The 1990/91 IEA reading literacy study : a matter of perspective

The reading literacy study, conducted in 1990/91 by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), measured the performance of 9 year-old students from 27 countries across the world. The IEA was particularly amenable to ‘popular’ cognitive views of reading. Having adopted particular views, limited interpretations of the data came to be presented, and different perspectives became ‘other’. Since the IEA study, there has been resurgence in large scale testing of student reading and comprehension in Australia, and these tests are premised largely on similar theoretical frameworks to those of the IEA Reading Literacy study. Because of the regard that large-scale studies such as the IEA reading literacy study were accorded, limited and problematic interpretations of data are of large concern, as these have been and are used to inform national policy on the teaching of reading, which, in turn, has consequences for students. A deeper understanding of the IEA reading literacy study is therefore important as it lays the foundations for increased problematization of issues by teachers and policy makers. This paper is derived from my doctoral research, where I performed a secondary analysis of low scorers from four countries around the world who participated in the IEA Reading Literacy Study. However, the aim of this paper is to identify the contributions that different theoretical perspectives make toward reading and literacy for the low scorers, and to facilitate engagement in a critically evaluative way with these.