Summary

In PIRLS 2021, New Zealand teachers were presented with a series of statements designed to capture their confidence using various instructional practices when teaching reading. Their responses to the statements have been summarised into a single measure of confidence, which is considered together with teachers’ background and experience, decisions they made to employ different organisational approaches, and how often language skills were taught.

The findings, albeit limited to the teachers of Year 5 students in 2020, suggest a link between confidence and the emphasis on areas of study as part of their formal education. There is also evidence of some instructional practices being used more often during reading instruction by teachers with greater confidence.  It is recommended that the results feed into the development of additional questions for the national version of the PIRLS 2026 Teacher Questionnaire that focus on knowledge of and preparedness to teach language concepts and skills. There would be some benefit to investigate further the core content of initial teacher education programmes.

Key Findings

• Teachers of the PIRLS 2021 Year 5 students were for the most part reasonably confident when teaching reading.
• After accounting for years of experience and gender, teachers’ confidence was found to be strongly associated with having reading theory and English/Language emphasised in their formal education, including teacher education. Incorporating at least some literature studies was also found to be of some benefit.
• Greater confidence to either teach language-related skills or use different instructional approaches when teaching reading was associated with:
  • teachers incorporating explicit teaching of vocabulary and decoding into their instructional programmes at least weekly
  • organising their students into mixed ability groups regularly
  • doing shared reading as a whole-class activity frequently
  • including diverse reading content to reflect a range of cultural contexts at least weekly.