Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Older students with reading disabilities (RD), those in fourth grade would rather clean their room than read,
the upper elementary grades and beyond, are particu- with one student stating, Id rather clean the mold
larly at risk for developing motivational problems around the bathtub than read (p. 442). Decreasing
related to reading. In fact, a downward trend in reading reading motivation is especially alarming given that
motivation with age has been found in the population motivational and attitudinal characteristics are better
at large, not just specific to students with RD (McKenna, predictors of reading achievement as children get older
Kear, & Ellsworth, 1995). Diminishing reading motiva- than when children are in the early elementary grades
tion is particularly stark for poor readers in the post- (Paris & Oka, 1989).
primary grade years. An illustrative example of the Young childrens motivation to read is typically less
extent of these declines in reading motivation is a study affected by failure than older childrens. Until about the
by Juel (1988), who found 40% of poor readers in the third grade, children tend to be generally unable to
Goal setting Used prior to reading; Prediction Used prior to and during
emphasis on process goals; reading; use of textual
goals set to improve learning cues to predict content
rather than performance to be read in text;
predictions monitored
while reading text and
re-predictions made
group (n = 9). The following describes the procedures strategy focus drawn from work in reciprocal teaching
for each group (also see Table 1). (Palinscar & Brown, 1984). Instructors modeled specific
Guided reading procedures. The reading comprehen- comprehension strategies, including prediction, sum-
sion strategy instruction designed for this intervention marization, and question generation, to enhance active
was based in part on techniques used in guided reading and strategic reading. Instructors used modeling heav-
(Cunningham & Allington, 1999), with a more specific ily during the first sessions, followed by guided practice
Table 2
Pretest and Posttest Means and Standard Deviations
Group
Guided Reading Explicit Comprehension
Variable Pretest Posttest Pretest Posttest
Reading Self-Efficacy 1
Reading Comp. Main Idea Ident. .00 .02 -.23 .48* -.26 .96** 1
*p<.05. **p<.01.
participants to see. They explained the purpose of difference between main idea thinking and retelling (or
using the strategy, how it would likely be beneficial to summarization) by explaining that the former is a
students, and the situations in which it could be used. search for the single most important idea conveyed,
Next, the instructors explicitly modeled use of the whereas the latter is creating a brief retelling of several
strategy. During modeling, instructors thought aloud important points in the text. Finally, participants were
the cognitive statements they made to themselves taught to give themselves feedback regarding use of the
internally when using the strategy. Modeling was fol- strategies and their value in understanding the text.
lowed by collaborative practice in which the instructor The mnemonic sheet served as a self-monitoring form
and participant worked together in using the strategy. for participants to check off whether they had used
Finally, participants independently practiced the strat- each strategy. Additionally, instructors used strategy-
egy and thus completed the strategy control transfer value feedback, based on the work of Schunk and Rice
from teacher to student. (1992), to explicitly show participants the link between
For the goal setting strategy, process goals were using the strategies and improved comprehension of
emphasized over product goals. Instructors taught par- the text. Examples of strategy-value feedback state-
ticipants to set goals to understand the text and to use ments include Since you have been using the strate-
the strategies to better understand the text. When
gies, you are better able to find the main idea and
using the prior knowledge strategy, participants
Now that you are using the strategies, you really
thought about what they already knew about the topic
understand what you are reading.
of the text. While the use of prediction is influenced by
prior knowledge, prediction is a more specific strategy Treatment Fidelity
that uses cues from the text, such as titles, pictures, During implementation of the interventions, instruc-
bold words, and subheadings, to hypothesize what the tors received frequent supervision and feedback. On at
text will be about. The main idea strategy was based on least two occasions, one of the principal investigators
the work of Vaughn and Klingner (1999). Here partici- observed each instructor during live instructional ses-
pants were taught to get the gist of the text and to sions to monitor fidelity of treatment. Corrective feed-
state the main idea in their own words using 10 or back was given after these observations. In addition,
fewer words. Instructors also taught participants the weekly staff meetings were held in which instructors
70
68
Reading Self-Efficacy Scoree
66
64
62
60
58
56
54
Pretest Posttest
Time
Guided Reading
Explicit Comprehension
than participants in the Explicit Comprehension inter- hension intervention made greater gains in attribu-
vention (see Figure 1). A medium effect size (d = tions to incorrect strategy usage when presented with
- .52) was found for the difference between interven- reading failure scenarios than did participants in the
tion groups. Guided Reading intervention (see Figure 2). The effect
Reading attributions to strategy usage. A violation size was medium (.74).
of the homogeneity of regression slopes assumption for The two-way ANOVA for attributions to correct strat-
ANCOVA occurred for the data representing attribution egy usage for reading success indicated an interaction
to incorrect strategy usage for reading failure situations.
effect that approached statistical significance, F (1, 18)
Additionally, the assumption of linearity was violated
= 2.96, p = .10. Those in the Explicit Comprehension
for the data representing attribution to correct strategy
intervention showed greater gains in their attributions
usage for reading successes. Therefore, the use of
to correct strategy usage when presented with reading
ANCOVA was inappropriate. Because both the assump-
tions of normality and equality of variance were met, success scenarios than did the Guided Reading group. A
two-way (intervention x pre-/post-) ANOVAs were used medium effect size of .61 was calculated for the differ-
to analyze these data. ence between groups.
The analysis indicated a significant interaction effect Reading affect. ANCOVA applied to posttest scores
for participants attributions to incorrect strategy usage for positive and negative affect for reading did not yield
for reading failures, F (1, 18) = 5.03, p < .05. The inter- treatment effects, F (1, 18) = .01 and F (1, 18) = .04,
action effect indicated those in the Explicit Compre- respectively.
Figure 2. Interaction for attribution to incorrect strategy usage for reading failure.
Importance of Incorrect Strategy Usage for Failure
16
14
12
10
0
Pretest Posttest
Time
Guided Reading
Explicit Comprehension