Post-doctoral assistant at the research group 'Language, learning, innovation', within the Department of Educational Sciences, Ghent University.

iris.vansteelandt@ugent.be   |  +32 (0)9 264 86 64 (secretariat)

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 Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Gent

Teaching reading/reading education

Reading motivation

Continuing professional development

Proficient reading is key in education and for full participation in our 21st century society. In this respect, it is known that teachers should act as inspiring reading role models for their students, who do not neglect affective aspects related to reading (e.g., reading attitude and motivation) next to reading fluency and comprehension. Ideally, all teachers act as motivating reading models and show a high self-efficacy regarding teaching and fostering reading. However, research indicates that there is a large group of (beginning) teachers who do not like to read. Therefore they often do not use motivating teaching practices and neglect to foster students’ reading motivation. This is especially worrisome, given the declining international trend in primary and secondary students’ reading motivation. Responding to the above and adding to the scarce literature especially on beginning teachers, my research focus has a twofold purpose: (a) to study beginning teachers’ reading attitude throughout the start of teacher education until the first two years in the profession and (b) to study and compare the impact of two continuous professional development (CPD) approaches (i.e., in a learning community vs. individually oriented) on beginning in-service teachers’ reading motivation, reading behavior, self-efficacy regarding teaching reading and fostering students’ reading motivation.

Publications and conferences