“A book about Facebook would be cool”: Conflicting opinions about reading on screen

 

One of the most obvious transformations in the literacy practices of adolescents between the original investigation in the 1990s and the new one in 2014 resulted from their increasing use of digital devices with screens. Even when statistics tell us that there are computers only in 35.8% of Mexican homes and Internet access in only 3 in 10 homes, more than 90% of the population between the ages of 10 and 18 habitually connect to the Web (1). As in other countries, this connectivity has contributed to the emergence of new youth cultures where hybrid and multimodal literacy practices converge. Addressing the theme of reading on screen is therefore essential for those of us who observe and attempt to understand where the new generations are heading in terms of education and culture.

Almost from the beginning of the mass use of devices and digital media, researchers realized that it was impossible to isolate digital literacies from other literacy practices, not only those related to literature but also to culture and consumerism. The “links” have continued to extend further, in a rhizomatic manner, together with other forms of communication, social networks and websites, as well as new models of marketing cultural products such as books or film. The opportunities these forms offer for searching, participating and creating have allowed many young people to express themselves and relate to others through multiple platforms and in modes that are intimately connect to the formation of their identities, values and beliefs. For researchers of reading and children’s and young adult literature, an immense field of study opened on the ways in which these themes fit in and become transformed within a digital world. It is a field that we are only just beginning to explore, spurred on by questions which, given the vertiginous pace of change, must be continually reformulated.

The task therefore goes much further than simply keeping in touch with the technological novelties, platforms or applications, given that it implies a preoccupation with the questions that are, and will continue to be, significant. Already some of the research from the beginning of the century seems out of date (for example, studies on the first educational CD-Roms), however, there are many studies that continue to provide pertinent reflections, as well as new ones that consider more specialized themes (2).

In the survey and the reading workshops that took place in 2014 in two Mexican secondary schools, it was evident that we had to address the theme of reading on screen, however, it was not our intention to cover the theme of digital practices but simply to probe to see, first, what kind of practices they mentioned, and second, what relationship there was between reading on screen and reading on the printed page. Very little is known yet about what happens in Mexico in this area and we wanted to learn directly from the young people. For this blog entry, we will only mention what we found in terms of some of the ‘myths’ about the theme of reading on screen based on the opinions of these “digital natives” which seem to reflect the same conflicting opinions offered by the “digital migrant” generation.

The ‘Rivers of Reading’ (seen entry for the 9^th of December 2014), allowed us to make a list of the digital media they used in their daily lives, among them, WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger. As was to be expected, the students in the urban school used digital media more extensively and with more frequency than those in the school situated in the more rural zone, mainly because of access both to devices and the Internet. In both schools, however, opinions coincided and they revealed a polarized perception of the “benefits” and “harms” on the part of students and teachers.

The participants expressed commonplaces about the “dangers” of the use of digital media and reading on screen, for example, they noted there are “improper” sites and viruses, that social interaction on line can be isolating and that reading on screen “affects concentration”. Curiously, “damage to eyesight” was one of the most frequently mentioned problems.

On the other hand, they were also aware of the “benefits” that the digital world offers reading, for example, they mentioned they could look up information about authors, obtain reviews and recommendations, locate and download texts (many of them free). Jorge, who said he only ever read on iPad, told us how he reads scientific texts and also classic and contemporary literature, from Hamlet to Divergent. Even those who read “only a little” in terms of printed books were aware that it is still necessary to read to understand, for example, how certain videogames work.

During the project, without us directing them to do it, the students began to search the Web to find information about the authors and books we were reading for the workshops, about Francisco Haghenbeck (author of Justicia Divina) (see blog entry for 13^th October 2014), for example, but also about Laura Gallegos, given that her site includes a variety of options that complement and extend the series Memorias de Idhún and permit the interaction with other ‘fans’ and with the author herself. In the course of the project, the participants also discovered “booktubers”, the young people who make videos of themselves recommending books in YouTube, some of whom have thousands of followers. (3)

During the sessions, disagreements arose about some aspects, for example, if it was easier to find the meaning of a word online or in a dictionary, if it was easier or harder to concentrate, become distracted, reflect or lose oneself in the reading.

We also found conflicting opinions when we spoke to some of the teachers about this topic. On one hand, they referred to the fact that digital technology “has beaten us” – as if they were participants in a battle between the printed book and the screen. They said reading on screen was distracting, that it was harder to do a “precise reading” and that the information on the internet was not always “correct” or “adequate”. On the other hand, they recognized that there are ways of using of the digital world for teaching: “We teachers have not known how to make the most of using Facebook or films or YouYube videos, all the technology that young people have.”

They noted that it was possible to create strategies to approach reading through the screen, as one teacher suggested: “We could say to them: look here, everyone [bring] your mobile phones here, everyone with your YouTube, come on, in 10 minutes, look for a book and we can share it”.

They also recognized that teachers are not always aware of the new skills of young people and what they can do with them: “Actually, if you notice, when they have and activity and they present their videos, their presentations are so well edited that they even look professional”.

We close this entry with a comment from one of the students who, when asked what sort of themes he’d like to read about in his Spanish class, said:

“A book about Facebook would be cool”.

We think that Jorge’s reply is revealing in terms of the implied convergence between the digital world and the printed word, as it shows the desire to read about topics that are close to adolescent lives - such as a digital social network-  but at the same time this topic is situated within the more traditional form of a printed book. Jorge reminds us that, in terms of the ‘new’ reading practices, the divisions are never as clear cut as we imagine, nor is the ‘new’ generation of readers that different from our own.

