Troubling Literacy in the "Contact Zone" of a Rural High School English Class

This dissertation examines how multiple, hybridized literacy practices exist in the "contact zone" of the classroom, a "social space where cultures meet, clash, and grapple, with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today" (Pratt, 2002, p. 4). The rural high school English class under study here operates as such a "contact zone," as the teacher and students engage in conflicted negotiation, rather than assimilation or acculturation, when multiple literacy practices vie for recognition. Fieldnotes collected during two months of participant observation, collected artifacts in the form of student written texts, teacher syllabi and school documents, i.e., student handbooks, as well as interviews with three male students, one female student, one teacher, one special education aide, and a school principal provided the data for this study. Findings make problematic the beliefs that 1) literacy is a homogenous, static, singular either/or phenomenon, i.e., official school literacy or unofficial, and that 2) classrooms represent homogeneous, unified communities of obedient students who share literacy practices. Rather, classrooms, as "contact zones," can represent heterogeneous groups of students whose literacy practices are hybrid and intercultural, grafting together often reactionary, oppressive sociopolitical intentions with officially sanctioned literacy goals. This inquiry raises questions about literacy as only a local social practice, as well as literacy pedagogical discourses that students do not simply assimilate or acculturate, but contest, appropriate, resist, and use to harass and oppress others, even as they accomplish school literacy assignments.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph. D.

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Curriculum and Instruction

Department dc:contributor.department

Teaching and Learning

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2000

Author dc:creator

• Groenke, Susan Lee

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Kelly, Patricia Proudfoot

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Dannenberg, Clare
• Bailey, Carol A.
• Carico, Kathleen M.
• Dubinsky, James M.

• contact zones
• rural
• literacy
• qualitative
• secondary

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-08172003-150141

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/11274