Influences on Key Stage 2 Teachers of Comprehension

Marley, Beth (2023). Influences on Key Stage 2 Teachers of Comprehension. University of Birmingham. Ed.D.

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Abstract

The National Curriculum (DfE, 2013) mandates what primary teachers should teach in their English reading lessons, but it does not advise how to teach reading comprehension. Teachers may therefore be influenced by a variety of factors in their practice. There is much previous research focussing on influences on teachers of mathematics and on the teaching of reading, suggesting teachers can be influenced by their beliefs and environmental factors such as the school climate, personnel, students and resources. This qualitative study extends the existing literature by exploring these influences on the practices of Key Stage 2 teachers of comprehension and the extent of their agency in comprehension teaching. Fourteen Key Stage 2 primary teachers, with a varied range of experience, were interviewed to explore how different influences appear to shape their thinking and practice, how heavily they were influenced by personal beliefs, practical considerations, by demands of policy or by research recommendations, which were the strongest influences and why. Vygotsky’s (1978) concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), is extended in Valsiner’s (1997) zone theory of child development. Goos’ (2013) adaptation of this and Lave and Wenger’s (1991) Communities of Practice (CoP) are used to explore teachers’ learning and development through their interactions with social and contextual environments.
The methodology encouraged the use of visual timelines by the interviewees, to prompt and help elaborate their recount of experiences and their perceptions of the influences on their comprehension teaching. Through their narratives, influences were found to be shaping practice in five main areas; using discussion, teaching language comprehension, teaching comprehension skills, teaching children to answer written questions and encouraging enjoyment of reading. Matrices were used to explore cross-case patterns of influence and to show the strongest influences in each area. The influences were split into sub-categories of national, school and personal contexts. Individual matrices for each teacher explored how they felt about their comprehension pedagogy and whether they had agency. The reduced data of teachers’ practice and expressed beliefs was compared with a proposed theoretical model of what the research and socioculturalism theory advocate as the skills, knowledge and interactions needed for reading comprehension pedagogy.
The research findings have implications for school CPD and ITE providers with its focus on approaches to teacher learning and development. It is of significance for the reading research community for further development of comprehension teaching. It will be of interest to other researchers using qualitative narrative research techniques.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ed.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ed.D.

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