eTexts and Teacher Education: Considerations for Text Structure and Purpose in Mobile Pedagogy

Defining Reading Purpose And Text Structure

In short, text structure and purpose are two reading constructs that have been marginalized in the research on eTexts because over-generalization. Specifically, students’ eReading experiences and abilities are combined together without regard to the significant differences that might exist as a result of readers’ ages, abilities, the structure of the text, and purpose for the reading. It is known that differences exist in students’ abilities to comprehend texts of various text structures (Schugar & Dreher, 2017), and readers who report enjoyment when reading for pleasure on mobile devices may become overwhelmed when faced with the task of reading academic texts from a digital device (Schugar, Schugar, Smith, 2014). Reading preference and reading skill are very different constructs and teachers and teacher educators should be careful when using this research to inform instructional decisions.