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Beach, Richard; Haertling, Thein, & Parks, Daryl. (2008). High School Students’ Competing Social Worlds: Negotiating Identities and Allegiances in Response to Multicultural Literature. NY: Taylor & Francis Pp. v + 335         ISBN 978-0-8058-5855-6

Reviewed by Janie Cowan
University of Georgia

December 18, 2008

A change in cultural tools may often be a more powerful force of development than the enhancement of individuals’ skills. (Wertsch, 1998, p. 38)

Books here are not presented as a tunnel, but as an ocean. (Reflection by student participant, p. 138)

High School Students’ Competing Social Worlds: Negotiating Identities and Allegiances in Response to Multicultural Literature  by Richard Beach, Thein Haertling, and Daryl Parks is designed for educators and researchers who seek to understand how adolescents construct and reflect on their identities through responses to literature.  Blending theory and research with specific application to case study profiles and discourse analysis, this book offers a readable discussion of a large scale qualitative study for both current classroom practitioners and academic scholars. The book provides educators with concrete descriptions of instructional methods that could be used in literature classrooms to encourage critical response to literature and reflection on personal identity construction.

General Overview

Beach, Haertling, and Parks report the results of a study of identity construction in 14 mostly working-class high school students in a literature course over a six month period.  Because students received college credit for the course, teacher and co-researcher Parks provided critical analysis strategies and practices that deviated from the “larger school culture of physical and intellectual control.” (p. x). Students were invited to question their own individual discourses through critical analysis of race, class and gender issues in selected multicultural literary works. Dialogic tension arose in these discussions and reflections, and some students moved to interrogation of larger social and political structures influencing their current identity construction. The researchers also sought to understand the influence of school culture on student identity formation by conducting ethnographic observations and interviews with students. Through this data, Beach, Haertling and Parks were able to examine shifts in students’ literary responses across time in their writing, conversation, and personal interaction.

Significance of Study

The authors cite several serious challenges confronting working-class adolescents in contemporary American society:

• Shift in economy from traditional manufacturing to knowledge-based; increased requirement for post-secondary education and flexible portfolios (Apple, 2001)
• Emphasis on transmission model of instruction, NCLB, and teaching to the test (Apple, 2001)
• Lack of cultural capital to navigate school bureaucracy (Eckert, 1989)
• Entering post-secondary work education lacking requisite academic skills or cultural capital (Beach, Lundell, & Jung, 2002)
• Economic disadvantage
• Racial and class segregation within schools (Tatum, 2003)
• Gender disparities favoring female success in and beyond school (Bettie, 2003)
• Increasingly conservative political climate favoring White, middle class voters

In order to successfully meet these challenges, the researchers take the position that adolescents must learn to negotiate the many competing demands placed upon them within diverse social worlds. Students must learn to critically reflect upon their own beliefs and attitudes regarding social structure, race, class, and gender. Learning is thus defined as the “acquiring of ways of knowing and valuing consistent with being certain kinds of persons in certain types of social worlds.” (Hicks,1996). This idea is consistent with the work of Nieto (2002), Fecho ((2004) and Delpit (1995), who each advocate the sort of critical educational experiences that call cultural models and ideologies into question.

Organization of the Book

The book begins with a nice overview of current theories of identity construction based on sociocultural theories of learning, critical discourse analysis, cultural model theory, and critical race theory. Given the idea that discourses of race, class, and gender mediate identity formation, the authors posit a move beyond determinist models of discourses shaping identity to also consider the development of agency as it affects identity construction.

Chapter 2 examines current research on how adolescents negotiate identities among the demands of community, home, peer group, workplace, family and school social worlds. The restrictive, controlling cultural model of school is contrasted with that of Parks classroom, where students are encouraged to resist the status quo and call systems into question.

Chapter 3 reviews sociocultural theories of literary response in contrast to traditional reader-response models. In a sociocultural response model, readers construct “texts worlds” (Smagorinsky, 2001) that are mediated by the discourses and cultural models operating in those worlds.  Negotiating the tensions in the competing social worlds of multicultural literature allows the student to examine the institutional forces at work that shape both literary characters and their own lives.

Chapters 4 and 5 explore the ways that students move from identification to critique of institutional forces. Grappling with dialogic tension in texts, students became more open to adopting different perspectives in analyzing issues in their own social worlds. Chapter 4 describes the change in student awareness as they began to identify with literary characters and make connections to their own life. Chapter 5 details Parks’ specific instructional techniques and approaches:

• Positioning of teacher as “text” – also struggling with issues of race/class/gender
• Avoid labeling/criticizing of student opinions
• Focus on larger institutions shaping student expressions instead of student’s themselves
• Avoid demonization of any group
• Provide background cultural information before reading literary works
• Provide concrete, real world examples/analogies applicable to student’s lives
• Use of metaphors for difficult concepts, such as a racetrack with hurdles (p. 114)
• Speak from oppositional points of view through role play
• Give students critical literary discourse language to discuss texts
• Valuing students’ life stories and lived experiences
• Drama activities/readers theater/monologue
• Use writing as a discussion starter
• Know and honor students’ cultural positioning and perception of self

Chapters 6, 7, and 8 consider the impact of Park’s instruction on six particular case study students. The authors examine what kinds of change, if any, occurred for individual students as a result of participating in the class and reading this literature. These profiles describe the ways students internalized some of the practices and tools from the course in newly constructing their identities. Findings revealed that although Parks’ class was constructed to be a safe and equitable environment in which to explore critical issues of race, class, and gender, the female students of color still experienced a sense of marginalization. Parks felt that his attempt to focus on White students’ racist and sexist discourses further served to polarize these female students. This leaves both the researchers and the reader to conclude that dialogic tensions are difficult to mediate.

Chapter 9 of the book is therefore devoted to this difficult topic. An analysis of the discussions of three novels illustrates the role of different types of dialogic tensions in encouraging students to adopt different perspectives on race, class, and gender. Students explored tensions between competing attitudes surrounding spirituality, religion, institutional racism, affirmative action, competitive individualism, individual meritocracy, social class, economic success, and gender issues.

The concluding chapter offers a summary and implications for teaching multicultural literature. Although some students were unwilling or unable to transcend their allegiances to status quo discourses and cultural models, some did allow the dialogic tensions between authoritative voices and the internally persuasive voices (Bahktin, 1981) represented in texts and discussions to alter their perceptions. These students adopted a critical stance as part of their developing sense of agency. The teacher assumes a major role in creating contexts that foster both critical response to literature as well as to life. Suggestions for further research underscore the need to continue to examine identity construction with a critical literacy frame.

High School Students’ Competing Social Worlds is a compelling view of the complexity and importance of culturally conscious education. This richly detailed account offers inspiration and guidance to those working to prepare adolescents for participation in today’s knowledge-based economy. Instructional methods that focus on basic skills acquisition and standardized test achievement are no longer sufficient; successful members of society must be flexible, possess multiple perspectives, think critically, remain open to cultural diversity, and critically analyze those institutional forces that limit or foster agency. From a research perspective, the book chronicles a well constructed qualitative study using a framework of critical literacy. Drawing upon sociocultural theory, it explores identity issues and marginalization within multicultural education. The reference list and literature review is invaluable to those seeking to conduct similar research. This data-driven volume is a significant contribution to the work of identity formation, reader response theory, and multicultural education.

References

Apple, M. (2001). Educating the “right” way: Markets, standards, god, and inequality. Philadelphia: Falmer Press.

Bakhtin, M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Beach, R., Lundell, D., & Jung, H. (2002). Developmental college students’ negotiations of social practices between peer, family, workplace, and university worlds. In D. B. Lundell & J. L. Higbee (Eds.), Urban literacy and developmental education (pp. 79-108). Minneapolis: Center for Research on Developmental Education and Urban Literacy, General College, University of Minnesota.

Bettie, J. (2003). Women without class: Girls, race, and identity. Berkeley: University of        California Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Delpit, L. (2006). Other people’s children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York: The            New Press.

Eckert, P. (1989). Jocks & burnouts: Social categories and identity in the high school. New         York: Teachers College Press.

Fairclough, N. (2001). Language and power (2nd ed.). London: Longman.

Fecho, B. (2004). “Is this English?”: Race, language, and culture in the classroom. New York:        Teachers College Press.

Gee, J. P. (2008). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses (3rd ed.). New York: Falmer.

Gee, J. P., Allen, A., & Clinton, K. (2001). Language, class, and identity: Teenagers fashioning themselves through language. Linguistics and Education, 12(2), 175-194.

Hicks, D. (1996). Learning as a prosaic act. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 3, 102-118.

Nieto, S. (2002). Language, culture, and teaching: Critical perspectives for a new century.                Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Smagorinsky, P. (2001). If meaning is constructed, what is it made from? Toward a cultural     cultural theory of reading. Review of Educational Research, 71(1), 133-169.

Tatum, B. (2003). Why are all the Black kids sitting together in the cafeteria? And other    conversations about race: A psychologist explains the development of racial identity (rev. ed.). New York: Basic Books

Wertsch, J. (1998). Mind as action. New York: Oxford University Press.

About the Reviewer

Janie Cowan is a doctoral student in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia. Her research interests include multicultural children’s literature, sociocultural issues in literacy education, and digital literacies. She currently serves as a school library media specialist in Forsyth County, Georgia.

Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review.

Editors: Gene V Glass, Kate Corby, Gustavo Fischman

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