Date
7-22-2025
Department
School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy in Education (PhD)
Chair
Janet Vosen
Keywords
middle school, literacy, teacher perceptions, Christian school, reading skill development, reading comprehension, subject area literacy, background knowledge, vocabulary instruction, inference generation
Disciplines
Curriculum and Instruction | Education
Recommended Citation
Guiel, Rachel, "Subject Area Teachers' Perceptions of the Influence of Reading Instruction on Middle School Reading Skill Development: A Transcendental Phenomenological Study" (2025). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 7247.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/7247
Abstract
This discovery of subject area teachers' perceptions of the influence of reading instruction and reading skill development on middle school students' reading comprehension is the theme of this phenomenological study. A subject area teacher was defined as someone who teaches history, science, math, and Bible classes. Middle school students were defined as six, seventh, and eighth-grade students. Reading skill development was defined as vocabulary instruction, background knowledge, and the implementation of flexible reading groups. The theory guiding this study is Vygotsky's sociocultural learning theory, as it describes learning coming before language development, language being the main tool of thought, and social interaction being the basis of learning and development. The central research question is, "What are the perceptions of subject-area middle school teachers about the reading comprehension level of their students?" Moustakas’s transcendental phenomenological design was used to examine this study. Data was collected from sixth - eighth-grade subject-area teachers with three or more years of experience in Christian schools in the United States. Data was collected using individual interviews, focus groups, and surveys. Data analysis included manually coding the data, establishing themes, and cross-analyzing to allow clusters to emerge from the data. The results revealed that reading skill development in middle school subject area classes is influenced by classroom design, reading development difficulties, reading development practices, and the lack of professional development in reading skill development.
