Literacy Sponsorship: Implications for Teacher Roles, Student Book Choice, and Equitable Literacy Access

Teachers hold significant power to determine which books or printed materials students might access, choose, or reject. It is important to consider how teachers' objectives, understandings, or perspectives serve as literacy sponsorship and implicitly privilege or suppress which texts, genres, or authors students access. This case study examines one teacher's literacy sponsorship roles that manifested as an expert, provider, and gatekeeper bookmobile checkout program. Acknowledging and exploring teachers' roles as literacy sponsors are imperative to understanding and addressing literacy equity. This study confirms the need for teachers to consider how text guidance, suggestions, or choices for students are forms of literacy sponsorship and potentially withhold or promote implicit notions of reading habits, topics, or attitudes about literacy practices.