Reading as a Struggle

When culturally diverse and economically deprivedstudents do not excel in school discourses aboutstruggling readers about abilities and disabilitiesand about teacher preparedness and effectiveness areamong the factors that are considered. My bookshifts the label struggling reader away fromstudents and positions students as being challengedby making meaning from texts and by the educationalendeavors instead of basically struggling to read. It positions reading as the struggle and not thereaders as strugglers. I investigated the factorsthat impede and impel meaning making for students whoare challenged in this way. Six narratives revealsome of these factors that impede and impel meaningmaking from texts for these six culturally diversestudents. The students spoke of their past presentand anticipated future experiences with literacy. Ifound that aliteracy contributes to the delayedemergence of reading for some students who arelabeled struggling readers. Aliteracy represents theability to read but the choice not to read. Sociocultural sociolinguistic and socioeconomicfactors contribute to aliteracy and to studentsmaking meaning from texts.