Engaging Adolescents in Reading

John T. Guthrie

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781452294841
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Metodi didattici per la lettura

With contributions from content teachers, this insightful book discusses instructional approaches, student activities, and textbooks that can motivate reluctant learners to become active readers.

1

Reading Motivation and Engagement in Middle and High School

Appraisal and Intervention

John T. Guthrie University of Maryland

This chapter sets the stage for our approach to motivation and engagement in middle and high school reading. First, we portray the dilemmas. Students read too little, and they rarely read for deep understanding. They seldom read to expand their sense of who they are as people. Faced with students who are less than ideally motivated, teachers often attempt to control behavior and get through the day. With so many responsibilities, teachers too rarely provide instructional support for reading engagement. A range of new research, however, yields insights about students’ needs and teachers’ actions. Our second goal is to introduce the teaching practices that can work. Throughout the book, we depict examples for classrooms or whole school initiatives.

Dilemmas of Students’ Motivation and Engagement in School Reading

Reading in high school is tied tightly to motivation. A majority of Advanced Placement (AP) students are motivated readers. However, many on-grade level, slightly below-grade level, or seriously deficient students are demotivated, apathetic, or expressly resistant to reading school content. Too many students report that they seldom do homework, that their minds drift in class, and that they do not see reading as functional to their future lives. A majority of students have little interest in reading for pleasure. At least half believe that they cannot read proficiently enough to understand the textbooks they use daily in classes. Alarming as they appear, these claims are buttressed by ample evidence.

In 2003, a nationally representative sample of Grade 12 students took a survey about their reading engagement (Grigg, Daane, Jin, & Campbell, 2003). Students answered questions such as, “How often do you read something for school?” with possible responses of “Every day,” “A few times a week,” “Once a week,” or “About once a month.” The responses were astonishing. A huge majority of 12th graders (93%) reported that they did not read every day for school. The bulk of the most extreme nonreaders had already dropped out of school and did not respond to the survey. A substantial majority (69%) did not read for enjoyment. This is a problem, because reading for enjoyment is a signal of intrinsic motivation, which refers to reading for its own sake.

An abundance of statistical research shows that intrinsic motivation drives students’ amount of reading. Students who read for internal reasons (interest, pleasure, favorite topics) read a lot and achieve highly. In contrast, students who read only for external reasons, such as grades, rewards, or recognition, do not read as often or as deeply. These are not mere notions or subjective impressions. They are well-verified conclusions from extensive, carefully designed interviews, questionnaires, and diary studies (see Table 1.1: Stanovich & Cunningham, 1992; Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997).

Some would say that adolescents across the globe are disinterested in reading for school. Perhaps, but in a comparison of fifteen-year-old students across the globe, U.S. students showed low reading engagement. In an extensive international survey in 2000, fifteen-year-olds reported how much time they read for enjoyment, the breadth and depth of the books and magazines they read, and their level of reading interest. Together, these qualities were merged into an index of “reading engagement.” United States students ranked 20th out of 28 developed countries on this reading engagement index, lower than Finland, Norway, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, Korea, and the list of countries goes on (Kirsch et al., 2002). In this survey, U.S. students were 24th out of 28 countries on the proportion who were “book readers,” as contrasted with “magazine readers,” “newspaper readers,” and “light fiction readers.” Thus, the United States did not show well in that international comparison of reading engagement and motivation.

Table 1.1 Grade 12 Students’ Reading for School and Enjoyment

Questions	Percentage Agreed
Do not read daily for school	93%
Rarely read science articles, history sources, or textbooks	74%
Almost never read for own enjoyment	69%
Reading is not a favorite activity	66%
Do not read a book from the library more than once a month	62%

We might not have cause for concern if reading engagement and motivation were merely recreational. But these qualities contribute to achievement in reading. (Guthrie, Hoa, Wigfield, Tonks, Humenick, & Littles, 2007). In the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) comparison, students’ reading engagement predicted achievement on a test of reading comprehension in every nation tested, including the United States. Also, students’ reading interest predicted their reading comprehension in every country.

Remarkably, reading engagement was more important than students’ family background consisting of parents’ education and income. Reading engagement connected to achievement more strongly than to home environment. Students with high reading engagement, but lower parental education and income, had higher reading achievement than students with lower reading engagement and the same background characteristics did. In this study and others, reading engagement trumped socioeconomic status as a correlate of reading achievement (Guthrie, Schafer, & Huang, 2001). No one is claiming that this is a causal relationship. Reading engagement and reading achievement interact in a spiral. Higher achievers read more, and the more engaged these students become, the higher they achieve. Likewise, lower achievers read less, and the less engaged decline in achievement. The spiral goes downward as well as upward. In fact, continued low engagement is a precursor to dropping out of school (Finn & Rock, 1997). Thus, engagement is not benign.

