About The Study

THE QUESTION: 

How can secondary school English teachers encourage teenagers to read more books for pleasure in the digital age?

Sub-Questions:

1. How can secondary school teachers use digital technologies to make reading more enjoyable for teenagers?

2. What can individual secondary school teachers do to develop a classroom reading community that motivates and supports teenagers to read for pleasure?

RESEARCH DESIGN

This study is a piece of Design Based Research, or DBR. This framework helps to bridge the gap between educational researchers and teachers through collaboration, which is informed by academic practise.

The key features of DBR include:

• Educational evidence-based design principles from the academic literature,

• Experimental design development in collaboration with teachers,

• Repeated cycles of testing in real-world learning contexts,

• Ongoing evaluation, refinement and improvement.

(Amiel & Reeves, 2008; Anderson & Shattuck, 2012; Barab & Squire, 2004; Herrington et al., 2007; Mandran et al., 2022)

About Design Based Research

Unlike predictive research, DBR actively refines and improves an evidence-based solution over multiple versions, using a clear and controlled structure, described below.

The purpose of the experiment is to test a specific set of evidence-based educational principles, which will provide further evidence for future practitioners and teachers to use in the development of their own educational resources and programmes.

The general structure of DBR is as follows. 

NOTE: Please scroll down to the next section for more specific information about this study, including its data collection.

Phase 1: Problem analysis and academic literature review

The issue (in this case, dropping teenage literacy and reading-for-pleasure rates) is explored, background research is conducted, and ideas for a potential solution design are pulled out of the existing evidence. (A summary of this study's background research is available on The Evidence page). A research proposal is developed and submitted for the approval process.

Phase 2: Development of the draft design principles

The principles or key guidelines for the new educational design are drawn up in collaboration with educational practitioners - i.e. teachers on the ground - to establish guidelines and key points for the development of the intervention, solution, or programme that is intended to address the issue. (The specific principles begin tested in this study are in the following section - please scroll down.)

Combining the research expertise of the academic with the practical educational experience and knowledge of the teacher is intended to encourage an effective, rigorous experimental design which will produce reliable and useful results, avoiding mistakes that may otherwise be caused by the inexperience of the researcher in a real-world educational system, or the practitioner’s inexperience with data collection and analysis.

Phase 3: Testing the design and gathering data

The educational programme is tested over several cycles in a real-world educational context, in close collaboration with the teacher(s). 

As it is the design principles or guidelines being tested, the actual programme itself can be refined and updated as the study progresses when areas of promise or improvement are identified. Multiple types of data are collected throughout each cycle, including from observations, surveys, interviews and focus groups.

The design is refined and tested over at least two iterations, as illustrated below:

Phase 4: Analysis and publication of results

Both the researcher and the collaborating participant teachers reflect together on the process and outcome of the solution design(s). The educational design principles are refined and updated based on the findings, and the outcomes of the study are analysed in detail to look for themes and patterns which can be explained with existing theories of learning. This also includes discussion of areas that need more investigation.

Finally, the research is written up and presented. In this case, it will be predominantly in the form of the doctoral thesis.

LEARNING TO LOVE READING PROGRAMME DESIGN:

NOTE: A full description of the current version of the programme is detailed on this page (please click here).

Based on the evidence found during Phase 1, the draft educational design principles that have guided the development of the Learning to Love Reading programme are:

1. Make reading social

a) Design for the development of a reading community

b) Include creative and conversation opportunities for students to participate in the reading community using social and digital media

2. Provide time & flexibility

a) Reading opportunities are frequent, regular, and substantial

b) Provide multiple means and channels of engagement

3. Facilitate agency & multimodal access

a) Students have agency in title selection (this includes explicit teaching of the skills they need)

b) Students may choose between print books, ebooks, and audiobooks

Learning activities and resources are created based on these principles; for example, establishing a learning environment early in the year that nurtures and encourages the development of a reading community through book-based social activities in the classroom and explicit teaching of how to use the school library.

The sequence of these activities and resources are planned and scheduled throughout the year as a unit of learning alongside and complementing the main curriculum and course, building student understanding and appreciation of the personal and social benefits of reading for pleasure. This includes both regular sessions of reading for pleasure (most likely but not exclusively in the school library), and social opportunities based on their reading that are designed both to encourage the 'fun' aspect of reading, as well as to build students' abilities to describe, find, and choose a book they will enjoy in a format that suits them best.

DATA:

NOTE: While all students in the participating teachers' classes will enjoy the learning and reading activities designed and chosen by their teacher (and approved as part of their English course by the school), data is only collected from those students whose personal and family/whānau consent has been given.

Throughout the Learning to Love Reading programme, qualitative data is gathered by:

• a pre- and post-programme survey of student attitudes, motivations, and opinions about reading,

• frequent researcher observations of the participating teachers and classes during the programme,

• photos and possibly audio or video recording of interactions between participating students and teachers, contributions to the reading community during programme activities, and screenshots of any relevant online artefacts (posts, reactions, comments, etc.),

• any recorded reflections and communications between the teachers and researcher,

• focus groups and interviews with participating students at the end of the programme,

• semi-structured interviews with the teachers in the middle and at the end of the programme.

All collected data will be anonymised to protect the privacy of the students, teachers, and their school. This includes "de-identifying" (censoring) some features of photos (including faces, uniform logos), interview transcripts, etc.

OUTCOMES:

The Learning to Love Reading study will produce:

• evidence-based education design principles that teachers can use to develop their own resources and lesson plans in their classrooms without relying on either specialist or whole-school support (likely including what not to do)

• evidence from Aotearoa New Zealand classrooms (including student and teacher voices) that have been subject to real-world pressures and influences during quite a volatile time in the NZ educational sector

• exemplar resources and lesson/unit plans that NZ teachers can use and adapt for their own classrooms

• evidence on the use and influence of ebook and audiobook technologies for teen reading for pleasure

• examples of how BYOD technologies can be used to support teen reading in schools

And, last but not least, 

• a robust doctoral thesis submitted for completion of a PhD in Education.

REFERENCES

Amiel, T., & Reeves, T. C. (2008). Design-based research and educational technology: Rethinking technology and the research agenda. Educational Technology & Society, 11(4), 29-40. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.430.875&rep=rep1&type=pdf  

Anderson, T., & Shattuck, J. (2012). Design-based research: A decade of progress in education research? Educational Researcher, 41(1), 16-25. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X11428813  

Barab, S., & Squire, K. (2004). Design-based research: Putting a stake in the ground. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 13(1), 1-14. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1466930  

Herrington, J., McKenney, S., Reeves, T., & Oliver, R. (2007). Design-based research and doctoral students: Guidelines for preparing a dissertation proposal. Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications, Chesapeake, VA.

Mandran, N., Vermeulen, M., & Prior, E. (2022). THEDRE’s framework: Empowering PhD candidates to efficiently implement design-based research. Education and Information Technologies: The Official Journal of the IFIP Technical Committee on Education, 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-10993-x