CHAPTER THREE CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE Introduction Chapter one discussed the notion of brain growth and that it is the individual s brain growth that leads to their understanding When considering literature what a person reads will influence how they think Exposure to traditionally canonized literature will produce a single literary culture the monoculture and exposure to multiethnic literature will give many non canonized literary voices a say i e the multiculture It examined the use of multicultural education the opponents of it and how multiethnic literature is a part of multicultural education Chapter two explained the development of education in the United States and how the Civil Rights era gave birth to the multicultural education movement It examined at the development of reading instruction in the United States the history reading materials used in schools and how different instructional approaches were politically influenced It reviewed ground breaking studies into multiethnic literature and how these studies influenced to the formation of multicultural education Chapter three reviews the research about multiethnic literature The research used in this chapter is organized into five sections content analysis teacher analysis preoperations concrete operations and formal operations Each of these studies are summarized and analyzed based on the conclusions provided The research is reviewed to examine how the use of multiethnic literature effected the engagement of Content Analysis The initial six studies of this section analyzed the ethnic content of trade books and basal readers Reynolds Taylor Steffensen Shirey and Anderson 1982 starts the bo I analysis because their study demonstrated how cultural schemata affected the comprehension of written text In this analysis Reynolds et al 1982 study is followed by Larrick s 1965 study of books written for children in the 1960qs the same study was replicated by Chall Radwin French and Hall 1979 10 years aRer Larrick s 1965 study This was done to determine if publishers had given non Caucasian books additional attention Similarly 25 years afier Larrick s 1965 study Reimer 1992 investigated the status of multiethnic literature Greenlaw 197 1 investigated the influence if any minority groups had on publishers of basal readers as well as influence on school systems implementation of basal readers Bean Readence and Mallette 1996 used James Banks multicultural typology to select young adult novels with multicultural In an empirical study to determine if there was a relationship between cultural schemata and reading comprehension Reynolds Taylor Steffensen Shirey and Anderson 1982 investigated 105 eighth grade students Approximately half these students were boys and half were girls Nine of the students were dropped from the analysis because their recall probe data suggested that they did not seriously attend to the task The subjects of this study attended one of three schools Memphis Tennessee a school that drew its students from a African American working class area n 54 and either Ogden or Mahornet Illinois who drew its students from a Caucasian agricultural area n 51 All subjects of this study read a letter about a school incident that could have been interpreted as a fight or as an instance of sounding sounding is a form of ritual insult predominantly found in the African American community Although sounding is often done for amusement Reynolds et a1 1982 noted that skill in this verbal art is one k 4 im typology formed a basis for character discussion The six stage typology revealed the variablity in main characters self identity across the six novels The book selection criteria offered teachers a means of identifying young adult novels that realistically confront societal problems In conclusion Bean et a1 1996 suggested the need for future research involving inlpre service teachers as well as adolescent students The method of believing and doubting as outlined by Blau gave this study credibility Had Bean only interpreted the stories then the conclusions would have been 1 limited However the fact that three different researchers offered three responses to support or doubt the other rater s findings produced findings that are convincing This study gives teachers a means to analyze the content of the reading materials that are used in their classroom The analysis of the research in content analysis suggests that multiethnic literature has not been produced in the same quantity of monoculture literature nor was multiethnic literature used in schools in the same quantity as monoculture literature As Reynold s et al 1982 investigation suggested the ethnicity of the reader directly impacts her comprehension of it When only monoculture literature is provided to the students they are not provided with the dendntic growth necessary for living in the ethnically diverse world that they will encounter after school The Larrick 1965 Greenlaw 197 I Chall et al 1979 and Reimer 1992 studies indicated that a lack of multiethnic literature was provided for preoperational students Bean s et a1 1996 study demonstrated that multiethnic literature could be selected for school aged children More analysis is necessary to determine how multiethnic literature is used to teach preoperational concrete operational and formal operational school aged children teaching of it The prior section of this chapter analyzed the content that school aged children were reading This section of the chapter analyzes the teachers who instruct the i students In the first study Carroll Gregg and Watts 1995 investigated teachers i attitude toward multicultural literature In the second study Gill 1998 investigated t1 university professors use of multicultural literature followed by four studies of i preservice teachers attitudes toward multicultural literature This section ends with a study by Smith and Strickland 2001 that investigated how teachers use multicultural literature To understand how multiethnic literature has effected students different aspects of teachers attitudes need to be investigated Whether it is the attitude of inservice teachers preservice teachers or professors of teachers the notions held will affect the school aged child because the teachers schemata will affect how she creates her literature lesson Carroll Gregg and Watts 1995 with other members of the Florida Council of Teachers of English Multicultural Commission developed a survey
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