Student Motivation in Literacy, Intervention and Strategies for the Promotion of Literacy
and the Potential for Science Fiction to Enable Readers
Greg Brown-Davis
The subject for this literature review is reader engagement for high school sophomore
boys. This literature review will address the relationship between motivation constructs, reading
interventions, teaching practices and the ability for science fiction (sci-fi) to engage sophomore
boys. The review begins by examining empirical research on motivation constructs in reading,
establishing why students do or do not read. Once those elements are identified it works to
establish who disengaged readers are. From there the review examines qualitative studies
discussing effective classroom practices revolving around literature with both classroom literacy
intervention and cultural/social involvement in literacy. The final component of the review will
revolve around science fiction’s ability to serve as a channel for interacting with the students.
The primary focus of inquiry explores science fiction’s ability to engage students in both literacy
as well as literary elements, drawing them in with thematic content paralleling structures
established in the conventional canon. Tangentially several of the papers referenced connect
science-fiction to content specific materials ranging from science to ethics, and the ability of
such writing to be applicable across curriculum.
Reading Motivations of Students in Grades K-12
Bozack’s 2011 study served as the genesis for this literature review, and was based on the
research begun with the Motivations for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ) developed by Wigfield,
Guthrie and McGough (1997). Wigfield, et al established 11 motivation constructs: Reading
Efficacy, Reading Challenge, Reading Curiosity, Reading Involvement, Importance of Reading,
Reading Work Avoidance, Competition in Reading, Recognition for Reading, Reading for
Grades, Social Reasons for Reading, and Compliance. Wigfield and Baker (1999) later gave the
MRQ was to 298 4th and 5th graders in four mid-Atlantic schools. Though focused on primary
schools, the motivational constructs were established and validated. Confirmatory Factor
Analysis (CFA) "showed good internal consistency reliabilities, with the exception of Work
Avoidance" (Baker & Wigfield, 1999). The conception that motivations for literacy is
multifaceted was confirmed with cluster analysis. Wigfield and Baker took the responses to the
MRQ and clustered the students into seven groups. Relevance from this study comes in two
implications:
First, rather than thinking of children as either high or low in motivation, it is important
to understand that many children have a mixture of motivational characteristics, some of
which may facilitate their engagement in reading and others could lead them to
disengage. Second, different groups of children in the classroom will respond
differentially to various motivation strategies teachers’ use. (Baker & Wigfield, 1999, p.
470)
There are several different implications, but the one of most relevant was that girl students
showed “more positive views than did [the boys] on all but two of the dimensions, Work
Avoidance and Competition” (Baker & Wigfield, 1999, p. 473).
Bozack’s research was a preliminary quantitative study of 330 students and 8 teachers at
a Catholic high school, and she developed a High School Literacy Project Questionnaire
(HSLPQ) to be appropriate for high school students off of the MRQ. The major differences in
Bozack’s research were that this targeted an all-boy high school population. In addition, she
added questions that asked both the students and teachers about their perceptions of the students’
reading ability. The study found that the motivational constructs of Baker and Wigfield held true
with some motives changing over time. However, it found that teachers’ ideas about the students
and students’ perceptions of the teacher’s belief (or lack) in the student affected motivation and
achievement. Bozack discusses, “As the work with this school progresses, it will be important to
gain an understanding of what cues boys and their teachers use to make judgments about reading
ability and practices” (2011, p. 69). By finding ways to align the two groups to the same cues
perhaps there will be a way to increase motivation. Bozack explained in a personal interview that
while motivations change over time, the boys’ conceptions of their reading affect motivation and
motivation improves reading achievement. From further unpublished research it was found that
achievement was a predictor of motivation for later years (A. Bozack, personal communication,
August 7, 2012). Also discussed in the interview was that many of the boys’ self-conceptions of
themselves as readers were based on the idea of print media as the standard defining a person as
a reader. However when offered other definitions (the internet, social media, magazines, etc.)
those that were self-identified as non-readers moved into the category of readers. One element
that Bozack suggested is that education, as currently constructed, is, in some ways, constructed
backwards. At a time in the boys’ physical, emotional and psychological development when they
are working for autonomy, education’s efforts towards academic literacy is limiting choice. This
is affirmed by Lenters (2006):
Just as students are entering a time of life when increased autonomy is their desire, they
simultaneously enter an instructional space where they have little or no choice in their
school-based reading. When the twin adolescent desires for agency (tied to identity) and
social interaction come up against secondary school pedagogy, the burgeoning of
resistance to in-school reading may not be coincidental. (p. 139)
This creates disengaged (Guthrie & Davis, 2003) and marginalized (McCarthey & Moje, 2002)
students which ultimately makes them reluctant (Hamston & Love, 2003) readers. In the
interview Bozack posited that single-sex classes may offer opportunity for boys to engage texts
on a more emotional level without the fear of cultural sex-identity expectations, or that an
emotional response was less likely with girls present because there was a tendency towards
machismo, or a desire to impress the girls (A. Bozack, personal communication, August 7,
2012).
