Influence of Family and Scholar Environment in the Acquisition of Reading Habits
The Final Masters prepared by the author in 2006 with the title of Les lectures de la generació nascuda a la dècada dels seixanta a Catalunya, led by Dr. Colomer, allowed delimit environments on which this thesis focuses its research: the family and the school.
From these premises, this thesis proposes the following:
- Establish the context influences in the acquisition of reading habits, especially focused on the family and the school environment.
- Establishing similarities and differences in the acquisition of two diferent populations according to the level of education achieved.
- Observe what, how and when each of these environments became important to acquire the habit of reading for each of the two groups studied.
- Analyze each of these influencing factors, either individually or as a whole, in order to be able to draw valid conclusions in achieving the reading habit from the comparison between both populations surveyed.
- Go deeper and better in each of the factors influencing the acquisition of reading habits from personal interviews with members of each population group.
- Analyze factors of influence that may result from the research respondents such as age, gender or type of school.
In order to research around the above points, we designed a research developed from two main sources of information. First, a survey has collected the reading and other items that may be of interest to a significant number of individuals -782- and second ten interviews. Thus, specifying, research has focused on the comparison of two adult populations: first, teachers active (404 individuals), and other adult students in the process of obtaining the graduate in Secondary Education in the Open Institute of Catalonia (378 individuals), and analysis of the responses obtained in interviews with ten individuals, five from each of the samples. Thus, this thesis complements quantitative analysis with a qualitative in order to give more emphasis to the research.
The results from the two sources have been analyzed under different prisms. Firstly a statistical analysis -market SPSS- implementing the program, and secondly a sociological analysis of the responses of the interviewees.
The analysis of the data obtained have been derived from the findings of the thesis and are summarized below:
- The acquisition of reading habits occurs mainly in two environments: the family and the school. The other settings are secondary.
- The awareness that one has as a reader is a single parameter. This awareness does not depend on a certain number of books, but quantity is framed by the family and social environment in which each of the readers is immersed.
- The self-image is also related to the frequency of reading.
- The level of training and academic background are factors that have influenced the reading habits of a sample of the adult population. Arguably the reading habit is closely related to the level of education that readers reach and / or vice versa.
- Trained teachers read more, read more often, but read the same type of books at present the population undergoing formal training.
-As environmental variables family and school have an impact on the habits of the adult population like example:
- The 80% of the teachers were told stories when they were small; this percentage drops to 65% of students from the IOC. Thus, a child who hear sotries has 15% more chances to reach the top level of study than one who does not. This familiar practice is more willing to be stronger if it is more frequent and constant.
- Environment of teachers in childhood was much richer in books quantity- -more than the students of the IOC. What is more, these books were more available.
- Both populations had close relationship between reading habits when they were little and reading habits when they grew up: a little more dedication to developing reading habits, improve reading habits.
- The institution or schools have played a major role in the formation of the reading habits in students from IOC rather than the teachers.
- The school has not made many readers of children who passed through his hands, but it has contributed more significantly to the IOC when data is observed globally. This means that when there are two populations globally, differences exist.
- To sum up, the school does not meet us as equal in acquiring the reading habit when the family is absent.
References
“Influència de l’entorn familiar i escolar en l’adquisició de l’hàbit lector”, PhD thesis by Joan Portell Rifà, supervised by Mireia Manresa Potrony and read at the Department of Language and Literature Education and Social Science Education.
