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Open Access Thesis

Keywords

Children--Books and reading; Reading, Psychology of; Students--Attitudes;

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate various developmental relationships between the attitudes of students toward reading and their reading achievement with the intention of providing additional information concerning attitudes and attitude testing within school programs. The relationship between reading achievement and attitude toward reading over grade levels, and the relationship between students' attitude toward reading achievement according to gender and participation in special programs was also investigated.

The population of the study consisted of 876 students in Grades 1 through 8 from a white, middle-class rural community. The instrument used to measure the attitudes of students toward reading was the Estes Reading Attitude Scale. The reading comprehension subtest of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills was used to assess the reading achievement of students. Raw scores on the tests were converted to percentile rank scores for use in the analysis.

Several conclusions concerning the relationships between students' attitudes toward reading and reading achievement were drawn from this study. The first conclusion was that there was a low but consistent positive relationship between students' attitude toward reading and actual reading achievement for all students. Second, the achievement level in reading appeared to remain stable despite the considerable changes in attitude toward reading. Third, attitude toward reading appeared to be maintained through the grades until Grade 8, in which there was a decrease. Fourth, correlations between students' attitudes toward reading achievement were significantly higher for female students than for male students. The fifth conclusion was that the drop in attitude in the total population was principally due to the drop in positive attitudes of the male students in Grades 7 and 8. Sixth, the actual performance of male and female students in reading achievement showed no difference. Seventh, for students of lower reading achievement, attitudes toward reading decreased over time. Finally, attitude toward reading tended to follow the achievement in reading level of both normal and high readers.

Year of Submission

1989

Degree Name

Specialist in Education

Department

Department of Curriculum and Instruction

First Advisor

Ned Ratekin

Comments

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Date Original

1989

Object Description

1 PDF file (94 pages)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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