Book Clubs as Didactic Tools

Alvarez-Alvarez (2016) explores the role of reading clubs in Spain with a focus on dialogism: that is, the role of conversation in civic and literary education.  Seen as much more didactic, the author seeks to understand the efficacy of reading clubs in promoting adult literary skills and reading comprehension through an interpersonal engagement.  We chose to include this article here because of its focus on learning, though the clubs examined were hosted an public libraries and community centers, and because of its extraordinarily rich literature review.  A key takeaway focused on book clubs as “social and cultural space[s] for discussion of controversial issues among people with different experiences, ideologies and tendencies on equal terms” (p. 240).

MacKay (2015) discusses the processes that Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia went through in order to adapt a campus reading group to a campus wide One Book program. This article reflects on the tasks associated with this type of large-scale reading program, and hints at the culture change that comes from integrating a text across curricula. This text proves particularly helpful when the Real Lit[erature] team began looking at scalability and creating a workflow.

Marland (2011) is a second source that reflects on academic book clubs as didactic tools. In this particular setting, the book club is meant to encourage language learners to read for fun, and in doing so, build language skills.