Abstract
Despite dedication of tremendous resources to developing literary proficiencies, advanced readers may remain an underserved and understudied population. This qualitative study included nine preadolescent participants aged 10–12 years who demonstrated reading comprehension abilities within the top 10% on a national normed achievement battery. The researchers gathered interview data from participants with corroborating evidence from their parents and their book club teacher. The grounded theory analyses found advanced readers to demonstrate superior reading comprehension and the ability to read entire books quickly. Participants reported positive attitudes toward reading in general and preferred out of school reading over the limiting structures of school reading. Some evidence supported a connection between reading and identity exploration through narrative imagination and empathetic relations to characters and narratives. Advanced readers may present cognitive characteristics, as well as behaviors and motivations that require differentiated learning designs.
“ Reading motivation and amount of reading young people engage in have been linked to reading achievement.”
The common thread of those projects was providing resources and opportunities to an underserved group of readers, those described as advanced readers. Although there are perceptions that advanced readers are an underserved group of students, there is a similar reality that they are also underrepresented in the published research literature associated with either reading and literacy or gifted and high ability students. Common database searches (e.g., Academic Search Complete and PsychINFO) yield fewer than 10 studies investigating characteristics of advanced readers, and some of those were published more than half a century ago. While there have been theoretical articles describing traits of advanced readers and offering strategies of interventions for these readers as well as intervention studies on strategies for differentiating for advanced readers, there is a gap in the research for a better understanding of the behaviors, dispositions, and preferences of advanced readers and the role that reading plays in their lives. The purpose of the present study was to better understand the behaviors, dispositions, and preferences of advanced readers in preadolescence and the role that reading might play in their identity exploration. Ideally, these improved understandings might lead to meaningful outcomes of pedagogy, learning design, and advocacy for this potentially overlooked group of readers.
Advanced Readers
For many preadolescents, books, and the myriad of characters within, serve as constant companions, aiding the navigation of the complexities of life and identity. Catharsis with characters and an escape into books might be especially helpful for preadolescents while they negotiate changing dynamics in this stage of life (Halsted, 2009). Developing one’s identity involves a process of risk-taking and exploring possible selves. Books may provide a way to vicariously experience different identities.
Even though reading can provide vast horizons for identity development in the adolescent years, the waning interest and engagement in reading that begins in middle grades is well documented (Greenberg et al., 2006; Pitcher et al., 2007; Unrau & Schlackman, 2006). The waning of interest and engagement can impact readers at all levels including advanced readers, and there may be complex explanations for the change in reading behaviors. Some evidence suggests that advanced readers receive little differentiation of either content or process in their school reading programs (Reis et al., 2004). For advanced readers, the problem of waning interest and engagement may be exacerbated due to this lack of differentiation (Little et al., 2014). Thus, the mismatch between learner readiness and the reading curriculum and instruction may lead to declining interest in reading even among those students who have a history of deep reading commitments and high reading achievement. In addition, while students generally like choices in what they read, many advanced readers tend to read books that are too easy and insufficiently complex to maintain growth trajectories (Eckert, 2008), and those book choices can potentially contribute to waning interest and engagement (Reis et al., 2004). Conversely, when advanced readers self-select appropriately challenging books in areas of their interest, and that independent reading is coupled with differentiated learning experiences in the classroom, those students have demonstrated increased achievement and higher interest in reading (Little et al., 2014; Reis et al., 2005).
Working within an information processing learning theory, Stanovich (1980) summarized the research on individual differences between struggling readers and advanced readers. There were a few validated cognitive processes that distinguished the differences across the spectrum of reading ability. Specifically, advanced readers distinguish themselves from other readers in three cognitive areas: (a) context-free word recognition, (b) use of content to facilitate word recognition, and (c) comprehension strategies. Advanced readers consistently recognize automated words faster than poor or average ability readers. In addition, when visual recognition fails, advanced readers have superior phonetic segmentation and recoding abilities compared with poor or average readers. For comprehension, struggling and sometimes average readers rely more heavily on conscious expectancies that they generate from prior sentences. However, advanced readers rely less on conscious expectancies leaving them greater attentional capacity for more complex comprehension processes. Stanovich also noted that advanced readers have near automated capacities for comprehending and remembering large units of text. Subsequent information processing theories connected individual differences in working memory with language comprehension (Just & Carpenter, 1992). Individuals with exceptional abilities and memory capacity experience more interaction between syntactic and pragmatic information which supports broader comprehension and the capacity to maintain multiple interpretations (Masson & Miller, 1983).
