Interested reader or uninterested dissembler?: the identities constructed by upper primary aged...

Interested reader or uninteresteddissembler?: the identities constructed byupper primary aged dyslexic pupils duringsilent reading sessionsRosemary Anderson

Abstract

This article discusses the identities that may beconstructed by upper primary aged pupils duringsilent reading sessions. The findings presented aretaken from a 2-year ethnographic case study, whichinvestigated how four dyslexic pupils, aged 10–11 (Y5–6), coped with the classroom reading they encounteredat a large primary school in northern England. Thetheoretical aim was to integrate the psychologicalconcept of dyslexia with a socio-cultural view ofliteracy development and an analytic framework wasdeveloped using symbolic interactionist theory. Hereideas on presentation of self, formulated by ErvingGoffman, are introduced and his notion of impressionmanagement is used as a lens through which to discusswhat happened when the pupils were put in the positionof having no choice but to engage with texts that weretoo difficult for them to read independently. I focus onthe silent reading sessions that were a regular feature oftheir Literacy lessons and introduce a typology of readeridentities. Evidence from systematic observations, sup-plemented with that from narrative observations andinterview transcripts, is used to illustrate the four types -interested reader, uninterested reader, interested dissemblerand uninterested dissembler – and the implications forliteracy development are drawn out.

Key words: dyslexia, socio-cultural perspective, casestudy, identity construction, impression management,silent reading sessions

Introduction and background

While working as a literacy support teacher during themid 1990s I discovered that an 11-year-old dyslexic pupilof mine sometimes pretended she could read classroomtexts that were in fact too difficult for meaningful engage-ment. At the time I was surprised by this dissemblingbehaviour, but I began to wonder if giving the impressionof being a competent reader was a strategy commonlyused by pupils experiencing literacy difficulties in orderto preserve self-esteem with peers and teachers.

Over time I developed an academic interest in thereading experiences of dyslexic pupils once they reach

the age when most children are ‘reading to learn’rather than ‘learning to read’. I felt that by the lateryears of primary schooling teachers might assume thatpupils would be able to read the texts put before themin the classroom, leaving those with dyslexic difficul-ties in a problematic position if they did not wish tolose face. I initially investigated this topic via a small-scale interview study (Anderson, 2001), but in order toexplore the subject in greater depth I conducted a 2-year ethnographic case study (Anderson, 2007). Thisarticle looks in detail at one aspect of the findings ofthis research, namely reader identity and impressionmanagement during silent reading sessions.

A socio-cultural view of dyslexia

Most academic research into dyslexia has been withinthe disciplines of cognitive psychology or neurology,and from this perspective literacy learning is viewed asa process of sequential skill development (see Reid andFawcett, 2004). This has led to a concentration ofattention in the literature on within person functioningof individual pupils, and although Riddick’s (1996)research on Living with dyslexia is a notable exception,the more sociological aspects of the subject have beenrelatively neglected (Burden, 2005). In my study theconcept of dyslexia, discussed below, was retained butwas integrated into a socio-cultural view of literacydevelopment, which regards learning to read andwrite as a set of social and cultural practices that takeplace within situated communities (Hall, 2003). Thisperspective can be linked with the work of Lave andWenger (1991) if teachers are viewed as experts whoinduct novice pupils into the classroom community ofliterate practice. My interest in this approach meantthat the research was focused firmly on the dyslexicpupils’ everyday school experiences as they copedwith the demands of classroom reading and engagedin social interaction with peers and adults.

There has been much debate over proposed definitionsof dyslexia that expand on its literal Greek meaning‘‘difficulty with words’’ (Hornsby, 1992, p. 3), and the

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result is that no two are alike. However, the dyslexiadefinitions do tend to have features in common in thatmost include a possible cause and many suggest that acertain amount of discrepancy should be demon-strated between actual and expected levels of literacyskills, given overall intellectual potential. A conse-quence of this way of looking at dyslexia is thatpsychological testing is needed before identification,with the result that only the most severely affectedpupils are likely to be formally assessed and labelled.

