Girls and boys as readers: challenging binary beliefs
Date
2025
Authors
Scholes, L.
Pink, E.
McDonald, S.
Editors
Cremin, T.
McGeown, S.
McGeown, S.
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Book chapter
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Source details - Title: Reading for pleasure: international perspectives, 2025 / Cremin, T., McGeown, S. (ed./s), Ch.2, pp.16-29
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Abstract
This chapter draws attention to international research on reading to offer an up-to-date synthesis of key issues that impact on volitional reading for boys and girls. Focusing on contemporary data, the chapter extends understandings of volitional reading or choice-led reading in young people’s educational, cultural, and life experiences. First, we consider what international data tells us about gendered differences in reading enjoyment and proficiencies and interrogate some of the binary beliefs about boys and girls that are crystallised by homogeneous presentations. We take a critical lens to look closely at some of the nuances related to gender and SES and investigate beliefs perpetuate about boys and girls as readers. Teasing out nuances that interplay for contemporary boys and girls, we then investigate what research has to say about the factors that constrain and enable volitional reading experiences for young people. Drawing on new findings, we explore the role of diverse texts on boys’ and girls’ reading enjoyment and shifting practices in the digital age. Finally, we illustrate the implications of contemporary research for boys and girls as readers and what this means for educational policy and practical application in schools across Western nations. Our intent is to highlight how reading for pleasure is associated with a range of rich and diverse positive experiences that grow exponentially when boys and girls are deeply engaged in volitional reading as part of their everyday life.
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Copyright 2025
Access Condition Notes: selection and editorial matter, Teresa Cremin and Sarah McGeown.