Despite a long-standing interest in advanced readers, a common definition does not exist on what it means to be an advanced, gifted, or talented reader and little research supports the assertions that do exist (Olson et al., 2006; Reis et al., 2004). Many of the published articles on advanced, gifted, or talented readers are theoretical articles (Dooley, 1993; Miller, 2009; Vosslamber, 2002; Weber, 2010) and not research studies. In both empirical studies and theoretical articles, the terms advanced reader (Hunsaker et al., 2010), gifted reader (Halsted, 2009; Miller, 2009; Weber, 2010), and talented reader (Reis et al., 2004) have been used, validating that there is not an accepted term and definition of what it means to be an advanced reader. Researchers use different terms operationalized by the sample from which they pull their data. Some researchers work with readers who are identified as gifted, while some study readers who are labeled as advanced or talented. Despite these differences, characteristics of advanced readers highlight technical skills such as advanced vocabulary (Reis et al., 2004), reading above grade level (Jackson, 2003), and increased verbal and visual memory (Jackson, 2003). Some of the characteristics describing advanced readers are based on anecdotal information and not necessarily empirically derived (Reis et al., 2004). These anecdotal characteristics include assertions that advanced readers often read very early and are self-taught readers, appreciate subtleties and humor in language (Halsted, 2009), look for complex ideas and themes, read voraciously and widely for a variety of purposes, and spend more time reading than their peers (Reis et al., 2004). Reis et al. (2004) also point out that defining what it means to be an advanced reader is difficult because often the idea of being advanced is relative to age-level peers, and peer groups can vary.
Much of the research on advanced and talented readers has focused on the impact of different instructional strategies for advanced readers. Reis et al. (2004) found that only three of the 12 classrooms they observed provided differentiated instruction and/or appropriately challenging reading material for the advanced readers. They provide suggestions of instructional strategies that can be used with advanced readers and remark on the potential negative impacts to motivation and growth in reading for advanced readers who are not given opportunities to experience appropriate challenge. While not all advanced readers may be receiving differentiation in the classroom, research-based curriculum models and instructional strategies on how to differentiate for gifted students in the language arts classroom are well-documented. The Schoolwide Enrichment Model for Reading (SEM-R) based on the work of Reis and Renzulli offers an enrichment-based approach to reading that focuses on enrichment reading experiences, self-selected reading, and higher order thinking skills (Reis et al., 2008, 2011; Reis & Field, 2007). The Integrated Curriculum Model, by VanTassel-Baska and the College of William and Mary, offers through their language arts units a conceptual theme, advanced literature, a reasoning model, and a high-quality student product (VanTassel-Baska & Brown, 2007; VanTassel-Baska et al., 2002). Well-respected programs for advanced readers include Jacob’s Ladder (VanTassel-Baska & Stambaugh, 2006) and Junior Great Books (Nichols, 1992), which focus on critical thinking and discussion strategies for reading. Extensive research exists on ways to differentiate for gifted students in the language arts classroom; however, there are still existing gaps in the literature on how to better understand the nature of advanced readers.
Although there is no consensus among researchers on exactly what it means to be an advanced reader, many of the acknowledged and researched characteristics focus on language and cognitive processing skills such as speed of reading, vocabulary, and comprehension. Many of the published articles are theoretical, and many of the research studies have focused on early, precocious readers or intervention strategies for advanced readers. This leaves a need in the research to explore and validate some of the anecdotal characteristics of advanced readers that have been described previously, including a better understanding of reading habits, preferences, behaviors, and conceptualizations of the role of reading in their identities. For the purpose of this study, we will use the term advanced reader rather than gifted reader or talented reader; however, there are no conceptual differences for the purposes of this study.
Reading Motivation
While more research on the behaviors and dispositions of advanced readers is needed, there is literacy research on aspects of reading that impact advanced readers. For instance, studies have explored reading motivation, text choice, and self-selection of books. Reading motivation and amount of reading young people engage in have been linked to reading achievement (Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997). Reading motivation is multifaceted, but one of the strongest predictors of the amount a student will read is intrinsic motivation (Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997). Aspects of reading motivation that have been measured are efficacy, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and goals for reading (Wigfield, 1997). Students with supportive home environments (where parents read aloud, model reading for pleasure, recommend and discuss books) and who are given opportunities and access to self-select books have been found to read more (McKool, 2007). Interest and access to books are important to motivation to read. Students often are given books at school to take home to read in the early grades, and the expectation that students will read at home often begins to decline once students know how to read (Garces-Bacsal & Yeo, 2017; Merga, 2015). Increased access to books has been found to promote recreational reading for adolescents (Merga, 2015), and increased reading has been linked to reading achievement (Schüller et al., 2016).
The process of selecting books for students is multidimensional, including aspects such as text features, genre preferences, selection processes, developmental issues, ability levels, and factors of motivation (Mohr, 2006). Preadolescents generally value independent reading over whole class reading selections, and the quality and diversity of reading materials tends to motivate students to read at school (Ivey & Broaddus, 2001). Selection strategies have historically included recommendations by family and friends, attractiveness of the front cover, genre, and reading blurbs from the book. Peers and family members’ recommendations to students tend to be more motivating than recommendations by teachers (Mohr, 2006).
