Title: SparkNotes study guides, reading behavior, and the literary canon in contemporary ELA education
It is an open secret that high school and post-secondary students do not always read the books they are assigned in their English Language Arts (ELA) or literature classes—novels like Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, and 1984. Numerous editorials, blog posts, and articles in teaching trade publications have bemoaned the scourge of online study guides, which they claim students use to avoid the readings and cheat their way through English class. Of these, the most frequently cited offender is SparkNotes, a subsidiary of multibillion-dollar American bookselling giant Barnes and Noble and the dominant digital successor to printed study guides like Cole’s Notes and Cliffs Notes. The SparkNotes website attracts half a million visitors each month, and high school students report that its use is endemic among their peers; however, except for a passing mention in one qualitative study of reading behavior (Keller, 2013), no formal research has yet addressed the SparkNotes phenomenon.
This paper presents early research from a thesis project exploring SparkNotes’ impact on the ever-evolving theory and practice of ELA education. Preliminary findings from a large-scale survey of students’ SparkNotes use will be situated within a theoretical framework from New Literacy Studies (Hayles, 2012; Keller, 2013). In addition to describing aspects of contemporary students’ reading behavior in quantitative terms, this research raises questions about the role of primary texts in ELA education, particularly texts from the English literary canon.
Presenter
Amanda Light Dunbar is a Master’s student and incoming PhD student in the Department of Education at Concordia University, where she researches the role of SparkNotes study guides in English Language Arts (ELA) education. She holds a BA (Hon) in English Literature and a BEd from the University of British Columbia. In the past, Amanda has worked as an ELA and ESL teacher, and as a learning coach and program coordinator with the Learning Associates of Montreal, Trevor Williams Kids Foundation, and the Montreal Fluency Centre, specializing in literacy and executive function-based interventions for students with learning disabilities. These varied experiences have given Amanda a unique and nuanced perspective on education, which drives her to explore the points of disconnection between research, curriculum, and pedagogy. To connect, email amanda.light.dunbar@gmail.com.
