Student teachers as readers: understanding the student teacher identity as a reader and their connections with children’s’ books

Recent and on-going research (Cremin et al 2008; Farrar 2021) has revealed that in-service and student primary teachers’ knowledge of children’s literature is often limited to the texts they read themselves at school, leading to what has been described as a ‘Dahl dependency’ and a subsequent narrowing of young readers’ experience of children’s literature. These concerns have been confirmed by a survey of over 2,300 primary teachers in England by the National Literacy Trust who also found that Roald Dahl was the most frequently named ‘good’ children’s author, with 67 per cent of teachers able to name one author (Clark and Teravainen 2015). A consequence of such limited knowledge is that teachers may struggle to make recommendations that speak to the needs and interests of the increasingly diverse young readers in their classes and may also lack the knowledge to build the communities of engaged and challenged readers that have been shown to help raise attainment while also promoting reading as a pleasurable activity (Cremin et al 2014). 

This research is the first to examine the experiences of student primary teacher trainees in England. By asking undergraduate students in their first year of study to reflect on their reading habits and knowledge of children’s books, we can shape our understanding and provision accordingly.