Online Street Literary Practice Study on teen girls
part of her rooted in practice, as well as in research
Scholarship and Pedagogical Agenda
Scholarship rooted in multiple identities
Community engagement
Activist driven engagement
Critical pedagogy
presented a portion of her dissertation
she seems really nervous and repeats herself many times
I bet when she's actually cool when she's comfortable.
Found myself trying to support her
Purpose of Study
To bring visibility to black adolescent girls as readers and the ways they make meaning of street literature texts through the use of digital technologies
black girls' experiences typically get grouped with black boys' experiences or white middle-class experience
objective to create a space for the girls to tell their own stories
RQs: societal, institutional, situational
critical discourse analysis-->reflexive, looking at one's own positionality
how black adolescent girls make meaning of street literature texts
"turn a mirror on myself as a researcher"
reader response theory: how reader stance influences meaning making
critical literacy: how reader dismantles hegemonic ideologies that confront the female protagonist
hip-hop feminist theory: how the reader addresses systematice issues confronting black girls in the 21st century (as opposed to black feminist thought, bc that's from a different generation) this is culturally and generationally appropriate for this group)
cites the researchers that developed these theories
data collection
qualitative research study over 3 months
online book discussions (FB primary data) asynchronous (every time they met online, they also met face-to-face) [Push, Fly Girl, Project Girl, Coldest Winter Ever]
semi-structured focus group interviews (targeted data) used in tandem with nline book discussion
participant journal writing, researcher journal, field notes-->a more private opportunity
continually checked her own subjectivities
feminist methodology-->multiple voices/stories the stroytelling aspect of focus groups and talking within a group space in line with the black oral tradition of storytelling
MT: would have been helpful to define "street literature texts"
multi-sampling: purposive & convenience
participants (only 5)
met in the library in the urban public library
Societal
quotes from the girls
societal position and feeling that they are stereotyped related to how they felt the female protagonist was portrayed
Institutional
when black adolescent girls read street literature texts, the spoke back to the black female condition of the protagonist
spoke to the way society portrayed the experience
Intertextual: merged street lit texts with other forms of media
Historical: merging street let texts with texts from different time periods (like the Color Purple)
Transparent: emotions & merging oneself with the text
created for themselves ways and strategies to make meaning without prompting
(Sipe, 2008; Rosenblatt, 1984)
in an effort to fix/address injustice, they woud insert themselves hypothetically into the literature
Situational
reflexive
particularly important working with participants of the same cultural group
negotiating these diffferent perspectives
"teenagers decide how they're gonna handle you"
Sipe, 2008: "teacherly moves"--> they didn't respond well to this
however, adult participant talk elicited more responses
create the best possible space for engagement< --implications of this
Implications
an action plan for information professionals
use of book clubs outside the school: spontaneous, authentic, student driven
use of digital technologies: contextualization, identity work
use of street literature tects: popular culture, bibliotherapy
types of facilitation: participant-centered, adult participant
literacy is defined for them as belonging to the school space-->cared about grammar and spelling in online journaling, etc. in the face-to-face space, they use a lot of African-American dialect
style shift
"dual consciousness"
often using digital technology in the school context is disconnected from out-of-school experience
autoethnographic tool: journals
future research studies
Race, Place, Space: historical literary analysis of the representations of marginalized populations in Newberry Award Winning Literature (1938-present)
Through the looking glass: critical exploration of young adult public librarians and school librarians' repsonse to multicultural texts in an information professional book club (the other half of her "concrete roses" research described here)
create space that allows them to bring all of who they are
knowing your population, serving your population
an action plan for LIS
race as invisible in LIS, has been addressed in terms of diversity of LIS professionals
literacy and information needs are not neutral
acknowledging the subjectivity that arrives at the information/reference desk
how do we account for that as information professionals
account for the needs of a diverse population
much of her research is drawn from the field of education and rhetorical studies
Questions
Be sure to be able to address generalizability
this is a way to talk with the girls, rather than saying this is what all black girls do/think/experience
small sample: what does that say about the difficulty of recruiting?
how do you recruit to get a broader sample? so you could see variance and determine the factors that influence
study took place bt september & december; if she did it again, there might be better timing in the summer
how would your finding affect your teaching/practice-->focus on reader response