Chapter 3
Assessing Motivation
to Read
Introduction
• The Relation Between Reading and Motivation
• Motivation Leads to Engagement
The Relation Between Reading and
Motivation
Reading Motivation and Engagement
• In summary of research, Commission on Reading noted
positive link between skilled reading and the reader’s interest
in the content, as have other reading experts before them (e.g.,
Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkerson, 1985).
• Others make even stronger statements. Smith (1988) concluded
that, “the emotional response to reading…is the primary reason
most readers read, and probably the primary reason most
nonreaders do not read” (p. 177).
How Motivation Impacts
Reading Development
Motivation and Learning to Read
• Guthrie and Humenick (2004) concluded that, “a motivated
reader is not likely to automatically gain these complex
cognitive competencies [reading skills] independently. The
unmotivated reader, however, is quite unlikely to gain these
reading competencies at all” (p. 351).
Motivation and Learning to Read
• Guthrie and Humenick (2004) studied the relation between
motivation and acquisition of comprehension skills.
• They identified 12 dimensions of motivation for reading.
• They categorized the influence of these 12 dimensions within
three more general types of motivation:
• external (or extrinsic) motivation
• internal (or intrinsic) motivation
• self-efficacy
Importance of Reading Self-Efficacy
• Reading Self-Efficacy
• Students’ beliefs in their capacity to read well, and their attitudes about
anticipated success or failure
• Confident students are more likely to engage in reading and to learn
from text
• According to the literature, self-efficacy appears to be the most
important motivational influence (Berkeley, Mastropieri & Scruggs,
2011).
Instructional Practices that Positively Influence
Reading Motivation
• Creating knowledge goals that emphasize learning content consistent
with background knowledge, interests, and connections to larger goals.
• Allowing student choices regarding reading content and reading time.
• Assigning interesting texts based on students interests, use of
illustrations, and consideration of relevance to background knowledge.
• Allowing social collaboration based on joint assignments.
(Guthrie and Humenick, 2004)
How Reading Attitudes are Formed
• From our interactions with reading content itself.
• From interactions with models that may influence perceptions
regarding the reading process, such as parents, peers, and
teachers.
• Influenced by instructional methods.
• Influenced by gender (girls have more positive attitudes toward
reading than boys), but not much by ethnicity.
• Reading attitudes tend to worsen over time, particularly for
poor readers.
(McKenna and Stahl, 2009)
Reading Attitudes
• Number of reading interests decline with age.
• Influence of gender increases with age, but girls are more
likely to read “boy’s books” than are boys to read “girl’s
books”.
• Typical male interests include science, machines, sports, and
action/adventure, while typical female interests include
interpersonal relationships and romance, and both males and
females seem interested in humor, animals, and the unusual.
(McKenna & Stahl, 2009)
Motivation Leads to Engagement:
Reading Engagement
• Engaged readers focus on reading to understand, to make
meaning of text, to avoid distractions, and to exchange ideas
and interpretations of text with peers. Their reading behaviors
reflect devotion to reading across time and genre and result in
important learning outcomes.
• Disengaged readers are inactive, uninvolved, and tend to
minimize effort during prescribed reading lessons and resist
reading during free time.
Engaged Readers Are Motivated
• All experts converge on the notion that engaged readers are
goal driven and strategic; they are motivated to obtain meaning
from text, to read.
• Importantly, engaged reading is strongly associated with
reading achievement (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000).
Engaged Readers Read More
• As engaged readers seek reading opportunities, they build
reading skills.
• As they become better readers, they tend to read more.
• This reciprocal relation has been referred to as the Matthew
effect by Stanovich (1986), after the Biblical story revealing
the tendency for the rich (using their resources) to get even
richer.
Goals and Grades for Reading
• Share goals for reading with students.
• Separate grades for effort from grades for achievement.
(Caldwell, 2014)
Students’ intrinsic motivation for learning (and reading specifically)
tends to decrease across elementary school years and extrinsic
motivation increases as they become more focused on grades and
performance compared to peers, although this pattern does not
characterize all students and has not been found in all studies.
(Gottfried, 1990)
Importance of Assessing Affective Aspects
of Reading
According to Afflerbach and Cho (2010), “Given the potential
power of affect to influence reading development, assessment of
affect should be a priority, yet it isn’t” (p. 498).
Importance of Self-Efficacy
• Positive academic self-efficacy is considered critical for
developing academic skills because of its motivational
influence.
• First described by Bandura (1977; 1978; 1986), it refers to an
individual’s beliefs about his/her ability to perform an
academic task successfully.
• Those beliefs are in turn influenced by students’ causal
attributions, i.e., the extent to which they believe success or
failure results from ability, effort, task difficulty, or luck.
Appendix B
How Reading Motivation Is Assessed
Assessing Motivation
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Self-reports
Anecdotal notes
Classroom observations
Reading journals
Interviews and surveys
Sentence completion
Interest inventories
Thought bubble
Attitude inventories: ERAS, RSPS
Classroom Observations:
Figure 3.1
• Anecdotal Observations
• Nonjudgmental language
• