Academic Reading: Comparing Students’ and Faculty Perceptions of Its Value, Practice, and Pedagogy

Abstract

This cross-sectional study at a four-year college explored the alignment between students’ and faculty perceptions and behaviors regarding academic reading. Constructs from the academic reading literature were used to create a 10-item survey, modified slightly for faculty and students to respond to the same prompts. A convenience sample of 848 students and a snowball sample of 63 faculty examined the value of academic reading, academic reading practices, and attitudes toward academic reading pedagogy. Differences in agreement between students and faculty were statistically significant for all items. Students and faculty agree that undergraduate education should make students proficient academic readers, although the faculty mean is significantly higher than the students’. The expert-novice, Dunning-Kruger effect, and disengagement compact are three theories proposed to explain results.

KEYWORDS:

• academic reading
• college reading
• reading behavior
• undergraduates
• university reading

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pamela J. Howard

Pamela Howard, is Librarian in the Leonard Library at San Francisco State University. She received her MS in Food and Resource Economics and her Masters in Information and Library Science from San Jose State University. She is responsible for information literacy instruction in the areas of the health science and biology at San Francisco State University.

Meg Gorzycki

Meg Gorzycki, EdD, is an Instructional Support Associate/Faculty Consultant at Academic Technology. She holds a doctorate in education with an emphasis on curriculum design and professional development, and her research interests include literacy and critical thinking. She has taught social studies and was a high school administrator for 23 years.

Geoffrey Desa

Geoffrey Desa, is an Associate Professor of Management and Social Innovation at San Francisco State University. He holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and a PhD in Business Administration from the University of Washington. His research interests include technology mediated pedagogy, social innovation and regenerative ecosystems.

Diane D. Allen

Diane D. Allen, has a PhD in education, with an emphasis in measurement, from the University of California Berkeley. As a physical therapist and professor in the Graduate Programs in Physical Therapy at University of California San Francisco/San Francisco State University, she instructs students in preparing evidence-based reviews and meta-analyses, requiring proficient and critical reading of research literature in health care.