Learning From High School Students' Lived Experiences Reading e-Books and Printed Books

• In Event: 14.045 - Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: 14.045-19 - The Materiality and Multimodality of Writing in the 21st-Century Classroom

Abstract

A 2014 School Library Journal report reveals that although sixty-six percent of schools nationwide offer ebooks, adoption is growing at a slower than expected pace, a phenomenon attributed in part to user preference for printed books. This study takes a closer look at young readers’ surprisingly persistent desire to read from a printed text by explicating a group of high school students’ experiences as they read Of Mice and Men, some using eBooks and others using printed texts. An interpretive phenomenological approach was used in data collection and analysis, and results showed that students experiences were influenced by the social contexts of reading, and the students’ values and beliefs, and cannot be attributed to the format of the text alone.

Author

• Ellen J Evans, Minnetonka High School