Research Recap: Bring Experts to School: The Benefits and Challenges of Author/Illustrator Visits in Secondary Schools

By Emmie Meeks

On February 19th, the Busload of Books Research team, along with some colleagues from WAC’s Communication and Media Studies department traveled to Hilton Head, SC for the 48th Annual Conference of the Eastern Educational Research Association. Assisted by the BoB Research team and Secondary Education Coordinator, Prof. Erin Counihan, I had the opportunity to develop and present research on survey data regarding the benefits and challenges of author/illustrator visits in middle and high schools.

The BoB team gave three presentations over the course of the conference, including from fellow student researcher Brooke Thomas, and Dr. Sara Clarke-De Reza. 

While I have loved investigating elementary students' and teachers’ literacy habits and attitudes through Busload of Books, my personal interest as a future secondary educator lies in middle and high school literacy. The BoB team gave me the opportunity to merge those interests and begin to investigate if similar results existed at the secondary level. 

Since there is little research on literacy events for middle and high schoolers and it is unfeasible to recreate an event like the Busload of Books Tour at the secondary level, this is just the first step in beginning to research the impact of literacy events on secondary students.

My presentation aimed to provide an overview of the survey data we collected from secondary school teachers and propose the need for further research in the secondary arena. The main points I presented were the top perceived benefits to students and teachers and the top perceived challenges to facilitating an author/illustrator visit. 

For student benefits, 70% of secondary teachers perceive that students feel more excitement about reading, writing, and drawing and roughly 60% perceive that students talk more about the authors of the books they read.

As for teacher benefits, just over 60% of teachers perceived that teachers are inspired to explore new reading materials for students and roughly 65% perceived that teachers feel more energized or enthusiastic about literacy.

While middle and high school teachers were fairly aligned on perceived benefits for themselves and students, identifying challenges showed more variability between levels.

72% of middle school teachers perceived that the greatest challenge is the overall cost of author and illustrator visits is too high and 54% said there is not enough money in our budget for these opportunities.

Only 63% of high school teachers said the overall cost of author and illustrator visits is too high and only 42% said there is not enough money in our budget for these opportunities.

See the tables below for a more comprehensive breakdown!

This research opens the door to exploring logistical and financial barriers to literacy enrichment events, helps make connections to the general challenges facing schools that serve impoverished populations, and begins to fill the gap in adolescent literacy research.

To see the slides from the presentation click here!

To view our whitepaper on this data click here!