Rethinking normative literacy practices,behaviors,and interactions: Learning from young immigrant boys

Abstract

In light of the historical failure of boys of color in US schools, this article sheds light onto the ways in which normative discourses of literacy and learning shape the experiences of immigrant boys and how they are perceived and defined as un/successful students. Findings indicate that although these boys—deemed to be “at-risk” or “struggling readers”—were not knowledgeable of prevalent school discourses and interactional sequences, they had sophisticated linguistic understandings and knowledgeable communicative practices. Yet, “good” and “successful” literate subjects were defined according to how well a child’s literacy behaviors aligned with school norms and expectations. Implications highlight the need to recognize and challenge gender-specific and behavioral norms that continue to disadvantage boys whose literacy practices do not mirror normative expectations.

Keywords

American behavior immigrants literacy primary school age

Chrysanthemum loved the way her name looked when it was written with ink on an envelope. She loved the way it looked when it was written with icing on her birthday cake …. Chrysanthemum thought her name was absolutely perfect. And then she started school.

(Henkes, 1991)

It is September, the beginning of a new school year, and the beginning of possibilities. I decide to read Kevin Henkes’ (1991) Chrysanthemum to the group of second graders scattered on the rug in front of me. They do not know me, and I do not know them. The only thing I “know for sure” is that, like me, they come from immigrant backgrounds, and unlike me, they are “struggling readers.” Before I even begin reading, one of the boys, Nicolas,¹ sighs heavily before shouting out—“I’ve already heard it four times!” Immediately, I imagine his calling out to be a form of resistance, a challenge, but I brush these thoughts aside, and begin to read aloud, anyway. My focus is, however, not so much on the text as it is on the boys—on what the boys are doing, specifically. I see bodies slumping over, backs turned away from me, eyes averting my gaze, and immediately think—these boys are not engaged.

As I finish reading the last few words of the book, I look out at the students, feeling somewhat defeated, for I am positive that this read aloud did not go well. Nicolas, again, is the first to speak. When he turns to face me, I am surprised to hear that he is “glad” I read Chrysanthemum “again,” glad because it made him think about how very important his name is to him and to his family. The room then fills with voices as the students turn toward each other and begin to share with one another the meaning of their own names. I look around the room in awe and am reminded that every identity is multilayered, every story multiple.

(Co-Lead Teacher’s Journal Entry)

Literacy is more than a set of discrete behaviors. Yet, every day, in classrooms throughout the country, “good readers” are defined according to teachers’ behavioral expectations, according to what is “appropriate” given the curricular structure employed: sitting and looking at the teacher during read aloud, silence during independent reading, or eyes and pencil on the paper during writing workshop. The journal entry above provides insights into a teacher’s expectations for successfully engaging students in a read aloud and illustrates how normative behavioral expectations are associated with the identity of “good literacy learners” within the context of an after-school program for immigrant children in the primary grades. The above entry is also a situated representation of the larger phenomenon (Dyson and Genishi, 2005) we documented over the course of an after-school program for immigrant children who had been classified as “struggling readers.”

Everyday literacy practices and curricular structures (such as read alouds), while seemingly inconsequential, impart norms for expected, “appropriate” behavior, and within most traditional school settings, particular behaviors are simply incompatible with notions of being a “good literacy learner.” As Chrysanthemum (Henkes, 1991) learned on that very first day of school, the act of naming is an act of power, a “prerequisite for being ‘recognizable’ (Butler, 1997: 5) as a subject” (Youdell, 2006: 44). While a name or label, such as “good” or “struggling” reader, does not convey truths about a student, it nevertheless is a way of defining who a child is (Souto-Manning, 2007a, 2007b) and, therefore, who that child can be within the schooling context.

Reviewing the literature: narrow understandings of literacy, learning, and identities

Within today’s educational landscape, policies and practices continue to generate narrow understandings of what counts as literacy, learning, and identity (Edelsky, 2006; Ringrose, 2013). The policy focus on young children’s reading and writing has primarily been on standardization, accountability, and regulation (Genishi and Dyson, 2009, 2012), all in an effort to produce successful—albeit “generic” (Davies and Saltmarsh, 2007)—literate bodies that can theoretically thrive in a competitive, globalized market economy. Yet, what is often ignored is that becoming a “good” literate subject, in part, depends on how well a child’s literacy behaviors align with classroom norms and expectations (Enriquez, 2011; Ferguson, 2001; Janks, 2010).

Through literacy curricular structures, children are subjected to discursive power relations which, in turn, shape their identities (Janks, 2010; Youdell, 2006). Learning to read and write always involves “learning some aspect of some discourse” (Gee, 1989: 21). According to Gee (1989), a Discourse² can be thought of as one’s “identity kit … a socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking, and of acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group” (p. 18). As such, discourses help individuals think about and frame the world in particular ways (Souto-Manning, 2014). Although seemingly natural, discourses are ideological in nature, carrying hidden messages about social power—“who has power and who does not, or who is right/normal and who is wrong/abnormal” (Blaise, 2005: 16). It is the pervasiveness of these normative discourses that make it difficult for educators to see how ideas about what counts as “good behavior” may limit students’ identities both as literacy learners and individuals (Souto-Manning, 2013a).

