What are our goals?
Our research and interaction activities aim at supporting children’s and adolescents’ (aged 10–17) critical reading skills. We aim at support the important work of families, teachers, teacher educators, and librarians in supporting the critical reading skills of the younger generation. We will develop innovative learning solutions to enhance critical reading skills of children and adolescents. Our research supports curriculum developers, educators, and policy makers to make decisions that provide equal opportunities to all adolescents to reach adequate critical reading skills for their future.
What do we study?
We examine how well students in different grade levels are able to evaluate online texts, graphs, short argumentative media messages, and geomedia. We will clarify underlying individual, motivational, and geographical differences (in Finland) in critical reading. We also aim to identify the individual dispositions, family factors, and practices affecting critical reading development. To support students critical reading skills, we will develop and examine efficacy of gamified learning solutions and adaptive feedback, and ways to support communal learning material development. Finally, we examine the efficacy of the intervention program for pre-service teachers that aims at enhancing their teacher self-efficacy and abilities to teach critical reading skills to their students.
Who are we?
We are researchers from the four Finnish universities: Tampere University, University of Jyväskylä, University of Helsinki, and University of Oulu. We are a multidisciplinary team representing educational sciences, psychology, geography, computer sciences, and health sciences. Consortium is led by Professor Kristian Kiili, Tampere University.