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The impact of labelling and segregationon adolescent literacy learningErin McCloskey aa Department of Education , Vassar College , Poughkeepsie, NY,USAPublished online: 21 Apr 2011.

To cite this article: Erin McCloskey (2011) The impact of labelling and segregation onadolescent literacy learning, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 15:7, 729-742, DOI:10.1080/13603110903336817

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International Journal of Inclusive EducationVol. 15, No. 7, August 2011, 729–742

ISSN 1360-3116 print/ISSN 1464-5173 online© 2011 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/13603110903336817http://www.informaworld.com

The impact of labelling and segregation on adolescent literacy learning

Erin McCloskey*

Department of Education, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, USATaylor and FrancisTIED_A_433859.sgm(Received 5 August 2009; final version received 15 September 2009)10.1080/13603110903336817International Journal of Inclusive Education1360-3116 (print)/1464-5173 (online)Original Article2010Taylor & Francis0000000002010Dr ErinMcCloskeyermccloskey@vassar.edu

This qualitative case study, grounded in disability studies in education, exploresthe literacy development of an adolescent student, described by school officials aslearning disabled and a non-reader. The researcher highlights how this studentlearned to connect to books based on an apprenticeship model. Additionally, theacknowledgement of the impact of labelling and segregation in special educationplayed a crucial role in literacy instruction. Providing varying perspectives aboutdisability and the category of learning disabled was instrumental in facilitatingliteracy learning at the adolescent level. Using an apprenticeship approach toliteracy, coupled with these analytic viewpoints, allows learners to take on thedemands of literacy learning while providing the space necessary to reflect on theimpact of being labelled as being innately disabled.

Keywords: learning disability; adolescent literacy; disability studies; specialeducation; apprenticeship; tutoring

Introduction

For all of Samson King’s1 life, his literacy learning has been documented in numbersand percentages. Samson’s school and the Kings’ home are located in a small inner-city community in the northeast of the USA. The Committee on Special Education inSamson’s school identified him in first grade as a student with a learning disabilityand he received special education services and an individualised educationprogramme (IEP) throughout his time in school. At the end of second grade, Samsonwas moved from his general education classroom, where he received his specialeducation services in a pull-out fashion (resource room), to a self-contained specialeducation programme, where he remained throughout his schooling. When I metSamson in June of his fifth-grade year, he was preparing to enter middle school,described by his teachers as a non-reader. His fifth grade annual review meeting wasthe last school meeting Samson’s father, Russ, ever attended. As Samson’s motherMaxine explained, it was just too tough for Russ to hear school officials talk abouthow baffled they were by Samson’s inability to read. Through the years, Samson’sparents had done all that was asked of them to support Samson’s literacy learning.When school officials recommended that Samson receive special education servicesoutside his mainstream classroom to improve his literacy learning, the Kingsconsented. When the school officials suggested that Samson be placed in a self-

*Email: ermccloskey@vassar.edu

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contained special education classroom with a smaller student/teacher ratio so that hewould receive more individual attention, the Kings again agreed. When the schoolsuggested to Maxine and Russ that they take Samson for literacy tutoring outsideschool, the Kings took him. Despite everything the Kings did, the IEPs and the self-contained special education classrooms Samson was in, he did not learn to read. AsMaxine described Samson’s history to me, she circled back to that fifth grade annualreview meeting and stated, ‘And after all this, here I am at his fifth-grade meeting stillhearing he can’t read’.

I met Samson as a result of that meeting. A friend and colleague, Allison, wasSamson’s speech and language therapist and attended that meeting. Allison contactedme to talk through her impression of the meeting and to seek a better understandingof why he was still identified as a non-reader by his teachers. She described the meet-ing, the King’s frustration and some of her own experiences with Samson. She askedme, ‘Are there just some kids who’ll never learn to read?’ I had been teaching for adecade by then, all the time in special education. I had taught students at all levels,from kindergarten through high school, in public schools and in residential settings. Iencountered many students who struggled with literacy and those struggles werealways very individual. Although my first reaction to Allison was, ‘No, all kids canlearn to read’, I wasn’t really sure this was true. I asked Allison to give the Kings myphone number. The next day, I was on the phone with Maxine, arranging a time andplace to meet.