(1)  See, for example, Bringué Sala y Sádaba 2008 http://www.razonypalabra.org.mx/Bringue.pdf

 

(2)  For example, the work of Jackie Marsh and Guy Merchant in the UK; Margaret Mackey and  Jennifer Rowsell in Canada; or James Paul Gee in the US. In Spain, Gemma Lluch has worked on this theme and a new book on the topic will appear soon from the research team at the Autonmous University of Barcelona, GRETEL.

 

(3)  See, for example, http://www.excelsior.com.mx/expresiones/2014/10/01/950074

In 2014, a “booktubers” encounter in the Biblioteca Vasconcelos (Vasconcelos Library in Mexico City) led by Daniel Goldin, revealed how successful this new way of recommending and talking about books has become. According to Marco Antonio López M., the Mexican “booktuber” community is the largest one in Latin America (La palabra y el hombre, Universidad Veracruzana, julio-agosto 2015).

The need to tell life stories: A brief account of the reading responses of secondary school students to Migrar (Migrate) by José Manuel Mateo and Javier Martínez Pedro

 

For this entry we have invited Alejandro Aguilar Mayorga to share an experience of reading with his secondary school students. His contribution is timely and important for two reasons: first because it is increasingly urgent to understand the issue of migration in order to try to find solutions (as is clearly evidenced by the situation in Europe over the past few months);  the second reason is that Aguilar Mayorga’s text follows from the previous entry in this blog because it describes a reading experience that shows the potential for using a text with words and images, together with a creative strategy, in the Spanish classroom. Not only does it cover the programme requirements but it also motivated the students to use their reading and writing skills in a way that resulted in a creative and significant experience for them and allowed them to reflect in a humane way on this historial and global phenomenon that is migration and which affects us all.

Migrar, the book by José Manuel Mateo y Javier Martínez Pedro, was published in 2011 by Ediciones Tecolote and received the New Horizons award in the Bologna Book Festival in 2012. It has been published in English with the title Migrant: The Journey of a Mexican Worker in 2014 by Harry N. Abrams.

Alejandro Aguilar Mayorga studied Hispanic and Portuguese at the UNAM (National University of Mexico). In the last few years, he has specialized in the field of reading promotion, school libraries and children’s and young adult literature. The activities he carries out for the promotion of reading with adolescents can be found in his blog "Librertades" (librertades.wordpress.com).

*Note: All the student's words and photographs have been included with their and their parents' permission.

 (My thanks to Nicole Stump for the English translation of this entry).

 

 

“We arrived in the famous “Beast”** and found ourselves with people from everywhere Mexicans, Peruvians, Chileans Guatemalans, Bolivians, men, children, teenagers, women, all with the same intention, looking for new opportunities and to move forward.”                – Mauricio

“We all started running, when suddenly we could hear lots of gunshots, screaming and crying. I could only shout to my family: “Stay together!” Little by little there were less people, leaving us at the end with the bunch of people that had been left. We all knew what would happen after, first they killed my son, the youngest, they also got to my wife and killed her, I managed to carry my son and I tried to hide among all the people and we managed to get out.” – Paola

Paola and Mauricio are two 2^nd year secondary school students at the Jesuit Latin Secondary School School, in Cuautitlán Izcalli, Mexico State.  They have both shared a tale with their group on the theme of the migration of Mexicans and Latin Americans to the United States. One is suprised by the reflexivity, the drama but, even more so, the narrative in the form of a chronicle, that emerges from their texts as a product of the observation and analysis of the visual narrative that is offered by Migrar.

In class, the students remain expectant when I enter and give each a set of photocopies with the mixed up images of Migrar. They had all expected a chronicle, since it was one of the topics to review that bimester. However, when they receive the images, the first thing I do is ask them what type of text they think could be produced from these visual elements. As their first ideas emerge, they answer that these “drawings”, because of their “design”, are similar to the Aztec or maybe Mayan images. Then, someone at the back, indicates that it’s a kind of codex and explains to us what that is, pointing out that it´s an ancient kind of text through which various events were narrated.

At that moment, I confirm the information about the codices and lead the students to focus their attention on the fact that this is a narrative, reminding them that this type of discourse is composed of sequences which, as we had identified while sharing some chronicles, possess a chronological order. Thus I ask the students to try to order the series of images they have received. The exercise of assembling the codex demands, on one hand, the observation of the readers and, on the other, a preliminary analysis of the images, because in order to find the correct order, they have to define a beginning, a first clue that will be modified in the subsequent images; a clue which, for most of them, was defined as the sun on the upper part of one of the squares.

Soon, having assembled the codex, the students ask me to check their work. They ask me if they’re right and I ask them about their choices: “What lead you to order it in that way?” The students explain and, almost naturally, begin to narrate facts, describe things, situate character and talk about the different scenarios that allowed them to work out the chronological evolution and several possible stories.  I ask them to share their work and we paste the sheets on the board or the walls and compare them; we compare the different readings of the images, the different narratives that have emerged. Most match.  Some go back to the board and change their previous order, asking their classmates why some image goes before or after another.

