How do perceptions of importance support from a reading intervention affect students' motivation, engagement, and comprehension?
Abstract
Interventions can enhance students' motivation for reading, but few researchers have assessed the effects of the specific motivation‐enhancing practices that comprise these interventions. Even fewer have evaluated how students' perceptions of different intervention practices impact their later motivation and academic outcomes. In this study, we utilised data from a study of Concept‐Oriented Reading Instruction, a programme designed to enhance seventh‐grade students' reading comprehension and motivation. We examined the effects of students perceiving one practice from this intervention, emphasising the importance of reading, which was designed to enhance their task values for reading (Eccles‐Parsons et al., 1983). Unexpectedly, structural equation modelling analyses showed that students' perceptions of importance support predicted their later competence‐related beliefs, but not their task values. Students' competence‐related beliefs predicted their reading comprehension and behavioural engagement, whereas students' task values predicted reading engagement. However, there were no significant indirect effects of perceiving importance support on students' reading outcomes.
Highlights
What is already known about this topic
- Interventions targeting students' task values have improved their academic outcomes in science and math.
- Concept‐Oriented Reading Instruction is a successful multifaceted reading comprehension intervention programme, implemented by classroom teachers. It includes a variety of theoretically based practices to enhance students' reading motivation, including the practice of importance support to increase students' task values.
What this paper adds
- Structural equation modelling analyses showed that students who perceived more importance support during Concept‐Oriented Reading Instruction reported higher competence‐related beliefs, but not task values.
- This study is one of very few that have measured students' perceptions of individual teacher‐delivered motivation‐enhancing practices in the reading classroom.
Implications for theory, policy or practice
- The findings show that students who perceive more of the practice of importance support show higher motivation to learn.
- However, results suggest that value‐targeting intervention practices might affect students' competence‐related beliefs more strongly than their task values in some circumstances.
Number of times cited: 1
- Patricia A. Alexander, Engagement and literacy: reading between the lines, Journal of Research in Reading, 41, 4, (732-739), (2018).
