Alyson Rumberger’s research while affiliated with Columbia University and other places

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Publications (5)


The elementary school library: Tensions between access and censorship
  • Article

December 2019

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139 Reads

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7 Citations

Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood

Alyson Rumberger

Children’s news media offers access points for students to learn about the complex and evolving world around them, and school libraries are spaces where students develop the skills and knowledge necessary to interact with media. Yet despite the potential of children’s news media, school libraries often become regulatory spaces where children are directed away from texts (both digital and printed) that are deemed inappropriate due to sophisticated content (Heins, 2007) or in some cases, are encouraged to read on their “level” (Kontovourki, 2012). This constructs children as vulnerable and in need of protection (Robinson, 2013). Instead, I seek to position the focal children as active, critical agents at the center of their own lives. In this article, I analyze conceptions of childhood innocence (James and Prout, 1997), arguing that both childhood and literacy are fluid and permeable constructions. I ask: What are the ways in which texts and literacy practices are censored in one elementary school library? To investigate this, I followed one school librarian, Deborah, and three first-grade students in their school library at City Partnership School as they navigated texts, learned about the world around them through multimedia platforms, and constructed their own identities as readers in a system with clear expectations for what a “readerly” identity looks like.


The Role of External Support Providers in Improving K-3 Reading Outcomes in New York

February 2019

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15 Reads

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6 Citations

Urban Education

This study documents the collective capacity of the external support providers working to improve K-3 reading outcomes in New York City. Interviews and social network surveys with a sample of the 112 providers at work in this “reading improvement sector” showed that they serve as a conduit for sharing reading-related resources and expertise throughout a large part of New York City. However, the collective impact of the sector remains limited because their goals vary widely; support is unevenly distributed; and many programs work in isolation and are informed by funders and sources of expertise that are unlikely to be connected.


Mapping the Reading Improvement Sector in New York City The Role of External Support Providers in Improving K-3 Reading Outcomes
  • Article
  • Full-text available

February 2019

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27 Reads

This report shares the results of a project designed to help build the collective capacity and increase the impact of the external support providers working to improve K-3 reading outcomes in New York City public elementary schools. In the first phase of the project, we identified all the programs in what we call the K-3 reading improvement sector in NYC 2014-15. In the second phase, we examined the extent to which a sample of these programs have the goals, resources, and personnel to improve reading outcomes system-wide. In the third phase, we mapped the relationships among a sample of programs in the sector in 2016-17, the sources they rely on to support their work, and the NYC schools with whom they partner. Making these relationships visible shows the extent to which students from different backgrounds and schools can get access to information, resources, and expertise, and the extent to which programs are in a position to increase their collective impact through coordination and collaboration. Among the findings: Over 100 programs are working in the K-3 Reading Improvement Sector in NYC The sample programs in the sector focus on a wide range of reading-related goals, but a limited number of programs have demonstrated effectiveness Twenty-six sample programs are connected to 161 different schools comprising 16% of all elementary schools in NYC (including 28% of the elementary schools in the Bronx and 26% of the elementary schools in Manhattan); and the programs are partnering with schools with relatively high levels of need in terms of both performance and poverty Just over half of the sample programs describe themselves as collaborating or partnering with at least one other sample program, but almost half were not in regular contact with any other sample program Sample programs received support from 57 different funders and 75 different sources for literacy expertise with little overlap These results suggest that sector programs have the goals, services, and personnel that could help improve K-3 reading outcomes in New York City; they have the connections to share resources and expertise with a large percentage of elementary schools; and several clusters of connected programs could serve as a powerful force for increased focus and collaboration in reading improvement across the city. However, the collective impact of the sector suffers from the evidence that goals vary considerably. Student and teacher programs differ in terms of their goals and personnel, and only a few programs have had formal outside evaluations completed. In addition, many of the sample programs in the sector are working in isolation from other sample programs and are informed by a wide range of sources of funding and expertise that are themselves likely to be only loosely connected. Although the clusters of collaborating and frequently connected programs could serve as a basis for expansion within the sector, the unconnected programs and the disparate sources of funding and expertise suggest that explicit strategies will need to be developed to support greater coherence in the sector and to increase the effectiveness of the sector overall.

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Levels in the library

May 2018

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54 Reads

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1 Citation

Phi Delta Kappan

Leveled reading, in which students select “just right” books based on their assessed reading level, has become a significant part of elementary reading instruction. However, libraries remain places where students can select books to read outside their reading levels. Based on observations of 1st-grade students, the author describes how the idea of reading levels has affected students’ perceptions of themselves as readers and what they should be reading. She argues for the preservation of spaces, like libraries, where students choose what, when, and how they read, without regard for reading levels.

Citations (3)


... Books that fail to fulfil their role are called trash (Knox, 2020). The results of a study conducted by Rumberger (2019) show that despite democratic principles, the school library often becomes a space where children and youth have limited access to both reading content and literacy practices considered undesirable, while at the same time the American Library Association establishes that many of the most banned and challenged literary works are often necessary in the educational process due to their educational value (Hennen, 2024). When teachers abandon their right and responsibility to select literature, they sacrifice their students to protect themselves (Freedman et al., 2000). ...

Reference:

Younger adolescents’ perspectives on book censorship: a case of Croatia
The elementary school library: Tensions between access and censorship
  • Citing Article
  • December 2019

Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood

... d explore a variety of virtual learning environments. Educators at Nan Chau Primary School and a researcher at the National Institute of Education used equipment and support from Qualcomm and Microsoft to create mobile learning platforms that helped students learn Chinese idioms. iZone schools also benefitted by building on or "borrowing" capacity (Hatch et. al. 2019;Elmore 1996) from a wide range of companies and other partners. For example, iZone could never have been launched without considerable initial funding from federal grants (including i3 "investing in innovation" grants) and private foundations (including the Cisco Foundation and Ford Foundation); without the resources of a host of technol ...

The Role of External Support Providers in Improving K-3 Reading Outcomes in New York
  • Citing Article
  • February 2019

Urban Education

... Por ejemplo, cuando se hacían pausas en el texto para indagar por la comprensión o prospectivas, los estudiantes se animaban a participar y respondían de manera acertada a preguntas literales. Por otra parte, se reconoció que los estudiantes de la básica primaria tienen un interés mayor por los textos literarios (Albelda-Esteban, 2019; Blakemore, 2018).Las estrategias didácticas capturaron el interés de los estudiantes por la lectura, debido a que tenían la posibilidad de interactuar con las imágenes, los videos, los audios y de esta manera fomentar la imaginación al pensar otros posibles finales, lo que favoreció el desarrollo de las competencias comunicativas(Rumberger, 2018). Las estrategias didácticas desde la biblioteca escolar están centradas en que el estudiante acceda a la información, se apropie de ella y pueda replicarla en sus lecturas individuales (Orellana-Guevara, 2017). ...

Constructing the Literate Child in the Library: An Analysis of School Library Standards
  • Citing Article
  • June 2018

Berkeley Review of Education