Working-class boys’ relationships with reading: contextual systems that support working-class boys’ engagement with,and enjoyment of,reading

Drawing on interviews with 15 boys attending schools in low socioeconomic communities in Australia, this paper examines the multiplicity of contextual influences on boys’ everyday reading experiences. Implementing an ecological metaphor, boys’ narratives about (i) their attitudes towards reading at school (microsystem); (ii) parental beliefs about reading (mesosystem); (iii) masculinities within low socioeconomic communities (exosystem), and; (iv) reading as socially valued knowledge (macrosystem) are explored. The paper illustrates the textured nature of immediate and broader influences on boys’ engagement with, and positioning of, reading. In particular, the paper challenges dominant discourses about working-class boys’ reading practices, contributing to research into literacy in-situ to make visible the immediate and broader contextual systems that influence the ways working-class boys engage with, and enjoy, reading.     

Masculinity Politics, Myths and Boys' Schooling: A Review Essay

This essay reviews two recently published American books about masculinity politics—Michael Kimmel's pro-feminist Manhood in America and his edited collection The Politics of Manhood —in order to comment critically on the current debate underway in various parts of the world on 'boys' and their schooling which sees them as the 'new victims' of the educational process.     

Examining Boys’ Readings of Gender in the English Classroom

As an opinionated and often challenging class of year 10 boys, they demonstrated a strong sense of their identity as a group of ‘bright boys’. One of their English teachers described the class as ‘boisterous, but very motivated – they love discussing texts’, but she also recognised their tendency to ‘descend into testosterone fuelled competitiveness’. I became interested in the ways these boys read and responded to literature and in particular how their strong view of themselves as ‘bright boys’ influenced their reading of gender in literature. I examine two lessons with this year 10 class in which they discussed representations of gender in two literary texts. I was interested in the ways they constructed and asserted their masculine identities through class discussions about gender in literature and I found myself wondering: how do these boys read gender, and why do they read gender in these ways?     

川端康成的掌小说论考——以表现少男少女情感的作品为中心

掌小说被誉为＂川端文学的故乡＂,在川端康成早期的文学创作中,点缀着大量风格清新的掌小说,其中表现少男少女的爱及感伤的作品洋溢着青春时代诗的精神,成为其青春时光的缩影。本文以川端康成的表现少男少女情感的掌上小说为中心考察了作品中少男少女的共同特点以及从小说传递出的作者回归少年的心理。     

阅读的退化与回归--兼谈大学生阅读兴趣的培养

阅读是一种深刻而复杂的精神活动,是信息传播的有效手段。人们通过阅读可以丰富自己的精神世界。目前,在高等教育的非中专业普遍开设的大学语课就是一种促进阅读,培养健康人格和个性的途径。因此,要有一本好教材还要有一种好方法。     

用“讲”的方式引导儿童的文学阅读

学前儿童的认知决定了学前儿童欣赏文学作品的特殊性,因此在学前教育专业《儿童文学》的课程教学中,必须根据学前儿童的特殊审美方式,培养学生具备＂讲＂的能力,培养学生学会选择优秀的文学作品去＂讲＂,从而在今后的教学中能培养儿童的阅读兴趣,让孩子们爱上＂阅读＂,为他们开启文学之门。     

Reading and Related Skills in the Early School Years: Are boys really more likely to struggle?

This study examined whether boys and girls in the early school years differed in reading and related skills, and their rates of progress. Gender ratios were calculated to ascertain whether there were more boys than girls who struggle with different facets of reading, and whether the variability of boys’ scores resulted in more boys being identified as poor readers, as evidenced by previous studies. A sample of 335 students in Years 1 and 2 were administered six reading and related assessments. Boys and girls did not significantly differ on any of the measures, and differences in gains were negligible. Boys did not consistently demonstrate significantly greater variability in scores (with the exception of single-word reading and spelling in Year 1 only). These differences, however, did not affect gender ratios for poor performance. Gender ratios were relatively low across measures, but increased with years of schooling. Implications of the results are discussed.     

