Out of the mouths of boys: A profile of boys committed to reading.

Love, Kristina ; Hamston, Julie

Introduction

In 1981 a National survey of the reading habits and attitudes of Australian adolescents was conducted by Rhonda Bunbury (1995; `Children's Choice' contains the report). Bunbury and her team examined adolescents' reading of a wide range of print materials (including newspapers, magazines and poetry, as well as novels and non-fiction). The adolescents in Bunbury's study were boys and girls in Year 5 through to Year 11, and her major findings were in keeping with other similar research into adolescents' reading practices and attitudes conducted both within Australia and the UK (see for example Office for Standards in Education 1993, Thomson 1987, Whitehead 1977). In particular, Bunbury confirmed international findings that more boys than girls were non-readers at each of the year levels from 5 to 11.

However, rather than remaining locked within a deficit model of boys and reading, Bunbury's survey allowed for deeper examination of boys' reading behaviours and attitudes when compared to girls. Bunbury questioned adolescents about their purpose for and attitudes towards reading and discovered that while boys tended to read less for enjoyment and personal insight than did girls, they tended to read for more pragmatic reasons, and, particularly as they progressed through secondary school, for purposes concerned with future employment. When the questionnaires of that cohort of adolescents who identified themselves as good readers were examined, Bunbury concluded that boys in this group read just as much for enjoyment and/or to gain personal insight as did girls (1995, p. 114).

These findings point to a more complex picture of boys reading than the rather one-dimensional portrait represented in deficit-oriented studies of boys and reading (see for example Office for Standards in Education 1993, Thomson 1987, Whitehead 1977). Yet little systematic research has been conducted to date into the reading habits and attitudes of boys identified as committed readers.

Our study seeks to address this gap in the research by systematically examining the reading behaviour of one group of Australian adolescent boys identified as committed readers. Our operational definition of `committed readers' is based on Millard's definition (1997, p. 40)--those `who seek to read whenever they get an opportunity at any time in the day'. Unlike Bunbury's national study, our study was a case study of one cohort of boys in one school, a Catholic boys' school in Victoria catering for boys from Years 5 to 12. The English faculty at the school was concerned about the motivation of its boys to read for enjoyment and insight and had approached the researchers for some assistance in this regard. As a first step in a longer research and professional development agenda, the researchers sought to describe the reading behaviours and attitudes towards reading of those boys identified as committed readers. By focusing on boys' perceptions of themselves as `good' readers we sought to accomplish two aims. Firstly, through the self-reports of this group of boys a rather detailed description could be offered of the reading behaviour and attitude of boys identified as committed readers within one school community. Such a `portrait' would begin to fill a gap in the research into boys and reading. The second aim of the research was to provide parents and educators with this `portrait' so that they could design reading programs tailored to meet the needs of a range of boys.

Data collection and analysis

Our larger research project was divided into two phases, with only part of phase one being reported in this paper. In phase one, questionnaires were distributed to 91 boys in the case study school who were selected by their English teachers as committed readers, at each year level from Year 5 to Year 11. Questionnaires from all 91 boys were collected, with approximately 12 from each year level across the three campuses of the school. The questionnaire was based on that designed by Bunbury (1995; see her appendix) but updated, particularly to include reading of the wider forms of print and electronically-based texts now available for leisure reading. The questionnaire thus elicited information (as did Bunbury's) about the boys' general interests, their perceptions of themselves as particular sorts of readers, the range of their reading, the purposes of their reading, and their sharing of their reading.

In phase two of our project, questionnaires were distributed to the parents/guardians of the selected boys, in order to elicit their perceptions of their own and their son's reading habits and attitudes. These questionnaires elicited information about the educational and occupational background of parents, parents' and siblings' reading habits and attitudes (including reading of electronic material and the perceived purposes of different types of reading), parents' reading-related behaviour with the boys (for example, creation of opportunities for discussing reading of various sorts), the role played by key family members in the reading development of the boys, and the reading-related practices of fathers or male guardians. The parents' and the boys' questionnaires elicited both quantitative and qualitative data, from which information could be gathered about the frequency of occurrence of key individual and familial reading-related factors, about how boys see themselves as readers, and about how their families support these boys as particular sorts of readers at various stages of adolescence.