Just before finishing the day’s session, I ask the students to give a name to the story told by the codex, in order to justify their answer. Some of the following titles are offered: “Migrating”, “Emigration”, “The Migration”, “Migrants”, “The Road to the American Dream”. Once again the students explain their choice, which corresponds with the process of assembling the codex. I ask them, finally, to write down the story they’ve imagined, following the models of the chronicle we have covered in class, to share it the next day, in which I have promised to show them the original order and read them the story that goes with the images with which they’ve worked.

The next day, the students, excited by the idea of reading their stories, approach me at the classroom entrance, something which, I must confess, doesn´t surprise me much, since this is a group of teenagers that love to tell stories and love, above all, to be listened to.

I listen, we all listen to the stories, and just like in the fragments I´ve shared in the opening lines of this introduction, the characters and the places begin to appear, as well as the journeys, the lives, the problems, the obstacles, the cruelties, the nostalgia, the work, the dream, the sadness, the joy, the hardships, the extremes, the loss, the towns, the traditions, the food, the needs, the friendships, all, all that is human, all that they are, that we are. For me, that is exactly what reading and writing are all about: processes through which the students have observed and analyzed a series of images that finds an echo within their references (experiences, results of other readings from different media; movies, TV news, newspapers, magazines or other books), without which it would have been impossible to build a story or even infer that the story is about migration; processes through which emerge the need to indicate, to describe and to narrate that which the visual text of Migrar has caused them to imagine.

 

Esteban, one of the more restless students in the class, surprises me with his willingness to come to the front of the class and point out each of the details he found when he continued analyzing the text at home. His presentation is formidable; made up of organized ideas that are grounded in his own experiences and readings about the subject. He makes a great effort to find the relationships between the sequences, symbols and cues that lead us to discover the story. He discusses and shares his text with us.

Afterwards, I decide to share the original text with them and they observe that their stories do have common elements: scenarios, characters, chronological sequences, and, in the end, the very story of the thousands and thousands of lives that walk endless miles to reach a better life; the lives of those that arrive and those who remain, of those who overcome the obstacles and those who are defeated. I should also have mentioned that, when sharing the narrative that goes along with the visual text, I’ve asked the students to try and find the characters and narrated situations, marking them on the codex with a coloured pencil. In this way, each student shows the outcome to the group, making reference to the history told in the book. In this sense, the students have managed to find the key moments in the text as well as in the codex and, finally, established connections between them.

During the last session of the reading of Migrar, I ask the students to formulate a series of questions directed at the author and/or illustrator of the book, in a way that one by one, they put themselves in the role of one of the creators. This way, we manage to open a question-and-answer session in which the students share their concerns and are able, finally, to have a dialogue and discuss their readings.

Without a doubt, sharing the book by José Manuel Mateo and Javier Martínez Pedro with my students on one hand facilitated the development of their interpretative skills based on the construction, deconstruction and reconstruction, observation and analysis of the images and, on the other hand, made the reading of such a peculiar book go beyond the text, because, as we´ve been saying, it allowed the setting up of dialogues, of explorations and, above all, encouraged the need to narrate and share more than simple stories, our own experiences through, in the first instance, oral channels and later, though writing.

 

 

**The “Beast” is the nickname of the train on which hundreds of thousands of Latin American migrants travel to the US border. They make this dangerous journey on the roof the train over 5000 kilometres.

 

Back to school and back to the same old issues with reading?

With the start of September and the start of the school year, we return to our blog which aims to disseminate some of the initial results of the project, “Reading Changes”, and to present themes that are relevant to research on reading and young people, not only in Mexico but in other parts of the world.

In this entry, inspired by the “back to school” moment, we will touch on the theme of reading in school. In the State of Morelos where we carried out the project in 2014 and the original investigation in 1992, around 500,000 children are of school age and 150,000 of them are in secondary (ages 12-15) or preparatory (ages 15-18) school. [Note: for those readers who are not familiar with Mexico, the country is made up of 31 states plus one Federal District]. As we know, these middle years of schooling are key in the formation of readers given that it is a time when adolescents tend to ask questions and look for answers outside the home and when they have more opportunities to discover and choose their reading for themselves. These are also the years during which the deep pleasure of reading can be discovered and rooted or lost, usually for ever.

The secondary school therefore has the possibility and responsibility to provide a space for the enjoyment of reading to develop but this will depend on three fundamental aspects: the programmes that are required by the educational authorities (with their respective readings, pedagogic strategies and evaluations), the access to a wide variety of texts and the teacher’s attitude.

In Mexico, among the curricular standards for the subject of “Spanish”(which includes language and literature), it is stated that during the secondary school stage, the student will develop an “enjoyment of reading” as well as a “positive self-concept as a reader” and that “the intention is to help student approach reading through the knowledge and enjoyment of different types of texts, genres, literary styles and, at the same time, to obtain sufficient tools to form competent readers who obtain an accurate interpretation and a sense of what they read” (Programme of Study, Basic Secondary Education, Spanish, SEP 2011). To help reach this objective, government initiatives such as the National Programme of Reading, launched in 2002 (now, the National Plan for Reading and Writing) and the Classroom Libraries Programme, provided book collections for school and classroom libraries for all the schools in the country. Despite political change and problems with its use (which will be discussed in another entry), schools have a greater and more varied collection in 2014 compared to 1992, which include different genres, picturebooks, graphic novels and also contemporary YA novels, by both Mexican and foreign authors.

