Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Lee Shumow
Hayal Kackar
M Cecil Smith
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New
York, NY. April 2008.
Teens’ perspectives 2
Purpose
Despite the explosion of visual media and technologies which have led to research on the
“new adolescent literacies” (Alverman, 2004; Luke, 2000), reading will remain crucial for
personal, educational, vocational, and social development well into the 21st century; thus it is an
essential skill for adolescents (Moore, Bean, Birdyshaw, & Rycik, 1999). Numerous
sources, however, document a decline in the time that adolescents spend reading for pleasure--
which has led to the assumption that reading is not valued by adolescents. We were, therefore,
surprised by the unsolicited and passionate presentations adolescents made about reading
activities in videotapes they made for our project pertaining to adolescents’ daily lives (Authors,
2005). The purpose of this paper is to describe adolescents’ reports about their reading in those
videos and our follow-up investigation of adolescents’ cognitive engagement, motivation, and
Background
considered as critical social practice (Alverman, Young, Green, & Wisenbaker, 1999). Literacy
as social practice signifies ways that persons interact with and interpret the world and the “word”
(texts), engage with and respond to text, contemplate differences (e.g., language, race, gender,
sexual orientation), and appropriate and employ texts to position, define and validate individual
identities. Our study examines the ways adolescents interpreted, responded to, engaged with, and
contemplated reading and how they used it to define themselves in documentary videos they
created. We also examined adolescents’ report about their cognitive and affective states as they
were reading for leisure and compared those to their reports when engaged with other leisure
activities.
Teens’ perspectives 3
(Phelan, Davidson, & Yu, 1998). Several contemporary theories of adolescent development
highlight the critical role adolescents’ interpretation of that experience plays in development.
research and practice (Daniels & Shumow, 2002). Lenters (2006) describes listening to student
voice as “an important research paradigm applied to the study of adolescent resistance to reading
….. [that] has yielded rich information regarding adolescent literacy practices…agency, and…
identity as components of resistance to reading” (p. #). The present study focuses on the voices
of a range of adolescent students about their reading using two unique data sources.
Researchers have most often examined adolescents’ reading habits through surveys and
interviews. Several studies have, for example, investigated why adolescents read for leisure. An
English study (Nestle Family Monitor, 2003) found that approximately 50 % of the 11 – 18 year
old adolescents surveyed described reading as relaxing, 50 % as helping understand others, 40%
as educational, 33% as fun, 25% as supporting learning, and another 25% as boring. Other
surveys have led investigators to describe young adolescents’ attitude toward leisure reading as
Large nationally representative data sets indicate that only 20 percent of adolescents read
for pleasure each day (Zill, Nord, & Loomis, 1995), although others provide higher estimates
(Roberts, Foehr, & Rideout, 2005). Bradshaw & Nichols (2004) found that reading of literature
international comparative case study revealed that U.S. adolescent students rarely mentioned
reading in interviews about leisure time (Hofer, 1999), suggesting it had little meaning to them.
But what adolescents say about reading in reflective videos and what they actually think about
Teens’ perspectives 4
and feel while reading might reveal more than quick responses to predetermined, retrospective
Literacy educators have also posited that literacy plays an important, yet not yet fully
psychosocial task in adolescence (Erikson, 1968; LaVoie, 1994). Achieving an identity entails
experimenting with different roles, beliefs, and perspectives, comparing one’s self with others,
and identifying with salient characteristics of significant others (e.g., parents, mentors). The role
that literacy plays in identity formation for adolescents has garnered considerable attention in
literacy education (Alvermann, 2001; Blackburn, 2002; Fecho, 1998; Finders, 1998/1999; Gee &
Crawford, 1998; McCarthey & Moje, 2002; Nielsen, 1998; Young, Dillon, & Moje, 2004).
Literacy researchers have argued that the ways in which adolescents approach and participate in
literacy activities reflects, in large part, their emerging identities. As McCarthey (2001) points
out, adolescent learners come to understand themselves in particular ways as a result of their
literate engagements.
Method
Data Sources
The present study identified and analyzed instances pertaining to reading from two data
sources. Each source gathered adolescents’ subjective experiences using unique methods.
Study One: TeenScene. The TeenScene project recruited 19 high school students who
each created a 60-minute video documentary about themselves. Educators in four high schools
referred students who were (a) representative of adolescents, (b) expressive enough to
communicate with others, and (c) trustworthy enough to be loaned a digital video camera. The
purpose and rules (e.g., don’t film illegal activities), digital video camera operation, and
Teens’ perspectives 5
guidelines for capturing images and sound were explained to each participant. Students were
asked to address three questions while creating their documentaries: What is important to you?,
What do you want others to know about you?, and, What did you do this week?
