University of Sussex
Browse

File(s) not publicly available

Wider reading at Key Stage 3: happy accidents, bootlegging and serial readers

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 07:47 authored by Jo WestbrookJo Westbrook
This paper reports a small-scale study of wider reading at Key Stage 3 in current English classrooms in secondary schools in the south of England. Six English teachers, three of whom were relatively new to teaching, were interviewed on what they thought about wider reading. The findings indicate that because of a lack of time and absence of demand for such reading in the current English curriculum, the more experienced teachers felt ambivalent about encouraging and assessing wider reading. The less experienced teachers were uncertain about how to encourage it and whether to respond positively to students' preferred reading patterns, such as the serial reading of books by a particular author. In several of the schools concerned, it appeared that school librarians had taken over the role of encouraging wider reading, as the English teachers focused on the technical skills required by the National Literacy Strategy. Where teachers did initiate wider reading, this was sometimes against departmental practice, a semi-illicit addition to their workload and could thus be seen almost as a form of `bootlegging¿. In addition to wider educational effects, the lack of support for this practice has implications for students' future success in English at General Certificate of Secondary Education and Key Stage 5 (16¿18) as both require students to read whole texts widely and confidently. The paper argues that it might be more productive to prepare students for this than to expect such reading to develop spontaneously as a `happy accident¿.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Literacy

ISSN

1741-4350

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

Issue

3

Volume

41

Page range

147-154

Pages

8.0

Department affiliated with

  • Education Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

Usage metrics

    University of Sussex (Publications)

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC