Promoting reading 1
the question of if and when dialogic reading is t
o be preferred is not just about language development, but also about the degree of engagement of the listener, and the motivation that can arise out of this engagement. Reading aloud is part of public libraries’ storytime sessions, which usually combine reading aloud from a book with storytelling and singing. Reading aloud is also included in many different reading promotion projects. A project of slightly different nature entails giving parents who serving time in prison the opportunity to record bedtime stories on CDs for their children. In recent years, reading aloud for adults has become a popular feature at Swedish public libraries. There are collaborative projects involving reading aloud for people with dementia, and there are reading promotion initiatives that involve young people reading aloud to the elderly. The fourth chapter of this book describes programmes and projects that in various ways use reading role models. That children and adults learn by imitating others is well known. The use of reading role models in reading promotion activities seems intuitively reasonable. A role model can be a person whose behaviour you imitate, but also someone whose values and ideas you share. There are a number of examples of reading promotion programmes and projects targeting children and adolescents in their free time that use role models adapted to specific target groups. The most important form of influence on children’s reading during their first few years of life is parents reading to their children and parents reading themselves. After all, children learn to speak and communicate long before they start school by imitating the significant adults in their close environments. Textbooks as well as research studies and student theses that treat the parent’s role as a role model for reading often stress, first and foremost, the importance of parents having an interest in reading. Consequently, reading promotion for children and adults cannot easily be regarded as two separate areas. Many research studies have examined how parents’ reading habits in their free time influence their children’s reading behaviour. There are studies that show that both parents have the biggest impact on the reading behaviour of their daughters. Researchers have also found evidence for what is termed the gender-stereotype hypothesis, according to which fathers have a greater impact on the reading behaviour of sons, and mothers on daughters. Judging by a number of studies, the most important reading role models for children are their immediate family, followed by their peers and their teachers. There are also studies that have identified reading role models among sportsmen and women in general and football players in particular. That boys generally demonstrate lower levels of literacy than girls has been established in a number of major studies, as have differences between boys/men and girls/ women in terms of reading habits. It has been shown that girls in the OECD countries not only do better on tests that measure reading ability, they are also more inclined to enjoy reading, read more frequently, think positively about reading and perceive themselves as readers. Broadly speaking, it is possible to distinguish between two types of explanations for the reading habits of boys and girls, and of men and women, respectively. Among the more controversial/contested explanations are presumed biologically conditioned differences in “learning styles”. Looking at reading habits from a social perspective 103