Effective Classroom Practices around Literacy
Villiger, Niggli, Wandeler, and Kutzelmann (2012) evaluated the effect of a school/home
literacy intervention program in a quantitative study of 713 students from 40 classrooms in 23
schools. It is rooted in Deci and Ryan’s Self-Determination Theory (as cited in Villiger, et al,
2002) with regards to the students and applied to a modified MRQ (Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997).
There were two aspects to the evaluation: school/home and school only. Using the LiFuS1
program the main objective was to promote fourth grade students’ reading literacy by
establishing motivationally supportive reading environments (Villiger, et al). The parents
underwent training in the program’s methods and were asked to encourage and facilitate
independent reading. The results demonstrated that in the group that had the intervention both at
school and in the home, there was an increase in curiosity and enjoyment indicating that the
home component was important. While the results showed that the intervention promoted an
increase in both curiosity and enjoyment, in the area of reading comprehension it was ineffective.
The authors suggest that perhaps because the focus of the study was to increase motivation and
not reading skills this may account for the lack. This study clearly identifies that a home
environment which has an “affective quality and emotional support at home for reading …[and]
that such processes could be responsible for the positive effects found” (Villiger, et al, 2012, p.
88) on reading motivation which correlates to reading achievement.
The purpose of a qualitative study of twenty-five 11th grader students by Kletzien, and
Taylor (1992) was to “determine what comprehension strategies contributed to literary
engagement or inhibited engagement among adolescents” (p. 1). The students were given two
short stories and orally reported their thoughts and understandings about the work. Transcripts of
those reports were then analyzed. The report found that differences between strategies used by
students who were both engaged and not engaged were not significant but rather it was whether
or not they discussed the reading with their parents and their ability to draw on preexisting
literary constructs that increased their value of reading (Kletzien & Taylor, 1992). The author
suggested that better analysis of strategies might be possible from a larger sample size and that
the difficulty of the text could contribute to the level of the readers’ engagement. One comment
made by Kletzien and Taylor was that “although some of the other differences approached
significance, it seems likely that a greater understanding of strategy use for engagement can best
be developed by examining individual readers’ response” (1992, p. 11). This hypothesis is in
keeping with other reports (Lenters, 2006).
1
LiFuS: German abbreviation for “Reading Within Family and School” (Villiger, et al, 2012).
Not only is the difficulty of the text a factor in reading motivation and comprehension but
the actual content (its structure, themes and genre) plays a significant role. Kooy found, in a
qualitative study of seven 9th grade students, varying responses to three separate novels. Though
the study predates the MRQ it looks at antecedents of reading motivation: “the literacy response
of adolescents through writing by investigating three characteristics: patterns, individual
variations, and the effects of genre on response” (Kooy, 1992, p. 1). Three novels were selected
and there were different results for each novel. Kooy categorized the novels by their difficulty
and content, and surmised that the response of students and subsequently their motivations in
reading were dependent on the level and nature of that content. During the reading of each novel
the students, after a short period of five to ten pages, recorded their responses in a reading log.
The information was then categorized and analyzed. Kooy explains that
Active learning requires taking risks, testing hypotheses and formulating and altering the
meaning of the text for the reader. Students learn not only what to think, but how to think
‘by asking questions that demand not just recall but higher-level reasoning and predicting
and by sometimes demonstrating reflective reading and writing behaviors’(Rosenblatt as
cited by Kooy, 1992 p. 16).
The importance of this finding relates to the idea that scaffolding into the course a reflective
portion provides an opportunity for unfettered reflection on the content. Because of the amount
of research completed after this study it would have been interesting to see the results of the
MRQ for the participants and the level to which they were engaged with text prior to the study.
A preliminary presentation of research by Van Der Hoven (1999) provides some clues to
how to increase reading achievement through scaffolding. The study sets out evaluate the work
of students resulting from exercises put forward by the teacher. It appears it is a qualitative study
of teachers (the final results could not be found) around practices scaffolding methods for
students’ meaning making process constructed between teacher and student, emphasizing the
reader-response paradigm. Its relevance in the classroom is an acknowledgement that adequate
scaffolding can promote meta-cognition in the students’ approach to literacy.
Reading strategies must be tailored developmentally. Though a student may be reading at
a certain level of proficiency, their level of living experience impacts their approach to reading.
