What does it mean to be a reader? Identity and positioning in two high school literacy intervention classes

Studies of high school literacy intervention classes have measured reading gains through standardized assessments, but few have considered the impact on students’ identities. In this embedded case study, I used theories of identity and positioning to answer two research questions: How did institutional and interpersonal acts of positioning in two literacy intervention classrooms build on, change, or challenge students’ personal histories and identities as readers? How did these acts shape students’ understandings of themselves as readers over time? I collected and analyzed interviews, field notes, and artifacts. Analyses revealed that ongoing positioning in one classroom thickened one student’s identity as a poor reader. Positioning in the second classroom reinforced the other student’s identity as a good student but had little impact on her identity as a reader. These findings highlight the need to better understand how instructional contexts privilege particular ways of reading and understandings of what it means to be a reader.Accepted manuscrip

The intersection of reading and identity in high school literacy intervention classes

Please note that there is an open-access version of this article available through the National Council of Teachers of English website: http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/RTE/0511-aug2016/RTE0511Intersectionpword.pdfIt is common practice to enroll adolescents in classes designed to improve their reading. Previous studies of literacy intervention classes focus on students’ acquisition of reading skills and strategies, but few studies consider how reading identities may contribute to literacy learning. To address this gap, I used theories of positioning and identity to answer the question: How do students’ understandings of literacy and their own reading identities interact with the figured worlds of their literacy intervention classrooms? I analyzed interviews, field notes, and artifacts for two students and teachers in different classrooms, focusing on students’ acts of agency. Analyses revealed that the students’ identities as good readers conflicted with the figured worlds of their classrooms, but they responded differently. One challenged the norms of his classroom in a manner contrary to his teacher’s expectations and was unable to disrupt his positioning as struggling reader. The other acquiesced to the norms of her classroom in ways her teacher recognized as characteristic of a capable reader, ultimately upsetting her struggling reader subject position. The findings reveal that students’ acts of agency and teachers’ interpretations of those acts are informed by students’ perceptions of themselves as readers and teachers’ understandings of literacy and learning in intervention classrooms. The findings also problematize the practice of placing students in classes that position them as deficient. Additional research that attends to sociocultural factors in classrooms is necessary to understand the academic, social, and personal implications of particular approaches to literacy instruction and intervention for individual students.Accepted manuscrip

Collaborating with youths as coteachers in literacy learning

The authors featured in this department column share instructional practices that support transformative literacy teaching and disrupt “struggling reader” and “struggling writer” labels.This work was supported by a Boston University Consortium grant and a Boston University School of Education Faculty Research Award. (Boston University Consortium; Boston University School of Education Faculty Research Award)Accepted manuscrip

Oral reading: practices and purposes in secondary classrooms

PURPOSE This paper aims to investigate teacher-initiated whole-group oral reading practices in two ninth-grade reading intervention classrooms and how teachers understood the purposes of those practices. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH In this qualitative cross-case analysis, a literacy-as-social-practice perspective is used to collaboratively analyze ethnographic data (fieldnotes, audio recordings, interviews, artifacts) across two classrooms. FINDINGS Oral reading was a routine instructional reading event in both classrooms. However, the literacy practices that characterized oral reading and teachers’ purposes for using oral reading varied depending on teachers’ pedagogical philosophies, instructional goals and contextual constraints. During oral reading, students’ opportunities to engage in independent meaning making with texts were either absent or secondary to other purposes or goals. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS Findings emphasize the significance of understanding both how and why oral reading happens in secondary classrooms. Specifically, they point to the importance of collaborating with teachers to (a) examine their own ideas about the power of oral reading and the institutional factors that shape their existing oral reading practices; (b) investigate the intended and actual outcomes of oral reading for their students and (c) develop other instructional approaches to support students to individually and collaboratively make meaning from texts. ORIGINALITY/VALUE This study falls at the intersection of three under-researched areas of study: the nature of everyday instruction in secondary literacy intervention settings, the persistence of oral reading in secondary school and teachers’ purposes for using oral reading in their instruction. Consequently, it contributes new knowledge that can support educators in creating more equitable instructional environments.Accepted manuscrip

Why the "Struggling Reader" label Is harmful (and what educators can do about it)