I designed this research project and explained my approach to Samson. I told himI was interested in knowing more about his struggles with literacy learning and hisexperiences in special education and that I would do everything within my power toteach him to read. I described how audio taping and transcribing our tutoring sessionswould help me analyse our tutoring sessions. Repeatedly during our time together, Ireminded Samson that he was teaching me as much as I was teaching him. I learned alot about why some students seem to continually struggle and Samson learned toread.

Samson

Rather tall for his age, Samson chose clothes that fit loosely and he had a strong lovefor Nike sneakers. In his spare time, he enjoyed riding his four-wheeler with hisfriends and listening to rap music. Samson identified himself as ‘an outside kind ofguy, just like my dad’. When I asked him about his plans for the future, he alwaysfocused on staying in his community and working with his hands. Samson’s father,Russ, worked for the sanitation department in their community and Samson’s brotherinstalled car radios at a local store. Samson spoke often of wanting to work with hisfather or perhaps being a car mechanic with his brother. He strongly identified withhis Italian heritage and often spent time at the Italian community centre in his neigh-bourhood where he volunteered doing odd jobs. When I first started working withSamson, I was teaching in the elementary school he had attended from kindergartenthrough second grade. When Samson was placed in a self-contained special educationclassroom at the start of his third-grade year, he had to change schools because theonly age-appropriate self-contained classroom existed in a different school. The deci-sion to move Samson to a self-contained classroom, and hence another school, was anextremely difficult decision for the King family because Samson did not want to leavehis friends. As well, the move meant that the district would provide transportation for

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Samson to the new school on a small ‘special education bus’ – a concern for Samson.Convinced by the school officials that this placement would be more conducive toSamson’s literacy learning, the Kings consented with the caveat that his parents drivehim to and from school. Hence, by the time he entered middle school, Samson hadattended three different elementary schools in the district although his family nevermoved.

Methods and data sources

The data described for this article are from a larger data set in which I describe howSamson and his family came to understand their participation in special education.The data shared here focus entirely on the tutoring sessions and were gathered usingqualitative methods (Dyson and Genishi 2005; Glesne 1999; Merriam 2001) and assuggested by Merriam (2001) were analysed simultaneously with its collection.

Samson and I met for at least an hour each week during the school year and twicea week during the summer months. The tutoring sessions took place either in my class-room after school or at a public library. I audio recorded each tutoring session. I partic-ipated in the tutoring activities with both an emic and etic perspective. I was aparticipant in the sessions and hence I operated with an insider’s point of view throughwhich I strove to assess and plan literacy instruction and gauge the impact of thatinstruction. Conversely, conducting research and transcribing each tutoring sessionallowed me to step back and operate with an etic, or outsider’s perspective. The tran-scriptions from the tutoring sessions were organised chronologically and 13 broadcategories were developed. These broad categories were then broken down intosubcategories. The data that inform this article come from the broad category of ‘tutor-ing/reading with me’ and more specifically from the subcategories of ‘connections totexts’ and ‘understandings about literacy’. A chronological review of the transcriptsallowed me to pinpoint instances where the apprenticeship process fostered Samson’sability to connect to texts. Coupled with this, looking at instances where Samsonbegan to gain a different perspective on disability, the learning to read process provedimperative to his literacy learning.

The goal of this case study was to understand the particular in depth and not to findout what is true of the many (Merriam 2001), and so it was important that this casestudy be longitudinal in nature to show growth over time. In addition to the transcrip-tions of the tutoring sessions, I took field notes during the tutoring sessions to capturewhat the audio recorder could not, kept a researcher’s journal in which I reflected onthe process of collecting data and tutoring Samson, and collected documents such ashomework assignments and materials we generated during the tutoring sessions.Taping and transcribing three years of tutoring sessions was instrumental in my abilityto pinpoint moments where new learning occurred, for both Samson and me. In thisarticle, I focus on Samson’s learning while I continue to implement what I havelearned from Samson in my teaching and research.

