What Are the Noncognitive Factors Related to Middle School Students' Reading Performance?

• In Event: Contextualizing Student Academic Success: Using NAEP Data to Understand Student Achievement

Abstract

A growing body of literature suggests that noncognitive factors such as grit, perseverance, motivation, and self-efficacy play important roles in student achievement, workforce and later life success (Farrington et al., 2012; Richardson, Abraham, & Bond, 2012). For example, motivation and self-efficacy are found to positively relate to reading achievement (Braun, Kirsch & Yamamoto, 2011; Bouffard-Bouchard, Parent & Larivee, 1991).

Despite a growing interest in this topic, much of the existing research relies heavily on non-representative samples of students and lacks in-depth analysis of these related factors and how they relate to reading performance. Reading is important in many aspects. It can affect students’ learning in other subjects when learning largely relies on processing and comprehending written materials. Research has shown that proficient reading skills are important in students’ success in other academic domains (Guthrie, Wigfield & VonSecker, 2000; Schiefele, Schaffner, Moller, & Wigfield, 2012). Unfortunately, the U.S. students’ reading performance is concerning. In 2017, about 32 percent of grade 4 students and 24 percent of grade 8 students performed below the Basic achievement level in the NAEP reading assessment, indicating that many students are struggling to master even fundamental reading skills.

For the first time, the 2017 NAEP collects perseverance, enjoyment of complex problems, and academic self-discipline measures in the contextual student questionnaire, providing us an opportunity to examine their relationship with student’s performance with a nationally representative sample. A prior study on this topic using the 2017 NAEP grade 4 reading data (Ji, Park, & Holmes, 2019) shows that perseverance did not have a direct effect on reading performance but showed indirect effect through confidence in reading knowledge and skills and academic self-discipline. The magnitude of this relationship varies by gender. The effect of perseverance through confidence in reading knowledge and skills on reading performance is much stronger for male students than for female students.

The proposed study is to examine if the relationships between the noncognitive factors and reading performance found for grade 4 can be found for the 2017 grade 8 NAEP data. Table 1 shows demographic characteristics for national public-school sample. Table 2 presents NAEP reading scores by the five noncognitive factors, and table 3 shows comparisons of these scores broken down by gender. The proposed path analysis (see figure 1) includes the five factors on confidence in reading knowledge/skills, perseverance, academic self-discipline, enjoyment of complex problems, and reading interests. Items used to construct the five factors can be found in Appendix A.

Based on the 2017 grade 4 results and the 2017 grade 8 descriptive results, we anticipate similar findings for the 2017 grade 8 reading data. These findings will shed light on the understanding how these noncognitive factors relate to each other and to middle schooler’s reading performance, and how these relationships vary by gender. Understanding these relationships will help researchers and educators know the psychological processes affecting student’s reading behavior and achievement. Thus, it may help students improve their reading performance and be well prepared for high school and beyond.

Authors

• Grace Ji, American Institutes for Research

• Juliet Holmes, American Institutes for Research

• Charles Scott, American Institutes for Research

• Bitnara Jasmine Park, American Institutes for Research