‘Listening to my readers’: Exploring the ‘Personal literacies landscapes’ of beginner readers

Abstract

This study takes a more holistic look at reading support, to explore what else is happening in this teaching and learning context, beyond the acquisition of a more secure knowledge of decoding skills. Children are deemed in need of a reading support intervention when their literacy skills are assessed as being significantly below the levels expected by their school for their age, and these difficulties can often negatively impact both upon their confidence as a learner, and also upon their enjoyment of literacy activities in school. Confidence and enjoyment in literacy learning is tacitly presumed to re-emerge once these skills are gained, boosted by the intervention’s focus on the cognitive technical decoding skills. This can often lead to less choice and agency in their reading activities than their peers enjoy. However, the findings of this study suggest that building in activities that promote enjoyment in literacy learning, confidence as a learner and a sense of agency do not detract from the cognitive gains, but seem to boost them. A key aspect of this is linking reading support activities to the literacy activities that the learner enjoys at home as well as in school. This is theorised as an individual’s ‘Personal Literacies Landscape’: all the different texts that they have seen or heard, even if they cannot access them independently, that have contributed to their ways of being in the world.