The Interdependence of Social Awareness and Literacy Instruction

528 © 2007 International Reading Association (pp. 528–537) doi:10.1598/RT.60.6.3

ALISON LOBRONROBERT SELMAN

The interdependence of social awareness and literacy instruction

Discussions of stories containing strong

social issues can help students to develop

and explore their own beliefs about issues

such as racism, prejudice, and social justice.

Joe and John Henry are a lot alike. They both likeshooting marbles, they both want to be firemen, andthey both love to swim. But there’s one important waythey’re different: Joe is white and John Henry is black,and in the South in 1964 that means John Henry isn’tallowed to do everything his best friend is. (Wiles, 2001)

The book Freedom Summer (Wiles, 2001) hasreceived several children’s literature awards.Like many other quality picture books about

challenging social issues, Freedom Summer pro-vides excellent opportunities for teachers to pro-mote the literacy skills and social awareness of theirstudents. By “literacy skills,” we refer to the com-plex process of reading and comprehending text. Inparticular, some of the key literacy skills of interestto us are building vocabulary, background knowl-edge, and comprehension skills in oral contexts. By“social awareness,” we are referring to the knowl-edge children have that allows them to understandand relate successfully to other people, both peoplelike themselves and those who are from differentbackgrounds. Some of the key skills involved in thesocial awareness domain are negotiating with oth-ers, resolving conflicts, expressing one’s point ofview, and listening to the perspectives of others. Aseducators and researchers in the fields of literacyand social awareness, we believe that is it essentialfor schools to help foster students’ social aware-ness in addition to traditional academic skills. It isour belief that through discussions about books like

Freedom Summer, students will have the opportuni-ty to learn about issues such as racism, prejudice,and social justice.

Our work focuses on finding the best methodsfor supporting students as they struggle to makemeaning, both of literature and the social contextsfrom which the stories were born. How can we cap-italize on the natural curiosity that is generated bythese books? Is there a way to capture a child’ssympathy for a character and transform it into agreater awareness of that character’s social setting?In order to reach that point, we must first under-stand how children interpret these books on theirown. Our research focuses on ways to assess stu-dents’ comprehension of social issues and themesin books. How do children of different ages (andfrom different backgrounds) understand issues oftolerance and prejudice in the children’s literaturethey are reading in school? We hope this article willshed light on both the importance of this work aswell as the challenges it presents.

Why Freedom Summer?There are thousands of high-quality children’s

books about social issues that would lend them-selves to this type of work. What is special aboutFreedom Summer? We selected this book for sever-al reasons. First, we wanted a book that would ap-peal to children of many ages. In order to read thisbook independently, a child would need to be on ahigh third-grade or average fourth-grade independ-ent reading level. However, Freedom Summerworks well as a read aloud for children in firstthrough fifth grade. It is a challenging read-aloudfor younger children, but it serves the purpose ofexposing these students to sophisticated vocabulary

The interdependence of social awareness and literacy instruction 529

and sentence structures. Although grammaticallyless demanding for a fourth- or fifth-grade student,for older students the challenge is interpreting thesocial issues in the story. In addition, we likeFreedom Summer because it can be understood onseveral thematic levels. On one level, most childrencan relate to this book because it is about friend-ship. On another level, Freedom Summer addressessocial topics such as prejudice, discrimination, andracial tension, handling them in a gentle, thoughtfulmanner. In order to deeply understand the friend-ship between Joe, a white boy, and John Henry, ablack boy, one must recognize the impact of the so-cial context on the relationship between the twoboys. Joe and John Henry lived in the southernUnited States in the 1960s, when most white peo-ple routinely discriminated against black people.And yet, despite these societal attitudes, a friend-ship flourishes between the boys.

Deborah Wiles brilliantly captures the momentthat Joe, the white character, begins to discover thesevere prejudice and hatred that has been there allalong, just beyond his conscious awareness. At themost dramatic point of the book, the boys witnessworkers filling a pool with tar in order to resist thecourt-ordered desegregation of the facility. Joe sud-denly realizes how segregation has limited hisfriend John Henry’s life:

My head starts to pop with new ideas. I want to go tothe Dairy Dip with John Henry, sit down and share rootbeer floats. I want us to go to the picture show, buypopcorn, and watch the movie together. I want to seethis town with John Henry’s eyes.

Listening to Freedom Summer, some childrenshare the same flash of insight that Joe experiencesin the story. For them, listening to the story is likehearing a symphony that changes from a major keyto minor in a single chord. In one moment, theyare enjoying a light-hearted story about two boyswho like to swim together during their summer va-cation. In the next moment, their world is turnedupside down. Just as Joe recognizes the prejudicethat he had previously overlooked, students sud-denly become aware of all of the author’s subtlehints about discrimination. Their awareness is al-tered, and they hear the rest of the story with a newsensitivity. But other children do not experiencethis shift. What might account for this variation? Towhat extent do age, gender, experience, sophisti-

cation, teaching technique, or some combinationinfluence a child’s social awareness?

The challenge of readingcomprehension

While the idea of promoting social awarenessthrough storytelling and children’s literature is notnew, there has been little systematic research to dis-cover what meaning children take away from sto-ries with complex, subtle, and even controversialthemes. While still in its infancy, our research is be-ginning to uncover the beliefs that children holdabout some of these social issues, as well as howthose beliefs are mediated through discussions ofbooks like Freedom Summer.

We are discovering the challenges elementarygrade students face making sense of a complexbook like Freedom Summer. In order to both com-prehend the plot and extract deeper meaning, stu-dents need support. At first, we thought thatinexperience with the historical context would bethe predominant barrier to students’ comprehen-sion of the story. However, something as small asan unfamiliar vocabulary word can derail theircomprehension.

Over the course of our research and practice,we have had the opportunity to read books likeFreedom Summer aloud with many students. Whileeach read-aloud is different, the common thread isthat students do not comprehend this book, or anyother, just by listening to the words and thinkingabout it on their own. A deep understanding re-quires discussion of the plot and reflection on thesocial context of the story, both with adults andpeers. We hope the following examples will illus-trate the delicacy of comprehension and the im-portant steps teachers can take to supportunderstanding of social texts.

The interplay between literacy andsocial awareness in comprehension

To illustrate this interplay between literacyskills and social awareness skills, we walk youthrough a portion of a reading of Freedom Summer.The following text is the transcript of Alison, thelead author of this article, reading Freedom Summer

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to Alleah (pseudonym), a fourth-grade student at apublic school in Dorchester, Massachusetts. This in-terview took place as part of the data collection forour study.

Interspersed with Alison and Alleah’s dialogueare many comments that highlight the supportAlison provides in the form of building literacyskills or building social awareness. We also high-light the evidence of comprehension that Alisongathers from conversing with Alleah. We also notewhether Alleah’s literacy awareness or socialawareness (or both) lead to her understanding ofthe text. Asking a student questions, or paying care-ful attention to the questions the student poses, tellsthe teacher if the student understands the text or ifshe needs additional support.

The literacy-oriented comments are mostlybased on the practice-oriented work of Fountas andPinnell (2001). Fountas and Pinnell are leaders inthe field of comprehensive literacy instruction.Their emphasis on the skills and strategies involvedin the process of comprehension resonates with ourtheories about creating meaning from text.

The focus on social awareness has two aspects.Most apparent is the emphasis on what socialknowledge the students extract from the text. Howdo students learn about social issues as universalas friendship? How do they gain an understandingof historical information as specific as civil rightsand desegregation? The second emphasis is on thesocial awareness the students bring to their under-standing of the text. This includes not only theirprior knowledge but also the level of their under-standing of relationships. How do students applytheir developing capacity to coordinate points ofview with the points of view, or social perspectives,of other people or groups? This core capacity to co-ordinate perspectives develops with age, can varywith situations, and is challenging to assess. Thesource for the social awareness-oriented commentsfound in Table 1 is the second author’s practice-based, but theoretically oriented book, ThePromotion of Social Awareness: Powerful LessonsFrom the Partnership of Developmental Theoryand Classroom Practice (Selman, 2003).

