Personalised reading for pleasure with digital libraries: towards a pedagogy of practice and design

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the pedagogical practice of developing reading for pleasure in pre- schools and primary phase settings through the lens of one key dimension of twenty-first-century reading: personalisation. It draws on a series of studies and examples to identify, address and problematise human- and digitally mediated personalised reading for pleasure. Through a content analysis of the key features of current digital library systems, it shows how these increasingly popular systems position teachers as librarians, curators and monitors, and undermine their potential roles as listeners, mentors and co-readers in order to foster children’s personal response to texts. Through a theory-driven approach it identifies ways in which current design limitations of library management systems can be addressed and from which their effective application and use can develop. This conceptual elaboration, which combines contemporary reading theories with the affordances of digital personalisation, provides new insights concerning personalisation in digital library systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital library systems
• pedagogy
• personalization
• reading for pleasure