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“The Culture of Reading” in a Public School

Ethnography, Service-Learning,

and Undergraduate Researchers

by carolyn behrman

 

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S

cores from a 2002 standardized Reading Proficiency Test for

fourth graders surprised the principal of Wensleydale

Elementary School (pseudonym). Her school is typical for its

urban Ohio district, sharing all the issues of funding, staffing,

unions, uneven student background and preparedness, and

decaying facilities faced by other urban, public schools in the U.S. The principal knew that a

statistical “race” gap in student scores might indicate socioeconomic differences within the

school’s catchment area. She also expected a gender gap—on average, girls perform better

than boys on tests like this one. Both gaps were indeed present in Wensleydale’s fourth grade

test score data. However, the principal was taken aback by two things. First, the gender gap

was much larger than expected—boys demonstrated proficiency at a rate 34% lower than

girls. The second surprise came when she compared Wensleydale with other schools in the

district. Wensleydale boys were 9% below the district average for boys, while Wensleydale

girls performed on average 19% higher than other district girls. These findings were con-

firmed when the principal examined her teachers’ classroom evaluations of students’ read-

ing—as a group the girls were racing ahead, the boys lagging behind.

Several years earlier, in response to declining test scores in the public school system overall,

district officials had asked schools to develop improvement plans. The staff at Wensleydale

focused their energies on improving their reading and math programs, adding writing and sci-

ence as a second tier of emphasis. This involved implementing several new reading-enhance-

ment plans. They hired a reading specialist with Title I funding and adopted 100 Book

Challenge

tm

, a commercial reading program described below. They joined OhioReads, a state

initiative in which community volunteers assist children who read below grade level. They

hosted authors and storytellers, and students and teachers participated in read-a-thons. The

school’s PTA also developed a highly successful annual book fair that aimed to put at least one

new book in every child’s hands. Reading gained an enormous profile in the school’s public

spaces: walls were covered with reading recognition notices as were lockers and designated

spaces in each classroom. Just after the Pledge of Allegiance each morning, the loudspeaker

announced those students who had reached individual 100 Book Challenge

tm

goals.

At the end of a spring day, girls head

home to homework, television, read-

ing, friends, and playing outside. The

top five activities ranked by boys

were television, eating, homework,

playing outside, and video games. 

Carolyn B

ehrman

           

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Carolyn B

ehrman

Given all this attention to reading, the test scores and eval-

uations were especially troubling. When the scores were made

public I approached the principal and proposed a collabora-

tive service-learning research project to describe the school’s

“culture of reading” and examine the ways it might be empha-

sizing differing behaviors based on gender. In the spring of

2003 undergraduates taking my advanced course in anthropo-

logical research methods teamed up with fourth graders and

their teachers to study the “culture of reading” at Wensleydale

Elementary School.

STUDYING THE “CULTURE OF READING”

A culture, broadly speaking, is an integrated pattern of behav-

ior, practices, beliefs, and knowledge. These constitute the

operating rules by which people organize themselves. Though

all members of a culture do not do exactly the same things,

play the same roles, or understand their culture in precisely

the same ways, they do all participate and thereby create and

maintain the basic rules of the culture.

In studying the culture of reading, our aim was to describe

the integrated pattern of reading behavior, practices, beliefs,

and knowledge, and to understand how the staff and students

actively created and maintained this pattern. To do this we

needed to examine the physical space, the shared activities,

and the individual behaviors and beliefs of the participants as

they related to reading. Our goal was to describe these features

and examine how they varied, and specifically to see how gen-

der operated as a variable.

The undergraduates began their semester studying ethno-

graphic and other research methods and learning about rele-

vant issues in literacy and the teaching of reading. During this

The PTA of the school sponsored an annual Scholastic Bookfair and 

contributed the proceeds to purchase books for each child and to improve

classroom resources. 

Service-learning 

and Ethnography

O

ne of my teaching goals is to

enable university students to

step outside their habitual

ways of viewing the world

and see patterns of culture in

the familiar world around them. In a service-

learning class, course materials and student

energies are brought to bear on a specific,

community-generated issue or question.

Service-learning is both an academic and a

civic experience that should further the stu-

dents’ skills and knowledge. This experience is

achieved through a sustained engagement

between community partners and students

working together to address a primary issue

or question such as: How do we describe a

“culture of reading,” and in what ways can

such a culture be considered to be ‘gendered’?

Courses like this present challenges. First,

trust had to be developed between the univer-

sity faculty and students and Wensleydale’s

staff, students, and parents. Both groups

needed to be confident that their interests and

work would be respected. Second, our find-

ings had to contribute to the school’s overar-

ching objective to improve reading profi-

ciency, and our research activities had to

dovetail with daily routines in the school. The

adage we set for ourselves was “first do no

harm and then make no unnecessary work for

the partners.” Third, the plan had to include

instruction for the undergraduates on clearly

defined course material, while engaging the

partners in the research process in a way that

fit with their pre-existing activities and goals.

Finally, protocols for the ethical treatment of

human subjects had to be followed. Both the

university’s and the public school system’s

approval for our activities and interviews had

to be obtained to conduct research with

school children. We developed a coherent

project proposal months before the service-

learning course began in order to acquire

these approvals but it needed to be flexible

and comprehensive enough to accommodate

the project plan created by students and com-

munity partners during the semester.

 

      

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Carolyn B

ehrman

time they met with the Wensleydale teachers’ planning com-

mittee. Together they agreed on three main tracks for the

research. These are characterized by the methods used and

types of data collected, and were undertaken by separate teams

of undergraduates.

PARTICIPANT-OBSERVATION 

Participant-observation is the foundation of ethnographic

inquiry. On the surface, the term