Clearly, Alleah’s comprehension of the storyFreedom Summer (see Table 1) was mediated byher literal understanding of the plot as well as herawareness of the social context of the South of the1960s. Alison provided support for Alleah’s com-

prehension, by relying on both literacy strategies(e.g., summarizing the plot) as well as providingsupport in understanding the social context (e.g.,elaborating and giving information about the cul-tural context). Alison made use of Alleah’s ques-tions and comments as a guide to whether or notAlleah understood the text.

Alternate interpretationsHow do other children interpret the same

event? We’ve had the opportunity to ask of manychildren the same question that Alison asked ofAlleah: “Why do you think the townspeople filledthe pool with tar?” There is wide variation amongthe responses. For the purpose of this article, wehave selected a few responses that represent a“low,” “medium,” and “high” level of awarenessof the social issues at play in the story.

Many children, like Alleah, find this event con-fusing. Some responses from children with a “low”level of awareness were, “Maybe because someoneasked John Henry’s brother to fill it up so no onewon’t trip in the pool” and “Because it was an oldpool and it had to be fixed. Because if the kid wasswimming he will get hurt.” Clearly, these respons-es are based solely on the children’s backgroundknowledge. When have they seen work crews cov-ering a surface with asphalt? Perhaps when cityworkers filled in a pothole in their neighborhood.Or, when the blacktop at school was resurfaced.Perhaps when they asked a parent or teacher to ex-plain the purpose of this construction, that adulttold them that the area needed to be fixed so thatpeople wouldn’t trip and hurt themselves.

Background knowledge can be very helpful inproviding a lens through which text can be inter-preted. However, once the background knowledgehas been activated, the next step is to return to thestory and use information from the text to furtherinterpret the event. These children skipped thisstep; they did not incorporate the historically rele-vant social issues from Freedom Summer into theirthinking about the work crew.

Some children went a step beyond this low lev-el of awareness, but still fell short of expressing afully developed understanding of the event. Some“medium” level responses to the question, “Whydo you think the townspeople filled the pool with

The interdependence of social awareness and literacy instruction 531

TABLE 1Freedom Summer excerpt read-aloud

[A law has just passed mandating desegregation. Joe and John Henry arrive at the county pool, excited to swim in thepool together for the first time. They are disappointed to find county dump trucks filling the pool with tar.]

County dump trucks are here. They grind and back up to the empty pool. Workers rake steaming asphalt into thehole where sparkling clean water used to be. One of them is John Henry’s big brother, Will Rogers. We start to call tohim, “What happened?” but he sees us first and points back on down the road—it means “Git on home!”

But our feet feel stuck, we can’t budge. So we hunker in the tall weeds and watch all morning until the pool is filledwith hot, spongy tar. Ssss! Some steam rises in the air. Workers tie planks to their shoes and stomp on the blacktop tomake it smooth. Will Rogers heaves his shovel into the back of an empty truck and climbs up with the other workers.His face is like a storm cloud, and I know this job has made him angry. “Let’s go!” a boss man shouts, and the trucksrumble-slam down the road.

Alison: Why do you think the townspeople filled thepool with tar? It seemed like a weird thing to do.

Alleah: What is tar?Alison: Tar is.... Have you ever seen trucks out paving a

road? (Yeah.) Tar is what you use to pave aroad. So they pulled up with these trucks, andthey went to the swimming pool, and they filledthe whole pool up with tar...with black, stickytar. Why do you think the townspeople filled thepool with tar?

