Engaging reading: A structured pedagogical framework for teaching reading for enjoyment (RfE) as educative practice in primary English classrooms

Abstract

Decades of research consistently demonstrate that student engagement in reading for enjoyment (RfE) is strongly associated with a wide range of educational benefits. Well-documented benefits include gains in reading achievement and improvements in students’ reading attitudes, motivation, and confidence. In Australia, engagement with texts for enjoyment is explicitly articulated as a curriculum expectation. Contemporary literacy policy, however, prioritises some aspects of reading instruction, while those related to RfE receive comparatively less systematic attention. As a result, classroom support for RfE is often constrained by policy settings, narrow pedagogical emphases, and fragmented practices. This article addresses a specific and persistent challenge within this broader context: the absence of coherent pedagogical structures and shared policy language to support the intentional teaching of RfE. Drawing on a doctoral narrative inquiry with four primary teachers, and informed by John Dewey’s (1934) seminal aesthetic theory, the article introduces an original conceptual pedagogical framework designed to support the teaching of RfE in the primary English classroom. The framework represents the author’s interpretation and pedagogical application of Dewey’s theory to the teaching of reading for enjoyment. It theorises RfE as educative practice through three interrelated pedagogical dimensions: environmental conditions, social practices, and temporal continuity. Its three-dimensional organisation is grounded in Dewey’s (1938) theory of experience and further informed by Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) three-dimensional inquiry space. The conceptual framework offers a shared metalanguage for teachers, teacher educators, researchers, and policymakers to conceptualise, discuss, and advocate for student engagement in RfE as a core educative practice. In doing so, it positions reading enjoyment not as an incidental outcome of reading instruction, but as a significant curriculum entitlement and pedagogical endeavour with generative and enduring educative impact. As such, the framework constitutes an important contribution to reading instruction, research, and practice.