does not follow directions at all and does not complete task 1: follows most of the directions and completes the task 2: follows all directions and completes the task 3: completes the task and goes beyond directions
● Expresses needs/wants, interests, preferences, and opinions ● Asks questions to help learn ● Requests help when they need it 0: no expression of agency 1: some expressions of agency in one category but only as they relate to task completion 2: expressions of agency in several categories related to task completion 3: strong expressions of agency that go beyond task demands
● Connects what they are learning with own life ● Fits different ideas together to make sense ● Tries to relate to what they already know ● Makes up own examples to help understand 0: no demonstration of cognitive engagement 1: some expressions of cognitive engagement in one category but only as they relate to task completion 2: expressions of cognitive engagement in several categories related to task completion 3: strong expressions of cognitive engagement that go beyond task demands
● Demonstrates interest, enjoyment, self-efficacy, and involvement ● Finds task to be fun Present: Finds task to be enjoyable or fun Absent: Does not find the task to be enjoyable or fun
related to our first research question: In what ways do students demonstrate engagement when provided daily opportunities to read, write, and discuss representative texts of their choice with a literacy partner? We will describe how the participants demonstrated engagement during partner journals and partner discussions, reporting findings first for Aaron and Keon, and then Reina and Briana.
Aaron and Keon
During the unit, Keon and Aaron read one book, Black Panther: Young Prince (Smith, 2018). In Tables 3, 4, and 5 we explain their engagement in partner journals and partner discussions.
Partner Journals
Table 3 displays engagement scores across their entries. Overall, Aaron displayed lower engagement scores in his first two entries, but by the last entry he met expectations in behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement. Across the entries, Keon met and exceeded expectations around behavioral and agentic engagement and
varied in his cognitive engagement. Both demonstrated emotional engagement in their later entries.
Aaron had lower instances of agentic engagement, but consistently high levels of behavioral engagement. Aaron’s first entry shows his inclination to list plot points, indicating some cognitive engagement in terms of connecting ideas, but mostly highlights his behavioral engagement as he expands upon the length requirement: i have been reading about how t’chala and his dad are going to america. And i learned that in the book t’challas grandfather is still alive. In the book i have been reading about how t'challa and mbaku are really good friends and they usually like to play in the forest of wakanda.
By his last entry, Aaron demonstrated higher scores for cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement. Despite consistent surface level errors in mechanics and spelling, his full entry goes beyond task expectations with a longer length, expresses anticipation for reading more, and synthesizes events to make sense of the plot. Yet, he does not demonstrate agency as he is not expressing interests, asking questions, or steering the conversation. The following excerpt highlights his emotional engagement. im not that far because of all the days im mist [missed] but i can’t wait to get to that part. Im at the part were mbaku joined that basketball team. Mbaku is a automatic bucket…. Im my mind i froze as i read. He shot and… Swish!
Keon’s journals showed high levels of agentic and behavioral engagement across the entries, while he fluctuated in cognitive engagement. Keon’s second entry shows his consistent agentic engagement as he expresses interest, asks questions, and steers the conversation. Nice, tell me what you have been reading. Ialso saw about how t’challa's grandfather is alive. It’s crazy because in the movie he doesn’t have a grandfather so the book is way
Table 3.
Journals of Aaron and Keon
Engagement Type Journal 1 Journal 2 Journal 3 Journal 4
Behavioral
Agentic
Cognitive
Emotional Aaron Keon Aaron Keon Aaron Keon Aaron Keon
2 3 2 3 3 3 N/A 3
1 3 0 3 1 3 N/A 3
1 2 1 2 2 1 N/A 3
Absent Absent Absent Present Present Present N/A Present
different than the movie. What do you think about t’challa's grandfather? Do you think he will protect t’challa or betrayed him like t’challa’s cousin did? . . . So far I love this book
and it fits me really well. What about you? Additionally, he is excited about the book’s content, demonstrating his emotional engagement, and the full entry exceeds length expectation, highlighting his typical behavioral engagement. While he does connect to background knowledge about the movie, demonstrating some level of cognitive engagement, he received a score of 2 because other cognitive areas were absent, such as connecting events in the text and creating his own examples.
Partner Discussions
Aaron and Keon’s discussions show different
patterns than their journals (See Table 4). For example, Aaron’s discussion demonstrated engagement across all domains, including agentic
Table 4.
