Perspectives on reading and instructional practice

This study examined the personal reading habits and instructional practices of four elementary teachers to determine the connections teachers construct between personal reading values and instructional practice. What connections do teachers make between their personal reading practices and the actions they value as they teach reading?; The study took place during a summer school intervention program for students at-risk of failure in reading. The summer school program lasted twenty days with students in attendance four hours each day. Summer school teacher completed an Adult Literacy Survey to determine selection of participants for the study. Four subjects, two avid reader/teachers and two non-avid reader/teachers, one each from the primary and upper grade classrooms participated in the study. An initial interview collected information on reading development as a child, personal adult reading habits, and instructional beliefs on how children learn to read. Teachers used a newly designed intervention kit for instruction, which provided an equal base to collect teacher implementations and modifications. Data were collected through interviews, observations, and documents. Since all teachers taught in the same district, one follow-up observation and interview provided comparison data of summer school and regular session practices.; Findings suggest that past lessons from three variables, home, school and reading instruction, affect each teacher's perspective of reading value, adult practices of reading and reading instruction. Each reader/teacher created from their personal reading life an understanding of the reading process based upon an accumulation of lessons learned through experiences beginning with the earliest conceptions of reading development and continuing on into adult life. These personal tenets of reading instruction guided the teacher in her search for best practices.; The theoretical framework hypothesized that avid reader/teachers by nature of these reading tenets choose instructional practices that increase the potential for producing avid readers, and that non-avid reader/teachers by nature of their chosen instructional practices limit this potential.