Expert blog: The importance of children seeing themselves in their reading material
Reading for enjoyment is an important focus for primary and secondary schools. Dr Emma Vardy and Dr Loren Abell at Å·ÃÀ¾ÞÈé along with former student Mary Scorer, now an Educational Psychologist Doctorate Candidate at the University of Å·ÃÀ¾ÞÈé, have been focusing on the importance of representation in reading material to promote reading for enjoyment in schools.
By Helen Breese | Published on 11 December 2024
Categories: Press office; Research; School of Social Sciences;
Children need to see themselves in the material they have access to, and this starts in the early years all the way through to young adult literature.
Especially in light of the recent National Literacy Trust Survey which reported a decline in children and young people reading for pleasure and reading in their spare time (Clark et al., 2024). The importance of representative material is then clear, children and young people need to see themselves in the material they are accessing but at present are not.
The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) recent Reflecting Realities report published in November found a drop in representation within UK children’s literature for primary aged children (titles for children aged 3-11 years old) (CLPE, 2024). There has been a slow increase in representation with 30% of books published in 2022 featuring a character from the global majority, whereas for 2023 only 17% of books did.
A sample of 5,884 books were published in 2023 and considered for the study, with only 999 of these books featuring a global majority character (people who are Black, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage, indigenous to the global south, and/or have been racialised as “ethnic minorities”, Campbell-Stephens, 2021).
This is despite an overall increase in the number of titles published demonstrating that it is an overall reduction in the number of representative titles published in 2023.
Our recently published work with parents echoes the importance of global majority representation in children’s literature (Scorer & Vardy, 2024). Although a small sample, parents highlighted the lack of material available for children especially in the younger years. For parents, these stories with vehicles for important conversations, for example around hair.
All the parents strongly urged that the inclusion of global majority characters to be authentic and to move away from stereotypes sometimes seen in children’s literature. The characters need to be role models to inspire children and raise their aspirations. However, the lack of material makes the role of a parent to locate material that includes characters that represent their family and their lives more difficult.
This is even more true for children aged 3-5 years old where there were the lowest numbers of representation despite the need for all children to have access to representative material (CLPE, 2024).
Children also echo this in a follow up study where we wanted to ask children their views on representation in children’s literature (Scorer, Abell & Vardy, under review). The children spoke of the importance of diverse reading material to help them understand other cultures and experiences.
Children expressed a white character dominance in books, desiring meaningful diverse representation to include visual, experiential and personality similarities with characters to achieve equal, fair representation. Equal representation was linked to reading engagement and enjoyment, belonging, self-image, and inspirational benefits for children’s identities.
Our research supports the views of the CLPE (2024) in that there is a need to increase the publishing of material that includes a diverse character base but that the material needs to be quality to support reading for enjoyment. Outputs cannot be stereotypical or ill-formed, the representation must be of high quality with the characters playing a crucial role to the narrative.
Dr Emma Vardy, Å·ÃÀ¾ÞÈé
Mary Scorer, University of Å·ÃÀ¾ÞÈé
Dr Loren Abell, Å·ÃÀ¾ÞÈé