Läsutveckling under mellan- och högstadiet: En longitudinell studie av läsfärdigheter hos elever med och utan lässvårigheter

Reading development during middle- and lower secondary school : A longitudinal study of reading abilities in students with and without reading difficulties

This dissertation consists of two studies, a middle school study and a follow-up study. In the middle school study, the reading ability of a group of middle school students, of which some have reading difficulties, is described and analyzed along with the classroom conditions the students are given for the development of their reading abilities. The overall aim of the follow-up study is to describe and analyze the reading ability development in the same group of students from the beginning of middle school to the end of lower secondary school, as well as examine the students’ use of strategies in grade 9.

In lower secondary school decoding, vocabulary and reading comprehension were tested like in middle school. Students’ reading comprehension was tested on both stages based on a reading comprehension test and a national test. Since the use of strategies seems to be important for students’ reading comprehension, even the use of learning strategies were examined by including a question from the PISA (2009) student questionnaire. Furthermore, six students who in the beginning of middle school had shown poor results in one or more of the reading aspects were, referred to as the small sample group and, were interviewed in grade 9 regarding their use of comprehension strategies when reading an age-appropriate historical factual text in a textbook.

Analyses show that there is a small development in reading comprehension from the beginning of middle school to the end of lower secondary school. Even the development of correct reading and vocabulary is relatively small. The largest development is shown for the reading rate, but analyses show that the reason for that is not merely a more automated process of decoding. A comparison between the results in the reading comprehension tests and the national tests at both stages show higher results for the national tests, which can depend on the different aims of the two tests. Regarding learning strategies, the entire study group stated in the questionnaire that they mostly use the deeper monitoring strategies, while the students in the small sample group reported that they tended to use the more superficial memory strategies. The results of the interviews show that the small sample group as a group found it more convenient to use comprehension strategies for superficial rather than for deeper comprehension.