This thesis explores the perceptions and conceptualisations of reading and reader identity of secondary school pupils and their teachers. In a context where adolescent readership is presented as in decline, the study analyses the ways in which participants value and foreground reading as predominantly of fiction and primarily for pleasure in motivating and sustaining reader identity. The study explores the lived experience of reading where the authentic and affective nature of the experience is highly valued but contrasted with the often objective and analytical reading of school. Finally, the ways in which socio-cultural factors influenced participants’ experiences, and were further enacted within the study, are explored.

The research employed an interpretative constructivist grounded theory approach. Data were gathered through focus groups, with discussions facilitated through use of a mosaic approach of participatory methods. Sixteen secondary school pupils and
two teachers from schools in the South-East took part. Data were analysed in accordance with the iterative and repeated inductive methods of the approach to afford arising theorisation.

This study contributes new theoretical knowledge because it challenges the narrative of declining adolescent readership and instead illuminates the complex amalgam of factors that contribute to on-going and sustained reader identity. It contributes to the body of professional knowledge by illustrating some of the current perceptions of reading in the secondary context and implications for practice are discussed as a result.