Alleah: I don’t know. Alison: Can you see what they’re doing here? Do you

see what they’re sitting on? (Yeah.) They’re sit-ting on the diving board? (Yeah.) And there usedto be water in the pool. But what’s in there now?

Alleah: Tar.Alison: Yes, tar. So can they go swimming? (No.) No.

Remember they wanted to go swimming so badly? But then they got to the pool, and it wasfilled up with tar.

Alleah: (Pointing at illustration of the pool.) Was thatthe pond?

Alison: No. (She turns back to illustration of the pond.)They used to swim in the pond. Here they areswimming in the pond. But they really wanted toswim in the pool. But the old law said that onlywhite people could swim in the pool. But then, doyou remember what they found out on this page?

Alleah: That black people and white people can stay to-gether.

Alison: That’s right. They found out they can go to lunchcounters together, they can use the same bath-rooms, they can go to drinking fountains togeth-er.... And they can go to the swimming pooltogether. So why do you think Joe and JohnHenry were so excited about that new law?

Gathering evidence of comprehension—literacy: By ask-ing Alison to define the word “tar,” Alleah demonstrat-ed that she is monitoring her own comprehension. Sherealized that the text didn’t make sense to her, and sheis asking for clarification.

Scaffolding comprehension—literacy: Illustrations pro-vide a rich source of information from which a readercan construct meaning. Alison uses the illustrations tohelp Alleah revise her interpretation of the text.

Gathering evidence of comprehension—literacy: Alleah’squestion indicated that she struggled to reconcile herinitial interpretation of the text with information ob-tained from looking at the picture.

Scaffolding comprehension—literacy: Readers need tosummarize as they read—to put together bits of impor-tant information that will help them understand the plotas it unfolds. By summarizing key points in the story,Alison helps Alleah connect important events.

(continued)

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TABLE 1Freedom Summer excerpt read-aloud (continued)

We sit on the diving board and stare at the tops of the silver ladders sticking up from the tar. Joe’s heart beats hardin his chest. John Henry’s voice shakes. “White folks don’t want colored folks in their pool,” says John Henry. “You’rewrong, John Henry,” I say, but I know he’s right.

“‘Let’s go back to Fiddler’s Creek,’” Joe says, ‘I didn’t want to swim in this old pool, anyway.’”

Alleah: Because he can go to the pond with his friend.Not only white people could go. But then, whenthey went there it was filled with tar.

Alison: Look how excited they are. They’re racing tothe pool. And they got there, and they foundpeople were doing this weird thing. They werefilling it with tar. Now look at them, sittingthere, and they’re looking at that tar that usedto be a swimming pool.

Gathering evidence of comprehension—literacy andsocial awareness: Summarizing appears to have been ahelpful strategy. This time, Alleah successfully synthe-sizes the events in the story with her knowledge of thesocial context of the story.

Alison: Why do you think Joe says, “You’re wrong,John Henry?” even though he knows JohnHenry is right?

Alleah: ‘Cause he was a slave, I think.Alison: That’s a good guess. He wasn’t a slave, but

there was a law....

Alleah: Wait a second.... Isn’t that like Rose?Alison: Rosa Parks?Alleah: Yeah, Rosa Parks. Was she born? Was she

there?Alison: Excellent question. Rosa Parks lived around this

time. What did she do?Alleah: She was on the bus, and a white man told her to

get up, but she didn’t want to, because she wasreal tired. So they called the police and then,she was arrested.

Alison: Exactly. And that was because there was a lawthat said that black people couldn’t sit in thesame place on the bus....

Alleah: They had to sit in the back.Alison: Right, just like there were laws that said black

people couldn’t use the same swimming pool.And so the laws changed, but not everybodyagreed with the laws. And that’s why they didthings like fill the pool with tar. Let me ask youjust a couple more questions.

Gathering evidence of comprehension—literacy andsocial awareness: To make an accurate inference,Alleah would need to draw on her knowledge of thesocial context, as well as her awareness of the friend-ship between the two boys. She is not able to synthe-size all of this information yet.

