“i would like to see how they got poor and see what it's like to be poor”: an analysis of...

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“I Would Like to See How They Got Poorand See What It's Like to Be Poor”: AnAnalysis of Young Children's Responses toa Critical Literacy Text About PovertyJudith A. Chafel a & Carin Neitzel ba Department of Curriculum and Instruction , Indiana University ,Bloomington , Indiana , USAb Department of Child and Family Studies , University of Tennessee ,Knoxville , Tennessee , USAPublished online: 19 Apr 2012.

To cite this article: Judith A. Chafel & Carin Neitzel (2012) “I Would Like to See How They Got Poorand See What It's Like to Be Poor”: An Analysis of Young Children's Responses to a Critical LiteracyText About Poverty, Journal of Poverty, 16:2, 147-170, DOI: 10.1080/10875549.2012.667058

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Journal of Poverty, 16:147–170, 2012Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1087-5549 print/1540-7608 onlineDOI: 10.1080/10875549.2012.667058

“I Would Like to See How They Got Poorand See What It’s Like to Be Poor”: An Analysis

of Young Children’s Responses to a CriticalLiteracy Text About Poverty

JUDITH A. CHAFELDepartment of Curriculum and Instruction, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA

CARIN NEITZELDepartment of Child and Family Studies, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA

Sixty-four 8-year-old children listened to a reading of a critical lit-eracy text about poverty and then responded to interview questionsabout the story. The content on which the children focused theirattention, the processes that they employed to engage with the text,and the particular stance(s) taken varied significantly by ecologi-cal setting or socioeconomic status for some categories of response.These findings are consistent with Rosenblatt’s (1994) theory andhave important implications for practice. Mindful of variationsin response, practitioners can become more sensitive to children’sconstructed meanings about poverty and scaffold accordingly.

KEYWORDS poverty, critical literacy, children

For some time, critical literacy has attracted the attention of teacher educatorsand practitioners seeking to encourage children to question the status quo.This article reports the findings of an inquiry that analyzed the responsesof 8-year-old children to a critical literacy text about poverty: namely,a storybook that stimulated reflection about a social issue. Although notinherently critical, a text may nonetheless inspire critique through the talkthat may evolve by exposure to its content (Meller, Richardson, & Hatch,2009).

Address correspondence to Judith A. Chafel, Professor Emerita, Department ofCurriculum and Instruction, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

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148 J. A. Chafel and C. Neitzel

Critical Literacy

Critical literacy is widely understood as “literacy for social and politicalcriticism (‘critique’),” justified on the basis of existing societal inequities,and directed toward the creation of a more just world (Gee, 2001, p. 15;see, e.g., Bomer & Bomer, 2001; Comber & Simpson, 2001; Evans, 2005;Fehring & Green, 2001; Muspratt, Luke, & Freebody, 1997; Quintero, 2004).Paolo Freire’s writings, most notably Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), haveinspired scholarship on critical literacy. Dialogue, reflection, and action arethe defining concepts that he advanced. To explain, he advocated conscien-tizacao: critical thinking about a generative theme meaningfully groundedin the lives of students. Students and teacher dialogue as equals about thetheme. They analyze it together as a coded (visually represented) and thenworded situation. The reflection has the potential to be liberating whenit brings forth a critical awareness of one’s position in the world andawakens the possibility of societal transformation. Liberation requires reflec-tion as well as action (praxis) (Freire, 1970/2009; McLaren & De Lissovoy,2003).

Historically, schools as institutions of society have legitimized the sta-tus quo by sanctioning knowledge transmission and not the constructivistthinking that Freire advanced. The traditional (and all too familiar) imageof the teacher positioned imposingly at the front of the classroom as she orhe dominates instruction contradicts critical literacy (Coffey, n.d.). In Freire’s(1970/2004) words, “Dialogue cannot be reduced to the act of one person’s‘depositing’ ideas in another, nor can it become a simple exchange of ideasto be ‘consumed’ by the discussants” (p. 126). With its emphasis on the pas-sive receipt of knowledge, traditional pedagogy (symbolized by Freire as the“banking concept of education”) stifles the active, deeper, and questioningways of seeing that he envisioned as potentially liberating (Coffey, n.d., p. 2).

Synthesizing 30 years of writing on critical literacy, Lewison, Flint, andVan Sluys (2002) identified four interrelated dimensions that appear to dis-tinguish the concept: “(1) disrupting the commonplace, (2) interrogatingmultiple viewpoints, (3) focusing on sociopolitical issues, and (4) takingaction and promoting social justice” (p. 382). In their explanation of thefour dimensions, they emphasize the radical departure that’s needed on thepart of teachers and children alike to embrace what critical literacy calls for.Teachers heeding the call for “disrupting the commonplace,” for example,must cast aside a traditional conception of curriculum as knowledge trans-mission and rethink their work from a critical perspective that requires newways of seeing. In other words, they must shift to a constructivist pedagogy(Morrison, Robbins, & Rose, 2008). The second dimension, “interrogatingmultiple viewpoints,” involves rejecting a single correct point of view infavor of open-ended inquiry about other perspectives. The third dimensionchallenges one to critique reality for the messages conveyed about power

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Critical Literacy Text About Poverty 149

relationships (“focusing on sociopolitical issues”), and not simply to relatefrom a personal or psychological frame of reference. “Taking action andpromoting social justice,” in conjunction with the other dimensions, encom-passes Freire’s notion of praxis: namely, reflection coupled with action forthe sake of greater equity.

