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Levelling the reading gap: A socio-spatial study of school libraries and reading in Singapore
Citation
Loh, C. E. (2016). Levelling the reading gap: A socio-spatial study of school libraries and reading in Singapore. Literacy, 50(1), 3-13. https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12067
Abstract
This article takes a comparative socio-spatial approach at the intersection of social class and reading politics to provide a fresh way of examining school reading policies and practices, unearthing previously hidden spaces of inequity for reading intervention. The juxtaposition of two nested case studies in Singapore, one of an elite all-boys’ school and another of a coeducational government school with students in different academic tracks, revealed inequitable practices, specifically in the designs and uses of school library spaces between schools serving different social classes. The study argues that attempts to design reading interventions should move away from the view of student-as-problem to structure-as-problem in order to discover new perspectives for reading intervention. Additionally, this study demonstrates how foregrounding social class in educational research is necessary for effective design of educational strategies that aim to transform education and society by narrowing the gap between students from different social classes.
Date Issued
2016
Publisher
Wiley
Journal
Literacy