Teachers' work in reading literacy across the curriculum in the senior phase of learning

Teaching students to read is one of the main aims of education systems around the world. For a significant number of adolescents, however, formal schooling has failed to deliver adequate reading proficiency. This article reports on a study of teachers' responses to a reading intervention programme for adolescents implemented in a senior secondary college in Australia in 2006. It engages with the question: in what ways does the reading intervention affect senior secondary teachers' knowledge of reading literacy and their motivation to provide reading literacy support to students in content area subjects? Data were collected from 20 semi-structured interviews with 15 teachers over a six-month period. The findings suggest that, despite the success of the intervention for the students, in this particular senior school context the teachers were largely resistant to expectations that they engage with the process of teaching reading in all senior phases of learning curriculum areas.