An examination of relationship between preservice teachers’ reading habits and critical reading skills

Abstract

This study aims at determining the relationship between preservice teachers’ reading habits and critical reading skills as well as assessing whether preservice teachers’ reading habits and critical reading skills vary with their gender, age, education year in the college, program type, and the number of books read per year. A relational survey model was used according to the objectives of our study. The sample consists of 255 preservice teachers studying at Turkish Language Teacher Education, Primary School Teacher Education, Social Studies Teacher Education, and Psychological Counseling and Guidance programs. “Attitude Scale on Reading Habit” (Gömleksiz (2004) and “Critical Reading Self-Efficacy Perception Scale” Karadeniz (2014) were used as data collection tools. The obtained data analyzed using IBM SPSS software version 22.0. Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis H-test as, nonparametric tests, and correlation and regression tests were conducted to analyze data. Significant differences were found between variables and scores of reading habits and critical reading skills. Furthermore, a positive correlation was determined between preservice teachers’ reading habits and critical reading skills. The regression analysis revealed that reading habit is a significant predictor of critical reading skills. The authors believe that the findings from the present study make important contributions to the current literature.