Norms of appropriate classroom behavior stem from cognitive learning models that historically have come to define the “norm(al)” (Goodwin et al., 2008) in terms of child development, primarily through observational classification systems rooted in scientific mental measurement (Kontovourki and Siegel, 2009). In their review of the literature on behavior and literacy learning, Ready et al. (2005), identified five “model” behavioral categories for literacy learners:

Approaches to learning—“attentiveness, task persistence, eagerness to learn, learning independence, flexibility and organization”;

Self-control—“respect for property rights, ability to control temper, accept peer ideas for group activities, and respond appropriately to pressure from peers”;

Interpersonal skills—commonly referred to as pro-social behavior, that is, “skill in forming and maintaining friendships, getting along with people who are different, comforting or helping other children, expressing sensitivity to others’ feelings, and expressing ideas and opinions in a positive way”;

Externalizing behavior problems—that is, “extent to which child argues, fights, gets angry, acts impulsively, and disturbs ongoing activities”;

Internalizing behavior problems—that is, “extent to which child appears anxious, lonely, sad, or to have low self-esteem.” (p. 26)

The researchers’ overall findings indicated that specific learning approaches impact literacy achievement more so than any other category. Their study highlighted how girls’ approaches to learning tended to be more in line with teacher expectations. While Ready et al. (2005) did not argue that there is an essential “literacy gender gap,” they did suggest that a link exists between literacy ability and teacher perceptions of learning approaches.

Bank et al. (1980) referred to such preferred perceptions as “differential response to pupil behaviors” (p. 119). Within the differential response hypothesis, teachers treat students differently, not because of purposeful discrimination, but because they are responding to different behaviors in distinct ways (Bank et al., 1980). According to Ferguson (2001), many teachers perceive classroom behavioral rules as “inherently neutral, impartially exercised, and impervious to individual feelings and personal responses” (p. 52). In this way, teachers do not acknowledge that evaluation of a student’s behavior/misbehavior is based on a teacher’s own subjectivity and social location (Ferguson, 2001)—that is, on their interpretation. Many teachers, instead, presume that behaving “appropriately” is both a simple choice and an essential prerequisite to literacy learning. Ultimately, this assumption fails to acknowledge the way the body is “inseparable from discourse(s)” (Youdell, 2006: 47) that not only define what is “normal” but also map particular subject positions onto students—namely, successful literacy learner versus “at-risk” for failure (Ferguson, 2001; Youdell, 2006).

Desired behaviors are generally synonymous with those exhibited by “high ability students” (Bank et al., 1980: 124). However, since school practices appear to align more closely with White, middle class values (Goodwin et al., 2008; Heath, 1982), differential response potentially discounts and denigrates diverse students’ languages, cultures, and experiences (Moll et al., 2001). Classrooms, then, are not neutral spaces devoid of power relations (Cahnmann-Taylor and Souto-Manning, 2010; Souto-Manning, 2010) and, as such, behavioral norms function to include some literacy learners and exclude others.

Much of the available research that investigates the relationship between behavior and children’s literacy acquisition/overall academic achievement, in large part privileges quantitative data (Alexander et al., 1993; Doctoroff et al., 2006; Fantuzzo et al., 2007; Malecki and Elliot, 2002; Ponitz et al., 2009; Ready et al., 2005; Spira et al., 2005). Despite the recognition of teacher subjectivity, the assumption is that researchers can discretely observe and categorize behavior. Consequently, extant research poses that teachers can recognize good behavior, student motivation, and engagement when they see it (Ponitz et al., 2009). Even though a distinction is often made between being good and behaviors of good/successful readers, what these labels mean is not always clear.

In their study of diverse third and fourth graders in a large urban community, Malecki and Elliot (2002) positioned learning as a social process and, therefore, urged educators to pay attention to students’ social skills, which they defined as “socially acceptable learned behaviors that enable a person to interact effectively with others and to avoid socially unacceptable responses” (p. 6). They concluded that there is a relationship between being “socially skilled” and a student’s overall academic achievement. Alexander et al. (1993) argued that being a “good citizen” (e.g. helpful, polite) is unrelated to academic achievement. Instead, they stated that the ideal behavioral qualities related to achievement are time management, attention, engagement, and subject interest. In a similar vein, Wasson et al. (1990) found that disruptive or noncompliant behavior did not impact student learning. They found that active participation played a key role in literacy success. In comparison to “good” readers, poor readers were less responsive, less attentive, and less verbal during structured classroom discussions.

While some researchers have made distinctions between the quality of being good (e.g. a good citizen) and model behaviors (e.g. behaviors attributed to successful students), the privileging of particular behaviors—whatever they may be—still has the power to potentially “disable” children (McDermott and Varenne, 1995). As Thompson (1997) argued, “culturally generated and perpetuated standards (such) as ‘beauty,’ ‘independence,’ ‘fitness,’ ‘competence,’ and ‘normalcy’ exclude and disable human bodies while validating and affirming others” (p. 6). Within classroom spaces, students must participate and behave in expected ways, according to normative cultural standards (Souto-Manning, 2013b). Failure to do so potentially marks children–e.g. as competent or incompetent–and once “classified … a whole range of other things fall into place as a result of it” (Hall, 1997: 2). In this way, classroom participation and behavioral expectations police normalcy, for the assumption is that a student who does not participate in appropriate ways (i.e. does not know the “right” response or behavior) is somehow unworthy or abnormal. Regardless of how goodness is being defined, what seems to be central is the idea that particular kinds of engagement are more valuable and lead to higher reading proficiency (Ponitz et al., 2009). Who decides what counts as engagement and how categories serve to mark students are never fully explored.