Disability studies in education and a different approach to adolescent literacy

Scholars that orient their work in disability studies in education (DSE) ‘investigate whatdisability means; how it is interpreted, enacted, and resisted in the social practices ofindividuals, groups, organizations, and cultures’ (Danforth and Gabel 2006, 5). Thisresearch is rooted in DSE in design, theory and practice (Connor et al. 2008). In keeping

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with DSE, I designed this study to include Samson as a co-participant and not as aresearch subject. Together, we theorise about the construct of disability. Further, Icannot divorce the experiences of being labelled and segregated in self-containedspecial education classes from instructional approaches to literacy learning. Forstudents that are separated from their peers in these classrooms, literacy instructionmust incorporate the impact of those experiences. It is the act of separating studentsthat creates this understanding of ‘difference’. For students who have experienced thissegregation, successful instruction must incorporate, explicitly, the impact of thisexperience. As Solis and Connor (2006) contend, all students with disabilities arenegotiating the stigma attached to the designation of ‘being’ disabled.

The understanding that students who are ‘learning disabled’, ‘remedial readers’ or‘struggling readers’ are in some way deficient, unmotivated and/or have developedlearned helplessness has been refuted in the past (Alvermann 2001; Knobel 2001; Kos1993; McCray 2001; Mehan 1996; Purcell-Gates 1997; Santa Barbara DiscourseGroup 1994). Still, as a way to address the history of ‘failure’ of adolescent literacylearners, these descriptors become a key facet of how to improve instruction in textsdesigned for pre-service teachers (e.g. Lerner 2001). However, when we listen to thevoices of students, we find in many cases that the adult interpretation that students arelacking motivation does not necessarily match what the students are experiencing. Forexample, what an adult views as an unmotivated child may be a child who wants his/her teacher to ‘understand that I am afraid to read and the fear makes me crazy’(McCray 2001, 299).

I contend in this research that acknowledging the labelling and segregation ofstudents in special education classrooms (Ferri and Connor 2005) is an importantfactor in strengthening the literacy skills of these adolescents. We cannot separate theimpact of these experiences from literacy learning as it is unfolding. When thestudents are removed from their mainstream classrooms and made different from theirpeers, this experience must be addressed as an important aspect of their literacy learn-ing. Discontinuing the policy of labelling and segregating students and providinginstruction based on a student’s strengths might be the most effective steps in advanc-ing the literacy learning for all students.

A framework for tutoring

Learning, according to Rogoff (1990, 7–8), happens when ‘children’s cognitive devel-opment is embedded in the context of social relationships and sociocultural tools andpractices’. I use Rogoff’s framework for cognitive development to portray Samson’sliteracy learning for many reasons.

Rogoff (1990) focuses on the concept of guided participation. This term suggeststhat guidance and participation are essential to children’s apprenticeship in problem-solving. How a more knowledgeable other guides a child may be tacit or explicit. Itinvolves scaffolding learning to bridge a child’s present understanding and skills toreach new skills. An important aspect of Rogoff’s theory, with its particular relation-ship to literacy learning and this study, is the notion of intersubjectivity. Rogoffdescribes this as, ‘a sharing of focus and purpose between children and their moreskilled partners …. From guided participation involving shared understanding andproblem solving, children appropriate solution, as defined by the local cultures’(1990, 8). Intersubjectivity when solving problems is important in fostering thedevelopment of inaccessible cognitive processes, such as literacy learning, which can

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be difficult to explain. Intersubjectivity, as related to this study, involves differencesin perspective and how those differences shift to reach a common ground for literacylearning. Rogoff asserts that perspective-taking is crucial to the development of inter-subjectivity.

Using social interaction as the unit of analysis (Varenne and McDermott 1998),I was able to see the microgenetic (Rogoff 1990), or moment-to-moment learning, thatwas essential for this change in perspective and literacy learning to occur. ForSamson, literacy learning in school required rote memorisation of terms and readingworksheets to complete. I would apprentice Samson into becoming a literacy learnerby not only paying attention to the materials I was using but by also thinking carefullyabout the relationship we were developing and the perspectives we both brought tothat relationship (Gee 2000; Santa Barbara Discourse Group 1994).

Two major understandings became apparent to me as I was gathering the data andbegan coding it. Both deeply affected my instruction. First, no one had talked withSamson about his understanding of, or history in, the category of learning disabled.This term existed as a descriptor of his self as much as the descriptor male. Samsonowned disability as the reason he did not learn to read. For him, it was a fixed descrip-tor. Samson had not been exposed to another view of the label of learning disabled,one that frames learning disabilities as fluid and social constructions. Varenne andMcDermott (1998) contend that learning disabilities are not internal manifestationswaiting to present themselves but rather exist solely because the society provides thecontext for their existence. Without this perspective, Samson lacked agency toconfront why he might have never learned to read nor did he ever challenge the labelgiven to him or his placement in a self-contained special education classrooms.Samson owned disability as the reason he did not learn to read yet had no understand-ing of what this meant. He referred to his difficulty with reading as his ‘problem’perhaps because that is how the school framed it. During the three years that I collecteddata, there was never a discussion in any of the school meetings that I attended thatlooked outside of Samson as to why he was not progressing. Neither instructionalapproaches, materials nor curriculum were ever considered.

