Dr Margaret Merga, senior lecturer at Curtin University, offers insights into how we can help our young people become life-long avid readers.

Dr Merga’s primary research areas are focussed on encouraging reading from the early years right up to adulthood. She has completed research projects at West Australian, national and international levels looking at how we can increase reading engagement in the youth population, and at older readers and the influencers and factors that have led to them continuing their engagement in reading into adulthood. Unpacking what makes adult readers read can lead to more effective educational strategies for improving reading in younger years.

What have you discovered about the power of influence?

In the International Study of Avid Book Readers (ISABR), we looked at who influenced adult readers and how. We also explored where they preferred to read, their concentration level and whether or not avid readers face the same challenges as non-avid readers in terms of concentration.

It provided interesting insights into how we can foster reading by exploring who can make a significant influence in young people’s lives and increase their engagement, but also looking at readers in general and their characteristics. For example, the discovery that concentration is an issue for both avid and non-avid readers has implications for the current trend to set up libraries as information centres, rather than places that are still conducive to deep, sustained and silent reading.

Has reader concentration been impacted by digital engagement?

I haven’t done any longitudinal research looking at changes in levels of concentration over time, but I do feel that the environment we live in probably poses some challenges.

We touched on that issue when we did research looking at the use of eReading devices among both the teenage population and children in Years 4 to 6. In both contexts, we thought that children with access to devices, who liked reading and were reading regularly, would be using these devices for eReading. However we actually found they were still really underutilising them for those purposes.

A recent study I did with Deakin University offered some reasons for the lower eReading rates, some of which related to the aesthetic experience of reading a physical book, and also around being able to pick up the book, feel how dense it was and be aware of how much investment would be required in terms of getting through it.

Of course some young people also talked about the distractions, particularly on devices with multiple affordances. On a tablet where they could read an eBook, but also check the internet, it was hard for them to not be distracted by the notifications and messages they got through various social networks they were connected with. That made getting into the deep state required for reading and sustaining more difficult on those devices. It is true that there are some young people who prefer eReaders, so it’s important we cater to those preferences, but I don’t think we’re at the stage where we can definitively say young people prefer to read books on devices.

What is it that drew you to this area of research?

I didn’t have much direction as a teenager, and then a friend asked me to tutor her sister while I was in high school. I found it was something that was relatively easy, definitely fun and paid well, so I wound up becoming an English teacher—almost by accident.

During my first degree I continued tutoring in literature and discovered that if I successfully encouraged my students to read more, my job became so much easier; their grades would start increasing without me really having to break a sweat. It seemed to be intuitive that if I wanted to get my students improving, I had to get them into books.

Thinking about how to do it effectively—because there’s such diversity in reader preference, even between those who fit into the exact same demographic in terms of gender, background, ethnicity—and connect them with books was a secondary point.

Once I became a qualified English teacher and started working in classrooms, I saw again that the students who were also readers significantly outperformed those who weren’t. I wanted to unpack that based on my perception that teachers and parents didn’t necessarily realise the power they had to influence or affect change. I saw that where influencers were exerted successfully, a powerful impact was made on young people’s decisions around their leisure pursuits.

We know that developmentally, young people are supposedly easier to influence in their younger years, but parents retain influence over their children right into adulthood and beyond. There is an idea that once your kids are teenagers you can’t influence them, and I wanted to research that.

I actually asked young children and teenagers the question: what would make you read more?

In your paper on interactive reading, there were some clear differences between an adult’s perception and what a child actually wants from them.

There are two constructs that I visit again and again in my research. The first one is this idea of ‘expired expectations’, where once children have this skill to read independently there’s an unspoken contract that they can now go ahead and do that, and teachers and parents can step back.

That idea of fostering willed, continued engagement to reader motivation just falls by the wayside. It’s something we don’t necessarily reflect on. One teenage boy who was particularly fascinating told me that when he was younger he absolutely loved reading. When I asked what caused him to stop reading he said that people just stopped expecting him to do it, so he thought it was something he didn’t need to do anymore. Within that framework, when more interesting things came along [like Call of Duty] why wouldn’t he choose to do something that gave a more immediate reward and also strengthened his social connections?

