If our aim is to close the gap, improve literacy, widen cultural experience and create a more dynamic and well educated population, we need to let it flow!
FLOW
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience– Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s famous investigations of “optimal experience” have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life. In this new edition of his groundbreaking classic work, Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance.
The ‘optimal experience’
Here lies the issue with reading today – if we are to achieve the ‘optimal experience’ where we are in a state of genuine satisfaction through reading, we need to provide the time and the space and the environment for this to happen. With the constant demands from electronic devices, the pull of social media, the distractions of TV, how are we ever going to find the time to achieve a state of ‘flow’ and give ourselves the space to enjoy the pleasure and deep enjoyment of reading for pleasure?
Personally, I can reflect back on my childhood, and my only distraction was going back to sleep. I am by nature very sociable, but I also have also enjoyed my own space and my own company, and I filled this space with my borderline obsessional need to read. As a child I used to have phases – I was into detectives and read ‘Sherlock Holmes’ the whole volume in one go. I read all of Agatha Christie too. On my introduction to more serious literature, I would read have author phases, including. Orwell, Grahem Green, Huxley, Austen, Bronte, Hardy, Eliot. Where I would read as many of their novels as I could get my hands on. I also loved – and still do, the form of the short story, I knew that if I have limited time, a short story would feed my need. I read everything, I cannot pass a newspaper or magazine or notice board without reading it – I also like to look at what others are reading, especially on the Tube in London. I am obsessed!
My children have access to all kinds of books, and to my dismay, my middle child – who had been an exceptional reader, is just about to finish his first term of secondary school and has stopped reading! I am hoping that we can get him back into it at some point – he just says he is too tired, he can’t find the time or energy to think enough to get into a novel. He has achieved the optimal experience – but he also knows the state of mind he needs to be in to reach these heights again, and he just hasn’t got the capacity for it at the moment. Our eldest is coming back from he Y7 and Y8 reading wilderness – in year 9 it seems he wants to widen his horizons again, and although I know he isn’t really reading the book he says he is reading – the fact he feels the need to keep me happy and pretend he is, is enough of a glimmer of hope for me. What I find most troubling is my youngest, who I don’t feel has ever achieved that optimal experience to really understand why reading is so enjoyable. She is far too engrossed in nonsense on You Tube. She watches all kinds – ‘My Little Pony’ in Spanish for example. No matter how we try, she would much rather have the instant gratification of watching something than investing the time and energy into experiencing the enjoyment of reading, and in the very short term we are leaving her to it, until she feels more ready.
If my children are struggling, and they have access to a whole wealth of both literature and non fiction, how do we get students from backgrounds where they have no immediate access to literature to fully engage in reading enough to appreciate the amount of pleasure that can be gained? Schools need to provide access to reading – because far too many students do not have access to reading in any other environment. There has been some research into links between reading and flow. In 1996, by Mcquillian and Conde identified the four factors they believed supported achieving optimal flow in reading. They are as follows:
- The text should relate to a topic of which the reader has some knowledge
- The text should relate to a topic that the reader wants to know more about
- The text should relate to a topic in which the reader is interested
- The text should relate to something which the reader would like to achieve.
If we are to fulfil these needs in an environment like school, one way to achieve this is through the access of a variety of magazines. In have a whole variety of reading materials, students can see and relate to a variety of topics. They can pick up a magazine, and flick through the pages until they find something the are really interested in, and then go back to the other articles once they have reads what is most important to them. They can read a short article if they don’t have much time, and then a longer one once if they do have more time. It offers a very flexible, but engaging approach to reading. Having a variety of magazines for students to access with provide them with all kinds of opportunities to engage in reading. In my own children’s busy lives, I can still rely on them picking up magazines to read – this gives me hope!
Springboard
The ultimate aim is that they find something they are genuinely interested in through reading a magazine. They can extend their knowledge of something they are already involved in, widen their cultural circles and extend their social circles. This will spur them into further reading where they will become engrossed to the point where they achieve optimal experiences through reading.
This is the next important and necessary step in schools. Students need to engage, they need to read, and if you can get them to achieve this, it will offer a whole world of experiences that stretch way beyond their tiny little worlds. It is a brilliant way to instil a sense of aspiration – instead of being told, they can find out for themselves how much the world has got the offer. We need to get students into a position where they can FLOW – achieve independence, and reach the heights of optimal experiences through independent reading.
Let it FLOW!
If you are a parent, teacher , student – basically anyone reading this, and you have no idea what I mean by reaching the optimal experience through reading, the Christmas holidays are upon us, find yourself a text you are really interested in reading, allocate some special time just to read, and let it flow!