From what we could observe in 2014, however, there has been less change in the selection of texts for the class, the pedagogy and the teachers’ attitudes. This can be seen in the same unenthusiastic attitudes to reading in the Spanish classroom in 2014 and 20 years ago. In general, the young people interviewed in 1992 did not “dislike” their Spanish class and made an initial effort to read the prescribed texts, although the majority did not finish them unless they were “short, easy to understand and entertaining”. The participants in 2014 expressed something similar and this attitude is sustained by the fact that, among the texts which they did remember reading with enjoyment were the “myths and legends” from their first year of Secondary School. In this sense, the graphic novel Justicia Divina by Haghenbeck and the picturebook, The Girl in Red by Frisch and Innocenti (which we have discussed in previous blog entries) turned out to be ideal for continuing this theme in terms of, for example, the way traditional myths and legends survive and the existence of different versions or endings.

In 1992, the adolescents complained loudly about the obligatory readings in school because they found them “long”, “boring” and “confusing”, such as Marianela by Benito Pérez Galdós (a 19thc Spanish author). In 2014, they complained mainly about their current text, the Poema de Mío Cid (an epic poem from around the 12thc): “it doesn’t grab my attention”; “it’s not interesting”; “it’s totally boring”. One student gave more details: “it’s like you don’t understand anything… because the poem comes in a different language which is the vulgar… the words puzzle me and also, the author who made the book, like he does not specify the development clearly and he confuses me, then, between the characters and the events.” These young people will probably never again try to read this text and they will lose the pleasure that this magnificent epic poem can offer. (It is no coincidence that this text figures in a blog from which the illustration for this entry was borrowed: “Diez libros obligatorios que te hicieron odiar la lectura” [Ten obligatory books that made you hate reading] http://blogs.publico.es/strambotic/2015/03/libros-conazo/).

In both 1992 and 2014 the students criticised the pedagogy related to the prescribed texts: taking dictation, copying from the blackboard, reading fragments in silence or aloud and answering comprehension questions. One difference was that, in 2014, one group of students was asked by the teacher to create illustrations for El Poema de Mío Cid. While this may seem a more creative approach, the students also complained because they said they could not illustrate a scene if they did not understand what was happening in it. As one of them rightly noted: “You have to read the page well to be able to specify it in the drawing.”

In an interview with one of the school authorities they recognized the fact that to carry out these more creative strategies, there should be a reflection and discussion to start with, about what the students understood; otherwise, this type of approach would not be successful: “We must take into account what the student has discovered, followed, visualized, brought to the text and imagined.”

It is certainly important to take into account the requirements of the curriculum which force teachers to cover the programme within a certain time and show results. There are also pragmatic students: “I don’t much like to read the book for Spanish, I’m just interested in the final mark.” However, the students themselves can suggest ideas for improving the situation. Near the end of the project in 2014, we asked the participants what they would do to make the Spanish class more interesting. Taking the question seriously, among the responses, they said it would be better if they all helped to choose a text and to discuss it and that the teachers should “explain better” what the text had to do with their lives as young people in the 21^st century.

The great writer Philip Pullman (author of His Dark Materials trilogy, among many other books) attributes his success as an author to one of his secondary school teachers. She so enjoyed reading the “classics” –legends, The Odyssey, Paradise Lost- to her students that she passed on her deep pleasure in these texts. Of course there are also committed teachers in Mexico who know how to inspire their students to read the “classics” and who know how to make the best use of excellent contemporary texts and creative strategies (and we shall see an example of this in the next blog entry).

With this type of approaches, the vicious cycle of boredom and the obligation can be broken and then, perhaps, “back to school” will not mean “back to the same old issues”.

Letter to a young reader

                               (Books taught me how to think and thought made me free)

 

From Evelyn:

This entry is dedicated to the young people who participated in the reading workshops during the research project in Mexico – some of whom are also readers of this blog. The majority finish their Secondary education and will go on to ‘Preparatory’ or ‘High School’. Some of them told us they want to continue their studies at university and were already finding out about the different possibilities; in fact, one young woman was leaving her town to continue her studies in Mexico City in order to apply to the National University (UNAM). Via this blog entry, we want to thank them all for participating in the activities and for sharing some of their reading life with us. We were conscious at all times that, although reading is embedded in social practices, the act of reading is an intimate act and that our questions infringed this intimacy, but our intention was to do so always with respect and appreciation and we are moved that the readers wanted to share with us both tears and laughter (and the occasional rude joke!). We learnt a lot about what they look for in their reading, what they expect from a text; about how they relate to fictional characters, about the way they interpret images and words, about their perspective on the use of digital technologies and reading and also about their sadness, fears, anxieties, hopes and dreams.

We thus also want to wish them the best for their future.

We hope that these workshops were useful. We are encouraged by the some of the students’ words in the project evaluation:

Maribel: What I liked best about the workshop was, well, all those talks we had, it was really fun to come to talk about things that I can’t talk to all my other schoolmates about, well, because they say we are crazy…

Mario: It’s because it is not usual to talk about reading with schoolmates.

Natalia: … you felt like confident to speak to everyone and everyone shared what they felt and when you felt something different from the others, well you would start to reflect…

They also passed on their enthusiasm to others:

Edgardo: … we have a schoolmate called Carlos and he asked us to borrow the book because he was also interested. He doesn’t read at all, he doesn’t read at all and with that book he started reading. He started to read it and he really liked that book.

