Reading and understanding texts of all kinds is a basic competence for participating in social and cultural life and for being successful on a job. The PISA-surveys have shown that, although most European adolescents dispose of adequate reading competencies at the end of school, about a quarter of them cannot meet the minimal standards. Not only has the European Commission failed in decreasing this risk-group of low achievers
in reading, (a goal aimed at in the Education Benchmarks), but the share of low achievers has even increased since 2000.
The urgency of this societal problem has induced the European Commission to invite tenders for a Socrates-Programme with the following aims and objectives: “Better understanding of the phenomenon of poor reading and poor readers in order to better
combat the problem.”
Within these goals, the ADORE-Project has investigated into the reading instruction for adolescent struggling readers in 11 European countries and searched for examples of “good practice” in the enhancement of these students. The participants of this project were reading-experts from universities and teacher-training-institutions from the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Romania and Switzerland.