Search

International findings indicate that there is a gap in the literacy performance of school-aged males and females, which has led to a focus on how to address this issue. Research suggests that an individual's literacy outcomes can be improved by regular recreational book reading, and therefore increasing frequency of engagement in this practice is seen as beneficial. However, the strategies and solutions employed to foster greater engagement in reading tend to subscribe to a problematic theoretical root. Essentialist conceptions of gender often frame educational and policy responses to this gender gap. Amongst other notions, males have been constructed as uniformly preferring non-fiction. This paper draws on previously unpublished data from the 2015 "International Study of Avid Book Readers" and the 2016 "Western Australian Study in Children's Book Reading" to examine the reading preferences of males. Male respondents in both studies displayed no marked preference for non-fiction, and males were more likely to prefer to exclusively read fiction than non-fiction. As essentialism requires homogeneity due to its biological basis, this paper ultimately challenges the legitimacy of using an essentialist framework to generate knowledge about how to best encourage males to read, exploring the risks inherent in this practice.

Collective biography draws on memory work methods developed initially by feminist sociologists (Haug et al., 1987) where people collaboratively examined the social and discursive resources through which they take themselves up as particular gendered subjects in the world. Their own memories become resources to investigate processes of subjectification and socialisation. Collective biography has affinities with narrative and autoethnographic research methods in its attention to how people tell stories about their lives, however its particular processes, assumptions and analytical practices differ. Its use of story-telling and writing makes it an appealing research method for people from English teaching backgrounds. Collective biography can be the central method in a research project or it can complement an inquiry that predominantly uses other methods. This paper briefly outlines collective biography and gives an example of how it was used in two collaborative projects that explored girls' reading practices.

Digital reading technologies may be intuitively appealing. They offer many possibilities, including great potential for interactivity around books, portability of whole libraries in one small reading unit, and almost instant satisfaction of demand for a particular book. Though there is limited research exploring the appeal of digital reading for contemporary adolescents, some schools in the US and Australia have already purged their stock of paper books, exclusively carrying digital books, on the assumption that digital books are more attractive to this demographic, and that transitioning to a purely digital format is progressive. In this paper data from the West Australian Study in Adolescent Book Reading (WASABR) are drawn upon to explore the current level of adolescent engagement in digital reading. Findings suggest that adolescents do not necessarily find eBook reading more appealing than reading paper books.

This paper explores the key findings of a range of research on teenagers and reading, focusing on the implications for classroom practice and student engagement. There is a particular emphasis on addressing the needs of underachieving and reluctant readers and the ways in which promoting reading for pleasure and enjoyment can contribute to student achievement and satisfaction within and beyond the classroom. (Contains 1 note.)

This article is based on a qualitative study that explored the impact reading had on the lives of two female students who attained exemplary results in their final year of high school. The reading practices of these two high achieving students provided data rich information. Both students were academically successful in completing their Victorian Certificate of Education. One of the participants was awarded Dux of the school while the other participant was the second highest achieving student in the VCE cohort. The focus of the study was to explore how reading linked to academic success, how students perceived reading in helping them achieve academic success and what other factors related to reading can be associated with students' performance. Reading was at the nucleus of both students' lives and the study explored how it interconnected and assisted them to weave their journeys of academic success. (Contains 1 note.)

The relationship between home and school is often raised in public discussion about boys' education as an aspect of boys' overall lower achievement in school, and particularly in literacy, relative to girls. A critical review of two influential Australian and one UK government commissioned reports into boys' education sets the scene for our analysis in this paper. Analysing these reports, we demonstrate that their conclusions are drawn on the basis of minimal research engagement with students' out of school lives, relying instead on extrapolation from boys' orientations to school activities. We then examine conceptual resources developed by researchers taking a socio-cultural lens to relationships between students' in- and out- of school lives. We describe how we have drawn on these resources in designing and implementing a research project in collaboration with teachers in six schools in South Australia In this paper, we report how, given the constraints of a mostly school-based project, we nevertheless were able to generate significant knowledge about students' encounters with literacy practices outside the formal classroom. What we learned as a result of our analysis of multiple data sets raises questions about the models which construct conflicting relationships between in and out of school learning, and how these models map onto gender. At the same time, we show how resourcing teachers to generate knowledge about boys' out-of-school literacies produced some pedagogical changes which benefited the "boys of concern" and all students. (Contains 7 figures, 4 tables and 1 note.)

The English teaching profession, spurred on by media and federal politics, has tended to construct aesthetic reading and political reading within a dichotomous conceptual framework (Morgan, 1997; Devine, 2004; Donnelly, 2007). The article argues that this need not be so, and that the two apparently opposed modes of reading can be performed not only compatibly, but simultaneously as one and the same event. Drawing on the disciplines of ethical criticism (Nussbaum, 1990, 1995) and the new rhetoric (Booth, 1980, 1982, 1988a, 1988b), this article develops ways in which the high school English students' "civic imagination" (James, 1907) can be mobilised for civic gain. Furthermore, this article argues that the modes of reading developed in the classroom that foster this kind of reading prompt a kind of "feminine justice" (Gilligan & Richards, 2009) that enables students to see "the other" in all her surprising particularity, rather than as a universal category. In fact, it is argued, that being open to the surprise of the particular is the premise on which apprehending "the other" can proceed. This argument is situated in sustained reflection on real and particular classrooms, and the particular texts the students happened to be studying at the time. The critical conclusion is that the pluralist reading habits that we could engender in the high school English classroom might provide a healthy and robust ethic for the English teaching profession to develop what Wayne Booth calls a "true college" of teachers (1998b), whereby pluralism, rather than dichotomy, characterises the profession.

This article explores the conditions of "flow" experience from two studies into the literate lives of young men (Smith and Wilhelm 2002; 2006) that were explanatory, when present, of motivation and engagement in various activities including literacy, and when absent, of a lack of motivation and engagement in various activities including literacy. Typical school activities and the lack of flow, as experienced by informants in the studies, is contrasted with the experience of playing video games and the presence of flow. The second half of the article explores the practical implications of how to meet the conditions of flow experience in school using inquiry framings of traditional curricular topics.

Reports on the findings of a pilot study investigating the reading choices and habits of adolescents between the ages of 12 and 15 years. Sets out to understand more fully what, when, where, why and how adolescents between the ages of 12 and 15 years are reading, and the implications of this information for teachers and classroom reading pedagogy. (SG)

Reports the following information from a survey of secondary school students: the amount of leisure reading undertaken by students; the type of literature read; the effect of personal-, school-, and home-related variables on the variation in amount of time spent on leisure reading; students' sources of literature; and students' attitudes toward novels set for study in English classes. (HOD)

Relates the implementation of a literature program for students in grade six based on reader response theory. (HOD)

If the classroom English teacher is to be given any assistance in determining the most appropriate literary experiences for developing students' literature appreciation, it is imperative that research create a clearer understanding of the factors involved in developing discrimination in literature. (RL)