Learning to read children’s emotional experience

Abstract

AbstractThis study investigated the effect of a positive relationship between adult and child within the learning to read process in school. Seven children, identified as having difficulties with reading, were interviewed. Two months earlier they had taken part in a two-week reading project that had involved daily reading for 15 minutes with an interested adult, who was not their teacher or classroom assistant. A social constructionist perspective informed the research. The emphasis was on reading as a ‘social act’ rather than merely a cognitive process.The two main areas of interest for the researchers were to find out how the children had experienced the specific intervention and to see what discourses the children used in their construction of reading.The participants’ language displayed complex discourses. Emotional factors connected with learning to read were strongly evident as were the individual learning approaches of the children. Reading was constructed as a powerful and desirable commodity by the children. All children drew on discourses of educational attainment and avoidance of failure and humiliation. A strongly positive response to the adult interaction was registered. The possible implications of these findings for the school in question and for further research areas are considered.