How texts teach what readers learn in a digital age

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on How Texts Teach What Readers Learn (Meek, 1988) and considers how texts teach readers in a digital age. I use Meek’s book as a frame for exploring the ways children learn about narration, structure, voice, discourse and language, and becoming an “insider” in the text. To demonstrate this, I use Meek’s own stipulation “If we want to see what lessons have been learned from the texts children read, we have to look for them in what they write” (p38). Three vignettes are included as exemplars, offering insights into the ways children use their experiences as readers to create hybrid texts, drawing on different media and modes. I conclude that How Texts Teach is still highly relevant to understanding of children’s reading and writing despite changing social and material contexts, and is a frame through which changes in children’s reading and writing practices can usefully be explored.