This post has been crossposted from theSpringerOpen blog.
In the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS 2016), 85% of Fourth-grade students in 50 countries and 11 benchmarking entities worldwide liked reading very much or at least somewhat. A large number of studies have shown that positive attitudes toward reading and reading achievement are related. Therefore, it is somewhat alarming that 16% of students in PIRLS 2016 do not like reading at all. In addition, girls seem to be at an advantage when it comes to reading. On average, they have a more positive attitude towards reading and higher reading achievement scores in nearly all participating countries. This gender gap has not been narrowing since PIRLS 2001.
Based on these observations, together with my colleagues, Prof. Dr. Ariane Willems and Lea Hartwich, I investigated the relationship between boys’ and girls’ reading attitudes and different factors on student and context (class) levels. We utilized national data from PIRLS 2011 and implemented multi-group models for France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
How did the findings vary between European countries?
The cross-country comparison showed that the number of books at home and how often students read books outside of school are stable indicators of reading attitudes. Students who borrow books from a library also have a more favorable view on reading, with the exception of girls in France and the Netherlands.
培养学生在学校和社区图书馆的参与以及增加学校外阅读量可能是与阅读建立积极关系的一种有希望的方法。
On the class level, few factors were connected to attitudes toward reading. For boys in Italy, their teachers’ experience was related to reading attitudes, whereas for girls in the Netherlands, the existence of a classroom library acted as a predictor. Surprisingly, students’ socio-economic background was not associated with reading attitudes at all.
Differences in reading attitudes between boys and girls remain apparent in three of four countries even after controlling for students’ socio-economic background, reading behavior, and contextual variables like the time teachers spend on reading instruction and activities, their teaching experience and usage of software for reading instruction.
仅学校可能对改善阅读习惯影响不大
The differences in reading attitudes between girls and boys cannot be readily explained by the contextual class level factors we used in our models. This leads us to conclude that we do not yet have a sufficient understanding of how to improve students’ reading engagement through classroom resources and teaching.
培养学生在学校和社区图书馆的参与以及增加学校外阅读量可能是与阅读建立积极关系的一种有希望的方法。Until now, schools seem to have little impact on the future challenge for improving the reading habits and skills of their students.
为了改变这一点，涉及不同部门，政策领域和教育机构的合作方法可能是有利的。此外，需要对基于学校计划对阅读态度的影响的进一步研究，尤其是特别关注性别差异，需要了解未来的阅读态度和阅读能力。
我一直喜欢阅读，在学校和我的妹妹一样。不幸的是，当草坪需要割草或垃圾到路边时，我的父母不赞成我的阅读。他们劝阻我的阅读是浪费时间，但允许我姐姐随时随地阅读。这种态度在我们附近很普遍。
Teachers did not seem to care if boys read. Perhaps they did not approve of comics and science fiction. Later, my friends and I switched to non-fiction but teachers did not seem to care about science and mathematics. They wanted us to read only Dickens, Shakespeare, and Clemons.