Perception of Secondary School Teachers on

Teaching Reading Skills in Content Areas

Perception of Secondary School Teachers on

Teaching Reading Skills in Content Areas

Abstract

It is essential for pupils to acquire efficient reading skills, in order to be able to develop and gain understanding of the content. To develop reading proficiency in different content areas has become a growing concern for educators. Teachers and administrators in secondary school curriculum have determined that students fail to meet the reading expectations. It was initially believed that the responsibility of reading solely lies with the elementary school teachers. It was assumed by the secondary school teachers that once students have been taught the basic reading skills, with simple usage, development and application, refinement of these skills would be followed. However this assumption has been discarded gradually, as administrators and educators have experienced an increase in the number of students that are not able to meet the reading requirements in the content classrooms. Thus teachers have recognized that it is imperative to have continued development of reading instructions at the secondary level. Therefore the aim of the research would be to focus on the need for understanding the significance of teaching reading skills to students in the content classrooms. A mixed research methodology would be used for gathering relevant information about matter under study. This research would enable teachers and educators to determine effective strategies that can be used by teachers to enhance the reading skills of their students at secondary level. By examining the results of the research that has been conducted it was analyzed that administrators and educators have recognized the importance of developing reading skills at secondary level with coaching and collaboration.

Survey Research Methodology

The researcher is available methods that can be used to gather information about the phenomenon, one such method to collect information is to conduct survey research. Survey research is a quantitative method of collecting information about the subject being studied. The purpose of survey research is to generate quantitative descriptions of some aspects of the study population. The subject under study might be individuals, groups, organizations or communities. By using survey research methods the researcher uses predefined and structured questions to collect information from people by asking them these questions (Owens, 2002). Their answers that will be gathered through the research might refer to those people or some other unit of analysis forms the data that needs to be evaluated. Another important aspect of survey research is to collect information not from the entire population but only from a fraction of the study population which is the sample population that would allow generalizing the findings to the population. There are different types of survey research that include, cross-sectional research which is used to collect data on population at a given point in time. Another type is longitudinal surveys which gather information over a period of time. Once the data has been gathered the researcher will then analyzed the changes that would occur in the population. Thus the method that will be used ...