Flight or Fright: An Explorative View of the Traits Needed to Sustain Reading Cultures at Individual and Communal Levels Across the African Landscape

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-630-7_16How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Reading Habits; South African Higher Education; Narrative Challenges; Social Cognitive Theory; Reading Experiences; Reading Communities; Reading Motivation; Pan-Africanism; Young Adult Reading Challenges

Abstract

If reading is an agent for change and development, the sustainable growth of Africa pivots upon the awakening of a reading custom in the individual where this is sustained through reading communities over time. The research addressed reading in a concurrent manner, where it is accepted as an isolated experience that is meant to survive in a communal form. The research unravelled intrinsic motivation and enjoyment as well as the dispensation of value and creation of meaning behind habit formation and narrative challenges within individual reading experiences. The study also investigated the habitual reading habits of entry level students at a private higher education institution in South Africa and the silent challenges encountered when reading a novel as part of the course curriculum. According to Balling (2016), the individual reading experience is one that is seldom documented. Through the Labovian (1973) method of narrative analysis, a deductive psychological and literacy approach was used to interpret findings. Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory as well as Balling’s (2016) developing reading theory, underpinned the identification of challenges and pinpointed opportunities for transformation. This study lends well to Rothbauer’s (2006) concept of reading communities which exist in the local, textual, and virtual form. Activities that can contribute to the enablement of such communities within the higher education environment were explored through participant feedback, and recognised challenges were welcomed as gateways for African engineering. Recommendations that could repair and resurrect the reading habits of students include indigenous game-based learning and municipal programme implementations.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Melita Vurden
AU  - Fathima Badat
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/12/31
TI  - Flight or Fright: An Explorative View of the Traits Needed to Sustain Reading Cultures at Individual and Communal Levels Across the African Landscape
BT  - Proceedings of the Focus Conference (TFC 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 289
EP  - 312
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-630-7_16
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-630-7_16
ID  - Vurden2024
ER  -