How The Girls Avoided Reading Elaborated Printed Texts Available In The Museum?

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This exchange shows how the girls avoided reading elaborated printed texts available in the museum, such as those in wall pockets. Furthermore, it points to their viewing rather than print reading preferences in galleries. After the tour, when asked about a printed wall narrative of an African warrior garment (assembled from animal skins and parts, such as talons; dozens of little mirrors;, and small encased religious passages) that had greatly interested the girls, Periwinkle laughed and reported they hadn't read about it: "We just looked at it." In the context of reported adolescent literacy crises, where do Periwinkle and Chastain fall? Certainly, as AP students from backgrounds of privilege they are not likely at risk for academic failure as it is typically defined. Decoding print for them was seemingly a game, and looking, as Periwinkle implied, took precedence over reading printed text. The many remarkable museum objects Vibram Fivefingers Shoes that interested the two girls, such as the warrior's garment and African masks, did not encourage them to read the printed texts ...
... readily available about those and other museum objects. This was also the case with other adolescents in the study.

Take for instance the following exchange between two other adolescent participants, Bart and Clifford. They, like Periwinkle and Chastain, identified themselves as AP students and white, and they toured the Bedford on their own and at their own pace. In addition, the two boys were both from academic households; each had a parent who was involved in higher education. The following conversation took place as they stood in front of a Bedford exhibition titled "Art Tools of History," which was accompanied by 14 printed text labels and three descriptive text panels:

Bart: [looking into the case] Dude, that's some kind of hammer!
Clifford: It's really cool!
Bart: And that thing must be for grinding corn.
Clifford: Like a mortar and pestle. Maybe for medicine.
Bart: Dude, that looks like a lamp.
Clifford: And that looks like Shiva, the goddess of chaos. That could be her. I'm interested in Hinduism.
Bart: That's cool.
Clifford: I was just lookin' at this [pointing into case]. They're like nunchucks. My friend Jason likes to play with nunchucks a lot. He's into martial arts.

Throughout their museum experiences, the two boys moved on to other displays without looking at printed wall texts and labels. Nonetheless, this data snippet shows some of the qualities literacy educators, in theory, value. First, the tools apparently engaged Bart and Clifford as suggested by their exclamations. Second, in this short span of time they made text-to-self and text-to-text connections Vibram Five Fingers that encompassed practical tools, religion, and martial arts. Indeed, as a sociocultural act, the youths were decoding museum texts and spaces, and as shown in this segment, not choosing to incorporate the printed texts into their acts of reading. Nonetheless, this did not deter them from making meaning from museum texts, broadly defined to include images and other objects, spaces, and so forth.