I conducted an action research project to assess the approach towards reading among a group of first-year University students in a Legal student course.The objective of this project was to evaluate whether my students took a deep or a surface approach to reading.My uitimate goal was to assess the quality of their learning outcome,as the approach to reading is considered to be directiy proportional to the quality of their learning outcome.
I adapted a study conducted by Marton and Saljo to the characteristics of my student and the subject I teach.In Marton and Saljo's study which took place at the Univerity of Gothenburg,Sweden in the 1970's the researchers asked student to read an article written by a professor of education on some proposed university reforms in Sweden.They told students that they would ask them some questions about the text once they finished reading it.Marton and Saljo met with the students and asked them open-ended questions to assess their approach to reading and their understanding of the text.Additionally,they specifically asked the students how they had gone about studying the text.
Marton and saljo (1969) reported that while reading the text,some students simply identified some isolated facts mentioned in the text, some students simply identified some isolated facts mentioned in the text, which they believed the researchers would ask them about during the interview,and then memorized those facts.These students could not make any connection between these facts and failed to see any connection to their realities.Another group of students tried to understand what the author was saying,focused on the underlying meaning of the text,and sought to integrate the different facts mentioned in the text.The first group of students focused on the surface level of the text while the second one adopted a deeper approach.