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Benefit of self-selecting reading materials.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

According to the reader response theory, the readers bring their interests, personal backgrounds, and prior experiences to the reading process. Research related to self-selection of reading materials shows that through this shift in power, learners take greater ownership in their learning process and their motivation to read increases. In this study, learner perceptions of such shift in decision-making power were examined among teacher education students. It was found that this shift in power contributed to their professional development to become a more critical reader.

Introduction

Involving students in the decision-making of their curriculum is known to positively impact their willingness to learn and improve their learning process (Moss & Hendershot, 2002). One form of this decision-making power is to provide students the opportunity to select their own reading and learning materials. According to reader response theorists, the readers bring their interests, personal backgrounds, and prior experiences to the reading process (Rosenblatt, 1982). Based on the readers' purposes of reading, the reading strategies they employ may vary (Rosenblatt, 1991). Schema theorists also suggest that different readers have different prior experiences and knowledge and the readers' schemata will determine how the readers construct their understanding of the reading materials (Anderson, 1984; Rumelhart, 1981; Fuhler, 2003). Thus, in order to relate students with varied backgrounds to the reading materials and to motivate them to read and construct meaning, the students should have choices or are allowed to select their own reading materials (Goodman, 1986). Research related to self-selection of reading materials, such as reading workshops where students read self-selected literature during sustained silent reading and later share what they read with their peers (Atwell, 1998; Bryan, 1999; Kletzien & Hushion, 1992; Reutzel & Cooter, 1991; Swift, 1993), showed that through this shift in power, students take greater ownership in their learning process and their motivation to read increases (Pierce & Kalkman, 2003; Walker, 2003).

In this inquiry, teacher education students enrolled in a "technology application in education" course were allowed to select their own reading related to...