“There is a certain irony to this point given that paperbacks are just as mass-produced as iPads at this point, but the persistent cultural attachments to print still have an impact on where and how students approach reading tasks in different contexts.” (Cohn, p.82)
This week I wrapped up my “Skim, Dive, Surface” annotating for this quarter although I have no doubt I will be back to it next quarter as it is the perfect text to read slowly alongside my ILC texts. I am excited to use this chapter to further build my ideas around this parallel between how we eat and how we read.
This chapter highlighted some of Cohns own research into this idea of digital vs physical reading in higher education I was reading about last week. In her own research she was able to discuss with college students the different contexts in which they would use physical vs digital reading. And this was a theme of much of the chapter, contextualizing where and when we use different forms of reading. Cohn found that in brainstorming or reading novels, students heavily leaned towards a physical book or pen and paper. But when it came to essays and analytical reading work there was a preference for digital texts. The intimate connection with the paper seemed to be a driving factor in any task that was deemed pleasurable with the research group, which makes sense, but how then do we drive a connection with the digital? Can we even do so?
She concludes the chapter by asking the reader, as an educator, to struggle with our own feelings about books? Where our ideas and feelings around print come from within our identities, and then the same with digital texts. She asks us to consider how we can leverage an emotional connection for good in the classroom, and how we can use this historical precedent to drive their students interests.
“Taking stock of our own feelings is critical to understanding what messages or ideas we may communicate to our students in turn as we likely aspire to help our students understand and make sense of their own feelings for reading. We should aim not to impose our own feelings on our students. In some cases, our feelings about what kinds of reading are appropriate can be harmful and discriminatory” (Gierdowski
& Galanek, 2020).
And secondly, how can we use this information about where students apply what form of reading and why to evaluate the emotional responses to different academic tasks, and how to push back against ingrained ideas that don’t serve students’ interests. As Cohn so neatly puts it, “If we give our students both the agency to make the choices and the tools to empower them to make those choices in ways that may allow them to assess their reading, writing, and learning situations appropriately, we can move forward from instrumentalist arguments to critical ones.” (p.89)