... literacy skills are not something we can rely on as a constant. We need to continue to build and maintain regular reading throughout our lives.

We need to have a greater awareness of how powerful we are when we cut off our encouragement, our provision of access to reading materials, our suggestions and insistence that they read and our reiteration of the benefits of reading.

We’re actually inadvertently conveying the message that reading is something that is finished once you know how to do it; it’s not a skill that we need to keep developing our whole life. But in light of research we have from the US around what happens when we don’t read—particularly over the period of summer vacation—and how we actually move backwards in terms of our literacy skills, it’s clear that literacy skills are not just something we can rely on as a constant. We need to continue to build and maintain regular reading throughout our lives.

Tell us about the social—or relational—implications of reading.

One of the things that became clear through my research is how much kids value the quality time inherit in their parents reading to them. I’d love to see it become a cultural norm. There are cultures in the world where literacy and reading is just a norm, such as Finland. For example, when you come into the airport in Helsinki there is a reading room with a range of comfortable chairs and a very large bookshelf on which you place the book you read on the way over and you pick up a new one. Huge amounts of money are spent in the libraries to make them these beautiful, comfortable and engaging spaces. Literacy is really privileged and recognised as important.

Then when we turn around and look at the literacy performance of this country in a comparison, it’s not a massive surprise that something that is culturally engrained as socially important, valued and cherished is being reflected by Finland’s strong performance in literacy indicators. I’m not suggesting it’s the only reason they’re performing at that lofty level, but it’s probably a contributing factor.

How does literacy contribute to other areas of education and learning, doesn’t it?

There’s research that links literacy skills and reading engagement to performance in mathematics, which isn’t very surprising when you think about your math word problems and how important reading comprehension is in order to actually understand what you’re being asked. If you’ve got children with low literacy who
are performing sporadically in mathematics, it may have nothing to do with their numeracy ability and purely be related to their understanding on a literacy level. Literacy really is a gateway to performance across a range of other disciplines.

Your research on interactive reading reminded me of something Jackie French told me: one of the problems when parents stop reading to their children is that the children get stuck at the level of the books they themselves can read. Does that resonate with you?

Absolutely. That was one of the things children talked about when I asked them what happened once they were no longer read to. There was a strong emphasis on what was lost in terms of the social level—that one-to-one time—but also students talked about how they felt the reading they shared with their parents gave them advantages.

Some children specifically likened it to being placed in an accelerated kind of English stream, or outperforming other students in their points in the library. When they were no longer being read to, some of them considered they were potentially losing a skill advantage over their peers.

It’s always interesting the level of self-awareness young people have; they’re incredibly insightful. For example, in the International Study of Avid Book Readers we had respondents who had been read to by parents with dyslexia, or who struggled with reading, and it actually made an even more powerful impression on them because they would see their parents were trying regardless. It was clear to them that their parents viewed literacy as something so valuable it’s worth fighting for.

The big problem is the lack of emphasis in developing reading motivation ... considering the body of research that links reading will to reading skill.

Are children looking for authentic modelling by adults around reading?

They’re learning self-regulation from us, they’re learning resilience from us, they’re looking at us and figuring out how we do our work-life balance. I think that’s why we need to stop and reflect. There’s this decreasing awareness of just how significant these [reading] benefits are. They’re not just small things; they have such significance for both academic and vocational performance.

In addition to that, in a world that is increasingly moving into the technological medium and so much of our interaction is actually text-based—ironically, we’re moving more and more into exchange of emails, texts and messages— having an ability to express yourself effectively, to make a powerful argument, to actually comprehend is becoming increasingly important.

What is it that kids know about interactive reading that you wish their parents or teachers knew?

It’s quality time; that’s a really big thing. Another is that they really don’t care if you’re bad at it, as long as you try—even if you don’t put on the voices, even if you stumble over words, even if you accidentally skip a page and have to go back. They just want you to read with them without seeming angry, impatient or tired, or wanting it to be over so you can move onto the next thing. As long as you are present and enjoying their book with them— no matter how difficult it is for you to get through together—it’s going to make a lasting positive impression.