Gathering evidence of comprehension—social aware-ness: Alleah is tapping into her fund of “world knowl-edge.” She is knowledgeable about the social normsthat influenced Rosa Parks. She can use that informa-tion as a reference to understand this story.

Alison: Why did he say, “I didn’t want to swim in the pool?”Alleah: Because black people can’t go in there, only white people can.

tar?” were, “The pool was filled with tar becausethe pool owner probably didn’t want black andwhite people to swim together,” and “The pool wasfilled with tar because John Henry’s brother did notwant John Henry hanging out with Joe.” Thesechildren seem to be aware of the racial tensions thatunderlie all of the events in Freedom Summer.However, they do not demonstrate in their respons-es that they understand it is the white people whoare discriminating against the blacks by shuttingdown this public facility.

Despite the complex nature of the discrimina-tion, there are some students who are able to drawsophisticated and accurate inferences as to why thetownspeople choose this course of action. Some“high” level responses to this question were, “Thepool was filled with tar because John Henry’sbrother worked for a white man and the white mandidn’t want blacks and whites to swim together,”and “The pool was filled with tar because whitepeople did not want black and white people toswim together.” Not only do these children demon-strate the awareness that the decision to close thepool is motivated by prejudice, but also they areable to accurately identify the white people as thesource of the discrimination.

Supporting students at multiplelevels in the classroom

One of the most challenging aspects of teachingis providing instructional support to children in thesame classroom who are functioning on very dif-ferent levels. This challenge is particularly appar-ent in the work of supporting children’s socialawareness and literacy development. While theabove examples were drawn from a wide sampleof children of different ages, it is not uncommon tomeet with a group of students in the same classroomwhose levels of awareness vary widely. How can ateacher meet the needs of these diverse learners?

It is very important to keep in mind that chil-dren’s social awareness is not static. As evidencedby the interview with Alleah, children’s awarenessof the social issues in the text evolve through con-versation. Teachers can scaffold children’s aware-ness just by talking them through the text, clearingup misconceptions by defining words, and high-lighting important events in the story.

Even when understood, social awareness is of-ten difficult to express. Classmates can also sup-port one another. Allowing children to share theirthinking with a partner prior to having a class dis-cussion is an effective instructional tool. It has beenour experience that children who exhibit a lowerlevel of social awareness, when paired with a high-er level classmate, will tend to gravitate toward themore sophisticated viewpoint. As for the “high-awareness” students, the opportunity to explaintheir thinking to a partner helps them to sharpen andclarify their ideas.

Finally, it is important to remember that onestrength of a book such as Freedom Summer is thatit can be understood and appreciated on multiplelevels. Some students will be able to grapple withthe complicated themes of prejudice and discrimi-nation. These themes may be beyond the awarenessof other students in the same class. It is still possi-ble for these “low social awareness” students tobenefit from a discussion about loyalty betweentwo friends who are from different backgrounds.

Literature for students of different ages

As stated previously, Freedom Summer wouldbe appropriate independent reading material for anabove-average third-grade or average fourth-gradestudent. This makes it an excellent choice as a read-aloud for a third- or fourth-grade class. The vocab-ulary and syntax of the book are within their graspand the story provides a rich plot line, emotionalcentral conflict, and interesting characters for stu-dents to debate and discuss.

Freedom Summer would certainly be appropri-ate for younger students, depending on the teacher’sobjective. While the topics of racial tension and dis-crimination are appropriate themes to study witholder children, friendship between two people whoare different is a more developmentally appropriatetheme for younger children. This theme is present inFreedom Summer, but there are many other books,written especially for younger children, that addressthis theme in a more accessible manner.

