A secret society of readers: College-age mentors’ literacy experiences with young adolescent mentees
Abstract
This study occurred within Year One and Year Two of an ongoing literacy initiative designed to build reader identities among underserved middle school students. Using a near-peer mentoring model, mentees were paired with college-student mentors to interact weekly around books and reading. Reader interests and identities are influenced by affective and relational approaches through mentored reading experiences and a variety of texts. This qualitative case study (n = 11 of 24 Year One and n = 13 of 37 Year Two mentors) aimed to identify the ways mentor/mentee relationships affect reader interests, attitudes, and skills, and to evaluate the initiative. We codified key themes in the interview data and identified ideas that were recurrent and reinforced. We assert that near-peer relationships were central, group dynamics matter, reader interests and identities were key, reader identities were (re)discovered, and time proved both structural and relational. Literacy practices through mentored reading experiences compel us to consider how interactions with texts and each other shape who we are and who we become.
Keywords
mentoring, affect theory, near-peer, relationships, reader identity, reader agency
ORCID Identifiers
Lindsay Persohn: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9937-1156
Dulcey Bishop Hunter: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-1253-6245
Chelsea Rivera: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-9818-2606
Karyn Z. Mendez: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-8554-6074
Cheryl R. Ellerbrock: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0070-5268
Lucy Monette: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-4462-1845
DOI
10.5038/2577-509X.9.2.1436
Recommended Citation
Persohn, L., Hunter, D. B., Rivera, C., Mendez, K. Z., Ellerbrock, C. R., & Monette, L. (2025). A secret society of readers: College-age mentors’ literacy experiences with young adolescent mentees. Journal of Global Education and Research, 9(2), 125-138. https://www.doi.org/10.5038/2577-509X.9.2.1436
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