At the end of the 1990s the British PsychologicalSociety (BPS) set up a working party to look at thewhole issue of dyslexia assessment and they proposeda new more inclusive definition, which stated that:

‘‘Dyslexia is evident when accurate and fluent wordreading and/or spelling develops very incompletelyor with great difficulty . . . This focuses on literacylearning at the ‘word level’ and implies that the problem issevere and persistent despite appropriate learningopportunities’’ (Reason, 2002, pp. 188–189).

The BPS definition, like all those before it, provedcontroversial for some professionals working in thedyslexia field, but was useful for classroom teachers asits terminology connected with that of the originalNational Literacy Strategy (DfEE, 1998). It allowedpupils who have specific problems with literacylearning at the single word level that are not severeenough to merit formal assessment but which remain asignificant barrier to learning despite targeted supportto be described as dyslexic, and so for this reason it wasused in my study.

Methodology

The research reported here was conducted between2003 and 2005 at a large primary school in a formermining area on the outskirts of a city in northernEngland. The investigation was designed as a casestudy (Merriam, 1988) so that the classroom readingexperiences of a small number of upper primary ageddyslexic pupils could be examined in detail. The schoolstaff identified four potential participants about toenter year 5 (age 10), whose self-chosen pseudonymswere Ernie, Russell, Amy and Janie, and they all gavetheir informed consent before the start of the research.These pupils had been receiving extra focused supportfor some time, but they all still experienced severe andpersistent literacy difficulties at the single word levelthat were unexpected given their overall intellectualpotential. Only Russell’s special needs had beenformally identified via a Statement of Special Educa-tional Needs (SEN) (DfES, 2001) but the other threepupils had reading ages at least 2 years behind theirchronological age according to a sentence completiontest, and in my professional opinion could also beconsidered dyslexic in the terms of the BPS definitiondescribed above.

The data collection methods used included narrativeand systematic classroom observations, documentcollection and informal individual lunchtime inter-views when the morning’s reading was discussed andpassages of text read aloud. The four pupils werefollowed for a day each in turn throughout Years 5 and6 (age 10–11) when all lessons involving reading wereobserved, and about 70 visits in total were made to theschool. The wealth of rich ethnographic data containedin fieldnotes and interview transcripts was qualita-tively analysed using a system of coding and classify-ing, and this inductive process led to the emergence ofa number of overall themes (Ely et al., 1997).

Connecting the study to symbolicinteractionism

The overarching theoretical framework used to makesense of the findings was symbolic interactionism (SI),a sociological perspective developed at the ChicagoSchool, which became very influential in the mid-20thcentury, particularly in USA(Plummer, 2000). SI wasseen as an especially apt underpinning for thisresearch as its basic tenets and those of the commu-nities of practice view of literacy can be demonstratedto dovetail into each other:

‘‘Literacy skills are socially negotiated actions that resultin meaningful thought and behaviour in the context ofprior actions and social interactions of the group. Theseactions construct the social context for further mean-ingful action (Crick, 1976). This cyclical negotiation ofcontexts and skills which meaningfully fit each otherrepresents the theoretical position of symbolic interac-tionism (Blumer, 1969), in which people fit their activityto the activity of others to construct shared meaningsabout their joint activity. Jointly defined activityreoccurring over time results in social practice. Whenthe actions of social practice include reading or writing,then the social practice is a literacy practice’’ (Myers,1992, p. 301).

Particularly pertinent for this research is the way thatSI regards the ‘self’ as essentially social, consisting of asubjective ‘I’, which is ‘‘able to reflect on an objectifiedsense of the ‘me’’’(Pollard and Filer, 1999, p. 4). Thisdraws attention to the unique capacity of humans to beable to see themselves from the perspective of others,an important consideration when thinking about theposition of dyslexic pupils during classroom readingactivities. Gross and Stone writing in the hey day of SI,usefully connected the concepts of the ‘self’ and‘identity’ by asserting that ‘‘identity is the substantivedimension of the self’’(1964, p. 3), a view that suggestsidentity is always situated. Reader identity then will beconstructed according to how the individual seesthemselves in relation to others within the communityof literate practice in which they participate.