The authors featured in this department column share instructional practices that support transformative literacy teaching and disrupt “struggling reader” and “struggling writer” labels.Accepted manuscrip

A Survey of Empirical Research on Nominal Exchange Rates

We survey the empirical literature on floating nominal exchange rates over the past decade. Exchange rates are difficult to forecast at short- to medium-term horizons. There is a bit of explanatory power to monetary models such as the Dornbusch 'overshooting' theory, in the form of reaction to 'news' and in forecasts at long-run horizons. Nevertheless, at short horizons, a driftless random walk characterizes exchange rates better than standard models based on observable macroeconomic fundamentals. Unexplained large shocks to floating rates must then, logically, be due either to innovations in unobservable fundamentals, or to non-fundamental factors such as speculative bubbles. The observed difference in exchange rate and macroeconomic volatility under different nominal exchange rate regimes makes us skeptical of the first view. The theory and evidence on speculative bubbles, however, is not conclusive. We conclude with the hope that promising new studies of the microstructure of the foreign exchange market might eventually rise to insights into these phenomena.

The Endogeneity of the Optimum Currency Area Criteria

A country's suitability for entry into a currency union depends on a number of economic conditions. These include, inter alia, the intensity of trade with other potential members of the currency union, and the extent to which domestic business cycles are correlated with those of the other countries. But international trade patterns and international business cycle correlations are endogenous. This paper develops and investigates the relationship between the two phenomena. Using thirty years of data for twenty industrialized countries, we uncover a strong and striking empirical finding: countries with closer trade links tend to have more tightly correlated business cycles. It follows that countries are more likely to satisfy the criteria for entry into a currency union after taking steps toward economic integration than before.

A Panel Project on Purchasing Power Parity: Mean Reversion Within and Between Countries

Previous time-series studies have shown evidence of mean- reversion in real exchange rates. Deviations from purchasing power parity (PPP) appear to have half-lives of approximately four years. However, the long samples required for statistical significance are unavailable for most currencies, and may be inappropriate because of regime changes. In this study, we re-examine deviations from PPP using a panel of 150 countries and 45 annual observations. Our panel shows strong evidence of mean-reversion that is similar to that from long time-series. PPP deviations are eroded at a rate of approximately 15% annually, i.e., their half-life is around four years. Such findings can be masked in time-series data, but are relatively easy to find in cross-sections.

DIVORCE - DOMICIL - RECOGNITION OF FOREIGN DECREES

The New York Court of Appeals has re-emphasized some well-established principles of divorce jurisdiction in the recent case of Fischer v. Fischer. In a suit involving the validity of a second marriage, W proved a Nevada divorce from her first husband, a citizen of New York, who had been served in New York but had not appeared to defend the litigation. The court denied recognition to the Nevada decree because W\u27s residence in Nevada, while it conformed with the statutory requirements of that forum, was proved to have been acquired solely for the purpose of securing a divorce. The invalidity of such a decree, the court said, was not open to doubt. Indeed, the long settled rule is that one who goes to another state for the sole purpose of procuring a divorce, not intending a permanent change of residence, does not acquire a new domicil; hence, his divorce proceeding is a fraud both on the court of the forum and of his own state, and is void. Since domicil or residence is a jurisdictional fact, the second court has the power to inquire into the facts to determine for itself whether or not the court rendering the decree had jurisdiction. While a foreign judgment is considered prima facie valid, and clear and convincing proof is needed to impeach it, the tendency of late years has been to reexamine the facts when the question arises in relation to a foreign, and especially a Nevada, divorce decree. This policy has been crystallized in statutes in several states, a typical one reading substantially as follows: If any inhabitant go into another state in order to obtain a decree of divorce for a cause which occurred while in this state, or for a cause not a ground in this state, a decree so obtained shall be of no effect. The Missouri court, in Wagoner v. Wagoner, gave weight to these evidentiary facts, that the plaintiff had taken room and board for the statutory period of time only, had obtained a position in Reno from a friend who required only an hour\u27s time each day, had told neither his business associates nor friends of his change of residence, and had returned to his home state immediately on obtaining his decree. On the basis of such showings the court decided that his residence was merely colorable, insufficient to confer on the Nevada court jurisdiction to decree a valid divorce