ECER 2017: The Multiphase Design: How Mixed Methods Research Adds Value to Research Projects (original) (raw)
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Summary This thesis investigates practices of how teachers teach and readers read involved in developing reading comprehension in English in Norwegian upper secondary school. It is an article-based thesis comprising three articles and an extended abstract. The latter includes a review of reading research, theoretical framing, methods and research design, and a summary and discussion of the three articles. The general theoretical and conceptual framing of this thesis is that reading instruction and reading comprehension in Norwegian upper secondary school take place within a sociocultural environment. Therefore, the thesis draws primarily on Vygotskian thinking on the importance of the active learner and the teacher who supports such learners, the use of reading comprehension strategies as tools for learning, and reading proficiency as an externalisation of reading comprehension. This theoretical framing is integrated with reading theories and reading comprehension research. Methodologically, the thesis uses a mixed methods approach to study the qualitative and quantitative aspects of practices involved in developing reading comprehension in English as a second language (L2). Article I is a qualitative study which investigated reading instruction, reading strategies, and metacognitive awareness among teachers. It examined how English teachers and those who taught in the first language (L1) reported to include reading comprehension strategies in their instruction, and how they made their tacit knowledge of such instruction explicit after participating in a teacher professional development (TPD) course. The findings showed a change in how the teachers described their teaching over time. A small repertoire of reading strategies was identified, along with how and why these were used in the reading instructions. Article II is another qualitative study of reading instruction, reading strategies, and metacognitive awareness, this time among teachers and their students. This study investigated how L2 teachers taught reading comprehension strategies in their instruction one year after the TPD course, how their students used the strategies offered to them, and how the students reflected on their strategy use. Classroom observation showed that reading strategies were not only taught by the teachers and used by the students; interestingly, strategy use seemed to have a personal purpose for the students in vocational programmes, but not for the students in general programmes. Moreover, while the teachers in vocational programmes demonstrated a gradual release of responsibility for strategy use to their students, the teachers in general programmes did not. Article III is a large-scale quantitative study that investigated reading proficiency within and across English L2 and Norwegian L1 across a national sample of upper secondary school students, including a number of those in Article II. The results of this study support the view that girls read better than boys and that students in general studies read better than vocational students. However, while the gender effect was relatively smaller for the L2 than the L1, the study programme effect was relatively larger for the L2 than the L1. This study also found that, while vocational students were in majority among the poor readers, only half of them were poor readers in both languages; the others were poor readers in one language and proficient readers in the other. Contrary to expectations, among the latter was a group of boys in both study programmes who were proficient readers in the L2, while being poor readers in the L1. A final finding was that, in the sample as a whole, 49% of the explained variance in the students’ reading proficiency in English L2 was accounted for by a combination of gender, study programme, and L1 reading proficiency. Based on the findings in the three articles, the main contribution of this thesis is increased knowledge about how teachers teach and readers read when developing reading comprehension in English in Norwegian upper secondary school. The findings show that reading proficiency in the L2 is closely related to reading proficiency in the L1 and study programme, although this is not a linear relationship for all students. The findings further show that reading strategies can be valuable learning tools that help readers develop their L2 comprehension, and that the teachers do indeed teach such strategies. Nevertheless, the findings also suggest little reason to claim that reading strategies are effective when taught in isolation. Instead, they have to be explicitly taught by the teachers, and then used individually and independently by the students seeing personal purposes to do so.
Reading Strategies in Teaching and Learning English as a Foreign Language: A Mixed-Method Study
Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities
Reading strategies are essential for teachers and students, especially in an EFL classroom. However, reading comprehension strategies and effective adoption of the strategies have been challenging for both teachers and students in Malaysia. This study aimed to identify the reading strategies used and not used by students and teachers when answering and teaching reading comprehension questions and explore the discord between the responses using an explanatory sequential mixed methods research design. The participants were 91 students and five teachers from a private university in Malaysia recruited using census sampling methods. A questionnaire consisting of literal, reorganization, and inferential reading comprehension questions was administered to the students, whereas interviews and observation were used to examine the strategies targeted by teachers based on Barrett’s reading taxonomy (1972). The findings revealed that EFL teachers used a vast repertoire of strategies in teaching...
English Didactics in Norway, 2019
This chapter reports a doctoral study (Charboneau, 2016) that investigated the use of four approaches to EFL reading instruction in Norwegian 4 th-5 th grades. The study used a mixed-methods approach comprising a questionnaire sent to teachers throughout Norway and a case study of four schools. The results suggest it was challenging to provide differentiated teaching to meet students' abilities and needs. The chapter discusses implications for EFL reading instruction, and suggestions for future research. KEYWORDS Reading instruction | materials | practices | differentiation | interaction 1. The chapter presents the overall results of a doctoral study, Approaches to English as a foreign language (EFL) reading instruction in Norwegian primary schools (Charboneau, 2016) from the University of Stavanger, focusing specifically on its practical implications for the teaching of English in Norway. The doctoral thesis in its entirety can be found here: https:// brage.bibsys.
