This study reports findings from a reading project with a focus on the reader, which has been carried out in collaboration with a Swedish teacher at a vocational upper secondary school. Rural vocational boys are often described as reluctant readers, and the study is about how their narrated experiences of reading can provide knowledge about reader identities and local reading practices, and how these can be used as subject content in Swedish education. Based on a narrative research tradition that sees narratives and narration as important resources in the work of developing teaching (Goodson, et al., 2010; Goodson & Gill, 2011, 2014) the study also aims to contribute knowledge about what a reading instruction that takes its starting point in such local reading practices does to vocational students’ narratives about themselves as readers. 

Data consist of topical life story interviews with 19 vocational male upper secondary students. Taking an ecological perspective on literacy (Barton & Hamilton, 1998/2012; Green & Corbett, 2013) which emphasize the interaction between readers, context and reading as a social practice, the results indicate an existing gapbetween reading practices in school and the more informal reading practices the boys engage in outside school (cf. Asplund & Goodson, 2022; Scholes & Asplund, 2021). Our analysis also shows that the boys have strengthened their identities as readers when their own reading practices and stories have formed the starting point for the reading instruction they encountered. The boys’ stories open up for didactic discussions about reading as a generic and subject-specific ability which is to be taught and learned in all subjects. Therefore, knowledge about reading is also expected to be taught and learned in teacher education.