Teachers of reading in Hungary and in a cross-cultural comparison1

Abstract

The article presents an investigation of teachers teaching reading and their teaching methods by comparing the results of two studies. The first one was a reading achievement study encompassing 31 countries, conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) in 1989/90. The second one was a 1993 Hungarian reading achievement study. Both studies also collected data about the elementary teachers of the students involved. Both in Hungary and in other countries, the majority of elementary reading teachers are women. The reading patterns of elementary teachers vary by country, but they typically read a lot, principally narratives and professional literature. The length of time spent teaching is related to the method of reading instruction: older teachers prefer the code-orientated method to the meaning-orientated one. According to the two studies the efficiency of reading instruction depends not on the methods of beginners' reading instruction, but rather on the sociocultural characteristics of the student and their school.