Läsförmågan bland 9-10-åringar. Betydelsen av skolklimat, hem- och skolsamverkan, lärarkompetens och elevers hembakgrund

Abstract

Title: Reading skills among 9-10 year olds. The importance of school climate, collaboration between school and home, teacher competence and pupils’ home background Language: Swedish, with summary in English Keywords: PIRLS; reading achievement; school climate; safety; parental participation; collaboration; home and school partnership; teacher competence; two-level structural equation modeling ISBN: 978-91-7346-655-4

The main aim of the thesis is to acquire knowledge about conditions in the school and classroom context that are relevant to students’ reading skills. In focus are school and classroom climate and the collaboration between home and school. Also taken into account are the effects of students' home background and teacher competence. The data consists of the grade 3 sample from the Swedish participation in the PIRLS (Progress in Reading Literacy Study) study in 2001 conducted by IEA. The statistical method principally used was structural equation modeling (SEM) where theoretically grounded latent variable models were fitted to the data. The manifest variables used as indicators were selected from the teachers’, the schools’, students’ and the parents’ questionnaires. A standardized reading achievement score was used as an outcome variable. The study includes three broad steps. Based on a comparison of low and high performing classes, it identifies in the first step areas that seems to be important for achievement. In this step, a number of survey questions are also identified, which serve as indicators of the concepts identified in the next step. The second step consists of a literature review in which previous research and theory in selected problem areas are studied. Through theories and/or previous research, a number of concepts are identified whose relationship to reading achievement is examined in the next step. In the third and final step, a series of theoretically based structural equation models are fitted to the data. In the first stage, measurement models of broad constructs such as “parental participation” and ”safe climate” are identified and later included in a two-level structural model. These latent variables are related to achievement both at the individual and at the class level. The results indicate that safety as well as the collaboration between school and home play an important role in explaining differences in reading achievement between classes. Between students in classes safety also seems to be important for explaining reading skills, whilst the effect of parental participation at the individual level seems to be almost negligible. In the final analysis, the relationships between each construct and reading achievement were investigated in separate models where both teacher competence and student home background was included. It is shown that the positive effect that safety as well as parental participation had on achievement was dependent on student home background and teacher competence at the class level, but also to some extent at the individual level. The results also showed that teacher competence and student home background do not seem to be systematically related to each other. To summarise, it can be noted that there are differences between classes not only with respect to pupils’ home background and reading achievement. There are also differences in the form of climates that vary in safety but also in the extent to which the parents participate in schoolwork. It was clear that there were also differences as regards the teaching teacher’s competence. There are many indications that this competence includes not only promoting good reading skills but also creating a safe climate and positive collaboration between school and home.