Study reads between lines of children's literary habits
Putting a book down becomes much easier as children progress from primary to secondary school, according to a landmark University of Queensland study of children's reading habits.
The study by Fred and Eleanor Schonell Special Education Centre director Professor Adrian Ashman is one of the more comprehensive examinations of children's reading and writing habits conducted in Australia and the first to include the impact of writers' festivals, in this case the Somerset Celebration of Literature held each year on the Gold Coast.
"We found a clear decline in students' reading habits from primary through to secondary years. For example, while 64 percent of primary school students said they had visited a library in the past three weeks, this declined to 48 percent for the secondary school students and most of these were girls," Professor Ashman said. "We discovered high school students borrow fewer books, spend less time reading and writing diaries and letters to friends and creative writing for school magazines."
He said the decline in reading habits could partly be attributed to the work pressures students faced in high school but also to the fact that boys perceived reading to be a "girlie" pursuit and were more involved in physical activities.
"Adolescence is a time of tremendous tumult and kids are dealing with quite a few changes in their personal, emotional, social and intellectual lives. For example, at the same time, they can be highly moral or highly immoral, sensitive and completely insensitive and these conflicts and the ambiguity that come from them may be exactly what they're looking for in fiction," Professor Ashman said. "Our study showed that young readers liked to tempt their imaginations and be entertained, preferring plenty of adventure and excitement in stories rather than those with an obvious moral message."
The researchers also looked at the impact on children's reading and writing habits of one of Australia's biggest school-based literary events - the Somerset Celebration of Literature -co-ordinated by Somerset College.
"We found the Festival definitely made children more enthusiastic about reading and writing. Many of the students we spoke to six months after last year's Festival told us that they knew a lot more about the process of writing than before they attended. They could also be turned on, or turned off, by the way authors presented themselves at writers' festivals," he said.
Professor Ashman and his research team surveyed 2500 primary and high school children and 700 adults for the study. The research team included research assistant Margaret Ballinger, senior lecturer Dr Christa Van Krayenoord and Dr Philip Neilsen from Journalism and Media Studies at QUT.
For more information, contact Professor Adrian Ashman (telephone 07 3365 6472).
