In the present dissertation, an attempt was made to unravel factors playing a major role in children’s reading literacy development. Most analyses were performed on data from the IEA Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS 2001). The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) intends to improve education by studying student achievement and the factors associated with it in educational systems around the world. PIRLS 2001 is the first in a continuing five-year cycle of trend studies in monitoring reading progress
internationally. The PIRLS 2001 data were perfectly suitable for the aim of mapping variation in reading literacy in different cross-national contexts. The PIRLS definition of reading literacy reflects the modern view that reading literacy is a constructive and interactive process: Readers are supposed to develop effective reading strategies and learn how to reflect on reading for both literary and informational purposes. In this final chapter, the four research questions will be answered: (1) To what extent can the Dutch version of the RLT be considered as a valid instrument? (2) How can variation in reading literacy be explained in the Netherlands? (3) How can variation in reading literacy be explained in industrialized countries? (4) How can variation in reading literacy be explained in top-performing countries? The studies of reading literacy achievement in varying contexts will be followed by a general discussion on the prediction of reading literacy on the level of the student, the school, and the country. Subsequently, some implications for future international reading research will be described, including the impact of different kinds of bias; conditions for multilevel analyses, and the risks of the use of background questionnaires followed by some alternative data collection methods. The dissertation will be concluded with some important implications for parents, teachers, and educational policy.
Reading Literacy Achievement in Varying Contexts
The present dissertation describes variation in Reading Literacy within different cross-national contexts, with the Netherlands as frame of reference. First variation in reading literacy within the Dutch context will be examined, followed by reading literacy in industrialized countries and top-performing countries subsequently.
The Dutch Context.
The topics in Chapters 2 and 3 concerned variation in reading literacy with respect to the validity of the Dutch assessment tool and predictors of reading literacy in the Netherlands.
Validity
The IEA has conducted international studies since 1959, and as such developed international test instruments. During this long history of international test
development in different domains, a reliable and stable test-development procedure has been realized (see Chapter 2). The PIRLS Reading Literacy Test (henceforth RLT) consists of eight text passages with a number of multiple-choice and open- ended items each. Statistics about test reliability and inter-scorer agreement within and between countries have shown that the IEA succeeded in developing a valid and reliable instrument for PIRLS 2001 (see Mullis Martin, Gonzalez, & Kennedy, 2003, pp. 296-298). The present dissertation corroborated the validity and reliability of the PIRLS RLT within the context of the Dutch situation and the Dutch language. We showed that the PIRLS RLT assesses the same skills as the national CITO Reading Literacy Test. Comparison of the linguistic characteristics of the Dutch and English versions of the PIRLS RLT revealed that the Dutch passages and items both contained a larger number of words as well as longer words than the English passages and items. However, the use of more and longer words neither produced a higher level of complexity with respect to content, sentence structure, text structure, or test items, nor did the Dutch children run out of time to finish the test. Our study also showed that the omission of passages and the modification or omission of test items after the field-testing of the reading literacy test did not affect the psychometric properties of the Dutch version of the test negatively or positively with respect to internal consistency, inter-scorer agreement, item-country interactions, and percentages of correct responding.
Predictors of Reading Literacy
Our study on predictors of reading literacy in the Dutch context revealed that Reading Literacy should be conceptualized as a multifaceted result of various school- learned skills and reading motivation. In accordance with the Simple View of Reading (Hoover & Gough, 1990), language and word decoding skills of the children were found to predict a substantial portion of the variance in reading literacy. In addition, students’ mathematics skills explained a notable portion of the variance. This is in line with earlier research showing that a clear relation exists between children’s math and reading abilities in that texts often depart from problem situations and use either graphs or charts as explanatory devices (Lees, 1976; Paul, 1990; Wood, 1992). The importance of reading motivation has also been found in a wide range of earlier research showing that the enjoyment that readers derive from reading also motivates them to spend more time reading and thus become better readers (e.g., Baker, Afflerbach, & Reinking, 1996; Schunk & Rice, 1984; Van Kraaijenoord & Schneider, 1999; Verhoeven & Snow, 2001). The multifaceted concept of reading literacy including decoding, language, mathematics, and reading motivation was successfully predicted on the basis of various student, home, and school-related factors.
At the student-level, we showed children’s nonverbal intelligence to be an important predictor of reading literacy, similarly to what has been found in other studies (e.g., Alexander, Graham, & Harris, 1998; Schunk & Zimmerman, 1994). Academic self- confidence was also an important predictor of reading literacy and even more important than reading self-concept. Children who believe that they perform well in school are motivated readers with a positive reading self-concept; they also have