Affirming the sociological nature of the reading process, Luke andFreebody (1997) also present a framework that sheds light on what criti-cal literacy involves. In their words, “Reading is tied up in the politics andpower relations of everyday life in literate cultures” (p. 185). Accordingly,they viewed reading in terms of coding, meaning, pragmatic, and criticalpractices, with each practice defined by its own set of tasks: “How do I crackthis text?” (coding); “What are the cultural meanings and possible readingsthat can be constructed from this text?” (meaning); “What do I do with thistext, here and now? What will others do with it?” (pragmatic); and “Whichpositions, voices, and interests are at play? “Which are silent and absent?”(critical) (p. 214). Conceiving of text as a social construction and readingas a non-neutral process, they envisioned literacy as an opportunity for cri-tique, opposition, and debate, a perspective that’s in harmony with Freire’snotion of literacy as “reading the word and the world” (Freire & Macedo,1987, book title; McLaren & De Lissovoy, 2003).

Becoming critically literate, then, requires children to become openminded, knowledgeable, inquisitive, and questioning about inequities thathave profound significance for the well-being of our democracy. Societalinequities may relate to class, ethnicity, gender, race, and more. Arguably,critical literacy is associated with an enhanced ability to better grapple withone’s own life challenges, to appreciate (sympathize with) life circumstancesdifferent from one’s own, and to adopt a principled orientation towardaddressing social problems (see, e.g., Heffernan & Lewison, 2005; Sipe, 1999;Tyson, 1999; Zeece, 2000).

Rosenblatt’s Transactional Theory of Reader Response

In her now-classic The Reader, the Text, the Poem, Rosenblatt (1994) laidout a transactional theory of reader response that emphasizes “the dynamicinterfusion of both reader and text” (p. viii). As Rosenblatt explained, awritten composition (“text’) imparts meaning. Readers seek to ascertain thatmeaning as they decipher and interpret the textual language. They mayimpose (or a text may call up) personal associations, attitudes, ideas, images,feelings, values, and so forth. Ideally, meaning resides neither entirely in thecomposition nor in the reader’s mind but in the interplay between the two.Nonetheless, as Rosenblatt pointed out, a response should not deviate farafield from textual intent.

Rosenblatt (1994) defined two types of reading activity: efferent andaesthetic. What sets them apart is the reader’s focus of attention. Aesthetic

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reading involves experiencing (“living through”) a text; the reader concen-trates on associations, attitudes, feelings, and so forth that are inspired byit (Rosenblatt, 1994, p. 25). Efferent reading means mindfulness about theoutcome of the reading process; the reader focuses, for example, on ideas,concepts, or actions to be remembered or enacted. Movement from oneto another may occur while reading the same text. Rosenblatt illustratedthis with the example of a mathematician who may concentrate on symbolmanipulation (an efferent stance) as well as the beauty of the result (anaesthetic stance).

Critical Literacy and Reader Response

Rosenblatt’s transactional theory amply supports the expectation of variationin response, yet little is known about how children of different backgroundsrespond to social themes found in critical literacy texts. Literature on criticalliteracy has concentrated mostly on explicating its theoretical foundations,and increasingly on describing (or analyzing) its implementation in class-rooms (Lewison et al., 2002; see, e.g., Clarke, 2005; Dutro, Kazemi, & Balf,2005; Heffernan & Lewison, 2000; Leland et al., 2003; Leland, Harste, &Huber, 2005; Powell, Cantrell, & Adams, 2001). Only a handful of studiesof children’s responses to poverty as a social theme in books for childrenappeared to be available after extensive searching of the literature, and onlyone of these studies provides a systematic demographic analysis.

To illustrate, a qualitative study by Dutro (2009, 2010) conveyed howthird-grade children living in poverty responded to a question (“What aresome signs of hard times?”) presented by a mandated curriculum withexperiences drawn from their own lives (Dutro, 2009, p. 89). Respondingaesthetically, emotionally, and thematically, the children’s writing contrastedsharply with “the curriculum’s positioning of students as immune fromsustained ‘hard times’” (Dutro, 2009, p. 89). Their responses to the ques-tion (from a unit of the curriculum on Leah’s Pony, a picture book byElizabeth Friedrich) confirmed not only their “privileged understanding ofthe inequities of the world,” but also their ability to engage with a text aboutpoverty in a profoundly meaningful way (Dutro, 2009, p. 89). Dutro saw herdata as demonstrating the importance of class analyses in literary research.

Sychterz (2002) reported findings of a study of first-grade children’sresponses to Maurice Sendak’s (1993) We Are All in the Dumps with Jack andGuy, a critical literacy text about bullying, greed, homelessness, and poverty.Inasmuch as the children in the study appear to have been privileged byrich prior exposure to books and reading in partnership and literacy may becontext dependent, the study’s findings may not be generalizable (Sychterz,2002). Yet they are suggestive. They indicate that as early as first gradechildren can meaningfully engage with social issues, as illustrated by thischild’s response to his teacher’s question about the cause of homelessness:

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“Maybe their parents lost their job or something or maybe they didn’t geta job and they didn’t have a house, so they lived in the dump” (p. 186).The study’s findings support Luke and Freebody’s (1997) exhortation aboutcritical practices being appropriate for early readers.

An inquiry by the authors of the present study (Chafel & Neitzel,2004) looked at 8-year-old children’s responses to Uncle Willie and the SoupKitchen (DiSalvo-Ryan, 1991), a critical literacy text about feeding the hun-gry. Participants were not privy to any of the picture storybook’s colorfulillustrations; they listened only to a reading of the text. Afterwards theywere directed to make a graphic representation about the story. They werethen instructed to speak about what they had drawn. Visual and verbalresponses1 (drawings and talk) were analyzed in conjunction and found tovary systematically by gender and socioeconomic status (SES). Girls focusedon the helplessness of the poor more than boys; higher socioeconomic-status children were more likely than lower socioeconomic-status childrento show a lack of awareness of the poor, to communicate the positive lookof poverty,2 and to focus on the environmental context of poverty. Girlsin U.S. society are generally perceived to be more emotionally aware thanboys, so the result for gender is not surprising. Neither are the first tworesults for SES, given that one would expect higher SES children to knowless than lower SES children about poverty. The third result pertaining to theenvironmental context of poverty is difficult to explain (Chafel & Neitzel,2004).

