Paper short abstract:

Based on interviews with mothers aiming at fostering reading children, this paper takes advantage of ethnology’s facility for studying lived experience by exploring how conflicting notions of values of reading translates in daily practices of reading homework.

Paper long abstract:

The act of reading is often considered beneficial beyond questioning, in particular regarding children. Contemporary Icelandic educational policy even defines literacy as a main aim of primary school and essential for participation in society. To accomplish this, authorities place a great deal of the responsibility with parents by extensive reading homework. This is without taking the voice of parents‘ into account, and thus leaving the question of how parents‘ experience this obligation wide open and urgent.

Based on 8 semi structured in-depth interviews with mothers all aiming at fostering reading children, this paper takes advantage of ethnology’s facility for studying lived experience by exploring how these mothers feel about the conduction of reading homework. The paper is part of an ongoing doctoral project on promotion of literacy in Icelandic primary school.

The findings reveal that although the mothers interviewed share the goal of the educational system to encourage reading, most of them experience a conflict between the reading practices promoted by the school and how they themselves would preferably support their children to become readers. Where an increased focus of measurement of reading and daily practice violates the interest of reading the mothers strive to awaken. Though there is an agreement on the value of reading, the notions about which the values are do not harmonize as well as reflected by the difference in preferred reading practices. The paper furthermore explores the implications of this discrepancy and how ethnology can contribute to the field of education by bridging different perspectives.