Reading Lists in Teacher Education: An Empirical Study of a “Very Prosaic” Genre

The reading list in higher education has received little research attention, despite the widespread assumption that it is essential for student learning. To find out more about this apparently prosaic genre, we gathered reading lists from English didactics modules in teacher education at six universities. We then interviewed the teacher educators involved in compiling and using these lists in order to explore their perspectives on the list’s purpose, compilation and use. Our findings show that teacher educators take into account their students’ commitment and ability to read and make sense of didactic texts when they choose what to include on the reading list. Furthermore, they are concerned with developing a didactic design that promotes interaction with these texts. We discuss what types of texts are deemed appropriate to include and the use that is made of them as a mark of the teacher educators’ self-perceived competence within the field of English didactics.