Browsing by Author "Kruus, Niina"

The aim for this study is to investigate primary school teachers’ and lower secondary school teachers’ reading habits and describe teachers’ recreational reading habits. Earlier research indicates that even thought the majority of teachers enjoy reading and they are unanimous about the importance of reading, it doesn’t necessarily mean that teachers use their leisure time to read. Teachers are important reading models to their students. By modeling they can demonstrate to students that reading is an important skill to know and a fun recreational activity. With the help of this study, information about finnish teachers as readers can be obtained. It is also possible to portray what kind of reading model teachers give to students at school. This study was conducted as a part of the Lukuklaani-project. The data was part of a survey that was sent to primary school teachers and lower secondary school teachers. Over 1800 primary school teachers, mother tongue and literature teachers from lower secondary school and other subjects’ teachers from lower secondary school answered the questions that are part of this study. The data was analyzed with quantitative methods. The majority of teachers read more than one book in a year. When compairing different teacher groups, mother tongue and literature teachers from lower secondary school read on average a little bit more than other teachers. Teachers read variety of different kinds of books, but a novel was by far the most read genre. The other subjects’ teachers from lower secondary school read more non-fiction than other teachers. Recreational reading habits were investigated also by asking about the respondents’ participation in literary circles, because increasing the use of communal reading emphasizing literary circle method in primary schools was one of the aims of the Lukuklaani-project. Most of the teachers didn’t participate in literary circles. The most popular type of literary circle, within those who took part in one, was friend group’s literary circle. The survey also investigated, what teachers had last read. Those who read a lot and those who read a little weren’t different from each other when looking at the book they last read. There were no great differences between different teacher groups’ recreational reading habits. However there were more teachers that were a part of a literary circle within the teachers that read more than within the teachers that didn’t read that much. The study indicates that teachers read quite a lot, especially fiction. Therefore they have a chance to give a good model of recreational reading to students.