Match or Mismatch [electronic resource] : Relationship between First-Grade Teachers' Theoretical Orientation to Reading and Their Reading Instructional Practices / Jianhua Feng and George W. Etheridge.
A descriptive study used survey methodology to determine first-grade teachers' theoretical orientations toward reading and students' attitudes toward reading, as well as structured classroom observations to describe teachers' reading instructional practices. Subjects, 259 of the 428 f...
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| Format: | Electronic eBook |
| Language: | English |
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[S.l.] :
Distributed by ERIC Clearinghouse,
1993.
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| Summary: | A descriptive study used survey methodology to determine first-grade teachers' theoretical orientations toward reading and students' attitudes toward reading, as well as structured classroom observations to describe teachers' reading instructional practices. Subjects, 259 of the 428 first-grade teachers (61%) in 94 elementary schools of a large mid-south metropolitan public school system returned usable survey data. A stratified sample of 15 teachers, 5 from each orientation (phonics, skills, and whole language), were randomly selected for classroom observation and interviews. Results indicated that: (1) the majority of teachers (219, or 84.59%) held a skills theoretical orientation to reading, while only eight (3.10%) held a whole language theoretical orientation to reading; (2) 60% of the teachers observed (including all five teachers with a skills orientation) taught reading in a manner consistent with their theoretical orientation to reading; (3) 73% of the teachers observed used basal/skills strategies; (4) all teachers used a variety of instructional strategies to teach reading; (5) all teachers consistently identified their own classroom experiences as the single most important influence in what they believed about reading and reading instruction; and (6) there was no significant difference in students' reading attitude with respect to teachers' theoretical orientation to reading and reading instruction. Findings suggest that the provision of practical strategies without theory may lead to misimplementation or no implementation at all, unless teachers' beliefs are congruent with the theoretical assumptions of the practice. (Ten tables of data are included; 46 references are attached.) (RS) |
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| Item Description: | ERIC Document Number: ED359494. ERIC Note: Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (Atlanta, GA, April 12-16, 1993). |
| Physical Description: | 37 p. |