Mi mamá me ama (Emitido el 16 de julio de 2008)

My reading of the literature had revealed extensive surveys on what reading material 11 – 16 year olds choose and how extensively they read. However I had identified a gap in the literature relating to teachers’ ideas about their students’ reading. It was also apparent that, since Sarland (1994) and Benton (1995a), there had been little systematic research into what 11 – 16 year olds thought about the books they read, although, of course, this is part of the work of Hall and Coles and of Reading Connects. I was also very aware, in my role as a former teacher and a PGCE trainer of secondary English teachers, of the impact of NC and examination imperatives on the use of fiction in the secondary English classroom. Alongside this was an awareness of a general perception and concern that young people in the 11 – 16 year old age range, and boys in particular (Love and Hamston, 2003; OECD, 2003), were reading fiction less than they used to.

I had already done a small scale study into the reading preferences of 11 – 16 year olds (Hopper, 2005, 2006). The study was based in the South West of

114 England and allowed 30 PGCE trainees to look at what their pupils read as part of their own induction into using fiction in the secondary classroom. This study looked at data from 707 pupils and, similarly to previous surveys detailed above, looked primarily at 11 – 16 year olds’ patterns of reading.

My previous study (Hopper, 2005, 2006) built on findings from previous surveys about young people’s book choices and their fiction author preferences; it also investigated reading beyond fiction and patterns of reading. However it was becoming increasingly apparent to myself and my trainee English teachers that 11 – 16 year olds did not always enjoy books on the curriculum or the books deemed good for them to read. In other words there were questions about curriculum imperatives and the whole notion of the school canon (Benton, 2000; et al). The vagueness of the much used word quality, in curriculum terms, seemed to be the crux.

Whilst there was a challenge in trying to investigate something as amorphous as the meaning of a single word, even when linked to a tradition of literature, this seemed an avenue worth exploring, especially with the prevalence of the use of this word, quality, in terms of the curriculum and in judgements passed on books written for young people. There were many approaches I could have taken, however it seemed important to design a research project which sought the opinions of both teachers and the young readers (11 – 16 year olds) since quality of reading material is such a prevalent curriculum preoccupation.

The views of the young readers about what they read, as I have demonstrated in this and the previous chapter, have been presented in a succession of studies over the last 60 years. However, I wanted to explore in more detail what 11 – 16 year olds enjoyed reading at home and at school and what aspects of story they valued. Whilst earlier studies have surveyed children in both the primary and the secondary sector, I wanted this study to focus on the 11 – 16 year olds, effectively KS3 and KS4 in curriculum terms in the UK. This linked both to my own experience as a teacher at KS3 and KS4 and a secondary trainer of PGCE English teachers. The surveys I have already referred to all note a falling off in enthusiasm for reading as children reach the teenage years, so, by focusing on

115 the 11 – 16 year olds, my research would seek to illuminate issues surrounding this as well.

In addition, with Goodwyn and Findlay’s (1999) research in mind, I also wanted to give teachers a voice to say what they valued in fiction for the pupils they taught, again for use in school and for reading for pleasure. Were they able to use a variety of fiction texts? Were their models to teaching fiction essentially Cultural Heritage, literary models (for example, Personal Growth) or based in theories such as Reader Response? Or were approaches when introducing pupils to fiction texts based in other models or literary theories? I also wanted to find out how teachers used the texts they chose in the classroom curriculum since the emphasis on texts of quality is a curriculum expectation (NC, 2008).

3.6.3 Designing the research

In designing my research I planned to build on previous successful models (Jenkinson, 1946; Whitehead, 1977; Benton, 1995; Hall and Coles, 1999; Reading Connects, 2008) but I intended to plan more opportunities for the teachers and students to describe what aspects of fiction for the 11 – 16 year old age range mattered to them. I aimed to explore through interview the many subtle nuances of an unfamiliar perspective (Zuber-Skerritt, 1996, p.16) and through this shed new light on a familiar area of research. I hoped that, through the process of interviewing, I might raise unexpected lines of enquiry (Grix, 2004, p.127) to illuminate my enquiry.

Thus I planned to begin with a questionnaire sent out to English departments in schools in the PGCE secondary Partnership of the University of Exeter; these were all in the South West of England. This allied with approaches in earlier research and although not national in scope, was similar to samples used by Jenkinson (1946) and Benton (1995). The questionnaires would be used to inform interviews with volunteer teachers. Unlike Whitehead (1977) and Hall and Coles (1999), where interviews were from a planned random sample, my interviews with teachers and groups of students would be convenience samples