The Impact of Reading Challenge Programs on Student Reading for Pleasure and Literacy Achievement

I work on Whadjuk Noongar land and engage with schools across the country in my research, so I acknowledge and pay my respects to all First Nations people. Aboriginal people have been teaching and learning on these lands for tens of thousands of years, and central to that learning is the sharing of stories. A personal connection with the importance of sharing stories has influenced me deeply as a reader, an educator, and a teacher librarian, and this focus underpins my current research project. Reading is considered a cornerstone of student education, and is not only a core learning area itself, but serves to provide students access to all other learning domains. Research has regularly linked independent reading habits to student success in other subject areas, as noted by Whitten et al. (2016):