Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Why a whole school reading culture?

• Reading and social and environmental supports
• Expired expectations and orphaned responsibility
• Reading beyond testing
• Benefits of reading engagement for literacy
• Literacy and cross-curricular learning
• Real world advantages
• The question of gender
• Sliding literacy, reading interest and reading frequency
• Read anything for literacy?
• The ongoing importance of paper books
• The importance of the school library
• Recovering from COVID-19 related literacy learning loss

2. Research-supported practices to choose from

• Opportunities for regular silent reading for pleasure
• Supporting choice
• Accessible and visible books
• Investment in school libraries and collection building
• Investment in qualified school library professionals
• Teacher modelling
• Engaging parental support Talking about books
• Creating and sustaining reading spaces
• Reading aloud
• Professional development and laying the foundation
• Promising emerging possibilities
• Activities to be subject to measures of effectiveness

3. Stakeholder engagement and resourcing

• Planning for initial and sustained educator and leader engagement
• Parents and guardians
• Grants for school based research initiatives

4. Implementation planning and change management

• Leading change in schools
• Assess the opportunity for change and empower others to commit
• Create and support a reading culture team
• Formulate and communicate a powerful vision of the change
• Plan for implementation
• Writing implementation plans

5. Monitor and strengthen the change process over time

• Evaluation
• More about goals
• Introduction to basic quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods analysis and data
• Getting quality evaluation data from children
• Quantitative analysis and data for schools
• Qualitative analysis and data for schools
• Mixed methods analysis and data for schools
• Determining baseline data needs and evaluation planning
• Boosting quality with academic partnership

6. Reporting

• Ethical reporting
• Professional outputs
• Media outputs
• Academic outputs
• Final points

Conclusions

• We need more research

About the Author

Margaret Merga is Founder and Lead Consultant at Merga Consulting, working with schools, professional associations and government departments on a range of literacy-related projects. She also holds the position of Honorary Adjunct at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales. Margaret is author of over 100 peer-reviewed and research-informed publications, with six non-fiction books on literacy, libraries, research methods and research communications. Her research has been cited more than 2,500 times and translated into many languages. She is an experienced educator and has taught in Australia, India, Thailand, Turkey and the US, across the age spectrum from kindergarten to adult education contexts. Her recent publications include 'School Libraries Supporting Literacy and Wellbeing' (2022) which highlights her research on the relationship between libraries, reading and wellbeing and 'Creating an Australian School Literacy Policy' (2023) which details how to design and implement a whole school literacy policy. Committed to sharing research knowledge beyond academia so that professionals can use research findings in practical ways, Margaret has won numerous awards for public engagement while her work has been featured widely in the media.