4. Reading and
Student Achievement Research
..
Campbell, J. R., Hombo, C. M., & Mazzeo, J. (2000)1999 Trends in Academic
Progress: Three Decades of Student Performance
Clark, C. & Rumbold, K. (2006). Reading for Pleasure: A Research Overview
Cullinan, B. E. (2000) Independent Reading and School Achievement
Haycock, K. (2003) The Crisis of Canada’s School Libraries: The Case for
Reform and Re-investment
Krashen, S. D. (2004) The Power of Reading: Insights from the Research
Lonsdale, M. (2003) Impact of School Libraries on Student Achievement: a
Review of the Research (Australian report)
OECD (2000) Reading for Change: Performance and Engagement Across
Countries.
5. Reading and
Student Achievement
reading for fun had a positive
relationship to average scores. At all
three ages (9, 13, 17 years), students
who said they read for fun scored
higher than peers who said they never
read for fun.
Campbell, J. R., Hombo, C. M., & Mazzeo, J. (2000)
1999 Trends in Academic Progress: Three Decades of Student Performance
6. Reading and
Student Achievement
Students who read independently
become better readers, score higher
on achievement tests in all subject
areas, and have greater content
knowledge than those who do not.
Cullinan, B. E. (2000)
Independent Reading and School Achievement
7. OE Reading for Change
CD
One crucial factor that education
systems can work on is the degree to
which students are active and well
motivated readers. This report shows
that the degree to which students are
engaged in reading is a crucial factor
associated with reading proficiency.
OECD (2000) Reading for Change: Performance and
Engagement Across Countries. Results form PISA
2000 (Executive summary)
8. OE Reading for Change
CD
-Read widely for a variety of purposes
-Read regularly
-And the extent to which they perceived
reading to be intrinsically valuable
OECD (2000) Reading for Change: Performance and
Engagement Across Countries. Results form PISA
2000 (Executive summary)
10. Engagement
Engaged reading is a merger of
motivation and thoughtfulness.
Engaged readers seek to understand;
they enjoy learning and they believe in
their reading abilities. They are
mastery orientated, intrinsically
motivated…’
Guthrie, J. T. (2000) ‘Contexts for
Engagement and Motivation on Reading’
11. Definition of Engagement
(OE CD)
•How much time is spent in reading for
enjoyment each day.
•The frequency and variety of reading such
as newspapers, emails and novels.
•An attitude towards reading that it is
enjoyable and an activity that readers would
find hard to give up.
OECD (2000) Reading for Change: Performance and Engagement
Across Countries. Results form PISA 2000 (Executive summary):
OECD - PISA (Program for International Student Assessment)
12. Csikszentmihalyi’s ‘Flow’
the mental manipulation of concepts;
the positioning of thinking as pleasurable;
the identification of the importance of
patterns, likenesses, connectedness;
the facilitation of concentration and
involvement;
the pursuit of an activity so pleasurable it is
undertaken for its own sake.
Csikentszentmihalyi, M. (1992) Flow: The Psychology of
Happiness.
13. Student centred
Creating classroom communities, providing
challenging tasks, and allowing students to
make choices characterise effective practices
that connect to students’ interests and
motivations. Connecting to students’ interests
and values ultimately can produce motivated,
engaged readers.
Guthrie, John T. & Donna E Alvermann (1999) (editors)
Engaged Reading: Process, Practices and Policy Implications.
14. Theory into practice
Teachers create contexts for
engagement when they provide
prominent knowledge goals, real-world
connections to reading, meaningful
choices about what, when, and how to
read, and interesting texts that are
familiar, vivid, important and relevant.
Guthrie, J. T. (2000) ‘Contexts for
Engagement and Motivation on Reading’
16. T E
he nabling Adult
We can’t teach what we don’t know, so anyone
who doesn’t know how to enjoy reading
literature, thinking about it, and entering into
dialogues about it shouldn’t try to teach these
pleasures. On the other hand, those of us who
do have these abilities need do nothing more
than figure out what we ourselves do in the
process of enjoying literature and then devise
ways of teaching children to do the same thing.
Nodelman, P. (1996)
The Pleasures of Children’s Literature
17. T E
he nabling Adult
Teachers who are passionate about
reading talk about the importance of
reading in their lives, share their love of
books and language, read aloud favorite
poems, excerpts, and stories, and
choose books to share that they
themselves enjoy.
La Marca and Macintyre (2006)
Knowing Readers
18. T E
he nabling Adult
…communicates their passion for, and
belief in the value of reading by providing
regular time for silent and serial reading
and reading aloud in their classrooms.
