Attitudes and Self-Perceptions of African-American Fifth Grade Students Reading African-American Literature

Abstract

African-American students' attitudes toward reading when provided with African-American literature for pleasurereading were investigated. The study was conducted with a class of fifth grade students in a central city school in southern Wisconsin. The students were provided with a set of African-American literature from which they were asked to choose a book and read during a 30 minute silent reading time everyday over a period of six weeks. Pre and post tests were given using the Reader's Self-Perception Scale, which is an instrument that is used to measure how students feel about themselves as readers. In addition to this instrument, students responded to their books in a Book Survey, which identified specific areas of interest that the students had found. Non-parametric tests, the Mann-Whitney U and Wilcoxen Signed Rank test, were used to compare the attitudes of African-American students with Non-African American students after the six week treatment. Results showed that I) there was no significant difference in the reading attitudes of the fifth grade African-American students after the