Children Reading for Pleasure in the Digital Age

Mapping Reader Engagement

Natalia Kucirkova, Teresa Cremin

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781529729849
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teacher Training

What does it mean to become a reader? What are the challenges and opportunities of engaging children in reading for pleasure in the 21st century? This book explores the ways in which reading for pleasure is changing in the era of globalisation, multiculturalism and datafication. Raising the next generation of engaged readers requires knowledge of the enduring characteristics of engagement and markers of quality in books and e-books. In addition, in order to develop new insights into children's experience of reading on and off screen, nuanced understandings of psychological and socio-cultural research are offered. The cross-disciplinary examination integrates key research from educational psychology, new literacies, multimodality and socio-cultural perspectives and explores consequences for practice. An authoritative guide - it invites graduates, researchers and teachers to participate in the authors' interdisciplinary dialogue about reading for pleasure.

1 Mapping the Terrain

Reading reflects and frames our lives, allowing us to make deep, personal connections with others and ourselves, to satisfy our curiosity and to learn more about the world. Whether children choose to read in childhood matters; it has the potential to make a difference to their learning and their life chances. Indeed, being a frequent reader can mitigate the negative influence of low socio-economic status on educational achievement (e.g. OECD, 2010). Extensive international evidence exists that demonstrates strong associations between the frequency with which young people read and their attainment, and many of these studies indicate the very significant role played in this interaction by the young reader’s desire – their intrinsic motivation to read (e.g. Schiefele et al., 2012; Sullivan and Brown, 2015; Taboada et al., 2009).

Reading for pleasure (RfP), that is volitional reading in which we choose to engage, can involve any kind of text, in any shape or form. In this new media age, such reading almost always includes digital texts, since digital technologies influence nearly every important aspect of human life: education, relationships, health, communication and work. Technologies combine and integrate key elements including portability, availability, connectivity, multimedia and personalisation, and as a consequence, they are powerful game-changers for the book industry. In this book we seek to draw attention to the positive influence digital technologies have had on children’s RfP and the ways in which the Internet has diversified the quality and augmented the quantity of texts available to children. Digital technologies have contributed to the process of children’s texts becoming increasingly multimodal, individualised and connected to others. Such texts, as parents and educators know, quickly draw in and engage young readers and they deserve our attention alongside more traditional printed texts. What texts children read matters. But do all texts incite their desire to read equally?

Narrative Texts

Children choose to read multiple forms of texts. In particular they engage with those that are of high interest and are meaningful to them, including for instance: advertising, comics, magazines, newspapers, fiction and non-fiction, all of which may be read on and/or offline. Drawing on our own research and that of others, we are particularly interested in children’s reading of fiction and we focus mainly on children’s literature, in print and digital book form. Whilst there is no officially agreed nomenclature for digital books, they typically relate to fictional narratives that are presented on digital devices, including dedicated reader devices (such as Kindle or Kobo) and multifunctional devices (such as iPads and smartphones).

In profiling fiction, we draw on the widely recognised power of narrative for constructing reality. Humans use narratives of various sorts as linguistic and cognitive tools to represent and reflect on the past, to structure and evaluate the present and to shape and inform their futures. Educationalists and literary scholars (e.g. Bruner, 1986; Hardy, 1977) as well as novelists (e.g. Gottschall, 2012) have highlighted the importance of narrative and reading narratives for human development and higher order thinking.

