Term

Summer 8-31-2020

Capstone

Thesis

Degree Name

MALED

Primary Advisor/Dissertation Chair

Joe Lewis

Secondary Advisor/Reader One

Andrew Schmidt

Peer-Reviewer/Reader Two

Victoria Martin

Abstract

White, Rachel. “Behind ‘Loving Reading’: Reading Behavior in Early Adolescents” (2020).

The research question addressed in this study was: what is the lived experience of loving reading for middle school students? Topics explored in the review included loving reading in popular understanding, reading motivation, reading identity, reading volume and reading in the home. The review also included an overview of affective reading assessments and qualitative understandings of reading attitude. The qualitative research of this study employed the interpretivist paradigm and consisted of interviews with six middle school-aged participants. In the interviews, participants discussed their reading identity, reading habits, reading efficacy, reading motivation, reading future and finally, their love of reading. The results were determined using inductive coding and analysis. Findings suggested that there was little correlation between self-reporting loving reading and habitual leisure reading. Participants who reported loving reading often read in different ways and for different reasons. Some participants read out of a sense of competition, some read out of a sense of obligation and some read to escape into stories. Participants measured their own reading ability almost entirely with standardized testing, not reading habits or enjoyment of reading. Ultimately, the study suggests that students can reflect more deeply discussing reading future and reading motivation than discussing loving reading. The study calls on teachers to interrogate the ways that their students internalize standardized test achievements, especially considering the bias present in these tests. Limitations, implications, and recommendations for future research are discussed.

dc_type

text

dc_publisher

DigitalCommons@Hamline

dc_format

application/pdf

dc_source

School of Education Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

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