The Child and Reading: Narratives of Literacy Competence

Abstract

The focus of this chapter is on the responses that individual children make to their encounters with the core skill of reading in primary school. The interview data presented here focus on reading and meaning making in children who are considered poor readers by school authorities. Data were drawn from both age groups of children, and there are differences in how children respond to reading based on age; older children show evidence of having a more fixed reading identity than younger children, where space to manoeuvre is still felt. The first part of the chapter presents findings on the meanings children make of reading identities in school, where they work primarily with constructs of ‘being’ intelligent or not. Data, in the form of quotes and fieldnotes, present children’s resistance to reading and to the reading identities they are assigned at school.