 

But these young people are not only readers, some of these students also shared their creative writing with us, they told us about the poems, stories and even novels. One young man spoke to us about the poetry he writes and how it had allowed him to understand others, and himself, better: 

One day I made a poem, I was very sad that day. One of my schoolmates took my notebook and began to read it. He said he felt almost the same thing that I had set down in that poem and at that moment I thought, ‘what I feel, other people also feel’, but sometimes it is hard for us to express what we feel.

This is an important motivation to keep writing, we hope that both he and the others will continue with these creative activities, perhaps one day we will find ourselves in another workshop with students, reading their published work! Thinking of these and other shared words, Laura and I were reminded of some of the letters written ‘to a young poet’ by the Rainer Maria Rilke and so we would like to leave them with some words inspired by this great poet.

From Laura:

When we are young, we hear many words of counsel and recommendation, it is the time in which the adults around us, especially family and teachers, want to share their experiences and for us to learn from their errors. This objective is not always fulfilled but the good wishes remain, the words are there to represent the interest or affection of others. Sometimes, when we confront a problem, we remember what our grandmother or mother or a good head teacher said to us. Sometimes, these words reach our hearts to change our way of seeing the world or they stop our footsteps and they make us think about ourselves and what we really want for ourselves. Sometimes, these words are kept with affection and we return to them to share with others.

Similarly, when we were young, we read a collection of letters that moved and enlightened us, Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. They inspired us to talk to you, vital readers of stories, thoughts, news and poems; restless spirits that populate the world of effort and work, of dreams and parties, of friends and solitude. To you, who walk through the streets making sense of the signs that others transmit, young people who accompanied us through hot afternoons or warm mornings, who looked at the books with astonished eyes, curiosity and desire, whom we would have liked to get to know more and better, who we listened to, we talked to and who we shall remember with affection.

Reading, dear students, is not a simple habit or pleasure, you already know that. Reading demands complicity, we must immerse ourselves in the atmosphere, listen to the voices and attend to the narrator to live, within the shoes of others, the battles, the love, the doubts and the betrayals that adventure novels distil; the place of refuge from what goes on around us, where our hearts beat quickly, full of desire or anguish. There will be some who want to stop our reading, who do not understand the dangers we confront together with the protagonists. Distracted or angry, we will have to wait and the world of the story will be suspended until the next moment of solitude shared only with the text. At that moment, the memories of what we’ve read will return and we will continue those parallel lives which enrich our own.

The love of reading is something that can be transmitted but it is not something that can be imposed and it is a lot of fun to find another person who shares our delight or who has read the same books. Don’t be disheartened when you don’t have anyone with whom to talk about your texts, you can tell the story in your own words to others, revive it for them, let that spark lit by the joy of it move to another heart.

The books are there, there are many places for them, don’t come to a standstill, there are virtual libraries, second-hand books, libraries which are worth traveling to, there are books in your neighbours’’ or relative’s houses, in your new school, in the street, in libraries. There are books for every taste and there are books that are waiting to be written, poems that wish to be born to express their ideas, sentiments or desires and there are stories that project them or dreams that can write them.

In the same way that the young participants will continue on their paths, this blog will follow its own, at least until the end of 2015. We are motivated by the number of visits the blog has had, between the Spanish and English sites, almost 4000, with readers from Uruguay to Canada and from Ukraine to Australia. We will be writing further about the analysis and the results of the research and we have several invited ‘bloggers’ who have promised us entries about reading practices of young people in Canada, Lebanon and also about Mexican adolescents reading about migration, among other themes.

For the moment, we wish our readers a good summer and we will take some well-deserved holidays until the end of August when the blog will resume.

Evelyn and Laura

Young people as researchers of reading

 

From the beginning of the project we wanted to awaken  a curiosity about reading in the participants, not in the sense of motivating them to read (although we trusted this might happen), but in the sense of encouraging them to reflect on reading practices and how they have changed in the last decades. As we have said before, our overall aim was to investigate this topic through the creation of a space in which to share experiences and reflections about reading. Starting from the students’ ‘Rivers of Reading’ (see entry from 9^th December 2014), we talked about what ‘counts’ or doesn’t count as reading, particularly from the school’s perspective. We also spoke about the reading done by other family members, younger children and friends. We discussed ‘young adult literature’ and speculated about reading on screen, not only about books but also about the different texts generated by virtual social networks and also about the way in which other visual media such as film or videogames invite new forms of reading.

Once we were well into the project, we asked them to help us carry out interviews on the theme of reading. The idea was that they could claim a bit more ‘ownership’ of the project in this way and participate, not as subjects but as researchers. Participatory research with young people has become the theme for an increasing number of publications (for example, Alderson 2008; Kellet 2005 & 2011; Powers & Tiffany 2006) most of which stresses the importance of involving them in a way that the experience becomes significant for them (rather than being a token activity). In our case, we tried to achieve this even if it was only a small part of the overall project given the time limitations. Ideally the project would have been conceived from the beginning with the group of young people but this was not possible in this case. However, brief as the experience was, we consider it a small step forward in a context where the agency and voices of young people are not taken into account and, as we have said before, the balance of power is almost totally inclined towards the adults – whether they be teachers or researchers. In other words, this was a pilot attempt to show the potential that a more participatory approach can have (and which could also be easily adapted as a pedagogic strategy in the classroom, for example, for media studies).

