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This article disrupts dominant discourses around boys and reading that often homogenise young males as reluctant, disengaged and, at times, adversarial readers. Rather than essentialising boys, we argue there is a need for a more sophisticated knowledge base about the influences, constraints and diverse experiences of boys as readers in society today. Drawing on interviews (n = 30) with Year 4 (8 to 9-year-old) boys at six schools, we consider their personal recounts of their enjoyment in reading, their preferred reading choices and narratives related to their experiences as readers at school. Analysis highlights boys' emerging reading interests, sophisticated and specific reading preferences, and changes in reading identities over time. Boys' preferences for particular fiction authors, novel series and genres dispute the common assumption in educational contexts that boys prefer to engage with non-fiction books. This finding is significant, as negative gendered stereotypes can impact on boys' reading self-concepts. It is also critical given Jerrim and Moss's recent research highlighting the importance of fiction in the development of reading skills. We consider implications for pedagogical practices that broaden reading experiences for the diversity of emerging masculine reading identities in nations such as Australia, where there is an absence of reading for pleasure in education policies.

Sourcing information related to socio‐scientific issues requires sophisticated literacies to read and evaluate conflicting accounts often signified by disagreement among experts, multiple solutions or misinformation. Much of the previous work exploring how young people approach conflicting information has tended to focus on students in the secondary and tertiary years, often taking an epistemic approach to analysis, rather than a literacies lens. At the heart of such endeavours, however, is the need for sophisticated reading skills accelerated by shifts to digital platforms to source information. Given the limited empirical studies in the field of literacy that articulate how middle school students approach sources of information, this study investigates 45 middle school students' (13–14 years of age) self‐reported strategies for investigating health risks associated with mobile phone use. We asked the students to imagine that a close friend was worried about the health risks of using their mobile phone and had asked them for advice. Students were then prompted to describe how they would search for information about the issue and how they would know if the information was reliable. Our analysis identified three dominant themes in the interview data, namely: (i) mistrust of the internet—people can be reliable sources; (ii) reliable sourcing requires consensus across sources; and (iii) criteria help to determine a reliable source. An interesting finding was the level of scepticism of the internet expressed by students. We draw on examples from the students' interview dialogue to illustrate the themes and engage in discourse related to their approaches including implications for teaching in English classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article disrupts dominant discourses around boys and reading that often homogenise young males as reluctant, disengaged and, at times, adversarial readers. Rather than essentialising boys, we argue there is a need for a more sophisticated knowledge base about the influences, constraints and diverse experiences of boys as readers in society today. Drawing on interviews (n = 30) with Year 4 (8 to 9‐year‐old) boys at six schools, we consider their personal recounts of their enjoyment in reading, their preferred reading choices and narratives related to their experiences as readers at school. Analysis highlights boys' emerging reading interests, sophisticated and specific reading preferences, and changes in reading identities over time. Boys' preferences for particular fiction authors, novel series and genres dispute the common assumption in educational contexts that boys prefer to engage with non‐fiction books. This finding is significant, as negative gendered stereotypes can impact on boys' reading self‐concepts. It is also critical given Jerrim and Moss's recent research highlighting the importance of fiction in the development of reading skills. We consider implications for pedagogical practices that broaden reading experiences for the diversity of emerging masculine reading identities in nations such as Australia, where there is an absence of reading for pleasure in education policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]