عنوان

Value and authenticity:

TLpq304255414

انگلیسی

Value and authenticity:

[Thesis]

R. J. Muhammad

Young adult readers respond to African-American literature

D. D. Brunner

Michigan State University

1996

262

Ph.D.

Michigan State University

1996

The purpose of the study, "Value and Authenticity: Young Adult Readers Respond to African American Literature" (hereafter known as "Value"), was to discover how four middle school students take up some traditionally used classroom novels. In other words, "Value" wanted to find out what African American students, reading outside the classroom, would value, question, or believe about some novels written about "the Black Experience." Therefore the intention of "Value" is to add student voices to the existing scholarship on The Slave Dancer (Fox), Words by Heart (Sebestyen), and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Taylor). If we accept Joel Taxel's contention that the textbooks, children's literature and indeed the social relations of the classroom are dominated by the perspectives of those in positions of social and economical authority, then the question of readership--of how children respond to, and make meaning of literary texts--is of fundamental importance given the belief that children are deleteriously influenced by racist and sexist images in literature ("Ideology" 255). Thus, some initial questions that guided this study were: (1) Based on what personal experiences and/or what stories in the readings do students believe and perhaps value these texts? (2) Contextually how may these novels force students to culturally and/or racially identify against themselves? (3) If students are more willing to actively engage a novel outside the confines of the traditional classroom, then why? Based on open-ended questions, "Value" individually invited the students to make written and oral evaluations of the novels. Among the multiple theoretical and pedagogical conclusions that can be drawn from "Value," perhaps the most important is that both the curricula and as well as individual teacher practices must allow space for students to make personal interrogations of the classroom novels. ftn Generally, the references by authors, critics, teachers and students, used in this study to "The Black Experience" acknowledge the common experience slavery, as well as the traditions that came with and grew out of the enslavement of African American people.

Education

Fox, Paula

Language, literature and linguistics

Sebestyen, Ou

Social sciences

Taylor, Mildred

D. D. Brunner

R. J. Muhammad

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y