ISL (2020). What do Spanish adolescents read?… ISL, 13, 35-53.
Discussion and conclusions
Along these lines we have approached the readers’ consumption of 1
st
year of Compulsory
Secondary Education students of the province of Cádiz and made a contrast with a sample of
students from other Spanish provinces. This vision has allowed us to identify trends in results and
has opened doors to carry out an empirical research on reading in our country when the Spanish
sample will be expanded.
As a starting point, we have found that we are facing a poorly reading population. The
percentage of informants considered as regular readers is very low. These results attract a lot of
attention because we must not forget that our population is extracted from the 1
st
year of Secondary
Education. Given that, in Primary Education the students seem to have a deep-rooted reading habit
(Molina, 2006; Moreno, Guzmán & García, 2017; Serna, Rodríguez & Etxaniz, 2017; Trujillo,
2017; FGEE, 2019), we ask which agents we should hold responsible for this rapid decline.
If we focus our attention on the school, as indicated by Romero & Trigo (2019, p. 119) “la
lectura, el acceso al mensaje literario, el desarrollo de la capacidad crítica y creativa de los
estudiantes… han sido y siguen siendo preocupaciones frecuentes entre el profesorado,
independientemente del nivel educativo, el contexto”. If we do it in the institutions, “una mirada
atenta a las comunidades [autónomas] desvela un panorama diverso en la cantidad e intensidad de
las propuestas, una con gran despliegue de actuaciones, otras con un acercamiento discreto y
algunas con un vacío clamoroso de política” (Trujillo, 2017, p. 103) and, finally, if we attend to
the family “los padres siguen ejerciendo una influencia notoria en todos los entornos de la vida de
los adolescentes” (Muñoz & Hernández, 2011, p. 622). It seems, therefore, that all those
responsible have fulfilled their task. However, the results invite us to reflect on the rapid social
changes and on the role that technologies should play in shaping a new educational model (Amar,
2017) in which social networks are understood as a learning community, an opportunity to share
and dialogue This is where the proposals made in the framework of ICT and social networks make
sense (Torrego, 2011; Hupfeld et al., 2013; Lluch, 2014; Lluch, Tabernero & Calvo, 2015; Heredia
& Romero, 2017; Rovira, 2017 or Heredia & Amar, 2018).
When analysing the format preferred by informants, we appreciate that there is still a
tendency to enjoy reading paper books. However, in the report made by the FGEE (2019), it seems
that the digital book is gaining presence among the adolescent population. In this sense, we
consider it appropriate to contemplate this result from two perspectives. On the one hand, to attend
to analog reading, it is essential that libraries - school and public - echo the varied editorial offer
and, little by little, are acquiring adapted works for the population. In addition, it is necessary for
teachers to be updated in order to exercise effective reading mediation, not only with students, but
also with families (Trigo, 2016; Santos Díaz, 2017; Colón & Tabernero, 2018). On the other hand,
if we want to bring reading in digital format to adolescents, it will be necessary to have an
economic aid programme so that both families and institutions responsible for promoting reading
can acquire and make known attractive digital resources. In this way, perhaps, we solve the
problem of (un)use of libraries, so evident in the findings obtained.
Regarding the type of books most read, we have found that preferences have hardly been
modified with respect to previous research (MECD, 2003; Muñoz & Hernández, 2018). Thus, the
most read books are those of adventure, humour, science fiction, mystery-espionage or terror. On
the opposite side, there are types of books more linked to the academic field, such as history or
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