Reading literacy
PISA defines reading not just as understanding a text, but as working with texts to achieve one's goals, build knowledge and take part in society.
Definition
Reading literacy is understanding, using, evaluating, reflecting on and engaging with texts in order to achieve one's goals, to develop one's knowledge and potential and to participate in society. This definition has applied since the 2018 framework, which gave more weight to digital texts and to working with multiple sources.
Three processes
Locate information
Find information within a text; search for and select what is relevant across several texts.
Understand
Grasp literal meaning; integrate parts of a text and draw inferences.
Evaluate and reflect
Judge quality and credibility; reflect on content and form; handle conflicting information.
PISA also measures reading fluency with short items: students quickly decide whether a sentence makes sense.
Text types
- Single-source and multiple-source: a text by one author, or texts by different authors that need to be compared.
- Continuous, non-continuous and mixed: running prose, tables, graphs, diagrams, lists, or a combination.
- Static and dynamic: fixed text as on paper, or a web page with links.
Tasks are often grouped into a scenario: for example, a student reads a blog, a science article and a news item on one issue and compares them.
Levels
The reading scale is divided into levels from 1c to 6. Level 2 (from about 407 points) is the baseline: students identify the main idea of a moderately long text, connect several pieces of information and understand a text's purpose. Students at Levels 5–6 handle long, unfamiliar texts, detect hidden assumptions and justify their judgement of a source's credibility.
In class
- Give two conflicting sources on one topic and ask: “Whom can you trust, and why?”
- Read texts with tables and graphs: reading is not only the literature teacher's job.
- Ask students to say separately what the text states and what can be inferred from it.
Example task: “Phones in class: opinion or data?”.
Sources
Our summary of the PISA 2018 reading framework, which was also used in the 2022 and 2025 cycles.