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.     

‘What Do You Think?’ Let Me Tell You: Discourse about Texts and the Literature Classroom

This article examines the practice of studying texts in secondary school English lessons as a particular type of reading experience. Through a critical stylistic analysis of a popular edition of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, the article explores how reading the text is framed by educational editions, and how this might present the purpose of studying fiction to students. The article draws on two cognitive linguistic concepts – figure/ground configuration and narrative schemas – in order to explore how ‘discourse about a text’ can potentially influence how students read and engage with a text. Building on a previous article, the notion of pre-figuring is developed to offer an account of how a reader’s attention can be directed to particular elements of a text, thus privileging some interpretations and downplaying others. The article then reflects more widely on the perceived purposes of studying fiction with young people, exploring in particular the recent rise of support within the profession in England for Hirsch’s ‘cultural literacy’ model, which sees knowledge about texts as more valuable than authentic reading and personal response.     

Reading Between the Lines of Reader Response: Constructing ‘the Other’ through the Aesthetic Stance

In this article, the author challenges English teachers of literature to examine applications of reader response theory in teaching reading which posit that readers approach a text from two stances: ‘aesthetic’ (emotional) or ‘efferent’ (literal). The essay presents a case study of pre‐service English teachers and adolescents’ web‐based discussions about a work of young adult fiction based on a transgendered character. The study highlights how the pre‐service teachers’ framing of questions about the book provoked the adolescents to adopt an aesthetic stance with the text that effectively ‘othered’ transgenderism, leaving potential opportunities for critical reflection and analysis of gender and sexuality unexamined.     

Becoming and Being a Specialist: anticipating and experiencing higher education English

Abstract

This paper presents and discusses a hitherto largely neglected area of academic and pedagogic research in one of the most popular subjects in higher education — English. The authors examine student‐held views of what constitutes ‘English’, focusing for part of the discussion on reading and reading logs in routine English teaching. The first part of the paper concentrates on the quality of students’ insights into reading as revealed by the novel experience of keeping a reading log. The second part of the paper places this pedagogic experience in a larger context. Here, students’ own views of English, anticipated and subsequent to arrival in higher education, are evaluated. The authors apply different theoretical constructs in both their methodology and interpretation of findings. They conclude that one significant challenge for students in higher education English today is to adjust themselves, with a balance between flexibility and coherence, to a new techno‐cultural world. This world demands the intellectual capabilities both of self‐reflection and community affiliation in an expanding disccurse called ‘English’.     

How graphic novels support reading comprehension strategy development in children

This qualitative case study explored the relationship between comprehension strategies and graphic novels in one Grade 4 classroom, utilising children as informants. The primary research questions related to children's applications of metacognitive reading comprehension strategies as well as the potential for graphic novels to support the students’ development as readers. Findings demonstrated that the children were able to apply two types of strategies to their reading of graphic novels: ‘keys’ that supported form‐specific comprehension strategies and ‘master keys’ that supported more general comprehension strategies that could be applied to other types of texts. Student preferences for graphic novels aligned with their preferences for reading narrative novels and non‐fiction, and did not align with preferences regarding comics or cartoons. Student preferences for reading graphic novels increased throughout the study. Fluent student responses to graphic novels through process drama were identified. Implications of the study involve the employment of graphic novels to support metacognitive strategies for reading and writing as well as to facilitate process drama.     

To Work or Play? Junior Age Non‐fiction as Objects of Design

This paper examines change and variation in the design of non‐fiction texts which have a junior‐age readership. Using a multimodal analysis, which draws from Kress and Van Leeuwen’s work, it argues that different forms of presentation of non‐fiction offer different ways of reading non‐fiction texts, which as yet are neither fully described nor recognised. Using the contrasts between linear and non‐linear design, the paper suggests that non‐fiction texts can be more or less firmly orientated towards reading as work or reading as play, contrasts which readers’ own choices in different contexts of use make apparent. From this point of view, the eclecticism of the National Literacy Strategy’s references to non‐fiction texts provides a starting point for renewed exploration of what non‐fiction is and how it really works for its readers.     

Lifting the flaps on information: purpose and play in non‐fiction texts

Books with flaps comprise a small, but recognisable sub‐genre of non‐fiction texts for children. Whilst they are popular with young readers, they sit unhappily within an educational discourse of non‐fiction that is dominated by notions of information retrieval and genre theory. This article considers the purpose and function of flaps in a number of texts and proposes that the best of these books provide pertinent lessons for readers about the nature of ‘information’, and about the playful nature of reading itself.     

