“I Would Like to See How They Got Poor and See What It's Like to Be Poor”: An Analysis of Young Children's Responses to a Critical Literacy Text About Poverty

Abstract

Sixty-four 8-year-old children listened to a reading of a critical literacy text about poverty and then responded to interview questions about the story. The content on which the children focused their attention, the processes that they employed to engage with the text, and the particular stance(s) taken varied significantly by ecological setting or socioeconomic status for some categories of response. These findings are consistent with Rosenblatt's (1994) theory and have important implications for practice. Mindful of variations in response, practitioners can become more sensitive to children's constructed meanings about poverty and scaffold accordingly.

Keywords:

• poverty
• critical literacy
• children

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The study was supported by grants from the Spencer Foundation and the Proffitt Endowment at Indiana University (Bloomington) to Judith Chafel. Both authors accept responsibility for the contents of the article. An earlier version of this article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, New Orleans, LA, August 2006. We would like to express our appreciation to Mary Harnishfeger for collecting the data and to various individuals who provided helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

1. Any verbal responses spontaneously uttered by the children while they completed the drawing were also included in these analyses, although these data rarely appeared in the transcripts.

2. Analysis of the data collected in the study revealed positive aspects in the children's understandings of poverty, with some children seeing the poor, for example, as experiencing a carefree setting, the existence of a support network, a pleasant affect (see Chafel & Neitzel, 2004, for more detail).

3. Analysis of the data collected in the study revealed negative aspects in the children's understandings of poverty, with some children seeing the poor, for example, as being physically vulnerable or lonely (see Chafel & Neitzel, 2004, for more detail).

4. Content, process, and stance coding categories were not mutually exclusive. Because some children's responses were coded as belonging to more than one category, total percentages exceed 100%.

5. Because some children's responses were coded as belonging to more than one category, total percentages exceed 100%.

6. N = 63 because the interviewer inadvertently neglected to pose the question to one child in the study.

7. Because some children's responses were classified as belonging to more than one coding category, total percentages exceed 100%.