Avid Readers
As one of the characteristics that has been described of advanced readers is reading voraciously, it is worth looking at what research has been conducted on students with a high motivation to read. Several research studies have been conducted on the characteristics of avid readers. Avid readers have been defined as those who read often, are motivated and dedicated to reading, and read to find meaning and to fill a personal need (Wilson & Kelley, 2010). Avid readers have also been found to prefer reading outside of school for their own purposes and to have a preference for specific genres and series-reading (Wilson & Kelley, 2010). Avid readers sometimes prefer series because they are already familiar with the characters and plots; they can engross themselves in the story without much reflection. In a study of self-identified avid fourth-grade readers, the young avid readers were found to have strong aesthetic responses to reading that involved imagining themselves as the characters in the book, imagining themselves being next to the characters in the book, and as someone interacting with the characters (Parsons, 2013). These young avid readers described feeling great sympathy for the characters and a desire to help them, as well as catharsis and empathy where they can identify as the characters.
Reading and Identity
Because many assumptions about advanced readers are anecdotal, a deeper and clearer understanding of the reading attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of advanced readers is warranted. Reading may be more than a cognitive skill for some individuals; it may be deeply anchored to their self-concept. What is the motivation to read among advanced readers? Are advanced readers often avid readers? Among preadolescents, reading may become a component of self-exploration as it plays both a therapeutic role as well as an epistemological filter for asserting and defending narrative components of knowing (Polkinghorne, 1988).
With increasing independence, early adolescents search for identity (Erikson, 1959), and the search is typically an extended journey. Identity formation includes commitments to roles and relationships, and identity may be multifaceted (e.g., social, cultural, academic, athletic). Specifically, identity is the aspect of the self that is most salient to interact in particular contexts and the aspect of the self to which one is deeply committed (Finkenauer et al., 2002). A wide range of factors might influence identity formation and self-concept, and advanced readers may incorporate narratives into an epistemological view of life (Bruner, 1990), creating a unique lens through which they make meaning of the world, connecting texts to real life.
Reading can also offer preadolescents opportunities for aesthetic experiences while supporting their complex quests for meaning and identity (Schüller et al., 2016). Books may be a perfect method of identity exploration for advanced readers (Halsted, 2009). Reading for some preadolescents becomes more than a cognitive tool or a pastime; it becomes a way of confronting the most complex questions of humanity. Rosenblatt (2005) argued that meaning was made in the transaction between the reader and the text, and that an important part of the reading experience is an aesthetic response where readers connect emotionally with the text.
Research Questions
The present study sought a deeper understanding of advanced readers that represents both empirical observations and narrated perspectives of the readers themselves. The goal was to gain a better understanding of preadolescent readers who were functionally classified as advanced readers based on exceptional performance on reading achievement and their interest in reading. The three research questions driving the inquiry were:
Method
Participants
The participants in this study were students from Grades 5 and 6 attending a small, private school in the suburbs in Texas. During the 2016–2017 academic year, the school recognized that of the 27 students in Grades 5 and 6, nine students demonstrated high reading ability and felt these students could benefit from an enrichment opportunity to read and discuss more books outside of their regular reading curriculum. All of the students in Grades 5 and 6 were given an enrichment opportunity for an hour once a week to work on a passion project. The enrichment book club met during the time that was set aside for students to work on passion projects. All nine students were invited to participate in the book club; however, two of the students chose to work on other passion projects instead of joining the book club. Although not all nine students chose to participate in the book club, all nine agreed to participate in this study. Students were identified based on reading achievement scores at or above the 90th percentile in at least one of the two previous years (see Table 1). All students at the school took the Educational Records Bureau (ERB) Comprehensive Testing Program (CTP), which included measures of reading comprehension. Students were identified for the enrichment book club opportunity based on test scores and teacher observations of the students’ reading habits as avid readers. Ethnicity was not indicated to protect the privacy of the participants in this small sample. The research team did not have access to the socioeconomic status of the families of the participants.
Advanced Reader Participants
Reading achievement percentile scores were based on students’ performance on the Educational Records Bureau (ERB) Comprehensive Testing Program (CTP) reading achievement test administered by the school. The score in this column represents the highest score the student obtained during the two prior annual test administrations.
The mid-year interquartile range (middle 50%) for Grade 5 students is 770–1,080. The mid-year interquartile range for Grade 6 students is 855–1,165 (www.lexile.com).
The students were given opportunities to read at home and school. Students had access to a classroom library, but there was no larger school library. Most of the students had greater access to books of their choice at home via the library or bookstores. There was no extrinsic motivation program for reading in place at the school.
