Reading Strategies for the Comprehension of Text-based Tasks. Instructional Practices and Routines in Mathematics from Teachers’ and Students’ Perspectives

Abstract

Reading strategies are important for the solution of text-based tasks and the comprehension of the situation presented in the task. The study investigates to which extent reading strategies are part of classroom instruction by asking how teachers and students perceive the strategy instruction. Both perspectives are included to get insight into overlaps as indicators for actual classroom action and in terms of increasing heterogeneity to discover differential perceptions within students. Therefore, 60 teachers and 261 students were asked about their perceptions of strategy instruction. Besides cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies, and type of strategy instruction, they were asked about the relevance of this topic in class. While the perspectives overlap in terms of cognitive reading strategies and the relevance of the topic in general, they differ regarding metacognitive reading strategies and the type of strategy instruction. Furthermore, a profile-specific approach of students’ perspectives shows differential perceptions of reading strategy instruction in mathematics lessons depending on their level of reading comprehension: Students with low reading competence approve a larger amount of reading strategy instruction than students with higher reading competence.