Feminist struggles to mobilise progressive spaces within the ‘boy‐turn’ in gender equity and schooling reform

This article presents the stories of two Australian feminist educators, ‘Kath’ and ‘Kim’. Drawn from a small‐scale interview‐based study, the stories highlight these women’s struggles to mobilise progressive spaces within the current boy‐focused equity and schooling agenda. Such struggles are located within the new possibilities for feminist intervention enabled by current educational trends in Australia. The stories focus on Kath and Kim’s experiences leading the professional development of teachers from several schools in Queensland (Australia) as part of the $19.4 million national initiative, Success for Boys. The article draws on feminist understandings of ‘progressive’ spaces and highlights the requisite conditions necessary for mobilising such spaces. In particular, Kath and Kim’s stories bring to light the powerful role emotions continue to play in both enabling and constraining gender reform and the continued significance of attending to, and working with, such emotions to enhance the pursuit of gender justice in schools.     

The link between fiction and teenagers’ reading skills: International evidence from the OECD PISA study

It is well known that children who read more tend to achieve higher scores in academic reading tests. Much less is known, however, about the link between reading different types of text and young people's reading performance. We investigate this issue using the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 database, exploring the association between the frequency with which teenagers read five different types of text (magazines, non-fiction, fiction, newspapers and comics) and their PISA reading scores. Analysing data from more than 250,000 teenagers from across 35 industrialised countries, we find evidence of a sizeable ‘fiction effect’; young people who read this type of text frequently have significantly stronger reading skills than their peers who do not. In contrast, the same does not hold true for the four other text types. We therefore conclude that encouraging young people to read fiction may be particularly beneficial for their reading skills. Interventions encouraging fiction reading may be especially important for boys from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds, who are less likely to read this text type.     

The good, the bad and the ugly: teachers' perception of quality in fiction for adolescent readers

Recent years have seen a great development in fiction written for the adolescent market‐teenage fiction. This article seeks to explore the notion of quality in teenage fiction building on earlier research by Whitehead (1977), Hall and Coles (1999), and Benton (1995a) and using findings from interviews with teachers in secondary schools in the South West of England in 2003 and 2004, the first phase in a study into perceptions of quality in teenage fiction. Questions are raised about whether English teachers have sufficient knowledge of this genre of literature to support pleasure and progress in reading for adolescents and also whether teenage fiction should be more directly addressed in the curriculum perhaps through a school canon, which may apply educational criteria to define a body of literature that begins where the child is, but allows for clear progression in reading.     

运用手语故事引导聋学生自主阅读的研究与实践

阅读是聋学生形成和发展汉语言能力的一个重要途径,但阅读的持久进行必须依靠阅读时产生的愉悦。手语故事形象生动,容易理解,受到聋学生的喜爱,是引导和帮助聋学生找到阅读乐趣的有效方法。在教育教学中,通过手语故事引导和帮助聋学生自主阅读,又通过自主阅读引导他们讲好手语故事,形成良性循环。这一方法使学生的阅读始终伴随着丰富生动的故事情节,有效地改变了聋学生阅读低效或无效的状态,帮助他们获得了阅读的快乐,使他们逐步形成了自主阅读的习惯和能力。     

What are teenagers reading? Adolescent fiction reading habits and reading choices

What are adolescents choosing to read? This is an important question because of potential divergence between school students' reading interests and reading expectations in school. This article considers the findings from a study of the reading over one week in May 2002 of 707 school students aged between 11 and 15, undertaken in 30 schools in the south‐west of England. The findings are related to earlier research by, amongst others, Whitehead, Benton, and Hall and Coles. The article reflects on adolescent reading choices, influences on those choices and the importance of validating all reading experience, including the new literacies.     

Promoting school libraries and schools library services: problems and partnerships

Literuture Matters was a two‐year, national programme in England designed to promote partnerships between schools library services and initial teacher training institutions. Its aim was to raise awareness of the role of the schools library service in promoting children's books and reading for pleasure. There were positive effects, in the short term, on student teachers, teacher educators and library staff. Potentially sustainable partnerships were developed, but structures and funding are needed to ensure a long term impact over new teachers' careers.     

论中国本土职场小说兴盛的文化背景

中国本土职场小说是近年来在中国大陆迅速崛起与扩张的类型小说,它的兴盛有特定的文化背景：从写作来看,是中国新兴白领阶层在为本阶层的文化代言及寻求身份认同;从读者阅读来看,是金融风暴酿就的职场危机的刺激与应急反映;从传播与销售来看,是消费主义与网络信息技术蝉联的结果。