One of our favorites for children in first or sec-ond grade is Stellaluna by Janell Cannon (1993).Stellaluna tells the story of a baby bat who becomesseparated from her mother and is taken in by a fam-

The interdependence of social awareness and literacy instruction 533

ily of birds. After an initial period of uncertainty,Stellaluna adapts to the strange customs of her newbird family. The central theme of the story is en-capsulated by an innocent question posed byStellaluna to her bird siblings: “How can we be sodifferent, but feel so much alike?” For younger chil-dren, this question can be the springboard into ameaningful discussion about respecting and appre-ciating differences.

Just as we believe that Freedom Summer is ap-propriate for younger students, depending on theinstructional objective, we also believe thatFreedom Summer can be a powerful instructionaltool for older students as well. The simple languageand illustrations make the text accessible to chil-dren in grades 4 and 5, giving them the freedom toexplore the central concepts without struggling topiece together the plot.

However, if the teacher’s objective is to pushchildren’s literacy skills in addition to supportingtheir social awareness, then we highly recommendchapter books such as Felita by Nicholasa Mohr(1979). This novel, written on a fifth-grade level, de-picts Felita’s struggles when her family moves froma Puerto Rican neighborhood to a neighborhood thatis all white. The book provides many opportunitiesfor students in the upper grades to discuss how Felitahandles her experiences of prejudice and discrimi-nation at the same time that she deals with concernsall preteenagers have with friendship and inclusion.

The books mentioned previously are just a smallsample of the many socially themed children’s booksappropriate for classroom use. There are a numberof organizations that provide excellent curriculumand instruction in the integration of the domains ofsocial and literacy development. Making Meaning(Developmental Studies Center, 2004), The Four Rs(ESR Metro, 1999), and Voices Reading: Literacy toLive By (Voices Reading, 2005), are just a few.

A closer look at literacy instruction:Strategies for sustaining readingand strategies for extendingmeaning

There are two sets of strategies employed byreaders when they encounter a new text (Fountas &Pinnell, 2001). The first is strategies for sustaining

reading. When students encounter a new text, theyneed tools that will help them move through it,word by word, sentence by sentence, decodingwords and making meaning as they go. Thesestrategies are the tools students use for solvingtricky words and monitoring their comprehension.The other is strategies for extending meaning.Good readers comprehend a text beyond the literalmeaning of the words on the page. They are ableto connect the new information with informationthey already know, and they are able to recognizethe significance of what they read.

Alison used many strategies for sustainingreading to help Alleah comprehend FreedomSummer: She helped Alleah “monitor comprehen-sion” by asking questions, answering questions, orexplaining important events. In addition, Alison en-couraged Alleah to use the illustrations as a sourceof information for understanding the plot.

Alison’s uses of strategies for extending mean-ing helped Alleah to arrive at a deeper understand-ing of the book. One of the most comprehensivestrategies is helping students form connections toa story. Students construct meaning from texts byconnecting the information to things they knowabout. Alison encouraged Alleah to make text-to-self connections (e.g., by asking Alleah if she’sever seen trucks paving a road). Alison encouragedAlleah to make text-to-world connections as well(tapping into Alleah’s knowledge about leaders inthe Civil Rights movement).

Alison drew upon several other strategies forextending meaning: summarizing, synthesizing,and drawing inferences. These strategies were par-ticularly important in helping Alleah understandthe critical moment of the story when the workerswere filling the pool with tar. First, Alison summa-rized the important plot developments that led up tothat moment. Next, Alison helped Alleah synthe-size world knowledge (facts about desegregation)with the event in the book (the townspeople fillingthe pool with tar) in order to generate a new un-derstanding. Finally, Alison encouraged Alleah toread beyond the literal meaning of the text in or-der to infer the motivations behind the characters’words and actions.

