Academic reading: review of empirical studies and theoretical reflections in spanish-speaking contexts Lectura académica: revisión de estudios empíricos y reflexiones teóricas en contextos hispanohablantes

Abstract

Reading in higher education is an issue of growing concern in Spanish-speaking contexts. Therefore, the aim was to find out what has been said about academic literacy and what diagnoses have been made on this subject. A narrative review was carried out within the qualitative research paradigm using the content analysis technique. A crawl of documents published between 2000 and 2020 in open access databases was carried out. Twenty-five documents were found on 21 empirical studies with a diversity of techniques and target population, showing the reading practices referred to by students and seen in the classroom, the approach of teachers and institutions, and diagnostic assessments of reading skills. As for empirical studies, different characterizations have been made where it is identified that students' reading practices in the classroom and outside it, do not favor the development of an expert reading level. In addition, text comprehension evaluations are aligned with the theoretical proposal of ascending reading levels, which is still widely used. As part of the theoretical reflections, it was found that from the academic literacy construct, reading is conceived as a skill that continues to develop and depends on the situation in which it is applied.