Using Harry Potter to teach literacy: different approaches

The ubiquity of the Harry Potter phenomenon offers an opportunity to examine the different ways educators use popular books to teach reading. This study analyses a number of journal articles that address the Harry Potter novels as tools for the classroom. These articles show a great diversity of approaches. Government testing of discrete, assessable skills can dominate contemporary discussions of literacy, and the Harry Potter books are sometimes used to address these targets. Other educators use Harry Potter to teach children about multimedia technologies. Most often, educators who embrace the Harry Potter novels affirm the value of reading for pleasure. This view often also promotes reading as a route to the critical literacy goal of social inclusion and the psychological development of the child. Taken together, these uses of Harry Potter present a confused picture, with no clear agreement on what good reading is or how it should be taught.