Attitudes toward Reading and the Teaching of Reading in a Group of Student Teachers

There are widespread assumptions and convictions about the importance of positive attitudes for the acquisition of reading skills, and the importance of the teacher in promoting such attitudes in pupils. But the teacher and his/her attitudes are relatively neglected variables in the massive reading research literature. This paper reports the construction of a semantic differential instrument to assess primary school teachers' attitudes toward reading and the teaching of reading. The instrument was administered to 317 final year prospective primary school teachers from five Victorian teachers' colleges. The semantic differential data were analyzed in two different ways and the correlational patterns obtained from each analysis are discussed. Components of the attitude instrument were found to be related to reading achievement.