Literacy and vulnerability: Shame or growth for readers who struggle

Jaeger, E. L. (2015). Literacy and vulnerability: Shame or growth for readers who struggle. Talking Points, 26(2), 17-25.


Once again, we are reminded that the words we use really DO matter. Here, Elizabeth Jaeger examines the words we use to describe “readers who struggle”. The words we hear and read most often when these readers are discussed are words with negative denotations and connotations.

When I was a child, we all knew who the “low” readers were. Jaeger discusses several other terms, including “disabled” and “remedial”, which suggest a medical model with reading difficulties seen as illnesses or “something wrong with” the reader. My university has a “diagnosis and remediation” course, and that name fits the medical model that suggests “pathology” in readers. Jaeger also challenges the term “at-risk” for its deficit focus and its tendency to blame students’ families and cultures for those deficits rather than looking at those differences as sources of strength. Even the currently preferred term, “struggling readers” focuses on and blames the reader rather than looking at possible contextual factors that may contribute to those struggles.

Jaeger quotes Curt Dudley-Marling’s suggestion that we “avoid the adjective-reader construction altogether” (p. 17) and instead just talk about readers. Jaeger does, however, propose an alternative adjective if we must have one: “vulnerable readers” (p. 17). A vulnerable reader has found reading difficult for a constellation of reasons that is unique to that individual reader. A vulnerable reader needs support to help her or him maximize strengths and work toward growing past the difficulties. With the deficit approach, these readers can often be subjected to shame that derails and shuts down growth.

Jaeger presents three case studies that illustrate her point. Each of these children had different kinds of difficulties with reading, and through support that focused on a search for strengths, each child found a strength that Jaeger terms that child’s “friend”. In “Ethan’s” case, he struggled with letter sounds and decoding, but his interest in finding out about history topics was his “friend”. Another child, “Sam”, had problems with comprehension and with making friends, but was good at math. He found that looking at comprehension strategies as algorithms made those algorithms his “friends”. A third student, “Bella”, struggled with academic vocabulary as many students do who, like her, have a home language other than English. Bella’s “friend” was her outgoing nature and her eagerness to keep trying even when reading was difficult.

In each case, we see a child who has unique strengths that can be used to overcome difficulties. Jaeger points out that for these vulnerable readers, the right help and support can lead to growth, but without that kind of strength-based support, these children could easily experience shame, defeat, and lack of growth.

A final point Jaeger makes is that the teachers of children who struggle can also feel vulnerable. It is easy to criticize teachers who do not support children in strength-based ways—until one has known the frustration and low self-efficacy that can occur when a teacher has tried everything he or she knows, and nothing seems to help. Today’s tendency to “blame the teacher” when a child does not learn can add to teachers’ vulnerability. A teacher, as much as a child, needs support to find strengths. A teacher, like a child, can tip in the direction of growth, or in the direction of shame.