Student labeling appears to have a positive connotation, as it serves as a means of accounting for the specific needs of each child. According to Spira et al. (2005), behavior impacts literacy learning and aids in initial reading difficulties. Researchers suggest that kindergarten students “with poor social and/or behavioral skills should be targeted for intervention efforts aimed at facilitating their classroom adjustment and developing their adaptive skills before they encounter significant difficulties in elementary school” (Spira et al., 2005: 232). While the intent is to improve students’ literacy skills, Spira et al. assumed that an inherent problem existed within the child, not within schooling as an institution. Specifically, researchers have ignored the potential of schools to “embody the class interests and ideology of the dominant class, which has the power to impose its views, standards, and cultural forms—its ‘cultural capital’—as superior” (Ferguson, 2001: 50). Spira et al. did not account for how sociocultural factors (e.g. race, ethnicity, income) come into play (Enriquez, 2011) and positioned difference as a deficit, not a resource (Gutiérrez et al., 1999).

Doctoroff et al. (2006) pointed out that particular males are likely targets of such intervention practices. Researchers found that there was a link between aggression and poor emergent literacy skills, specifically for young boys. They situated their discussion amidst previous literature findings, which suggest that teachers often attend to boys’ aggression and misbehavior, while ignoring girls’ misbehavior, which may be less overt. Consequently, boys are often identified as having learning disabilities, while “struggling” female students may go undetected. According to Walkerdine (1990), being good has different ramifications for girls than it has for boys, as dominant heteronormative discourses tend to position girls as “docile good girls” and boys as “naughty” (Harris, 2004: 19).

Overall, much of the research reviewed (Alexander et al., 1993; Doctoroff et al., 2006; Fantuzzo et al., 2007; Ponitz et al., 2009; Ready et al., 2005; Spira et al., 2005) seems to have privileged an autonomous model of literacy (Street, 1993). According to Street (1993), within an autonomous model, the assumption is that the acquisition of literacy will serve as a positional good for individuals, thereby positively affecting their “social and cognitive practices” (p. 77). Literacy is, in this way, tied to the idea that literate individuals are, and therefore behave, “better” than “illiterate” individuals, setting up a series of normative binaries—good/bad, savage/civilized, literate/illiterate (Souto-Manning, 2013b). Literacy is thus assumed to be a universal and neutral skill set. Children who appropriately develop this skill set are expected to achieve. Furthermore, Street (1993) argued that literate beings are viewed as “rational” subjects. Therefore, good readers “know” how to make the “right” choices in order to interact with texts in “proper” ways (Willis, 2007). Such discourse assumes a rational/technical or mechanistic worldview (Heshusius, 1989) that is reductive and results in reading being reduced to a universal process that can be systematically broken down regardless of the reader’s social location. Yet if students “use literacies to make meaning in their lives” (Ma’ayan, 2012: 16), then this standardized conception of a good reader ultimately controls students’ meaning-making processes and discounts their social and cultural experiences.

In sum, developmentally appropriate practices and autonomous literacy models do not account for students as embodied individuals (Enriquez, 2011) from distinct racial, ethnic, gender, and socioeconomic backgrounds. As such, the body is not viewed as a “site for knowledge” (Hamera, 2005: 70). Instead, part of performing good reader means making the “right” choices by controlling one’s behaviors, one’s body (Enriquez, 2011; Hamera, 2005; Janks, 2010; Kontovourki and Siegel, 2009). Kontovourki and Siegel (2005) contended that everyday classroom practices “work on children’s bodies and produce habits of self-discipline” (p. 32). Children learn to appropriate classroom norms regarding good behavior. Those students who are “successful” literacy learners are able to regulate their bodies, that is, train themselves into “proper” behavior (Souto-Manning, 2013b). In short, failure to make the right choices, to control one’s body, casts literacy learners as failures—that is, as illiterate, struggling, or even disabled (McDermott and Varenne, 1995).

Theorizing the failure of young immigrant boys and the failure of schools

In theorizing the failure of young immigrant boys and the failure of schools, we combine sociocultural–historical and critical conflict theories. Sociocultural–historical theory allows us to look at the failing of students while critical conflict theory affords us insights into the failure of schools.

Sociocultural–historical theory

According to Gutiérrez et al. (2009), remediation remains a central strategy in addressing the academic needs of students who differ from the dominant norm—reinforcing generic rules of appropriateness in classrooms and schools. Yet if we are to build on the strengths of each student, we must do away with remediation and start moving toward re-mediation. The basic rule of re-mediation (as opposed to remediation which frames children in terms of deficits) involves an expansive, hybrid, and additive approach to differences and diversities. In other words, the social rules of participation and learning as well as the division of labor are re-mediated by a social imagination oriented toward new forms of collective activity and new, multimodal literacies. In contrast to the traditional remedial approaches, the notion of re-mediation—with its focus toward the socio-historical influences on students’ learning and the context of their development—involves a more robust notion of learning. It disrupts the dogma of pathology linked to remediation. Instead of emphasizing basic skills framed as problems of the individual, re-mediation involves a reorganization of curriculum and teaching. According to Rogoff (2003),

A sociocultural-historical perspective requires examination of the cultural nature of everyday life. This includes studying people’s use and transformation of cultural tools and technologies and their involvement in cultural traditions in the structures and instructions of family … and community practices. (p. 10)

Critical conflict theory

Critical conflict theory moves away from “the functional paradigm [which] sees schools as more or less rational instruments for sorting and selecting talented people” (Hurn, 1993: 44) and builds on “the conflict paradigm [which] often depicts them as institutions that perpetuate inequality and convince lower-class groups of their inferiority” (p. 44) and “sees schools as serving the interests of elites, as reinforcing existing inequalities, and as producing attitudes that foster acceptance of this status quo” (p. 56). By asking “what can be done?” critical conflict theory acknowledges schools as sites where inequality is perpetuated while seeking to challenge schools as serving and reinforcing inequity and moving away from such inequitable practices. This study takes a critical sociocultural–historical conflict theoretical perspective.

