Analysing the relationship between teachers' readinginterest and students' attitude towards reading

The aim of this study is to analyze the relationship between primary school teachers' interests in reading and the attitudes of 4th grade students' towards reading books in terms of various variables and to examine teachers' opinions about acquiring reading habits. In this case study by mixing both qualitative and quantitative methods are used together. The sample of the study is taken from77 fourth grade primary school teachers working in the central district of Ağrı province between the 2016-2017 academic year with all fourth grade students studying in the central district of Ağrı province where 775 students are randomly selected from each branch. The qualitative part of the study's working group consists of six teachers determined by homogeneous sampling which is one of the purposeful sampling methods. In order to collect data "Attitude Scale for Reading Books (Kitap Okumaya İlişkinTutum Ölçeği)" (Darıcan,2014), "Reading Relevancy Scale (Okuma İlgisi Ölçeği)" (Dökmen, 1994) and semi-structured interview questions are used in the research. In this study appropriate statistical tests are used for the analysis of quantitative data and content analysis technique are used for the analysis of qualitative data. Besides that; descriptive statistical tests (arithmetic mean, Standard deviation, percentage and frequency), T-Test, Mann-Whitney U Test, Kruskal Wallis Test and One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) are used to analyze quantitative data. As a result of the study, it is concluded that students' attitudes towards reading books are high. Students' attitudes toward reading books differ significantly according to gender; it is concluded that female students' attitudes toward reading books are considerably higher than male students' attitudes of reading books. This study shows that students' attitudes towards reading book differed significantly according to the presence of a bookcase at home, the family members' frequency of reading books and the frequency of reading books in the classroom. However, it is seen that teachers' reading interests do not differ significantly according to gender, age, marital status, education level and having children. The study unfolds that the teachers' reading interests can be meaningly high who think that reading is effective in being happy and successful in life. The main assumption of the study is that there is no significant relationship between the reading interests of the teachers and the reading attitudes of the students. Key Words: Reading, Reading Attitude, Reading Interest, Habit, Reading Habit, Primary School, Fourth Grade, Primary School Teacher.