FIRST GRADERS AS SENSITIVE SOCIAL PARTNERS AND SKILLED READERS

This mixed methods dissertation is guided by a sociocultural framework and a pragmatist stance to contribute to early literacy scholarship about minority children. In particular, I explore the relationship between low socioeconomic status Puerto Rican children’s reading experience and their social cognition by: (1) assessing them through quantitative and qualitative measures that reveal their capacities in these areas at the end of their first grade year, and (2) documenting their reading experiences at home and at school through ethnographic qualitative methods. The analyses revealed significant positive correlations between the tests of reading and social understanding, a scarcity of conventional reading practices in the home, the predominance of a whole-class basal approach to reading in the classroom, and discrepant cross-methods findings regarding who qualifies as a reader and who has insights about the social world.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Curriculum & Instruction

Year

2015

Author dc:creator

• Arvelo Alicea, Zaira R

Contributors dc:contributor

• Judith Lysaker
• Janet Alsup
• Susan Britsch
• Panayota Mantzicopolous

• picturebook
• Puerto Rican
• reading
• social imagination
• social understanding
• theory of mind

Repository record dc:identifier

https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/open_access_dissertations/1085

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:docs.lib.purdue.edu:open_access_dissertations-2301