Cantrell, Almasi, Rintamaa, and Madden (2010) examined the “impact of Learning Strategies
Curriculum, an adolescent reading intervention program, on 6th and 9th grade” students” (p. 279).
The study examined 365 students, using a randomized treatment-control group design, from
twelve middle and eleven high schools. The 6th grade group showed significant gains from the
intervention program over the control group while there was no significant difference in the 9th
grade. The greater experience of the 9th graders makes a reading strategy that focuses on
gleaning comprehension from the text less valuable because the older reader is pulling more
from their own experience. It may be a developmental change in cognition in which a 9th grade
student who is beginning to develop an individual identity (Lenters, 2006) is working to
internalize the content against their own life experience. Cantrell, Almasi, Rintamaa, and
Madden suggest that later adolescents may need “instruction that focuses on constructing a
situation model that enables them to effectively integrate their knowledge, experience, and
strategies to achieve deep-level comprehension in a variety of contexts for a range of
purposes…such as Transactional Strategies Instruction” (Anderson as cited by Cantrell, et al,
2010, p. 269) that emphasize a more developed need for comprehension.
The Impact of Science Fiction on Content
Though not empirical studies, several papers show an anecdotal connection between
science fiction to many ideas that can engage students both in literary content and ideas that
apply across the curriculum. Cox (1990) describes a college course which reaches across several
different subject areas. Cox used the course to stimulate inter-disciplinary discourse and the
potential depth for future dialogue was large. Though the article was not specific to literacy
motivation, there is a potential for further inquiry and research. Similarly, Fife (1999) explains
how visual media can connect to more abstract ideas. However visual media was used to connect
course materials such as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter” to Star Trek: The Next
Generation’s “Unnatural Selection” and using the students ability to engage visual media as a
means to transfer meaning and themes from one media to another. In a qualitative study OngelErdal (2004) showed a film to college students and then asked a series of questions and evaluated
their understanding of the actual science. Though the data was inconclusive it did suggest there
was something in the films that prompted a desire for further inquiry. Ontell’s (1997) article is an
invaluable resource connecting the value of science fiction to creating motivation in students.
Ontell first debunks the idea that science fiction is not literature providing a number of works
that are established with literary merit. In addition it suggests strategies for librarians that could
be applied to teachers of English. He discusses the variety of ways that science fiction can bring
forward challenging topics in a non-confrontational approach allowing students to resonate with
something they may otherwise withdraw from. He quotes C.S. Lewis, “For me, reason is the
natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning” (p.16).
Conclusion
Literacy and the motivations of readers are multi-dimensional and complex and as such
reading strategies, interventions and scaffolding must reflect that. Despite the trend in education
for one-size-fits-all, the research suggests that this approach will not be effective in promoting
motivation and by extension achievement. Bozack (2011) and Baker and Wigfield (1999)
demonstrate that reading motivations range from intrinsic to work avoidance, suggesting that
students need to be engaged dependent on their needs. Bozack (personal communication, August
7, 2012) echoed ideas put forward in other researchers’ conclusions which stated that asking the
students for their input on reading practices and autonomy or directed autonomy is essential in
promoting engaged readers. It is interesting that the researchers have quantified and categorized
the readers and it bears further reading to explore greater examination of why students fall into
those fields. By exploring the why of the problem readers it may be possible to understand how
to move them into more engaged readers.
Reading interventions (Villiger, et al, 2012), practices (Cantrell, et al, 2010) and
scaffolding (Van Der Hoven, 1999) all appear to help, however it seems that it is environment
that is most impactful, as Villiger suggests (2012). Not only is classroom structure and pedagogy
(Cantrell, et al, 2010) important but having a setting where students feel both autonomous
(Lenters, 2006) and supported is necessary (Kooy, 1992). What much of the research suggests is
that at a time when students desire the most independence, their reading is bounded by
restrictions, grades and expectations; that, combined with greater difficulty of text creates a
reluctant reader. Finding even limited ways to promote choice may create more independent
readers and as a result create a more motivated reader. As there are many fields categorizing the
reader there must be many avenues to engage the varying levels. Continued examination of
pedagogical strategies may uncover a Rosetta Stone (as policy makers are hoping); more likely it
will create a collection of practices that can be tailored to meet the varied needs of individual
students that don’t easily fit the mold of a broad brush.
Further reading should be done on the results of adolescent motivation and strategies that
fostered literacy. In addition a greater understanding of developmental psychology would ground
the inquiries read and the hypothesis posited by current and further authors in scientific
understanding. In recent years, there has been an increase in single-sex motivational analysis and
practices and may yield approaches and understanding regardless of the age level studied. In
researching further material, reaching out to authors of studies could provide guidance for further
inquiry.