Statistically significant findings also appeared in the data for the chil-dren’s responses to the question that immediately followed the drawing task(i.e., “What does being poor mean?”). White children were less likely thanBlack or biracial children to speak about the negative look of poverty3 andto exhibit an awareness of the poor. In addition, urban children were lesslikely than rural children to focus on the positive look of poverty. Thesefindings appear to reflect the greater knowledge of poverty possessed bythe Black or biracial children. That knowledge may have emanated from lifeexperience: all of the children were drawn from an urban setting, and themajority was classified as belonging to a lower SES (Chafel & Neitzel, 2004).Yet the rural children with their focus on the positive look of poverty (e.g.,self-agency, environmental support) may also have been communicatingknowledge acquired experientially about the distinctive “look” of poverty inrural settings (Chafel & Neitzel, 2004).

The study’s findings were not interpreted from a critical literacy andreader response perspective as adopted in the present inquiry. That perspec-tive can yield insight into the textual content on which children of differentbackgrounds focus their attention, the processes that they employ to engagewith text, and the particular stance(s) taken. The conceptualization may sug-gest ways that practitioners might intervene to enable children to becomecritically literate.

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The inquiry about to be described investigated these questions: Whatare 8-year-old children’s responses to a critical literacy text about poverty?In what ways do ecological setting, gender, race, and SES influence theseresponses? The inquiry was not undertaken with the assumption that indi-vidual children’s one-time responses to a critical literacy text about povertyin a controlled setting would necessarily reflect conscientizacao. Rather, theintent was to ascertain what the children’s responses might be and to ana-lyze them from the perspective of critical literacy. Rosenblatt’s transactionaltheory, which informed the study’s design, amply supported the expectationof variation in the children’s responses. In her words, “the raw material ofthe literary process itself is the particular world of the reader” (Rosenblatt,1994, p. 11). Although children’s worlds bear the mark of demographic fac-tors (e.g., social class opens up/closes off entrée to numerous monetaryadvantages; society approves of gender-specific actions, characteristics, andfeelings), traditional schooling practices may stifle demographic influenceson children’s response patterns by encouraging passive, restricted, and rou-tinized reactions to text (Boutte, 2002; Sloan, 2002). Assuming that’s thecase, it’s not entirely clear how demographic factors may influence response.Nondirectional research questions are thus appropriate. They are also con-ceptually consistent with the study’s inductively derived category system fordata analysis.

Growing perspective-taking ability and an expanding world view makethe 8-year-old child an interesting subject for an empirical inquiry abouta controversial social issue like poverty (Chafel & Neitzel, 2004, 2005).The children were the same participants as those in Chafel and Neitzel’s(2004, 2005) work, with the present inquiry constituting a part of that largerinvestigation (described in detail below).

METHOD

The critical literacy text selected for the study focused on feeding the hungry.Uncle Willie and the Soup Kitchen by Dyanne DiSalvo-Ryan (1991) is a storyabout a boy who spends a day off from school at a soup kitchen with hisUncle Willie, an excursion that’s motivated by the child’s curiosity about theneedy. The experience affords the boy an opportunity to engage in socialaction. He and Uncle Willie collect food donated by a local meat market,deliver it to the soup kitchen, participate in getting a meal ready, serveit, and help clean up afterwards. The story communicates a social message(viz., the value of providing assistance to the poor) but says little about themother than highlighting their need. The story’s characters include a Can Man,a woman asleep on a park bench, and the hungry who frequent the soupkitchen.

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Participants and Procedures

An invitation to participate in the study was extended to the total enrollmentof 15 classrooms in nine urban and rural schools. From this larger pool, 648-year-olds with signed parental consent whose families completed surveysrequesting information about the children’s sociodemographic characteris-tics made up the sample. Ninety-five children were given parental consent.Seventy-three percent of that number (69) submitted completed surveys.Five of the children were 9-year-olds and consequently disqualified fromparticipation because of their age.

On the surveys, respondents were asked to identify the child’s race andto answer questions about education, income, occupation, and other particu-lars. Annual family income ranged from less than $9,999 to $80,000. On aver-age, the families earned annually between $36,000 and $39,000, with SD =$12,000. Summing each child’s survey data on family income and parentaleducation and occupation (recoded using the Duncan Socioeconomic Indexof Occupations) yielded an estimate of SES (Duncan, 1961). The childrenwere grouped as belonging to a higher or lower SES by applying a meansplit to these estimates. The sample was diverse socioeconomically (44 %higher and 56% lower) as well as by gender (50% boys, 50% girls) and race(67% White, 33% Black or biracial). A proportion of the children came fromrural classroom settings (33%) and the remainder from urban settings (67%).Table 1 describes the study’s participants demographically.

A White, female graduate student made several visits to each of the15 different classrooms to read stories to the entire class prior to data collec-tion. These visits were completed to familiarize the study’s participants withdata collection procedures. Developmentally appropriate books without apoverty theme were selected for the readings. The readings were followedby two additional activities: a discussion with the group about the story,and a drawing task about the story completed individually by the children.Following the drawing activity, the children spoke about their drawings,while the class listened.