The results of the parents' questionnaire will not be examined in this article. From the boys' questionnaires a profile of their general interests, as well as their reading interests, has been constructed. The most striking feature to emerge from boys' reports of their most popular leisure activities (see Figure 1 below) is that this group of boys, as committed readers, appear to be able to share their reading for leisure with a wide range of other leisure activities.

Figure 1. Popular leisure activities.

Reading 92
Television 91
Radio or CDs 87
Competitive sport 68
Musical instrument 63
Video games 63
Watch live sport 58

Note: Table made from bar graph.

Although not all boys engaged in all the leisure activities indicated in Figure 1, by far the largest number of boys in this cohort shared their reading for leisure with the watching of television, listening to music, playing or watching sport, playing a musical instrument and playing video games. These data suggest that these boys, despite being committed readers, have a well-rounded interest in a diverse range of leisure activities.

Analysis of the range of reading materials that these boys report having read further indicates that reading of fiction books for leisure was complemented by the sustained reading of a wide range of other types of material. These other materials, as represented in Figure 2 below, include newspapers, magazines, the Internet and CD-ROMs (throughout the study, only text-based CD-ROMs such as `Kings Quest', as opposed to `point-and-shoot' games, were considered as `reading' material).

Figure 2. Materials read in last four weeks.

Book 84
Magazine 64
Newspaper 85
Internet 70
CD-ROM 39

Note: Table made from bar graph.

Fiction was overwhelmingly indicated to be the favourite type of material read for leisure, with 45 out of the 91 boys indicating this as their first preference. 10 boys ranked newspapers as their favourite reading, 9 ranked non-fiction first, 7 magazines, 4 Internet, 3 text-based computer games, 2 comics and one boy ranked poetry as his favourite leisure reading material. As with Bunbury's study, what was reported as favourite reading material tended to vary with age, with more boys in the senior years of schooling identifying newspaper reading as their favourite form of leisure reading. The frequency of reporting of Internet and text-based computer games as favourite leisure reading materials, though small, is noteworthy. A longitudinal study of subscriptions to this form of leisure reading could yield some interesting results, especially in light of one respondent's comment below.

 I really enjoy reading and I hope as I grow older and technology becomes
 more advanced that I get a chance to read new sources of information, not
 just books and CD-ROMs. I really like technology, but would choose reading
 books over technology any day.

 (Matthew, Year 7)

This brief analysis of some of the boys' questionnaire responses has provided a snapshot of the leisure interests, including the reading interests, of a group of boys identified within one school as committed readers. This snapshot raises some interesting questions about what it is to be a male reader and how such readers are constructed. The remainder of this article will focus on these boys' responses to one set of questions about themselves as readers. In these questions boys were asked to rank themselves as readers on a 5-point scale (from `poor' to `excellent') and the results are represented in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Self-rating as a reader.

Average 2
Good 20
Very good 41
Excellent 28

Note: Table made from bar graph.

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of these committed readers rated their reading ability as `good', `very good' or `excellent'. The boys were also provided with space on the questionnaire to offer some explanation for their choice of self-rating (the exact question being `Why do you think this?'). We have chosen to concentrate on these explanations in the remainder of this paper because they were particularly thoughtful and articulate, offering insights which could prove valuable to literacy educators. Very little of the recent literature examining boys and reading, particularly in the Australian context, has reported on boys' perceptions of themselves as readers. Bunbury's (1995) study is one exception, but the data for this study were collected nearly twenty years ago. Such a gap in the research is unfortunate, since educators can learn much about how reading programs in both primary and secondary schooling are being received by students. Reports of boys' perceptions of themselves as readers can provide educators with a barometer of how student attitudes and insights may be influenced by home and school reading initiatives. These self-reports, in turn, also have the potential to inform the development of educational programs which are more relevant to boys.

We thus transcribed all the responses of the 91 boys explaining their self-ratings as readers. In reviewing these discursive comments, we were struck by the extent to which these boys constructed their reading ability in terms of reading as a social practice. None of the boys reported that they were `good' readers simply because of their genetic endowment. Many, like Chris below, indicated that it was at best through a combination of biology, social influence and practice that they could consider themselves as `good' readers.

 I'm a good reader because of my genes and also because my parents always
 read to me when I was little and also that I do a lot of reading.

 (Chris, Year 6)

All of the 91 respondents indicated that their families, teachers, and key people in their communities played a significant role in their development as readers. Furthermore, these boys could identify those elements of their reading as a social practice that had been `scaffolded' (Mercer 1994) through various social interactions.