Disengagement from reading has its roots in earlier years. According to a nationally representative survey of fourth graders in 2005, 65% of students did not report reading as a favorite activity. In the same survey, 73% of students did not read frequently for enjoyment, and 59% of students stated that they did not believe that they learned very much when reading books. In our judgment, reading as a favorite activity and reading for enjoyment are indicators of intrinsic motivation for reading. These statistics indicate that a substantial majority of Grade 4 students are not intrinsically motivated to read. Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) further show that students’ intrinsic motivation, according to these indicators, decreased from 2002 to 2005 (Donahue, Daane, & Yin, 2005).

Compared to students in other countries, fourth graders in the United States are astonishingly low in intrinsic motivation for reading. A 2001 nationally representative sample of fourth graders from 35 countries ranked the United States 33rd in an index of students’ attitudes toward reading (Mullis, Martin, Gonzalez, & Kennedy, 2003). In reading for their own interest outside of school, an indicator of intrinsic reading motivation, the U.S. students ranked 32nd. Students from the United States were equally unlikely to choose stories, novels, or reading for information outside of school. In a reanalysis of these data with a different coding scheme by independent investigators, U.S. students were found to be ranked 35th out of 35 countries in the revised index of attitudes toward reading. Though we should be cautious in interpreting the data from the lowest achievers due to unreliability in the measures, the apparent demotivation of U.S. students is nevertheless alarming (Gnaldi, Schagen, & Twist, 2005; Twist, Gnaldi, & Schagen, 2004).

In this book we are referring to school reading. Encompassing the interaction with fiction, literature, science, history, current events, personal narratives, Internet texts, and personal journals, this is no small domain. What distinguishes this domain from out-of-school reading is the premium that is placed on the goals of gaining knowledge, using text for improving other skills such as math or historical thinking, exchanging thoughts and opinions with peers, and aesthetic enjoyment of literature or of well-formed ideas. Out-of-school reading often centers on social interactions and is likely to feed personal pursuits or popular culture (Alvermann, 2001). Clearly, students can be engaged in nonschool literacy without being engaged in academic reading. But it is the frequency and depth of academic reading that associates positively and highly with measured reading comprehension, whereas nonschool reading (e.g., magazine reading) associates negatively with tested comprehension among adolescents both in the United States and in other countries (Kirsch et al., 2002). Our aim here is to explore the dynamics of school reading and its cultivation in the classroom.

Challenge: Teacher Support for Motivation and Engagement

Why are so many students disengaged from school reading? Without a doubt, lack of parental support, Internet distractions, and students’ gainful employment are contributing factors. In addition, classrooms are a major source of disaffection with reading. Although motivation is not created in a week, students are highly sensitive to the classroom context. If a single teacher affords her students a certain number of well-designed choices in their reading, students respond with a bit more investment to those reading tasks. It is unrealistic to expect one teacher’s actions to spread motivation throughout a student’s life. However, within the microworld of one classroom, the motivational context matters. If this is true, how do students experience reading in high school?

Across our nation, U.S. students in Grade 12 took a questionnaire in 1998 and 2002. Combining across these, we present a portrait of student perceptions. This is a tip of the iceberg, but an important one. Table 1.2 shows results of threats to students’ reading activities in response to questions such as, “When you are given reading assignments in class, how often do you have time to read books you have chosen?” Additional questions and their results are given in the table. Students answered either “Daily,” “Weekly,” “Several times a month,” “Monthly,” or “Never.”

In this survey, students reported that in science and history classes, they almost never read books other than the textbook. While seemingly normal, this is actually problematic. Textbooks in these subjects are extremely difficult and are beyond the reach of all but the most advanced readers. Confronted with such texts, students suffer low self-efficacy when they try to read. In response, teachers often shelve the textbooks, and students are deprived of the knowledge they contain.

Students also reported that they rarely work in groups to understand the books in school. Restricting reading to an individual activity disadvantages many students who are disposed to social interaction and who need discussion to learn. Students are almost never given opportunities to choose books that are central to their academic learning. For example, 82% reported that teachers never give them time to read books they choose, and 86% reported that they never select books from the library for school reading. The table shows the numbers from this nationally representative sample of 12th graders.

