Creating Communities of Readers: A Study of Children's Information Networks as Multiple Contexts for Responding to Texts

Abstract

This case study explores the perspectives of a group of sixth-grade language arts students concerning their views of the contexts of reading and responding to books in school. The researcher took the role of participant-observer and characterizes this study as a qualitative interpretive case study. As participant-observer, the researcher collected data in the form of fieldnotes, interviews, and written responses; the researcher analyzed data using the constant comparison method. Results of the study indicated that in this setting children respond to texts differently in the contexts under which they read and write about books. There were four different classroom contexts for responding to books in school: "silent" reading, book selection, writing, and aesthetic activity. Three conclusions were drawn from the study and make up an emerging grounded theory: (a) Children respond to books in patterns specific to school contexts, (b) Classroom contexts for reading and responding to books are socially constructed through children's interactions, and (c) Children constructed a community of readers by interacting with one another to respond to books in socially constructed contexts serving as information networks.This study was inspired first by my own love of books and reading and second, by the work of Galda (1988) who suggests that readers' responses to books are influenced by the nature of the reader, the text, and the context. We seem to know more about readers and texts than we do contexts for responding to books. Specifically, there seems to be a need for an investigation of the social construction of the contexts for reading and responding to books. Thus, this study was conducted to 379

Transitions to the Conventional: An Examination of a First Grader's Composing Process

“…More recently, researchers have investigated the social nature of young children's writing, asking how the dynamics of classroom culture and the worlds outside of school enable, shape, and constrain writing, as well as how children use writing as one of many symbolic systems to negotiate their social worlds and form communities of writers and readers (Brock, 1990;Dyson, 1989Dyson, ,1991Goodman & Wilde, 1992;Guice, 1995;MacGillivray, 1994;Rowe, 1989Rowe, ,1994. Young children's appropriation of various written genres and topics for different audiences and social purposes has also been investigated (Chapman, 1996b;Dyson, 1992), as well as their appropriation and manipulation of popular culture (Dyson, 1997) to construct their identities and to deal with issues of power and social relationships.…”