Apprenticeship in action

Samson at the onset

To get an idea as to where to start working with Samson, I administered a preprimerword list from an informal reading inventory. He read three out of 10 words correctly(no, the, he). Samson had very little experience reading connected texts and could notthink of one book he had read. He shared with me some of his school worksheets andit was clear that he was adept at finding patterns in them. When asked to tell me aboutthem, Samson replied, ‘I just do them. I don’t know what they’re for’. When Samsonread a first-grade passage from the inventory, he used the first letter of each word andthe letter patterns to ‘guess’ at what the word might be, with no monitoring forcomprehension. For example, for the sentence ‘They put it on the very top’ Samsonread ‘Why people it on the vest toy’. Further, Samson related to me that he wasamazed by how people ‘remembered’ all the words in books. It was not until our sixthsession that Samson agreed to write in our tutoring sessions. His first written sentencewas the last sentence to a story he dictated to me. He wrote, ‘and that is the end’ as‘and the is the and’.

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Guided participation

Samson held the belief that reading and writing were all or nothing prospects. Readingwas either something one could or could not do. Early on during one of our first tutor-ing sessions, Samson said to me, ‘What does it matter? Nothing helps me anyway.People are good at some things and bad at others’. There were many times during ourtutoring sessions when Samson expressed his frustration with learning to read. Thesesessions required intense determination and focus on Samson’s part and there weresome days when both Samson and I were frustrated with the process.

Reading and writing were mysterious processes for Samson. In the many schoolmeetings I attended, I could find no evidence of teachers talking with Samson aboutthis reading. In the spirit of special education, teachers sometimes accommodated hisinability to read (reading tests to him, sending work home), but again, in all the data Igathered throughout his middle-school years, there was never any discussion withSamson or his family about how to teach Samson to read.

Intersubjectivity about the reading process

I had not grasped the ramifications of Samson’s perspective on literacy in our earlytutoring sessions. I thought that if I told Samson what to do when reading and he didit, he would read. I was confident we had established a shared purpose. The purposeof our tutoring sessions was to teach Samson to read and for me to conduct research.As Rogoff (1990) asserts, intersubjectivity is a sharing of purpose and focus. Whatwas missing in our early sessions, which I came to see had great importance, wasfocus.

Focus maintains that an idea exists with maximum clarity and to obtain focus, it isnecessary for points to converge. Samson and I came to the tutoring sessions with verydifferent beliefs about literacy. For Samson, learning to read was like trying to changehis eye colour. His ‘problem’ was a part of him and this made him different, so differ-ent in fact that he needed to be removed from his friends and moved to differentschools. I saw reading and writing as a process and Samson viewed it as a concretething he was missing at birth. I believed what I read and was taught about successfulliteracy instruction – engagement with text, purposeful reading, explicit instruction,appropriate reading level and so forth would lead to literacy learning (Clay 1993).Samson believed something totally different. I needed to find a way to obtain focus inour tutoring sessions.

Talking about research with the one who has been researched

During a portion of the time I was working with Samson, I was also a teaching assis-tant working with graduate students in a literacy practicum class. In this graduateclass, the students seeking certification as literacy teachers were learning aboutresearchers who have shaped the field of literacy while implementing specific instruc-tional approaches to help the students they were tutoring. I began to see in these grad-uate students how they made connections between the theories about literacy learningand the students they were tutoring. While the graduate students were in the teachingmoment, they could reflect on the work of the researchers and shift their approachesor gain a different perspective. Through this experience, I began to believe that thisprocess would benefit Samson.

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As stated before, Samson’s history with reading failure and special education wastantamount to our tutoring sessions and with him learning to read. Samson’s schoolexperiences happened to him and he had little knowledge about why it so happened.Samson truly believed that there was something innately wrong with him. Samsonwas not privy to any other explanations about why reading was difficult for him otherthan he was different. I needed to share with him a different perspective so that he tooin the teaching moment could gain a different perspective.

