Exploration of social studies teachers’ experiences of reading practices: A phenomenological study

Abstract

In this phenomenological study, I aimed to describe the perceptions of social studies teachers’ lived experiences about their reading practices that may have influence on the development of students’ reading comprehension. Data were collected from interviews and handwritten interview notes were analyzed by using qualitative data analysis. Sixteen middle school social studies teachers were recruited in different schools in a city in Turkey for this study. Three themes emerged from the data analysis in the study: reading comprehension skills and strategies, teaching practices and instructional practices. The results of this study yielded two findings: first, the majority of the teachers did not benefit from best practices, reflecting the highly interactive nature of the reading comprehension process; instead they often used the reading tasks or practices in traditional sense in-class. In addition, these teachers found feelings of inadequacy in terms of providing students with instruction in reading comprehension strategies due to their lack of training of content area reading instruction. Second, a few teachers believed that providing instructional scaffolding to support the development of students’ reading comprehension was of primary importance in terms of building understandings and skills for social studies reading achievement.