The study

Given the importance of rethinking what counts as literacy and the role of immigrant boys as engaged students, especially in light of the historical failure of multicultural and multilingual children of color in US schools (Goodwin et al., 2008), the marginalization of expansive conceptualizations of home and community literacy practices (Gregory et al., 2004), and the overrepresentation of boys in intervention programs (both behavioral and academic—cf. Artiles et al., 2001; Dyches and Prater, 2010), this article addresses the following question: In what ways are normative discourses of literacy and learning shaping (1) the experiences of young immigrant boys and (2) the ways in which young immigrant boys are perceived and defined as un/successful students? Seeking to address the above question in depth, the study pursues the following sub-questions: (1) In what ways do young multilingual and multicultural male students negotiate successful literacy practices in an after-school program? (2) What insights do these students’ behaviors and talk offer regarding normative expectations in the literacy practices they experience? (3) How can teachers challenge normative discourses indexing³ the academic success of young immigrant boys?

Setting the context

The Teaching Immigrant Children project primarily served immigrant children from first and second grades (ages 6–8 years) whose first languages were other than mainstream American English.⁴ This after-school program was designed to build on the strengths of immigrant children’s language, literacy, and cultural experiences. The project took place at a public school in New York City with an enrollment of approximately 750 students and a 70 percent rate of free lunch. The school’s demographics were as follows: 15 percent White, 25 percent African American, 55 percent Latino/a, and 5 percent Asian. The percentage of students who reached proficiency in reading and math per standardized tests was around 30 percent. Approximately 20 percent of the school’s students were identified as English language learners and 20 percent received special education services—an overrepresentation in both categories.

The grant-funded after-school program was provided at no cost to multilingual (or emergent multilingual) students nominated by their teachers as “struggling readers.” Two female co-teachers worked with a group of 10 students (7 boys and 3 girls) three times per week (2:40–4:40 p.m.) over the course of 7 weeks (totaling 21 meetings and over 60 hours). The co-teachers were pursuing graduate degrees in education in a large college of education in New York City. Both of them were bilingual, members of immigrant families—one being Latina and having Spanish as a first language—and had more than 2 years of previous experience as lead teachers in early childhood settings. They planned weekly and sought to conduct culturally relevant lessons in small group settings. Plans focused on cross-linguistic and transcultural aspects of learning, valuing children’s home and community language and literacy practices while facilitating their success in academic settings.

The goal of the project was to engage young immigrant children identified as coming from so-called “disadvantaged backgrounds” in language and literacy-rich activities which honored their backgrounds and cultural legacies, not only bringing together their home practices and school expectations, but also creating new and more hopeful language and literacy practices. Within this context, children learned by doing as teachers made purposeful connections and re-mediated (Gutiérrez et al., 2009) misalignments within and across home and school communicative practices. The program extended the school day for these children and sought to deepen their understandings of language and literacy—linking talking, reading, and writing with their interests and experiences. Thus, primarily, the project sought to make education inclusive for children whose first languages were not mainstream American English.

Our roles as researchers were multi-pronged. Souto-Manning designed the after-school program and secured funding for it. She hired the teachers and collaborated with school administrators to identify student participants. Souto-Manning and Dernikos co-designed the curriculum and met with the other lead teacher regularly to debrief and plan responsively. Dernikos was one of the co-lead teachers in the after-school program. Yu was a participant-observer and many times stepped into the role of assistant teacher.

Data collection, coding, and analysis

Throughout the year, all meetings (and resulting narratives) were digitally recorded and transcribed. Narratives were combined with artifacts, teacher reflective journal entries, and thick descriptive field notes. The data analyzed here are part of a larger data set comprising field notes, artifacts, digital recordings, and transcripts collected three times per week over the course of 7 weeks. We brought critical sociocultural and critical conflict theoretical lenses to the analysis—to help explicate the context of this article and identify how the concept of re-mediation came to life, a foundational premise of the program.

Procedurally, following each after-school session in which data were collected, we transcribed interactions and added interpretive notes as we brought together field notes and transcripts. We created data packets (Rogers and Mosley, 2006) for each participant in the after-school program as well as thematic data packets. We conducted preliminary retrospective analysis, reading and rereading the primary data and engaged in open coding (Miles and Huberman, 1994). We combined preliminary codes, focusing on those that were prevalent across interactions and learning events.

Together, we analyzed the data collected, first by organizing data packets for each student. Then we broke apart these packets and looked inductively at instances when teacher expectations and student behaviors collided, finding “hot points” (Cahnmann-Taylor et al., 2009). After engaging in inductive and deductive coding, we engaged in constant comparative analysis and identified two categories present in the findings below: gender and behavioral discourses of literacy success.

