The Relations Among Summarizing Instruction, Support for Student Choice, Reading Engagement, and Expository Text Comprehension

• In Event: Adolescent Reading Motivation: Building Stronger Interventions

Abstract

Objective – This study investigated the effects of explicit strategy instruction in summarizing combined with offering students meaningful choices in the classroom as instructional practices for increasing sixth-grade students’ reading engagement and expository text comprehension in social studies.

Theoretical Framework – Research on early adolescents reveals significant declines in intrinsic motivation for reading and points out the need for metacognitive strategy use among middle school students. Research indicates that explicit instruction involving motivation support and metacognitive support for reading strategy use in the context of a discipline such as social studies is an efficient and effective means of increasing reading comprehension. This study explicitly compared a reading engagement model (i.e., strategy plus choice) with strategy only and choice only conditions for a sample of middle school African American students.

Data Sources and Methods – The participants were predominantly African American students from sixth grade using a concurrent embedded mixed methods design. The quantitative portion of the design analyzed the outcomes while the qualitative portion focused upon students’ subjective experiences. Three class sections were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: The experimental section received instruction in summarizing and was provided with student choice; the second section received instruction in summarizing alone; the third section was provided with student choice alone. All activities for the study were created to incorporate strategies outlined for increasing student engagement in other literature (Guthrie, McRae & Klauda, 2007; Wigfield et al., 2008). Data also included the types of student choice preferences and student daily motivation levels using the Experience Sampling Method (Hektner, Schmidt, & Csikszentmilhalyi, 2007).

Results – The results of the study confirm previous research on reading comprehension and engagement using Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) principles (Guthrie, McRae & Klauda, 2007; Wigfield et al., 2008), altered to focus upon one motivator and one reading strategy. The study demonstrated student increases in situated intrinsic motivation, summary writing, expository text comprehension, and reading engagement. Therefore, deliberate classroom interventions, which take into account student diversity and interests through providing meaningful choices, along with proven instructional methodology in summarizing, can create a classroom of engaged learners with improved reading comprehension levels.

Scholarly Significance – This study adds to the literature on reading engagement due to its unique focus on middle school student motivation and use of reading strategies in the discipline of social studies. The instructional practices can be utilized in other classrooms and the results generalized to other similar populations. The population of predominantly African American students differentiates the study from previous studies on reading engagement that included mainly Caucasian students as participants (Guthrie, McRae & Klauda, 2007; Wigfield et al., 2008). Furthermore, the study provides a new demonstration of flow theory (Hektner et al., 2007) as it relates to social studies instruction.

Authors

• Amy Root Littlefield, Holy Trinity Episcopal School/Catholic University of America

• Kathleen C. Perencevich, The Catholic University of America