Is printed-text the best choice? A mixed-method case study on reading comprehension
2020
APA Citation: Kazazoğlu, Semin. (2020). Is printed-text the best choice? A mixed-method case study on reading comprehension. Abstract Reading is a basic language skill which is essential not only because it develops the literacy skills of the students but because enables them to comprehend and formulate the discourse within a language. Lack of reading, on the other hand, causes impairment of comprehension and affects the academic progress of students greatly. The range of studies suggesting that screen-based reading has a greater effect than primarily paper-based is growing each day. Accordingly, this study aims to set forth the effects of screen-based versus paper-based reading on reading comprehension of English. This is a mixed-method case study, conducted by a group of 30 freshmen, majoring in English Language Teaching undergraduate program at a state-run university. As a tool for data collection, performance tests and written opinion forms were used. Before the study, three different reading texts have been specified. Of these, two were printed, and four of them were digital. Two of the digital text was plain text (pdf); the other two texts were enriched with pictures and links (hypertext). After reading the texts, the participants answered the reading comprehension questions provided by the researcher. Besides, after each application, the written views of the participants have been gathered. In the process of data analysis, performance tests have been scored, and written views are divided into themes. As a result, the success of the application with the highest means score has been identified as the first and fourth reading texts, which were printed. The two lowest success means are identified as containing links to text pictures and hypertext. The findings additionally discovered that students who study texts in print, scored substantially higher at the studying comprehension tests than the students who study the texts digitally. All in all, this study involves several pedagogical implications for reading comprehension in the field of foreign language settings.
Academic English reading proficiency at the university level: A Norwegian case study
In this paper the academic English reading proficiency of 578 Norwegian university students was quantitatively examined. Self-assessment items were used to measure reading proficiency in Norwegian and English and validated using an International English Language Testing System Academic Reading Module. The study found that about 30% of the respondents had serious difficulties reading English, while an additional 44% found it more difficult than reading in their first language. The main problems encountered were unfamiliar vocabulary and slow reading, while extracurricular readers and respondents who were able to guess word meanings from context had higher reading scores. Poor language proficiency was a problem for many, to the extent that they fell below the linguistic threshold level. The study showed that, contrary to expectations, Norwegian EFL instruction at upper-secondary schools fails to develop the academic English reading proficiency needed for higher education.
Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 2021
We know from previous research that teacher questions can influence reading comprehension development; however, we know less about the reading processes that are required of students through the use of questions. The present study examines teacher questions on texts reviewed during whole class reading comprehension instruction across 51 lessons in 26 Norwegian eightgrade language arts classrooms. Through video observations, the study (a) identifies textdependent vs. otherwise text-related teacher questions, (b) deductively examines frequency patterns of text-dependent questions based on three reading literacy processes: locating information, understanding, and reflecting/evaluating, and (c) examines the relative time allocated to various question-response literacy interactions arising from text-dependent teacher questions. Findings showed that teachers mostly asked questions that required students to interpret or reflect, while they hardly asked any questions that required students to assess the quality and credibility of texts. Implications for the development of reading literacy proficiency required in today's society are discussed.
Why should learners of English read? Norwegian English teachers' notions of EFL reading
Teaching and Teacher Education, 2018
h i g h l i g h t s Teachers' notions of EFL reading framed by traditional understandings. Basic text comprehension and practical spoken skills perceived as most relevant. Traditional collective classroom reading seen as a means to secure social inclusion. Meta-awareness of texts advocated in current curricula perceived as less relevant. Teachers' discursive practices work to sustain boundaries between subjects.
How do Norwegian second-grade teachers use guided reading? The quantity and quality of practices
L1 Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 2021
This paper documents how teachers use guided reading practices in Norwegian second-grade classrooms. In a two-part study consisting of teachers' self-reports (Study 1) and video-observations of guided reading sessions (Study 2), we analyzed the frequency and characteristics of guided reading practices. Findings from Study 1 indicate that guided reading is a common practice of Norwegian second-grade teachers and that discussing word meaning, text, and pictures are the most frequently addressed literacy components. Findings from Study 2 illustrate that the teachers regularly make optimal use of the before-reading phase, while the after-reading phase is relatively lacking. The observational data also indicate that teachers are more likely to simply check students' understanding of word meaning rather than to work in-depth with vocabulary. Likewise, teachers were more likely to supply help in the decoding process rather than scaffold students' decoding with strategies. In sum, the data indicate that teachers may not fully use the benefits that guided reading instruction can afford. We discuss how to help educators use more of the potential of guided reading, arguing that the benefits of guided reading can be strengthened by (1) more indepth planning, (2) greater use of strategies, and (3) routines for observing and assessing.