Summary
Findings from the National Literacy Trust’s 2012 Annual Literacy Survey on reading enjoyment, reading behaviour outside class and reading attitudes. Children and young people who used Accelerated Reader (AR) in 2012 tend to enjoy reading more, read more often, read a greater variety of fiction texts and think more positively about reading than their peers who do not use AR.
This report explores the differences, if any, between children and young people who use AR and those who do not, in terms of their reading enjoyment and reading attitudes. The report uses data from our third annual literacy survey, conducted in November / December 2012, in which 34,910 8 to 16-year-olds participated.
A wealth of data is routinely collected by AR about children’s reading skills to monitor and help manage their independent reading. However, no information is collected on the ‘softer’ reading outcomes, such as reading enjoyment and attitudes towards reading. We were therefore commissioned by Renaissance Learning to help plug that gap.
While the data from our survey showed differences between AR users, we ought to keep in mind that this is not a controlled experiment that manipulated AR usage. In order to help tease out the real impact of AR on reading enjoyment, reading behaviour outside class and attitudes towards reading a longitudinal study is needed that follows children and young people from before they start AR to see whether their attitudes and wider reading behaviour change as a result.