Browsing by Author "Horst, Paige Hayes"

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    Boys Who Love Books: Avid Adolescent Male Readers in the Secondary English Language Arts Classroom
    Horst, Paige Hayes (Virginia Tech, 2016-07-22)
    This study was designed to explore perceptions and lived experiences of avid adolescent male readers, in order to better understand their development as readers. This study explored: (1) how previous reading experiences influence the development of the avid adolescent male reader and (2) how the reading habits and preferences of avid adolescent male readers are socially constructed. Rosenblatt's (1978) Transactional Theory of Literary Work forms the theoretical framework of this study. Rosenblatt (1978) argued that as readers engage with texts, they bring an individual schema to these literary transactions. This prior knowledge and experience are the lens through which the individual reader understands the content of the text. Even when reading the same text, readers respond to the text in individual ways, based on their individual schema. Through the use of a naturalistic inquiry design, data was generated through a series of interviews with the participants. Data analysis was qualitative and iterative, triangulated with multiple interviews, interview mapping, thematic tables, dialogic memos, and researcher field notes. Data analysis led to a better understanding of the development of the avid adolescent male reader, including: (a) the role of family culture on reading identity, (b) peer group influence on reading habits of avid adolescent male readers, and (c) transactional responses of avid adolescent male readers both in and out of educational settings. Data generated during interviews illuminated the complex, individuated and interwoven nature of the elements present in the development of the avid adolescent male reader. Finally, this study gives insight into how understanding the development of these readers may provide teachers with instructional strategies and reading opportunities that support all developing readers.
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    A Case Study of One Teacher's Experience Using a Sociocultural View of Disability in the English Classroom
    Biviano, Amanda C. (Virginia Tech, 2019-04-22)
    Teachers' attitudes are shaped by the language, culture, and power constructs surrounding the disability in our society. This qualitative case study investigated how a sociocultural lens supported an English teacher's efforts to plan and implement lessons that use literature to examine disability critically. The theories of Bakhtin (1981), Rosenblatt (2005), as well as literature that highlights the use of disability studies, social justice, and dialogic pedagogy guided the methods of the study. The sample included the teacher and one ninth grade English Language Arts class of approximately 25 students in a rural high school. Methods involved three semi-structured workshops which served to guide the teacher in an examination of the social discourses surrounding disability, encouragement of aesthetic responses to reading, and the facilitation of a dialogic pedagogy. Participant interviews, lesson plans, observation field notes, and reflective journals were transcribed and triangulated with researcher field notes. Attention was paid to the participant's learning as a social act which leads to a teacher's "ideological becoming" and development of the self as a "process of selectively assimilating the words of others" (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 341). Therefore, the lenses of Transactional Analysis (Stewart, 2011) and content analysis (Schreier, 2014) was used to examine the context and process of planning and implementation for an ELA teacher in order to uncover the meaning-making processes that the teacher undergoes when using literature to examine disability critically. Findings give insight into the development of a teacher as he learns how to apply a sociocultural lens to literary study, as well as how he contextualized and situated his understanding of disability as connected to other forms of difference. While this study is not generalizable due to its qualitative nature, it can be transferable by providing insight into how a teacher guides students through texts that portray disability.