Preliminary communication
Student Overload Caused by Extensiveness of Textbooks and Reading Ability
Emerik Munjiza
Abstract
Student overload is constantly present in Croatian education system. Most frequently listed causes of student overload include: curriculum, textbooks, teacher attitudes towards subject matter and criteria in evaluation of learning outcomes.
There are two forms of student overload: overload based on the amount of contents that need to be learned which is time consuming and overload based on the depth of contents which is not in line with student mental and physical abilities. In this paper the author analysed student overload caused by extensiveness of textbooks and underdeveloped reading ability. The study focused on the analysis of the textbooks used in the fifth grade of primary school. It started with the hypothesis that all texts need to be read at least twice, once for informative purposes and then once again for comprehension.
When reading abilities are considered (speed and comprehension) there are great individual differences, and therefore students are divided into three groups: fast readers, avarege readers and slow readers.
It was empirically proven that fast readers can reach the aim when there is optimal overload, average readers can hardly achieve that aim, whereas slow readers are not able to achieve that aim. During 175 school days the aim was hard to achieve so students continued to study on weekends as well, so additional analysis of 290 work days was conducted. All days were considered work days except for summer break. In such analysis students have no free weekends nor holidays. It needs to be pointed out that the analysis did not take into account overall student overload, but only the overload that was the result of reading textbook texts.
Keywords
student overload; time-consuming tasks; overwhelming subject matter; textbook; reading speed; comprehensive reading; school days; work days
Hrčak ID:
152292
URI
Publication date:
19.6.2015.
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