Students reading skills, reading habits and reading interest depends on a number of factors related to the individual students, their home background and their schooling. Schooling can be seen from different perspectives such as the national school system as such, the individual school and the school class which the student is part of. School classes differ among other factors in respect of the composition of students, the general climate in the class room, the experience of the teachers and the teaching methods used by the teachers.

The importance of teaching is often stressed and it is often claimed that teachers make a difference. In order to look further in to this it is of interest to investigate whether differences exist between different school classes in respect of average reading skills, reading habits and reading interest. It is also of interest to examine whether teachers claim that they use different methods in their teaching related to reading.

Of special interest is to examine to which extent the students are supposed to work independently and to look at whether differences between the classes in reading skills can be related to the degree of autonomy for the students. When the results from PISA 2009 was made public in Sweden one of the possible explanations given for the declining skills in reading among Swedish students was the increased use of teaching methods where the students to a large extent are left to themselves to solve different types of tasks. A recent metastudy of Swedish research concerning reading showed that independent work of the studetns seemed to be one of the most frequent methods used in reading instruction in all grades. A number of studies show that teaching methods leaving the students too much to individual work may lead to less good results than more structured teaching. This has been generally established, but also in relation to reading.

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