To start the session, we reminded the students of the project’s objectives and we explained what the research process involved (collecting and analysing data, reaching conclusions, publishing and disseminating findings…). We then invited them to help us with the research by taking a more active role although we also asked them to take the activity seriously give it implied a greater level of responsibility and ethical conduct. They would have to design the interview questions in groups, supported by the researcher, and then each of them would interview someone they knew, over 18 years old. They would first have to explain what the project and the interview were about and obtain their permission. They all accepted the invitation and showed themselves surprised and intrigued by the idea, it was obviously something new for them to be considered as part of the “team” and, of course, they were also enthusiastic about using the mini-recorders.

There is no room to enter into detail here about the design of the questions but it must be said that the simple fact of having to decide what questions to ask and how, led to important conversations about the objectives, themes and expectations of the exercise and also about some ethical considerations. For example, the fact that not everyone knows how to read was raised but also that directly asking the question ‘Can you read?’ may be uncomfortable for some people. One group therefore decided to begin asking ‘Do you like to read?’ so that, as Rodrigo said, ‘they will not feel offended’. Another interesting discussion arose around a question suggested by Alma, ‘Where are you from?’, as her peers argued that this didn’t have anything to do with reading. Nevertheless, Alma persisted, ‘It may be that (in other places) there are different forms of reading books…’

The final lists of each group included questions related to preferences in terms of formats for reading (‘computer, tablet, mobile or physical book’) and also related to opinions about the changes in reading. The responses to this last question proved most interesting given that the range of age of those interviewed was between 18 and 70 years. For example, this was the response of a secondary school teacher aged 32 years:

Lucio: What do you think of how reading has changed since you were little or a young person?

I don’t know if reading has changed but what I have noticed is that now young people I think read a little bit more compared to when I was that age, I don’t remember having a single teacher in primary or secondary school that tried to foster the reading habit in me. However, as I come from a family of teachers, well I was always close to books and even then I don’t completely have that habit, sometimes because of lack of time, lack of interest, but I think that young people now are reading a bit more, perhaps not the books they should read, but they are doing it.

After asking the group questions, Lucio continued this interview, adding questions on his own initiative:

Has reading a book helped you keep going forward in your daily live, despite problems or adversities you have had?

If you could make a book, what would you like to put in it?

If you had the opportunity of telling a young person how to change their life, through a book, what book would you recommend to them to change their life?

Not only did we all learn from the responses but we also learned from the questions that the young researchers formulated.

Most interviews were too short for in-depth analysis and we did not really have enough interviews to be able to make any generalizations (there were also a few technical problems with the recorders). However, the range of ages did allow us all some insights into the differences between generations. For example, it was fascinating to know that The Iliad was the first book that a man of 69, a peasant farmer in the state of Morelos, remembered reading and this generated discussion around the reading of the ‘Classics’. But the most important thing about this activity was not the information that the young researchers obtained from their interviews but the fact that they became more active agents, more curious about and conscious of the theme that concerned us and that they felt their contribution was valued and would be part of the overall research project.

References

Alderson, P. (2008) Children as researchers: participation rights and research methods. In: Christensen P and James A (eds) Research with children: perspectives and practices. London: Routledge, 276-290.

Kellett, M. (2005) ‘Children as active researchers: a new research paradigm for the 21st century?’ ESRC National Centre for Research Methods, NCRM/003 www.ncrm.ac.uk/publications

Kellett, M. (2011). Engaging with Children and Young People. Centre for Children and Young People Background Briefing Series no.3., Lismore: Centre for Children and Young People, Southern Cross University.

Power, J. L. &Tiffany, J. S. (2006) Engaging Youth in Participatory Research and Evaluation, Journal of Public Health Management & Practice 12 (6), S79 - S87.  http://www.nursingcenter.com/journalarticle?Article_ID=676564

Good questions for research on reading and response

 

                                                 Mural on a school wall painted by students

Our “Reading Changes” project is entering a phase of deeper analysis of the conversations we had with the students about their reading practices and the ways in which they constructed meaning from the three texts we read. The re-reading of the transcripts has led me to reflect about the way in which we ask questions when we work on response to reading and about the questions themselves. We all know the value of asking good questions and although in what follows I will refer mainly to the role that questions play in research, I think that this reflection can be relevant to teachers, librarians, parents and anyone else who ‘mediates’ between children, young people and books.

Since the time of Socrates philosophers have employed questions as a basis for stimulating free and critical thought and, even today,  ‘Philosophy for Children’ is an approach that centres on a community of enquiry where, among other things, participants learn how to formulate good questions. Asking questions has many functions: in the case of research it has to do with the core query that launches the project and with obtaining information from participants; in the case of pedagogy, it has to do (or it should have to do!) with stimulating reasoning and reflection. An ethical enquiry in an educational context therefore has to consider the impact of the research in terms of pedagogy and this is why our ‘Reading Changes’ project was based on the idea of workshops where collective dialogue, rather than formal interviews, were encouraged as well as the use of questions (and visual strategies) that had an educational potential. It may seem obvious but it is easy to take for granted the fact that in traditional educational contexts it is the adult who has the ‘right’ to ask questions and the child or adolescent, the ‘obligation’ to respond – and in a certain way.