Nature designed us to enjoy stories so we could benefit from practice. Fiction is an ancient virtual reality technology that specialises in simulating human problems. (Gottschall, 2012: 59)

In addition, researchers have found that narrative texts, in part perhaps due to their inherent personal and emotional allure, involve and challenge young readers, enhancing their desire to spend more time reading (e.g. McKeown et al., 2015; Mol and Bus, 2011). More recent research demonstrates the existence of a substantial ‘fiction effect’ (Jerrim and Moss, 2018). Drawing on large scale data of 15 year olds from 35 OECD countries, this study reveals that those young people who read fiction frequently, have significantly stronger reading skills than their peers who do not. Importantly, this effect does not hold for the four other text types: magazines, non-fiction, newspapers and comics (Jerrim and Moss, 2018). Whilst we recognise that RfP contributes to far more than children’s academic attainment, and deserves to be valued in its own right as an aesthetically engaging experience and a way of making sense of experience, we find the argument for a ‘fiction effect’ compelling and foreground it accordingly.

We consider that reading literature in narrative form distinctively excites and enhances the imagination, helping children consider myriad possibilities and connections. Connecting to Craft’s framework of possibility thinking (e.g. Craft, 2001; Cremin et al., 2006) we conceptualised children’s pleasurable engagement with print and digital texts, and identified six facets linked to narrative. These comprise: sustained, shared, interactive, affective, creative and personalised engagement (Kucirkova et al., 2017) and we use these to underpin our arguments in this book. Children’s engagement in narrative encourages them to persist, to read on, to read more frequently and to interact with others about what they are reading, but how does this operate with print and digital books and what difference does the social context make? These are some of the issues we address, whilst always cognisant that what young people read, and the social context of reading are crucial to them finding pleasure and satisfaction in the process. The context always matters; it shapes their engagement in the reading experience.

Reading as Social Practice

Reading, Knoester (2010) argues, has historically been misconstrued as a solitary not a social practice. In education in the English-speaking Western world, it is also frequently framed as a set of neutral cognitive skills that can be taught and tested. This framing and assessment of reading is underpinned by what Street (1984, 2008) describes as an autonomous model of literacy. This views literacy/reading as a set of skills which are independent of context (where and how we use them), and can thus be taught through an authoritarian form of pedagogy in school. The model assumes a hierarchy of skill levels with literacy acquisition as a ladder that children have to climb. It categorises learners according to the level of skill that they do not yet possess and as such is a deficit model, as no attention is paid to what learners can do on their own terms. It also implies these skills are transferrable from the classroom context to the outside world. Yet as Luke and Freebody (1997) remind us, teaching and learning are made possible through social interaction and discourse exchange, not through knowledge transmission or the acquisition of specific skills at a particular point in time.

In this book we view literacy and reading as a social practice, located in interaction between people; we recognise it is socially and historically constructed and framed by the context of its use. We adhere to Street’s (1984, 2008) ideological model of literacy which takes account of difference – of different texts and different contexts – and we recognise the uniqueness of each learner. We do not envision a perfect twenty-first century reader, rather we recognise, as Barthes (1975) highlighted, that we continue to give ourselves reading lessons throughout our lives as we encounter texts which make new and interesting demands on us, demands that we choose to respond to for our own reasons. In addition, we recognise that reading varies in response to different cultural norms and discourses (e.g. relating to gender, identity) and that it is always embedded in relations of power. For children at home with their siblings and caregivers, or at school with peers and teachers, the reading experience and the sharing of these experiences with others is influenced by what counts as reading in these contexts, by their relationships (including power relations), and by the agency afforded them, as well as by the texts and identity positions they adopt or that are made available to them. These and other contextual factors contribute significantly to the pleasure involved. Working from a socio-cultural perspective, we seek, in alignment with Dyson (1995), to understand RfP both through the unofficial lens that frames children’s everyday reading lives and practices at home, and through the official lens that frames their experience of reading in school.

Positioning RfP

Although we are placing RfP under the spotlight, we are acutely aware that in many countries where high-stakes testing holds sway, this non-assessed aspect of reading is marginalised. There is an inherent suspicion that RfP is not actually ‘work’, but is merely an additional extra, (albeit a desirable one), that will take time away from the serious and important business of learning to read (predominantly through phonics) and learning to comprehend. Since schools are assessed on these aspects, children’s volitional reading too often remains backstage. It is rarely rigorously planned for, and merely afforded a real role to play in celebratory events such as World Book Day or Night.

In addition, since narrow conceptualisations of reading underpin the curricula of many countries, teachers can come to unquestioningly accept these, and view reading as merely proficiency – a universal set of technical skills that are defined for them by the nation or the state. Such skills are perceived to be independent of text and context, yet as adult readers we know that what we are reading and where we are and with whom during particular reading events influences our interest and engagement as readers. Intriguingly a disjuncture often appears to exist between teachers’ personal engagement in RfP as a choice-led affectively engaging, cognitive and social process, and their pedagogic practice as professionals within the system.

Nonetheless, there are schools that place RfP at the centre of school life, and build children’s delight and desire, even with limited budgets. Such schools eschew RfP as a series of activities or slots in the timetable and instead they plan and integrate RfP pedagogy that is responsive to their children’s interests and home reading practices – print and digital, on and offline. Such practice is also reliant upon teachers’ subject knowledge of children’s literature and other texts and is enriched by staff adopting a Reading Teacher stance, as a teacher who reads and a reader who teaches. This positions the teacher as a fellow reader, helps to build reader relationships and over time, combined with the chance to read, hear and talk about texts in a highly social reading environment, contributes to the creation of reciprocal reading communities (Cremin et al. 2014).

Mapping the Journey

Drawing on work in developmental psychology and education, we seek to consider the value, challenges and opportunities of children’s engagement in contemporary RfP. Through this book we explore the personal and social nature of RfP; an approach that invites theory–practice dialogue from which to discover and elaborate new meanings. In the process we work towards three goals: to theorise the experience and practice of RfP, to deploy an interdisciplinary approach and to engage in an examination of the interrelationships between personal and collective RfP in school.

In relation to theorising RfP, whilst the empirical base regarding print texts is reasonably well-established, empirical evidence concerning children’s volitional reading of digital books is slim due to the recent appearance of digital reading devices. We orient our analysis of the field around the reader’s engagement with texts which is inherently personal, and aim to bring the children’s reader identities to the fore. So that our readers can trace our claims back to rigorous empirical analyses, most of our arguments are drawn from peer-reviewed journal articles and books based on research projects. We have both worked with teachers, early years practitioners and professionals, literacy charities, publishers and children’s app designers in consultancy or voluntary positions and draw on these experiences to substantiate our practical recommendations. As such, we present our readers with insights that have been set out in scholarly literature, but also tried and tested in educational practice. We interweave reflections and observations from practice with empirical and theoretical work in all chapters in order to foster non-hierarchical relationships between practice and research.

We adopt an interdisciplinary approach to examine the fabric of reading with and on screens and the enchantment that is possible through narrative. The need for increased interdisciplinarity in designing and interpreting children’s reading in the digital age has been recognised by the European Union, which has several funding streams dedicated to the study of children’s reading on screen. We discuss and conceptualise children’s RfP from the perspective of multiple disciplines and combine insights from our empirical work that has followed different disciplinary origins, including psychology, education and literary studies. Interdisciplinarity is essential for fostering multi-stakeholder conversations and is therefore a key goal for us as reading researchers. Employing a socio-cultural lens, we are particularly interested in the roles of personal agency and the nature of social mediation in RfP; the ways the individual reader and communities of readers are positioned, enabled and enriched through their engagement with texts, print and digital.

Our focus on the interrelationship between a personal and collective response to reading offers a rich conceptual space from which to explore the experience of RfP in the twenty-first century. We argue that the nature of RfP has been affected by the emergence of multimedia, customisable and highly versatile texts, and that these socio-technological changes influence children’s responses to reading fiction. In this book, we propose a new theoretical construct – reciprocal RfP – which unites the psychological and socio-cultural research on children’s reading at home and school, and honours the interrelationship between personal and collective responses to narratives. We study these personal–social interrelationships at the meso and micro levels. The meso level relates to the influence of adults who mediate children’s experiences and the micro to the characteristics of the reading medium itself.

