An examination of the role of culture in the transaction of reader and text

Abstract

The primary purpose of this study was to determine if students' aesthetic involvement or preference would be influenced by the culture of the student or the culture portrayed in the text. Subjects included 122 fifth-grade students and 126 seventh-grade students in the same rural school district. Each subject listened to six short stories representing African-American, Hispanic, and White cultural groups. After listening to each story, subjects wrote a free response and then rated the story. Overall the level of aesthetic involvement was not significantly influenced by the culture of student or text. Students from all cultural groups tended to go beyond simply retelling story events and showed evidence of responding aesthetically to the stories by mentioning specific parts, making judgements, reflecting on the story world, relating something in the story to the real world, and drawing inferences. Analysis of the focuses revealed grade level differences with a decrease at the seventh-grade level of responses focusing on the story world and an increase in making judgements. Only the focus which dealt with reflecting on the story world revealed a significant relationship between culture of student and text. With respect to preference, results revealed that a significant interaction was evident for grade by story ethnicity. Fifth graders strongly preferred White stories, while seventh-grade students preferred stories containing African-American characters. There was also a significant interaction for student ethnicity by story ethnicity. Students of minority cultures strongly preferred stories portraying their own culture while White students, although they preferred White stories, were more homogeneous in their preference. Book was also a significant main effect. Implications of this study are that although students of different ethnicities prefer stories reflecting their own culture, they are able to have complex aesthetic transactions to works regardless of the culture portrayed. This supports the integration of multicultural literature into the curriculum because literature affords all students opportunities for rich experiences with literature and allows students of differing ethnicities to enjoy the books reflecting their own cultural heritage.