For their regular reading curriculum with their primary teacher, they read short stories, nonfiction magazines, and novels throughout the school year. Sometimes novels were read as whole class and sometimes in small groups such as literature circles. The school also set aside 15 min every day for silent, sustained independent reading. The enrichment book club was hosted by a different teacher and met once a week. The book club teacher was a female with 8 years of teaching experience, a specialty in literacy education, and graduate school training in gifted and talented education. During the book club meetings, the students nominated books for the group to read and voted on which books to read. Students read the books outside of the meetings and came to the book club meetings prepared to discuss the books. The purpose of the book club was to read and discuss books; no major assignments or grades were attached to the book club.
Data Collection
The principal source of data used in the analytic protocol was semi-structured interviews with the nine participants. Given the age of participants, interviews had time limits and were divided into multiple sessions as needed to account for participants’ concentration and attention spans. Even though some interviews were broken into multiple sessions, all students were asked the same questions. Lengths varied based on how detailed participant responses were. Three participants (P1, P3, and P4) had one interview session. Five participants had two interview sessions (P5–P9), and one participant (P2) had three interview sessions.
Interviews were conducted by the primary investigator, and the interviews were transcribed by the three-member research team. The same interview prompts and follow-up probes were used with all participants. Even though interviews were broken into multiple sessions, all students were asked the same questions. Some examples of questions included in the semi-structured interviews were: (a) Describe what your favorite books have in common; (b) What types of genres do you like to read? (c) Describe why reading is important to you; and (d) What do you look for in a good book? The questions are intended to provide a structure yet allow for freedom in responses while keeping the discussions focused on participants’ lived experiences in regard to being advanced readers.
Additional sources of supplemental data were generated, collected, and used within the social constructivist analytic process (Charmaz, 2008). The first supplemental data were responses from an online survey completed by the teacher who organized the enrichment book club. The questions asked of the teacher focused on her observations of the students’ reading habits and behaviors, whether she thought reading was important to the students, and how she would describe the students’ relationships to books. She had been the classroom teacher for seven of the nine participants prior to the book club in the previous school year. The teacher’s responses were used as contextual information during the interpretive process. The survey included prompts for the teacher to describe the students’ participation and reading habits from the classroom and the book club. She described each student’s reading patterns, discussion participation, and primary reading interests based on her observations working with the students. She recorded these informal observations on each student, as well as generalized across the group. The second supplemental data source were open-ended survey items for the participants’ parents describing the participants’ reading habits. Parents of all nine students provided narrative descriptions of the participants as readers. Some examples of questions asked the parents included: (a) How would you describe your child’s reading habits? and (b) What role do you think reading plays in the life of your child? Similar to the teacher’s feedback, parent descriptions of the participants were used as contextual information for data verification during the interpretive process. The interview protocol, online survey completed by the book club teacher, and the survey questions completed by the parents can be accessed via an Open Science Framework (OSF) link.
Grounded Theory Analysis
Grounded theory from a social constructivist theoretical perspective was used for empirical data reduction and interpretation (Charmaz, 2008, 2014). Using a social constructivist view of grounded theory allowed the researchers to gain deep understandings of socially constructed phenomena (Charmaz, 2008). This approach to grounded theory is built on the following assumptions: (a) deep understanding is multifaceted and socially situated, (b) the research process is built through interaction and multiple perspectives, and (c) the research process accounts for the positionality of the researchers who bring prior experiences and knowledge structures to the interpretive process (Charmaz, 2014; Mills et al., 2006).
Each of the three researchers documented a positionality about personal experiences with reading and possible preconceptions about advanced readers. All three researchers approached this study as readers themselves, who consider reading integral to their identities and interpretation of the world. Books are seen as vessels of knowledge, adventure, friendship, and a momentary escape from the weight of the world and a window through which to view it. All three researchers approached this study with a belief that being an advanced reader may go beyond skills and that advanced reading could include a deep aspect of who or what one is and is becoming.
The grounded theory interpretive protocol for this study guided by Charmaz (2014) included the following: (a) each researcher read the nine transcribed interviews separately and recorded initial impressions; (b) those first impressions were discussed, mediated, and merged to create initial categories and observations (Stage 1 initial coding; see Table 2); (c) collectively, the three researchers read the nine transcripts again line-by-line assigning codes; (d) after the list of codes was generated, the three researchers re-read the transcripts, the survey responses of the teacher, and the participant descriptions from the parents; (e) memo notes were developed during the reading (Stage 2 initial coding) and a set of summary statements were generated from those memos to represent the socially constructed categories representing the data (see Table 3); (f) remaining codes were tallied in the transcripts to look for prevalence in the data and to look for consistency among the coders; (g) initial codes were conceptually grouped to form focused codes consistent with the observations from both stages of initial coding (see Tables 4 and 5); (h) the teacher and parent observations of the students as readers were coded for evidence of the codes and categories suggested by the interviews for triangulation and contextual accuracy; (i) focused coding produced interpretive statements relating to the core categories developed with continued comparison to the data collected; and (j) data extractions were presented to validate each interpretive statement. An important component of creating analytic distinctions in grounded theory is using constant comparative methods as established by Glaser and Strauss (1967; as cited in Charmaz, 2014). Throughout each of the stages of analysis, constant comparative methods (Charmaz, 2014) were used: codes were compared with the data within each interview by each coder, codes were compared across coders, and codes were compared across participants.
