Black Girls’ Reading Motivations: Centering Their Perspectives and Experiences to Redefine a Hegemonic Construct

Abstract

This article addresses tensions between how researchers have conceptualized and operationalized adolescent reading motivation and how a group of Black girl readers perceive and enact reading motivation. Through a grounded theory approach, this qualitative study offers an initial exploration into mapping a race-reimaged reading motivation construct by centering the views, through artifact-elicited interviews, and experiences, through classroom observations, of a group of adolescent Black girl readers. Findings point to a need to reconceptualize reading motivation so that researchers and practitioners are equipped to recognize Black girls’ reading motivations.

Situative Black Girlhood Reading Motivations: Why and How Black Girls Read and Comprehend Text

“…I analyzed each year's data prior to the next year's data collection process. The data analysis between cycles focused on describing the participants' reading motivations [12,13,15]. To answer the research question, "How are relationships between Black girls' reading motivations and their reading comprehension evident in their reading engagement and enactments?"…”

“…Exploring racially, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse students' reading motivations through this framing limits our understanding of how readers are motivated and ignores additional nuance in the relationship between reading motivation and reading comprehension. In previous studies [12,13], Black girl readers have demonstrated distinct reading motivations, including meaning-oriented, collaborative, and liberatory reading motivations, that have not previously been represented in traditional reading motivation constructs.…”

“…Although there is limited research on Black girls' reading motivations [12,13,15], studies of their literacy practices have more broadly attended to constructs, such as selfefficacy [16] and value [17], that are consistently included as dimensions of reading motivation [11]. Self-efficacy answers the question, "Can I be a good reader?"…”

“…Elicitation techniques can also make the interview setting more comfortable and reduce power imbalances between the interviewer and the respondents, especially with adolescents who may feel that they are being tested on their ability to supply the right answers [45]. This iteration of the study, which is described in detail elsewhere [13], offered evidence that CTC participants were motivated to read to grow in their ability to make meaning with text (meaning-oriented reading motivation), be in community with others (collaborative reading motivation), and understand themselves, others, and society (liberatory reading motivation).…”

Providing Proximal Rewards: Rethinking Reading Rewards and Motivation

“…Another factor can be instructional practices that allow for little student choice in reading tasks and topics. Reading topics can lead to marginalizing those students whose motivation differs from that of the teacher (Jones, 2023). Reading can then seem inauthentic and thus lower intrinsic motivation.…”