Content analysis of The reading teacher, 1948-1977
Creators: name: Tolsma, Catherine Colette
Publisher: name: University of British Columbia
Year: 2010

description: The results from a content analysis of an elementary reading education journal, The Reading Teacher, are reported in this study. Retrospective bibliometric analysis of the journal focussed on three dimensions: subjective classification of articles published in Volumes 21 through 30, determination of selected content trends and demographic characteristics of articles published in Volumes 1 through 30, and analysis of referenced journals in Volumes 21 through 30. The 20 Year Annotated Index to The Reading Teacher, containing 18 major categories and 31 sub-categories, was used as a base for the subjective classification. Empirical classification of the 844 articles contained in Volumes 21 through 30 resulted in the addition of five additional sub-categories. Demographic characteristics of the articles were determined using eight variables: topical trends, multiple authorship, sex of author, author occupation, geographic location of author, citations per volume, type of publication cited, and age of cited material. Data were presented in frequency counts and percentages, and collapsed into three ten-year time periods to detect trends and shifts in emphases over the thirty volume years. With articles classified according to subject matter, two areas received the greatest emphasis: Reading Instruction and Skill Development. Major categories remained quite stable over the three time periods, with shifts occurring among the sub-categories. The majority of articles were single authored (82.6%); authorship was approximately equally divided between men and women over the thirty volume years, with a noticeable increase in male authors in recent years. The most productive contributors were affiliated with colleges and universities and resided in the eastern sections of the United States. The number of publications cited showed a steady increase across the thirty volume period, with an increase observed in the number and percentage of books cited and a slight decrease in journal citation. Relatively high median ages were found for cited material with a trend toward citation of newer, material and cited material representing archival and near archival ages in comparison with similar results from science disciplines. The third section of the study investigated the core and support literature structure of elementary reading based on the frequency with which different journals were cited by authors publishing in Volumes 21 through 30 of The Reading Teacher. It was found that the Pareto characteristic identified in previous research held for this literature collection with eight titles accounting for 51.14 percent of the cited journals. These eight titles could be considered the core elementary reading journals, and include three reading journals, two general elementary journals, two educational research journals, and one English journal. A wide variety of support journal literature was identified suggesting: that elementary reading interacts with a broad interdisciplinary base representative of education and other academic fields.