The Reading Teacher | 2019
Reading and the Development of Social Understanding: Implications for the Literacy Classroom
Abstract
As reading teachers have long known, the benefits of reading for pleasure are indisputable. Extant research literature has focused primarily on the cognitive benefits of reading, such as spelling, vocabulary size, and general knowledge (Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997; Mol & Bus, 2011; Sparks, Patton, & Murdoch, 2014). However, recent empirical research provided exciting clues that the benefits of reading may extend to other abilities more directly reflected in social competence; namely, the ability to understand and sympathize with others’ emotions, cognitions, and motivations. In this article, following Carpendale and Lewis (2006), we refer to this set of abilities as social understanding. These skills are critical because social understanding makes relationships possible. Part of what makes human interactions rich is the ability to feel the joy that others feel, to share in sorrow when someone is in need, and to experience a sense of righteous anger when someone is treated unjustly. Equally crucial is the capacity to understand and empathize with others who have very different experiences. Students may identify with the bullying that Auggie faces in Wonder by R.J. Palacio, despite not having the same disability; they may delight in Matilda’s perseverance in defying wicked adults in Matilda by Roald Dahl, despite not having abusive parents of their own; in The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak, they might suffer with Liesel as bombs rain down over Munich without ever having to experience the horrors of war themselves. These sociocognitive abilities fit within the larger framework of socioemotional learning, which broadly refers to the development of skills and knowledge related to personal and social tasks and challenges (Taylor, Oberle, Durlak, & Weissberg, 2017). A large body of research has supported the importance of promoting socioemotional learning in schools (for a review, see Taylor et al., 2017). Whereas socioemotional learning can be integrated in different forms across the academic curriculum, this article focuses specifically on the role that reading fiction can play in developing social understanding. First, we review psychological research providing evidence for a link between reading and social understanding. Next, we draw on scholarship that attempts to explain why this link exists, that is, how reading may facilitate social understanding. Finally, we provide some concrete strategies for book selection and literacy activities in the classroom that can help foster these benefits of reading.