Digital reading didactics in primary education: insights into differentiated digital reading instruction

Abstract

Reading texts on a screen has become a routine part of everyday life. While teaching reading in primary school, this calls for practical didactic approaches combining differentiation, digitalization and cross-curricular content. This study examines how digital differentiated cross-curricular reading materials (EFADIL) are implemented in Grade 3 classrooms in Austria. A mixed- methods design integrates teacher interviews ( N = 34), classroom observations ( N = 33), and student questionnaires ( N = 605). The findings reveal tensions between perceived advantages, disadvantages, and enacted classroom practices. The materials provided a motivating learning environment and enabled differentiation and independent work. Simultaneously, they might lead to superficial and rapid task processing, along with variations in the use of the interactive digital features (e.g., glossary word function). Tasks requiring language production were often perceived to be more cognitively demanding. The study reveals instructional guidance, the teachers' role, and dimensions of instructional quality to be key factors in ensuring that digital differentiated materials support effective and inclusive reading instruction.