Reading skills are not only important for children of primary school age. They are also of great importance for young people in secondary education, intermediate and higher vocational education. In the Workshop Education-Research Reading Skills, teachers from all these forms of education investigate how they can improve reading skills in the province. Hilde Kooiker-den Boer of the Excellence and Innovation in Education lectorate leads the project.
The first three years of the project were made possible by a subsidy from the Equal Opportunities Alliance of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. This spring, the lectorate was awarded an NRO subsidy. This will allow Hilde and her colleagues to further develop the workshop. They focus on integrating reading education into other subjects.
PhD research
This ties in with Hilde's PhD research. In October 2024, she obtained her PhD from Utrecht University for her research into how to integrate reading instruction into subject areas in primary education. For a long time, a reading comprehension lesson in primary education consisted of reading a text and answering questions about it. "It had been clear for some time that this was not effective. Linking reading instruction to a subject area worked much better for children," says Hilde. "However, it was not clear to many teachers how to do this."In her research, she looked at how she could make this easier for teachers. Ultimately, she spent six years on her research. "During this period, more and more schools started integrating. So I unintentionally got ahead of the pack. I like to see that. I have been overtaken by practice, so to speak."
'More and more schools are switching to rich texts: authentic texts that are much more enjoyable to read'
Underlining signal words
How do you teach students about the way in which informative texts are structured, was the main question in her research. “This concerns text connections such as chronology or cause and effect. Little attention was paid to this in primary education. In the past, children had to underline a few signal words in a text and that was it. By linking it to the subject matter and hands-on research activities, you look much more at text connections and, for example, link effect to cause.”
Teacher training and teaching materials
Hilde started her research with an analysis of the Knowledge Base Dutch for primary education. “I wondered what students are actually offered about text structure and text comprehension. That was quite fragmented. I immediately saw opportunities for improvement.” She made a number of knowledge clips (short theory lessons) for the students to change that, which she tested among the students the following year. The problem was that she had to do this during the height of the corona crisis.
She then analysed a large amount of teaching materials for the subject of Science and Technology, which are used in primary schools. She wanted to investigate to what extent these texts are suitable for the link with reading comprehension.
The texts that Hilde read often turned out to have an extremely high information density: businesslike and not very attractive to children. “A lot has changed in that area in the course of my research. More and more schools are switching to rich texts: authentic texts that are much nicer to read and sometimes even contain literary aspects. That is the other extreme. With a view to the subject matter, the core is also important. We are looking for an intermediate form.”
'When students are hands-on, it produces a lot of language. They often feel very involved in projects about litter or the disadvantages of too much sugar'
Lesson series
In the next phase of her research, Hilde designed four lesson series together with teachers on topics such as litter and plastic soup. These series were a combination of reading, writing and hands-on research activities. Various schools tested each other's lesson series. "For most children, this combination turned out to work well. Teachers were also enthusiastic, but found it more difficult. They sometimes felt unsure about certain subject content." Finally, she turned the four lesson series into one series of eight lessons, which she tested at various schools.
Very involved
Hilde continues to focus on themes such as reading education and subject integration. According to her, the combination of language education with science and technology education offers many opportunities. "When students are hands-on, it produces a lot of language. They often feel very involved in projects about litter or the disadvantages of too much sugar. It also works really well to link writing assignments to that. They then pay much more attention to it."
For teachers, the approach from language education can also lower the threshold to, for example, get started with technology. “And attention to technology is very much needed in primary education, certainly in our region.”
Joint research
The Workshop Education-Research Reading Skills will continue in the coming school year in the four-year project ‘Reading in all subjects’. A broad consortium of teachers from primary education, secondary education, intermediate and higher vocational education and educational experts from libraries will work in three regional teams to develop a cross-disciplinary approach to reading education. They will design a framework based on literature study and practical exploration. Teachers will design and test interventions in educational practice based on that framework.
This will ultimately result in a toolbox that can be used for the continuous line from primary education to higher education. “We also hear within the HZ that students often have difficulty with reading tasks that they have to perform for their studies. This project gives us the opportunity to actively work on this. There is still room for one or two HZ courses to join, so you are very welcome.”
Excellence and Innovation in Education
The Excellence and Innovation in Education lectorate wants to maintain and further develop the quality of and connections in Zeeland education through practice-based research and new initiatives. The chair is a partner of all schools in the region.
Read more about the lectorate