Knowing and Using Research

Article:

Gutherie, J., & Klaudia S. (2014). Effects of Classroom Practices on Reading Comprehension,
Engagement, and Motivation for Adolescents. Reading Research Quarterly, 49(4):387-416

Article Overview

I am continuously looking for ways to better understand perspectives on literacy instruction in order to
improve my students’ abilities to comprehend both fictional and expository texts. I chose this article
because it was a literacy study at the grade level I teach. I was interested in understanding what specific
strategies were implemented for comprehension and what measurements were taken to determine
student motivation. Lastly, I wanted to understand how I can use the information either in my classroom
or to create a new perspective on student learning.

Summary:

This research article examines Concept Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI), to which extent language
arts instruction integrated with teacher support for student engagement and motivation increases
information text comprehension and motivation in comparison with traditional instruction (TI). One of
the highlights of this research study examines the positive effects of CORI on middle school students as
opposed to elementary students (as done in previous studies). In comparison to similar CORI studies,
this research examined integrated literacy-history instruction (this is very pertinent to me now as a 7th
grade History and English teacher).

Description of CORI:

Core-Oriented Reading Instruction CORI is described as a pedagogy consisting of sets of interleaved

procedures for fostering students’ acquisition of academic literacy.

Previous studies of CORI Effects on achievement, motivation, and engagement:

Previous studies examining CORI assessed the simultaneous implementation of providing choices,
arranging collaborations, supporting competence and offering relevance. They did not investigate how
motivational and engagement supports were linked to increases in motivation apart from their
combination of strategy instruction. This study looked specifically at those supports.

Theoretical Perspectives on motivation and engagement:

CORI utilizes the framework from the self-determination theory, expectancy-value theory, the socio-
cognitive theory, and the activity theory.
Primary Outcomes:

This study used the CORI strategy of teaching using history, specifically US Civil War, as the subject
matter of context. This study also uniquely examined the association\ of students’ perceptions of the
teacher’s motivational support with changes in motivation and engagement. The two primary outcomes
that were looked at were:

1) The extent that CORI allows students to achieve competencies in informational text
comprehension in US Civil War reading more effectively than TI for middle school students.
2) Whether the CORI practices of emphasizing support for student proficiency, choice, and
collaboration assists in student motivation and improved engagement in reading activities in
comparison with TI for middle school students.

Methods:

This study included 615 seventh grade students enrolled in 4 middle schools at a rural public-school
district in a mid-Atlantic state during the 2010-2011 school year. There was a total of 11
reading/language arts teachers participating in the study. Exclusion criteria included: classes of teachers
that started teaching in the second half of the year and could not be provided the proper professional
development, classes where teachers were below implementation thresholds, students without consent
forms filled out by parents, patterns in the students responses indicating they did not follow directions,
students who were suspended or engaged in homeschooling during any of the study period, and lastly
students were excluded if they had an IEP plan in place.

This study used four different types of measurements to assess efficacy; the first measure being a self-
report survey that inquired about students reading motivations, reading engagements, and persistence
in reading activities. The second measurement used was a self-report questionnaire representing four
constructs to assess students’ perceptions of their teacher’s classroom practices and supportive
behaviors during the four weeks of instruction. The third measurement used was the Woodcock-
Johnson-III Reading Fluency Test. This test gives students three minutes to read as many sentences as
they can and indicates whether or not the sentence is true. This test evaluates student reading speed
and understanding of what they read. The final measure this study looked at was informational text
comprehension. For this measure, students were given five reading passages on differing historical
topics. Each reading passage was followed by five multiple choice questions with varying difficulty and
weighted for grading, appropriately based on difficulty.
Results:

This graph represents the effect of the time by order interaction. This confirms the first primary
outcome stating that those students receiving instructional information via CORI as opposed to TI would
have more text comprehension. The result indicates that whenever CORI was taught, the group
receiving it gained text comprehension. In comparison, when TI was taught, there was no change in
comprehension level.

