The reading skills of young people across Europe are declining (OECD, 2023). This trend is also evident in the Netherlands, where both reading proficiency and enjoyment of reading among children and adolescents have decreased. (Swart et al., 2023). People who struggle with reading face significant disadvantages in our society. Adults with low literacy tend to earn less, experience poorer health, and have shorter life expectancy than those with proficient reading skills. As reading difficulties increase throughout the education system, society as a whole bears the consequences.

One reason cited for the Dutch reading crisis is that language teaching in Dutch schools has become increasingly fragmented into separate components that are disconnected from other subjects (Van Koeven & Smits, 2022). Dutch teaching methods use adapted texts that have been simplified, resulting in an impoverished context and a limited vocabulary (Houtveen et al. 2012).

A promising educational approach to turn the tide in the reading crisis is to work with so-called rich texts. Rich texts contain rich language, are authentic, are of high quality, and encourage reflection and interaction (Burki et al., 2023). They stimulate the reader's imagination and curiosity. Rich texts are authentic and unadapted texts from outside the classroom, such as children's books and newspaper articles (Berardo, 2006; May et al., 2023). From previous research, we know that reading (aloud) and discussing rich texts in the classroom can improve students' reading comprehension (May et al., 2023).

Previous research has shown that weak readers are often offered simplified and impoverished texts, whereas they would in fact benefit from reading rich texts with appropriate support (Brown et al., 2018). However, Dutch teachers are generally not accustomed to using rich texts in their instruction, and it remains unclear what teachers and schools need in order to effectively design reading instruction based on rich texts.  We also know little about how working with rich texts in reading education contributes to the reading skills, reading motivation, and reading enjoyment of students.

The research discussed in this article aims to fill this knowledge gap. The first research aim was to asses the experienced benefits for students of a rich-text-based reading approach in terms of reading skills, reading motivation, and reading enjoyment. The second aim of the research was also to gain insight into teachers' sense of competence in working with rich texts, the bottlenecks they experience and what they need in order to use rich texts in their teaching.

This contribution discusses a three-year collaborative design research, in which researchers and teachers worked together to develop, implement, and evaluate rich-text reading approaches in five Dutch primary schools. Data were collected through open classroom observations, student interviews, and teacher interviews.

The results show that both teachers and students experience positive outcomes in reading skills, reading motivation and reading enjoyment by a rich-text reading approach. Furthermore, the study revealed a number of challenges and enabling conditions at the school level that influence the successful implementation of working with rich texts in reading instruction. One challenge, for example, is that preparing lessons with rich texts is relatively time-consuming, because there is less reliance on teaching methods.

This research was conducted in the context of ERLA (Educational Research Lab Amsterdam), a partnership between primary school boards and the knowledge institutes University of Amsterdam, Kohnstamm Institute and Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (www.woa-amsterdam.nl). In this lab, teachers and researchers conduct practice-based research into issues related to equity and diversity that arise directly from educational practice. This contribution is based on a three-year collaborative design research project (McKenny & Reeves, 2018) called ‘Reading with understanding and engagement’ (2023-2026). Within this project researchers and teachers collaborated to develop, implement, evaluate and refine approaches using rich texts in primary schools. Joint meetings were held in which there was room for professionalization of teachers, exchange, development and evaluation of approaches, using the cycle of practical research developed by Van der Donk & Van Lanen (2012). During the project period, primary schools (N=5) implemented the developed reading approaches at their own pace and in line with the contextual conditions of the schools. The current contribution is based on the first round of data collection (spring 2025). Data were collected through open classroom observations in al the participating schools, student interviews (N = 56), and teacher interviews (N = 14). Six lessons on the five schools were observed during the approaches in action. During the observations in six lessons on five schools, both teacher behaviour and student behaviour were examined. Notes were taken using four different indicators: teacher behaviour, student behaviour, teacher words and student words. Directly after the observations students were interviewed in small focus groups. The students were asked about their experiences with the reading approach and the benefits they experienced from working with rich texts. The teachers were also interviewed about their experiences with the reading approach and the benefits and challenges they experienced when working with rich texts. Both the teacher and the student interviews were semi-structured using an interview guide and were conducted in small focus groups. The interviews were transcribed and, together with the observation notes, analyzed using content analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994).

The results show that both teachers and students experience positive outcomes in reading skills, reading motivation and reading enjoyment when working with rich texts. Teachers note that this approach makes it possible to better support both weak and strong readers. Students particularly mentioned learning new words (pronunciation, spelling and meaning) and an increase in knowledge as important benefits. All schools mention working with rich texts within a thematic approach as the most important mechanism for success. Rich texts are perceived by teachers as particularly effective when they are presented within a thematic context that has been worked on for several weeks. Theme-based education is seen as essential, because knowledge and vocabulary are better retained when concepts recur in multiple contexts. Teachers emphasize that a logical structure of activities and substantive knowledge is a prerequisite for working successfully with rich texts. At the same time, this approach demands a lot from teachers' skills, such as coming up with meaningful questions for texts and scaffolding weak readers. Finding suitable texts and preparing lessons also takes a lot of time, because there is less reliance on teaching methods. Professionalization, collaboration within schools and a clear reading policy with fixed routines and support from school leaders are crucial. In order to share insights from the research with other practitioners, teachers and researchers developed two practical publications. One is a roadmap that can be used at school level to implement working with rich texts school-wide; the other is a guide for teachers that supports them in using rich texts in their reading instruction.

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