“READING OUTSIDE THE COMFORT ZONE”: HOW SECONDARY STUDENTS EXPERIENCE GRAPHIC NOVEL INSTRUCTION IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS CLASSROOM BY HINDA L. KRINSKY A dissertation submitted to The Graduate School of Education Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Education Graduate Program in Literacy Education Approved by: __________________________________________ Alisa Belzer, Ph.D., Committee Chair __________________________________________ Erica Boling, Ph.D., Committee Member __________________________________________ Priya Parmar, Ph.D., Committee Member New Brunswick, NJ August 2012 ABSTRACT Within the current educational climate, many adolescents, particularly at the secondary level, struggle to achieve literacy proficiency. One factor that may be contributing to these poor proficiency levels is the curriculum, particularly the type of texts being used to develop literacy in school. These materials tend to reflect traditional notions of text that are believed to develop skills necessary to succeed on standardized assessments. Many English Language Arts classrooms continue to privilege traditional literary texts and linguistic modes of meaning despite the fact that developing the skills to read certain alternative texts, like graphic novels, can make students better, more engaged readers. The graphic novel can also be used to improve proficiency by providing opportunities for students to develop multimodal reading and critical literacy skills. Though researchers continue to highlight the educational benefits of graphic novels, the general theoretical literature has yet to explore how readers adjust to the affordances of this type of text or how instruction impacts this learning process. Using an embedded case study model, this study documented how a twelfth-grade class studied four graphic novels that had been incorporated in their ELA course. The data were derived from multiple sources including observations, interviews, artifacts, and documents. Findings for this study suggest that readers may require instruction specific to graphic novels in order to fully access the unique textual affordances and maximize the learning potential of this kind of text. This research also indicates that graphic novels may be better suited for a nontraditional instructional approach, such as a multiliteracies pedagogy, that more fully addresses its multimodal and pluralistic features. This study also suggests that instructors working with such materials receive special training to ensure that their instructional model is appropriate for graphic novels and to help support student learning with text-specific strategies. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am sincerely grateful to my advisor, Dr. Alisa Belzer, for the support and guidance she showed me throughout my dissertation writing. Her continued patience through the late night emails and child-interrupted Skype calls have been both inspiring and deeply appreciated. I would also like to thank Dr. Erica Boling for the numerous opportunities she has given me to participate in research. The experience I gained working with her has been invaluable and will no doubt inform the rest of my academic career. I would also like to thank Dr. Priya Parmar for starting me off on this path and for being—since my very first undergraduate course—so encouraging of my work. I can now imagine a future in which comics are in fact “cutting edge research.” I would also like to thank my parents, who despite not understanding my interest in comics, have always been helpful and cheering me on through this process. Most importantly, I would like to thank my husband, Dovid, for his dedication to this project and for doing my share of household chores for the past year. Thanks to the triplets, Eliana, Judith, and Ezra for allowing Mommy to work endlessly on the “puter” and for giving me other things to think about. Yes, Mommy finished working! iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………........................ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………........................iii CHAPTER ONE: Introduction……………………………………………………………1 Adolescent Proficiency under NCLB……………………………………………..3 Challenges Involved in Achieving Adolescent Proficiency under NCLB………...4 Youth Literacies: Adolescent Proficiency outside the Classroom………………...8 The Graphic Novel: A Multimodal, Critical, Youth Literacy…………………...13 Purpose of the Study……………………………………………………………..17 CHAPTER TWO: Literature Review……………………………………………………19 Multiliteracies……………………………………………………………………19 A Mulitliteracies Pedagogy………………………………………………21 Multiliteracies and Youth Culture……………………………………….24 The Graphic Narrative: Its History, Format, & Audience…………………….