Libraries Contribution to the Acquisition of Reading Literacy at Primary and Secondary School in Spain

Abstract

This paper explores the impact of school libraries on students' reading achievement at primary and secondary school in Spain. Firstly, it is provided an overview of the state of the art of the research on libraries' impact in the Spanish education context. Secondly, a statistical analysis is conducted by using the datasets released from the international student assessment surveys, as an attempt to measure and confirm the effect of school libraries on students' scoring. With a quantitative empirical approach, the paper seeks to test the influence of the library as a predictive variable for achievement results in international reading assessments. Framework and datasets released from PISA 2009 and PIRLS 2011 surveys are used as a source for the statistical analysis. The systematic procedure for data selection, together with variables operationalization are explained. Then, possible associations between variables are explored. The results suggest statistically significant evidences of the positive impact of school libraries on students' reading scoring at secondary school. Finally, the paper explores those limitations concerning the analysis at primary school. Therefore, further research issues are suggested. This work is part of an ongoing doctoral research which is focused on the impact assessment of libraries in learning contexts.