Browsing by Author "Mannermaa, Elli"

According to previous studies, both the level of reading skills and the amount of reading for pleasure have been reducing among Finnish children. An active reading hobby has a positive effect on one’s reading skills, so by increasing the amount of reading for pleasure, the level of reading skills will also rise. The first goal of this study is to examine which factors have the biggest influence on the amount of children’s reading for pleasure. The purpose of this is to see if schools can have an influence on it and if yes, in what ways. The most recent Finnish national core curriculum published in 2014 brings up a socio-constructive conception of learning. This study will also examine what kind of teaching methods based on that conception are used in Finnish schools, and what kind of effects they have on the reading hobby of pupils. The method of this study is a descriptive, integrative literature review. This method was chosen because the goal was to create new information by combining and linking the results of previous studies. The research data has been found using a few different databases, such as Google Scholar and Helka. The data could be found by searching with the keywords on the topic of this study in Finnish and English. The results of this study showed that the reading engagement is the biggest factor that leads to reading becoming a hobby. The reading engagement consists of the combination of three factors: the amount of reading, one’s interest in reading and the diversity of read material. This study showed that schools can affect these three factors by increasing pupils’ intrinsic motivation towards them. Cooperative teaching methods reflecting the socio-constructive conception of learning are widely used in Finnish schools’ literature education. These methods have been proven to influence the reading hobby of children, by either having an effect on their intrinsic motivation or the three factors of reading engagement. Cooperative teaching methods commonly used in Finnish schools and found effective in this study were for example book clubs, shared reading and drama.