“Why Has She Stopped Reading?” The Case for Supporting Reading for Pleasure in Secondary Schools.
The aim of this study was to investigate why some children, who engage in reading for pleasure at primary school, stop reading once they have transitioned to secondary school. The study followed eight students from their last term of Year 6 primary education (10 to 11 year-olds) through to the end of their first term of Year 8 secondary education (12 to 13 year-olds). In this ethnographic interpretivist study I used a variety of methods including: observation, questionnaires and group conversations to discover the reasons why some students engage in less reading for pleasure once they begin their secondary school education. I employed thematic analysis to allow flexibility to my research and to provide a detailed and rich account. Some of the eight students involved in this study dramatically reduced the amount of reading which they engaged in and some continued to spend a similar amount of time engaging in reading for pleasure. Some students continued with familiar, safe, readerly texts and some students branched out to explore new genres and text types. This study provides insight into how the child as a reader changes once they move to secondary school and identifies what teachers need to know about the child to be able to facilitate reading for pleasure. New Year 7 students are concerned about perceived negative peer perceptions of readers and suggestions are made about the ways in which teachers and librarians can work with students to encourage reading for pleasure. A key finding of this study was that a precise understanding of Year 7 students as readers by secondary school English teachers is required for them to be able to facilitate students’ reading for pleasure. Suggestions are offered about how teachers can gain a greater understanding of their students as readers and suggestions are also offered about how to develop the child as a reader.
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