Date of Award
2018
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education (EdD)
Committee Chair
Sydney Brown
Abstract
Experts agree best practice in elementary education allows students time for silent reading during school due to the benefits to students in vocabulary development and reading stamina. As students age, this practice typically declines in favor of activities meant to teach vocabulary, prepare for standardized tests, and study novels together as a class to explore and analyze literature, resulting in less reading and subsequently decreasing reading stamina. -- Teachers at a high poverty South Carolina high school, recognizing reading stamina as an issue, implemented a protocol described by Penny Kittle (2013) in Book Love: Developing Depth, Stamina, and Passion in Adolescent Readers, a method of individualized instruction centered on silent reading of choice material. A researcher studied the project called the Book Love Initiative guided by the central question, "what happens in a secondary English classroom when a teacher creates and utilizes a balanced approach of appropriate level choice reading, text study, and novel study?" -- Employing a QUAN + QUAL mixed-methods approach, the researcher used Kittle's (2013) reading survey, the Sydney Attribution Scale (Marsh, 1983), student conferencing data, weekly reading records, behavioral observation checklists, and interviews with teacher participants to measure the impact on four constructs identified in research questions: attitudes toward reading, reading volume, stamina behaviors, and classroom environments. -- A companion study at a low poverty high school in North Carolina employed similar methods so researchers could determine if there were further reaching implications. Findings at both sites determined the initiative positively impacted the constructs identified in research questions. Companion researchers made recommendations for practice, policy, and research as a result of the study's findings.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Citation Information
Lynch, Meredith Eubanks, "Filling the Reading Void: Studying Reading Stamina in a Rural High School Through Action Research: A Companion Research Study" (2018). Education Dissertations and Projects. 384.
https://digitalcommons.gardner-webb.edu/education_etd/384
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