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The aim of this research, Reading Selection as Information Seeking Behavior: A Case Study with Adolescent Girls, was to explore how the experience of reading fiction affects adolescent girls aged 13 through 15, and how that experience changes based upon four activities: journaling, blogging, a personal interview, and a focus group session. Each participant reflects upon works of her own choosing that she had recently read. The data is evaluated using content analysis with the goal of developing a relational analysis tool to be used and tested with future research projects. The goal of this research is to use the insights of the field of bibliotherapy together with the insights of the adolescent girls to provide a higher, more robust model of successful information behavior. That is, relevance is a matter of impact on life rather than just a match of subject heading. This work provides a thick description of a set of real world relevancy judgments. This may serve to illuminate theories and practices for bringing each individual seeker together with appropriate documents. This research offers a new model for relevant information seeking behavior associated with selecting works of essential instructional fiction, as well as a new definition for terminology to describe the results of the therapeutic literary experience. The data from this study, as well as from previous research, suggest that literature (specifically young adult literature) brings the reader to a better understanding of herself and the world around her.

In this thesis, I explore and critique the content of the fashion teen magazine CosmoGirl. Through a bricolage of methods, I examine the magazine's representation of teen femininity and compare it to the editor's "pro-feminist" initial goal and intended social role for the publication. / Drawing upon previous studies, and linking my findings to established theories, I analyze the possible relationship between the publication's content and the influence this media genre has on the social development of young women. / My research findings show that CosmoGirl's portrayal of femininity is stereotypical, patriarchal and unrealistic and that such representation perpetuates negative and destructive feelings in young women. / In my discussion, I explore possible reasons for the lack of representation of the editor's goal for the magazine within the magazine's overall discourse. I also discuss the importance of media literacy in education as a means to alter today's media, so its representation of women becomes truthful.

Recent research has revealed a gender gap in reading attitudes and achievement. Broadly speaking, when compared with girls, boys display a more negative attitude towards reading and perform less well on measures of reading achievement. Yet, why boys appear to have such difficulties with reading and why girls appear to have fewer difficulties with it has yet to be fully explored. This thesis examines the talk of a group of grade five and six students at a multi-cultural, multi-lingual, mixed socio-economic urban elementary school, concerning their ideas of gender normative behaviour, gendered reading practices and the consequences of non-normative gender performances or gender crossing behaviour. Using Critical Socio-Cultural theories of literacy and learning and Feminist Post-Structuralist theories of gender and identity, this year long ethnographic study reveals that students' investments in their gender identities may help to create and maintain the gender gap in reading attitudes and achievement. In particular, boys' investment in maintaining a heteronormative masculine identity may interfere with their participation in school based print literacy. The implications of these findings for bridging the gender reading gap are discussed. In addition, this thesis raises questions about the simplicity of current conceptions of the gender reading gap that depict boys as victims and girls as victors in school. This thesis adds to research that calls for a more complex understanding of issues of gender, "race" and class in .contemporary classrooms.

This thesis is contained within the frame of a plot diagram, since it is a story about telling stories about stories. The conflict was initiated when it struck me that I had been living unawares inside a contradiction: I called myself a feminist, yet I loved and promoted the "Great Works of Western Literature", a canon reflecting patriarchal metanarratives. This conflict shaped the question, "What does it mean to say that we are gendered by what and how we read as girls?" I looked for clues by re-searching my graduate coursework, amongst the discourses of critical pedagogy, postmodernism, interpretive inquiry, and feminist literary criticism. Translating theory into rising action, I adopted as my approach the memory-work techniques described in Female Sexualization (1987), an exemplary work of feminist research. I formed the BookMarks Collective, comprising an affinity group of six women, including me, who met and responded to the question for five months by writing, critiquing, and rewriting memory-stories about their girlhood reading. The experience of collectivity itself became the story's climax: together we opened the door to a world we would not have discovered alone or lived theoretically. Together we brought to life the belief that change in ourselves preceeds pedagogic change, our conversations having sparked insights about our beliefs and practice that none had come to on her own. Together, we re-read "gendering" as a process within a complex and contradictory constructed reality in which we both act and are acted upon. Together, we recognized the power of collective consciousness-raising to enable us to re-view the textual meanings of our lifestories, allowing us to become conscious agents in their ongoing construction. / viii, 232 leaves ; 29 cm.

Recent research has revealed a gender gap in reading attitudes and achievement. Broadly speaking, when compared with girls, boys display a more negative attitude towards reading and perform less well on measures of reading achievement. Yet, why boys appear to have such difficulties with reading and why girls appear to have fewer difficulties with it has yet to be fully explored. This thesis examines the talk of a group of grade five and six students at a multi-cultural, multi-lingual, mixed socio-economic urban elementary school, concerning their ideas of gender normative behaviour, gendered reading practices and the consequences of non-normative gender performances or gender crossing behaviour. Using Critical Socio-Cultural theories of literacy and learning and Feminist Post-Structuralist theories of gender and identity, this year long ethnographic study reveals that students' investments in their gender identities may help to create and maintain the gender gap in reading attitudes and achievement. In particular, boys' investment in maintaining a heteronormative masculine identity may interfere with their participation in school based print literacy. The implications of these findings for bridging the gender reading gap are discussed. In addition, this thesis raises questions about the simplicity of current conceptions of the gender reading gap that depict boys as victims and girls as victors in school. This thesis adds to research that calls for a more complex understanding of issues of gender, "race" and class in .contemporary classrooms. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

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This study describes a content analysis of six contemporary young adult fiction novels. Adolescence is a time of great change, particularly for girls. It is during this time that female adolescents develop their voice and identity. As literature reflects the reader’s world, it also affects in part how female adolescents perceive their identity. Latent content analysis was used to code eight variables to determine if select contemporary young adult fiction novels appropriately describe the development of identity among adolescent females. All of the novels included in the study provided sufficient evidence of accurate portrayal of female adolescent identity development, by having examples of at least four out of eight variables, with most having examples of seven out of eight variables.