I Would Like to See How They Got Poor and See What It's Like to Be Poor: An Analysis of Young Children's Responses to a Critical Literacy Text About Poverty

Sixty-four 8-year-old children listened to a reading of a critical literacy text about poverty and then responded to interview questions about the story. The content on which the children focused their attention, the processes that they employed to engage with the text, and the particular stance(s) taken varied significantly by ecological setting or socioeconomic status for some categories of response. These findings are consistent with Rosenblatt's (1994) theory and have important implications for practice. Mindful of variations in response, practitioners can become more sensitive to children's constructed meanings about poverty and scaffold accordingly.