…31 The History of the Graphic Narrative……………………………………32 The Comics Format………………………………………………………38 The Comics Audience……………………………………………………43 The Educational Benefits of Graphic Narratives……………………………...…45 Supporting Comprehension……………………………………………...45 Developing Critical Literacy…………………………………………..…47 Growing Vocabulary………………………………………………….….49 Encouraging Writing………………………………………………..……49 Motivating Reading………………………………………………...……50 iv Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….52 CHAPTER THREE: Research Design…………………………………………………..55 Site Description…………………………………………………………….…….56 Participants...……………………………………………………………………..62 Data Collection Procedures………………………………………………………66 Observations……………………………………………………………..66 Interviews……………………………………………………...................67 Documents……………………………………………………………….70 Artifacts………………………………………………………………..…71 Data Analysis Procedures………………………………………………………..71 Researcher’s Role………………………………………………………………..73 Limitations…………………...…………………………………………………..75 Trustworthiness…………………………………………………………………..75 CHAPTER FOUR: “I get so ADD reading comics”: How Graphic Novels Challenge Readers ………………………………………...……………...…………………………77 Confronting Early Conceptions of Text….………………………………………78 Initial Challenges………………………….……………………………………..80 Difficulties Reading the Page Surface……...……………………………………81 Navigating the Page Surface………..……………………………………82 Practicing Closure………………………………..………………………84 Using the Deigetic and Extradiegetic Spaces of the Texts.…...…………87 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………104 v CHAPTER FIVE: “I just thought it would be something fun… [but] I don’t know what to do with them”: How Instruction Shapes Students’ Understandings of Graphic Novels…………………………………………………………………………………..108 Traditional ELA Approach: Limiting Opportunities for Making Meaning in Graphic Novels………………………………………………………………....108 Instructional Challenges within the Traditional ELA Approach……….109 Learning Challenges within the Traditional ELA Approach……...……112 A Multiliteracies Approach: Expanding Opportunities for Making Meaning in Graphic Novels……………………………………………………………..…..121 Making Connections through Situated Practice…………...……………123 Developing a Metalanguage through Overt Instruction…………...……125 Denaturalizing Learning through Critical Framing………………….…127 Revisiting Learning through Transformed Practice………………….…129 Conclusion…...…………………………………………………………………140 CHAPTER SIX: Conclusion ………………………………………………………..…142 Implications for Practice………………………………………………………..145 Training for Teachers to Work with Alternative Texts……………..….147 Selecting an Appropriate Instructional Approach………………………149 Supporting Student Learning………………………………………...…150 Policy Implications…………………………………………………………..…152 Recommendations for Future Research………………………………………...153 APPENDIX A: Class Survey I…………………………………………………………155 APPENDIX B: Class Survey II……………………………………………………...…156 vi APPENDIX C: Class Survey III……………………………………………………..…157 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………158 vii LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE 1……………………..…………………………………………………82 FIGURE 1…………………….……….…………………………………………83 viii 1 CHAPTER ONE Almost none of my students liked to read. This was the reality I faced on my first day as an English Language Arts (ELA) middle school teacher. Having spent all summer preparing lessons on literary classics, I was devastated that so many of my students were not only uninterested in reading, but struggled a great deal with it. For weeks, I tried to come up with innovative ways to get them more engaged in reading. Nothing seemed to work. Then, one day during independent reading, I introduced a student to a graphic novel from our literacy center. Word quickly spread that it was a “cool” book, and before long students were clamoring to read it. This gave me an idea. What if I incorporated a graphic novel into my official ELA curriculum? After some persuasion, the administration agreed to the experiment, but only if I could fund the project entirely on my own. Sharing this challenge with my students, we decided to try to make it happen. We scoured every public library in Brooklyn in search of copies of Maus I: My Father Bleeds History (Spiegelman, 1986). We also raised money from family and friends to buy copies of the books, and even managed to get a few donated from local booksellers. Once every student had a copy, we spent a great deal of time reading the text and learning how comics convey narrative using words and images. It seemed that for the first time in my classroom, students were enthusiastic about reading. The change was palpable enough, even beyond my own classroom, that the school leaders decided to allow graphic novels to be used to fulfill students’ mandated reading requirements. Once we finished Maus, we moved on to traditional print-based literature. In subsequent units, I noticed that many students seemed more engaged in