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The foundations of socialawareness: Perspective taking and perspective coordination

Strategies for extending meaning provide apowerful bridge between literacy and social aware-ness because the social awareness emphasis is onunderstanding the meaning the characters make oftheir experiences. As part of our research protocol,Alison asks Alleah several theoretically driven “per-spectival” questions: Each of these questions asksthe reader to put him or herself in the character’sshoes. The questions we ask, both for purposes of re-search and practice, always include matters of inter-pretation, and in particular interpretations that allowfor, but do not require, a deeper level understandingof the way story characters need to take or coordi-nate perspectives in order to gain a deeper sense ofsocial awareness or self understanding.

While reading and discussing FreedomSummer, Alison worked with Alleah to help her ap-ply her perspective-taking and coordination capaci-ties on several levels. For example, Alison askedAlleah to think about the challenges the new worldorder has on Joe and John Henry’s friendship. Onone level, this question required Alleah to reflect oneach of the characters’ perspectives. From JohnHenry’s point of view, it might be difficult to have afriend who has access to more places and activitiesthan he does. Reciprocally, these same circum-stances might cause Joe to feel limited or uncom-fortable in his friendship with John Henry.

While these perspectives are valid, Alleahmight also be able to reflect on a more abstract lev-el of perspective coordination. She might be able totake into account the impact that societal attitudeshave on their friendship. She might be able to rec-ognize that the same racism and bigotry that influ-enced the townspeople to fill the pool with tarmight also affect the attitudes the boys have towardeach other. It is hard for the boys to be friends be-cause they live in a time and place where friend-ships between blacks and whites are discouraged.

In response to the question, “Why is it diffi-cult for Joe and John Henry to be friends?” Alleahreplied, “‘Cause white people and black peopleusually don’t be together. ‘Cause it’s separate.” It’sdifficult to judge from this response the degree towhich Alleah is coordinating perspectives. Perhaps

she meant that because of segregation, white peo-ple and black people are never physically in thesame place. They each have their own pools andtheir own ice cream parlors. Because they don’tspend time in the same locations, there is never anopportunity to form friendships. While this is fac-tually correct, it is a limited level of understand-ing. On the other hand, there could be anotherinterpretation for her words “white people andblack people usually don’t be together.” Perhapsshe is referring to the attitudes of white people andblack people, meaning that they don’t usuallychoose to be together. In this case, she would be ap-plying a more interpretive level of understanding.With further probing and support, Alleah could bebrought up to that deeper level.

Overlap between literacy skills and social awareness skills

While usually thought of as two distinct fields,the worlds of literacy and social awareness are ac-tually closely linked. In some cases, the same skillis practiced in both worlds, but called by differentnames. For example, during the reading ofFreedom Summer, Alison asked Alleah, “Why didJoe say, ‘I didn’t want to swim in that old pool,anyway?’” From a literacy standpoint, one wouldargue that Alison wants Alleah to draw an inferencebased on the text. From a social awareness pointof view, one would say Alison wants Alleah todemonstrate her knowledge of Joe’s capacity totake into consideration another’s perspective, inthis case John Henry’s, to answer the question.They’re both important skills to have.

However, whereas the literacy frameworkhelps us understand Alleah’s response, “Becauseblack people can’t go in there, only white peoplecan,” in terms of her capacity for inference, the so-cial awareness perspective asks us to consider thedegree to which Alleah expresses the way Joe’s un-derstanding of John Henry’s position influences hisown thoughts and actions. It is true that the boysdon’t want to swim in a pool that’s filled with tar,but some students never move beyond that “fact-based” comprehension of the question. Alleah,however, understands the rule is not fair to JohnHenry, which is a deeper level of analysis. Somestudents in Alleah’s class go even deeper. They ar-

The interdependence of social awareness and literacy instruction 535

ticulate Joe’s response as “care based.” For exam-ple, “Joe did not want Joe Henry to feel bad.” Joe isconcerned with John Henry’s feelings, and in hisown way trying to be supportive. This is a deeperinterpretation of the text.