β Standard error β β R2 change

From time 1 to time 2
Concept-Oriented .263 .048 .25 .055***
Reading Instruction
Traditional .154 .035 .16 .023***
instruction

From time 2 to time 3

Concept-Oriented .262 .048 .25 .058***
Reading Instruction
Traditional .161 .042 .16 .021***
instruction
***p < .001.

The results of CORI did show that compared to TI, motivational and engagement supports were stronger
with CORI. CORI had an effect size of .25-.26 standard deviations while TI had an effect size of .15-.16
standard deviations. Although there is statistical significance in CORI compared to TI, the overall effect
size had a relatively low impact on student learning.

Discussion:

This study found that student participation in CORI increased comprehension of informational text more
strongly than traditional instruction did for middle school students. The authors suggest that reading
comprehension of the middle school students in the study increased due to the following CORI
components: motivational engagement, history text, and strategy instruction.

The authors of this study contribute positive effects of CORI versus TI due to enhanced motivational
support. They suggest that students felt more energized to comprehend the text when they found
relevance of the text/learning activity, personal meaning, competence in handling the text, and shared
intrapersonal relationships. Whereas in TI, the students were more likely to read the text literally and
remember the text in fragmented pieces as opposed to obtaining a full comprehension.

The results of this study support findings from other studies that demonstrate instructional effects on
motivation and engagement. These findings also support the use of multiple motivational-engagement
supports in conjunction with strategy instruction for instructional texts in middle school History/English
classrooms and suggests that this strategy may lead to better reading comprehension and therefore
better learning and retaining of knowledge in our students.

Critique/Limitations:

● There were 11 different teachers involved in this study. It discussed that the teachers were not
formally trained in competence support because of what they stated as a limitation of
resources, time, and the teacher level of familiar background with it. Even though they were all
given the same instruction on utilizing the CORI method of instruction there could have been
some variability between teachers which could potentially have lead to differences in results.
● The study excluded students with IEP’s, “because they were provided with a wide variety of
instructional interventions within and outside of the classrooms that researchers could not
supervise or guide.” This makes it unrealistic to some educational populations because students
with IEP cannot legally be excluded from our instruction. This would exclude 11/36 (30%) of the
students I have in one of my classes.
● Demographics are not characteristic of all school districts across the nation. 78.9% of students
were European American only 16.7% African Americans, 3.4% Asian American, and 1% other
ethnicities.
● One of the groups received the CORI method of teaching first and the control second while the
other group received the control method of teaching first and the CORI method second. While
this was seen as a strength in this study (i.e. it allowed the researchers to see how well the
students were able to hold on to the knowledge they obtained from being taught with the CORI
method earlier), I believe it could also be seen as a limitation as it could have swayed the
results.
● Relatively low impact on student learning in comparison to other strategies. Still worth noting
that there is a positive correlation that CORI has on motivation and engagement support.

Classroom Application
After reading this article, I don’t know that I found too much value in CORI as a solid investment of my
instructional time. However, I can take away some value to my learning as an educator. I like the study’s
purpose to discuss the role of motivation and engagement. Where I found the most value is in the
author’s discussion of the theoretical framework. “Engaged reading with informational texts refers to
active text interactions in which students are seeking conceptual understanding of complex topics…They
believe that reading extensively and deeply is beneficial to them in the immediate present” (Guthrie, &
Klaudia, 2014). This ties in with what we have been doing at our site in helping not only build our
students self-efficacy but our staff’s as well.

One way I can foster self-efficacy of the students I teach in my classroom is through appropriate tasks
and feedback. For example, if I choose an excerpt from a text and I know that it will be challenging for
most of them, I know I will need to help them create a surface level understanding and guide my
students by setting a clear purpose for reading the text, briefly modeling my thinking, and chunk the text
appropriately. This will give them opportunities to either read, annotate, or discuss their thoughts as we
move through the text. I can use feedback in a timely manner to specifically address their immediate
concerns and/or frustrations to make the text more accessible to them. As a form of differentiation, I
can help students who need extra prompting and cueing by giving them a metacognitive bookmark and
help them to keep track of where we are in the reading process.