Disconnections: Pushing Readers Beyond Connections and Toward the Critical

This article highlights a popular classroom reading practice in the United States, connection-making with autobiographical experiences, and argues that this practice may hinder critical engagement with texts when not viewed as a continuum. Data from a multi-year ethnographic and teacher-research study that took place in a high-poverty community in the Midwest region of the U. S. are used to explore the use of disconnections as a potential entry point for critical literacy practices. Using sociocultural and critical frameworks for thinking about students and literacy, the authors present a case for encouraging students to notice and work through a spectrum of connection-making including disconnections they experience with text.