The same graduate student collected data for the study in a locale awayfrom the children’s classrooms: that is, in a separate room or area of eachchild’s school. She read the text of Uncle Willie and the Soup Kitchen to eachof the 64 participants individually. The children were not privy to the illus-trations. Alternating across the sample, she then conducted an interview thatconsisted of (1) a series of questions and (2) a drawing task and additionalquestions. She verbalized this statement to the children: “I am interested inwhat children think about other people who are like them or who are dif-ferent from them. So, I am going to ask you some questions. There are noright or wrong answers to my questions.” She then requested each child’sthoughts about the story as well as about the nature, cause, justification, andalleviation of poverty (Furby, 1979; Leahy, 1981, 1983; Ramsey, 1991):

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TABLE 1 Distribution of Participants by Gender, Race, and SocioeconomicStatus (N = 64)

Girls Boys

GenderSetting

Urban 22 21Rural 10 11

Socioeconomic statusHigh 13 15Low 19 17

RaceBlack/Biracial 10 11White 22 21

Black/Biracial White

RaceSetting


Socioeconomic statusHigh 6 22Low 15 21

High Low

Socioeconomic statusSetting


● Tell me about the story [and prompts].● Tell me about poor people. What are they like?● Why are some people poor?● What would have to happen so there would be no poor people?● Do you think it is fair that some people are poor? Why (Why not)?● Who should take care of poor people?● What would you like to see happen to the poor people in the story?● Is there anything else you would like to tell me?

She presented the drawing task with this statement, “Now, I’d like you tothink about the story I just read to you, and to draw a picture about thestory. In your picture, I’d like you to show me what this story about beingpoor means to you. There are no right or wrong pictures.” Prompts wereintermittently administered during the drawing task (e.g., “I am interested tosee what being poor means to you”). Then, she asked these questions:

● Tell me about your drawing [and prompts].● “What does being poor mean” (Karniol, 1985, p. 794) [and prompts]?

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Audio recordings were made of the interview data collected in the study.These recordings were later transcribed.

Fourteen White, rural children (6 boys, 8 girls; 10 of higher SES and 4 oflower SES) repeated the interview following the same procedures as thoseused with all of the other children in the study. The duplication (necessi-tated by audio taping problems) may have biased the findings in favor ofthese children. Yet the study’s findings and the time lapse between the twointerviews (at least 2 months) argue against this possibility (Chafel & Neitzel,2004, 2005).

Data are presented here for the children’s responses to two of the inter-view questions dealing with reader response: (1) “Tell me about the story”(and accompanying prompts) and (2) “What would you like to see happento the poor people in the story?” The children’s responses to the drawingtask as well as the question immediately posed afterwards (“What does beingpoor mean?”) also constitute a form of reader response. They have alreadybeen analyzed and reported elsewhere (by Chafel & Neitzel, 2004, as notedearlier) and so are not incorporated into this study. Because the children’sresponses to another question (“Is there anything else you would like totell me?”) might have some bearing on the present inquiry, the children’sresponses to this question were scrutinized. Most children replied, “No,” tothe question, and the other responses were so few in number that theyprecluded statistical analysis.

Data analysis for the first reader response question, “Tell me aboutthe story,” was based on three types of categories: (1) the content of thechild’s response (activity, philanthropic activity, objects, story characters),(2) processes employed in the child’s response (narrates, connects, inter-prets, evaluates, creates/embellishes, speculates), and (3) the stance(s) takentoward the story (efferent, aesthetic, values, detached). Data analysis for thesecond reader response question, “What would you like to see happen tothe poor people in the story?,” was based on these category types: (1) allevi-ation of need (affective, appearance, economic, physical, possession, social,other); (2) philanthropy (individual, institutional); (3) social comparison(normalization, other); (4) poor become good people; (5) effort on the partof the poor; and (6) economic independence on the part of the poor.

Two of the stance categories (efferent, aesthetic) were identified a pri-ori (Rosenblatt, 1994), and one process category (connects) was suggestedby previous literature (Beach & Marshall, 1990; Purves & Beach, 1972). Theauthors determined the other categories inductively using the constant com-parison method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). With the constant comparativemethod, units of data are continuously compared and “sorted into groupingsthat have something in common” (Merriam, 1998, p. 179). As Merriam (1998)put it, an inductive approach to category generation “ is largely an intuitiveprocess, but it is also systematic and informed by the study’s purpose, theinvestigator’s orientation and knowledge, and the meanings made explicit

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by the participants themselves” (p. 179). In the study reported here, theauthors (1) independently read the transcripts of the children’s responses toeach interview question, (2) discussed together their individual perceptionsof the discernible groupings in these data, (3) agreed on brief definitions forthe groupings they decided on for coding, and (4) coded the data with thesegroupings. Tables 2 and 3 present definitions and examples for the codingcategories by question.

Coding was completed for each of the two interview questions sep-arately. First, the authors each independently applied the coding schemato each set of responses; then, they compared their ratings for each ques-tion. They immediately entered into the computer ratings they agreed uponas data for statistical analysis. They discussed all “disagreements” in theirratings until they agreed as to what a particular rating should be. Theagreed-upon rating was then entered as data. Coding of the data was basedon the presence (absence) of a category. The categories for coding con-tent, process, and stance were not mutually exclusive. Each child’s transcriptwas coded for all content, process, and stance categories present in theresponse.

A version of Cohen’s kappa appropriate for dichotomous variables andadjusted for chance agreement was calculated for each of the coding cat-egories. Estimates were based on the raters’ independent codings beforeany disagreements were discussed and resolved. They ranged between.73 and 1.00. Tables 4 and 5 present response frequencies (percentages)and interrater agreement for the coding categories by question.

FINDINGS

“Tell Me about the Story” and Prompts

To examine whether the children systematically responded differently to theprompt, “Tell me about the story,” based on their gender, race, setting, orSES, a series of two-way contingency table chi-square analyses were inde-pendently conducted for each coding category. The results of the statisticallysignificant chi-square analyses are reported below along with the Cramer’sV statistic (a measure of effect size assessing the strength of relationshipbetween the child characteristic variable and response variable).