La Marca and Macintyre (2006)
Knowing Readers
19. T E
he nabling Adult
They enjoy listening to and reading students’
responses and designing meaningful and
purposeful ways of supporting thinking and
talking about text. They demonstrate in subtle
ways, by the way they position reading in their
classroom, what it means to them and their
students.
La Marca and Macintyre (2006)
Knowing Readers
20. T E
he nabling Adult
…model the negotiations that experienced
readers do: predicting on the basis of what they
know about the way texts work, what they know
about the world, the way people behave, and so
on, and then adjusting and modifying these
predictions as the text progress.
La Marca and Macintyre (2006)
Knowing Readers
21. Access and Choice
People do not become committed readers on
a diet of prescribed texts only, however well
chosen they may be…We cheerfully become
willing readers when following our own
instincts and tastes.
Chambers, A. (1991)
The Reading Environment
22. Talk
In isolation, intrinsic motivational goals cannot
sustain engagement in reading…Students who
are socially inclined, talk with their friends,
share books, and discuss their writing are
most likely to become avid readers. Thus,
motivations for reading cannot be considered
in isolation from their social and cultural
contexts.
Guthrie and Anderson
in Guthrie and Alvermann (1999) (editors) Engaged Reading
25. Text Centred Thematic Units
Secondary
In a modern world
What do these texts tell us about
ourselves and societies values?
26. Advertising catalogues
The Simpsons television show
Supersize Me (documentary film)
The art of Andy Warhol, Edward Hooper, Munch.
Youth Society pages – The Age
Who Weekly Magazine
So Yesterday & Uglies series
The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley
The Singing Hat
The Gospel According to Larry
Affluenza: When Too Much is Never Enough
Don’t Eat this Book
Chew on this!
Oryx and Crake
My presentation today is based strongly on the work in the book Knowing Readers It is a synthesis of work done over a number of years including my original PhD research on how we create a reading environment in a secondary school library. This work has been reported on before in a number of forums as both presentations and artricles. In Australia this work has culminated in the book Knowing Readers: Unlocking the Pleasures of Reading, this book was a joint effort, written with a well known expert in the field of YA literature, Pam Macintyre, the editor of the journal Viewpoint: on books for young adults and a lecturer at the University of Melbourne. Knowing Readers combines my own work with the ideas, views and research of a like minded colleague. (pass it around) Today I would like to focus on the following areas that are central to this work in an effort to give you a taste of our views in a short time. The areas to be addressed are:
Firstly, pleasure reading and student achievement
Those who see value in the experience of reading see the creation of a reading culture, a reading community that reads for pleasure, as an integral part of any school’s endeavours and an important area for school library involvement and leadership. Reading is both an important skill that enables us to function effectively in society and an experience that increases our understanding of the world around us. Very few people would with argue this. But, at times the educational sphere feels the need to only value those activities that can be shown to have a measurable impact on student achievement levels – a scores on the board approach to education. Reading, or more specifically, reading for pleasure, has often suffered under this interpretation of what is important in schools. Whilst we all may agree that reading benefits us in many ways there is no doubt that some of its benefits are hard to quantify. What does the research say about the impact of reading, more specifically pleasure reading, on learning and achievement levels? There have been a number of different international and national reports that have feed into this discussion many of which I have shared in the written report. They include:
These reports are from various countries, including the United States of America, Great Britain, Canada and Australia. The OECD report Reading for Change is an international research report based on findings from 32 countries. These reports were produced for a variety of reasons by different organisations or government departments but they consistently tell us the same thing. For example the report entitled Trends in Academic Progress: Three Decades of Student Performance states that they found that
And Cullinan in a report titled Independent Reading and School Achievement found that:
And the OECD study, Reading for Change, in discussing what schools can do to improve student achievement across all areas of education said that to increase reading proficiency first
This study suggested the factors that contributed towards engagement in readers were the extent to which students:
This positioning of engagement as an important factor in making learning relevant and worthwhile is present in various documents around the world. In my own state of Victoria in Australia our new document upon which curriculum is based - The Victorian Essential Learning Standards positions engagement as central. We are not the only educators with this focus many other major academics and curriculum creators around the world are positioning our need to engage students in their learning as vital. This is part of a student centred approach to learning in an attempt to make schooling more relevant to the lives of young people and more effective. Let’s look then at my second area of focus (to next heading slide) - The centrality of engagement
Why make engagement central to reading interactions? Alvermann and Guthrie have commented extensively on the importance of engagement to the reading experience. Guthrie, has said that:
Guthrie describes a state we want for all of our students. The OECD in their report Reading for Change , that I referred to earlier, defines engagement as a combination of factors. They assessed students levels of engagement by exploring these thing:
“ An enjoyable activity that readers would find hard to give up.” These are students who see themselves as readers. Students who are likely to remain lifelong readers. A more complex view of engagement can be found in the work of Csikentszentmihalyi who describes a state of flow or deep engagement. He defines this deep engagement as:
While Csikentszentmihalyi is using this concept to describe involvement in a range of activities from sport to science, he also claims that the act of reading can be an example of flow. This concept clearly links to the student centred approach to a thinking curriculum described earlier that positions engagement as important. Some of you may recognise in Csikentszentmihalyi terminology clear links to the work of reading commentators such as Aidan Chambers and his reading strategies - The three sharing's and the tell me questions. In his three sharings model Chambers encourages readers to makes connections, to see patterns and puzzles in what they read. Encouraging students to both share and critically contemplate what they read. Guthrie and Alvermann have discussed at length what this student centered approach means in practice. They have said:
And what do teachers do to facilitate this? Guthrie has said that:
This appear obvious but we don’t always get it right. Guthrie is not suggesting that we don’t challenge or extend our students only that to first engage them we must meet them where they are at if we are going to form lasting, productive relationships that connect our students to a world of reading that they can identify with, and become a part of. Where does that leave us then, as teacher-librarians? Chambers in his book The reading environment created the idea of an enabling adult. The facilitator for the reading experience. An enabler that will encourage engagement in the reading experience. So, let’s consider the next focus of my presentation today (next slide) (The teacher librarian as the enabling adult).
The idea of the enabling adult has has been explored by many researchers, including myself. The academic and researcher Perry Nodelman has said of the role of the enabler or facilitating teacher:
Sounds wonderfully simples doesn’t it! ‘ Figure out what we do ourselves and devise and teach children how to do the same thing’ The construct of school places limitations on this but this in a practical sense, in relation to where and when we read and also how we read, and how we think and talk about what we read are very important lessons for young people that we don’t necessarily always explore in helpful ways. Pam Macintyre and I explored this in our book ‘Knowing Readers’ saying:
I am sure many of you have wonderful examples of these types of sharing in your own classrooms. Invite the participants to share EXAMPLE HERE PERHAPS Pam and I go on to say that the enabling adult
And that
Invite them again to respond EXAMPLE HERE PERHAPS And the enabling adult needs to provide reading experiences for their students that ….
The role of the enabling adult is complex and involved but in the time allowed I would like to mention three of the most important areas that need to be continually addressed. Aidan Chambers’ said:
Access to books that students choose to read is vitally important if we are to engage them in the reading process. (KRASHEN) This necessitates an extensive knowledge base of relevant reading possibilities at the finger tips of the enabling adult. It demands a well stocked library and also time to access that collection and read at a leisurely pace beyond classroom set texts. Access to all of these things underpins the creation of a reading community of engaged readers that are free to make choices about their own reading. The other important area I would like to address is (next slide) - talk Guthrie and Anderson have said
So, we need to be able to support lots of reading of varied kinds beyond the classroom set text and we need to see reading as a social activity that involves talk and interaction, research and argument. We need to create a community of readers. Such a community has ultimate impact and reach when it is built upon a relationship between the classroom and a well stocked, active school library. I would now like to explore two approaches to texts in a classroom environment that model practice that is engaging and thoughtful.
Firstly, a thematic text centred unit.
The approach here is to group together a variety of diverse texts to explore a meaningful concept and to encourage thoughtful discussion. This thematic approach is common in primary schools in Australia but not a common approach in secondary school. This is a thematic unit for secondary.
The focus is titled ‘in a modern world’ and the preliminary question posed is What do these texts tell us about ourselves and societal values? The texts that could be used to explore this are varied. We the following:
Such a study brings together texts of different lengths and styles to suit and engage different interests and abilities. It also encompasses texts popular texts and everyday texts as well as challenging novels and non fiction. It offers scope for in depth study of big issues and also the possibility of cross curricula involvement with areas such as history or art. It encourages discussion and debate and asks students to make links between what they read and the world in meaningful ways. Next – comic life
Explain how this is used to create a response, review, next chapter, version of dialogue to engage with the text in a meaningful way. Next photo story
Explain how this is used and show example of Rosie’s work. How does this encourage engagement? -encourages reflection and interrogation of the text. -encourages deep understanding and necessitates interpretation -offer a form of response that is not centred on writing and one that offers a chance of creative interaction In conclusion I would like to presume that I have made an argument for the relevance of reading of all kind in the lives of young people and for the importance of our role as enabling adults. I’d like to finish though with a comment on the importance of reading by a higher authority. Thank you