Third Grade African American Boys Respond to Representations of Race, Class and Gender in Children's Literature

Abstract

African American students are often at odds with their education. Instead of being viewed as a place that can offer help, support, and a catalyst for social change, school is viewed by many African American boys as a place that does not recognize or understand their own lives, and where their knowledge and understandings of the world are not valued. These boys suffer great alienation from their schooling experiences. Having students read and respond to literature with representations of issues that African American boys face everyday provided the context for this study. This research examined the ways these boys respond to diverse representations of race, class, and gender in children's literature read in their own classroom, Realizing that most African American students do not have a place to offer their thoughts and understandings in the classroom, let alone have them recognized, shaped my research in how the participants responded to the literature. Participants were encouraged to freely respond to the literature we shared, allowing them to make any connections they wanted personally while also building off the connections they were making to other students' responses. Using a grounded theory approach to the data, I analyzed and coded the participants' responses, and four conceptual categories emerged from the responses. Although the literature shared focused on either race, class, or gender, the students were not willing to respond openly to all three topics equally. In fact, the students did not discuss issues related to class in their responses, while their discussion of race was grounded in a historical context while gender was discussed in almost exclusively personal connections to their own lives. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone [phone]. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]