Each adolescent had a digital video camera for one week. The completed videos were
content analyzed. As a validity check, educators from the participating schools viewed excerpts
Study Two: Sloan. Extant data from the University of Chicago Sloan Center 500 Family
Study (Schneider & Waite, 2005), collected from participants who resided in eight middle- and
upper middle-class communities that varied geographically and demographically, were used for
secondary analysis. Our study focuses on 165 adolescent student participants (59 % female, 80 %
White). Data collection included the Experience Sampling Method (ESM; Csikzentmihalyi &
Larson, 1984), a week-long data collection process with good validity and reliability (Hektner,
Schmidt, & Csikszentmihalyi, 2007; Schneider & Waite, 2005), during which participants wore
programmed wristwatches that emitted 8 signals each day. Watches beeped randomly during
participants’ waking hours. When signaled, participants recorded their location, activities,
companions, and psychological states at that time. Participants’ activity descriptions were coded
using detailed schemes. This data set contains 11,721 responses from adolescent students; 3,506
Leisure reading was defined as those instances when adolescents were not in class and
reported reading a newspaper, popular culture magazines, news/idea magazine, teen fiction,
literature, unspecified fiction, nonfiction or other general “reading.” Students reported 329
Teens’ perspectives 6
instances of leisure reading. Seven percent of adolescents’ responses occurred while they were
reading, which indicated that they spent about 28 minutes per day reading.1
Adolescents read at (a) home (81%), (b) school, not in class (3%), and (c) public places
(16 %). They were (a) alone (60%), (b) with friends/peers (6%), (c) with parents (24%), and (d)
with others (9 %). In addition, students provided responses to Likert and semantic differential
scale items reporting on their cognitive, affective, and motivational states, as well as their views
about themselves and their abilities at the time. This paper focuses on those states while reading
Results
Study One. Approximately 1/3 of the adolescents spontaneously discussed what they
were reading or talked about books in their documentaries. They indicated deep interest,
involvement, and engagement in reading (quotations from videos will appear in the full paper).
(Markus & Nurius, 1986). Adolescents identified with protagonists and explored their personal
beliefs while describing their reading in the videos. For example, Emily noted that she reads “a
lot,” partly because she lived far away from friends in her exurban home, and wondered openly
about her reactions to the works of Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club, Choke) and Ann Rice and what
her identification with the characters in those books means about herself. She also discussed
Brave New World and how it led her to think more critically about her philosophical beliefs and
Karl also used literature to examine his beliefs. He reported reading The DaVinci Code
twice shortly before making his video. Holding the book up to the camera, he said, “Some of it
1
Figure computed by multiplying 2.918 (percent of reading responses) by 960 (the estimated number of
adolescents’ waking minutes a day) and dividing the product by 100.
Teens’ perspectives 7
really caught my attention and I was pretty interested in it.” In fact, it led him to question the
accuracy of what he had been taught as a Roman Catholic: “It brings up questions. I went online
and researched it. Most of the gospels were written much later than his (Jesus’) death. Things
got taken out and filled in…” He connected these concerns to questions he had just begun
Lauren defined herself as a “reader,” and mentioned reading “teen” books. Eunice also
saw herself as a reader but took a critical stance toward “teen” books that “tell you what to do”
compared to “really good novels” in which there is a “relationship between the book and
These and other high school students indicated that reading was important to them; they
were interested, engaged, and enjoyed reading. This led us to wonder about documented declines
in time and attitude toward reading and whether adolescents’ motivation to read or not could be
at least partly explained by how they feel when reading compared to when involved in
Study Two. We then examined adolescents’ reports while they were reading to determine
how they rated their cognitive, affective and motivational states. Their reports of negative affect
(i.e., anger, anxiety, stress) while reading were very low, as were effort and productivity ratings.
perceived importance of activity, and wish to be doing the present activity, but higher ratings of
Teens’ perspectives 8
positive affect (enjoyment, happiness, feeling good about self), and cognitive engagement
(control, ability).
Adolescents reported higher levels of concentration, interest, and control while reading
than when engaging in leisure activities. Alternately, they were less involved in reading,
perceived reading as less important, and felt less happy while they were reading than doing other
Reading Leisure
M SD M SD t
Concentration 1.85 .85 1.59 .61 -3.192**
Interest 2.08 .79 1.83 .64 -3.199**
Control 2.32 .82 2.15 .62 -2.212*
Involvement 1.51 1.10 1.97 .75 4.817***
Adolescents also felt less angry and less hardworking while they were reading than engaging in
other types of media (e.g. music). They reported higher levels of ability and enjoyment while
reading than engaging in other media types (Table 2). (Associations with self/identity measures
Implications
Our findings shed some light on adolescents’ participation, engagement and views on
reading. In contrast to surveys depicting disaffection, we find that high school students view
reading as engaging, enjoyable, and beneficial —in part to confront identity formation tasks.
Comparisons between their perspectives on reading and other leisure activities suggest that
adolescents’ views about reading are complex and nuanced. Surveys asking adolescents if, what,
and how much they read are likely not capturing a sufficiently complete view of adolescents’
reading interests and activities. Note that adolescents’ reports about reading activities were
unsolicited in these two projects, in contrast to surveys that explicitly query students about their
Educators should take note of adolescents’ expressed reading interests (which may be at
odds with official classroom reading) and their reading of unsanctioned texts (e.g., adult novels).
Connections between in-school and out-of-school reading should be made wherever possible.
Teens’ perspectives 10
References
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Bradshaw, T. & Nichols, B. (2004). Reading at risk: A survey of literary reading in America.
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Csikszentmihalyi, M. & Larson, R. (1984). Being adolescent: Conflict and growth in the teenage
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Teens’ perspectives 11
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