Critical Content Analysis of Children's and Young Adult Literature

Reframing Perspective

Holly Johnson, Janelle Mathis, Kathy G. Short, Holly Johnson, Janelle Mathis, Kathy G. Short

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317311492
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Langues et linguistique
• Sous-sujet: Alphabétisation

In this book the authors describe their strategies for critically reading global and multicultural literature and the range of procedures they use for critical analyses. They also reflect on how these research strategies can inform classrooms and children as readers. Critical content analysis offers researchers a methodology for examining representations of power and position in global and multicultural children's and adolescent literature. This methodology highlights the critical as locating power in social practices by understanding, uncovering, and transforming conditions of inequity. Importantly, it also provides insights into specific global and multicultural books significant within classrooms as well as strategies that teachers can use to engage students in critical literacy.

1

Critical Content Analysis as a Research Methodology

Kathy G. Short with the Worlds of Words Community

Content analysis has frequently been used as a research method to examine children’s and young adult literature as texts, particularly within the field of literary studies. Our own interests as educators typically focused on studying the responses of readers to these texts. Over time, however, we found that we needed to critically examine the texts as well and so turned to research methodology textbooks and published studies to find out more about the methodology. After extensive searches and discussions with researchers across disciplines, we realized that the procedures for this analysis are usually not described in detail in published studies and are discussed only briefly in methodology textbooks.

In particular, we are interested in procedures for critical content analysis with a definition of critical as a stance of locating power in social practices in order to challenge conditions of inequity. Our struggles to define the methodology and to locate useful analysis procedures brought the authors of this book together. We talked with literary critics who engage in critical content analysis, such as Clare Bradford, and read the work of many literary critics, such as John Stephens, Perry Nodelman, Roberta Trites, and Mavis Reimer. We read critical content analyses by educators who focus on representational issues, power relations, and language as a postcolonial tool, particularly seminal studies by Rudine Sims Bishop (1982) and Joel Taxel (1986). Recent research by educators, such as Vivian Yenika-Agbaw, Wanda Brooks, Patricia Enciso, Carmen Medina, Maria Botelho, and Masha Rudman, was especially helpful. We revisited content analysis within the field of communication to understand the history of this methodology and engaged in our own critical content analyses. In addition, we met as a group over several summers, reading critical content analysis studies and descriptions of the methodology. Finally, we sponsored a study group and several sessions on critical content analysis at annual conventions of the Literacy Research Association to engage in conversations with other researchers (Beach et al., 2009).

These experiences led us to identify processes within critical content analysis as a methodology and to realize that our work as educators influences our approach to critical content analysis. We learned a great deal from literary critics but our intentions as researchers differ in significant ways because of our commitment to, and knowledge of, children, adolescents, teachers, and classrooms. Those differences influence our reasons for selecting a specific research focus, critical theory lens, and set of texts, as well as our reflections on the implications of our research for children as readers. This shift in focus also includes an interest in critical literacy and the ways in which our research strategies can inform classroom practice. The findings from critical content analysis studies of children’s texts provide important insights and critical perspectives on specific global and multicultural books that are often used in classrooms. In addition, the strategies and questions we use as research analysis can be adapted as strategies for critical reading by teachers and students.

Our experiences as researchers in the field of education also influence the ways we write about our work, particularly in the use of a research report framework that includes descriptions of research procedures. We admire the ways in which literary critics in children’s literature write about their work, often without subheadings, as they weave theory and data together to construct a compelling argument. At the same time, we recognize that we would have difficulty getting our work published in journals for educators, the group of people we want to reach as an audience, using that format. The different expectations between our fields were apparent in a conversation with Clare Bradford after hearing her present on her research methodology. We were excited about her careful and clear description of research procedures and asked why she did not describe those procedures in her published work. Her puzzled response was “It never occurred to me to do that. It isn’t something that would be expected or appreciated in literary journals.” For us, the opposite is true. Our interest in research procedures, however, goes beyond getting published to include strengthening our analysis strategies and challenging the field to view critical content analysis as a rigorous approach to research of children’s and adolescent books as texts.

This chapter provides the contextual frame for this book through a brief description of the history of content analysis and a description of how we have conceptualized and actualized critical content analysis as a research methodology. The following chapters enact this conceptualization through reports of research that include careful descriptions of research procedures and discussions of the findings. The final chapter considers implications of these research analysis strategies for critical literacy approaches in teacher education and K–12 classrooms.