Luke (1995) provides a useful framework for viewing reading as a social practice. In this view students bring to and take from their literacy experiences the resources and practices that they have appropriated in their homes and communities as well as in their schools. In shifting the focus from psychological to sociological models of reading Luke identified reading as a set of social practices deeply embedded in particular cultures where `one learns to do with reading what one is taught to do and what is valued and encouraged and useful in cultural interpretative communities and sites' (1995, p. 175).

Luke identified four distinctive types of literacy practices which, he argued, are by themselves necessary, but not sufficient for operating effectively in society. One of these practices is coding practice, in which readers draw on the alphabetic, graphophonic, lexico-grammatical, text-handling and discourse-structuring conventions of written texts. A second reading practice is semantic practice, where readers draw on their own lived experiences as they come to make meaning out of written texts. A third reading practice is pragmatic practice, where readers engage with written texts in terms of the purposes for which they and others can use them. The fourth reading practice is the critical, where readers engage with the text as an artefact constructed by someone, somewhere, at some point in time, and with a particular way of seeing the world.

These four practices, Luke argues, are variously valued in different communities. As they offer explanations for themselves as particular types of readers and reveal the extent to which they have appropriated particular cultural resources, the comments of the boys of this study, we argue, reflect something of the ways in which particular sorts of reading practices are valued in their communities. These boys, as articulate, academically successful products of a middle-class community, are reflecting on social practices that have contributed to who they are as readers, as well as who they are in the wider social sphere.

Luke's (1995) model of reading as a social practice provides a theoretically motivated `template' for analysing such comments. The remainder of this paper will thus consider the boys' reflections on why they consider themselves to be `good' readers under the headings of Coding Practice, Semantic Practice, Pragmatic Practice and Critical Practice. The articulate self-evaluations of this cohort of boys are not in any way considered as representative of boys in general. They do, however, provide educators with an opportunity, hitherto not available, to identify, celebrate and possibly emulate the social practices that contribute to the construction of boys who enjoy sustained reading for leisure.

`Good' reading and coding practice

In rating themselves as `good' readers, many of the 91 boys included some judgement of themselves as code-breakers. Boys' discursive comments as revealed in their questionnaire responses focussed on three aspects of code-breaking:

* skill with accuracy in translating the graphic into the phonic code

* skill with the lexical code

* speed of decoding.

Competence with the graphophonic features of code-breaking were regularly commented on as indicators of `good' reading practice, across all year levels and even in the upper secondary years of schooling, as indicated in the comments below:

 I think I am a very good reader because I rarely stutter, I get frustrated
 when others can't read as well as I can, and I can pronounce words that
 others can't.

 (Nick, Year 9)

 I listen to boys read out loud in class and I find I am better than some,
 but others are better than me. I judge this more on speed of the person's
 reading, rather than intonation and understanding. In that respect, I rank
 myself higher.

 (Richard, Year 10)

The notion of speed of decoding, as revealed in the comment above, was also evident in a range of boys' judgements regarding their skill with the lexical code.

 I am an excellent reader because there isn't much words I don't understand
 and don't know how to spell and I also read fairly fast.

 (Steve, Year 5)

 I am an excellent reader because I don't have to ask my parents what a word
 says or means.

 (Sean, Year 5)

Some boys, such as those below, down-ranked themselves as readers based on the criteria of speed and fluency of reading.

 I am only good (not very good) because I don't read a lot and I am pretty
 slow.

 (Paul, Year 8)

 I am not an excellent reader because I don't read as much as I could and
 because I still stumble on some words.

 (Michael, Year 8)

Overall, this cohort of boys report having little or no difficulty cracking the graphophonic code, the lexical code and the syntactic codes they encounter in their reading. Many boys explicitly reported having received extensive support from parents (fathers as well as mothers), in coding practice of this sort. With such support through the earlier years of their schooling, these boys will have confidently grasped the fundamentals of the alphabetic, graphophonic, punctuation and `text-handling' codes by the time they reach Year 5 as the first year level surveyed. Boys up to Year 10 also appeared to attach premium value to their capacities to work with these codes with speed and fluency. Perhaps because of the visibility of this aspect of reading practice, these boys appear to attach more importance to decoding as an indicator of proficiency with reading (especially in comparison with others in their cohort) than to the other aspects of reading practice discussed below.