84 Interested reader or uninterested dissembler?

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In its pure form the influence of SI on sociologicalthought declined during the second half of the 20thcentury (Fine, 1993), but within the field of educationthe theory has been used in the recent past to underpinAndrew Pollard’s ‘‘Identity and learning programme’’(Pollard and Filer, 1996, 1999). Pollard and Filer statethat pupil identity:

‘‘is forged through those aspects of school through whichpupils interact, work and compete (or not as the case maybe) for what is valued by their significant others; theirpeers, parents and teachers, as well as by pupilsthemselves. This bears a very important relationship tothe symbolic interactionist position . . . [as it] emphasizesthe development of self-awareness and construction ofmeaning through interpersonal relationships’’ (Pollardand Filer, 1999, p. 293).

In relation to the reader identities discussed in thisarticle, the phrase ‘‘what is valued by their significantothers’’ is perhaps the most salient in the abovequotation, and this will be discussed further in thenext section.

Erving Goffman and impressionmanagement

Although SI thinking on identity has been the maininfluence on this research overall, the theoreticalinspiration for the specific findings reported in thisarticle has been provided by the mid-20th centuryCanadian sociologist, Erving Goffman. His main areaof interest was ‘the interaction order’, which he saidexisted when ‘‘two or more individuals are in oneanother’s response presence’’ (Goffman, 1983, p. 3),and although he did not actively associate himself withSI (Burns, 1992) his work had ‘strong affinities’(Plummer, 2000, p. 208) with the perspective becauseof his focus on a socially defined self during face to faceencounters.

In the preface of his first major book, The presentation ofself in everyday life (1959), Goffman explains that:

‘‘The perspective employed in this report is that of thetheatrical performance; the principles derived are drama-turgical ones. I shall consider the way in which the publicindividual in ordinary work [or school] situationspresents himself (sic) and his activity to others, the waysin which he guides and controls the impression they formof him, and the kinds of things he may and may not dowhile sustaining his performance before them’’ (Goffman,1959, p. 9).

Through the book he develops his ideas on howpeople, when in closed ‘team’ situations in ‘‘anyconcrete social establishment’’ (Goffman, 1959, p. 9)co-operate to produce a managed performance, which

is prepared in a ‘backstage’ region and then presentedto the world when ‘front stage’. Viewed through thislens, pupils in a classroom community of learners canbe regarded as players in a closed team who try to giveidealised public performances that ‘‘attempt to incor-porate and exemplify officially accredited values of thesociety’’ (Goffman, 1959, p. 45).

High status is accorded to proficient literacy skills inthe western world (Burden, 2005) and a climate ofperformativity has prevailed in English schools forsome years now (Hall et al., 2004). Because of thisdyslexic pupils are likely to be well aware of ‘‘what isvalued by their significant others’’ (Pollard and Filer,1999, p. 293), and so it is unsurprising that they sufferfrom low self-esteem in areas of their life that involvereading (Anderson, 2008a; Burden, 2005). It is thereforemy contention that in order to bolster their self-imagewhen in the company of peers and teachers, dyslexicpupils are likely to use impression management tacticsin order to sustain a presentation of themselves asmore competent readers than they really are. Evidencefrom my study revealed that this was certainly the casewhen the four pupils were forced into a position in theclassroom of having to engage with texts that were toodifficult for them to read independently.

Silent reader identity construction

Although the pupils indulged in impression manage-ment during a variety of classroom activities involvingreading, their patterns of behaviour were clearest to seeduring Y6 silent reading sessions. These took place ona regular basis for around 10 minutes at the start of thedaily Literacy lessons (DfEE, 1998) when the bookchoice was limited to a collection of ‘young reader’type novels and classic children’s fiction pre-selectedby teaching staff. As the pupils read I observed themfrom the back of the room and filled in a systematicobservation proforma with codes (Croll, 1986) in orderto record their behaviour at 10 second intervals.Inspiration for the categories was provided by thoseused by Pollard and Triggs (2000) in the PACE project,but whereas they noted pupil activity and interactionseparately, I devised codes that combined the two, forexample ‘‘DP – distracted interacting with pupil/s’’(see Figure 1 for the complete set of codes).

