Newhouse, Jeannie;
(2024)
What do five- and six-year-old pupils think reading is? Exploring perceptions of reading among children learning to read using systematic synthetic phonics.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
This thesis explores the perceptions of reading held by five- and six-year-old children as they near the end of Year 1 in an English Primary School. As this research has taken place at a time when government policy dictates that reading should be taught through a systematic synthetic phonics ‘first and fast’ approach, the impact of this context is central to this study. In particular, this research has emphasised the influence of the Phonics Screening Check (PSC) on children’s perceptions of reading; the PSC is a test of 40 phonically decodable words, half of which are ‘alien’ or pseudowords. Situated within a socio-cultural frame, this study was a collective case study of seven children within one primary school setting. A range of participatory methods organised within a ‘listening framework’ was used to explore the children’s perceptions, including a custom-made incomplete story book. To understand the influence of the context around each child, interviews with the children’s parents and teachers were also carried out. The findings revealed that the PSC influenced how these children defined reading; partly from its role in enforcing this skills-based approach to teaching reading but also from the intensive practising and sorting of fake words in the run up to the PSC. This practice left children unsure whether the words they encountered were ‘fake’ or just words they had not come across before, leading them to view ‘sounding out letters’ as the goal in reading rather than making meaning. This study also found that the way parents engaged with the school’s approach and how they framed their reading discourse influenced their child’s developing relationship with reading. This thesis argues therefore, that the current approach to teaching reading has the potential to damage young children’s conceptions of reading and in this way create a nation of disaffected readers.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | What do five- and six-year-old pupils think reading is? Exploring perceptions of reading among children learning to read using systematic synthetic phonics |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2024. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Learning and Leadership |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10188987 |
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