Date of Award

Winter 1-21-2015

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

School of Education

First Advisor

Patrick Allen

Abstract

Over the past few decades, the United States has seen a shift in classroom reading instruction away from time spent reading for pleasure and practices like Sustained Silent Reading. While researchers have found a few positive relationships between time spent reading for enjoyment and educational outcomes, these limited findings have been unsatisfactory in convincing organizations like the National Reading Panel of the efficacy of Reading Enjoyment Time. This study uses the The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 reading assessment and accompanying student questionnaires to determine the importance of Reading Enjoyment Time as a predictor of reading outcomes, especially as this variable relates to subpopulations that are typically lagging in literacy achievement. The 2009 PISA includes a sample of 5,233 fifteen and sixteen-year old students (2,687 male; 2,546 female) from across the United States, and this study examines the self-reported Reading Enjoyment Time of these students, comparing its predictive ability for reading scores to the predictive ability of gender and socioeconomic status. The study finds that all three variables — Reading Enjoyment Time, gender, and socioeconomic status — are statistically significant predictors of reading outcomes with socioeconomic status being the strongest predictor (β = 0.372), followed by Reading Enjoyment Time (β =0.226), and then gender (β =-0.097). The research suggests that Reading Enjoyment Time does lead to improved reading outcomes for students, as highlighted by the 50.84 difference in PISA reading scores that corresponds with a move from the category of no Reading Enjoyment Time to thirty minutes or less Reading Enjoyment Time. Implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.

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