Examples of completed schedules form Tables 1–4below, and it is important to note that the rows of codesshould be read from left to right, top to bottom, asindicated.

At their lunchtime interviews the four pupils readpassages from the books they had engaged withduring the morning’s silent reading and by carryingout error analyses on their taped renditions I was ableto establish if the texts were at a suitable independentlevel for extracting meaning (usually stated as o5%


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errors). Sadly, I discovered that except for Ernie, formost of the time this was not the case for the other threeas their error rates were much higher, averaging over anumber of sessions at 17.5% for Amy, 16% for Janie and23% for Russell. This put them in the position of havingno choice but to engage in pretence if they were toconvey the impression they were reading.

A descriptive typology

By studying the completed systematic observationschedules in detail alongside the reading passage erroranalyses I became aware of particular patterns ofbehaviour, and in order to present these clearly, thedescriptive typology shown in Figure 2 was developedas a 2 � 2 matrix (Woods, 1986).

My analysis suggested that the two most salientvariables affecting presentation of self during silentreading were:

� Whether the pupil had a high or low level ofmotivation to engage with the book.

� Whether the book was set at an appropriateindependent reading level or was inappropriatebecause it was too difficult.

These variables were therefore chosen as the twodimensions of the matrix, and the potential combina-tions generated four different silent reader identitytypes. In Figure 2 these are given descriptive titles:

� ‘Reader’ means that real reading occurred, whereas‘dissembler’ means that there was an appearance ofreading, but that for part of the time at least this wasa pretence indulged in as part of impressionmanagement.

� The terms ‘interested’ and uninterested’ refer towhether a high or low proportion of the time wasspent apparently on task.

These potential reader identities will now be describedwith examples, as during the study the pupil partici-pants presented themselves in ways that illustrated allfour types. However, it is important to be aware thatthe reader identity constructed by an individual isalways context specific, and so if textual difficulty wasmarkedly different from usual, the pupils’ patterns ofbehaviour could alter significantly. Their reader typetherefore was not ‘set in stone’ but varied from time totime, and for this reason two of the illustrative tablesbelow refer to the same pupil.

The four silent reader identity types

Interested reader (wants to read and can read)

A pupil is likely to behave as an interested reader whenhe/she is highly motivated to engage with text becausethe book provides interest that is appropriate for theage group and is at a suitable independent readinglevel. Ernie, whose reading standard improved a gooddeal during Y6, provided a typical example of thisidentity type on one occasion when he was observed tobe reading silently for 82% of the time (see Table 1). Hisbook, Billy Beast, was a subversive retelling of a fairystory and during most of the session he appeared to bein that magical state often referred to as ‘‘being lost in abook’’ despite some distractions in the classroom.

When he read a passage during his lunchtime inter-view I discovered that the book was at an acceptablelevel for independent reading and his description ofthe storyline showed that he had understood the textwell. It was also obvious that he had relished thehumour provided by the authors and that his enjoy-ment had been enhanced by being able to takeadvantage of intertextuality (Meek, 1988) as he wasfamiliar with the usual conventions of fairytales andunderstood they had been changed to comic effect.

Code Pupil behaviour RS Reading silently (apparent) RT Reading to teacher RA Reading to adult FP Flicking through pages of book DO Distracted on own DP Distracted – interacting with pupil/s DA Distracted – interacting with adult IA Interacting with adult (about reading)MT Management task WH Waiting for help MR Moving around room OR Out of room

Figure 1: Codes for systematic observation

Level of motivation toengage high

Level of motivation to engage low

Text at appropriate level Interested reader

(wants to read and can read)

Uninterested reader

(doesn’t want to read but can read)

Text not at appropriate level

Interested dissembler

(wants to read but can’t read)

Uninterested dissembler

(doesn’t want to read and can’t read)

Figure 2: A typology of silent reader identity


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Pupils who construct their identity as interested readersduring silent reading sessions are in the ideal situationfor improving their reading attainment as the highvolume of rewarding print experiences make it likelythat Stanovich’s‘bootstrapping mechanism’ (1986,p. 380), so vital for progress, will operate.

Uninterested reader (does not want to read but canread)

If a book is at a suitable reading level, but the pupil isnot motivated to engage with it, then he/she is likely toconstruct their identity as an uninterested reader.Although for most silent reading sessions the booksthat Janie read were too difficult, on one occasion whenshe chose a novel that, although over the usual errorlimit, could be considered just about acceptable due tothe nature of the errors, she showed behaviour typicalof this identity type. In stark contrast with Ernie, sheonly spent 40% of the session reading, and this totalwas made up of several short bursts of engagementrather than sustained periods of attention (see Table 2).She spent the remainder of the time firstly spinning outthe task of writing the title and author of the book on areview sheet for as long as possible and then latterlylooking around the room or whispering to Amy whowas sitting next to her. It would seem then that she wasrelatively uninterested in the textual content, andtherefore only engaged on a shallow level.

Janie’s behaviour suggested a surface level of intereston many occasions, and of the four pupils she was theone who showed the clearest evidence of ‘‘system-atically excluding print’’ (Johnston, 1985, p. 160) fromher life. In the following interview extract she actuallyadmitted this:

RA: ‘‘. . . Would you like to fetch it [a poetry book] andread it to me or?’’

J: ‘‘I don’t know where it is’’.RA: ‘‘Don’t you – oh that is a shame – right – what are

you going to?’’J: ‘‘I don’t read nothing really?? (Inaudible) . . .

(Janie goes out the room and the interview ends)’’(Y6 Interview transcript).

It is not surprising that after experiencing years ofstruggling with classroom texts, dyslexic pupils avoidreading as much as possible. The problem, however, asJohnston (1985) pointed out in relation to his ‘learningdisabled’ interviewees, is that if individuals do thisthey then deny themselves the practice that could leadto an improvement in their literacy skills.

Interested dissembler (wants to read but cannot read)

If pupils are highly motivated to engage with their booksduring silent reading sessions, but the text levels arebeyond their independent reading capacity, they have no

choice but to behave as interested dissemblers if they are togive the impression they are full members of theclassroom community of literate practice. Amy, whowas a highly conformist pupil, often revealed behaviourtypical of this identity type and I observed herapparently ‘reading’ for 64% of the time during onesession when her book was far too difficult for mean-ingful engagement to have occurred (see Table 3). Areward system for the number of books read was inoperation at the time, and as during interviews Amy wasalways desperate to construct her identity as a con-scientious pupil, it would seem likely that this was themain reason for her high level of motivational interest.

Russell’s SEN Statement (DfES, 2001) entitled him to anumber of hours of individual support, and during theLiteracy silent reading sessions he was often withdrawnfor work on high frequency spellings, which made itdifficult to conduct systematic observations. However,he was present at the brief silent reading sessions thattook place when the afternoon register was taken, andduring these his behaviour was often that of an interesteddissembler. His motivation to present himself in this way

Table 1: Interested reader – Ernie

Book: Billy beast by L. Anholt and A. RobbinsError rate on passage read: 6%Reading speed on passage read: 84 wpm50 codings (about 8 minutes)Behaviour coded at 10-second intervals along the rowsleft to right

Start

RS RS RS DO RS RS RS RS RS DORS RS RS RS RS RS DP RS RS RSDO RS RS RS RS RS DO DO RS RSDP DO DO RS RS RS RS RS RS RSRS RS RS RS RS RS RS RS RS RS

Finish

Codes, Behaviours and Percentages

Code Pupil behaviour % of codings

RS Reading silently (apparent) 82RT Reading to teacher 0RA Reading to adult 0FP Flicking through pages of book 0DO Distracted on own 14DP Distracted – interacting with

pupil/s4

DA Distracted – interacting withadult

0

IA Interacting with adult (aboutreading)

0

MT Management task 0WH Waiting for help 0MR Moving around room 0OR Out of room 0


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on these occasions seemed somewhat different fromAmy’s as it appeared to derive from the need to give theimpression that he was the type of reader who couldengage with the same texts as his friends.

