Browsing by Author "Lindström, Linnea"

Aim. There is robust previous research and enquiries showing declining results in reading literacy and reading interest. As a reaction to this, the current Finnish National Curriculum (2014) enhances the goal to offer reading-related experiences to promote a reading lifestyle. Previous research states that it is crucial that students develop an early reading habit and are exposed to fiction texts. Consequently, a Matthew effect can be observed in reading, resulting in polarizing reading skills: Good readers enter a positive reading spiral that boost their reading motivation, whereas weaker readers stagnate. The aim of this study is to explore how the goals of the curriculum to stimulate reading interest and offer reading-related experiences can be carried out through an intervention in fiction teaching in primary school. Another aim is to explore how students’ reading identities can be supported. The intervention emanates from literary art methods where aesthetic, transformative, postcritical, and reader-oriented literary views are connected via co-creative reading. Methods. The study applied a phenomenographic and hermeneutic framework. The research material consisted of twelve focus group interviews with third graders and analyses of an assignment paper that students filled out three times over the course of three different occasions. In total, 43 students participated in the focus groups, and 47 students contributed with assignment sheets to the research. Both interviews and students’ artefacts were pseudonymized and treated in accordance with the TENK ethical guidelines. The assignment papers were analyzed through qualitative text analysis with the aid of a profile matrix, and thematic analysis was applied to the focus groups. Results and conclusions. The results imply the intervention led to changes in students’ perception of themselves as readers, that is, their reading identity. Students through three identified group of reading identities, which were conducted based of the presence of a reflective reader-self in the assignment papers: An incipient reading identity, a burgeoning reading identity and a strong reading identity. The students’ statement in the interviews were consistently positive and showed that several students had established a reading habit, expanded their literary worlds, and developed a more positive and perceptible reader identity. Additionally, the results indicate the fiction reading’s potential to stimulate empathy. Thus, the study circumstantiates that the path from the collapse of reading should start within the individual, and by offering aesthetic reading experiences one can encourage students to a reading lifestyle according to the curriculum.