About the project
For centuries, the medium of reading was handwritten or printed text, from early scrolls to mass printed newspapers, magazines and books. This situation has changed dramatically, increasingly involving screen-based reading on laptops, tablets and smartphones, where we can read or even listen to the text being read for us. Although billions of people are now reading in new ways on their screens, little research has investigated the challenges and possibilities arising from reading in different formats, and even less research has examined how these rapid changes affect reading instruction in schools. This severe knowledge gap is a key driver behind FRAME.
To capture various voices and perspectives on reading instruction and practices in hybrid and digital lower secondary schools, FRAME will use a mixed methods research design drawing on qualitative and quantitative methods, in a combination of classroom video, screen recordings and student physiological data during reading to capture ongoing instructional practices, interviews to explore teachers’ and students’ beliefs about reading in different formats, and teacher surveys to identify perceived challenges and possibilities of teaching reading across print, screen and audio mediums.
Our aims are to
(a) understand how the combination of print, screen and audio affects both the reading experience and the teaching of reading in today’s hybrid lower secondary classrooms
(b) develop new and much sought after knowledge about how teachers enact reading instruction in everyday classroom practices
(c) examine the effect reading instruction has on students’ reading experience and behavior and
(d) identify teachers’ and students’ perspectives on reading practices that are both promising and challenging, to suggest implications for future reading instruction.
These aims are highly relevant to ensure high quality reading instruction in digitalized societies - where reading is happening across screens, paper and audio.
