Re-Reading Families: The Literate Lives of Urban Children, Four Years Later (Practitioner Inquiry)

156 Pages·2007·0.8 MB·English

by  Catherine Compton-Lilly

The Practitioner Inquiry Series
Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan L. Lytle, SERIES EDITORS
ADVISORY BOARD: JoBeth Allen, Judy Buchanan, Robert Fecho,
Susan Florio-Ruane, Sarah Freedman, Karen Gallas, Andrew Gitlin,
Dixie Goswami, Peter Grimmett, Gloria Ladson-Billings,
Sarah Michaels, Susan Noffke, Marsha Pincus, Marty Rutherford,
Lynne Strieb, Carol Tateishi, Diane Waff, Ken Zeichner
Re-Reading Families: Regarding Children’s Words: Teacher
The Literate Lives of Urban Children, Research on Language and Literacy
Four Years Later BROOKLINE TEACHER
CATHERINE COMPTON-LILLY RESEARCHER SEMINAR
"What About Rose?" Using Teacher Rural Voices: Place-Conscious
Research to Reverse School Failure Education and the Teaching of Writing
SMOKEY WILSON ROBERT E. BROOKE, Editor
Immigrant Students and Literacy:
Teaching Through the Storm:
Reading, Writing, and Remembering
A Journal of Hope
GERALD CAMPANO
KAREN HALE HANKINS
Going Public with Our Teaching:
Reading Families:
An Anthology of Practice
The Literate Lives of Urban Children
THOMAS HATCH,
CATHERINE COMPTON-LILLY
DILRUBA AHMED, ANN LIEBERMAN,
Narrative Inquiry in Practice: Advancing
DEBORAH FAIGENBAUM,
the Knowledge of Teaching
MELISSA EILER WHITE, &
NONA LYONS &
DÉSIRÉE H. POINTER MACE, Editors
VICKI KUBLER LaBOSKEY, Editors
Teaching as Inquiry:
Learning from Teacher Research
Asking Hard Questions to Improve
Practice and Student Achievement JOHN LOUGHRAN, IAN MITCHELL, &
JUDIE MITCHELL, Editors
ALEXANDRA WEINBAUM,
DAVID ALLEN, TINA BLYTHE, Writing to Make a Difference: Classroom
KATHERINE SIMON, STEVE SEIDEL, & Projects for Community Change
CATHERINE RUBIN CHRIS BENSON & SCOTT CHRISTIAN
with DIXIE GOSWAMI &
“Is This English?” Race, Language, and
WALTER H. GOOCH, Editors
Culture in the Classroom
BOB FECHO Starting Strong: A Different Look at
Children, Schools, and Standards
Teacher Research for Better Schools
PATRICIA F. CARINI
MARIAN M. MOHR, COURTNEY
ROGERS, BETSY SANFORD, MARY ANN Because of the Kids: Facing Racial and
NOCERINO, MARION S. MacLEAN, & Cultural Differences in Schools
SHEILA CLAWSON JENNIFER E. OBIDAH &
KAREN MANHEIM TEEL
Imagination and Literacy: A Teacher’s
Search for the Heart of Learning Ethical Issues in Practitioner Research
KAREN GALLAS JANE ZENI, Editor
(continued)
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Practitioner Inquiry Series titles, continued
Action, Talk, and Text: Learning and Teacher/Mentor:
Teaching Through Inquiry A Dialogue for Collaborative Learning
GORDON WELLS, Editor PEG GRAHAM,
SALLY HUDSON-ROSS,
Teaching Mathematics to the New
CHANDRA ADKINS,
Standards: Relearning the Dance
PATTI MCWHORTER, &
RUTH M. HEATON
JENNIFER MCDUFFIE STEWART, Eds.
Teacher Narrative as Critical Inquiry:
Teaching Other People’s Children:
Rewriting the Script
Literacy and Learning in a Bilingual
JOY S. RITCHIE & DAVID E. WILSON
Classroom
From Another Angle: Children’s
CYNTHIA BALLENGER
Strengths and School Standards
Teaching, Multimedia, and Mathematics:
MARGARET HIMLEY with
Investigations of Real Practice
PATRICIA F. CARINI, Editors
MAGDALENE LAMPERT &
Unplayed Tapes: A Personal History of
DEBORAH LOEWENBERG BALL
Collaborative Teacher Research
John Dewey and the Challenge of
STEPHEN M. FISHMAN &
Classroom Practice
LUCILLE MCCARTHY
STEPHEN M. FISHMAN &
Inside City Schools: Investigating
LUCILLE MCCARTHY
Literacy in the Multicultural Classroom
“Sometimes I Can Be Anything”:
SARAH WARSHAUER FREEDMAN,
Power, Gender, and Identity in a
ELIZABETH RADIN SIMONS, JULIE
SHALHOPE KALNIN, ALEX Primary Classroom
CASARENO, & the M-CLASS TEAMS KAREN GALLAS
Class Actions: Teaching for Social Justice
Learning in Small Moments:
in Elementary and Middle School
Life in an Urban Classroom
JOBETH ALLEN, Editor
DANIEL R. MEIER
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Re-Reading
Families
The Literate Lives of
Urban Children,
Four Years Later
CATHERINE COMPTON-LILLY
FOREWORD BY JAMES PAUL GEE
Teachers College, Columbia University
New York and London
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Published by Teachers College Press, 1234 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027
Copyright © 2007 by Teachers College, Columbia University
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, or any information
storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.
Portions of Chapters 1 and 2 appeared previously in the following articles:
Compton-Lilly, C. (2005). “Sounding Out”: A pervasive model of reading. Language Arts
82(6), 441–451. Copyright 2005 by the National Council of Teachers of English. Reprinted
with permission.
Novinger, S. & Compton-Lilly, C. (2005). Telling our stories: Speaking truth to power.
Language Arts 82(3), 195–203. Copyright 2005 by the National Council of Teachers of
