ABSTRACT
In terms of literacy development, one of the primary tasks of a classroom teacher is to understand and extend children’s responses to literary texts. The process begins in the early years of schooling and continues through the primary and secondary stages of education. However, in terms of teacher education and of the NLS guidelines the actual teaching of the reading of literature warrants a more prominent profile. In order to recognise and extend what Jonathan Culler (1975) called ‘literary competence’ in their pupils, not only should teachers be familiar with a wide range of literature for children (Aidan Chambers (1993) suggests a newly trained graduate should be familiar with ‘a basic library’ of 500 texts) but they should also have a basic understanding of the phenomenology of reading – of the diverse and complex ways in which readers bring meaning to texts.
