Relationships between voluntary reading and post-secondary educational participation for

African-American and European-American males and females from early adolescence

through emerging adulthood

Paper presented ECER Biennial Conference, Dublin, Sept 7-10 2005

Helen M.G. Watt & Paul W. Richardson

University of Michigan

Rewards of Reading Rewards of Reading for Pleasurefor Pleasure

Acknowledgments Preparation of this manuscript was supported by a grant to: Elizabeth B. Moje and Jacquelynne S. Eccles from the National Institute of Children’s Health and Human Development (NICHD)/Office of Vocational Education (OVAE)/Office of Special Education Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), Grant #1 R01 HD046115-01.

Data come from the Maryland Adolescent Development in Context study which was supported by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Adolescent Development Among Youth in High-Risk Settings awarded to Jacquelynne S. Eccles and a NICHD grant (#R01 HD33437) awarded to J. S. Eccles and A. Sameroff.

We would like to thank the following people for their assistance: Todd Bartko, Elaine Belansky, Nick Butler, Diane Early, Kari Fraser, Katherine Jodl, Ariel Kalil, Linda Kuhn, Sarah Lord, Oksana Malanchuk, Karen McCarthy, Alice Michaels, Leslie Morrison, Stephen Peck, Dairia Ray, Robert Roeser, Kate Rosenblum, Sherri Steele, Erika Taylor, Cindy Winston, Carol Wong. We are grateful to Meisha Williamson and Melanie Overby for their assistance in the early stages of preparation for the manuscript.

Questions

Do early adolescent literacy activities impact on educational outcomes later in emerging adulthood?

Which literacy activities, over and above literacy abilities, predict later level of post-secondary educational participation?

Do African American and European Americans benefit equally from literacy achievement?

Framework

Literacy abilities predict high school completion and degrees earned (Raudenbush & Kasim, 1998).

Prose literacy activities (newspapers, magazines and books) predict occupational outcomes, over and above literacy abilities for AA, not EA (Guthrie et al., 1991).

We follow U.S. adolescents through to young adulthood over a period of 7 years – few studies to date focus specifically on adolescents.

Framework

Longitudinal quantitative and qualitative data to examine contextual and environmental factors that impact on educational participation opportunities and life courses.

We model potential benefits of voluntary reading (over and above reading ability) on educational participation separately for AAs and EAs to determine whether there are greater benefits for EAs (cf Ogbu).

We seek to demonstrate a relationship between voluntary reading and educational outcomes in a large normative sample which does not confound SES with AA educational underachievement.

Voluntary reading

Unlike assigned reading, voluntary reading involves the reader’s choice of what will be read, where and when it is read and invites no check on comprehension or measurement of success other than the reader’s own interest.

Results in children: positive attitude to

reading as an activity; growth in vocabulary; development of reading

comprehension; verbal fluency; general information; positively correlated

with school grades

Secondary Analysis – Survey Data

Subsample from MADICS larger study for whom reading data were available

3 waves of data: early grade 7, summer grade 7, 1-year post-high school

male female totals

AA 129 205 334

EA 67 115 182

totals 196 320 516

Voluntary Reading and Post-Secondary Educational Participation

Voluntary reading in early adolescence has benefits (over and above reading ability) for level of postsecondary educational participation 7 years later.

Girls read more than boys in early adolescence (but not later).

European Americans (EA) read more than African Americans (AA), although this difference was fully mediated by higher reading scores for EA (as measured by CAT reading in grade 5).

Differential Benefits of Voluntary Reading for African Americans and European Americans

Early EA advantage in reading achievement had flow-on effect via voluntary reading to educational participation

Significant relationship between early grade 7 reading and educational participation for EA only (caveats)

EA model

Gender (F=1) SES

prior reading ability (grade 5)

Reading (wave 1)

Reading (wave 2)

Reading (wave 5)

Educationalparticipation (wave 5)Adj.R2=.06

.17

.23

.29

.19

.15†

Listwise N=131, standardized regression estimates† p<.10, all other paths significant at p<.05

.38

AA model

Gender (F=1) SES

prior reading ability (grade 5)

Reading (wave 1)

Reading (wave 2)

Reading (wave 5)

Educationalparticipation (wave 5)Adj.R2=.06

.23

.23

.20

.13†

.22

Listwise N=196, standardized regression estimates† p<.10, all other paths significant at p<.05

Purposes, influences and stabilty

The modest R2 ‘s prompted us to examine the intersection of literacy with other related affordances

Family, friends and teachers were important in providing social supports and advice - central in promoting literacy activities and educational participation. (See qualitative data to follow)

Interview SampleThe qualitative sample consisted of 19 interviewees of either AAs and EAs: 5 AA males, 11 AA females; 1 EA male, 2 EA female. Interviews gathered over 3 years (Years 11 & 12 and 1 year post-high school)

Survey data provided level of reading frequency: - 5 AA (1 male, 3 female) in highest third;- 1 female from the lowest third; - 2 EA (1 male and 1 female) from the top third.

All except 1 AA female (from highest third) made it to college.