Initial Categories and Observations at Stage 1 Initial Coding
Summary Statements From Memo Review After Stage 2 Initial Coding
Derived Focused Codes Describing Advanced Readers
Description of Focused Codes
This study included nine participants, but 16 interviews with the participants were conducted. All participants were asked the same questions, but some interviews were broken into two or three sessions to account for participant attention span and based on how detailed their responses were. Part of the goal of grounded theory is to generate enough data to allow for patterns and categories to emerge in the analysis. After conducting the interviews with the participants, the researchers felt more data were warranted to add to the understanding of the participants as advanced readers. Thus, the researchers surveyed the parents and the reading teacher of the students about their observations of the participants as readers. The additional insight into the students from the parents and teacher allowed for more ways of looking at and across the data. Charmaz (2014) discusses that the term theoretical saturation is often claimed uncritically, and that researchers need to consider many issues when conducting and analyzing data as part of grounded theory. One approach is to use the term theoretical sufficiency instead of the term data saturation, which focuses on the idea that the categories are suggested by the data and not saturated by the data (Charmaz, 2014). Through constant comparative methods of analysis and the triangulation of the different forms of data, the researchers reviewed the data until they believed theoretical sufficiency was achieved to be able to develop a theory of advanced readers.
Results
Through a constructivist grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2014), a theory emerged that advanced readers share cognitive traits that indicate high verbal ability, have genre preferences, demonstrate deep and complex thinking, and share perceptions of reading that distinguish between school reading and pleasure reading. Some advanced readers demonstrate a relationship with reading that connects to identity formation, in the form of a voracious desire to read and emotional connections to reading. The following descriptions of those behaviors, dispositions, and preferences of advanced readers were generated from initial coding (see Table 2), categorizing, and focused coding (see Tables 4 and 5) of the interview data. Most of the participants shared similar reading behaviors and abilities, but there were some subtle differences in attitudes and beliefs toward reading. Some of the participants indicated that reading was linked to their self-concept and identity, while some did not.
Theoretical Coding Categories
The following descriptions present an elaboration of the focused codes resulting from the constructivist data analysis (Charmaz, 2014). Table 5 presents a description of each code, while the elaboration below presents examples from the data to support the description.
High verbal ability
When considering how the participants described themselves as readers, the themes indicated that these students all used traits to describe themselves that indicated high verbal ability. The specific traits that the students used in their descriptions of themselves as readers indicated evidence of early reading, superior comprehension, and ability to read entire books quickly. Many of the participants began to read before the age of four, had little memory of learning to read, and described themselves as self-taught readers who learned how to read on their own. Several participants (P4, P5, and P7) stated that their parents have told them they read as young as 1 or 2 years old. When asked if he remembered learning to read, Participant 1 described, “Not really. It was back before kindergarten, like, preschool. I read short books . . . I just kind of figured it out for myself” (P1).
The superior reading comprehension often manifested as a large capacity to remember details of books, a sophisticated understanding of language and plot, and a self-awareness that different levels of text complexity require different attention to details and even speed of reading. Participant 5 showed her capacity for memory and comprehension by using quotes from various books in her explanations throughout the interviews. Participant 6 described how he varies his attention to detail depending on the level of text complexity, “Well a great example for that is when I read Enders Game and Lord of the Flies. I had to spend, like, an hour for each of them just to review what I had read and think about it” (P6). Participant 5 also described how she reread a more difficult or complex text to help her better understand the details, “Yeah, I read To Kill a Mockingbird, and I didn’t get it. It was better the second time” (P5).
While not all of the participants read as extensively and frequently as others, most exhibited an ability to read entire books quickly. When they found the right book and were motivated to read, they had the ability to read entire books in 1 or 2 days. Participant 2 explained that she often can read a whole book in a couple of hours if motivated and allowed to read without interruptions, “If I was reading the whole day, it would take . . . maybe one or two hours” (P2). Participant 5 specifically revealed that her dad timed her reading speed, “Yes, he decided to time me for 10 minutes. So, he set the timer and told me to read. So, after 10 minutes, I had finished about 35 pages” (P5). This ability to read books quickly played a role in most participants preferring longer books because the text lasted longer and provided more details.
