Teaching Perspectives and Expectations about the Reading Practices of First-Year Psychology Students

Abstract

University reading in the social sciences involves working with multiple textual and discursive sources. Often teachers can expect students to behave as autonomous readers and to know in advance how to read in a specific area. In this sense, this paper addresses teachers' perspectives and expectations about the reading practices of psychology students at a state-run university. For this purpose, a qualitative study is carried out in which 30 teachers of the first year of the Psychology career are interviewed. The interviews are analyzed in the light of categories that are derived from the theoretical framework and are considered the emerging ones as well. The results show that the perspectives of the great majority of teachers on the reading of learners are focused on the difficulties and rarely emphasize strengths and self-criticism with teaching practices. Moreover, these results relate to the reading practices expected by teachers. Those teachers who emphasize difficulties state that they encourage monological reading practices and expect students to read in this way. Those who recognize potentialities and difficulties in their students when reading, declare to make possible dialogical practices and expect students to be able to read collaboratively with them.