Findings

Findings convey the ways in which research participants—deemed to be “at-risk”—came to the after-school program with sophisticated linguistic understandings and knowledgeable communicative practices—although, not knowledgeable in the school discourse (Gee, 1990) and prevalent interactional sequences (Cazden, 1988), for example, how to behave during read alouds, when to talk, when to remain silent, when to answer questions. According to the children’s interactions and teachers’ reflections, traditional literacies (Dyson, 2002) were privileged in this school, even when caring and competent teachers were responsively drawing on the interests of the children they taught. Specific behaviors were expected within particular literacy curricular structures. Findings point toward the need to recognize and challenge gender-specific and behavioral norms that continue to disadvantage children whose literacy practices do not mirror traditional definitions and normative expectations (Souto-Manning, 2013b). In situated ways, the boys in the after-school program highlight how some literacy behaviors are privileged in school learning.

Below, the boys who were part of this after-school program, particularly Alim, a second-grade boy of Muslim descent whose family immigrated from an African country, invite us to see how they learned and made sense of the world in intentional and brilliant ways—albeit in ways which were not necessarily in alignment with teachers’ expectations for literacy success. Alim invites us to move away from associating eyes on the teacher and bottom on the floor as the behavior needed for a child to make sense of a book read aloud. He invites us to think about the option of moving around and single-handedly performing his draft prior to touching pencil on paper. He invites us to move away from normative definitions and understandings of how children should behave and start learning about pluralistic possibilities for engagement, learning, and success.

Behavioral norms and literacy success

Returning to the scenario which opens this article, it is important to note that the co-lead teacher questioned the male students’ engagement during the actual read aloud—due to poor posture, inattentiveness, bodies turned away from pictures. Yet, she came to realize that the boys did make meaning during the read aloud—later evidenced in their talk, writings, and drawings. This raises questions about institutional practices/ideas of schooling and what counts as participation.

Also, many times the boys were engaging in the task at hand—responding to the “What my name means to me” activity following the Chrysanthemum read aloud, for example—but doing so orally and not in writing. While the teachers were mindful of a process-based approach to authoring, they still expected children to work on a written product. This is captured by the following interaction (reconstructed from participant-observer notes combined with video recording; names and nicknames substituted for confidentiality purposes):

The teachers kept asking Rafael and Alim to concentrate and focus on their work (about their names) many times as they kept talking to each other. Rafael began to write sentences after he spoke out his ideas verbally first. Rafael says: “I have a lot of names. People call me Rafael, Rafa, Rafi, Rafito, Muniz … These are all my names.” Rafael kept talking to himself about his name and began writing down on the paper finally after the teacher called out his name several times. Alim also continued talking. He exposed many of his thoughts but did not write down much. It took some time for Alim to start working on the written part of his work, but his oral narratives regarding who he was and what his name meant were rich. The story of his name was semantically and pragmatically sophisticate

Alim and Rafael (a Latino boy whose family had recently immigrated from Mexico to New York) were both involved in deep conversation about the topic at hand, much of which was not captured in their sentence-long product (in Rafael’s case) or a string of letters (in Alim’s case). They were also actively taking up the assigned task—making text-to-self connections (Calkins, 2010) about the book that was read. These verbal connections illustrated how the boys were engaging in learning, although they did not express their understanding of the topic in the “correct” format. After all, talking is often associated with not doing one’s work (Gallas et al., 1996; Laman, 2013), and could have been conceptualized as a distraction in this case.

According to Gallas (1995), the devaluing of student talk promotes the idea that what truly count are the teacher’s voice, thoughts, and ideas. In this way, the teacher becomes the “knower,” that is, the only one who can construct knowledge. Although talk may not be the preferred way for teachers to assess children’s understandings, it is an easily accessible way for children to socially make sense of their worlds and words. Talk is at the center of sense making and literacy events (Gee, 1989) and allows students the space to “explore their ideas and construct new ones together” (Gallas, 1995: 11). It also enables teachers to learn from student thinking. For example, here Rafael illustrates that his subjectivity shifts within particular contexts, where sometimes he is called by his Spanish name, and other times, by a number of different American names (“Rafi, Ray, Raphael”). Therefore, Rafael resists a fixed view of his identity (“These are all my names”) and shows us that he cannot so easily be defined (e.g. as always a struggling reader in school), as he brings multiple perspectives to any given literacy task.

Beginning to value talk as a way to learn from the children they taught, the co-lead teachers started leaving aside their conceptualizations of appropriate literate behaviors. For example, later that same month, the following dialogue⁵ (reconstructed from participant-observer notes and video recordings) took place:

During read aloud time, the boys showed enthusiasm for the story, looking at each other, communicating their connections, and displaying excited facial expressions. Their faces lit up and they started sharing their predictions for the story and the setting. The teachers had selected a book about a father in jail, Visiting Day (Woodson, 2002), due to the children’s own experiences having family members in jail and the reported stigma the children had reported experiencing as a result. When one of the lead teachers opened the book to the page that featured the cell where a girl’s father was living and shared it with the group, asking them what they saw, the following conversation ensued:

Rafael ((while teacher was reading)):

Ooh, ooh! I knew it! The father is in jail and little girl’s visiting her father.

Teacher:

What makes you think that he’s in jail?

Rafael:

There’s a tower, a gate. I seen that before.

Teacher:

Oh, these pictures helped you make connections=

Rene:

=In the back page there was cup, brushes in his room ((comes closer to the book and turns the page)) Se:::e? He is living there. He brushes his teeth there and he …

Jahi ((comes closer and points to the picture)):

Oh, he’s wearing jail clothes!

Teacher:

Is he? That was a great observation.