Transformative Readings: Harry Potter Fan Fiction,Trans/Queer Reader Response,and J. K. Rowling

The politics of children’s literature and the actors surrounding it have never been more visible than they are now, in the digital age. As one of the first children’s series to gain widespread popularity concurrently with the spread of the internet, the Harry Potter septet arrived on the global stage at the perfect moment to develop an avid, connected fandom. But the fandom has laid bare the many conflicting ideologies of the fans themselves and of the actors surrounding the texts. This article examines the contentious issue of gender nonnormativity and its relation to the Harry Potter texts, the queer/trans reading practices and political resistance common to the fandom, and the ongoing disagreements over gender, made visible on social media, between Rowling and the fans of her series. The article discusses the Harry Potter novels’ varied and conflicting ideologies; queer/trans readings of the Potter septet, including both invitations and resistances to queer/trans reading by Rowling herself; how gender is queered and queried in and through fan fiction; and finally, the recent hostilities between Rowling and her fans. It concludes by discussing the worsening relationship between Rowling and her fans and highlighting how fans are using their collective power to undermine Rowling’s gender politics through fan fiction. By doing so, the article traces the complex politics of the reception of books for young people in the digital age, demonstrating that authors’ powerful voices continue to shape readers’ responses to texts long after their publication but showing, too, that readers often resist authors’ attempts to influence not only their textual interpretations but their politics.

     

Reading practice in Irish primary classrooms: too simple a view of reading?

This article investigates issues surrounding the adoption of the ‘simple view’ of reading. While this theory of the reading process has recently been espoused as the official view of early reading instruction in England, a recent Irish study, discussed in this article, indicated that this view of reading is also widespread among Irish teachers. This article argues that a less simple view of reading recognising the importance of cognitive flexibility, metacognition and explicit comprehension strategy instruction in reading needs to be promoted among all educators. A lack of emphasis on such explicit reading comprehension instruction has been found to be a common thread in research conducted in the United States, in England and in Ireland and is often linked to reading underachievement. Hence, the authors conclude that the implementation of a more holistic and inclusive ‘balanced’ model of reading development is immediately imperative in reading classrooms, both in Ireland and internationally.     

The Pedagogy of Persuasion: The Culture of the University of Pont‐à‐Mousson

“Henceforth, my dear philosophers, let us be on our guard against the dangerous old conceptual fiction that posits a ‘pure, will‐less, painless, timeless knowing subject'; let us guard against the snares of such contradictory concepts as ‘pure reason’, ‘absolute spirituality’, ‘knowledge in itself: these always demand that we should think of an eye that is completely unthinkable, an eye turned in no particular direc‐ tion, in which the active and interpreting forces, through which alone seeing becomes seeing something, are supposed to be lacking; these always demand of the eye an absurdity and a nonsense. There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective ‘knowing'; and the more emotions we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our ‘concept’ of this thing, our ‘objectivity’ be.”

(Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals)

As an ‘epilogue’ to this special issue on postmodernism in. the history of education the authors, as privileged witnesses, examine to what extent ‘Paedagogica Historica’ has stimulated or just mirrored trends in (post‐)modern educational historiography. To analyse the journal they make use of both measurable and interpreta‐ tive indicators. The main conclusion runs as follows: ‘Paedagogica Historica’ acted more as a mirror than a lever in developments in the history of education.     

What might the school of 2030 be like? An exercise in social science fiction

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the deliberately speculative question of ‘What might the school of 2030 be like?’, with a specific focus on the influences of digital technologies. The article adopts the methodological approach of ‘social science fiction’ to explore the ways in which digital technologies might be used in one Australian high school in 2030 (Lakeside), and what this might mean for the people whose lives are enmeshed with these technologies. Through the co-construction of five social science fiction ‘vignettes’ about life within Lakeside, the article considers the increasing prevalence of dataveillance, digital deskilling and the de-territorialization of schooling. The article then goes on to consider changing relationships between time/place, material and coded structures, as well as the increasingly platformized and data-driven nature of schooling in the 2020s. The article ends by considering the ways in which critical scholars can continue to use the methodological approach of social science fiction writing with regard to unpacking the politics of digital education futures.     

Pirates and poachers: Fan fiction and the conventions of reading and writing

This article explores what teachers and students can learn about contemporary story‐telling from a study of fan fiction – that is, stories created by readers and viewers out of the canonical material of previously published fictions. Drawing on the example of Pirates of the Caribbean, it investigates ways in which fan fiction writers develop codes and conventions to govern themselves. For example, online litmus tests establish when a writer is self‐indulgently writing ‘Mary Sue’ characters into a story; the self‐styled Protectors of the Plot Continuum patrol the fictional limits of an imagined world to make sure that canonical information is not violated by fan fiction writers. This article makes use of such examples to investigate how quality control in fan fiction is codified, and to explore what teachers can learn from such enterprises about contemporary writing, reading and viewing. It compares these possibilities with issues of online literacy outlined by Henry Jenkins under three headings: the participation gap, the transparency problem, and the ethics challenge.     

Causal connections in beginning reading: the importance of rhyme

Profound misunderstandings of the implications of rhyme and analogy research (sometimes called ‘new phonics’) for classroom teaching still appear regularly in the reading literature. It has been argued that ‘rhyme and analogy’ researchers do not believe in teaching children grapheme-phoneme correspondences (Chew, 1997). Rhyme and analogy has also been branded as ‘analytic phonics’, which is argued to be inferior to ‘synthetic’ phonics (Watson and Johnston, 1999). Such misconceptions are confusing the debate over how best to teach ‘phonics’, following the publication of the National Literacy Framework (DfEE, 1998). For example, some authors are suggesting that teachers should replace an emphasis on phonological awareness and onset-rime with a teaching programme based on ‘synthetic’ phonics (Deavers and Solity, 1998; Watson and Johnston, 1999). This paper discusses the implications of Goswami and Bryant’s (1990) theory about important causal connections in reading for classroom teaching, and reviews more recent ‘rhyme and analogy’ research within this framework. New research on the nature of the English spelling system and the representation of linguistic knowledge is also discussed. The importance of taking a balanced approach to phonics instruction and teaching children correspondences between letters and phonemes and letter sequences and rimes is emphasised.     