Genre preferences
All of the interviewed students showed not only a sophisticated understanding of genre and genre differences, but they also had a developed awareness of personal genre preferences. These preferences highlight intricacies within the readers’ identity formation. A common theme was a preference for science fiction and fantasy. Participant 9 explained why he liked fantasy and magic, “It’s the ways it’s not real life. It’s fantasy. You can think of anything, and it happens” (P9). For some participants, a preference for science fiction and fantasy seemed to indicate they were more driven by an exciting plot than a relatable character. This plot-driven focus also seemed to play a role in many participants preferring series to individual books; they longed for adventure and took comfort in knowing it would continue. Participant 8 described why he preferred series to individual books, I know if there are multiples ones of that, then I would be like “Grrr . . . I need to get the next one.” If it is, like, only that book, then I would be like “Aww . . . I wish it could go on forever . . . ” (P8)
An awareness of and preference for genre was an intriguing revelation of the participants’ identities as readers. The awareness of and preference for genre affirms the importance of allowing students opportunity and access to self-selected books at appropriate reading levels.
Deep and complex thinking
While reading, many of these participants engaged in deep and complex thinking. They were often driven by a desire for knowledge and a deep curiosity, inciting in some a preference for nonfiction texts. Whether fiction or nonfiction, participants sought texts that supplied challenge and mental stimulation. They appreciated complexity in language (e.g., wit and sarcasm), plot structure (e.g., multiple narrators, narrative within a narrative), and believability (i.e., requirement of feasible details).
Some participants also noted an appreciation for mysteries because suspenseful stories allowed the reader to participate in the book and really think through the plot. Participant 2 described why she appreciated sarcasm and language, “With some books, it makes it feel like it’s a robot writing it in some way, like it’s not a real person, it’s just a narrator, but with, like, sarcasm, it reminds you that someone is actually writing this” (P2). Participant 6 described that he loved science fiction because he felt he could learn about science without having to commit to boring textbooks. He knew enough about science that he evaluated the quality of science fiction books by the believability and accuracy of the scientific details in the text But my favorite by far are the Star Carrier series, which is a science fiction series that uses only real scientific theories. Like, if they are going to have a laser blaster, then it’s actually going to be an invisible laser. And if they are going to have a particle beam, it’s going to be an actual beam of particles. (P6)
Perceptions of reading
One belief around reading that stood out with most of the participants was a perception that school reading is different than pleasure reading. This belief also impacted some of their reading behaviors at home and school. These advanced readers often distinguished between school reading and pleasure reading. For some participants, they felt they had very little time to read at school, which impacted the types of texts they chose to read at school. They preferred to read novels when they had more unrestricted time to read, so they chose simpler books they can read quickly when reading at school during times such as silent reading. When questioned about what they read during their language arts class, some of the students seemed to have a hard time remembering the names of novels that had been assigned at school. Participant 3 also described his feelings around assigned novels, Uh, yeah, we just did a novel study, like a few weeks back . . . . I did NOT like it. I read Number the Stars . . . Well, I liked the book. I just didn’t like all the questions I had to answer. (P3)
Voracious desire to read
All three researchers approached this study with a belief that being an advanced reader may go beyond skills and that advanced reading could be a large part of those students’ identities. We found that three of the participants (P2, P5, and P6) stood out as different from the others when considering the role that reading played in their identity and self-concept. These advanced readers demonstrated a self-concept that was wrapped around reading. One of the themes that stood out as linked to identity formation was a voracious desire to read.
These advanced readers crave unrestricted access to books until they feel they are finished. They often become completely absorbed in reading until they are unaware of other events in their surroundings. The book club teacher described that Participant 2 “loves to read and often has a book in her hand. She gets completely absorbed when she is reading. You have to tap her shoulder or use physical contact to usually get her attention” (book club teacher). When only given a short amount of time to read, they often will choose to read short books and snippets of books. They generally prefer longer books due to complexity, a desire for books to never end, and the ability to consume books quickly. They often reread books and favorite parts of books. They also often read a large volume of books and read broadly across genres. The book club teacher described how Participant 5 consumes books and then consumes them again. She disappears when she reads, often literally and figuratively. She gets absorbed in what she reads, but she also hides in random places around the classroom. You find her hiding under a table, or behind a shelf. She will sneak off to read in the classroom during recess or lunch when no one is looking. (Book club teacher)
Participants 2 and 6 indicated they often preferred to read at home because they had the freedom to read until they finished the text; thus, at school they chose to read short books or snippets of books due to limited amounts of time to read. These participants often became completely absorbed in reading until they were unaware of other events in their surroundings. Participant 2 also described her tendency to get absorbed in books, “I really like, when I’m reading a book . . . I don’t really pay attention to what other people are saying, so when someone is trying to talk to me, I just go, Mmmhmm, or just say something” (P2).