Alim:

I think he might be a policeman. He is wearing a blue one. Look his=

Jahi:

=I see he’s in jail. I see the blue cop next to him.

The boys continued talking about the scenario based on their own readings of the pictures and understandings of the text for over 5 minutes—they made connections to prior knowledge and found connections among their situated (and often private) bodies of knowledge. In doing so, they talked out of turn and did not sit in their designated rug spots. Yet, they made sense of the text, gained understanding, connected the text to their own experiences (to self), contrasted with the fact that they had not seen texts that featured family members in jail before (even though it was part of their lives and experiences), and questioned the role of jails in society.

Both lead teachers welcomed their responses and enthusiasm, stepping back during the time in which the children were engaging in meaningful conversations about the text. The teachers became learners, paying attention to what the children were saying and the processes in which they were engaging. The buzz in the classroom did not detract from the learning, but contributed to it, even if it did not follow turn-taking conventions and fully include the teachers. Yet seeking to make bridges between the processes in which they were engaging and the behavioral expectations in their primary grades classrooms, the teachers later reminded the children that reading also involved listening—to the reader and to each other. So instead of chastising the children for not following behavioral conventions associated with a particular curricular structure in place, the teachers valued what the children were doing and sought to build bridges to procedural displays that would be deemed desirable and appropriate in their classrooms, thereby positioning them as successful learners (Souto-Manning, 2013a).

Later, in recounting the day at the closing of that day’s session, the boys related that they enjoyed reading with “rule breaking” because they did not have to pay attention to what to do, so they could focus on what they knew and on what they were thinking. Jahi said, “you know, there are so many rules to remember that I can’t remember what I was gonna say sometimes.” By changing their perceptions of what counted as engagement (e.g. by creating spaces for the boys to talk out of turn, physically move about on the rug, and position their bodies close to the read-aloud text), the teachers were able to expand the children’s repertoire of practices (e.g. the inclusion of particular kinds of talk and movement during read aloud). Instead of reading the boys’ behaviors as “inappropriate,” the teachers now valued their voices, ideas, and enthusiasm—while reminding them to listen as well. Interestingly, the boys later labeled those nontraditional behaviors as “rule breaking.”

With regard to “rule breaking,” Alim—pretending to be a teacher, using a woman’s voice—expressed desire to also move beyond school sanctioned writing norms:

Don’t make me do the same thing that Ms. Jones [a teacher] did. “Make your story! Make your story!” ((turns the pages)). These are the rules. Don’t tell me you can’t write all the way to the end. Good writers write all the way to the end.

In illustrating the school rules, Alim clearly outlined expected writing behaviors, such as stamina. While he even employed process-based language “Make your story,” a concept explained by Ray and Glover (2008), he understood that the focus was still on product and on how much to write. In some ways, the school rules limited Alim’s choices (e.g. he could not decide how much he would write) and potentially positioned him as a particular kind of writer and student. If “good writers write all the way to the end,” then failure to do so potentially casts Alim as the opposite of a “good” writer, that is, “bad.” Yet Alim’s insistence (“Don’t make me”) for rule breaking illustrates that he desires to resignify the school rules, shape his own literacy experiences, and ultimately move beyond the hierarchical and “normative binary” (Souto-Manning, 2013b) of good/bad writer.

While the lead teachers initially read Alim and the other boys’ behaviors as “off-task” and potentially disruptive (as they openly resisted being silent and following school rules), they soon began to view their talk, movement, and behaviors as kinds of literacy practices, as illustrated by the representative learning interaction described below (transcribed from video):

Alim:

I dunno what to write. I’m not a good writer, you know?

Rafael ((looking at Alim)):

Hey. You can write you like to play tag. We did it today. Remember?

Alim stopped talking and seemed to think about what Rafael just said for several seconds (by looking blankly at Rafael); he ran around the table recalling his game of tag (reaching out to his peers and almost touching them while saying “Got you!,” “You’re it!,” and “You can’t get me!”)

Alim:

Yea. I can write ’bout that. E:::easy!

Rafael:

Told you!

Alim sits down, grabs the pencil and begins to write about playing tag.

Alim:

I’m really good at this, you know?

Instead of being silent and working independently, upon seeing his peer struggle to get started writing, Rafael shared his connections with Alim (between playtime and writing workshop), and offered Alim an idea for writing. It is important to note that Alim and Rafael worked together to challenge two normative literacy behaviors: (1) of ideas being generated individually and (2) of pre-writing activities and processes consisting of pencil on paper behaviors. In this case, even though Alim decided to take up Rafael’s idea by writing about the game of tag they had played earlier that day, he did not engage in any recognizable and normative pre-writing strategies (e.g. sketching a picture before starting to write a story, listing the beginning-middle-end sequence of the story). While Alim’s running around the table and pretending to play tag may have appeared “off-task” to some teachers, it actually served as a draft to his story, or at the very least as a map (Ray, 2004). Yet, running goes against what is expected as appropriate behavior during writing workshop. In addition, for Alim, talking with his friend Rafael was key, as it allowed him to move beyond his earlier writing habits. In doing so, Alim moved from beginning every sentence with “I like” and writing one long, disconnected list to writing a fuller story, which included more varied sentence starters and, overall, more compound and/or complex sentences even if he did not have time to finish his entire piece that day. Thus, by rigidly focusing on school rules, for example, stressing length over complexity/depth of writing and ideas as well as designating appropriate literacy behaviors associated with specific curricular structures, teachers may miss opportunities to support children’s literacy development. Alim and Rafael’s behaviors—which do not neatly fit within the range of appropriate behaviors of successful literacy learners—invite us to rethink behavioral expectations associated with specific curricular structures.

