National Literacy Tour Creates Opportunity for Groundbreaking Research Project

When the Washington College Department of Education team saw an opportunity to ride along—figuratively at least—with an exciting national literacy tour known as Busload of Books, they enthusiastically jumped aboard.

From left to right: Avery Castellani '24, Riley McHugh '24, Nick Garcia, Ph.D, Assistant Professor of Sociology; Bridget Bunten, Ph.D,  Associate Professor of Education; Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr. When the Washington College Department of Education team saw an opportunity to ride along—figuratively at least—with an exciting national literacy tour known as Busload of Books, they enthusiastically jumped aboard. Led by an interdisciplinary team of faculty and students, the result is the creation of a groundbreaking research project that collects data about the impact that access to books has on childhood literacy in a way that has never been done before. 

Busload of Books is a year-long project by author/illustrator duo Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr promoting literacy, celebrating America’s educators, and raising awareness of the challenges facing the nation’s public schools. Swanson and Behr are traveling with their family in a renovated school bus to visit one Title I school serving economically disenfranchised communities in each state, plus the District of Columbia, giving away about 25,000 hardcover books along the 25,000-mile journey. The tour kicked off at Mount Pleasant Elementary School in Wilmington, Delaware on August 30 and is expected to last throughout the entire 2022-23 school year, wrapping up in June 2023.  

The connection to Washington College came via Sara Clarke-De Reza, assistant professor of education and director of the Museum, Field, and Community Education minor, who has a long-time friendship with the couple and was helping them with some fundraising. “Knowing that I work in education and am pretty nerdy about research they asked me to find research about book deserts, the connection between poverty and literacy, and the benefits of using picture books or graphic novels to reach students who didn’t enjoy reading,” said Clarke-De Reza. “Essentially they were looking for data that could bolster their case.” 

“That’s when they started to tell me all of these stories about how their assemblies were changing lives,” she added. “Stories about how teachers would contact them and let them know that a student read a whole book for the first time, or wrote their own book and brought it to school inspired by Robbi and Matthew’s one visit.” 

Intrigued, Clarke-De Reza asked the next logical question—has anyone tried to study this before? She did a cursory review and found nothing about the impact of author visits on students and school. 

“I saw a really cool opportunity that tons of people care about and would benefit from,” she said. “There are so many stories that support these types of visits—it’s clear that there is general consensus that it’s a great thing and has an impact—but there is no robust large-scale research. For me, it was a dream opportunity.” 

Clarke-De Reza then turned to her colleagues, who immediately recognized the value of the opportunity and got onboard for a large-scale, three-year research project. They designed the research plan with Washington College students at the center, bringing two student researchers on board, and teaching them how to do the work on a real-world project. In addition to Clarke-De Reza, who is the project manager and lead researcher, the interdisciplinary research team includes Bridget Bunten, Associate Professor of Education and Chair of the Washington College Education Department; Nick Garcia, Assistant Professor of Sociology; Erin Counihan and Michelle Johnson, lecturers in Education, and students Riley McHugh ’24, Avery Castellani ’24, and Brooke Thomas ‘26. 

One of the key aspects of getting the project up and running was reaching out to the schools on the tour with an invitation to also participate in the research component.  About 30 of the 51 schools signed on. For the data collection, students in each school will be surveyed at three different points, with questions focused on their attitudes and beliefs around reading. This will happen about a week prior to the Busload of Books tour stop at their school, immediately after the assembly, and again about 30 days after the visit.  

The goal with the series of surveys is to measure both the short and long-term impact of the assembly and the book that each student will receive.  As part of the research, teachers will also be surveyed at two separate points, one right before the visit and a second one about 30 days after. For the final data set, administrators will also be providing feedback through a single survey that gets completed about one month after the assembly. 

“The surveys will let us understand the differences among schools with vastly different resources and capture student information from remarkably different communities,” said Garcia. “From underserved urban schools to those in Appalachia, this is a unique opportunity to understand student and teacher input from across vastly different geographies. I'm very interested to see what our findings mean for elementary schools.” 

The research team also created curriculum materials that are available to teachers in the participating schools that introduce students to the books, and provide activities that they might do after. Whether and how teachers use these instructional materials will also factor into the data analysis.  

“What makes this so exciting is that a project and companion survey of this magnitude have never been conducted before,” said Bunten. “From a data perspective, we don’t yet have a firm understanding of what might be the impact of a one-time author or illustrator visit to a school.”   

While this is a multi-year project—full data collection will conclude in July 2023—the team anticipates having data from about half of the participating schools by the end of the fall semester, at which time they may be able to draw some preliminary conclusions. The team’s hope is that the findings lead to more funding for similar experiences and opportunities to expand access to books.

In the short-term, the data will be used to design proposals for conferences, but they foresee the potential to design a national professional development opportunity for educators where they can share their findings more broadly. The research has the potential to contribute in other meaningful ways, such as informing state and local educational policy, funding, and curricular decisions.