ABSTRACT
This chapter considers ways in which schools and parents can work together to promote students' recreational reading in order to raise academic outcomes related to the study of literature. It then presents a framework for thinking about the promotion of recreational reading, and provides illustrations of some of the approaches parents in a recent case study took using that framework. Disciplinary norms and expectations are articulated as outcomes in subject-based curricula. In the New Zealand English Curriculum, and in English language arts programmes internationally, a highly valued outcome is students who become lifelong readers of complex literary texts across a variety of historical, national and ethnic traditions and who are able to make 'warrantable interpretations' about the meaning, effectiveness and aesthetic value of such texts. Research about the Summer Learning Effect (SLE) has contributed much to what we know about students' out of school reading practices, and the relationship of those practices to academic achievement.
