Reading to Dogs (RTD) in schools, a form of animal-assisted education (AAE), is growing in popularity and prevalence. RTD involves children reading to a registered dog with benefits to well-being and reading outcomes thought to arise because of the unconditional positive regard and non-critical listening bestowed on the child by the dog. Yet RTD…

Compelling international evidence illustrates the potential of reading for pleasure for enhancing student reading achievement along with other learning and wellbeing outcomes. Yet profound challenges exist for nations seeking to encompass attention to students' volitional reading. In this paper we critically review the growing research evidence in…

Research Findings: This study investigated the effectiveness of a home-based intervention in increasing the intrinsic reading motivation and Chinese oral vocabulary of minority South Asian children in Hong Kong. A quasi-experiment was conducted with 78 children (M[subscript age] = 51.54 months; control: 37 children, intervention: 41 children) and…

Word reading fluency is crucial for early L2 development. Moreover, the practice of digital reading has become increasingly common for both children and adults. Therefore, the current study investigated factors that explain digital word reading fluency in English (L2) among Chinese children from Hong Kong. Eighty-six children (age: M = 9.78, SD =…

Gamification is becoming increasingly popular in primary education due to the widespread use of digital technology. However, gamified reading is new, and there is little empirical evidence regarding its effectiveness. The sustainability of the effects of gamification pedagogy is also in doubt as some scholars think that such effects are short-term…

Purpose: Reading fluency establishes the basis for the strong literacy skills needed for academic success. We aim to trace how reading fluency develops from childhood to adulthood and identify factors that influence this development. Method: In this study, 200 families were followed. All participating children (N = 200, 47% female) were ethnic…

The relationships between oral reading fluency, reading motivation and reading comprehension were examined at the beginning and the end of second grade among 121 Hebrew speaking students. The contribution of oral reading fluency and three sub-factors of motivation--self-concept as a reader, value attached to reading and literacy outloud (social…

Working through four key tenets of Deleuze-Guattarian theory, the authors describe how contemporary affect theory offers a radically different perspective on reading. Asking how we can conceptualize reading differently if we conceptualize affect differently, we argue that possible meanings of reading or experiences of reading must be considered…

Literacy educators, spurred by curricular standards requiring increased attention to reading nonfiction, are compelled to consider text-specific reading instruction. As research supports the connection between motivation and reading achievement, these mandates beg the question, "Are children equally motivated to read fiction and…

This article is a critical content analysis of Children's Choice award-winning picture books from 2000 to 2014. The "critical" part of the analysis consists of selecting archetypes for males presented in these texts based on applying feminist poststructuralist literacy theory that situates literacy and language at the center of gender…

The recent pandemic disease, COVID-19, brought about a measure that involves every individual staying at home in Nigeria. This had various effects on different activities and habits of an average Nigerian. This study examined the influence of COVID-19 lockdown on reading habit of Nigerians using Lagos State inhabitants as case study. Descriptive…

Background: There is increasing recognition of the contribution of affective factors such as motivation to the development of reading competence. Reading activity is theorised to mediate associations between motivation and achievement, but this has been tested empirically only rarely. Method: This study employed structural equation modelling to…

This study employed the mixed method explanatory sequential design to investigate Japanese fourth grade students' reading motivation. A total of 102 students first completed the Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ) to investigate the differences in reading motivation among different dimensions in three categories (Competence and…

This study examined the role of science domain knowledge, reading motivation, and decoding skills in reading comprehension achievement in third-grade students who are English learners (ELs) and students who are monolingual, using a nationally representative data set. Multigroup probit regression analyses showed that third-grade science domain…

This paper is part of a wider survey in which we identify groups of readers aged 10 to 11. The paper presents the findings on the observed affective variables (attitude and motivational) of different groups of readers. The results show that individual's attitude towards reading has the impact on reading comprehension and vice versa, better reading…