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Reading and Rigor: A National Study of Common Reading Book Selections

Reading and Rigor: A National Study of Common Reading Book Selections. Jennifer R. Keup (@ JRKeup ) National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition 43 rd Annual ASHE Conference November 15, 2018. Common Reading Experiences: BACKGROUND.

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Reading and Rigor: A National Study of Common Reading Book Selections

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  1. Reading and Rigor: A National Study of Common Reading Book Selections Jennifer R. Keup(@JRKeup) National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition 43rd Annual ASHE Conference November 15, 2018

  2. Common Reading Experiences: BACKGROUND

  3. Common Reading Programs (CRPs) • “Educationally purposeful programs that engage students in a variety of in- and out-of-class academic and social experiences” (Laufgraben, 2006) • Prevalence • 38% of campuses report that CRPs are a part of FYE • CRP as a component of first-year seminars: 46% of at 4-year institutions and 15% at 2-year campuses • CRP as a component of pre-term orientation programs: 43% of at 4-year institutions and 8% at 2-year campuses

  4. CRP: Characteristics • Most often in the orientation, transition & FYE programs • Involve an assigned reading of one or more books or reading selections • Are academically oriented • Promote reading, critical thinking, and discussion skills • Focus on a theme generated from the selected work • Bring students, faculty, and staff together around a common intellectual activity • Incorporate a range of activities around selected work • Have shared program leadership among academic and student (Laufgraben, 2006)

  5. CRP: Objectives • Orients new students to critical thinking & college level writing • Provides a springboard for community conversation • Establishes academic expectations before arrival • Establishes a culture of readers • Connecting to peers and faculty • Connects to institution’s mission and First-Year Experience (or other) goals • Serves a cohesive point of entry for transfer students • Models discourse and dialogue around difference (Andersen, 2014; Laufgraben, 2006)

  6. CRP: Literature • Dominated by guides for implementing practice and single-institution case studies • Few impact studies. However, CRPs do affect: • Learning outcomes at the student level such as self-reported academic skill development and multicultural appreciation & competence (e.g., Soria, 2015) • Campus/community outcomes such as student-faculty interaction, forging community & collaboration, and removing stigmas (e.g., Twinton, 2007) • Very few national/multi-institutional studies or ones focused on the book itself

  7. NAS: Annual Beach Books Studies • Yield findings that are highly critical of CRPs, particularly regarding the selection of the books • Conclusions of these studies are that CRP text selections are • too homogenous • too recent • too liberal in thematic content and perspective • too focused on issues of race • lacking in intellectual and academic rigor • rarely include classics

  8. Common Reading Experiences: 2014 National Study of Texts

  9. Research Questions • What are the general characteristics of the texts selected for common reading programs at institutions across the country? • What do national data tell us about the themes and content of the texts selected for common reading programs? • What do national data indicate about the academic rigor of common reading texts and programs?

  10. Theoretical Framework: Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT)

  11. CRP Text Selection: Data Sources • Text selected is the unit of analysis (N = 264) • Book data provided by publisher for 2014 • Title • Author • Institution • Amazon • Publication year • List price • Format • IMDB: TV or film adaptation Knopf Doubleday

  12. CRP Text Selection: Data Sources • Source for Subject/Genre/Scope • Library of Congress • Alibris • WorldCat • Amazon • Reading level: Flesch-Kincaid test of first paragraph in the book with > 50 words that did not contain dialogue or quotes • Institutional information from IPEDS (N = 245)

  13. CRP: General Characteristics • Price point is generally mid-range • MSRP range: $10.00 – $29.99 • MSRP mean: $16.33 • 94% of selections were in paperback format • Selections focused on new releases • Oldest was published in 1968 • 90% had been published since 2000 • Only 24 texts in the sample had a TV or film adaptation (17 were American productions)

  14. CRP: Text Genre • Nonfiction (185) • General (103) • Memoir/Biography/Autobiography (64) • Essays (18) • Fiction (79) • General (63) • Graphic Novel (9) • Short Stories (7) • Poetry (1)

  15. CRP: Metrics of Rigor • What do national data indicate about the academic rigor of common reading texts and programs? • Indirect: • Page count • Contextual scope of book (setting) • Direct • Reading level (Flesch-Kincaid Scale) • Subject codes • Number • Complexity

  16. CRP: Page Count Range: 69-1,184 pages Mean: 316 pages

  17. CRP: Contextual Scope & Setting

  18. CRP: Reading Level Mean: 9.5

  19. CRP: Subject Codes • Special Populations • Children, Youth, & Families • Science/Technology • Women/Gender • Society/Sociology • Medicine/Health • History • Environmentalism • Psychology/Self-Help • Immigration/Refugee/ Migration • Race/Race relations/Ethnic studies • War • Psychology • Religion • Economics/Poverty • Crime & Punishment • Death/Terminal illness • Slavery/Internment • Politics/Government • Cooking/Food • Education • Travel • Nature/Wildlife • Sports • Romantic relationships • Civil Rights • Other

  20. 21% of CRP titles3+ codes 68% of CRP titles2+ codes

  21. Common Reading Programs: Conclusions & Implications

  22. Conclusions • CRPs tend to use mid-range price point, recent, paperback books • Mixed results in terms of rigor: • Low: Reading level • Suggestive of rigor: • Nonfiction • Page length • Some evidence of scope/setting outside of students’ own • Few selections with TV or film adaptation • High: Nature, number, and complexity of subject/thematic content

  23. Implications & Contributions • Theoretical: Application of CHAT to higher ed and to structure a research agenda on CRPs • Methodological: Use of nontraditional data sources to create dataset for study of CRP titles • Practical: Larger context to inform institutional selection and rationalize program; subject area considerations; range of ways to consider rigor in text selection • Research: New data sources; range of measures for characteristics and rigor; national/multi-institutional findings

  24. Limitations • Subject areas, setting, and contextual scope were coded from existing data in library and sales databases/catalogs, which were often brief • Existing sales and catalog data likely upholds existing social biases • Represents outcome of the book selection process and not the process itself, which is informed by social and institutional issues • Qualitative methods and data from one year limits generalizability

  25. CRP: Coding Example • Published in 2007 • 425 pages in paperback • $16.95 • Nonfiction-Memoir/Biography/ Autobiography • Set in the United States • Subjects • Politics/Government • Race/Race Relations/Ethnic Studies • Women/Gender

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