What are children most afraid of when reading aloud?

When we haven’t been given adequate opportunity to read aloud at home—for whatever reason—and it’s not something rehearsed at school, completing a fluency test in front of their peers—or even one-to- one with teachers—is an absolutely terrifying situation for kids.

What they do in those contexts is compare themselves to the peers who have had the advantage of being read to. It is a completely unfair playing field. Not all children have that opportunity at home, so it is absolutely vital that they have the opportunity to safely practice reading aloud at school, especially if that is going to be a skill we assess, measure and test.

The big problem is the lack of emphasis in developing reading motivation; it’s not a strong feature at all in the curriculum and we’re doing a disservice to our young people.

Considering the body of research that links reading will to reading skill, I really think there should be much more than cursory reference to reading for enjoyment or pleasure.

I think to some extent this might be reflective of recent movements in the English teaching and learning space. There was concern that we were inadvertently telling young people the only worthwhile texts are books. There was a move to increase the recognition and importance of being able to engage with a wide range of texts and critically analyse everything—from a hip hop poem to a Shakespearean play and everything in between. What ended up happening in the process of broadening our texts is that books got a little shunted to the side and devalued.

When I went to Vancouver a couple of years ago, there were people at the conference who talked about libraries where books had been removed or placed in the back room. I wonder, to an extent, the extremes that we embrace in the research fields around English ... if we accidentally cause some of these things to happen.

I understand there are some school libraries in Australia that have gone completely digital.

It’s very concerning. When I’ve tried to track down the thought process behind that, I’ve constantly come across this projection of young people characterised as digital natives. But there has been a lot of research that’s come out that suggests young people actually have diverse preferences, and also really diverse skills when it comes to digital literacy. We can’t assume that because children have strong affordances in one area that translates to all areas.

A lot of decisions we make in the education space around literacy and reading are based on stereotypes, whether they be around technology, preferences or gender—don’t even get me started on that one. But I always go back to the source research and I always look for the large sample data—preferably from international studies—to find out where ideas are coming from, and there are far too many myths being proliferated in this space that have significant influence on the resourcing decisions that we make in our libraries.

Do you have any tips for librarians on how to foster an environment that will create future readers?

That’s exactly what I will be looking at in a new study being funded by the Copyright Agency, so you’ll hear more from me on this topic once that is complete.

However, from what I have gathered so far, it’s important to resist the information centre model. As soon as you move from a space where reading is encouraged and possible into a space where the books are removed and replaced by devices and there’s not necessarily a comfortable place to sit and read, you’re taking away access to what is still the preferred mode of reading. That can definitely impact on children’s willingness to read.

Within that context it’s important that for as long as possible, books remain a priority. We need to bear in mind that avid readers can also struggle with concentration, that many readers need a quiet place to read and that struggling readers in particular, if they’re having to reread sentences to extract meaning, find it harder with background noise—so the environment we create in our libraries really matters.

Take on board all the new movements in libraries, but also critically consider them. If I take all the books out of my library, will young people still want to read? Maybe I should ask them and make the decision based on what they say. If I allow nonstop music, discussion and talking in my library, is there still space for people to pull up a beanbag or chair and get immersed and lost in a book? Because there are some children who simply do not have an environment at home where that’s possible.

Increasingly, it seems, children come home and go straight into after-school work, or sibling care. The level of demands on young people is high and we cannot assume they’ve got space and time to be able to read at home. We need to continue to provide that time and space at school.

School libraries are very multi-purpose these days, facing multiple demands with often diminishing staffing levels. Librarians are trying to meet many competing needs with finite resources.

I know there are all kinds of pressures on you and it’s really hard, because I get emails from some of you, but keep advocating for getting kids into your library, trust your instincts, and don’t get caught up in any newfangled ideas—look at them, try them out; but just make sure that what you sacrifice is not greater than what you gain.

I love it during research projects when children talk about good libraries where they can read; they describe it like an atmosphere. They don’t just talk about the books, they talk about the space where they feel comfortable and cosy, where they have the silence that they need. That’s what school libraries can offer them that they often can’t get elsewhere.