Coping with classroom reading : an ethnographic investigation into the experiences of four dyslexic pupils during the final years of primary schooling
Year: 2007
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This ethnographic case study explores how four dyslexic pupils coped with \nclassroom reading during their final two years at a large prim3IY school in an exmining \nvillage on the outskirts of a northern city. The research takes a constructivist \nview of childhood which regards pupils as competent reporters of their experiences, \nand connects the psychological concept of dyslexia with a socio-cultural view of \nliteracy development. The central tenets of symbolic interactionism and ideas put \nforward by the mid-twentieth century sociologist, Erving Goffinan, form a \ntheoretical underpinning and frame the qualitative analysis of the observational and \ninterview data. The findings suggest that the pupils' dyslexic difficulties had a \nnegative effect on their reader identity and that this resulted in low self-esteem in the \nacademic domain. Problems with word reading meant that many texts encountered at \nschool were beyond their independent level and the consequence was \nmarginalisation within the classroom community of literate practice, an effect \nintensified by attendance at withdrawal sessions. However, the need to present \nthemselves in a favourable cultural light resulted in the use of impression \nmanagement techniques designed to enable them to appear more competent readers \nthan they really were. The pupils also developed a repertoire of inter-person and \nwithin-person coping strategies for difficult reading which all had the effect of \nminimizing the amount of text they read themselves. These strategies could be \nviewed as positive in the short term in that they enabled them to function in the \nclassroom with some semblance of normality, but were damaging to learning in the \nlonger term as problems with reading were disguised. Electronic multimodal texts, \nespecially those associated with internet use, have increased the complexity of \nclassroom reading in recent years, and the findings of this study suggest that they \nmay have added to the marginalisation experienced by dyslexic pupils.
Author: Rosemary Elizabeth Anderson
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2547826765