Russell was desperate to present himself as a memberof the group of mid-ability boys who enjoyed readingjunior thriller novels and so when two friends bought anovel called Fire and Ice from the school Book Fayre, hepersuaded his mother to obtain a copy for him despitethe fact that when he had attempted similar texts inthe past he had found them very difficult. Duringhis lunchtime interview his error rate was 30% on thepassage read to me, but his motivation to give theimpression he was part of the unofficial ‘book club’meant that immediately afterwards when the after-noon register was taken I observed him giving everyappearance of engaging fully with the text:

‘‘1.10 PM . . . Russell collected his reading book Fire andice from his tray and sat down in his place with Jacob . . .

He then appeared to start to read from where he hadfinished with me a few minutes before’’.

‘‘. . . During this short session Russell gave everyimpression that he was really reading. This is the clearestexample I have ever seen of a pupil maintaining the pretenceof reading because they are desperate to be part of the peergroup community of readers – it is doubly sad in Russell’scase as his perseverance is also motivated by really wantingto read the story which has been recommended to him’’.

‘‘The teacher said she would not start the register until shecould see that they were all reading. Jacob and Matthew werealso reading the same book as Russell – as the teacher took theregister she remarked that they all had the same title and said‘An epidemic’ – Matthew said ‘Fire and ice – they’re rightgood’. Russell continued to appear to read his copy’’

(Y6 Fieldnotes).

Dyslexic pupils who construct their identities asinterested dissemblers are likely to be quiet conformistpupils who fade into the background in classrooms

Table 2: Uninterested reader – Janie

Book: Magic dad by A. PrinceError rate on passage read: 10% (mainly minor errorson proper nouns)Reading speed on passage read: 56 wpm50 codings (about 8 minutes)Behaviour coded at 10-second intervals along the rowsleft to right

Start

MT MT MT MT MT MT MT MT MT DOMT MT DP DP RS DO DO DO DO DORS RS RS DP DO DP DP DP DO RSRS RS RS DO RS RS RS DP RS RSRS DO RS RS DP RS RS RS RS DP

Finish




pupil/s18


0


0


Table 3: Interested dissembler – Amy

Book: The Rex files – Life snatcher by S. RangerError rate on passage read: 15%Reading speed on passage read: 30 wpm50 codings (about 8 minutes)Behaviour coded at 10-second intervals along the rowsleft to right

Start

RS DP RS RS RS RS RS RS RS DPDP RS RS RS RS RS RS RS RS RSRS RS RS RS RS DO MR MR RS DOWH WH WH WH MR IA RS RS DO DORS RS RS RS RS RS RS DP DP DP

Finish




pupil/s12


0


2



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and do not demand that their needs are met. However,their efforts at pretence suggests that, against the odds,they still want to be able to read, and every effortshould be made to find ways to enable them to interactwith suitable texts before Stanovich’s (1986) ‘Mattheweffect’ begins to operate and they become disaffected.

Uninterested dissembler (does not want to readand cannot read)

Pupils who commonly behave as uninterested dissem-blers during silent reading sessions are not afraid toshow their lack of interest when they have to interactwith a book that is at an inappropriate level. Janie’sbehaviour was often typical of this identity type and onone occasion when she was attempting to read anoverly difficult book from the series of subversive fairytales, she only read for 14% of the time and this wasspread out in five transient periods of engagement (seeTable 4). She spent most of the rest of the time eitherwhispering to neighbours or out of the room on a

prolonged toilet trip, and the fact that she wasprepared to openly disengage could be seen asevidence that she did not feel the need to manipulateher presentation of self so as to be seen as a full memberof the classroom community of literate practice. As sheoften seemed somewhat disaffected with school thismay have been to some extent true, but I discoveredduring an interview that she too was affected by theneed to present herself as a more competent readerthan she really was, and to my amazement, was evenprepared to admit she was engaging in pretence:

RA: ‘‘Can you show me where you are [in the book] then –right near the back.’’

J: ‘‘(Janie flicks through the book to near the end andindicates p. 63) There’’.

