Reading In and Out of School. Factors Influencing the Literacy Achievement of American Students in Grades 4, 8, and 12, in 1988 and 1990.

摘要

The report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is based primarily on a reading assessment of fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-grade students conducted in 1990. As part of the assessment, students were asked a variety of questions about their reading instruction and reading habits. The report focuses on those background factors that are most closely related to reading instruction and reading performance, including instructional approaches, reading experiences, home influences, and demographic characteristics. Also, the 1990 reading assessment contained components in common with a 1988 reading assessment conducted by NAEP, and this permits some comparisons between data for the two assessments. The assessments discussed in this report were based on an updated interactive view of reading in which factors related to the text, the situation, and the reader influence reading comprehension. In this view, comprehension may be influenced by the type of material being read; the purposes or goals for reading; and the characteristics of readers, including their attitudes, knowledge, and understandings, and their ability to use the reading strategies needed to achieve comprehension. Also, the student background questions in the 1988 and 1990 assessments discussed herein focused more extensively on students' instructional activities, as well as on a greater variety of reading experiences in the home and at school than was the case for the trend assessments.