In research, this imbalance of power also exists, not only because researchers are adults working with the permission of the relevant authorities but also because they normally have a certain academic level and are backed up by a university. Young people may feel obliged to respond to questions and, perhaps, to answer what they think the researcher wants to hear. On the contrary, they might refuse to say what they really think, refuse to participate or remain silent as a form of resisting that power and hierarchy. Any teacher or mediator will recognize this situation, indeed, any parent of an adolescent will too! If we add to this situation the impact of traditional didactic methods which assume there is a “truth” to be discovered through questioning and that there is a “correct” answer or a “proper” response, the resulting context can discourage participants to share the information we are looking for and even less to share their thoughts and ideas. This is why it is important not only to prepare the space but also the questions that will in some way compensate for that imbalance of power and create, within all the limitations, a dialogic situation that is more democratic and authentic.

Many books have been written about conducting ethical qualitative research which takes into account the voices of the participants and aims for more participatory methods. Many books have also been written about how to formulate questions, either for interviews o. When a formal interview is conducted for an empirical, quantitative project, questions are normally constructed with little flexibility and to be asked in a particular order. In qualitative research, questions are also carefully formulated but there is more flexibility. However, when the research is about inviting a child or adolescent to talk about a literary text (whether it is a picturebook, a novel or poetry), the questions need to be even more fluid given that we are trying to enquire about a process that is not only cognitive but very personal (Morag Styles and I wrote about this in 2003 in our book on research on response to picturebooks and have just completed a new version of the book in which we emphasize this particular point because we have seen so many other research projects, some by our own Master’s and PhD students, that have proved just how important it is to ask good questions). If closed and objective questions are asked, as they tend to be in the classroom, we will not be able to learn much about a process that is so unique and intimate as the act of reading.

As well as doing our best to create a welcoming space for the students who participated in our workshops (in a psychological rather than a physical sense given the limits we had), we created questions that we hoped would stimulate their interest in the project itself and through which we could integrate a more complete picture of their acts of reading. For example, we asked if they thought that books and reading were still important in the digital world, how new technology had affected their practices and preferences or what they would suggest to encourage reading among their peers. We also asked them, among other things, what role image played in comparison to words in the texts we read, about empathy, and about ambiguous endings and characters.

There is no space here to write about their responses but I do want to mention five points about asking questions which came up repeatedly and which have taught me much about creating a conversational space for research. First, I have learned that it is important to tolerate the silence that can follow a question. It is very hard to avoid trying to fill these silences given that they sometimes seem endless but if we remind ourselves that we all need time to order our thoughts before answering a question, we realize we have to be patient. Second, we must really allow participants’ voices to be heard. Given that the book and the theme of the conversation is exciting to us, it is easy to allow ourselves to talk too much and even answer our own questions. Third, unless there is a specific pedagogic intention in the research, we must avoid the impulse to “teach” given that, on one hand, this reasserts hierarchies and on other, they will learn enough from reading and the conversation with others.  Fourth, it is important to pay attention to the questions that the participants ask, even when they seem irrelevant or misguided; there will be a rationale behind them although we may not see it immediately. Finally, I’ve learned that good questions lead young people to create their own good questions and it is precisely at the moment of asking their questions when a real dialogue begins and the balance of power inclines a bit more towards equilibrium.

E Arizpe

 

Reading and Turkish Adolescents

In this entry we travel from Mexico to Turkey!

We are very pleased to have a guest blogger, Osman Coban, writing about reading in his country and specifically about the reading choices of Turkish adolescents. We think that readers will find it illuminating to compare what is happening in this area in different places around the world. In particular, it is interesting to consider Turkey alongside Mexico, given that they are both considered to be part of the “MINT” emerging economies group (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey). However, while it may be true that they are on an upward economic turn, we must not forget that the increasing wealth and advantages do not benefit all the population and that there are still many serious problems and unresolved conflicts in all these countries which affect education and reading, as Osman reminds us in the text below.

Osman is doing his PhD on this topic, at the University of Glasgow, funded by a scholarship from the Turkish Government. Last year he was successful in obtaining one of the IBBY-UK bursaries to attend and present a poster at the IBBY International Congress in Mexico. At the moment, he is “in the field”, collecting data through a variety of methods, working with young people in schools. We are grateful that he managed to find some time to write this blog for us.  
 

During my primary and middle school term [1975-1985], there was political chaos. There were political events all over the country and if the parents were involved, they used to try to get their children to read political books that were written by the ideological group they agreed with. I was one of the victims of this. I was forced to read some of these books and as a result I was scared of books in my childhood. I had been given some very difficult books to read and to explain but I did not understand anything from the books that I had been reading. Imagine a book about 500  pages long with political terms (...) in front of a child who is in fifth year of primary (...) I hated books (...) I loved reading after I became a teacher. I would read children’s books to the children. I met children’s books after I became a teacher, I didn’t read children’s books when I was a child. After that I loved reading books.

I believe that this Head teacher’s memories about reading represent a brief summary of reading history in Turkey in the second half of the 20^th century. Between 1950 and 1990, politics had a significant effect on young readers’ reading habits and choices. In addition, there were only a handful of authors who wrote for children and young people and few translations of children’s and young adult (YA) texts from other countries. The didactic attitude of the authors was a key factor in the construction of these stories.