English. Reprinted with permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Compton-Lilly, Catherine.
Re-reading families : the literate lives of urban children, four years later /
Catherine Compton-Lilly ; foreword by James Paul Gee.
p. cm. — (The practitioner inquiry series)
Follow-up to author’s earlier work, Reading families. New York : Teachers College Press,
c2003.
InAuthorudes bibliographical references and index.
Follow-up to author’s earlier work, Reading families. New York : Teachers College Press,
c2003.
ISBN 13: 978-0-8077-4792-6 (hardcover)
ISBN 10: 0-8077-4792-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 13: 978-0-8077-4791-9 (pbk.)
ISBN 10: 0-8077-4791-2 (pbk.)
1. City children—Education—United States—Case studies. 2. City children—Books and
reading—United States—Case studies. 3. Reading—Parent participation—United States—
Case studies. 4. Education, Urban—United States—Case studies. I. Title.
LC5131.C617 2007
372.42’5—dc2
2007000217
ISBN: 978-0-8077-4791-9 (paper)
ISBN: 978-0-8077-4792-6 (hardcover)
Printed on acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America
14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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As always, I dedicate this book to Todd and Carly.
Thanks for being with me.
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Contents
Foreword by James Paul Gee ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Four Years Later:
The Role of Reading in Students’ Lives 1
Demographics and Achievement 5
The Importance of Longitudinal Qualitative Research 7
Race and Research 9
The Purposes of This Book 10
The Plan of this Book 12
1. Discourses and Figured Worlds 13
Focusing on the Context 13
Considering Discourses 16
Figured Worlds: Discourses in Action 25
2. Two Dominant Discourses:
Paying Attention and High-Stakes Testing 28
Paying Attention: “They Probably Don’t Listen to the Teacher” 29
High-Stakes Testing: “I Think It’s Great” 36
Conclusions: Rereading Dominant Discourses 42
3. Proximity and Distance: Marvin’s and Jermaine’s Stories 44
Marvin’s Story 45
Jermaine’s Story 54
Conclusions 61
vii
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viii Contents
4. Gender and Schooling: Alicia’s and Jasmine’s Stories 66
Alicia’s Story 66
Jasmine’s Story 73
Conclusions 79
5. Degrees of Reading Success and Failure:
Peter and Bradford 85
Reading Capital: Defi ning Success and Failure 86
Peter and Bradford 88
Peter, Bradford, and Reading Capital 92
The Intersection of Race with Reading Capital 104
Unrecognized Failures and Successes 105
Conclusions 107
6. Rereading Conclusions 111
Hearing Alternative Discourses 113
The Possibility of Change 115
Recommendations and Possibilities 119
Appendix A: Family Overviews 123
Appendix B: Research Methodology 125
References 127
Index 133
About the Author 143
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Foreword
In his 1986 book, The Real Coke, the Real Story, Thomas Oliver tells the
story of the now infamous “New Coke,” a story retold in Malcolm Gladwell’s
(2005) best-seller Blink. In the early 1980s, Pepsi ran commercials in
which people took a sip from two glasses, not knowing which was Coke
and which Pepsi. The majority said they preferred Pepsi. The Coca-Cola
Company replicated the tests and found, to their chagrin, the same result.
Afraid of losing market share, Coke—long the dominant brand—changed
its old formula and came out with the New Coke, which was made to a
new formula, one that in a new round of blind taste tests came out above
Pepsi. But New Coke was a disaster. Consumers hated it. Coke returned
to its old formula, and Pepsi never did overtake Coke. What happened
here? What was wrong with the test?
In a sip test, tasters don’t drink an entire bottle or can of soda—they
just take a sip. It turns out that if you ask people not just to take a sip, but
to take a case or two of each drink home for a few weeks, you often get a
different result. Taking a sip of a drink and drinking a whole bottle or can
are different experiences. Sometimes, for example, the fi rst sip is sweet,
but the whole bottle is, by the end, cloying. Furthermore, people report
their taste preferences differently when they are drinking at home than
they do when they are drinking in a lab under artifi cial conditions.
There is nothing “unscientifi c” about a sip taste—it’s a nice controlled
sort of study of a rather classic sort. But it is misleading and in the case of
New Coke, disastrously so. To truly know people’s preferences you need
to know how the product is situated in and placed within the lived social
practices of the person and his or her interpretations of those practices.
A sociocultural-situated view of language, learning, and the mind takes
the same view of people’s talents. To fairly and truly judge what a person
can do you need to know how the talent (i.e., skill, knowledge) you are
ix
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