I began by sharing the research of Clay. We talk together about how, when read-ing, the person reading the story had to think about what looked right visually, whatmade sense and what sounded right (Clay 1993), all at the same time. I explained toSamson that Clay believed that some students ‘learned to be learning disabled’ (Clay1987) by practising ineffective strategies over and over again. When I asked Samsonwhat strategies he used to get unknown words he said, ‘I don’t know’. I explained toSamson that Clay’s theories were interesting to think about but that he, living theexperience of being in special education and identified as learning disabled, was theexpert in this context. I asked Samson if sometimes his strategy was to look at the firstletter of a word, say a word that started with this letter. Samson shrugged his shoul-ders. I shared with Samson the initial assessment I had done in which he seemed to bedoing that. I commended him for using the visual information and we talked aboutwhy his response of ‘Why people it on the vest toy’ for the text ‘They put it on thevery top of’ didn’t make sense. In later sessions, I connected Clay to Samson’sapproach of only using the visual information in a humorous way, when Samsonwould rely on only guessing based on the first letter, by saying to him, ‘Now, whatwould Clay say about that?’ Many times Samson would smile and try a different strat-egy or strategies to get an unknown word.

I also wanted Samson to understand that his difficulty with learning to read,according to some researchers, did not only reside in him but that contextual factorsalso shaped the creation of a learning disability. If Samson could understand that otherpossibilities existed as to why learning to read was hard for him, rather than he was insome way deficient, he would not see any other factors but himself as responsible forhis struggles with literacy. What follows is an excerpt from a conversation aboutStanovich’s (1986) research and what he referred to as the ‘Matthew Effects’:2

Author- So this guy called Stanovich said that he thought one reason that kids who hadtrouble with reading had trouble for years and years and years was that oncethey had trouble, they did less reading. You know what I’m saying? It’s likeif you had trouble with, uh, let’s say basketball, and ya couldn’t score to saveyour life and then you were like, ‘Well, I’m not any good at that so whybother to do it’. You’d never get any better, right?

Samson- Yeah.Author- So what this guy is saying is just that. If you have trouble with reading then

you’re like, ‘I’m not so good at that. I’m gonna not do that anymore’. So, youdo less reading and of course, like with basketball, you’re not going to get anybetter at it. Does that make sense to you?

Samson- Yeah.Author- Do you think that something like that might have happened with you?Samson- Yeah, I guess. I don’t know like I never did read stuff; sometimes I’d just like

copy or whatever.Author- Well, you know, it’s also a teacher’s job to make sure you are reading stuff

and so even if you’re copying and what have you, they [teachers] should bemaking sure you’re reading-

Samson- Yeah, that’s true, so it ain’t all on me.

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Another perspective became available to Samson. His struggles with literacy were nolonger ‘all on him’. We also discussed whether we felt learning disabilities wereinnate characteristics or social constructions (McDermott, Goldman, and Varenne2006; Mehan 1996), and at one point Samson exclaimed, ‘Hey, I don’t have LD whenI’m four-wheelin’!’ Sharing this perspective with Samson was paramount in the shiftthat needed to occur from literacy being something he lacked to something he neededmore experience doing. Using research and naming the researchers made these ideasmore than just what I thought. They were a point of focus that took literacy learningoutside of Samson and made it more than instructional techniques for me. As I toldSamson many times, these researchers were talking about students like him and hewas the expert – the person who was living the experience and the one who could vali-date or invalidate their findings by sharing his thoughts.

Sharing researchers’ findings with Samson allowed him to objectify literacy anddisability and consider it from afar. These were new and important concepts forSamson. This stance helped him become an apprentice to literacy because he could bein the midst of learning to read and could then step back and consider his feelings andfrustration with the process. Samson could feel wanting to give up and we could talkabout Stanovich (1986) at the same time.

Once Samson had some perspective on the process of learning to read and beingclassified as learning disabled, I noticed a change in his orientation to learning.I observed a willingness to engage past the point of frustration. I draw on data to showhow, through guided participation, Samson began to connect to texts. Reading for himshifted from being simply a task to complete; it became something much more.

