Leonie, Bronwyn and Katya were pleased to present interim findings from the schools survey at the National Education Summit in Melbourne in June 2022. Based on over 3000 survey responses, this presentation included information on how often and how much time teenagers spend reading for pleasure and what they think about reading for pleasure as well as the major challenges to teens reading more.
Professor Katya Johanson and Leonie Rutherford at the ALIA National Conference 2022
Professor Katya Johanson and Associate Professor Leonie Rutherford presented at the Australian Library and Information Association Conference in Canberra on 19 October 2022. The conference theme – diversity was examined in various contexts throughout the conference program. Our presentation focused on publisher understanding of how well their industry served diverse readers, and teacher and teacher-librarian views of the range of reading material provided for young people.
The Teen Reading study asked a number of questions about young people’s reading preferences and experiences, in both “open fields” in our survey and in interviews. Teens were able to tell us in their own words about how they felt about reading in general and about reading long form texts using digital platforms. An interim, single researcher coding of the question “How do you feel about reading on digital devices?” yielded the following breakdown:
“I like reading real books in my hand … but with eBooks on small devices, I can carry multiple books easily without worrying about bending pages in my bag…”
“I read a lot on devices because it is easier than having to buy every book you read”