Discussions
Engagement Type Discussion 1 Discussion 2
Aaron Keon Aaron Keon
Behavioral 3 3 2 2
Agentic 3 3 2 2
Cognitive 3 3 2 3
Emotional Present Present Present Present engagement. Keon exhibited engagement consistently in the four areas, displaying higher engagement during discussions. In the following interaction from their first discussion, Kierstin, overheard Keon and Aaron debating a plot point, and she helped guide them to turn back to the text. Keon shows cognitive engagement as he tries to fit ideas together, and Aaron exhibits agentic engagement as he continually redirects Keon to his evidence.
Keon: That doesn’t mean it’s a race.
Aaron: No watch.
Keon: That doesn’t mean it’s a race.
Aaron: Cause look at it, I could tell it was a race because he said [reads excerpt from text]... Keon: You hear that, you hear that? So the foe is actually an enemy. Aaron: Yes but his enemy–Keon: And it doesn’t mean, just cause it says he gasped for air doesn’t mean it’s a race. And it actually says that he caught him...so explain to me why you think it’s a race? Aaron: Because it says his foe [reads excerpt from text]. While their second discussion still met task
demands and demonstrated engagement in all four areas, the first discussion resulted in higher scores. This was because Aaron was mostly focused on trying to figure out the meaning of a word, and when Keon did not know the answer, he turned the conversation back to the race-or-fight debate. This is shown in the excerpt below. Aaron: A-ver-ting
Keon: So you have a question? Aaron: Yes, it says in page... Keon: Page what? Aaron: Eleven, it says, “averting his gaze from the king. ” Keon: Oh, on page eleven I wrote something too. I wrote, I actually don’t know what averting means, but umm... you were right Aaron, when you said it was a race... it says it on the next page after.
Summary
Keon and Aaron seemed to demonstrate
higher levels of engagement in all four areas during their partner discussions. This mode allowed them to collaborate to actively construct meaning from the text. Discussions allowed for “online”
responses around text evidence, plot and vocabulary, particularly since the time between journal entries was prolonged due to Aaron’s absences. The format seemed to be a better way for Aaron to demonstrate agency through his efforts at steering the conversation, while Keon’s cognitive engagement encouraged them to dive back into the texts.
Reina and Briana
During the unit, Reina and Briana finished three books, Inside Out and Back Again (Lai, 2011), and two from the Jada Jones (Lyons, 2017) series.
Partner Journals
Table 5 displays engagement scores across the four exchanges. Overall, Reina and Briana displayed emotional engagement throughout their entries. They were also both behaviorally engaged, with Reina always exceeding the task requirements. Reina displayed agentic and cognitive engagement more consistently than Briana. Reina demonstrated cognitive engagement across entries usually exceeding expectations. She often connected ideas, related events to her own life, made up her own examples to help solidify understanding, and read strategically by making
Table 5.
Journals of Briana and Reina
Engagement Type Journal 1 Journal 2 Journal 3 Journal 4
Briana Reina Briana Reina Briana Reina Briana Reina
Behavioral
Agentic
Cognitive
Emotional 3 3 2 3 2 3 3 3
1 2 1 2 1 3 2 2
2 2 2 3 1 3 3 3
Present Present Present Present Present Present Present Present
predictions. She asked Briana questions and expressed her opinions, demonstrating agentic engagement in service of meeting task demands. An excerpt from her third entry highlights this
engagement. I am happy that we finished 3 books. What book did you like out of the 3 we read? I like
Inside out and Out again the most…. I can relate, because it was the first day of [afterschool program]. I thought everyone was talking in a different language. Until I got to be friends with people in my class. Then I heard a rumor that I and my friends knew about. Then I put a stop to it. I hope the next book is a good book!
Briana’s journals, however, showed varied cognitive engagement and minimal agentic engagement. Briana’s fourth entry exceeded expectations for length and displayed her frequent emotional engagement. In this entry, she demonstrated cognitive engagement as she related text events to her own life, connected ideas, and created her own examples. However, there was limited display of agentic engagement as she did not ask questions to help steer the conversation. Briana: I am so glad that we finished the book!!! When we get new books we always finish our book so i think we should keep it up the good work. I am so curious to see what we are going to read next. Now i really love Jada
Jones books they are really good... I really want to have a sleepover now because they are so fun i was really hoping that if the science trick worked we would be able to see it but it did
not and that fine…
Partner Discussions
Reina and Briana’s first partner discussions displayed some engagement, while the second and third demonstrated limited engagement (See Table 6). In their first discussion both students were behaviorally engaged, making sure they each took turns and explicitly referenced their notes as was
Table 6.
