The themes of student influence and barriers to student involvement align with the quantitative data; participants appear most concerned with selecting titles that match student interest, while also finding this a barrier to navigate. Additionally, forms of surveying student and observing students emerged in the open-ended responses as primary methods for involving students in the book title selection process. Lastly, a desire to provide students with titles that encourage voluntary, recreation reading appears to drive how students are involved and the barriers that participants navigate.
Ultimately, the results of the pilot study did provide context for how the participants prioritize student influence and involvement in book title selection, and how they navigate barriers. The results indicate that while the participants value student interest with the intent to inspire voluntary, recreational reading, they also perceive individual student interest as a barrier since it is financially challenging to cater to individual student needs in reading. Additionally, student interest can be difficult to navigate when students lack the experience to understand and articulate their own reading interests. Finally, both the literature and pilot study results indicate that methods of student involvement are limited to observing students and surveying students, and suggests that participants may need support in effectively engaging and empowering students in book title selection for the classroom library.
Teachers genuinely want students to enjoy reading and to feel successful in reading. The literature and study showed that teachers desire to fill the classroom with interesting reading material, to make time for reading, and to allow choice in reading; however, a large and concerning gap is the active participation of students as stakeholders in selecting titles for the classroom library, even as literature also revealed that teachers feel students have agency in book title selection for the classroom library.