Table 1.2 Motivation Threats to School Reading Activities

Stem for all questions: “When you are given reading assignments in class, how often do you …”
Questions	Percentage Agreed	Motivation Threatened
Read other than textbook for science	35	Self-efficacy
Read other than textbook for social studies	38	Self-efficacy
Work in groups to talk about text	35	Social interaction
Do a group project about what you read	29	Social interaction
Have time to read books you have chosen	18	Choice and control
Use library to borrow books for school	14	Choice and control
Have teacher help you break words into parts	23	Self-efficacy
Have teacher help you understand new words	55	Self-efficacy

This profile shows that students report rarely reading outside of the textbook, seldom collaborating with other students to interpret books, and infrequently choosing a text, a book, or a reading selection for schoolwork. This pattern raises barriers to motivation development because students require support for self-efficacy (through using readable texts), social interaction (through collaborating to read), and self-direction (through guidance in making good choices about reading).

In contrast to these instructional practices, students say that they usually experience a different set of teacher-directed reading activities. On the same questionnaires (Grigg et al., 2003; Levine, Rathbun, Selden, & Davis, 1998), 12th-grade students said that they were likely to do the following on a daily or weekly basis: (1) read silently in school (74%), (2) explain understanding of what you read to the class (65%), (3) have a class discussion of what you read (62%), (4) write about what you read (61%), or (5) make a class presentation about something you read (54%). Thus, a majority of 12th-grade students say they read silently, have class discussions, and write about what they read. Although these are sensible practices, they are not highly motivating. Such a pattern shows that reading is mostly textbook driven, teacher controlled, and content centered. Insufficient attention is paid to students’ needs for making choices (being in control), showing competence (experiencing self-efficacy), and socially engaging with text (feeling related and belonging), all of which enable students to become motivated, engaged readers.

Although teachers often “inherit” highly motivated or unmotivated students from past classrooms and teachers, students are also sensitive to the context of a single classroom. Motivation for a course is not determined solely by home characteristics, or by the innate quality of being an avid learner. Within limits, the learning environment a teacher creates counts for students’ motivation. Next, we overview students’ reading motivations and how teachers can influence them, which is the subject of this book.

Meaning Is Motivating: Classroom Goal Structures

If students view the classroom as emphasizing understanding the main ideas, they become internally motivated. When students think that the teacher is devoted to their learning, they will read deeply. In contrast, when students perceive the teacher as bent on giving tests, checking scores, comparing students to each other, and striving exclusively toward external accountabilities, they become extrinsically motivated. These students will read for the test, but not for their own learning. They will seek the gold star, but not the comprehension of content. They will cheat, if necessary, to attain their goals and will minimize their efforts. On the other hand, when the teacher sets and sustains a context for engaged reading, students will grow intrinsically motivated and become invested in literacy learning.

Faced with a classroom of students who resist the text, teachers usually resort to coercion. Teachers often attempt to compel students to read under the threat of frequent testing. In the forms of weekly quizzes, daily writing tasks, and end-of-course grades, teachers demand compliance. Under a state of coercion, students’ commitment to reading is undermined. Just at the age when students seek to be competent and independent, teachers are increasing their controls, constraints, and the regulation of students’ school lives. Consequently, students rebel by not reading, not doing their homework, not paying attention in class, or not coming to class.

Control and Choice: Supporting Self-Directed Reading

It is self-evident that teachers cannot turn every page for every student in middle school and high school. Students become self-directing or they fail. Explicitly helping students to become self-directed is a charge to all teachers. Many teachers do it implicitly, without plans and conferences. Others either deliberately or unintentionally neglect this real need.

Enabling students to control significant elements of their reading and writing work is motivating. This refers to affording students significant choices in their reading. English teachers often allow students a choice of one of two short stories to read and critique. In history, effective teachers can allow students to select one of two sides of a controversial issue for reading and learning. In science, teachers can enable students to choose a subtopic for closer inspection in specialized reading. In these situations, students can determine how they will display their knowledge, or how they will express their understanding of text-based material.

Fortunately, teachers do not have to teach students to want choice. Students desire self-direction and control over their lives, especially in secondary school. Students seek more freedom...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Editor
• About the Contributors
• 1. Reading Motivation and Engagement in Middle and High School: Appraisal and Intervention
• 2. Meaning Is Motivating: Classroom Goal Structures
• 3. Control and Choice: Supporting Self-Directed Reading
• 4. Reading Is Social: Bringing Peer Interaction to the Text
• 5. Self-Efficacy: Building Confident Readers
• 6. Interest in Reading: Potency of Relevance
• 7. Growing Motivation: How Students Develop
• 8. Struggling Readers: Boosting Motivation in Low Achievers
• 9. Next Steps for Teachers
• Questionnaires
• Resources
• Bibliography
• Index