Discussions
Engagement Type Discussion 1 Discussion 2 Discussion 3
Briana Reina Briana Reina Briana Reina
Behavioral 2 2 0 0 1 1
Agentic 3 1 N/A N/A N/A 2
Cognitive 2 2 N/A N/A N/A 1
Emotional Present Absent N/A N/A Present Present
required. They were also cognitively engaged in connecting the ideas in the text to construct meaning together. That said, Reina did not display emotional or agentic engagement, unlike her journal entries. In contrast, Briana showed agentic engagement we did not see in her journals when she expressed opinions about her favorite quotes. She stated, “Can I go first actually? So what I wrote on my notecard… There was this quote that I absolutely love, it’s called ‘they tease you because they adore you.’ That’s good to know if you’re getting bullied.” After their first discussion, they began reading new self-selected texts featuring less complex plots, and the resulting discussions were less rich. The second discussion received a behavioral
engagement score of 0 and the third discussion, although slightly better, showed less engagement across the four areas. At times, presumably since their current texts did not have enough to discuss, their conversations would revert back to questions about their first text.
Summary
Overall, Reina and Briana displayed higher engagement during their journals than their discussions. During the journals, Reina and Briana were frequently emotionally engaged and posed several questions to each other (e.g., “If you lived somewhere and there was a war happening and you had to go somewhere, would you be scared being in a new community?”). This appeared to allow them to cognitively and behaviorally engage as they were relating and synthesizing ideas and constructing meaning together. Thus, the journals seemed to be more successful in fostering their engagement. Interestingly, the first discussion with the highest scores for engagement was also the discussion during which Briana was emotionally engaged in discussing her favorite quotes. This was also the first time Briana agentically engaged at a high level. This suggests the importance of emotional engagement, particularly for Briana.
Students’ Perspectives
In the section that follows, we will explore results related to our second research question: How do the literacy partners’ classroom interactions align with their own understanding of their engagement during literacy instruction? We will present results for each student, describing responses from the student interviews and how they aligned with results from the journals and discussions.
Aaron
During his interview, Aaron made comments that related to agency in terms of his preferences and opinions. He stated that he enjoyed partner and small-group discussions over whole-class discussions because he could more easily “hear other people’s ideas” and build on those thoughts. He stated his favorite texts to read were action
books and comic books; thus, his work with a partner and their text choice aligned with his preferences and interests. In regard to behavioral engagement, Aaron expressed a desire to push himself to read more challenging texts, and he self-identified vocabulary
as an area of weakness when meeting task demands. He states, “Yeah. I think I challenged myself with Black Panther because it has like a bunch of words I don’t know yet.” During discussions he focused on determining the meaning of unknown vocabulary with Keon. Although he did not make any comments that directly related to cognitive engagement in his interview, we observed that his desire to push himself to meet task demands allowed him to
better understand his text.
Aaron also indicated understanding of his own emotional engagement and its importance in reading, when he stated a need to “find more joy in books.” When looking at his scores, it appears other engagement areas were higher when he was emotionally engaged.
Keon
With respect to agency, Keon stated any participant structure was fine with him, as long as he could frequently participate, expressing his desire to state opinions and share his understanding. He discussed his interest in basketball and explicitly linked this to the book he was reading. The text selection and partner work seemed to align well with his interest in content and frequent participation. His comments indicated that he viewed peer discussion to contribute to his learning aligning with cognitive engagement. He stated, “We all get to discuss what we think about this part… and all combine it and [understand] different things.” He exhibited higher cognitive scores in discussion, which aligns with his preference for group collaboration. In regard to behavioral engagement, Keon exhibited high self-efficacy and describes himself as never giving up, especially when he is in “the zone.”
Reina
Reina’s interview shows a close connection
between her agentic and behavioral engagement. With respect to agency, Reina states that she prefers adventures and mysteries, aligning with her text choices. Reina expressed a preference for small-group work over partner work, explaining she got distracted when working with a good friend. She shared that during partner discussions, they would start with difficult questions but over time she would reuse the questions. She also showed agency in her note-taking strategies, stating in her interview that she would not use the required sticky notes for the discussion because she remembered plot points on her own. However, these notes may have helped lead her to new questions rather than reusing old ones. These comments may explain her lower behavioral engagement scores during partner discussions. Reina stated that she enjoyed making predictions and highlighting interesting parts in reading, which align to cognitive engagement. She explained that they “were all eager… we were like oh my gosh, let’s find out what was next! [The teacher] didn’t even know we continued reading.” During her interview, she commented on the political climate of her native country, stating “sometimes I feel like from an unknown country.
That we’re surviving a lot of wars.” Although she does not explicitly explain the connection, what she stated about her own life mirrors the main
character’s situation from Inside Out and Back Again (Lai, 2011). This comment also demonstrates her emotional engagement as she discussed how eager they were to keep reading.
