Do Knowledge and Motivation Matter? The Role of General Knowledge and Reading Motivation in Reading Achievement in the Elementary Years

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

The dissertation consists of two studies. The first study used a U.S. longitudinal dataset and addressed the questions: 1. Does general knowledge measured in kindergarten predict reading growth in the elementary years? 2. To what extent does third-grade reading motivation explain reading growth over and above general knowledge? The second study used three international datasets and addressed the question: In five countries, how are fourth-grade motivational constructs for reading and science knowledge related to informational and narrative reading comprehension in students who are SLLs and students who are monolinguals?

Methods
For the first study, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 was used. The main statistical approaches included factor analysis to identify motivational constructs and multi-group latent growth modeling to examine how early general knowledge in kindergarten and reading motivation in third grade explain reading growth, while controlling for early decoding skills and demographic covariates (see Figure 1 and 2). For the second study, three merged international datasets (PIRLS 2011, TIMSS 2011, and the combined dataset of TIMSS and PIRLS 2011) were used. Factor analysis was used for motivational constructs, and the role of science knowledge (a proxy for general knowledge) and reading motivation in informational and narrative reading comprehension was analyzed by using multi-group multilevel regression, controlling for demographic covariates. In both studies, the reading models were examined separately for students who were SLLs and students who were MLs, and the coefficients of the predictors and covariates were compared between the groups using the Wald chi-square test.

Findings and Implications
General knowledge predicted reading development concurrently and longitudinally, in students who were SLLs and students who were MLs to a similar extent (see Table 1 and 2 for the results). The findings suggest that enhancing knowledge at the beginning of schooling and in the middle grade may support reading development in students who are SLLs as well as students who are MLs. However, policies related to reading development often (e.g., the U.S. No Child Left Behind Act) have focused on enhancing reading skills apart from knowledge development. It is important to convince policy makers that enhancing students’ knowledge has the potential to support reading development not only in students who are MLs but also students who are SLLs.
Reader self-perception, defined as how readers feel about themselves, significantly contributed to reading development concurrently and longitudinally in both groups to a similar extent. It is worth noting that reader self-perception explained reading growth even in the period when the rate of reading growth was decelerated. Professional development for teachers to enhance reader self-perception of students has the potential to support their reading development, regardless of language status. (742 words excluding references)

Author

• HyeJin Hwang, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor