PhD | ‘Shared reading in education – NWO project ‘Becoming literate in a digital age’’ – Laurie Bastemeijer

*Photo credit: Sincerely Media

PhD | ‘Shared reading in education – NWO project ‘Becoming literate in a digital age’’ – Laurie Bastemeijer
PhD-candidate: Laurie Bastemeijer
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Els Stronks, Prof. dr. Yra van Dijk, Dr. Agnes Andeweg.
Institution: Utrecht University

In the digital age, the relationship between people and textual media is quickly changing. Over the past decades, the literacy skills of Dutch youth have steadily declined. A problematic development, since literacy is not only known to contribute significantly to one’s societal position and opportunities in life, but the reading of literary texts in particular could possibly help one become a more critical, engaged and empathic citizen. The overarching NWO-project this research is part of aims to develop insights and effective interventions, in order to improve literacy acquisition through education in The Netherlands. One possible intervention can be found in Shared Reading, a reading method developed by English organization The Reader. In Shared Reading, a small group of people come together to simultaneously read a literary text, under the guidance of a Reader Leader, who facilitates a conversation about the text. This conversation is based on Socratic principles and devoid of any specific educational goals or ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’. This way of reading allows people to come together, share thoughts and associations, and support each other in a (joint) process of personal and literary meaning-making. Existing studies show that these sessions can have positive effects on a variety of (meta)cognitive and social skills, and the synchronous character of shared reading could potentially stimulate reading motivation and positive reading habits in pupils and students, too. The method has, however, not yet been examined in an educational context. This research project thus proposes to investigate if and how the principle of Shared Reading can be transferred to an educational setting and what its effects will be, specifically for the students in (pre-) vocational education who are most at risk for low literacy.