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UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date:___________________ I, _________________________________________________________, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: in: It is entitled: This work and its defense approved by: Chair: _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ Children, Parents and Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading A dissertation submitted to the Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders of the College of Allied Health Sciences 2007 by Jennifer Walz Garrett B.S., Truman State University, 1997 M.A., Truman State University, 1999 Committee Chair: Jo-Anne Prendeville, Ed.D. ABSTRACT This research documented children, parents and teachers’ beliefs about reading. Specifically, this study described children, parents and teachers’: 1) definitions about reading, 2) beliefs about how they learned to read, 3) purposes for reading and 4) relationships between participants’ reading perspective in comparison with current/historical reading instructional methods. Participants included 47 children in grades 1, 3 and 5 from an urban Catholic school, their parents and classroom teachers. The 93 participants were interviewed about their reading experiences using the questions, “What is reading?,” “How do you think you (your child) learned to read?” and “Why do you read?” In addition, the teachers’ classrooms were observed during reading or language arts instruction and artifacts were collected. Transcripts from interviews were coded and analyzed for categories of responses. Data from interviews, observations and artifacts were triangulated revealing several themes. First, results indicated that children, parents and teachers predominately agree on defining reading as an action/skill. Second, participants indicated learning to read through formal and informal experiences with children reporting a high frequency of formal reading experiences. Third, purposes for reading were numerous but the majority of participants described at least one recreational/pleasure purpose including reading for fun. Additional themes, implications and future research directions are discussed. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my family and friends for all of their encouragement and support. My husband, Troy, took a leap of faith with me so that I could pursue my dreams. To him I say, “We got it done!” I’d also like to express my appreciation to our extended family and friends for the calls, letters and visits while we were far from home. To the friends and support systems that we developed in Cincinnati, I could not have done it without you. I want to acknowledge Forest Chapel United Methodist church members, especially Peace Circle, Jungle Jim’s Demo team, Cincinnati Dockers Australian Rules Football team, Oklahoma Sooners Alumni club, and Wilmington College Athletic Training department for becoming our family away from home. I also want to extend my gratitude to the Towne and Bradle families who provided friendship, entertainment and meals over the past three years. Finally, to my fellow doctoral students who have been on this journey and will be my closest colleagues in the future, the goal is attainable! I would also like to thank my committee members and research participants for their time. Dr. Jo-Anne Prendeville, Dr. Laura Kretschmer and Dr. Annette Hemmings have provided endless support. I found the perfect committee for pursuing my interests in literacy and qualitative research. They have gone above and beyond to share words of wisdom, time and sense of humor as I conducted this study. The research participants were gracious to share their stories about reading and I will be forever grateful. This research could not have been completed without both these important groups of people. Finally, I would like to thank Allison Smith, my dissertation writing partner. We balanced each other and I look forward to writing with you again in the future. DEDICATION I dedicate this dissertation to those who struggle to learn to read yet become readers through perseverance and hard work. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 5 Background 5 Purpose 6 Theoretical Framework 7 Overview of Subsequent Chapters 7 CHAPTER 2 REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE 9 Theories of Literacy and Reading 10 Components of Reading 11 Influences on the Reading Process 17 Purposes of Reading 24 Beliefs and Knowledge About Reading 25 Summary 33 CHAPTER 3 METHODS 35 Overview 35 Theoretical Orientation 35 Research Site 37 Participants 39 Materials 43 Procedures 44 Data Analysis 45 Field Exit 48 1 CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS 49 Definitions of Reading 49 Learning To Read 56 Purposes for Reading 66 Relationships 71 CHAPTER 5 DISCUSSION 83 Overview 83 Themes 83 Additional Findings of Interest 93 Implications 95 Limitations 97 Further Research 99 Conclusion 99 REFERENCES 101 APPENDICES Appendix A Child Interview Questions 111 Appendix B Parent Phone Interview Questions 112 Appendix C Teacher Interview Questions 113 Appendix D Definition of Reading Categories 114 Appendix E Learning to Read Categories 115 Appendix F Purposes for Reading Categories 117 2 LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. Child participants by grade, class, gender (n=47) 41 2. Race/Ethnic demographics of school compared to study participants (n=47) by percentage 43 3. Group results for “What is Reading?” by categories of Action/skills (AS), Learning/knowledge (LK), Emotional/Affective (EA), No Response (NR) and Outliers (n=93) 51 4. Grade level responses to “What is Reading?” by categories of Action/skills (AS), Learning/knowledge (LK), Emotional/affective (EA), No Response (NR) and Outliers (n=47) 55 5. Similarly coded responses for Definition of Reading across Triads of a child, his/her parent and teacher 56 6. Responses to “How do you think you learned to read?” by categories of Informal Experience (IE), Formal Experience (FE), Both, No Response (NR) and Other (n=93) 58 7. Grade level responses for Learning to Read by categories of Informal Experience (IE), Formal Experience (FE), Both and Outliers (n=47) 60 8. Similarly coded responses for learning to read experiences across triads of a child, his/her parent and teacher 65 9. Purposes for reading by participant groups across categories of Environmental (E), Informational/learning (I/L), Occupational (O), Pleasure/recreational (P/R), Required (Rq), No Response (NR) or Outliers (n=93) 67 10. Grade Level Response to “Why do you Read?” by categories of Environmental (E), Informational/learning (I/L), Occupational (O), Pleasure/recreational (P/R), Required (Rq), No Response (NR) or Outliers (n=47) 70 11. Similar coded responses for purposes for reading across Triads a child, his/her parent and teacher 71 12. Comparison of Partnership of Reading Definition (n.d.) parts to adult and child responses of this study to “What is Reading?” 86 3 LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Parent participants’ race/ethnicity (n=40) 41 2. Student participants’ race/ethnicity as reported by parent (n=47) 42 3. Relationship of children’s Action/skills (AS) definition of reading, Formal Experience (FE) learning to read and Pleasure/Recreational (P/R) purpose for reading (n=47) 73 4. Relationship of parents’ Action/skills (AS) definition of reading and Pleasure/Recreational (P/R) purpose for reading (n=40) 81 5. Relationship of teachers’ Action/skills (AS) definition of reading, Pleasure/Recreational (P/R) and Informational/learning (I/L) purposes for reading (n=6) 82 4 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION “In the endeavor of reading research, we, as observers of the phenomenon of reading, all begin and end with the same basic problem, the problem of how to define reading” (Mosenthal, 2002, pp. 2-3) Learning to read is an important achievement that impacts many aspects of a person’s life. It involves a multitude of social and cognitive processes. Reading is critical for a child’s academic success (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 2002). Most educators and parents would agree that the goal of learning to read is to become independent and lifelong learners. Reading instructional methods are continuously debated in educational, psychological and political realms. Research indicates a host of influences on learning to reading including necessary components and skills for reading, formal and informal experiences of home and school, instructional methods and belief systems. As a result, it is important to explore these influences within the triad of children, parents and teachers whose lives intersect as a child strives to become a proficient reader. Background The United States has always valued education, especially learning to read. From the days of the early American schools to current times, reading has been considered one of the most important subjects (N. B. Smith, 2002). The goal of reading and type of instruction used in the schools has changed and been influenced by religion, economics, politics and research. For example, early American schools emphasized learning to read as a way to learn and better understand biblical scriptures (N. B. Smith, 2002). Currently, reading instruction is heavily 5 influenced by politics and research. In 2002, President George Bush signed into law, “No Child Left Behind” ("Public law no: 107-110 ", Enacted January 8, 2002) which emphasized every child reading on grade level and using only