In examining contemporary children’s engagement in reading print and digital books and profiling the personal as well as social aspects of RfP, we aim to offer both teachers and researchers additional tools to think with as they document, develop and nurture children’s volitional reading.

2 Reading for Pleasure in the Digital Era

Our shared interest in children’s volitional engagement in reading is motivated not only by scholarly concerns, but also by policy and practice questions. International evidence reveals that the frequency with which young people, and particularly boys, engage in volitional reading markedly decreases as they move through the years of schooling (Mullis et al., 2012; OECD, 2010). Furthermore, reading for pleasure (RfP) is not always foregrounded in schools in ways that nurture young readers and enable reciprocal reading communities to be built. We believe that more attention needs to be paid to the experience of reading, the inner satisfactions and pleasures, as well as those experienced through shared engagement and discussion. Our research, and that of other colleagues, reveals that it is more than possible to entice and engage children as readers in this digitally saturated era. Much depends however on our knowledge, understanding and practice, and the print and digital texts made available to them.

In order to examine contemporary children’s RfP explore the reading experience and consider how to build affect and reciprocity in action in classrooms, we frame our discussions in this chapter and throughout the book around a set of encompassing dimensions of reading engagement (Kucirkova et al., 2015). These include: affective, creative, interactive, shared, sustained and personalised reading engagement and can be applied to reading any text, including for example interactive story apps or classic narrative poetry printed on hand-made paper. We examine these facets towards the end of this chapter, having explored the nature of RfP and the benefits that accrue to those who develop a love of reading in childhood. In addition, we voice our concerns about children’s attitudes to and engagement in reading, reflect on print and digital books, and critically examine the quality of many e-books, our primary digital text focus. We try to avoid a digital–print books divide; rather we seek to consider the rich experiences, challenges and opportunities of children’s contemporary engagement in reading.

RfP

Reading for pleasure, a term more frequently used in England than elsewhere, is fundamentally volitional, choice-led reading of any kind of text. Often described as ‘free voluntary’ or ‘independent reading’ in the US (Krashen, 2004) and as ‘recreational reading’ in Canada (Ross et al., 2006), it is closely associated with intrinsic motivation and feeds our desire for more such engagement. It is the reading that we do of our own free will, anticipating the satisfaction that we will get from the experience. It also encompasses reading which, whilst it might have begun at someone else’s request, is sustained by the reader in response to their personal interest (Clark and Rumbold, 2006). RfP thus refers to a positive attitude towards the act of reading and involves sustained engagement with books and texts. For many educators, RfP is associated with two easily observable features: children’s motivation and desire to read, and their engagement. Such a perception is well aligned with the OECD’s (2016) recently widened conception of reading which they use in the influential Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests.

‘Changes in our concept of reading since 2000 have led to an expanded definition of reading literacy, which recognises motivational and behavioural characteristics of reading alongside cognitive characteristics. (OECD, 2016: 7)’

This re-conceptualisation serves as a reminder that as educators and researchers we need to avoid accepting the narrow notions of reading that dominate tests and policies internationally, and tend to view reading as simply decoding and comprehension. Instead we need to re-consider reading and RfP, learning from our own experiences as readers as well as those of the young, and seeking to understand more fully the available theoretical arguments and emerging empirical evidence. Such considerations will help us as we work to nurture young people’s identities as readers, enrich thei...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Acknowledgements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustration List
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgements
• Praise for the Book
• 1 Mapping the Terrain
• 2 Reading for Pleasure in the Digital Era
• 3 The Personal and the Affective
• 4 The Personal Entangled
• 5 Reading for Pleasure Pedagogy
• 6 Reciprocal Reading Communities
• 7 Readers’ Identities
• 8 Documenting Volitional Reading
• 9 Revisiting the Journey
• References
• Index