Publication Date
3-2018
Abstract
What are indicators, or markers, of ‘inclusive’ reading classrooms? As elementary school teachers across the United States are increasingly required to teach reading to diverse, heterogenous groups of students within the same classroom space, practitioners and researchers seek to identify what constitutes 'inclusion' in reading instruction. This study explores how two fourth grade friends – one labeled ‘struggling’ and one labeled ‘average’ by normative reading assessments – transgress classroom expectations around quiet, leveled reading behaviors while also facilitating each other’s inclusion in the classroom reading community. Combining ethnographic methods and D/discourse analysis, this study explores the dominant cultural Discourses that circulated and shaped local meanings of reading and ability created by the students and teacher. Taking notice of the students’ engagement with texts and each other, the focal teacher builds official curricula inspired from their ‘clandestine’ and ‘transgressive’ interactions. Implications from the data suggest that practitioner research, where teachers study students’ discourse, could help teachers design more inclusive opportunities for literate engagement.
Recommended Citation
Coakley-Fields, M. R. (2018). Markers of an “Inclusive” Reading Classroom: Peers Facilitating Inclusion at the Margins of a Fourth Grade Reading Workshop. Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts, 57 (1). Retrieved from https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/reading_horizons/vol57/iss1/3
Included in
Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Disability and Equity in Education Commons, Elementary Education Commons, Language and Literacy Education Commons
