Facilitating Reading Engagement in Shared Reading

This article responds to this special issue's overarching interest in the relation between modes of reading and the experiences of actual readers by analyzing how the specific practice of shared reading facilitates readers’ engagement in literary reading. The article responds both to an under-investigated dimension of the practice of shared reading, that of the role of facilitation, and to a pressing articulated and educational need to develop additional and better methodologies for fostering literary reading engagement, as existing results from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have demonstrated the importance of reading engagement for both academic achievement and social mobility. By linking the notion of engagement within the PISA framework with phenomenologically oriented empirical research on expressive reading and the notion of emergent thinking in existing shared reading research, the article argues for the role of the reader leader in facilitating literary engagement. These connections may inspire literary scholars to consider the link between literary analysis and the didactics of literary reading.