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Research by Stiftung Lesen

Round Table 2007: “Evaluation of Reading Promotion”.

Germany’s leading reading promotion experts discussed the “crucial question” of reading promotion: “how do you measure the success of projects?”

“It does not matter how difficult the question is as to how success of reading promotion is measured, it is just as certain that in future, an evaluation of the project work will become just as standard as the project presence itself in the Internet.” That is what Prof. Dr. Stefan Aufenanger, Research Manager of Stiftung Lesen explained in his resume of the 3rd Round Table on reading promotion by Stiftung Lesen on 6th and 7th December 2007 in Mainz, which was sponsored by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF).

For 2 days, Germany’s leading experts on reading promotion were guests in Mainz: Around 40 representatives of reading promotion organisations as well as specialists from the relative Ministries discussed the topics “what makes a reading promotion project particularly successful – and with which scientific methods can success be measured in the first place? This double question was called the crucial question of reading promotion by Heinrich Kreibich, Managing Director of Stiftung Lesen.

The development, which leads to the evaluation trend of reading promotion, was outlined by Corinna Brüntink, project leader in the Federal Ministry for Education and Research, in her opening speech: “Firstly, sponsors increasingly demand comprehensible quality assessments and secondly, project leaders are realising more and more that analysis of programme results is a precondition aimed at the further development of future projects. Brüntink: “Therefore evaluation of reading promotion will become increasingly important.”

Work groups highlighted the topic “Evaluation in School and in the Classroom” as well as the “evaluation of projects and organisations of reading promotion”. Prof. Dr. Stefan Aufenanger lead the panel made up of well- known experts: Prof. Dr. Gudrun Marci-Boehncke (Ludwigsburg), Prof. Dr. Peter Conrady (Dortmund) and Prof. Dr. Uwe Flick (Berlin).

The conclusion of the conference according to Aufenanger is that: “an awareness is continuously taking hold, that good will and financial investments alone are not enough to fulfill the quality demands of reading promotion projects”. The joy of reading and reading competence must be conveyed in the electronic media culture in a professional manner in order to reach important target groups effectively.” According to Aufenanger, this does not simply mean the adoption of evaluation methods which are popular in other project fields: “The joy of reading, the central aim of our various initiatives and institutions, is not so easily measured. We must protect our freedom to critically question evaluations in reading promotion.”