Moving beyond the workshop model and exploring new literacies

Building on the possibilities of the behavior labeled by the boys as “rule breaking,” the lead teachers drew on children’s interests in computers and gaming, thus expanding the notion of what counted as a worthy text and appropriate reading behaviors. Teachers identified an interactive reading program (starfall.com) that allowed children to read with a high level of support. This made the boys excited about reading and they started (re)crafting their own identities as readers. This is illustrated by the following learning event (reconstructed from co-lead teacher’s journal, participant-observer notes, and video recordings), which took place as the boys started engaging in computer-mediated reading:

Alim particularly enjoyed the computer-mediated reading experience and asked if they could continue reading on Thursday … Alim seemed to excel while reading online—often shouting out his responses or trying to sound out words in unison with the computer voice over. There has been a noticeable difference in Alim as a reader. His attitude has markedly changed. Initially, he was withdrawn from activities and resistant to reading out loud. But once his behavior was repositioned, not being an obstacle to participation, over the past few weeks, he has shown great willingness to read and a desire to learn more—especially about birds and all scary things. As Thursday’s activity came to a close, Alim whispered to one of the lead teachers, “You’re the best teacher ever!” When asked why, he said: “Because you are not always telling me go sit. You listen.”

Alim had not yet been reading books independently when he started working on the computer. Yet, the computer skills (and his interactions with the class around them) seem to have informed his more traditional reading skills and practices. Here is the interaction between Bertha—a very confident reader who displayed normative literacy behaviors in the after-school program—and Alim (transcribed from a video) 4 weeks after the learning episode above:

Alim ((came to the table with a book to sit next to a girl who actively read during sustained silent reading time)):

See? Se:::e? I can read thi:::is much. ((Alim reads several pages of a Dr. Seuss book accurately and fluently))

Bertha was reading another book by Dr. Seuss, which had, according to her, “a lot of words in it.” Bertha was very proud of her ability to read all these words. She showed Alim and Yu how many pages she read so far, interrupting Alim’s reading.

Bertha:

I read it all. It has … u:::uh … 62 pages. I read it all. Alim! Look! I read it all.

Alim ((quickly turning to the last page of his book)):

Me too. I got like 63!

Bertha ((shows the page that has a lot of words)):

Look how much I read over here. ((Bertha turns the pages of her book and points to each word printed on those pages, showing to Alim how much she had read.))

Alim:

Wow, I read that much, too. Look! ((starts pointing to the words printed on the pages of the books.))

Alim and Bertha read the book and showed how much they read to each other. They seemed very excited about it. Alim also showed the book to other teachers and told them how much he read so far.

From avoiding books and not wanting to read, Alim had come to develop as a capable reader who shared his enthusiasm and abilities with children who were often perceived to be actively engaged during sustained silent reading time (e.g. Bertha). Specifically, he had developed conventional skills in unconventional ways. This happened as the after-school-program lead teachers focused on the positives, on what he was doing well, and made space for him to move and to pay attention and to participate in his own way.

This success in more traditional literacy practices and curricular structures led Alim to move from being the “behavior problem” and the “boy who couldn’t” to someone from whom others could learn. For example, after reading a book aloud, the lead teachers invited children to read a related story and create games related to the book (as a relevant reading response) on a computer. Alim and Enrique actively participated in reading the story, making and playing their game. Whenever the children saw some words that they were not confidently reading, they listened to how the words were pronounced by clicking the word on the screen. Alim and Enrique were so engaged that they continued asking the teachers if they could play one more story and game, thus expressing their excitement and joy for this type of interactive learning, which combined low risk and high support.

While reading a more complex and longer story, a lead teacher suggested that the two boys, Alim and Enrique, take turns. Enrique hesitated to read but, with some encouragement and assistance from Alim, took risks and became more confident. Alim had become a more confident reader, so when Enrique was struggling with some words, Alim would help him read them by asking Enrique if he had seen the word somewhere else, what would make sense, and demonstrating to Enrique how to chunk words in order to decode them (making analogies to video game levels and adventures). Alim showed high interest and enthusiasm in these activities during the entire session—he had gone from a “struggling” reader to a “successful” reader who was able to help other students. And he was, on his own, displaying more of the normative “follow the rules” behavior. All in all, the boys—especially Alim—invite us to move away from associating literacy success with specific behaviors in read alouds, independent reading, writing workshop, and other curricular structures associated with literacy teaching and learning.

Findings point out that “appropriate” behavioral expectations can serve to exclude children from becoming successful readers and writers (especially boys of color). As the lead teachers came to discover, the immigrant boys in the after-school program who tended to perform masculinity in more traditional ways (e.g. by behaving aggressively or energetically) were generally not recognized as “successful” in their classroom settings—not because of their academic abilities, but because their behaviors were often seen “as contrasting with the values [and discourses] of … [traditional] school[ing], which require obedience rather than resistance and diligence rather than distraction” (Francis and Skelton, 2005: 29).

If schools continue to honor values and behaviors often associated with White middle class families, as institutions they will continue to segregate and fail students whose home and community interactions differ from the so-called norm. Furthermore, if schools continue to gender success in literacy and associate the label of successful to specific behaviors and procedural displays, they will continue disadvantaging boys such as Alim. All in all, learning from Alim means that we teachers need to move away from deeming normative literate practices appropriate (a culturally loaded and often Eurocentric concept) or not. Alim invites us to think about learning from the processes whereby individual children engage in literate practices and to build bridges between those practices and what is traditionally valued in schools.

