“It is very important that I also think it is funny, so that it rubs off!” : How school librarians can contribute to students reading motivation and reading comprehension

The purpose of this study is to investigate how school librarians describe that they can help students with their reading and linguistic development within the school subject Swedish by motivating them to read. We also intend to study if they take on a more didactic teaching role when it comes to the students’ linguistic development by utilising and reading comprehension strategies in their work with the students. The theories applied encompass different reading comprehension strategies, motivation for reading and theories of preunderstanding together with Lev Vygotskijs theories about the socio-cultural perspectives. The empiric material have been collected through interviews with four school librarians and observations of three. The material have been analysed and interpreted through theories and earlier research. The major findings are that the school librarians can affect the students’ motivation for reading by presenting new books, by allowing the students to choose their own books and by providing a broad variety of book to choose from. Furthermore we found that the librarians use severar methods for reading comprehension in their work, for example Concept Oriented Reading Instruction and Reciprocal Teaching.