Finally, the role of conversation is pivotal forboth the development of literacy skills and socialawareness. A pianist’s skills sharpen as her fingersbecome familiar with the landscape of the keyboardthrough daily drills. So, too, a student’s facility withlanguage improves through conversation. Oral lan-guage is a key component of any language arts cur-riculum. Providing opportunities to discuss thesocial ideas presented in texts is one of the best waysto ensure students develop the ability to talk aboutthese issues. When children have the chance to thinkdeeply about what they are reading and then put theirthoughts into words, their understanding maturesprofoundly. According to Calkins (2001), “We teachchildren to think with and between texts by helpingthem say aloud, in conversations with us and withothers, the thoughts they will eventually be able todevelop without the interaction of conversation” (p.226). By going through the process of articulatingtheir thoughts, children develop the vocabulary nec-essary to discuss issues such as racism and socialjustice. “Dialogue” is the analogy in the domain ofsocial awareness. It is crucial to the endeavor en-hancing perspective-taking skills. Teacher–studentand student–student conversation is key to explicat-ing the way people see the social world.

Final thoughtsThe field of literacy instruction has undergone

a revolution in the past 20 years. In the 1980s, theemphasis in reading instruction was primarily onteaching children to decode words and ascertain theliteral meaning of texts. In recent years, there hasbeen an important shift in the conceptualization ofreading (Harvey & Goudvis, 2000). In the currenteducational discourse, “reading” refers to “con-structing meaning from print.” In today’s classroom,teachers guide students not only in decoding andmaking literal interpretations, but also in construct-ing meanings built on the students’knowledge of theworld, and on the student’s personal experiences.

The current conceptualization of the readingprocess, and the teacher’s role in this process, is far

more thorough than it was 20 years ago. However,we would submit that there is still a great distance totravel and that the field of social awareness devel-opment has something important to contribute.

From a literacy perspective, the purpose of read-ing a book like Freedom Summer is to give studentsan opportunity to practice all of the skills and strate-gies that will make them independent readers.However, a book like Freedom Summer also has thepotential to enhance social awareness by creating anopportunity for students to talk about racism, preju-dice, and social justice. Through discussion, studentscan expand their knowledge about how a social illsuch as racial discrimination can affect not only anentire society, but individual friendships as well.

But, as we learned with our experience of thechildren not knowing the meaning of the word tar, ifchildren’s comprehension of the story is not sup-ported, they will find it difficult to get to a pointwhere they can experience these conversations.Likewise, there is a risk involved in reading FreedomSummer and not supporting students’ social under-standing of the story. After listening to and dis-cussing Freedom Summer, Alleah said that shelearned, “That white people and black people canbe in the same home, like when you adopt a baby.And they can be in the same pond, and water foun-tain, and be together instead of being separate.”

It is encouraging that Alleah feels she has“learned” such a hopeful message from this book.Early on in the reading and conversation withAlison, Alleah’s comprehension seemed limitedand a bit shallow. However, at other points in thestory, with Alison’s help in scaffolding, Alleah ap-peared to have a deeper understanding of what wetake to be other important themes of the book. Forexample, Alleah discussed the boys’ desire to befriends, in spite of what others might think of theirfriendship. This hints at an understanding of the so-cial pressure that the boys faced. With more dis-cussion, Alleah might be able to say she learnedthat one shouldn’t allow society to dictate who weare friends with. Or, she might be able to discussthe courage required to stand up to unfair socialpractices. These are the types of messages we hopethat students will take away from this story. As ev-idenced by our work with Alleah, we believe thatwith support and scaffolding, children can interpretthe social messages of the books we read to themand develop more sophisticated social awareness.

The Reading Teacher Vol. 60, No. 6 March 2007536

Note: The research described in this papertakes place within the context of a school-based so-cial development program that is supported by theThird Millennium Foundation.

Lobron works for Newton Public Schools inNewton, Massachusetts. She can be contactedat 15B Maple Terrace, Newton, MA 02458,USA. E-mail [email protected]. Selmanteaches at the Harvard Graduate School ofEducation—Human Development andPsychology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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