Pedagogy for reading for pleasure in low socio-economic primary schools: beyond ‘pedagogy of poverty’?

New research findings are presented in this paper, responding to a significant knowledge gap about the role of pedagogy in tackling persistent educational inequalities. The paper examines the potential of Reading for Pleasure (RfP) pedagogy to disrupt ‘pedagogy of poverty’ in low socio-economic (SES) schools and to enable children to reap the cognitive, wellbeing and social benefits of RfP. Children’s volition and social interaction as readers are central to RfP and have been found to be particularly constrained by pedagogy common in low SES schools in the US, Australia and England. The research examined how pedagogy for RfP was instantiated in four low SES English primary schools to understand how this potential might be realised and its effects on children’s engagement with RfP. The schools were selected because they had invested in RfP, yet the study found their RfP pedagogies did not in practice support children’s volition and engagement because teachers’ understandings of reading focussed upon proficiency. Such teachers need to reconceptualise reading as social and volitional to underpin RfP pedagogies. The paper provides new insight into the challenges of developing genuine RfP pedagogy and other pedagogies that profile volition and active engagement with learning in low SES schools. Introduction/background This paper presents new evidence to inform current debates about the role of pedagogy in tackling educational inequalities by examining the potential of reading for pleasure (RfP) pedagogies to disrupt ‘pedagogy of poverty’ (PoP) (Haberman, 1991; Haberman, 2010) in low socio-economic (SES) schools, thus enabling children to engage in and reap the benefits of such reading. These benefits include increased skill in reading (and other subject areas) and more sustained reader engagement which is particularly important for children in low SES areas whose educational outcomes tend to be significantly lower than their more advantaged peers. The paper is novel in examining RfP pedagogies specifically in the contexts of the unique circumstances of low SES schools. It examines the challenges posed by PoP in such contexts to developing children’s volitional and sustained engagement with reading their reading for pleasure. The paper first introduces the research into PoP in the US and Australia and relates this to the English context using Bernstein’s (2000) concept of performative pedagogy. It then presents research on RfP pedagogy using Bernstein’s notion of competence pedagogy in order to contrast the possibilities for children to engage volitionally with learning – in this case reading in each form of pedagogy. Following this, the methods for the empirical research reported in the paper are outlined. The findings from the research into how RfP pedagogy was instantiated in low SES schools are then presented followed by discussion, conclusion and recommendations for practitioners working in low SES contexts. The concept of PoP, a term first coined by Haberman (1991), highlights the impoverished pedagogical offer commonly made to children living in low SES urban contexts in the US. Linked to Haberman’s conceptualisation of PoP, research evidence from the US (Waxman, Padron & Lee, 2010; Thadani et al., 2010; Belfiore, Auld & Lee, 2005; Waxman, Huang & Padron 1995) and Australia (Smyth, McInerney & Fish, 2013; Mills & Gale, 2013; Hayes, Johnston & King, 2009; Lingard, 2007) suggests that pedagogy in low SES school contexts is likely to entail particularly strong teacher control where their role is to transmit knowledge to children who are positioned very passively. PoP requires student compliance in carrying out teacher-set tasks, rather than developing creativity, critical thinking or problem-solving, and focuses upon raising test scores in ‘basic skills’ in literacy and numeracy (Lingard, 2007). PoP