IS MY UNDERSTANDING YOURS - A STUDY OF HIGHER-EDUCATION STUDENTS READING FOR UNDERSTANDING AND THE EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT TEXTS

This study explores the cognitive and affective reactions of 25 higher degree students to a text reading task under conditions which were de signed to induce thorough understanding. Each participant read one of four short texts selected to be interesting and demanding and not inte nded for study purposes. They then wrote responses to a set of questio ns about their reading before sharing them with another student for ta pe-recorded discussion of similarities and differences in their unders tandings. Their text was available to them throughout and all response s were anonymous. It was found that with reading processes associated in the literature with what has been termed a ''deep'' approach to stu dying text, understandings varied between readers both between and wit hin texts. Discussion between students about their differences allayed anxiety about understanding but did not necessarily aid it further, a nd most students felt that more work on the text would be fruitful. Va riation is discussed in terms of response to text genre, type and styl e. Implications for theory and practice in higher education are drawn. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.