International Reports on Literacy Research
France, United Kingdom, Brazil

Compiled by Jacquelynn A. Malloy and Stergios Botzakis

France

International research correspondent, Jacques Fijalkow

In his report, research correspondent Jacques Fijalkow presents research into variations of reading motivation related to students' socioeconomic status (SES), age, and gender. Three of these studies were presented at an international colloquium in Huy, Belgium, in 2002 and later published in a special issue of Caractìre in 2003. In the first of these studies, the 2000 Programme for International Student Assessment was used to assess the reading performances of 15-year-olds as well as their reading habits and attitudes (Lafontaine, 2003). A composite index of engagement and reading profiles was built by using cluster analysis, which identified four different profiles ranging from highly diversified to poorly diversified and longer to shorter text. The proportion of students in each profile varied widely among the countries that participated in the study, and gender and reading profiles were found to be closely linked. Females were found to be more numerous in the profile category identified as “diversified preferring longer texts,” whereas males were more numerous in the profile named “diversified preferring shorter texts.” Students in the two more highly diversified profiles revealed better reading performances than those in the less diversified profiles. Engagement for reading was also found to vary among countries. For example, it was high in all of the Nordic countries and Japan but quite low in many European countries such as France, Belgium, and Germany.

Another finding was that engagement strongly correlated with reading performance and gender. After background variables such as gender and SES on individual and institutional levels were controlled for, engagement was shown to have the third highest correlation with reading performance following grade level and immigration status. The results also illustrated that strong reading engagement seemed to compensate for an underprivileged background. Students from less privileged backgrounds who were highly engaged in reading performed better than students from equivalent to somewhat more privileged backgrounds whose engagement in reading was weak.

The aim of the second study (Chouinard, Theoret, Van Grunderbeeck, Cartier, & Garon, 2003) was to compare the self-perceptions of, and value accorded to reading by, boys and girls of low SES and to investigate the change in these variables during the first years of secondary school. To this end, a self-report questionnaire was administered in a three-year survey to 78 French-speaking students of low SES (28 girls, 50 boys) from three schools in Montréal, Quebec, Canada. Analysis of variance using repeated measures showed that boys reported lower encouragement from significant social agents, such as teachers, family, and peers, and higher anxiety levels when they read. Furthermore, boys displayed lower achievement goals and less interest in reading than did the girls who responded. Analyses revealed no variations of these results over time.

In the third of these related studies, Schillings (2003) used a longitudinal design to investigate the development of intellectual and social competencies for reading comprehension in adolescents. Funded from 1999 to 2003 by a French-speaking community in Belgium, the study was designed to examine the transition from childhood to adolescence in a sample of 370 students. Whereas a range of skills was studied, the author was responsible for exploring the development of reading comprehension skills. Based on a theoretical framework of reading engagement outlined by Guthrie and Alvermann (1999), this study explored the links between motivation for reading (Baker & Wigfield, 1999), metacognitive reading awareness (Jacobs & Paris, 1987), and reading achievement. Subjects were tested at the end of grade 6, which is the final grade level in primary school. An analysis of structural equation modeling revealed a statistical validation of the process of engagement adapted from Guthrie and Alvermann.

In addition, recent research in France has investigated issues of gender in children's literature. For example, Dafflon (2002a) conducted a study aimed at building an inventory of heroes and heroines in Francophone children's literature published in 1997. As a result, notable quantitative differences were found to exist between the central main characters of both sexes. Male main characters systematically outnumbered female main characters regardless of the nature of the characters or their age. Books written for the youngest children were found to contain the greatest number of disparities between male and female central roles, primarily in books written by male authors. These findings echo those of comparable studies of Anglo-Saxon children's literature.