Voluntary reading: Purposes

Voluntary reading serves different purposes:

- satisfies curiosity- fuels interest/s;- contributes to knowledge;- is a distraction from ‘unpleasant’ reality;- fills in time.

Voluntary reading: InfluencesWhat people read impacts in unpredictable ways:

- Identification with certain beliefs, values and practices including gender and ethnicity:

“You know like, Annie [Orphan Annie] for instance! [laughs]…That was like my role model. And like Pippy Longstocking and all, all these, um.. more aggressive, I guess you can say females that were like in stories and movies and even in history. Like when we're reading about you know, African Americans, like Sojourner Truth and all these other ones...But it's the fact that, it was a woman that did it. And people are always make it like men supposed to be the dominant figures you know. Just made me proud, it made me feel that I wanna be one of those women who --- and that, it don't have to be African American. There was like, Amelia Earhart, although she never came back [both start to laugh] --- but she wasn't, she was still trying to achieve her goal, you know. It's just a, it's, uh, just fascinating! [laughs]… And, when I learned about, there was black females. Then it made me also proud to be an African American - a female African American.” (Margorie, ID#2624 African American)

Influences on beliefs, values and practices

Can be quite idiosyncratic and influence people in unexpected ways when it intersects ‘incidentally’ with other influences:

“My father, well my father, he used to subscribe to, um, Black Enterprise and different magazines, so those were around, so I just looked at them and started reading them and started learning.” (Clarence,#809,AA)

- Clarence also read about Karl Marx, learned about The Economist and The Wall Street Journal from watching the t.v. show, Family Ties. He was also greatly influenced by reading Richard Nixon’s biography . As strange as it seems the sentiment attributed to Nixon: “never be petty, never be mean, or mean-spirited… and they won’t win unless you hate them back” had helped him deal with offensive, discriminatory remarks about blacks getting preferential treatment in gaining entry to college.

Voluntary reading: Stability?

It is subject to other pressures and stresses and is not robust or stable and may even decline markedly:

“So. I mean I'm just feeling.. so stressed out right now and [sighs]. I don't even know what to do.” (Jane, ID#241, EA)

It may serve as a ‘time waster’ and result in a form of procrastination when other contextual features are more pressing:

“I read a lot of science fiction I guess because I don’t really like this…I never liked this reality for a long time and like to kinda’ warp myself into something different. Although I didn’t really read a lot until I met a friend in seventh [grade] who uh, read a lot of science fiction and then I started reading a lot of it…Just find it interesting. ” (Leon, #2114, EA)

- low correlations across data waves.

More complex types of reading seem to matter. Even low frequency voluntary reading may be highly formative – see Margorie #2624

“One of my biggest interests that I have is I read a lot. If you go back in my room, you’ll see nothing but books all over the place. I have a big box of books…in my closet and then over to the side I have this big trash can that I made in school. It’s full of books and then up on the wall, I have these…I have a whole three, four shelves full of books. That’s mainly what I do is read.”

“And at first I had wanted to be a lawyer. But then… I decided I wanted to be a teacher and after that, it just seemed like that's the only thing I wanna do. You know I thought about my English teachers and you know, and I hoped I would be, I hope, I will be as good an English teacher to my students as they are to me, but I always wanted to be an English teacher. And I even had these little stupid things. I would picture what I would put up in my classroom like on the boards and stuff. And I, I even had this little stupid one saying I told, I told all my friends that I was going to, um, say it the first time I introduced myself to the class. Have a little sign that says: “Reading, it's funnn-damental!’” (Antoinette, ID#0643, African American)

Antoinette: an avid reader’s career choice

Literacy, social supports and educational participation

“my Grandmother… she taught me to read the bible …She made me read the book, the bible, to go to Sunday school…[to] learn more about what that she didn’t teach. Then, when I come home and she’ll ask me what I learned, I’d tell her. She’ll tell me more stuff that I didn’t know and so on.”

“My Aunt Monica…Well, she’s a teacher and she’s always pushed me to read stuff and do stuff…I read everything. She makes me do math problems that [pause] and she’s the one that made me start liking Spanish…I love Spanish now.”

“My mother. She encourage me to finish school, graduate high school and go to college because she didn’t have a chance to go… She bought me books; she pushed me to go to school.”

“My mother, she motivated me to, um, go to college…She told me that I can do anything I wanted to do and she really, she knows that I really, really want to be a speech pathologist.” (Tracy, #1601 AA )

Literacy, social supports and educational participation

“There's, um, this guy at the church I go to now… he was a teacher, a Sunday School teacher… I mean he really helped me with, um, religious beliefs. And not only that but he's uh, he's (pause) some scientist…Like, I mean he knows, he's been through college and, with the agricultural department…And he helped me with school work, and he helped with problems I was having with my friends, or with my boyfriends, or whatever… but he shaped so many things in my mind. I mean…he's the one that really taught me … you should like listen to different people and shape your own opinions.” (Jane, #241 EA)

Implications and Outlook

Processes by which voluntary reading in early adolescence comes to benefit educational outcomes over and above level of reading achievement?

Broader set of educational outcomes? Additional racial and ethnic groups? What are adolescents reading voluntarily?