Disconnections: Pushing Readers Beyond Connections and Toward the Critical

Abstract

This article highlights a popular classroom reading practice in the United States, connection-making with autobiographical experiences, and argues that this practice may hinder critical engagement with texts when not viewed as a continuum. Data from a multi-year ethnographic and teacher-research study that took place in a high-poverty community in the Midwest region of the U.S. are used to explore the use of disconnections as a potential entry point for critical literacy practices. Using sociocultural and critical frameworks for thinking about students and literacy, the authors present a case for encouraging students to notice and work through a spectrum of connection-making including disconnections they experience with text. " Oh, we loved those books! " " I read that one! " " I read that, and that, and that " Heather, Cadence, and Sarah—three almost-fifth-grade girls—agreed to meet me at a playground near their homes a full two years after I (Stephanie) had been their teacher in second grade. Our mid-summer meeting under the hot sun began with bubbling conversations about families, boys, and the fun they had already been having since school had ended for the year. My head pivoted back and forth from girl to girl as I tried desperately to follow the animated discussion, but the agenda I had planned for the morning was weighing heavily on my mind: Disconnections. Although two years had passed since I was the Correspondence should be sent to