In a global age of increasing literacy expectations across multimodal forms of communication, the demand for reading as a basic literacy is a given. Empirical research has demonstrated the importance of choice-led reading for enhanced reading proficiency, self-directed learning and mental wellbeing. Such volitional reading, whether for pleasure or learning, is key to student engagement. However, findings from international tests such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) reveal that young people’s volitional reading continues to decline. Even as the bar for what counts as functional and critical reading is raised, global inequities exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, persist in widening the gap between students’ opportunities to access reading materials for recreational reading across different sociocultural and national contexts. Simultaneously, technology has enabled easier access to a wide range of reading materials through different platforms and formats, and young people’s views and complex agentic practices in this space need to be better understood.
In this special issue, we aim to feature current and cutting-edge research on children and adolescents’ (collectively known as “young people”, typically aged 8 to 18-years-old) reading, both in schools and out-of-school settings. Childhood and adolescence are optimal periods for the acquisition of new skills and competencies, which is why we focus on this life-stage as vital for the cultivation of volitional reading dispositions. We invite contributors to envision the future of volitional reading, attending to the viewpoints of young people, educators and various stakeholders. Diverse disciplinary and interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives and empirical studies exploring, but not limited to, the following questions, are welcomed.
- What counts as volitional or recreational reading?
- What are young people’s perspectives of reading?
- How are young people’s identities as readers supported and developed in schools, homes or communities?
- What are students’ reading habits and preferences in print and digitally in light of the changing technological landscape?
- How do learning environments, technology and material objects shape access to recreational reading materials?
- What is the role of bilingual or multilingual free-choice reading in a complex, global world of multiple flows of knowledge and peoples?
- What does choice-led reading mean in different cultural contexts?
- What innovative methods successfully document young people’s recreational reading?
