Abstract of

First Person
Teachers of Literacy, Love of Reading, and the Literate Self: A Response to Ann Powell-Brown

Kimberley Gomez

The author asserts that literacy teacher training programs should design opportunities for teachers to become more reflective about the literate self. Graduate students were queried about the relationship between their personal, historical, and professional literate selves. They documented their memories of reading and considered what it means to be literate and to have a literate self. Results suggest that many teachers experience disinterest in or discomfort with reading. They lack effective strategies for approaching text and do not have well-developed frames of reference of reading for entertainment or pleasure. For them, reading is primarily associated with work routines or daily activities of life. Yet these teachers' aspirations for learners indicate that they are enthusiastic and committed supporters of reading in all phases of personal, public, and professional life. Programmatic design suggestions are offered to better support reflective dispositions about the literate self. Future research and program design in teacher preparation should explore the joint contribution of the public and private literate self to teacher practice.

Abstract from Gomez, K. (2005, October). Teachers of Literacy, Love of Reading, and the Literate Self: A Response to Ann Powell-Brown. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 49(2), 92–96. doi: 10.1598/JAAL.49.2.1