EU Read

Research by Stiftung Lesen

Round Table Reading Promotion 2005

Stiftung Lesen’s work is accompanied by research and documentation activities. Thus its research service offers up-to-date data on reading behaviour and other information on the numerous disciplines that deal with research into the complex phenomenon ‘reading’. Furthermore, Stiftung Lesen organises regular conferences and other specialist meetings on the big topic of reading support.

The 2005 event, organised with the support of the federal ministry for education and research, was the first big round table discussion on reading support. In total, 55 representatives of bigger reading support organisations, the experts of the ministries of education and culture and of teacher’s further vocational training of the states of Germany met in Mainz in order to discuss the state and the perspectives of reading support in Germany.

Five problem areas were identified in the discussions as the main points of focus for future work:

> Most reading support projects do not include accompanying research or evaluation. Thus, it is not certain which measures really achieve their targets.

> How can we reach the 25% of problem children identified by PISA that have hardly any reading and writing competence? Besides offers of language courses, there are hardly any other support measures.

> Most of the reading support projects target reading motivation. It is not know how far they also develop reading competence. However, the improvement of reading competence is the ultimate target of all support measures.

> Successful models of reading support often stay in the place they were developed, but it is important to disseminate them as far as possible nationwide. This generally fails because every state develops its own projects. The participants asked the question whether it has to be like this.

> Finally, teacher training was criticised harshly by some. They are neither trained in reading diagnostics (teachers are often not able to judge the reading competence of their pupils) nor in the methods of successful reading support. A reform of teacher training was called for. 

There was an agreement that it is advisable and necessary to link the various regional and national initiatives on reading support more strongly. Documentation of the round table discussion can be ordered from Stiftung Lesen in German.