Rewards of reading: Toward the development of possible selves and identities

Abstract

Children's voluntary reading positively correlates with school grades, vocabulary growth, reading comprehension, verbal fluency, general information, and attitudes towards reading. Drawing on qualitative interviews collected alongside six waves of longitudinal survey data in an urban setting in eastern USA, We argue that voluntary reading by adolescents also provides learning opportunities that scaffold identity formation, afford 'spaces' where youth rehearse and relationally enact gender roles, ethnic/racial identification, and fashion educational aspirations. The interviews with African American and European American youth were conducted in five visits and spanned 3 years through senior high school and 1 year post-high school. Methods of inductive and narrative analysis identified patterns of benefits and potential drawbacks of voluntary reading. Amount of voluntary reading was affected by school, family, and social and work commitment pressures, and fulfilled a number of broad roles. What and how youth were reading was as important as the amount. Significantly, reading allowed adolescents to explore possible selves-an interest in historical figures helped one African American male to develop values resisting stereotypes of male or African American, just as an African American female came to resist conforming to gender and racial stereotypes in dress and occupational ambitions. Relationships between voluntary reading habits, family context and educational aspirations were identifiable for a number of the interviewees.

The impact of literature education on students' perceptions of self and others: Exploring personal and social learning experiences in relation to teacher approach

“…Whereas these responses are in this study rather infrequent, there is growing attention for the potential of literature education as a stimulus for critical thinking (e.g., Bean & Moni, 2003;Faust, 2000;Koek, Janssen, Hakemulder & Rijlaarsdam, 2016). Finally, in line with findings by Richardson and Eccles (2007), we assumed that the participants in this study would also report to experience explorations of their possible future selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986). However, such experiences are reported by only 12.5% of the students, which is a rather small percentage compared to many other content learning experiences.…”

“…Second, Sikora, Kuiken and Miall (2010) showed through questionnaire responses of 24-year-old literature students that self-modifying feelings and a deepened self-perception were evoked if readers, who lost a loved one, experienced aesthetic emotions when encountering stylistically striking passages in a poem. Third, Richardson and Eccles (2007) found in their interview study among adolescents that voluntary reading sometimes made them explore their possible selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986): it made them think about who they are, who they would like to be and who they do not want to become.…”

“…Second, like Appleyard's (1991) research, most studies about adolescents' personal and social insights as a result of reading fiction are conducted in the context of voluntary leisure reading, like the studies mentioned earlier (Charlton, Pette & Burbaum, 2004;Richardson & Eccles, 2007;Rothbauer, 2011). Research conducted in the context of the literature classroom among adolescents, on the other hand, has often been confined to reading engagement and/or analytical skills in terms of interpreting literary texts (e.g., Eva-Wood, 2004;Janssen, Braaksma & Couzijn, 2009;Peskin, 1998;Pieper & Wieser, 2012;Tengberg, Olin-Scheller & Lindholm, 2015).…”

A qualitative study of motivation to read for pleasure with adolescent struggling readers using a theoretical model : how to begin?

“…Reading for pleasure draws from a variety of printed and digital texts that covers a wide range of topics and interests. It is the type of reading that students do for their own entertainment, information and pleasure (Richardson & Eccles, 2007). Reading for pleasure is unlike reading required in school where success is under the scrutiny of various measurements: book reports, comprehension questions at the end of each chapter, or memorizing vocabulary words.…”

“…This concept of adolescent as a time of becoming can be construed as -a time between many spaces: childhood and adulthood: work and play; home, school, and community: romance and sex, history and science class, the list of inbetweens goes on and on,‖ (Moje, 2002, p. 222 (Markus & Nurius, 1986). An area in which adolescents can safely contemplate possible selves, find strategies for navigating spaces and settle on personal values and beliefs is through reading for pleasure (Richardson & Eccles, 2007).…”