CONTENT

When discussing the story, 75% of the children spoke about objects or activ-ities in the story (e.g., “a shop, a shop where, where poor people couldcome in and eat”), and 55% spoke about the emotions, personal actions,or motivations of the people in the story4 (e.g., “And it was a good thing

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TABLE 2 Coding Categories for “Tell Me about the Story”

Name Definition Examples

No response Child conveys a lack ofknowledge.

“I don’t know.” “I forget.”

Content of thechild’s response

Child speaks about activity,philanthropic activity, objects,or story characters.

“He was helping the people.”

Process responses Narrates: child recounts thetheme, line/plot, characters,objects in the story.

“They went to the soup marketand everybody started coming inand get some food.”

Connects: child draws aconnection between thecontent of the story andpersonal experience, priorknowledge or lack ofknowledge, or sociallycompares.

“And if I could I, sometimes I helppeople that are poor down atthe church around the corner.”“Some people live in boxes ifthey don’t have a house.”

Interprets the Story: child “getsinside” a story character,commenting on motivation oraffect; makes an inference ordraws a conclusion about thestory.

“They both have a good timeeverywhere they go.” “He wasvery kind to work at the soupkitchen.”

Evaluates: child communicates ajudgment or makes a valuestatement about the story.

“I liked it and it was sort of sad.”“It was nice for him to do thatfor the people that didn’t havehomes and all.”

Creates/Embellishes: child addsto the content of the story,projects self into the plot of thestory, and so forth.

“Then, the next day, he went toschool and they learned about,learned manners.” “People seeempty cans, they throw them inthe cart for him and help himout.”

Speculates: child wonders aboutspecifics of story content.

“I wonder if they’re like really longand they stretch out.”

Stance toward thestory (attitude/purpose)

Efferent: child focuses on thefacts or concepts of the story.

“Well, they go to a store and theyget stuff.” “A person works in asoup kitchen.”

Aesthetic: child focuses onpersonal meaning or feelingsevoked by the story.

“And you wouldn’t want themlaughing at you because youwould be sad.”

Values: child utters a statementthat expresses a social good.

“It was a good story because UncleWillie tried to help the peopleand the grocery store didn’thave food to help the people.”

Detached: child gives noresponse, mentions incidentalstory facts or factsunconnected to the story.

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TABLE 3 Coding Categories for “What Would You Like to See Happen to the Poor People inthe Story?”

Name Definition Examples

No response Child conveys a lack ofknowledge.

“I don’t know.”

Alleviation of need Child talks about allaying the(affective, appearance,economic, physical,possession, social, or other)wants of the poor.

“They get a lot of money . . .and get toys and bikes andclothes and baths so theydon’t have to wash in thelake.” “They would kind ofget a little higher. And justkind of have a better life.”

Philanthropy Child speaks about individualor institutional giving to thepoor.

“Somebody would help thepoor people.”

Social comparison Child talks about normalizingthe poor or contrasts thepoor in other ways.

“Be just like normal people.”

Effort on the part of the poor Child verbalizes an endeavorundertaken by the poor.

“They could really work . . .they could be . . . theywouldn’t be as poor.”

Economic independence onthe part of the poor

Child talks about financialself-reliance for people inpoverty.

“And see if they get a job inthe shelter.” “Get paid alittle money to work . . . atthe soup store and so theycould earn money and theycould rent a apartment likeGeorge.”

Poor become good people Child speaks about moralbetterment of the poor.

“I would, I would like themto turn into good people.And don’t have any liquorstores on every corner andstuff.”

that his uncle worked in the community to help poor people”). There werestatistically significant differences in the content of the children’s responsesbased on their ecological setting. Chi-square analyses, χ 2(1, N = 64) = 5.71,p = .02; Cramer’s V = .32, indicated that the probability of children dis-cussing content beyond the objects or activities of the story was 2.10 timesmore likely when the child was from an urban as opposed to a rural setting.Proportions were .60 and .28, respectively.

PROCESS

When responding to the story, most of the children (86%) engaged in someform of narration. In their narratives, 41 of these children (74% of the 86%)simply recounted parts of the story line or plot (e.g., “Willie, he helps poorpeople so that way, so that way they don’t die on the streets”); 26% of the86% provided a synthesis or summary of the story or stated an overall theme

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TABLE 4 Response Frequencies (Percentages) and Interrater Agreement for the PovertyCoding Categories for the Question, “Tell me about the story” (N = 64)

CategoriesNumber of children responding

(Percentage)

Interrateragreement

Cohen’s kappa

No response to the story 3 (5%) 1.00Content of the response

Object or activity 46 (75) .78Personal actions, emotions 34 (55) .96

Process response to the storyNarrates 55 (86) .861. Lists facts or plot 41 (74) .902. Summary or theme 14 (26) .85Connects 10 (16) 1.00Interprets 24 (38) .73Evaluates 23 (36) .97Creates/embellishes 4 (6) 1.00Speculates 1 (1.6) 1.00

Stance toward the storyDetached 27 (42) .74Efferent 48 (75) .88Aesthetic 7 (11) .77Value 10 (16) .94

TABLE 5 Response Frequencies (Percentages) and Interrater Agreement for the PovertyCoding Categories for the Question, “What Would You Like to See Happen to the PoorPeople in the Story?” (N = 63)

CategoriesNumber of children responding

(Percentage)

Interrateragreement

Cohen’s kappa

Don’t know 3 (5%) 1.00Alleviation of need 42 (68) .83Type of need .94Physical 10Possession 23Economic 25Affective 3Appearance 1Social 2Philanthropy 13 (21) 1.00Social comparison 2 (3) 1.00Become good people 1 (1.5) 1.00Effort on the part of the poor 7 (11) .82Economic independence 9 (14) .93

of the story. Sixty-five percent of the children in the sample engaged inhigher level processes such as connection (16%) (e.g., “Well I cared aboutpeople who were homeless, but I really didn’t pay as much attention as I donow since I heard of this story”); interpretation (38%) (e.g., “He, he probably

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wants to go the next time that he’s out of school to the soup kitchen withhis Uncle Willie”); or evaluation (36%) (“I’m glad that people made up anidea about soup kitchens because they’re real help for poor people”). Therewere statistically significant differences in the processes children employedin their responses based on ecological setting and SES. Chi-square analysesshowed that the probability of basic narration as the primary (or sole) pro-cess engaged was 2.54 times more likely when the child was from a ruralas opposed to an urban setting, χ 2(1, N = 64) = 4.25, p = .04; Cramer’s V= .29. Proportions were .71 and .28, respectively. Children who were froma higher SES group were 2.45 times more likely than children from a lowerSES to attempt to draw connections to find relevance or meaning in thestory, χ 2(1, N = 64) = 5.05, p = .03; Cramer’s V = .30. Proportions were.22 and .08, respectively. Although there were no differences statisticallybetween SES groups in the extent to which the children offered interpre-tations (44% lower, 33% higher), children from a higher SES group were5.49 times more likely to engage in interpretation when the child was froman urban rather than a rural setting, χ 2(1, N = 28) = 7.05, p = .03, Cramer’sV = .56. Proportions were .50 and .09, respectively. Among the urban chil-dren, children from the lower SES group were 7 times more likely thanchildren from the higher SES group to engage in interpretation, χ 2(1, N= 43) = 5.02, p = .02, Cramer’s V = .52. Proportions were .56 and .08,respectively.

STANCE

When discussing the story, 65% of the children expressed an efferent stance(focused on facts/concepts of the story) (e.g., “It’s about this boy and thisman named Willie. And about poor people. And these poor people thatlines up outside of the building place. And they want some, some soup”),11% assumed an aesthetic stance (focused on personal meaning or feelingsevoked by the story) (e.g., “It was sort of sad”), 16% of the children tooka value-laden stance (focused on social messages about responsibility ora social good) (e.g., “And well, I think it’s just a good deed book becausethere’s a soup kitchen and that helps people”), and 18% of the childrenwere detached in their response to some extent5 (e.g., “The story was aboutI forget”).

There were statistically significant differences in the stances taken bythe children based on SES. The probability of children taking an efferentstance was about 1.45 times more likely when the child was from a higherrather than a lower SES, χ 2 (1, N = 64) = 5.42, p = .02; Cramer’s V = .29.Proportions were .92 and .64, respectively. The probability of a child takingan aesthetic stance was about 4.5 times more likely when the child’s SESwas lower as opposed to higher, χ 2(1, N = 64) = 4.33, p = .04; Cramer’sV = .27. Proportions were .18 and .04, respectively.

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“What Would You Like to See Happen to the Poor Peoplein the Story?”6

To examine whether there were systematic differences in the children’sresponses to the question “What would you like to see happen to the poorpeople in the story?” based on gender, race, setting, or SES, another series oftwo-way contingency table chi-square analyses were conducted. The resultsof the statistically significant analyses are reported below.

In response to this question, 5% of the children indicated that theydidn’t know. A majority of the children (68%) responded with the alleviationof some type of need: 60% of the 68% discussed economic needs (e.g., “getmoney”), 55% possessions (e.g., “get a home”), 24% physical needs (e.g.,“they would be more healthy”), 7% affective needs (e.g., “And be happy.”),5% social needs (e.g., “meet some friends and have some nice people aroundthem and . . . get a life”), and 2.4% appearance (e.g., “they’d be moreprettier”). Smaller proportions spoke in terms of individual or institutionalphilanthropy (21%) (e.g., “I would like to see somebody like share withthem. A house. Or help them buy food. And help them get a house, a hometo live in”), economic independence on the part of the poor (14%) (e.g.,“Get rich enough to buy their own home and food”), or effort on the part ofthe poor (11%) (e.g., “I’d like to see them work hard and get some money.And then buy stuff for their family”). Only 3% of the children verbalizeda social comparison (e.g., “be like other people”), and even fewer (1.5%)talked about the poor becoming good people (e.g., “I would, I would likethem to turn into good people. And don’t have any liquor stores on everycorner and stuff”).7

There were statistically significant differences in the children’sresponses based on SES and setting. Children from a higher SES were1.68 times more likely than children from a lower SES to discuss alleviationof need, χ 2(1, N = 63) = 8.41, p < .01; Cramer’s V = .37. Proportionswere .86 and .50, respectively. Children from a lower SES were 2.36 timesmore likely than children from a higher SES to discuss philanthropy, χ 2 (1,N = 63) = 3.38, p = .05; Cramer’s V = .23. Proportions were .27 and .11,respectively. Although the difference was not significant statistically, therewas a slightly higher likelihood for children from a higher as opposed tolower SES to engage in social comparison, χ 2(1, N = 63) = 2.75, p = .09;Cramer’s V = .20.

Children from an urban setting were more than 17 times more likelythan children from a rural setting to discuss the need for effort on the partof the poor, χ 2(1, N = 63) = 3.94, p = .04; Cramer’s V = .25. Proportionswere .17 and .00, respectively. In contrast, children from a rural settingwere 4.14 times more likely than children from an urban setting to discusseconomic independence on the part of the poor, χ 2(1, N = 63) = 5.25, p =.02; Cramer’s V = .29. Proportions were .29 and .07, respectively.

