Primary school teachers’ teaching strategies for the development of students’ text comprehension

ABSTRACT

Teaching strategies and their combinations are important for improving students’ text comprehension, but it is unclear how they are used in primary school. To identify frequencies and patterns in primary school teachers’ strategy use, 186 Estonian teachers were questioned. Explorative factor analysis revealed the strategies of supporting active learning, teaching text comprehension and teaching grammar rules. Younger students’ teachers preferred supporting active learning, while older students’ teachers favoured teaching grammar rules. Teachers’ subgroups with different profiles were also revealed. In the largest subgroup, teachers taught younger students’ and preferred supporting active learning. Knowledge about teaching strategy profiles is crucial for improving efficient teacher training and also for supporting students’ text comprehension.

KEYWORDS:

• Teaching strategies
• text comprehension
• native language
• primary school

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Maile Käsper http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7431-393X