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Children’s and adolescents’ reading of longer connected text is decreasing in in many parts of the western world, including Sweden, leisure reading as well as school-related reading (Vinterek et al., 2020). Growing inequity among students’ opportunities to develop L2 reading literacy also highlights the compensatory objective of Swedish compulsory school. Concurrently, the Swedish school system, like many other, has moved in a direction of increased accountability for students, teachers, and school leaders. The intensified focus on short-term assessment and easily measurable results, e.g., in the form of more and earlier national tests and student grades, has made it even more of a challenge for professional teachers to make room for extensive reading practices and to focus on more long-term goals such as building students’ self-identity as readers. 

The purpose of this study, which is part of a larger project on reading practices in Swedish compulsory school, is therefore to investigate how a group of English teachers (L2) cope with these challenges in four different classrooms, situated in different socioeconomic contexts. More specifically, I look at what type of reading practices that these teachers initiate for their respective group of students, and in what way these classroom practices manage to strengthen students’ self-identity as readers of English. Theoretically, the study is framed by Self-determination theory (SDT) and the related notion of reading self-concept, defined as one’s sense of competence and the role ascribed to reading as a part of one’s personal identity. The analyses of the L2 reading practices are primarily based on audio-recorded observations of two classrooms in Grade 6 and two in Grade 9, with some contextual data from complementary teacher and student interviews. Preliminary results indicate that teachers are caught a in dilemma where they must navigate between two conflicting goals: taking shortcuts to prepare students for the national test or creating positive reading experiences that can build students’ long-term self-identity as L2 readers. To initiate and sustain reading practices that manage to negotiate between these goals, teachers need professional agency and self-determination to create classroom environments characterized by both control and autonomy support.

The results are of relevance to research on literacy instruction and motivation in general, and on L2 reading in particular. 

Biesta, G. (2017). Education, Measurement and the Professions: Reclaiming a space for democratic professionality in education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 49(4), 315–330. 

Vinterek, M., Winberg, M., Tegmark, M., Alatalo, T., & Liberg, C. (2020). The decrease of school related reading in the Swedish compulsory school 2007–2017. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 66(1), 119-133.