Five readers browsing: The reading interests of talented middle school boys

Abstract

Researchers concerned with curriculum differentiation for gifted and talented students have long promoted the benefits of providing opportunities for students to explore their personal interests within the regular curriculum. Many literacy researchers have also concluded that teachers can improve students' (especially boys') attitudes toward reading by offering opportunities within the literacy curriculum for students to choose reading materials based on their own personal interests. However, there are few empirical investigations into the particular interests of talented boy readers to guide teachers who wish to provide students with a rich selection of texts from which to choose. In this multicase study, 5 boys who are talented readers were observed while they browsed for reading materials in a large bookstore. Interviews with each boy and analysis of the texts that they identified as personally interesting revealed 4 major themes that together characterize the complexity of these boys' reading preferences.