Connecting to texts

Connecting to texts was a critical component in Samson’s development as a reader.As stated earlier, in school Samson’s teachers often gave him packets of worksheetsthat he was very successful at completing. He was so successful in fact, that in hisreading class, where he did the majority of this kind of work, he never received areport card grade below a 90%. This task required that Samson look at the question onthe worksheet and then refer back to the reading passage to locate an answer. Samsonstated that he did not attempt to read the passage but that he just ‘did’ the work. Duringthe course of our tutoring however, Samson would learn the difference between doingreading and engaging in reading.

Initially, the idea of connecting to text was foreign to Samson. The first tapedexchange that highlights Samson’s inexperience in discussing a text happened on28 September 2000, while completing a homework assignment for his English class.During our hour-long tutoring sessions, it was not uncommon to spend the first 15–20minutes working on Samson’s homework. Although the reading might be aboveSamson’s instructional level, he was responsible for completing the homework none-theless. This session, Samson’s homework was to answer comprehension questionsabout the section of text they had read in class from Charlotte’s Web (White 1974).The second question on the worksheet asked for the reason Fern, the girl in the story,put the pig, Wilbur, in the baby carriage when they went for walks. The text thatanswered the question read, ‘Sometimes on these journeys, Wilbur would get tired andFern would pick him up and put him in the carriage alongside the doll’ (White 1974,10). Samson read the text first and was able, with assistance, to read all the wordsexcept ‘journeys’, ‘carriage’ and ‘alongside’. I then reread the line and a bit further

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finishing with, ‘Fern would wheel the carriage very slowly and smoothly so as not towake her infants’. We went back to the worksheet and I reiterated the question:

1 Author- But why did she originally put him in the carriage?2 Samson- Because, uh///to see what an infant is?3 Author- Do you know what an infant is?4 Samson- A baby.5 Author- Ok so what do you mean by ‘to see what an infant is?’6 Samson- Hmm///uh///

Here, Samson tried to take a section of the text to answer the question. This was famil-iar practice for him. He was confident that a portion of the text answered the question;he just was not sure which portion. Samson supplied an answer in Line 2 based onwhat I had just finished reading. I asked Samson to explain his reasoning behind hisanswer (Line 5) without commenting on whether the answer was right or wrong.When Samson hesitated, I said:

7 Author- Let me read this part again, ‘Sometimes on these journeys, Wilburwould

8 get tired and Fern would pick him up and put him in the9 carriage alongside the doll’.10 Samson- Oh, besides the doll?11 Author- Right, so why did she put him in the carriage next to the doll?12 Samson- It didn’t just say there.// Did it?13 Author- //um, ok, let me read this again and as I read it, you’re thinking about14 and listening for the reason why Fern would put the pig in the carriage.15 Samson- Ok.16- Author- ((reads the passage again))17- Samson- Oh, he would get tired//tired. He would get tired. Put that?18- Author- What do you think?19- Samson- Yeah.

Despite rereading the section of text that answers the question, Samson was stillconfused. He answered in Line 10, ‘Oh, besides the doll’. He intended this to be theanswer to the worksheet question. I acknowledged Samson’s answer and againqueried him to consider why Fern would put him in the carriage to which he repliedin Line 12, ‘It didn’t say there’. He then waited two seconds and added, ‘Did it?’ Itwas as though, while I was rereading, Samson was trying to memorise a small portionof the text so that he had an answer. He did not seem to try to follow the storyline orfully consider whether the answer he was providing would make sense.

I realised in this exchange that Samson needed explicit guidance in thinking abouthow to interpret this text. This explicit strategy instruction (Nokes and Dole 2004)involved telling Samson what to be thinking about and listening for as I reread the text(Lines 12–13). This level of support enabled Samson to glean from the passage theinformation that was necessary to answer the question. Still, Samson was unsure andat the end of Line 17 asked for verification that this was indeed the correct answer.Rather than explicitly state yes or no, I asked Samson to consider whether it could becorrect (Line 18) and he decided it was (Line 19).

