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Individualising scaffolding: teachers' literacy interruptions of ethnic minority students and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds
Author(s) -
Mertzman Tania
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of research in reading
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.077
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1467-9817
pISSN - 0141-0423
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9817.2007.00356.x
Subject(s) - socioeconomic status , literacy , psychology , ethnic group , comprehension , phonics , meaning (existential) , mathematics education , class (philosophy) , scale (ratio) , race (biology) , reading comprehension , functional illiteracy , primary education , reading (process) , pedagogy , sociology , linguistics , population , gender studies , demography , geography , cartography , artificial intelligence , anthropology , computer science , psychotherapist , philosophy
This paper describes a small‐scale study that examined the ways four elementary teachers in the United States scaffolded the literacy of students differently through interruptions. One thousand four hundred and ninety‐eight interruptions were identified and coded in the study. Findings show that teachers' interruption patterns frequently conflicted with or undermined their planned and voiced approaches to literacy instruction. The interruption patterns in this study indicated that some teachers' interactions with the ethnic minority students and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, while somewhat individualised, had unrecognised patterns which focused these children on phonics and accuracy as opposed to comprehension and meaning. These patterns supported a more passive approach to literacy that replicates and reproduces class and race structures of society.