How Teachers Initial Training and Classroom Practices Improve Reading Engagement and Achievement

1. University of Liège (Belgium) – Approches Quantitatives des Faits Educatifs Ariane Baye (ariane.baye@ulg.ac.be) and Valérie Quittre (v.quittre@ulg.ac.be) Introduction Reading comprehension is nowadays defined as a dynamic process involving a tripartite: the reader, the text and the context. The challenge for research on reading comprehension and for the teachers in their daily practice is to find the most effective way to guide the children in their progress in this dynamic and complex process. Based on Wilkinson and Son’s (2011) work we can identify two main streams of research on learning and teaching the reading comprehension: (i) centered on strategies and (ii) centered on the transactions (Rosenblatt, 1978, 2004) or dialogue (Bakhtin, 1981), with the text and with the other readers. Objective The aim of the study is to explore the impact of teachers’ initial training and type of classroom reading practices (strategic or transactional) on pupils’ engagement towards reading and on reading proficiency. • Hypotheses • Most effective teachers will keep from their initial training and experience the most stimulating and effective elements from both main streams (strategic/transactional). • Fruitful classroom activities (Rosenblatt, 2004) influence students reading engagement towards reading and reading achievement. Material IEA-PIRLS 2006, 23 EU-countries or education systems, 200 students randomly selected by country. Analysis The structural model was tested using LISREL 8.8 software. The dependant variable is the reading performance. Latent variables TTRAIN (5 variables): Teacher type of initial training (training including teaching reading and reading theory areas) TSTRAT (6 variables): Teacher classroom reading strategies (how often does the teacher try to develop reading skills asking for instance to identify the main idea of the text) TTRANS (3 variables): Teacher classroom transactional reading activities (how often does the teacher develop reading skills using writing and social interactions about a text) STRANS (2 variables): Student classroom transactional reading activities (how often does the student write something after having read and has social interactions about a text) SOCIAL (2 variables): Student social interactions about reading with friends and family outside of school ENGAGE (11 variables): Student positive attitudes and practices towards reading READ (1 variable): Student achievement in reading Results Significant: *** .001 Goodness of fit statistics: RMSEA=0.06 – CN=310.8 - GFI=0.97 – AGFI=0,97 – NFI=0.91 - NNFI=0.91 – CFI = 0.91 How Teachers Initial Training and Classroom Practices Improve Reading Engagement and Achievement Conclusion The model shows significant and quite strong relationships between the kind of initial training (pedagogy vs. literature centered), the classrooms reading practices (aimed at developing personal answer to a text and social interactions) and reading engagement, this last one being significantly linked to the reading achievement. • Perspectives • This model doesn’t take into account that students are nested into classrooms and schools. The next steps are: • including the “country” and “school/classroom” levels in a multilevel model • replicating those preliminary analyses using the recent PIRLS 2011 database. References Bakhtin, M.M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. Rosenblatt, L. (1978). The reader, the text, and the poem: The transactional theory of the literature work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Rosenblatt, L. (2004). The Transactional Theory of Reading and Writing. In R.B. Ruddell, & N.J. Unrau (Eds.), Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (pp. 1363-1398). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Wilkinson, I. & Son, E. (2011). A Dialogic Turn in Research on Learning and Teaching to Comprehend. In M. Kamil, P. Pearson, E. Moje, & P. Afflerbach (Eds.), Handbook of Reading Research (pp. 359-387). New York & London: Routledge.