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University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses November 2016 Synergy Between Digital and Traditional Literacy Practices: A Framework for Building a Reading Culture in a Secondary School Nina Kositsky University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Curriculum and Instruction Commons Recommended Citation Kositsky, Nina, "Synergy Between Digital and Traditional Literacy Practices: A Framework for Building a Reading Culture in a Secondary School" (2016). Doctoral Dissertations. 727. https://doi.org/10.7275/8964881.0 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/727 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SYNERGY BETWEEN DIGITAL AND TRADITIONAL LITERACY PRACTICES: A FRAMEWORK FOR BUILDING A READING CULTURE IN A SECONDARY SCHOOL A Dissertation Presented by NINA KOSITSKY Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF EDUCATION September 2016 Education © Copyright by Nina Kositsky 2016 All Rights Reserved SYNERGY BETWEEN DIGITAL AND TRADITIONAL LITERACY PRACTICES: A FRAMEWORK FOR BUILDING A READING CULTURE IN A SECONDARY SCHOOL A Dissertation Presented by NINA KOSITSKY Approved as to style and content by: ______________________ Maria José Botelho, Chair ____________________ Theresa Austin, Member ______________________ David Lenson, Member ______________________ Janine Solberg, Member ___________________________________ Joseph B. Berger, Senior Associate Dean College of Education DEDICATION To Michael, Eugene, and Roman And in memory of Mark Kositsky ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Completing this dissertation was an intense, demanding, and time-consuming project, and I would like to thank my husband Michael Kositsky for his unconditional love, patience, and support throughout this process. My deepest appreciation goes to my academic advisor Maria José Botelho, whose thoughtful guidance was instrumental in brining this project to a successful closure. I especially want to acknowledge her rare ability to provide intellectual guidance while remaining very respectful of my views and aspirations. I also want to extend my thanks to Jerri Willett, Professor Emerita of Language, Literacy and Culture of the College of Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She was part of the early stages of my doctoral journey and encouraged me to adopt a truly open-minded stance towards the issues I was aspiring to explore. I would like to thank my committee members Theresa Austin, David Lenson, and Janine Solberg, whose unique perspectives on my research helped me refine the telling of it. Finally, I wish to express my sincere gratitude to my research participants – Jack, Jane, Jeff, Meg, Moira, Nick, Sam, as well as Richard Bradley, the headmaster of the school where I conducted my dissertation study – for opening their classrooms and their minds to me. Their professional enthusiasm and reflective thoughtfulness made this experience an intellectually stimulating and rewarding endeavor. v ABSTRACT SYNERGY BETWEEN DIGITAL AND TRADITIONAL LITERACY PRACTICES: A FRAMEWORK FOR BUILDING A READING CULTURE IN A SECONDARY SCHOOL SEPTEMBER 2016 NINA KOSITSKY B.A., LINGUISTICS UNIVERSITY OF NIZHNY NOVGOROD, RUSSIA M.ED., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST ED.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Maria José Botelho Integration of digital technologies into the English classroom requires that we rethink pedagogical frameworks within which education occurs. This study examines traditional and digital literacy practices in a high school that committed itself to building a strong reading culture among its students as it digitized its library collection. Through a series of in-depth, phenomenologically based interviews and classroom observations, the researcher focused on identifying factors that foster an interest in literary reading as a personally meaningful literacy experience among 21st century adolescents and explored the following questions: What kind of teaching practices promote this interest? What kind of social environments encourage it? Can digital technologies be a bridge to reading engagement among Millennials? vi The findings revealed a complex array of interwoven issues – digital technological and sociocultural – that appear to shape young adults’ reading practices in a cultural context that offers an unprecedented variety of options in terms of access to and engagement with literature. Among the topics discussed throughout the dissertation are as follows: an educational paradigm for promoting adolescents’ interest in literary reading; student and teacher agency; technology as the extension of teacher and student; choice- driven English curriculum; reader-response theory in the Digital Age; peer influence; school library services and on-demand eBook acquisitions. While the dissertation offers a detailed account of how digital technologies can play a prominent role in boosting Millennials’ reading engagement, it foregrounds social factors as building blocks of a strong reading culture. These research findings have direct implications for conceptualizing secondary English education in the Digital Age in terms of its content as well as its pedagogical approaches. vii PREFACE I learned to read in preschool, out of a fervent desire to be part of a mysterious community of people who knew the code – the community of literate people. The mere ability to decipher and make meaning of written symbols excited me and made me feel worldly. I am still filled with joyful anticipation of the forthcoming pleasure of reading every time I come across a new title that captures my interest, for one reason or another. As Alberto Manguel (1996) put it, “I could perhaps live without writing. I don’t think I could live without reading” (p. 7). When you are a reader, you never really question, or “unpack,” the term itself: for you, reading is just one of the most efficient and gratifying ways to satisfy all sorts of frivolous and serious curiosities you happen to have: about the world, other people, the self. After all, language is one of the key tools that help us mediate reality (Vygotsky, 1986). It is when my personal interest in reading as an intellectually and emotionally rewarding pursuit evolved into a professional interest that the issue presented itself in all its reality: for years, the field of education has been grappling with the problem of aliteracy – “having the ability to read but no interest in doing so” (Thimmesch, 1984). For instance, in the proceedings of a conference held in 1984 and solely devoted to the aliteracy phenomenon (Thimmesch, 1984), conference participants express their concerns about “the decline of language skills in successive generations of high school students, the simplification of college textbooks, a diminished newspaper readership, the omnipresence of television” and ponder effects of these trends on our culture and society. viii These concerns sound remarkably familiar; except in our Digital Age, “the omnipresence of television” has been replaced by the ubiquity of personal digital technologies. Thus, technologies come and go, but the challenge of raising a reader remains. There is no doubt that some of the obstacles to achieving this goal continue to be socially and pedagogically induced. And this is what concerns me on both personal and professional levels. And this is what has been the driving force behind the research presented in this dissertation. Thus, it is with “impassioned goals” in mind (Charmaz, 2006) that I entered the research on reading practices in the Digital Age. To echo Charmaz (2006), I entered the studied phenomena with enthusiasm, opened myself to the research experience, and followed where it took me. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... v ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................. vi PREFACE .................................................................................................................................. viii LIST OF TABLES ...................................................................................................................... xii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................ 1 Statement of the Problem and Purpose of the Study ....................................................................... 5 Assumptions and Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................ 12 Significance of the Study ........................................................................................................................... 17 2. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ............................................................................................... 19 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................

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