Semester of Graduation
Spring 2026
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Secondary and Middle Grades Education
Department
English
Committee Chair/First Advisor
Dr. Anete Vásquez
Second Advisor
Dr. Beth Marks
Third Advisor
Dr. Camille Sutton-Brown-Fox
Abstract
This present study examined how adolescents narrate their reading experiences and what those narratives reveal about reading identity, motivation, and engagement. This study responds to a persistent problem in literacy education: adolescent reading is often framed through disengagement or reduced to isolated constructs, while students’ lived reading experiences across school, home, digital, linguistic, and social contexts remain underexamined. Guided by Self-Determination Theory, Intersectionality, and Reader Response Theory, this study centers on adolescent voices and treats these participants’ stories as the primary avenue of understanding how they experience and interpret their reading lives and selves. Data were collected through narrative interviews, participant-generated artifacts, and contextual observations in a Title I high school. Findings revealed that participants did not narrate reading as simply present or absent. Instead, they described reading as conditional, relational, and context dependent. While each participant’s story was distinct, six cross-case themes emerged: reader identity as conditional and relational; format as a gatekeeper to engagement and meaning; narrative transportation and emotional stakes; media, time, and attention competition; bilingual reading as contextual and risk-laden; and agency, choice, and reader control as conditions for engagement. This study focuses on understanding adolescents’ reading lives through the lens of lived experience and context, and it offers implications for literacy instruction which honors reader identity, legitimizes varied reading practices, and creates more meaningful conditions for engagement.