These readers often reread books and favorite parts of books. Participant 6 described his affinity for rereading books: Mostly, whenever a new book comes into the house, I read it. If I don’t like it, I don’t read it again. If I do like, it read it again and again. Mostly the books I keep in my room are the ones I can re-read and put down in one setting. And some of my favorites. (P6)
They also often read a large volume of books and read broadly across genres. Participant 6 also described the benefit of rereading, “I want to re-read a book, especially when a book’s good. You want to experience it again. It’s the same principle as escaping to another world. You like that world well enough” (P6).
Emotional connection
A second theme that stood out as linked to identity formation was emotional connections to reading. Advanced readers seem to exhibit a capacity for deep, emotional connections to characters and empathy. The parent of Participant 6 described his emotional connections to reading: “Books are his escape to a better reality, and a path to deeper insight about all sorts of subject matters . . . The imaginary worlds in books are as important to him emotionally as the real world” (Parent P6). Participant 2 described her own emotional connections to reading, I may not be an outcast now, but I remember from . . . kindergarten or preschool . . . I didn’t have a lot of friends. I’d have, like, one, and since I didn’t really like to socialize that much, characters that were just like that, kind of seemed, like, oh, hey, I can see myself in that situation, and it feels like you can kind of connect, and, like, really feel what that character’s feeling, so it gets you more immersed in the book. (P2)
Some parents of participants (P1 and P7) even noted their child avoiding certain books because they wanted to avoid hurt and disappointment. These parents speculated that their children’s deep empathy for characters is one reason their child avoided reading certain books. The parent of Participant 7 explained, I feel like some of the reason she avoids reading books other than the fun books is because she feels a lot of empathy for the characters, and she can’t handle it. There have been times when we’ve been reading a book together and she would demand to know if they’re going to be okay. (Parent P7)
It is interesting to note that while some of the participants exhibit the same traits and dispositions as the other advanced readers, they may lack the maturity to cope with their heightened affinity for empathy. Perhaps these readers will make reading a greater part of their identity as they transition into adolescence when they gain the ability to harness the empathy they feel for the characters.
Advanced readers seem to often appreciate the writing style of the author and narrators speaking directly to the reader. They seem to have an appreciation for characters they perceive to be confident, better at tasks than they are, or have exceptional ability. They like to live vicariously through characters. They were drawn to exploring through texts’ infinite possibilities that made them imagine what could happen and characters that showed great strengths, talents, and confidence. Participant 2 described, Because in real life there’s a lot of limited things, but with stories, you can kind of just look at things and, like, for, like, fiction books, you can kind of just see oh, it’s, I mean you know it’s impossible, but it’s interesting to think of how it would work. (P2)
Discussion
The first research question asked how advanced readers describe themselves as readers. The advanced, preadolescent readers in this study described themselves as early readers with little or no memory of what it was like to learn to read. It seemed that reading had always been a part of their lives even in early childhood. Reading was not a skill they remember acquiring; rather, it was just something they did, a very natural behavior. They recalled fond memories of reading with their parents and transitioning to independence, and their parents’ descriptions corroborated those student accounts. These students’ descriptions of themselves as readers also revealed exceptional comprehension. They grasped complex meaning and subtleties of character and plot. These well-developed skills of comprehension were corroborated by the teacher’s descriptions of the students in class and in book club. They were able to recall specific details and ask interesting questions about what they were reading. As a whole they could read books very quickly, and a couple could read fast even by adult standards. They read multiple books a week; when time permitted, they would complete entire books in a single day. These descriptive qualities are consistent with previous research on advanced readers (Reis et al., 2004; Stanovich, 1980). The advanced readers in this study were consistently read to by their parents, corroborating previous research on the importance of supportive home environments to reading behaviors (McKool, 2007). These advanced readers demonstrated tremendous comprehension and detailed memory of what they had read. These characteristics of advanced readers as exceptionally fast readers with depth and breadth of comprehension remains consistent across time and study design.
The second research question in this study probed beyond those typical cognitive characteristics seeking to better understand their behaviors, dispositions, and preferences as advanced readers. These students all read more than typical students in the school, but there was some variance among the nine participants. These variances were corroborated by the parent feedback and the teachers’ descriptions of the students’ reading patterns. On the low end they read more than most students of their age in the school. On the high end, they were voracious readers consuming three or four books a week. They preferred longer books, and they preferred book series. They described their genre preference for science fiction and fantasy, but the data suggested that they did not confine themselves to those areas. There was evidence that they enjoyed complexity in plot and character, and this preference seemed to be related to their description of what they read at home and what they read at school. School reading was described as boring and mundane compared with their home reading habits. Even though they liked reading, they did not like the structures of school reading—the time limitations and interruptions. These findings that advanced readers have genre preferences, prefer series, and prefer reading outside of school for their own purposes is consistent with previous research on avid readers (Wilson & Kelley, 2010).
