Does Teachers' Engagement in and Quantity of Instruction on Text-Picture Material Have an Impact on Students' Skill Improvement?

• In Event: 35.030 - Multiple Representations and Multimedia: Student Learning and Instruction

Abstract

Objectives
Given the challenges students feel when working with multirepresentational learning material, the study aims at analyzing the impact of teaching on students’ development of text-picture integration skills.

Theoretical framework
Learning with multirepresentational material is common in schools as most school textbooks contain instructional pictures like diagrams (Mayer, 2001). To under-stand texts with instructional pictures, students need to integrate textual and pic-torial information into a coherent knowledge structure (Ainsworth, 1999), which often proves difficult. Especially low-ability students process pictorial information superficially and spend less time than high-ability students on relevant parts of the picture (Hannus & Hyänö, 1999; Schnotz et al., in press). Explicitly picture-oriented instruction can improve students’ understanding of texts with graphics (Mautone & Mayer, 2007), and teachers report high engagement to support students using multirepresentational material (McElvany et al., 2010). However, if teachers’ common instructional practice is helpful for students, especially for those, who need their support most, is not clear. The Matthew’s effect predicts the opposite (Rigney, 2010).
Our objective is to analyze, whether teachers’ self-reported (a) quantity, (b) engagement in, and (c) avoidance of discussing multirepresentational material predicts positive development of text-picture in¬tegration skills in students (Question 1). Furthermore, we test whether there is a moderating effect of students’ cognitive and text-picture integration skills (Question 2).

Methods
Students’ text-picture integration skills and verbal cognitive abilities were tested twice with one year in between (t1, t2). Teachers filled in questionnaires concerning their text-picture integration instruction at t1. Quantity, engagement and avoidance were assessed each with 4 items, using a four-point Likert answering scale for engagement and avoidance and a six-point scale for quantity. In multilevel analyses conducted with HLM, we analyzed the impact of teachers’ instructional behaviors (level 2) on students’ text-picture integration skills at t2, controlling for these skills and cognitive ability at t1 (level 1) and school track on level 2 (Q1). For Q2, interactions between level 1- and instruction variables were estimated.

Data source
N = 891 fifth and seventh grade students from 40 classrooms from three secondary school tracks (lower, medium and upper track with achievement-based attendance) and one Biology, Geography or German teacher for each class (n = 40) participated in the study.

Results
Regarding Q1, no significant main effects of quantity, engagement, or avoidance on students’ competence development were found (see Table 1).
Concerning Q2, we found students with higher cognitive ability to profit marginally more both from teacher engagement (p < .10) and from quantity of using text-picture materials in class (p < .10). No interaction with student text-picture integration skills at t1 was found. Model 2 shows a marginally significant main effect of instructional quantity if the interaction with cognitive ability is included.

Significance
Results demonstrate that especially for low-ability students, more than frequent and engaged common practice of instruction in text-picture integration is needed to improve students’ skills in this field. More research on effective instructional approaches is necessary. Teacher education could be improved, as it currently does often not explicitely include text-picture integration problems.

Authors

• Britta Oerke, Technische Universität Dortmund

• Nele McElvany, TU Dortmund University

• Annika Ohle, TU Dortmund