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The interviews with the four teachers provided a detailed picture of the motivations that lead to the implementation of their specific reading programs. As well as possessing a personal love of reading, which fuelled their enthusiasm for the topic, the four teachers were influenced in their work by the serious implications for their students if they failed to achieve success in reading. These implications are well documented in the research.

The teachers had a well-developed, if naïve, conceptual understanding of the attitude model described by McKenna (1994). The programs they implemented, while designed to provide students with a model of reading behaviour and provide time to develop and practise reading skills, also had as an underpinning objective to improve the attitudes of students through their engagement with books and book talk.

The teachers’ reading programs were primarily organised so that they engaged with the interests of the children but were also, perhaps, intuitive in their intention to intersect with children’s developing attitude towards reading. All four

of the teachers were attempting, each in his or her own way, to achieve these goals in a classroom environment that was supportive and encouraging of literacy engagement – in much the same way that Smith (1982a), Cambourne (1988), Luke and Freebody (2000) suggest as productive. They were, in every sense, fulfilling the theoretically projected objectives of the model. The majority of the children in these classrooms demonstrated a genuine commitment to the literacy activities in which they were engaged. They had absorbed the ethos of their teachers, each of whom was able to express unreservedly his or her commitment to the goal of ensuring the children recognised the importance of the enjoyment of literacy achievement.

The teachers in this study all understood that they had achieved their intentions in their literacy programs when they were able to gauge children’s attitudes toward reading from the children’s response to it. As Michael said, very tellingly, “his smile tells me what I want to know about his attitude” (Interview, May 8, 2002 p. 9). The benefits of engaging with literature, as discussed with these teachers, were not being measured by ‘scientific testing’. They were measured instead by the number of books being read, the conversations that emerged from them, the subtle differences that became apparent in the children’s writing, the growth in vocabulary and the joyful participation the children expressed when they were ‘allowed’ to read their favourite books.

Equally important to the goals of literacy achievement, in the opinions of the teachers, was the learning that occurred in the area of children’s social and emotional growth. The teachers attributed this growth to the fact that the content of the literature with which children engaged provided them with access to complex abstract concepts that were made concrete for them through their engagement. This, in turn, allowed the teacher and children to engage in the discussion of issues that were relevant and often challenging.

The carefully constructed contact with literature that these teachers have provided has the potential to generate the motivational force of commitment to reading that will encourage children to engage with complex, challenging ideas and to move beyond their known experience. As was suggested by Dixon (2000), participation in book talk, the active and meaningful discussion of literature, has the

potential to provide a potent means for the voicing of the children’s thoughts and perceptions, and in so doing, adding to the shared knowledge of the class. Children in the classrooms who were the focus of this study became privy to ideas and gained access to vicarious experience beyond their own actuality, as a direct result of their engagement with literature, as Nell (1988) suggests they would. They were able to make discoveries about themselves, their world and the world beyond them, in a way that offered the essence of the experience without its inherent dangers (Meek, 1988).

It is cautiously suggested that many of the benefits that have been discussed here, tend to fall within the affective domain and thus forge an appropriate connection to the philosophical shift towards a ‘thinking’ curriculum, one that demands engagement with the cognitive skills of hypothesis, synthesis, assessment and evaluation of ideas. Indeed, the four teachers in this study, by planning the literacy practices described by them, as described in this document, are providing precisely the kinds of developmentally appropriate activities that raise the consciousness and inform the moral decisions of students.

Many of the researchers in the literature have suggested, as was found to be the case in this study, that teachers who understand the power of interest and motivation in influencing student attitudes, not only to reading, but generally, will be better able to affect positive change in the classroom. The teachers who participated in this study, and others like them, who attend to the affective domain of learning, are, it is hesitantly suggested, ideally situated to implement the changes envisaged by the developers of the new values- and futures-based curriculum, the Essential Learnings (Education Department, 2002a).

If we, as a society, want children to graduate from our schools with the values expressed in the new curriculum documents, then literature, and teachers who appreciate its worth, are well positioned to help develop creative, imaginative, thinking people to take their place in that society.

The many facets of classroom practice that the teachers have described in their interviews, have added greatly to the researcher’s understanding of children’s affective development, and the importance of interest and motivation in

influencing attitude and achieving student learning. These four teachers were all caring, professional people who sought the best for their students and were generous enough to share their insights gained over many years of experience. Together with the contribution made by their students, who participated in the survey, they have built up a picture of their practice and the benefits that accrue from it. The researcher appreciates their time, openness and honesty in contributing to her knowledge and to that of the research on this topic.