ABSTRACT
Robert Scholes notion that reading is dynamic, transformative, social and ethical is provocative: if reading is, indeed, all these things and more, then the implications for how and why we research and teach it are profound. As students grow older, many may no longer be perceived as readers because their reading is judged in purely educational terms. There are many ways in which practising English teachers can deepen their understanding and refine their approaches to teaching reading. The complexity of readers, reading and readership will therefore be explored in depth in this book with the aim of encouraging a reconsideration of what such well-worn terms may mean. The focus of the chapter is researching reading within an educational context, it is necessary to remind ourselves how reading is perceived within English teaching in order to establish why doing research might be of such crucial importance to teachers practice.
