Becoming well-read or reading well?: Academic Reading Circles as an innovative and inclusive practice

Academic Reading Circles are an innovative strategy for supporting students’ academic reading practices. Based on reading circles used in more general contexts to develop students’ engagement with reading extensively, Academic Reading Circles have been adapted to the academic context to help students engage with more complex texts in their discipline. This paper will consider how Academic Reading Circles can play a strategic role in students becoming well read or in their learning process of reading well. The authors will use their experiences of embedding Academic Reading Circles in their teaching within different disciplines (in the Arts/Humanities and Social Sciences) to explore how Academic Reading Circles can guide learners to develop a critical lens through which to examine denser academic texts, and encourage them to recognise and make the most of the multidimensionality of the reading experience.