Briana
With respect to agency, Briana was interested in reading about other people’s lives, aligning well with her partner texts, and she expressed a preference for small-group work. She explained a preference to work in small groups so she could collaborate with several peers and deepen her learning. Thus, working with just a partner may have limited her opportunities to engage in the way that worked best for her.
She goes on to explain that during partner journals, “I can take off some of her ideas, whatever she wrote and think what she’s thinking of and put it to what I think of.” As there is more time to process and consider ideas in writing, this could explain her journals’ higher behavioral scores, which allowed her to meet the task demands more readily. This comment also reflected her cognitive engagement and how she socially constructed meaning with others; a task she seemed to more easily accomplish during journals. The importance of emotional engagement for Briana is clear. During the interview, she described a time before this study when she was asked to read a text, but she explained, “I didn’t want to read it at all… so I just didn’t read it. Like I read some of it, but it got boring.” It appears that if she is not emotionally engaged with a text, Briana will avoid the task altogether. At the same time, during this study when she was emotionally engaged, such as when she wanted to share a meaningful quote, she displayed agentic engagement not usually observed.
Summary
The interviews confirmed that, overall, students were reading texts that they found emotionally engaging. The interviews also provided insight into students’ success and struggles with participant structures (e.g., small group, partner, whole class). Aaron preferred hearing others’ ideas, specifically those that enhanced his vocabulary acquisition, while Keon preferred more frequent talk turns that allowed him to share more ideas. This made the partner discussions a fruitful way for them to interact with the text. In contrast, Reina found working with a partner, particularly a friend, distracting, while Briana depended on processing time and emotional engagement. Thus, their journals allowed for a less distracting space to make more personal and emotional connections.
Discussion
We set out to explore student engagement when provided daily opportunities to read, write, and discuss self-selected culturally representative texts with a partner and how these interactions aligned with students’ own understanding of their engagement. Through analysis of partner journals
and discussions and student interviews, three main themes emerged around text selection, literacy tasks, and participant structures. First, text selection played a crucial role in fostering student engagement. We found that students demonstrated high levels of engagement when they were matched with texts that aligned with their interests and which included
multicultural and multilingual main characters. For example, Reina connected her text with her culture; while Briana connected the same text to her
experiences with bullies. These students were emotionally connected with characters based on their parallel experiences aligning with previous research (e.g., Ebe, 2010). That said, we found interest was not enough; these texts also had to be challenging. Reina and Briana’s second and third texts represented their cultural backgrounds but were less complex than their first selection. While they were able to emotionally engage with all these books, there was less cognitive engagement when they were discussing and writing about simpler texts. This may explain Reina reusing questions during discussions. In sum, representation of cultural relevance and interest must be considered
to increase opportunities for emotional and agentic engagement. Yet, text complexity must also be considered to provide ample opportunities for cognitive engagement and rich partner collaboration.
Second, allowing varied ways for students to interact with texts (e.g., journals, small-group or partner discussions) provides a fuller picture of student engagement. Keon and Aaron found greater engagement in discussions, while Briana and Reina discovered greater engagement in journals. As Kierstin monitored engagement, she was able to facilitate these interactions more
strategically. When monitoring one discussion, Kierstin perceived Keon and Aaron’s behavioral engagement was lowering but that their emotional engagement was high. In response, she inquired about their conversation and facilitated a debate
about a moment in the text. When monitoring journals, Kierstin noted Briana’s requirement for emotional engagement so she suggested reflection on important quotes that connected to her life in discussion. From this teacher facilitation and
monitoring, their discussion was more engaged with the conversation about quotes being their highest rated discussion. Students’ preferences around partner, smallgroup, and whole-class work makes a difference in their engagement with literacy texts and tasks. Keon wanted to build upon peers’ ideas and be an active contributor to this meaning making and Aaron desired a partner or small-group setting to hear multiple ideas and perspectives. This made the partner work a great fit for them. Briana and Reina did not like the partner work for discussions due to higher distractions and fewer opportunities to hear other thoughts. When reflecting on this, Kierstin realized that if she had known her students’
preferred participant structure and the reason for this, she could have made varied instructional decisions. She could have kept Briana and Reina in
partner journals, but allowed for small-group discussions for higher levels of engagement. It is important to note this study was conducted in one classroom with a small sample size; thus findings cannot be easily generalized. That said, findings offer insights into how teachers can use culturally relevant and complex texts, varied tasks, and group collaboration to foster engagement. Doing so may create more equity in instruction and, in turn, better support students’ literacy development.
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