Dialectical reading in the Web environment: findings from a case study

Initially, reading challenges related to the web environment will be discussed in the current paper followed by describing four reading modes including exegetical, dogmatic, agnostic and dialectical which have been proposed by Walter Kaufman. The research aimed to examine such modes of reading in the Web environment via a questionnaire distributed among the postgraduate students in Shahed University of Tehran, IRAN. By stratified-random sampling method, 266 students were selected as the statistical population of the research from a population of 800 students. By descriptive and nonparametric statistical analysis, the finding of the research indicate that the students have respectively used agnostic (52.6 %), dialectical (33.5 %), dogmatic (11.3 %) and finally exegetical (2.6 %) reading modes in the reading of web resources. More statistical analyses according to the gender, faculty and level of students showed that dialectical reading, as the ideal mode of reading, is the secondary mode after the agnostic one. Paper recommends the necessity of instructing advanced information literacy and critical thinking skills for dialectical. The literature review shows that the current research is the first one regarding dialectical reading mode in the Web environment.