There is concern about underachievement in reading in Britain. The aim of this inquiry is to find insights into school life that can be used to develop thinking about practice relating to children who experience reading difficulties in mainstream primary schools. This inquiry investigates seven and eight year old children's perceptions of reading in case studies of three primary schools. The intake of two schools was predominantly, white British and working class; the intake of the third school was also white British but the children's parents were in clerical, semi-professional or professional employment. The research employs five methods for data collection: classroom observation, reading tests, structured/semi -structured interviews, story telling interviews and 'incidental data collection'. The power difference between adults and children, along with children's usually more limited linguistic repertoire, means that adhering to effective interviewing practice is especially important when interviewing children. The development of an interview procedure for use with primary school children based on children telling a story is reported. It is argued that the story-telling interview can be used beneficially with children who are poor readers. Children's perspectives of reading were found to be wide ranging. Factors that influenced their views were gender, the learning environment at home, self-image, the quality of the reading materials and the trust afforded children in their reading at school. Boys were found to be disadvantaged in reading development by constructions of masculinity that view reading as a feminine activity. Furthermore, a boy's self-identification as a non-reader or as a person who rarely reads voluntarily sometimes occurs at a younger age than has generally been reported. This is linked with social economic status and sociocultural influences. The concept of children's collective agency was introduced in relation to the shaping of school processes and practice. It is suggested that in certain circumstances, connected with social background, the characteristics of the group of children in a classroom can shape classroom practices and whole school practices.

From the starting point of the Schools Council Working Paper 52, in 1975, a small-scale longitudinal study was carried out (1975-78) with 40 children, a stable, homogeneous group from one primary school. Because of the composition of the sample no generalisations could be made to the child population as a whole. The survey studied the voluntary reading of the children in the sample. Data was collected by questionnaire, interviews, standardised tests and an attitude scale, devised by the researcher. Some of the findings were not unexpected, but several controversial issues arose in the small-scale study. The appropriateness of always using mean scores to examine this kind of data was discussed. It was questioned whether children in fact read less because they listed less books. Few children were non-readers. Children read more magazines and newspapers as they grew older. They were keen to read adult fiction. Boys gave up reading children's books sooner than girls did. Major influences were seen to be those of the media, of friends, of public libraries and of interested encouraging adults. Examples of different types of readers, presented as detailed case studies of individual children, comprised a major part of the study.

This thesis investigates reading for pleasure in Britain from a variety of perspectives, in the context of popular concerns surrounding levels of readership, particularly among young people, and consists of four substantive chapters. The first chapter reports how book sales and library circulation have changed, and what predicts readership in the Taking Part survey. I show that claims surrounding changes in reading in Britain may be overstated, although the number of issues from British libraries has fallen, and that while the predictors of readership are largely as expected, there are some important results surrounding social status, and ethnic differences in children. The second chapter investigates changes in young people’s reading behaviour, using the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England. I show that changes in young people’s reading cannot be explained through a displacement effects account, and that socioeconomic differences in readership do not increase as panel members get older. In the third chapter, I investigate whether the relationship between reading for pleasure and educational attainment can be explained through cultural capital, and extend this with occupational attainment, using the 1970 British Cohort Study. I show a relationship between reading for pleasure and occupational attainment net of education, and I show that this relationship seems to have a cultural dimension beyond a cognitive effect account. In the fourth chapter, I show that the relationship between leisure in adoles- cence and educational and occupational attainment is not driven purely by highbrow activities, as on a certain understanding of Bourdieu: in particular, I show a relationship between occupational attainment and middlebrow activities.