A Brief History of Content Analysis

‘Content analysis’ is an umbrella term used to indicate different research methods for analyzing texts and describing and interpreting the written artifacts of a society (White & Marsh, 2006). The content of texts are interpreted through coding and identifying themes or patterns, with the actual approaches ranging from impressionistic, intuitive, and interpretive analyses to systematic quantitative textual analyses (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). Since content analysis involves making inferences from texts to the contexts of their use by using analytical constructs derived from theories or research, researchers adapt content analysis to their research questions and develop a range of techniques and approaches for analyzing text (Krippendorff, 2003).

Although content analysis rose to scholarly prominence in the 1950s in the United States, the method dates back to the 17th century to Western European religious scholars who analyzed newspaper articles for immoral content. In the 18th century, content analysis was used in Scandinavia to examine hymns that were not approved by Lutheran Church officials for possible heresy (Krippendorff, 2003).

Content analysis moved beyond religious affiliations to a more robust and accepted methodology in the 20th century through association with communications studies in the United States. Newspaper readership was flourishing and journalism scholars were interested in exploring the types of news being covered as well as how much space was devoted to each type. This led to quantitative content analysis where analysts counted words or inches of column space for particular types of news (Neuendorf, 2002). This quantitative content analysis was adapted to new media that subsequently emerged, including radio, television, film, and, the Internet. While this work was primarily contained in the field of communications and the study of mass media, other fields such as history, psychology, and sociology used variations of this method. For example, the Payne Fund Studies was a large multidisciplinary effort from 1929–1932 to study the effects of movies on children’s attitudes and learning.

Content analysis currently includes both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Quantitative approaches are used in fields concerned with mass communications (Neuendorf, 2002), while qualitative content analysis covers methods such as discourse analysis, social constructivist analysis, rhetorical analysis, and textual analysis. Neuendorf (2002), who writes from a quantitative perspective, defines content analysis as a “summarizing, quantitative analysis of messages that relies on the scientific method and is not limited to the types of variables that may be measured or the context in which the messages are created or presented” (p. 10). On the other hand, Krippendorff (2003) sees content analysis as a “research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from the texts to the contexts of their uses” (p. 18). Hsieh and Shannon (2005) note that this approach reflects a focus on “the characteristics of language with attention to the content or contextual meaning of the text” (p. 1278).

Researchers use qualitative content analysis to make inferences from texts and to make sense of these interpretations within contexts surrounding the texts. This analysis involves the close reading of small amounts of texts that are interpreted by the analyst and then contextualized in new narratives. Wilson (2009) gives the example of a researcher “reading” the clothing worn by teens and putting that clothing into different categories representing similar meanings, such as a Goth or hip hop. These categories represent inferred meanings that make sense within the context of a particular group of teens within a particular culture and time period.

Galda, Ash, and Cullinan (2000) argue that the two major strands of research on children’s literature as text have been literary analysis and content analysis, each with considerable variation. They point out that although the purposes are similar, the methods differ, with literary analysis describing what authors do and content analysis examining what the text is about.

Stephens (2015) argues against this opposition, pointing out that literary analysis is based on asking “What is this text about?” (p. v) through a theoretical lens and that “any analysis of stylistic devices or narrative patterns is directed towards the interpretation of content” (p. vi). He points out that content analysis is significant because of its focus on literature as representations of human experience and that research involves asking higher-level questions, such as “How do I determine the significance of what happens here?” (p. vi), that lead researchers to select particular methodological tools.

In the past, content analyses of children’s books were initially quantitative, counting the presence and images of a particular cultural group or phenomena (Galda et al., 2000). Recent research has become qualitative with researchers taking a theoretical position that frames the development of research criteria for text analysis based on an understanding of texts and readings of these texts in the social, cultural, and political contexts in which they are considered (Short, 1995).

Content analysis reflects a hermeneutic, reader-response-oriented research stance and so meaning is not in the text but in the reading event, which is a transaction between an analyst and a text (Rosenblatt, 1938). Texts thus have multiple meanings that are dependent on the analyst’s intentions as a reader and the context of the study because the purpose for the reading influences the meanings that are constructed as research findings. Analysts read to draw inferences from texts to apply to the context of the study, thus to make sense of something outside of the text. The texts do not speak for themselves, but are read in order to inform another context (Krippendorff, 2003).

Since content analysis is a stance, one option for researchers is to take a critical stance. What makes a study “critical” is the theoretical framework used to think within, through, and beyond the text, and involves a particular critical theory, such as postcolonialism, critical race theory, or queer studies.

