"What Are You Reading?": How School Libraries Can Promote Racial Diversity in Multicultural Literature

While many educators state beliefs about the importance of selecting fiction that will engage a diverse student population, use of multicultural titles in secondary classrooms has lagged, in part due to increasing focus on the Common Core State Standards in the United States. The purpose of this stu...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Multicultural perspectives (Mahwah, N.J.) N.J.), 2014-01, Vol.16 (4), p.203-209
Main Author: Lafferty, Karen Elizabeth
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic Standards
Belief & doubt
California
Classrooms
Cultural Pluralism
Educational Strategies
Educators
High School Students
High schools
Librarians
Libraries
Library Role
Literature
Multiculturalism & pluralism
Population
Race
Reading
Reading Materials
School Districts
School Libraries
Schools
State Standards
Statistical Analysis
Student Diversity
Students
Teachers
United States
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:While many educators state beliefs about the importance of selecting fiction that will engage a diverse student population, use of multicultural titles in secondary classrooms has lagged, in part due to increasing focus on the Common Core State Standards in the United States. The purpose of this study was to determine if high school students in a Southern California district were using school libraries to access multicultural literature characterized by racial diversity. Four years of circulation data from the district's five comprehensive high schools were examined. Analysis revealed that the titles with the highest circulation were overwhelmingly written by White authors and about White protagonists. Suggested are ways that educators can use resources within school libraries to promote more racially diverse multicultural literature, even as classroom titles remain static. Included are recommendations for how teachers and teacher-librarians can encourage students to select from a wider range of texts, as well as guidance on conducting a circulation analysis.
ISSN:1521-0960
1532-7892
DOI:10.1080/15210960.2014.951888