The Fact and Fiction Research Project, funded by the ESRC and based at the University of Southampton, observed and documented seven to nine-year-old boys' reading in and out of school. The study showed boys' preference for non-fiction does not prevent them from 'getting on the literacy bus' as some have argued, citing the absence of non-fiction from the early years reading curriculum as failing to satisfy boys' interests. Rather the project found that boys gravitate towards visually based non-fiction to mask their poor reading skills.

Examine the range of non-fiction they favour, from football sticker albums to Dorling Kindersley's Eyewitness series and what you find are a range of texts where the visual, rather than the written text, dominates. Two boys working their way through a sticker album will concentrate on the number of pages the owner has filled; compare collections in terms of who has the most or the best stickers; or compare views on the relative merits of teams or players.  This is boys doing friendship, and friendship in this case involves sorting out a hierarchy of knowledge and expertise, or who can tell good jokes, or deliver the best insults. The expertise displayed seldom draws directly on the immediate written text. Indeed in the kind of session outlined above, the writing in the sticker albums - about players' footballing histories, or the clubs' previous performance - goes largely unread. In this kind of encounter, who knows the most is often not directly related to, and doesn't depend upon, who can read the text the best. In these respects, weak readers can meet their peers on an equal level.

It is the potential for equal social status that seems to draw weaker boy readers towards visually based non-fiction, and away from fiction texts. Fiction reading in the classroom constructs a different kind of hierarchy. Close monitoring of children's progress in reading (largely fiction) texts is used by adults to carefully grade and sort children's competence as readers to determine the kinds of text children will have access to. The fiction books children get to read, in their layout and point size of typeface, make public children's relative standing in the reading stakes, both to the child themselves and to their peers. The project data shows boys and girls respond differently to this [exposure].

For weak girl readers, less seems to be at stake socially in accepting teacher judgements about their relative competence at reading. In paired reading, weaker girl readers find few difficulties in accepting help from more experienced readers, whilst groups of girls can often be observed reading well below their competence level, turning the reading of "easy" texts into a kind of play. Weaker boy readers find it harder to reconcile the social standing they are being offered in class to the social standing they aspire to in their relations with peers. One consequence is that early on many boys begin to evolve, often elaborate, strategies for disguising their low status as readers and as a result they spend less time reading.

The project data suggests different areas for intervention. For weaker girl readers, that they be encouraged to read at, or above, their current levels of competence, rather than within and below. For weaker boy readers, that more opportunities be created for keeping them on task, coupled with ways of raising their self-esteem. It is a mistake to think that nothing can be done about boys. Indeed, the Department for Education and Employment's own figures show that in 20 per cent of primary schools boys outperform girls and in 30 to 40 per cent of schools they lag behind significantly.

It may be that shifts of emphasis in the teaching format now in place within the structure of the Literacy Hour are already effecting changes in line with the project's findings: making the focus for literacy instruction the group rather than the individual and by always insisting on work that encompasses text, sentence, and word levels with explicit attention paid to supporting wider reading.

Whilst teachers continue to struggle to meet targets and deliver a worthwhile curriculum in the new climate of quality control, there is much to play for and plenty of reasons for feeling optimistic about the future.
 
 

Further Reading  A working paper documenting the Fact and Fiction project findings is available from Rita Corbridge, School of Education, University of Southampton SO17 1BJ. Cost £2.  M. Barrs and S. Pidgeon (1993) Reading the Difference: gender and reading in the primary school. London: CLPE. M. Barrs and S. Pidgeon (1993) Boys and Reading. London: CLPE. L. Graham (1999) Changing Practice through Reflection: The KS2 Reading Project. Croydon/Reading: UKRA.

 

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