Student Teachers as Readers : The Reading Experiences and Reading Pedagogy of Finnish and British Student Teachers

Abstract

As the pedagogy of teachers depends partly on their earlier life experiences, investigating the prior reading practices of student teachers is crucial. This study investigated Finnish and English student teachers’ (N = 353) own reading, the importance of their own reading to their reading pedagogy, and the relationship of these to teachers’ content knowledge of reading pedagogy. The data were collected via an online questionnaire and analysed via quantitative methods. According to the findings, nearly all the student teachers enjoy reading, have a positive attitude towards reading, and consider the teachers’ own reading important for the pedagogy they implement. However, even though a large number of the student teachers read during their free time, for many, reading represents a potential free-time activity that is valued, but for which there is no time. In the study, student teachers’ reported free-time reading correlated with how many children’s books the student teacher could name. In other words, it seems that the more pre-service teachers engage in their own reading (time used to reading for pleasure, level of experiences for enjoying reading) the greater their knowledge of children’s literature, which is an essential part of the pedagogical content knowledge of literature teaching. Teacher education programmes should find ways to individualise reading instruction for student teachers as it will simultaneously scaffold the individuality of readers in the classrooms of these future teachers.