Publication Date
12-2025
Abstract
The last 4 years of headlines describing the various book bans and curricular gag orders happening in the United States serve as an important context for P–12 teachers’ daily work. This article describes the findings from a qualitative survey that sought to understand what influences P–12 teachers’ text selection for teaching and for inclusion in their classroom library in the aforementioned context. Teachers reported stakeholders who held decision-making power as well as which stakeholders were influential in their text selection. Three overarching themes emerged from teachers’ most influential factors in their text selection: social and communal influences, literary content and value, and curriculum and planning. Critical sociocultural theory is used to interpret the findings, revealing P–12 teachers’ complex and sometimes conflicting perspectives between their text selection practices and national, state, and district politics. Additionally, the authors report how P–12 teachers’ beliefs and surveyed concerns can work as a form of censorship with or without accompanying book-banning legislation. The authors call for more political education about national, state, and district policies in teacher education as well as incorporating material for justifying and teaching BIPOC- and LGBTQ-authored texts in the discussion and implication section.
Recommended Citation
Svrcek, N. S., Colantonio-Yurko, K., & Miller, H. ". (2025). Teachers’ Perspectives on Text Selection in a Time of Book Bans and Censorship. Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts, 64 (3). Retrieved from https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/reading_horizons/vol64/iss3/4