At the beginning of the 21^st century, although the overall literacy rate in Turkey was high (92.9%), only 4% of the population said they read books as part of their daily life. Poverty and conflict have been the other reasons for this low reading rate. Almost half the children in Turkey have to work as well as going to school. In the eastern region of Turkey there has been conflict since 1990, due to a complex political and ethnic situation and Kurdish children in particular have been living under difficult conditions (Robinson, 2010; Yegen, 2006). In addition to household chores, the many of them also have to work as farm labourers during the summer term in different parts of the country. In addition, nearly half the workers in Turkey earn the minimum wage: 949 TL (approximately 360USD) (CSGB, 2015; Sabah, 2012 and it is almost impossible spend any of this money on books because this money is hardly enough for the basic needs of a family. Another reason is the high price of books, as Isfendiyar, who is 17 years old and one of the students in my project, explained.

 So far I have mentioned some of the complex issues related to the Turkish context which have had a negative impact on the reading habits of young readers. However, on the positive side, since 2003 there have been several local and national reading campaigns which have resulted in a noticeable increase in the reading rate of young readers. The Turkish Ministry of Education prepared a list of ‘100 Basic Works’ in 2005 for primary and secondary level to be read before the end of students’ school period (Cotukkesen, 2007). Former president Abdullah Gul and his wife Hayrunnisa Gul launched the ‘Turkey is reading’ campaign in 2008 which promoted reading awareness at a national level through a number of reading events. In schools, every day had to start with 10 minutes of reading. In an event that took place outside schools, people from every age read books in stadiums in different parts of the country to develop reading awareness at a national level and this made an impact on young people as well as adults (The Governorship of Istanbul. 2008, Kılıc, n.d.). As a result, between 2008 and 2013, the reading rate increased from 4% to 6.8 % and the literacy rate from 92.9% to 96% (Unal, 2013, TUIK, 2013).

 
Even if the lack of economic wealth limits the publishing market in Turkey, there has been a distinct rise in the availability of children’s and young adult’s texts from both Turkish and World authors. This has brought a positive acceleration in the reading rate of young readers. Specifically, the translation of popular YA texts has opened a new field of reading in the country because there are not many Turkish authors who write for this age or, perhaps, because the authors who write YA literature are ‘not as good as foreign authors’, an opinion expressed by ‘Tess’ (the nickname of a girl w  ho participated in my project - she is a fan of Tess Gerritsen).
 
Regarding my own project, I am interested in the reading choices of adolescents in Turkey and the effects of these reading choices. I am conducting surveys, interviews and carrying out reading activities with readers in the second year of secondary in Adana province, in Southern Turkey. For the reading activities, I offer a list of Turkish and World classics as well as contemporary popular fiction to the participants. They choose one of them to read. If they want to read any other book which is not included in the list, they can do so as well. They identify the chapter they liked most and explain why, then the other participants read the chapter and they all discuss it. During these sessions, a total of 10 books will be discussed by two groups of five students.   

So far, according to the survey data I have obtained, 235 out of 294 students indicated that they have a favourite books and 74 of these books are Turkish books while 220 of these are World books. It is also interesting to note that among the ones who indicated a Turkish book as a favourite, there was a preference for realistic fiction, while the others preferred popular fantastic texts, such as The Hunger Games, Sherlock Holmes and Divergent. The Harry Potter and Twilight series were among their childhood favourites and opened the door for them to other stories involving fantasy.   

To conclude this brief account, although there are some factors that continue to have a negative impact on the reading practices of adolescents in Turkey, the increasing variety of books, which now include translated books, has been contributing to raising the reading rate.  We can hope that this will continue to rise, along with the new production of books for children and young people by Turkish authors and publishers, so that there will be a wider range of choices and readers will be further encouraged to read and, like the Head teacher mentioned at the start, will learn to love reading.

Osman Coban

References:

Cötüksöken, Y. (2007). 100 Temel Eser Listeleri Üzerine, 100 Temel Eser Tartışması.

CSGB, (2015). Asgari Ücretin Net Hesabı, available at http://www.csgb.gov.tr/csgbPortal/cgm.portal?page=asgari accessed on 17.05.2015.

Kılıç S., (n.d.). Malatya Okumada Dünya Rekoruna Koşuyor, available at http://www.ha-ber.com/m/?id=12838 accessed on 17.05.2015.

Robinson, A. (2010). Meltem's Journey: A Refugee Diary. Frances Lincoln ltd.

The Governorship of Istanbul, (n.d.) İstanbul İli Türkiye Okuyor Kampanyası Projesi, available at http://www.istanbul.gov.tr/?pid=13648

Sabah (2012), Sigortalilarin Yarisi Asgari Ucretli, available at http://www.sabah.com.tr/ekonomi/2012/11/15/sigortalilarin-yarisi-asgari-ucretli# accessed on 19.05.2015.

TUIK (2012). ‘Working Children’, Turkish Statistical Institute, available at www.tuik.gov.tr accessed on 17.05.2015.

TUIK (2013). ‘Turkey in Statistics 2013’, Turkish Statistical Institute, available at www.tuik.gov.tr/IcerikGetir.do?istab_id=5 accessed on 19.05.2015.

Unal, (2013), Konusan Kitap Okumayı Artırdı, available at http://www.zaman.com.tr/mustafa-unal/konusan-kitap-okumayi-artirdi_2167850.html accessed on 14.12.2013.

Yegen, M. (2006). Müstakbel-Türk'ten Sözde-Vatandaşa: Cumhuriyet ve Kürtler. İletişim.