Students' Identities and Literacy Learning

165 Pages·2002·2.03 MB·English

by  Sarah J. McCarthey, Ira

Students'
Identities and
Literacy
Learning
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Students'
Identities and
Literacy
Learning
Sarah J. McCarthey
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Champaign, Illinois, USA
I~ ~~o~;~;n~~~up
LONDON AND NEW YORK
Published by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, axon, OX14 4RN
270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016
Transferred to Digital Printing 20 I 0
Copyright 2002 by the International Reading Association, Inc.
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.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Pnbllcatlon Data
McCarthey, Sarah J., 1955-
Students' identities and literacy learning/Sarah J. McCarthey.
p. cm.-(Literacy studies series)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-87207-446-3 (alk. paper)
1. Language arts (Elementary)-United States-Case studies. 2. Multicultural education
United States-Case studies. 3. Identity (Psychology)-United States-Case studies.
1. Title. II. Series.
LB1576 .M249 2002
372.6-dc21
2002002344
Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint
but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent.
In memory of my mother
and to my son ...
may the power of story continue to connect us.
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c^ N o tz tfiE ^ S e z l e i
Few topics are as important as the development of identity and the
role of literacy in this process. In this eighth book in the Literacy Stud
ies Series, Sarah J. McCarthey synthesizes a powerful body of ethno
graphic case study research conducted across three diverse sites.
Through a qualitative lens, the children and teachers in these classes
come alive, displaying varying degrees of alliance or resistance with
in the prescribed literacy curricula. We see the payoff and price of
"doing school" in students' willingness to conform or resist practices
that influence their in- and out-of-school identity construction.
Managerial and curricular practices that have their origins in busi
ness spill over into classroom settings with varying consequences for
students (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 2001). These practices collide
with the postmodern reality that
identity can no longer be written through the lens of cultural uniformity
or enforced through the discourse of assimilation-rather, students bring
to the classroom not some unified grand narrative but multiple narratives
representing diverse immigration and language and cultural experiences.
(Giroux, 2000, p. 190)
The case studies presented here move our debates and discus
sions well beyond the bounds of method into a challenging consid
eration of how curriculum interacts with students' identity construc
tion. Issues of power and positioning underpin much of this work,
illustrating the complex forces that cause children to weigh the costs
and benefits of classroom conformity. Consistent with a growing
body of work on identity construction, Sarah McCarthey's classroom
research challenges past views of literacy curriculum as a kind of
neutral zone, devoid of asymmetrical power struggles.
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