ABSTRACT
Work by González, Moll and Amanti argues the fundamental importance of teachers learning about what children and young people already know and think so that their prior knowledge can be seen as vital funds contributing to the understanding they are accruing. There are serious implications for any adults involved in young people's reading – whether teachers, librarians, authors, bookstore workers or parents. Visual research methods such as drawing, rivers of reading collages or taking photos to create a photo-story montage have all proved to be important sources of data in the research projects. Changes in digital technology over the past couple of decades, however, mean that young people have a much wider range of reading material at their disposal than ever before. They can, for example, choose to read texts that have traditionally been available for many years such as comics, films, fiction or non-fiction books.
