UvA educators: “Reading comprehension must be brought back to all secondary school subjects”
Reading proficiency in Dutch secondary schools has reached a low point, according to the results of the PISA study published last week. There are plenty of explanations, one of which lies with the teacher training colleges specializing in primary education, or PABOs, the UvA educators Gert Rijlaarsdam and Peter de Jong believe. “At the PABOs, there is little room for children’s literature in the curriculum.”
The results of the international PISA survey hit hard last week. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which measures the skills of 15-year-olds worldwide every three years, has been reporting declining results in reading literacy for the Dutch since 2006. In the latest survey, the Dutch also dip far below the EU average. Compared with the oldest 14 EU countries, only the Greeks score even lower on reading skills than the Dutch.
“Reading skills have been in decline for years,” agrees Peter de Jong, UvA professor of orthopedagogy and a specialist in learning to read and in reading comprehension. “But the drop since 2018 is so huge, I find it very shocking.”
Why? Sonja van Overmeeren, Dutch subject teacher at the UvA’s teacher training program and Dutch teacher at a secondary school lists up some of the factors: “The stimuli of modern media, the anglicization of society, the high number of teaching hours, a teacher workload that is the highest in Europe, the teacher shortage, unqualified people in front of the class, a government that calls alpha subjects leftist hobbies ... We all make assumptions in the media but the problem is so complex, no one has an unequivocal answer.”
Too little substance
“There is probably no single explanation,” professor of orthopedagogy De Jong agrees. “Everyone has their favorite one.” Still, De Jong is willing to venture a guess. “It starts as early as elementary education. One explanation is that the method of teaching reading comprehension doesn’t work very well. It focuses too much on reading strategies and formal text features such as key sentences and paragraphs, and far too little on text content and analysis.”
Teachers and parents must also lead by example. De Jong says: “At the PABOs, the elementary school teacher training program, there is little room for children’s literature in the curriculum. If teachers themselves don’t read, they can’t convey much enthusiasm to students, either.” Parents also read books much less often and spend more time on their smartphones.
The same goes for children who read a lot on their smartphone or tablet these days. De Jong says: “This is seen as a problem by some scientists because it could lead to other reading habits, such as looking more superficially and scanning texts. One hypothesis is that digital reading has greatly reduced students’ attention span for reading longer texts.”
Also, of course, if you want to understand a text, you must understand the words. De Jong says: “Something is apparently going wrong there. Children’s vocabulary—especially those who are poor at reading comprehension—is limited. This can play a role in many ways. For example, children who have never been to the sea know fewer words related to it. A reduced vocabulary is also a reason why children from disadvantaged backgrounds or non-Dutch-speaking backgrounds are not as good at reading comprehension.
Outdated Dutch textbooks
But the problem goes beyond that. “There is a widespread feeling among Dutch teachers and Dutch-language educators that the quality of Dutch as a subject in secondary education is deteriorating,” notes Dutch-language educator and UvA professor of pedagogy Gert Rijlaarsdam. “This has been going on for about 10 years. One of the reasons, they say, is the quality of education.”
Specifically, the quality of textbooks is the reason why Rijlaarsdam is developing a new curriculum for the subject of Dutch in primary and secondary education. “The texts children have to read in textbooks are often extremely outdated and sometimes poorly written. There is no reason for a student to read them. Then too many and usually lousy questions are asked about the texts. Such as this random one: What is the text about?”
Like De Jong, Rijlaarsdam emphasizes that reading comprehension should be more about the content of a text than about reading strategies. “It’s not a matter of giving students a text and telling them: Go read it. That’s dead in the water. It starts with getting students interested in a topic or having them figure out a topic for themselves. There must be a purpose and a motivation to read, to find out something. And then it turns out they can do it, sparking a discussion of the content, too.
On Friday, December 8th, Rijlaarsdam delivers his farewell lecture on schoolchildren’s Dutch language proficiency. “I contend that the subject of Dutch alone is not enough. We must pull out all the stops. Reading comprehension must be taught in all subjects in high school because in all subjects, knowledge is acquired through texts.”
Insights from science have already been incorporated into the new core objectives, which state what pupils must know and be able to do for the subject of Dutch. For example, a core objective is to talk about texts with more content, not to shorten or simplify texts, as publishers still sometimes do, but to work with the “rich,” original texts. Also, multiple texts on one topic are offered to help students learn to evaluate and reflect better, which is where things often go wrong in the PISA test. What’s more, the core objectives state that reading comprehension should be integrated into all school subjects.
Next year, based on these core objectives, the Dutch final exam will also change. Dutch teacher Overmeeren says: “And with that, the teaching methods must also change. This way you can reach everyone.”
Limited reading comprehension at the PABOs
Yet the problem runs deeper, according to Rijlaarsdam. Namely, there is not enough investment in teachers’ knowledge of how children comprehend texts. The curriculum cannot change this. The textbook does not teach, the teacher does.
Both De Jong and Rijlaarsdam believe far too little attention is paid to reading comprehension at PABO schools. “Teachers are expected to be well versed in how to teach children reading comprehension. But in practice, only six lessons are set aside for reading comprehension in the four-year PABO course.”
Van Overmeeren sees hopeful changes in recent years in teacher education. “Scientists, subject matter experts, and teachers are pulling together more to tackle the problem of reading comprehension. The tough thing for science is to reach the shop floor, and vice versa. Scholars don’t always realize how difficult it is to teach text comprehension to a class of 30 children.”
De Jong also sees bright spots. “I think the realization is there now that the tide must be turned. For example, I see that publishers are interested in how they can work with science to see how they can encourage reading. But we won’t achieve anything with just a few actions; we have to make efforts on multiple fronts.
Van Overmeeren adds, “The changes going on now have not yet had their effect on PISA scores. I remain optimistic. We continue to do our utmost because nobody wants to send children into society with limited literacy.”
The Academic PABO Amsterdam, the university bachelor’s program that trains elementary school teachers, scheduled a consultation Friday afternoon in response to questions from Folia about the focus on reading comprehension in the program, but could not yet be reached for comment.