This exchange, taken from one of our earliest taped tutoring sessions, showsSamson and I engaged in a problem-solving task around a text. As Rogoff (1990)explains, guided participation involves this type of supportive challenging. Samsonneeded to learn to think as a reader thinks and not just hang on to a piece of text that

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may/may not be the answer to a question. This is new learning for Samson. As a strug-gling reader, Samson was often relieved of responsibility when he encountered textsthat challenged him. Samson, in many instances, received answers from his peers and/or teachers. As Rogoff states, ‘The notion of guided participation is intended to stressshared activity with communication that includes words as well as actions, and thatencompass the routine, tacit activities’ (1990, 17). Thinking about a text as one readsis an activity that one would expect a 13-year-old boy to have grasped but like Clay(1987) points out, Samson spent years practising an ineffective strategy (although itcan be considered effective in that it worked for him when completing his readingworksheets) that ultimately got in the way of real literacy learning. Samson tried tomemorise portions of text to answer questions rather than take in the text as a wholeand think about the storyline.

The previous example was typical of the interactions that Samson and I engagedin repeatedly in our weekly tutoring session. These active, problem-solving situations,in which Samson was apprenticing into literacy and the culture of being a reader, laidthe foundation for Samson’s learning. These types of interactions happened in allareas of literacy learning as Samson learned to decode, express himself in writing andapply comprehension strategies (Author). By showing how Samson progressed inconnecting to texts, I am wary of presenting Samson’s literacy learning as a ‘miracle’case. Our hour-long sessions over a three-year period were not always great leaps ofprogress. The following examples of how Samson learned to connect to text showglimpses into how the apprenticeship process looked for Samson and me. Theseexamples show forward progress but there are many examples that show just howfrustrating the process could be. In all major learning experiences, there are struggles,and this learning experience was no different.

What follows is an excerpt that highlights Samson’s growth in thinking abouttexts. Although I began taping our tutoring sessions on 14 September 2000, it was notuntil 7 December 2000 that Samson independently connected to the text and ques-tioned the story. We were reading a version of the story Kidnapped (Stevenson 1886)and in the story, a wealthy older man was eating a bowl of porridge. A young boyshowed up at his door, and the wealthy older man offered him a bowl of the porridge.We had just finished reading this portion of text and I wanted to see if Samson wasfollowing the storyline. I asked:

1 Author- Would you eat it?2 Samson- What?3 Author- Porridge.4 Samson- What’s that?5 Author- Kinda like oatmeal.6 Samson- Nah.7 Author- Kinda like a cheap meal you can have-8 Samson- I don’t know how cheap it is though.9 Author- Pretty cheap.10 Samson- How much?11 Author- If you were really poor you might eat a lot of porridge, probably12 pennies a bowl.13 Samson- Oatmeal, oatmeal tastes best.14 Author- Yeah, especially if you put sugar in it. Remember Goldilocks and15 the Three Little Bears?16 Samson- Yeah.17 Author- They ate porridge.18 Samson- Porridge.

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I gauged from my opening question, and Samson’s response to it, that he was notthinking about the text. When I asked him if he would eat it [porridge] he did not know‘it’ referred to the porridge (Lines 1–2). When I explained the ‘it’ was porridge (Line3) Samson informed me he did not know what porridge was (Line 4). In Lines 14–15,I tried to connect porridge to Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The conversationseemed to be going nowhere in particular. After Line 18, Samson excused himself andused the bathroom. When he returned to the table he asked:

19 Samson- Ain’t he rich?20 Author- Yeah.21 Samson- Then why is he eatin’ porridge?22 Author- That’s a good question! What’s up with this guy? Why is he old23 looking and slumped over and eating porridge and looking like a bum?24 Samson- When he’s rich.25 Author- Right.26 Samson- In a big house.27 Author- Exactly.28 Samson- This guy is makin’ me mad.29 Author- ((laughs))

I had spent months reading stories with Samson and modelling how a reader connectsto a text. I would think aloud as we read and question the text. This exchange was thebeginning of this process for Samson. Samson independently thought through thestory and questioned the text. I had tried to place Samson in the story by asking if hewould eat the porridge if offered to him. Samson, having had some time to think aboutthe text and our conversation about porridge, came back from the bathroom tocontinue the conversation. His opening question in Line 19 and the follow up questionin Line 21 show Samson was thinking as a reader. He was also actively questioningthe text. Further, he shared an emotional response to the content of the story byexpressing in Line 28 that the character was making him mad.