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DISCUSSION

This study inquired about the nature of 8-year-old children’s responses to acritical literacy text about poverty and the way that ecological setting, gen-der, race, and SES influenced those responses. The statistically significantfindings that appeared in the data are consistent with Rosenblatt’s (1994)theory and other literature that conceives of text as a social construction(see, e.g., Apple, 1992; Beach, 1993; Emler, 1987; Emler & Dickinson, 1985).The children talked about the story in ways that reflected their differentbackgrounds. The content on which they focused their attention, the pro-cesses that they employed to engage with text, and the particular stance(s)taken varied significantly by setting or SES for some categories of response.Not all children found the story meaningful in the same way; or, as Apple(1992, p. 10) so aptly put it, “There is not ‘one text,’ but many.”

Although the children communicated a variety of responses, the major-ity adopted a stance toward the story that suggests a limited prior acquain-tance with critical literacy texts about poverty. A focus on facts/concepts(the stance assumed by most children) seems to represent a more “on-the-surface” reaction to the text than one conveying values, personal meaning,or feelings evoked by the story. To illustrate, one child spoke about thestory’s facts/concepts in this way: “Well, a boy had a grandpa and he workedat the soup kitchen.” In contrast, another child spoke in terms of personalmeaning and feeling: “Well, I cared about people who were homeless, but Ireally didn’t pay as much attention as I do now since I heard of this story.”The latter type of response (adopted by fewer children in the study) sug-gests deeper, more involved engagement. Yet that type of response doesnot constitute critique. Critique, a defining characteristic of critical literacy,did not emerge as a category for coding the data, although “evaluates” and“values” did emerge. Arguably, responses classified as belonging to thesetwo categories may be viewed as initial, early manifestations of critique.With more exposure to critical literacy texts and opportunity for guided dis-cussion, children’s responses may become more complex. Flint (in Chafel,Flint, Hammel, & Pomeroy, 2007) observed that over time the children andteacher in her study of critical literacy engaged in less text centered, moresubstantive, and critical conversations. That study documents the importantrole that teachers can play in making such conversations happen.

Alternatively, only two questions were employed in this inquiry to elicitthe children’s responses to the story. The specific wording of these questionsmay have influenced the more superficial stance adopted by most children.

When asked the question, “Tell me about the story,” urban children inthis inquiry were more likely to discuss content beyond objects or activitiesand to interpret the story and rural children to engage in basic narration asthe primary (or sole) process response. To illustrate, one urban child spokeinterpretively about the story in this way: “People that laugh at them they

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should be looking that it’s not really funny because that could have beenthem. And you wouldn’t want them laughing at you because you would besad.” A rural child recounted aspects of the story in this way: “It’s about thiskid’s uncle who feeds other people that who are poor. And tons of peoplekeep on coming in and out, in and out, in and out.” The urban childrenlikely brought to the story a richer background of prior knowledge aboutpoverty (Chafel & Neitzel, 2004, 2005). They resided in a large city thatprovided more opportunity for exposure to poor people than the rural chil-dren. More than one half of the urban children also belonged to the study’slower SES group. Prior knowledge of poverty may have enabled the urbanchildren to engage with the story on a higher level (that is, interpretively):by attempting to “get inside” a story character, or making an inference ordrawing a conclusion about the story.

Applying Langer’s (1967) differentiation of the two modes of feeling tothe child’s concept of story, Applebee (1978) defined an objective responseas recognizing “some characteristic which seems to lie directly in the work,”and a subjective one as acknowledging “the effect of the work on thereader or listener” (p. 90). The higher SES children in this study seemedto respond more “objectively” to the story and the lower SES children more“subjectively.” The higher SES children (some possibly never experiencingeconomic adversity) were more likely to focus on textual facts/concepts. Forexample: one higher SES child made this factual statement about the story:“In the story, everyone, some people helped each other make food for thehomeless.” The lower SES children (some perhaps with life experiences res-onating with the story theme) responded more emotionally, as they focusedon personal meaning or feelings evoked by the story. For example, a lowerSES child spoke about his feelings about the story in this way: “It was sortof sad.”

In a similar vein, one group’s response seems to have been moreaccommodative in nature and the other’s more assimilative. In Applebee’s(1978) words,

Assimilation is the way in which new experience is given its meaning;it is a progressive, forward-moving process in that the new experienceis in turn incorporated into the framework which assigns that meaning.In this process the world view is primary and focal, whereas in the com-plementary process of accommodation the events of the world dominatemore fully. (p. 128)

When asked to talk about the story, the higher SES children were more likelyto concentrate on textual content (i.e., on events of the world) and the lowerSES children to focus on personal meaning or feelings (i.e., on their worldview).

Certain methodological limitations suggest cautious interpretation ofthe study’s findings: viz., a small sample, and data analyses that assumed

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independently operating variables that may actually interrelate. Other factorsnot included in the design (e.g., IQ, prior exposure) may also be associatedwith the children’s responses (Chafel & Neitzel, 2004, 2005). The issue ofprior exposure merits brief discussion.

Uncle Willie and the Soup Kitchen (a Reading Rainbow title) has beenthe focus of service–learning projects implemented in schools, and TV pre-sentations, as recently pointed out by an anonymous reviewer. Only thosechildren who were re-interviewed because of audio problems were specif-ically asked the question, “Have you ever seen or listened to this storybefore?” (Chafel & Neitzel, 2004, p. 32). Given the number of childrenreplying positively to the question (11 out of 14) as well as the numberof classrooms participating in the study (15), it’s likely that prior exposure tothe story may have influenced the findings positively or negatively. Or, theremay have been no effect at all. In the case of positive or negative effects, it’sremarkable that even though the children may have had a common social-ization experience in which one might expect them to be more alike in theirresponses than different, they were not all alike. On the other hand, it shouldalso be pointed out that without prior exposure to the story more variationmight have appeared in the data. Future research should address this issuewith the presentation of a novel story, as pointed out by the same reviewer.