`Good' reading and semantic practice

Semantic practice involves readers engaging with a range of personally and culturally determined semantic cues to make meaning out of text. As `text-participants' (Luke 1995), readers thus bring their knowledge of the purposes and structures of various texts to bear in their comprehension of these texts, as well as bringing personal experiences and values. For the committed readers of this study, comprehension of the materials they read was reported to be a relatively unproblematic task, across all types of reading material and all year levels, as indicated in the comments below.

 I am a very good reader because I read books that are of a higher standard
 than the set novels in class, but sometimes I have to look a word up in the
 dictionary because I don't know what it means.

 (Adam, Year 8)

 I think I am a good reader as I seem to be able to read books and
 newspapers without trouble. I seem to understand everything I read.

 (Cameron, Year 9)

 I can easily read any material with expression, comprehension and without
 error.

 (Patrick, Year 10)

 I might be a good reader due to the fact that I have been reading the
 Internet for a long time and I have had to scan quite a lot of information.

 (Simon, Year 8)

Two features of the above comments, which are typical of the cohort of 91 responses, deserve further exploration. Firstly, boys regularly commented on their ability to comprehend a wide range of texts, including newspapers, novels, magazines and the Internet, texts which present them with varying degrees of difficulty. Clearly, these boys bring to the meaning-making process a sophisticated knowledge of how a wide range of text types, presented in a variety of modes, are constructed. As revealed in other sections of boys' questionnaire responses and in their parents' questionnaire responses, these boys belong to households that typically:

* subscribe to a range of newspapers and magazines

* are connected to the Internet

* have substantial libraries

* regularly give reading material as gift

* regularly involve extended family members in recommending and discussing reading materials with the boys.

As a consequence of their extensive literary experiences, this cohort of boys brings a broad literary and world knowledge to their reading of a wide variety of text types and modes.

A second significant feature arising out of the above comments is the awareness of this cohort of boys that they are using a variety of comprehension strategies, many of which are both effective and apparently well-automated. The mention of `scanning' in Simon's comment above points to one of many distinctive strategies that these boys indicate they use in reading for comprehension. Some boys described themselves as `good' readers because they were `able to easily summarise the material' they have read (David, Year 6), or because, like Ryan below, they can work out from the clues in the text how to read it.

 I like to read what I want and not to be told by others to. I enjoy
 stumbling across uncharted territory when it comes to reading for
 vocabulary and understanding.

 (Ryan, Year 8)

Yet others commented in various ways on their ability to become involved in the imaginary world of narratives in particular.

 I am an excellent reader, because I enjoy reading a wide array of books and
 just about any book that I pick up, whether hard or easy, I can read it
 without difficulty. I can also picture what's happening in the book that
 I'm reading. Instead of thinking of reading as a chore, I immerse myself in
 the story and get the most pleasure out of it that I can.

 (William, Year 7, our emphasis)

Comments such as William's above point to some boys' capacities to engage in what Benton and Fox (1985) identify as the `secondary world' of a novel, as constructed by the author within a culturally determined set of conventions. It is because of this capacity for imaginative engagement that these boys can relinquish themselves to the pleasures of the narrative. Their capacity to employ such strategies such as `imaging' to make meanings of their reading in culturally appropriate ways owes much, we would argue, to the acculturation processes that have occurred in their home and school lives.

It would appear then that these boys accurately label themselves as `good' readers, not just because of their extensive practice as breakers of the basic literacy codes (as discussed in the section above), but because they participate in knowing how to `read' the literary conventions valued within their Anglo-Australian cultures. They can effortlessly bring relevant world knowledge, relevant literary knowledge of how certain types of texts are constructed for particular effects, and relevant culturally determined `schemata' (Anderson 1977, Wallace 1992) to the processes of making and taking meaning from a wide range of texts. A preliminary analysis of the parents' questionnaires strongly suggests that reading-related interactions in the homes of these boys support these semantic practices in important ways.

`Good' reading and pragmatic practice

As text users readers use the material that they read for a range of different purposes. Since our questionnaire was designed to explore boys' behaviour and attitude related to reading for leisure, one set of purposes necessarily excluded from the data is school purposes. By far the majority of boys in this research indicated that their prime purpose in reading non-school-related material was for enjoyment.

