What is happening when students engage in deep reading?

- An increasing number of students in higher education report that they struggle to read long and complex texts, and that they have low cognitive endurance,” says Anne Mangen at the Norwegian Reading Centre.

This is precisely the basis for the new research project Deepread. Here, researchers from the Norwegian Reading Centre, Cognitive Lab at the University of Stavanger, and researchers from the University of Oslo, the University of Southern Denmark, and Utrecht University will map the factors that influence upper secondary students when they read long, continuous texts silently and with sustained concentration. The project will also examine whether it makes a difference if students read together in groups or individually.

The researchers also aim to determine whether it makes a difference that students have digital technologies available when they engage in deep reading, and whether it matters if they read on paper, on a screen, or listen to a text as an audio file. The project will map what happens during concentrated reading, using video data, interviews, measurements of physiological responses during reading, and self‑report measures of reading flow, comprehension, engagement, and endurance.

Findings from the research project will, after the study is completed, be developed into recommendations for classroom use, which teachers, pupils, and students can draw on if they want to create the best possible conditions for deep reading.

- We hope the study will give us concrete insights that can help others create good conditions when students need to concentrate on reading long, continuous texts,” Mangen concludes.