Almost two months after this exchange, on 30 January 2001, Samson not onlyinitiated stopping the reading of the text, but also independently connected to it onmany levels. Samson and I were reading about the space shuttle and space explora-tion. Samson stopped multiple times throughout the text to ask questions, makecomments and ask for clarification. Samson wanted to know if telescopes were ‘true’.He asked, ‘Can they [telescopes] really let you see things that far away?’ ‘How dothey work?’ ‘What is gravity?’ ‘How many times have people travelled to space?’ Iwas initially surprised that Samson had not learned about telescopes, gravity andspace travel; but if Samson’s learning in school was measured by the answers heprovided on worksheets, then it made sense that he had not been actively engaging inthe content of the material. At one point in our conversation Samson said to me, ‘Thisstuff is fake’. I spent a few minutes trying to convince him that space travel really didoccur but he did not look convinced. After we finished reading the text, we exploredthe NASA web site on a computer in the library where we met every week. Samsonwas fascinated.

In our penultimate taped tutoring session on 3 June 2002, Samson and I read abiography about Frederick Douglass. Samson and I shared the reading, alternatingparagraphs. We were talking back and forth about the story. At times I would stop thereading to make sure Samson understood a term or idea or to just comment on whatwe read. Samson also stopped to comment or connect to what he was reading or hear-ing. Samson was reading when he stopped in the middle of a sentence and stated:

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You know, this guy is amazing and I mean talking about being brave. All those beatingsand being beat and sneakin’ around to learn, and what have you. I guess I’ve got it prettygood man. I’m sure glad I was no slave or nothin’ or even that I lived then ’cause I gotlots of Black friends, ya know? I don’t think if I was him I could just be standing therecalmly and giving speeches and you know.

Through guided participation, Samson appropriated the ‘way of being’ a reader. Theprevious quote from him is an example of that. I did not stop the reading, Samson did.Samson spoke in terms that showed he both understood what he read and connectedthe life of Frederick Douglass to his own. When engaged in text reading, Samsoncould think like a reader. Further, Samson entered the secondary world of the book,which he was not able to do before. That secondary world, when the words on the pagereflect back to us our own position in the world, enables readers to love, and cravebooks.

Coda

I asked Samson on 10 June 2002, the last tutoring session I taped, whether hewanted to meet again next school year. He replied, ‘Hell yeah we’re gonna meetnext year’. Further, as a way to bring closure to our research, I asked Samson toreflect on his schooling with regard to being in special education and his struggleswith learning to read. While Samson had initially been reluctant to discuss hisschool history or his feelings about special education with me, he was very seriousin thinking through his answers to these topics now. In particular, Samson took agreat deal of time in thinking through his answer to the question I asked about whatadvice he could give to teachers to help them teach children to learn to read. Samsonstated:

Samson- Um/////if///hmm, let me think about that///if teachers, the teachers, the teach-ers should give you more attention than they do.

Author- Like what kind of attention? What would have been good for you?Samson- Um, if they would’ve helped, they///if you don’t really know how to read like

real-, like when I first started and I didn’t know nothin’ really, they shouldlike put me, they should like break up the group smaller, and teach the kids,and give the kids the more attention that they need. That’s what they should do.

What is particularly striking about Samson’s answer is that he now believed thatsomething could have been done to help him earlier rather than a belief that he wasinherently defective. When Samson and I approached learning to read as an activeproblem-solving process, rather than a task to be completed, Samson made progress.Further, I suggest that sharing the research about adolescents with learning disabilitiesand struggling literacy learners, with those currently in that circumstance, is a power-ful way to demystify the process. Samson learned not only to read, but he learned hecould analyse his experiences with literacy and special education. He could then gaininsight into other aspects, and not only his innate self, to understand why learning toread was difficult for him.

The medical model of disability, which subscribes to the belief that deficienciesare inherent in people, has a substantial impact on learning and teaching. A newapproach to literacy learning, particularly with students who have been labelled aslearning disabled, requires that students be made active participants in both situatingdisability and learning about approaches to literacy learning. The voices of those who

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have experienced segregated environments, both teachers and students, present theopportunity to challenge the ontological and epistemological assumptions in specialeducation.

Notes1. All names are pseudonyms.2. Transcription conventions:

/ one second pauseItalics stress placed on a word(( )) details of the conversation- Word is cut off[ ] analysis comments

Notes on contributorErin McCloskey is an assistant professor in the Education Department at Vassar College. Herresearch interests include investigating the spaces where disability and literacy intersect,instructional strategies that promote inclusion, and constructions of ability.

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