The “Critical” in Critical Content Analysis

Adding the word “critical” in front of content analysis signals a political stance by the researcher, particularly in searching for and using research tools to examine inequities from multiple perspectives. Researchers who adopt a critical stance focus on locating power in social practices by understanding, uncovering, and transforming conditions of inequity embedded in society (Rogers, 2004). This critical consciousness challenges assumptions within thought and in the world that privilege some and oppress others (Willis et al., 2008).

Critical content analysis differs from content analysis in prioritizing a critical lens as the frame for the study, not just as part of interpreting the findings or citing scholarship in a literature review. Some researchers who engage in content analyses use a critical theory to comment on their findings, while in critical content analysis, the researcher uses a specific critical lens as the frame from which to develop the research questions and to select and analyze the texts. A critical approach is based in the intentions of the researcher to transform conditions of inequity and so this stance pervades all aspect of the research process (Willis et al., 2008). Since the researcher takes a political stance based in issues of inequity and power, some researchers believe that this positioning is subjective and unduly influences the research. Freire (1970) argues that all research is political and is always from within the subjective stance of the researcher. Critical content analysis makes the researcher’s stance explicit and public to readers of that research.

Critical theory developed out of the work of Kant, Hegel, Marx, and the Frankfurt School, but current theoretical conceptions are traced to Paulo Freire (1970) who states that the world and texts are socially constructed and read through perspectives that differ from one reader to another. Each person conditions or transacts with a specific text in unique ways based on that person’s lived experiences, value systems, and cultural understandings (Rosenblatt, 1938). Texts are never neutral as readers can revise, rewrite, and reconstruct texts to shift and reframe meaning (Vasquez, 2012). Texts are also written from a particular perspective to convey particular understandings of the world with the language of the text and the narrative strategies positioning readers toward particular meanings. Because of this positioning of text and reader, the perspectives of each should be questioned. The concept of critical therefore requires a questioning stance when reading the word and the world (Freire & Macedo, 1987).

Typically this questioning stance focuses on social issues involving race/ethnicity, class, or gender, and the ways language is used to shape representations of others who could be similar or dissimilar to the intended audience. The language used can impact the way readers perceive specific groups of people and by extension influence the power those within particular groups may or may not have within a specific society. For instance, women are often portrayed as more sensitive and thus are often held suspect when being considered for powerful roles in the United States.

A critical stance often includes questioning the concept of “truth” and how it is presented, by whom, and for what purposes. Other questions also emerge around whose values, texts, and ideologies are privileged or considered normative. A critical stance focuses on voice and who gets to speak, whose story is told, and in what ways. Groups marginalized on the basis of gender, language, culture and race, and sexual orientation are often the focus of a critical lens (Luke, 2012).

Freire (1970) argues that a critical lens involves critique (questioning what is and who benefits), hope (asking what if and considering new possibilities), and action (taking action for social justice). A critical lens thus moves from deconstruction to reconstruction and then to action. Freire points out that in everyday life many people stop at critique (deconstruction), which often paralyzes them with guilt, unsure about how to take action. In critical content analysis, the focus is on critique, on a critical examination of issues of stereotyping and misrepresentation in literature, a deconstruction of books and the societal issues that are reflected in representations of particular groups of people. Freire makes it clear that we should also be looking for reconstruction, for the ways in which texts position characters as resistant to existing stereotypes and representations in order to develop counter-narratives, and to offer new possibilities for how to position ourselves in the world. Based on critique and hope, researchers take action through publishing their work to a broader audience and engaging with teachers and students in their own critical analysis and use of these texts.

One of our first steps as researchers was to immerse ourselves in critical theories that seemed most relevant to our work, to spend time reading and grounding ourselves in theory. This immersion made it clear that there are many possible critical stances, including poststructuralism, critical race theory, critical feminism, postcolonialism, trauma theory, green theory, Marxism, New Historicism, gender and queer theory, and childism. Reynolds (2011) points out that scholarship in children’s literature has benefited from adapting the critical theories used in literary, media, and cultural studies to support investigations based on narratives for children. Which theory is used depends on the research purpose with researchers often combining multiple theories to construct a critical lens through which to analyze text.

Conversations with literary critics indicate that they believe that a strong grounding in theory is one of the differences between content analysis as conducted by educators and their own work. We agree that educational researchers often do not forefront theory, tending to cite rather than to think with theory about their data. One of the major contributions to our thinking about critical content analysis was recognizing the importance of prioritizing theory. We noticed that we tend to quickly locate our studies within a the...