 I think I am a good reader because I read about 4 nights a week and I also
 enjoy it.

 (Michael, Year 5)

 I think I am a very good reader because I enjoy a great book immensely and
 always like finding out more. If I read a good book I'll always find the
 sequel or series of that book or maybe read something by the same author.

 (Paul, Year 7)

 I think I am a very good reader because I only read the things I am
 interested in. If I read things that don't interest me I get bored of them
 very easily. This will not help me read because it puts me off it. When
 reading something that catches my attention I have to finish it. I will
 find when reading books that are interesting they are finished quickly and
 efficiently.

 (Zack, Year 7)

Zack's comment above hints at another pragmatic purpose of reading for leisure that is regularly cited by boys across the year levels in their comments that of improving literacy.

 Reading helps to extend a person's vocabulary. Another thing is that if you
 know how to read well it can be a real asset for years to come.

 (James, Year 6)

 I think that the more you read the better a reader you will become.

 (Daniel, Year 7)

 Over the years I have read a large variety of materials that have enhanced
 my reading ability (although maybe not my spelling!).

 (Chris, Year 9)

This particular `use' of reading reflected a stance which we heard regularly repeated by English teachers and librarians at the case-study school that `the more you read the better a reader you will become'. It appeared that these committed readers have appropriated wholeheartedly the view that reading ability is a long-term `asset'. An awareness was also reflected in these boys' discursive comments (see Michael below for example) that reading ability was not only an asset in terms of making them better readers but it also helped make them better writers.

 I usually like to read before I go to bed as it is quite comforting. I like
 to write my own stories and I don't use them for school. Next to my bed I
 have a list and every time I come across a good sentence or word I write it
 down. These words are often used in my stories.

 (Michael, Year 7)

Many boys identified a rather different purpose in their reading of non-fiction texts, where reading for information was reported as a highly valued purpose, particularly amongst older boys. These non-fiction texts included the Internet, biographies, magazines and newspapers. Boys read their favourites in each of these categories depending on their specific (and typically age-related) interests, as represented in the range of comments below.

 My favourite books to read are books that contain facts about movies or
 television series that appeal to me.

 (Anthony, Year 8)

 I read guitar magazines every day. I read about bands, guitar set up and
 music theory. This is as much a hobby as playing the instrument.

 (Patrick, Year 9)

 I read anything that interests me from books to writing on notice boards. I
 sometimes even read graffiti. I read whatever newspapers I can get my hands
 on because news of the current world really interests me.

 (Thomas, Year 10)

 I share my magazine reading (Finescale Model Magazine, Military Models,
 Sonic, Screwdriver) with my father, since we are both avid fans of Star
 Trek and Doctor Who and we both make military models. I, like my father,
 enjoy making models. I find the quest for accuracy in a small scale replica
 enthralling. I also use email to communicate with other modellers on the
 Internet. In parallel with making models is military history. I often read
 factual books about particular types of tanks, for example. I also enjoy
 fictional books associated with WW2 and war. However I feel it is important
 to read as diverse a range as possible.

 (Christian, Year 11)

These and many similar comments are distinctive in the passion expressed by the boys for their particular hobbies and for the importance of reading as a means of supporting that passion. Furthermore, it appeared that as these boys moved further up the school their interests became more specialised and as a consequence their reasons for reading non-fiction material became even more pragmatic. With this maturation boys' specialisations also appeared to became even more `masculinised', and boys reported on the very distinctive roles played by their fathers in supporting both their reading practices and the uses to which this reading was put. The close identification with their fathers as reflected in the comment by Shaun below is apparent in the reports of many boys from Year 7 upwards in this cohort of committed readers.

 My dad reads books about wars and goblins and elves so I've started to read
 books like him.

 (Shaun, Year 7)

By the time they reached Year 11 boys like Christian above no longer represented themselves as apprentices in their fathers' reading areas but as partners able to share expertise on an equal footing. It would appear from the boys' comments that, increasingly, the father was not only the person who provided the model for reading content and purpose but also became the person with whom this reading was discussed. As suggested in Tom's and Stephen's comments below, these discussions helped to shape the boys' understanding of the world in general as well as their understanding of specialised interests.

 My father helps me choose my non-fiction. Often after reading the
 newspapers Dad hands it to me and recommends articles to read. After
 reading it he often begins conversations about it or I may ask him a
 question.