Alim is a case in point and his trajectory is a situated representation of the processes in which many of the students in the after-school program embarked. According to the analysis of data packets, the immigrant boys who had room to move and display their literate lives in meaningful and relevant ways developed more traditional literacy behaviors and skills in the long run (over the course of a semester or a year). Thus, findings point toward the importance of focusing on what students can do in terms of literacy and not on the ways that they behave. In doing so, teachers will uncover the positives and come to see what students are doing, the processes in which they are engaging. In doing so, they can support the exploration of new literacies and ultimately foster multi-literacy development.

According to the experiences of the boys in the after-school program, normative discourses (i.e. those establishing what counts as normal, often defined in White, middle class ways—Goodwin et al., 2008) of literacy and learning shape the experiences of young immigrant boys as outsiders. They are perceived and defined as unsuccessful students because their behavior during specific curricular structures (e.g. read aloud, writing workshop) is not what is expected. This perception is attributed (at least initially) without an assessment of the child’s real understanding or skill set. It is attributed as teachers see children displaying behaviors that are believed to indicate disengagement or off-task activities. Yet, as we take a close look at Alim and his literacy learning process, which is representative of many other immigrant boys who enrolled in the program, we learn that this is a mistaken and stereotypical assumption that serves to further exclude children who come from diverse homes and communities. The larger discourse of the “good” or “smart” student (Broderick and Leonardo, 2011) is constructed in a relational way, which necessitates the “bad” or “not smart” student. Setting up such socially constructed binaries is problematic as it does not restructure curriculum and teaching, but places the blame on students (Souto-Manning, 2013b).

In taking a closer look at Alim and how in laying on the floor, running, and walking away he was still engaging in literacy practices and learning, we learned the necessity to get to know students as individual human beings, of learning about their preferences, interests, and processes in a cultural anthropological way as opposed to immediately scaling and rating their practices against the master narrative of a good student. The breathtaking diversity of schoolchildren necessitates doing away with any one-size-fits-all models or expectations in terms of processes and/or behaviors (Genishi and Dyson, 2009). Alim invites us to do just that by challenging our assumptions of attention as visual contact and of authoring as pencil touching paper, for example. He was only able to negotiate successful literacy practices once the after-school-program teachers started focusing on what he could do and on what he was already doing, while respecting his individual processes for reading and writing words and worlds.

In addition, Alim’s behavior and talk offer insights regarding the need to move away from normative expectations and linking specific behaviors to success, learning, and growth in reading and writing. As teachers of a diverse student population, we need to embrace the proclamation that “diversity is the new norm” (Genishi and Dyson, 2009: 4). We can challenge normative discourses, thus re-indexing the academic success of young immigrant boys in their own terms while contributing to dispelling stereotypes and to more supportive and inclusive classrooms.

Implications

Implications of this study point to the need for early literacy and early childhood teachers to understand how their expectations are culturally located (Souto-Manning, 2013c) and how learning and development are culturally situated (Rogoff, 2003). Within most traditional primary classroom settings, “literacy” is often conceptualized as nonideological in nature and, therefore, devoid of any socio-historical, cultural, and political contexts (Street, 1993). Yet, by simply positioning literacy as a neutral practice involving “general” reading/writing processes, educators, administrators, and policymakers alike tend to discount the myriad of ways that normative discourses function to narrowly define what it means to be “successfully literate,” thereby excluding diverse learners who are often constituted outside the so-called norm.

Rather than actively—albeit unintentionally—promoting good/bad moralizing ideologies (e.g. “good reader”) based on cultural and gendered expectations of literacy success, educators might instead expand the notion of what counts as reading, writing, and “text” (Freire, 1983). One implication, then, would be for educators to engage in a critical process (Freire, 1983), which would give teachers and students the necessary tools to identify and potentially deconstruct dominant discourses in order to reconstruct more inclusive worldviews. Specifically, teachers could begin by rethinking the ways in which their classrooms may be gendered, raced, and classed spaces (Blaise, 2005; Jones and Vagle, 2013) that promote hierarchical binaries and exclusionary practices. In order to do so, teachers must first recognize and reflect upon their own cultural locations (Souto-Manning, 2013c). Rather than judging a child’s behavior (e.g. as appropriate/inappropriate) against some assumed cultural “standard” and then linking that behavior to a student’s overall literacy performance (e.g. successful/failing), teachers should strive to include and honor students’ varied linguistic, cultural, and experiential legacies, while challenging the privileging of particular normative practices which position certain students as unsuccessful literacy learners.

Ultimately, embracing a singular, monolithic view of literacy and gender does not allow teachers and students to critically engage with text and the world around them and, above all, serves to limit the possibilities for who students like Nicolas, Alim, and Rafael can become. By valuing multiple ways of interacting and behaving during literacy events and specific curricular structures, all students and teachers can benefit by coming to both acknowledge and honor multiple literacy practices. Teachers and students can therefore come to value multiple ways of knowing, behaving, and making sense of their social and cultural worlds.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

This research benefitted from the vision of the Teachers College Inclusive Classrooms Project (TCICP), directed by Celia Oyler and Britt Hamre.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research benefitted from the financial support of the Zankel Urban Fellows Fund.

Notes

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