Disintegrate the unit!

Margaret Meek (1988) has described how children borrow ideas from literature through ‘unteachable’ lessons. In this article I explore how children's written work might be enhanced through ‘teachable’ lessons, where the teacher draws attention explicitly to aspects of literature and the literary devices used by authors, and where children explore and evaluate literature through group reading and discussion. The interrelationship between children's knowledge and understanding of literature and their writing development is examined. The way that critical reading and group discussion can develop children's metalanguage and metacognitive understanding is illustrated.     

Reading skills in extended discourse in English as a foreign language

Are there different reading skills (Davis, 1944; 1968; 1972) or is there just one‘basic’(Spearitt, 1972) or‘common’(Thorndike, 173) reading skill? Tests designed to measure some posited reading comprehension skills were given to advanced students of English as a Foreign Language. There were five tests: I) Vocabulary Recognition as measured by a multiple-choice test, 2) Extraction of Meaning during reading as measured by open-end questions, 3) Extraction of Meaning during and after reading as measured by a question-cued recall test, 4) Fast and accurate reading as measured by a Word Intrusion Test, and 5)‘Overall reading proficiency’as measured by a modified cloze test. Results indicate the existence of two factors: Factor I which is connected with‘receptive’reading skills, and Factor 2 which is connected with‘productive’reading skills. It is suggested that reading comprehension tests of extended discourse in English as a Foreign Language which do not tap‘productive’reading skills, such as are required in recall (and in real life), are only partial tests of reading comprehension.     

Utilizing Nonfiction Texts to Enhance Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary in Primary Grades

Many primary grade students are not afforded nonfiction-rich opportunities, with fiction comprising the majority of books read aloud in classrooms. With the Common Core Standards recommending that half of the texts made available to students be nonfiction, educators are increasing their use of informational text. The present study explored the impact of explicitly teaching reading comprehension and vocabulary strategies with nonfiction text compared to fiction text in primary-grade classrooms. Two first-grade (n = 39; 25 male, 14 female) and one second-grade class (n = 20; 13 male, 7 female) participated in the quantitative study that followed a repeated measures design in which the students alternated every 2 weeks between fiction-based instruction and nonfiction-based instruction for a total of 8 weeks. Vocabulary and use of comprehension strategies were assessed at the end of each 2-week period. Overall findings indicated that students were better able to apply the comprehension strategies and define vocabulary following nonfiction-based instruction; they also were more motivated to read informational text. The authors recommend that teachers use more nonfiction texts in the primary grades to support students’ reading comprehension and vocabulary development.     

TEACHER TRAINING AND SCHOOL PRACTICE

In their previous article (Educational Research, 13, 1) the authors discussed the attitudes of 1,000 pupils in selective secondary schools towards literature generally and towards GCE ‘O’ and ‘A’ level examinations. In that article they explored pupils’ expressed likes and dislikes of texts prescribed by GCE examining boards; they now consider these same pupils’ preferences in their leisure reading, and conclude that present methods of teaching English often fail to take into account ‘consumer’ response, particularly in poetry and drama reading.     

Playing and resisting: rethinking young people's reading cultures

In this paper I will argue that while young adult readers may often be represented through ‘othering’ discourses that see them as ‘passive’, ‘uncritical’ consumers of ‘low‐brow’, ‘throw‐away’ texts, the realities of their reading lives are in fact more subtle, complex and dynamic. The paper explores the discourses about reading, identity and gender that emerged through discussions with groups of young adults, aged between 16 and 19, about their reading habits and practices. These discussions took place as part of a PhD research study of reading and reader identity in the context of further education in the Black Country in the West Midlands. Through these discussions the young adults offered insights into their reading cultures and the ‘functionality’ of their reading practices that contest the kinds of ‘distinction[s]’ that tend to situate them as the defining other to more ‘worthy’ or ‘valuable’ reading cultures and practices. While I will resist the urge to claim that this paper represents the cultures of young adult readers in any real or totalising sense I challenge the kinds of dominant, reductive representations that serve to fix and demonise this group and begin to draw a space within which playfulness and resistance are alternatively offered as ways of being for these readers.     

现代叙事与"读图时代"初析

经典的小说叙事艺术正随着“读图时代”的到来趋于式微，语言的缺场和图像的霸权深刻影响着现代社会叙事策略。叙事艺术的生产性审美转向视觉化的消费性审美，并逐步上升为化主因，叙事策略的改变建构起新的阅读习惯和审美趣味，既有的化规则被打破，由此引发出一系列值得我们高度注意和深思的问题。