 (Tom, Year 9)

 I discuss the events that occur in my fiction reading with my mother and I
 discuss certain things about cars in Wheels magazine with my father.

 (Stephen, Year 10)

This expressed affiliation of the high school boys with their fathers is in contrast with the reports of the boys in the younger levels, who more regularly cited the mother as the most significant influence on their reading. Patrick's comment below is representative of boys in the Junior school.

 My mum is the foundation of my reading as she always makes me read books of
 her choice which turn out good in the end.

 (Patrick, Year 5)

We would argue that it is through these (apparently gendered) discourses of family reading-related discussions that these boys appropriate particular sets of cultural resources and attitudes as they learn to become not only committed readers but successful members of their society. For many boys in our cohort these cultural resources were transmitted not only through parents but also through siblings, as indicated in Remy's and Patrick's comments below.

 Dad helps me choose story books that are older than others. My brother
 helps me choose good books that he has read in the past. I discuss sports
 results from newspapers with my older brother.

 (Remy, Year 5)

 My sister sometimes helps me choose books about people and their lives. My
 brother recommends comedy books written by comedians and journalists. My
 father sometimes recommends fiction, but sometimes philosophical books that
 make you think.

 (Patrick, Year 10)

In many responses, the cultural resources provided by family members extended beyond what was useful in the boys' current contexts to those resources that provided a link with a family's historical culture. Many boys indicated that they either sought, or were encouraged to read, the books their parents had read as children, thereby forming a cultural and even spiritual link with their parents. In a small, but significant, number of cases, grandparents appeared to play a particularly important role in recommending reading material that provided a link with a cultural life that boys might otherwise not have access to.

 My grandmother (European) recommends books and poetry to me. I read a fair
 bit of poetry (Hilaire Belloc, Chaucer, Pushkin), sometimes recommended to
 me by my grandmother, to whom I often read out loud.

 (Ben, Year 10)

While providing a link with family members was identified as one prominent reason for reading, the importance of sharing and discussing reading with friends was also raised as an important purpose for reading. Interestingly, the mode of reading appeared to be a discriminator in determining what would be shared with friends, as opposed to what was shared with family. Internet material and magazines were typically shared with friends, with boys regularly passing on Internet sites and discussing these both face-to-face and through Internet chat facilities.

In summary, these boys reported a wide range of uses for their reading, engaging as they did with pragmatic practices such as strategically developing a wider range of literacy skills, selectively reading for specific information or more effectively engaging with family and friends. Whatever the purpose, these boys could be seen to draw on an extensive range of cultural resources and discourse practices within their homes and communities as they engaged with reading as a pragmatic practice. Their `ways of taking' (Heath 1983) valued information from key people in their communities and purposefully applying this information in the pursuit of very specific goals suggested that these boys would be powerful users of texts in contexts beyond school.

`Good' reading and critical practice

Critical practice involves readers developing strategies for questioning and critiquing texts, through talking about, rewriting or contesting them. As `text analysts', readers demonstrate awareness of `how, why and in whose interests particular texts might work' (Luke 1995, p. 179). In contrast to their comments on the three previous aspects of reading practice, the boys of this research provided very little discursive evidence to suggest that critical practice as a text analyst was essential in their considerations of what constituted a `good' reader. Such comments to this effect on their questionnaire as did occur (only 3 boys out of 91) were made by boys in the senior years (Years 10 and 11) only.

 I often comment on useless articles in newspapers, articles that are given
 too much importance for nothing, and movie ratings and reviews.

 (Paul, Year 10)

 I personally like to explain to people my overall fascination, frustration
 or disappointment about the overall ending and/or the structure of a book I
 have read ... In sharing my newspaper reading, usually I inform friends of
 the latest music news and read reviews of movies currently screening. I
 either declare my agreement with a reviewer or I condemn him/her for their
 opinions, and do this in an argumentative tone during lunchtime with
 friends. I refer to specific sentences and words the reviewer used, which
 helps to support my contention. (Christopher, Year 11)

 There is nothing that stirs me up more than reading something in the
 newspaper that I don't agree with. I have felt compelled on more than one
 occasion to write a letter to the editor, several of which have been
 published.