Because preadolescence is a time of identity exploration, the third research question investigated possible connections between the advanced readers’ reading behaviors and preferences and their exploration of emergent identities. For a few of the advanced readers, the data indicated that reading was connected to identity exploration through their emotional connections to reading and a voracious desire to read. Having strong aesthetic responses to reading in the form of imagining oneself as a character in the book and feeling catharsis with characters is consistent with research on avid readers’ aesthetic responses to reading (Parsons, 2013). The potentially heightened emotional response to reading is an area that may deserve further investigation among advanced readers.
Through both emotional connections to reading and desire for deep and complex thinking, these preadolescent advanced readers similarly described how they projected themselves into the narrative and characters and conversely absorbed those characters and narratives into their interpretations of their own experiences (also similar to findings about aesthetic responses of avid readers by Parsons, 2013). This capacity for projection and absorption are reminiscent of Nussbaum’s (1997) concept of narrative imagination which is the capacity to think outside of one’s personal landscape of experience and imagine the desires and emotions of others through deep engagement with narrative forms. Nussbaum argued this capacity for narrative imagination was a fundamental goal of advanced humanities education, and these early adolescents’ descriptions of their experiences may reveal an early entrance to complex humanities thinking and interpretation. Reading for some of the advanced readers in this study (P2, P5, and P6) might have been more than a cognitive capacity; it was deeply personal. Reading was the steady fuel for imagination that allowed them to seamlessly merge their emergent identities with the narratives they daily traversed. For some advanced readers, the texts served a reflective role as they explored their own early adolescent identities. The stories and the characters were possibilities—starting points and sounding boards—through which they constructed complex understandings of concepts of struggle, journey, villain, and hero. The advanced readers in this study were at the entry point of early adolescence characterized by identity exploration (Finkenauer et al., 2002). The evidence suggested that some of the advanced readers in this study were trying to connect their love for reading with their emergent identities. Parents of some of the other advanced readers in this study indicated their child purposely avoided reading some books because their emotional responses to books were too strong. The stories of these preadolescent readers might support further research into the potential interaction of reading, narrative imagination, and identity exploration.
Implications and Limitations
Rambo-Hernandez and McCoach (2015) found that the growth trajectories of advanced readers continued each year through the summer when most students experience a plateau or even a dip in reading performance. How do learning designs respond to these exceptional readers, especially as they transition into adolescence? What are the characteristics and features of an advanced reading pedagogy that takes account of exceptional ability to read books quickly and complex comprehension? How might an advanced reading pedagogy nurture the type of identity exploration and humanities thinking these participants demonstrated? The Stanford Humanities Center describes humanities pedagogy as one that provides the tools for understanding our experience as human beings so that we might discover who we have been and imagine the possibilities of who we might become (Stanford University, n.d.). These types of questions and explorations might inform the way schools provide integrated humanities curriculum in response to advanced reading abilities and complex thinking dispositions.
An area that merits continued attention is the school-based experience of advanced readers. The participants in this study enjoyed reading but described their reading experiences at school as negative or boring. They described ways in which they saved their preferred reading materials for home and read magazines or random books from the classroom library during the dedicated in-class reading. In some cases, they described assigned class texts as boring—which is not necessarily unusual except that these participants were advanced readers who had above average interest and motivation in reading. This echoed the suggestion by Little et al. (2014) that advanced readers may experience little or no differentiation in their school literacy programs.
It would be helpful for further research to be conducted on the phenomena of advanced readers in other settings. Limitations of this study include a small sample size, the participants were students attending a private school in a suburban setting, and the depth of the questions asked. These students were read too early and often. Books and other reading materials seemed ever-present, and parents were often reading role-models. Follow-up research might consider the ecologies of literacy from which advanced readers emerge as part of the inquiry model seeking understanding of the complex interactions of ability, support, opportunity, and social learning phenomena such as modeling, expectation, reward, and motivation.
Supporting Documents
The authors will provide the interview protocols for the students, their parents, and the teacher, as well as full “blinded” transcripts of each of the interviews through a link to Open Science Framework. To preserve the blind review process, that link will be provided upon acceptance.
Footnotes
Conflict of Interest
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Bios
April Walker, PhD, recently completed her doctoral degree at the University of North Texas in curriculum and instruction with a focus in language and literacy. She taught elementary and middle grades for 12 years. Her main research interests are critical thinking, disciplinary literacy, and advanced readers.
Janessa Bower, BA, is a doctoral student of educational psychology in the College of Education at the University of North Texas. She teaches high school Humanities. Her research focuses are creativity in writing, advanced readers, and connecting the knowledge of researchers to the practice of educators.
Todd Kettler, PhD, is an associate professor in educational psychology in the School of Education at Baylor University. He coordinates the gifted and talented education programs for the School of Education and also serves as the chair of the Texas Commissioner of Education’s Advisory Council on gifted education.