Youth and Power: An Empirical Study of Teenagers’ Responses to Adults’ Attempts to Influence their Reading
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2021
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| 01front.pdf | contents and abstract | 210.66 kB | |||
| 02whole.pdf | thesis | 1.44 MB |
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Teenage reading has come to the forefront of research and mainstream conversations about youth and education in the 21st century. Adults have dominated these discussions with their perspectives and expectations of how teenagers should read, excluding teenagers themselves from participation in these conversations. There is limited research on the role of adults on contemporary Australian teenagers’ reading, despite adults’ influential roles as authority figures in the lives of teenagers. As a result, adult-dominated conversations and scholarship have also overlooked how teenagers respond to the adult influences on their reading practices.
In this study, I explore these power dynamics between contemporary Australian teenagers and the adults who shape their engagement with literature—specifically, how teenagers respond to this adult influence. Hence my research question: How do contemporary Australian teenagers respond to the influence of adult authority figures on their reading practices, in the contexts of leisure and school reading?
I conducted 41 semi-structured qualitative interviews with Australian teenagers aged 12–20. My diverse group of participants included 37 current high school students. I also interviewed four recent high school graduates, to provide insight into how changes in environment and access to legal adult status have had an impact on teenagers’ responses to adult influence on their reading practices. Through a discourse analysis of my interview data, I identified and classified teenagers’ responses within two key contexts where adults sought to influence teenagers’ reading: personal and leisure reading, and school and literary education.
Further analysis of my data using the literary theories of aetonormative theory (Nikolajeva 2009; 2013) and youth theory (Seymour 2015), did not explain how real-life teenagers respond to adult expectations of their behaviour and world views. Based on my empirical investigation, I argue that teenagers respond to adult influences on their reading from critical and empowered positions, even when they are unable to access adult power. To model my findings, I propose a new theory I call Teenage Deference Theory (TDT) as a means of understanding these responses, and recognising teenagers as possessing their own power which allows them to navigate their interactions with adult authority figures and prioritise their own needs and interests. I also challenge the flawed adult perception of non-adults as inherently powerless due to their lack of access to traditional forms of adult power.
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