 (Michael, Year 11)

Paul's, Christopher's and Michael's comments suggest that critical practice was understood in terms of personal disagreement with a writer's opinion, albeit involving a degree of text deconstruction through reference to `specific sentences and words the reviewer used' (Christopher). As part of their recent work on `Presentation of an Issue' (a component of the Victorian Certificate of Education assessment in English) these boys would have received practice in this form of text analysis and were no doubt reflecting the approaches they had been taught in school.

Based on our analysis of the parents' questionnaires, it appears that the boys' comments were also no doubt appropriations of the discourses heard in their homes, discourses related to clarifying personal positions on a wide range of social issues. What was missing from these comments, however, was an understanding that texts work to construct both `subject positions' and `reading positions' (Kress 1985). Paul, Christopher and Michael have foregrounded their own positions as `subjects' with distinctive reactions to the opinions expressed in a text. They have not, however, articulated the understanding that, as `good' readers, they may also have learnt to identify the `positioning devices' (Luke 1995, p. 180) used by authors in their attempt to predispose readers towards adopting particular reading positions or ideological stances.

Of course, the absence of explicit comment about critical practice (especially without a specific prompt to do so) does not necessarily mean that these boys do not endorse critical practice as a component of `good' reading practice. However, the relative absence of explicit comment about critical practice as a characteristic of `good' reading practice contrasts with the relative frequency of boys' explicit references to coding, semantic and pragmatic practice. Such absence suggests that critical discourses (Kress 1985, Luke 1995) have not been as extensively appropriated by the boys, their teachers or their parents, as those discourses which foreground the importance of decoding, semantic and pragmatic practice.

A number of speculations could be made about this absence here. It may be that reading as a leisure activity, as opposed to reading for more school-related purposes, is not regarded by boys as a mode requiring critical interrogation. It may be that critical social theories are still not being regularly translated into pedagogic practice (as recommended for example by Alloway & Gilbert 1997, Macken-Horarik 1998, Morgan 1997), and thus are not yet available as a cultural and discursive resource which these boys, their parents and their teachers can appropriate. It may also be possible that these boys, despite their existing cultural resources, do not have a sophisticated enough metalanguage to articulate how their own critical practice may operate to identify both subject and reading positions (as demonstrated by Love 1999 with a different cohort of students). In any case, the relative absence of a critical metalanguage in the comments of the boys in this research is noteworthy and merits further examination in a more extensive study.

Conclusion

The above analysis has provided a portrait of the reading practices and attitudes towards reading of one group of boys identified as committed readers. The texts that they reported having read for leisure, and the discursive and interpretative practices associated with them, can be considered as `privileging texts' (Bernstein 1990, p. 175) in that they are socially powerful within the particular context in which these boys are learning to take their place in the world. Texts such as the `philosophical books that make you think' mentioned above, along with newspaper articles dealing with `news of the current world', the poetry of Pushkin and the Internet are all (arguably) privileging texts within a middle class Australian community. So too are the spoken interpretative discourses associated with these texts, discourses that these more committed readers have appropriated in order to be considered as successful within the institution of schooling and in the wider social community.

The systematic examination of the boys' discursive comments regarding how they have accessed these privileging texts has indicated their awareness of the particular importance of coding practice, semantic practice and pragmatic practice. The comments have reflected the understandings of this cohort of boys that reading, in its broadest sense, is a set of social practices embedded in their particular family and community cultures. However, despite being articulate and scholastically successful, few of the boys in this cohort mentioned the importance of critical practice as a necessary component of being a `good' reader, suggesting that, for whatever reason, the discourses of critical literacy have still not found their way as `privileging texts' into pedagogic practice, at either the school level or the home level. If indeed these boys have learnt `to do with reading what they have been taught to do and what is valued and encouraged and useful' (Luke 1995, p. 175), a question remains about where and how critical practice is taught, valued and encouraged. We will be pursuing this question in the next stage of our research as we interview the teachers and parents of these boys.

In the meantime we would strongly recommend that teachers consider the sustained use of resources such as Alloway & Gilbert's (1997) professional development package Boys and Literacy and Morgan et al.'s (1996) professional development package Critical Literacy.

