Research+Articles

Research Articles

This part of the wiki is designed particularly for research-based articles on teachers, teaching, methods, and other school-related studies. Students are encouraged to work with such articles to understand that there may be methods to a teacher's madness! Articles posted also come with an abstract summary and overview as well as a link to full-text article. Articles should be cited in APA format.

This section also serves as a model for student-made work involving professional research articles.

__**[|The Reading Habits and Literacy Attitude of Inservice and Prospective Teachers] **__ Nathanson, S., Pruslow, J., & Levitt, R. (2008). The reading habits and literacy attitudes of inservice and prospective teachers: Results of a questionnaire survey. Journal of Teacher Education, 59(313), Retrieved from http://jte.sagepub.com

**Problem ** This study focuses on the correlation between teacher enthusiasm and student enthusiasm by focusing on the growing problem of aliteracy. Research has found that a lack of excitement for reading is prevalent in American education. It was specifically designed to answer the following questions:


 * 1) Are preservice and new inservice teachers enthusiastic readers?
 * 2) Did instructional practices affect reading enthusiasm?
 * 3) Did family influence personal reading habits and attitudes toward reading?
 * 4) Have former elementary, high school, or college teachers shared a love of reading?

**Design, Sample, and Measure ** The study used the Applegate and Applegate (2004) LHQ survey to test 747 people. 283 (38%) were currently full-time teachers. 464 (62%) were currently graduate students not teaching full-time, but studying to become a special education and/or regular education teacher. The questions were mainly open ended, and graded on a specific rubric of 1-5. 1 generally represented no enthusiasm, while 5 denoted very high enthusiasm for reading. 

**Data Analysis and Results ** The data suggests that summer reading is not a top priority for the majority of those tested. It also saw no correlation between how much fact-based recollection a student was asked to do in class and what kind of readers they would eventually become. Furthermore, elementary reading experiences had very little effect on how much adults enjoy reading.

There was statistically meaningful data on readers who had, at some point in their education careers, a teacher who loved to read. People who had an enthusiastic teacher were more likely to be enthusiastic readers. Enthusiastic readers were also more likely to rate their early reading experiences as positive, whereas people who did not enjoy reading seemed to have more negative experiences with learning.

It is also important to note that there was an overall negative response to college reading from nearly every type of reader surveyed.

17% of the total sample indicated that they found little to no enjoyment in reading. 47% of the respondents characterized themselves as enthusiastic to highly enthusiastic.

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">Questions For Thought **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">What Does This Mean? **<span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%; text-align: center;"> It means that teachers will have a difficult time teaching reading if they are not passionate about the subject themselves. Furthermore, it means that educators must take steps to engage not only their students’ brains, but their hearts as well
 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">What are some strategies for engaging a reader’s “heart”?
 * 2) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">What extend does the workplace and school culture enhance or support teachers’ personal reading habits?
 * 3) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">Do curricula, time, and accountability factors enhance of decrease reading enthusiasm?
 * 4) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 120%;">How do standardized tests affect these results?

**<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 150%;">Why is this Important? ** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">This applies to my future in a myriad of different ways. The sample studied were students just like we are, and are learning to become teachers through Masters-level study. It is applicable to my current point in life, and brought to light how my personal reading habits will affect my class in the future. I am a very enthusiastic reader, according to this survey, but how can I bring that passion to my students successfully? How can I be that one teacher that really instills in my students a love of reading?

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> As a future teacher of English, I find these results to be unsurprising. Even among my peers in college, reading (particularly for pleasure) is not something I find to be a widely-practiced habit. What I found disturbing about this study is how profoundly aliteracy affects those trying to learn successful reading practices. It emphasizes the ideas we have been discussing in class: teachers tend to teach how they were taught, not how they were taught to teach. This idea is paramount in understanding why students learn from enthusiastic readers.