Implications for Practice and Further Inquiry

Mindful of variations in response and the social factors influencing them,practitioners can meet children where they are conceptually as well as emo-tionally. With sensitivity and insight, they can facilitate the construction bychildren of more critical understandings about poverty. As one child in thestudy queried, “I would like to see how they got poor.” Then, he added, “andsee what it’s like to be poor.” Queries like these posed in a classroom settingcan become the starting point for meaningful debate and inquiry by children.To illustrate, in reply to the child’s first query, a teacher might ask, “How canwe find out?” If the children decide to pursue library research on the ques-tion, a teacher might guide an inquiry into the multiple causes of povertyand whether they contradict a prevailing societal stereotype about the poor(viz., they are lazy/unwilling to work). Subsequent research addressing thechild’s second question might focus on the material consequences of priva-tion and the innumerable challenges that accompany them. Knowing whatcoping with these challenges requires can help children to critique anotherstereotype: namely, “the belief that the impoverished are ‘just not trying hardenough’” (Blank, 1989, p. 159; cited by Chafel, 1993, p. 331).

Teachers can expose children to literature that provides opportunitiesfor engagement with different poverty themes (e.g., homelessness, dis-crimination, unemployment); and they can urge children to connect the

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issues they are reading about with their own privileged (unprivileged) lives.Complexity of thought may be promoted when they acknowledge, respect,and scaffold children’s distinctive response patterns and encourage a cross-fertilization of perspectives (Sipe, 2008). With expert guidance, childrendisplaying more objective responses can also learn to become more sub-jective; those responding in a more accommodative way can be enabled tobecome more assimilative; and vice versa. Cognizant of dimensions (themes,questions) on which to focus children’s attention (for examples, see Lewisonet al., 2002; Luke and Freebody, 1997; Sipe, 2008; Siu-Runyan, 2007), theycan strive to inspire children to embrace critique. With skillful questioning,they can encourage children to interrogate, problematize, question, suppose,wonder, and more (Fecho & Meacham, 2007; cited by Norton-Meier, 2009;Lewison et al., 2002; Readers are referred to Chafel, 1997, for additional waysto engage children with poverty issues).

Activities with children’s literature focusing on poverty need not be lim-ited to classroom settings. They can be pursued in the many different localeswhere story reading with children naturally occurs: the home, recreationcenters, camps, churches, and more. Activism of this kind can be under-taken by anyone interested in educating children—the future citizens of oursociety—to question the status quo.

Many prospective and practicing teachers find critical literacy texts trou-blesome or objectionable, for a variety of reasons. For example, they maybe convinced that exposure to the issues raised by critical literacy texts isnot developmentally appropriate for young children; they may subscribeto a transmission model of teaching that’s incompatible with question-ing the status quo; or they may lack the pedagogical expertise to pursuediscussions with children about controversial issues (see Meller & Hatch,2008; Schmidt, Armstrong, & Everett, 2007; Serafini, 2007; Wollman-Bonilla,1998). Other sources document the encouraging efforts of some teachers toadopt critical practices (see Heffernan & Lewison, 2005; Leland et al., 2005).These disparate orientations suggest the need for continued inquiry on theimplementation of critical practices in classrooms.

Future inquiry is needed to analyze how children engage with criticalpractices in classroom settings and the pedagogies that teachers employ tohelp them construct socially conscious perspectives (Wollman-Bonilla, 1998).Specifically, the findings of this inquiry suggest these directions for futureresearch: What kind of prompted (unprompted) questions (statements) dochildren of different ages and backgrounds propose about the content ofcritical literacy texts that deal with economic hardship? How do teachersacknowledge, respect, and scaffold children’s distinctive response patterns?In what ways, if any, is a cross-fertilization of perspectives among childrenwith varying response styles encouraged? And how do children subsequentlyrespond?

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SUMMARY

This study is arguably the first to systematically analyze demographic vari-ation in young children’s responses to a critical literacy text about poverty.Existing societal inequities related to class justify the use of such texts withyoung children. Insight into the ways that children respond can enableteachers to more sensitively scaffold children’s thinking. With guidance,children can become more critically literate about poverty in our society.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The study was supported by grants from the Spencer Foundation and theProffitt Endowment at Indiana University (Bloomington) to Judith Chafel.Both authors accept responsibility for the contents of the article. An earlierversion of this article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the AmericanPsychological Association, New Orleans, LA, August 2006. We would like toexpress our appreciation to Mary Harnishfeger for collecting the data and tovarious individuals who provided helpful comments on earlier versions ofthis article.

NOTES

1. Any verbal responses spontaneously uttered by the children while they completed the drawingwere also included in these analyses, although these data rarely appeared in the transcripts.

2. Analysis of the data collected in the study revealed positive aspects in the children’s understand-ings of poverty, with some children seeing the poor, for example, as experiencing a carefree setting, theexistence of a support network, a pleasant affect (see Chafel & Neitzel, 2004, for more detail).

3. Analysis of the data collected in the study revealed negative aspects in the children’s under-standings of poverty, with some children seeing the poor, for example, as being physically vulnerable orlonely (see Chafel & Neitzel, 2004, for more detail).

4. Content, process, and stance coding categories were not mutually exclusive. Because somechildren’s responses were coded as belonging to more than one category, total percentages exceed100%.

5. Because some children’s responses were coded as belonging to more than one category, totalpercentages exceed 100%.

6. N = 63 because the interviewer inadvertently neglected to pose the question to one child in thestudy.

7. Because some children’s responses were classified as belonging to more than one codingcategory, total percentages exceed 100%.

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