Another question arising from this first stage of our research concerns the ways in which the perceptive and articulate insights of these boys can be used to inform teachers and parents as they attempt to encourage other boys to read more extensively for leisure. As committed readers, these boys have appropriated in different ways `privileging' texts and reading practices from particular family members, the younger boys tending to effectively appropriate reading and discursive practices modelled by their mothers and the older boys, in the main, appropriating reading and discursive practices modelled by their fathers. The cultural resources and institutional access and support (Luke 1995) made available to these boys across this Year 5-11 cohort provide the conditions for an ideal apprenticeship into valued reading practices. Thus these boys' comments offer valuable insights for educators, both within the family and within the school. One powerful and still relatively unexploited social resource in the maintenance of boys as committed readers, as revealed in the boys' comments, is fathers and other male role models. In the next stage of this research project, a more detailed examination will be made of the roles played by fathers who are successful in helping their sons maintain their commitment to reading as a leisure activity through their later adolescent years. Such research will build on recently emerging, but embryonic theory in this area (see in particular Moloney 1999, Nichols 1994), and will, it is hoped, provide fine-grained models for emulation of the reading-related practices of fathers who have substantially contributed to the development of their sons as committed readers.

References

Alloway, N. & Gilbert, P. 1997, Boys and Literacy: Professional Development Units, Curriculum Corporation, Carlton.

Anderson, R.C. 1977, `The notion of schemata and the educational enterprise', in Schooling and the Acquisition of Knowledge, eds R.C. Anderson, R.J. Spiro & W.E. Montague, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, New Jersey.

Benton, M. & Fox, G. 1985, Teaching Literature Nine to Fourteen, Oxford University Press, Melbourne.

Bernstein, B. 1990, Class, Codes and Control, Vol 4: The Structuring of Pedagogic Discourse, Routledge, London.

Bunbury, R. 1995, Children's Choice: Reading at Home and at School, Deakin University Press, Geelong.

Freebody, P. & Luke, A. 1990, `"Literacies" programs: Debates and demands in cultural context', Prospect, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 7-16.

Heath, S.B. 1983, Ways with Words: Language, Life and Work in Community and Classrooms, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Kress, G. 1985, Linguistic Processes in Sociocultural Practice, Deakin University Press, Geelong.

Love, K. 1999, The Whole Class Text Response Genre in Secondary English: A Case Study, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Melbourne.

Luke, A. 1995, `The social practice of reading', Proceedings of the ARA Conference, Brisbane, Australia, pp. 167-187.

Macken-Horarik, M. 1998, `Exploring the requirements of critical school literacy', Literacy and Schooling, eds F. Christie and R. Misson, Routledge, London, pp. 74-103.

Mercer, N. 1994, `Neo-Vygotskian theory and classroom education', in Language, Literacy and Learning in Educational Practice, eds J. Maybin & B. Steirer, Multi-Lingual Matters, London, pp. 92-110.

Millard, E. 1997, `Differently literate: Gender identity and the construction of the developing reader', Gender and Education, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 31-48.

Moloney, J. 1999, `We don't read because we want to be men', Magpies, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 1-4.

Morgan, W. 1997, Critical Literacy in the Classroom: The Art of the Possible, Routledge, London.

Morgan, W., Gilbert, P., Lankshear, C., Werba, S. & Williams, L. 1996, Critical Literacy, Australian Association for the Teaching of English, Norwood, South Australia.

Nichols, S. 1994, `Fathers and literacy', Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 17 no. 4, pp. 301-312.

Office for Standards in Education 1993, Boys and English: A Report from the Office of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools Department of Education, United Kingdom.

Thomson, J. 1987, Understanding Teenagers' Reading, Australian Association for the Teaching of English, Sydney.

Whitehead, F. 1977, Children and Their Books: The Final Report of the Schools Council Research Project on Reading Habits, HMSO, London.

Wallace, C. 1992, On Reading, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Kristina Love is a lecturer in the Department of Language, Literacy and Arts Education at the University of Melbourne. Her recent research is in the area of oral classroom discussions as these both reflect and construct student attitudes towards the texts being explored. Kristina uses the tools of Systemic Functional Linguistics to examine these oral discourses, both in face-to-face discussions and in on-line discussions.

Address: Faculty of Education, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria

Email: k.love@edfac.unimelb.edu.au

Julie Hamston is a lecturer at the University of Melbourne. She is primarily interested in how language constructs social and cultural identities. This forms the basis of her PhD, which centres on the creation of dialogic relationships within the context of post-colonial pedagogy, and, in more recent years, research into English as an international language in China.

Address: Faculty of Education, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria

Email: j.hamston@edfac.unimel.edu.au.