RA: ‘‘Right . . . can you just read a little bit of it for me?’’J: ‘‘I haven’t really been reading it’’.RA: ‘‘Haven’t you ? What have you been doing then – how

do you mean?’’J: ‘‘I just flick through a page like that. (Janie turns pages

of the book rapidly)’’RA: ‘‘Yes’’.J: ‘‘And keep going like that (Janie flicks pages again)

while I’m writing’’.RA: ‘‘. . .. Well, how can you say you’ve got to the end of the

book then if you’ve?’’J: ‘‘Miss just says – ‘Oh right’ – when you say ‘Oh I’ve

finished’ – she goes ‘Go and change your book then’ andif it were a boy’s story and I don’t really like them’’.

(Y6 Interview transcript).

It would seem then that during the brief periods whenJanie appeared to be reading she was in fact indulgingin a highly strategic form of impression management,and later in the interview she confessed that she kepteach book for about 5 days in order to strengthen theillusion. It is interesting that she told me shedissembled because she did not like boys’ books, asthis explanation enabled her to maintain her presenta-tion of self as a more competent reader than she reallywas. This reader type is likely to be the most damagingas dyslexic pupils who construct their identity in thisway have clearly switched off from reading comple-tely. Because of this they are likely to need a great dealof sensitive teaching if they are to ever take on thevalues of the community of literate practice and feelthat books offer pleasures that make it worth putting inthe huge amount of effort involved in learning to read.

Concluding comments

In this article I have used findings from my study todescribe four potential silent reader identities, but it isimportant to restate the point made above that all theparticipating pupils showed evidence of behaviourassociated with more than one type if the textual contextwas markedly different to that which they usuallyexperienced. For example, at the start of Y6, before theimprovement in Ernie’s reading standard, even hebehaved as an uninterested dissembler while trying to

Table 4: Uninterested dissembler – Janie

Book: The fried piper of Hamstring by L.Anholt and A.RobinsError rate on passage read: 15%Reading speed on passage read: 49 wpm50 codings (about 8 minutes)Behaviour coded at 10-second intervals along the rowsleft to right

Start

DP DP DP DP DP DP DP DP DP RSIA IA RS DP DP DP DP DP DP DPDO DO RS RS DO MR OR OR OR OROR OR OR OR OR OR OR MR MR MRDO DO RS RS DP DP DP RS DP DP

Finish




pupil/s42


0


4



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engage with a Horrible Histories non-fiction book thatwas too difficult for him to read independently.

Pollard suggests that a particular strength of studiesconducted from the SI perspective is their ability toprovide ‘‘detailed and incisive accounts of the dynamicsand constraints of the contexts within which learningtakes place’’ (Pollard and Filer, 1996, p. 7). Certainly therange of performances observed during this studyunderlines the importance of recognising that context isa vital element in the construction of identity in theclassroom. The evidence also shows the need to beaware that if pupils find themselves in problematiccircumstances, they may well be using impressionmanagement tactics (Goffman, 1959) in order to presentthemselves as better readers than they really are.

The findings presented above suggest that unlessdyslexic pupils are able to construct their identities asinterested readers, silent reading sessions are a completewaste of time for them and so are unlikely to contributeto reading development. In fact, if the experience ofhaving to engage with books that are overly difficult orboring occurs on a regular basis, it may well be acontributing factor in the establishment of negativeattitudes to literacy in general. No claims are made asto the generalisability of the findings discussed as thestudy focused on a small number of pupils who werereceiving their education in one particular schoolcontext at one historical moment. Nevertheless it ishoped that the insights into pupil behaviour discussedvia the typology prove thought provoking for teachersworking in a variety of educational settings as theystrive to meet the needs of pupils in their care.

It is vital that ways are found to match readers and textseffectively so that dyslexic pupils, and indeed all thosewith reading difficulties, are able to value silent readingsessions as a rewarding part of their school curricularexperience. For only if that happens can such pupilstruly function as full members of the classroomcommunity of literate practice (see Anderson (2008b)for practical advice on how to promote meaningfultextual encounters during silent reading sessions).

Acknowledgement

An earlier version of this article was presented at theUKLA International Conference, Liverpool Hope Uni-versity, 11–13 July 2008.

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CONTACT THE AUTHORDr Rosemary Anderson, Penhill Barn, MainStreet, West Witton, Nr. Leyburn, North YorkshireDL8 4LU, UK.e-mail: [email protected]


r UKLA 2009

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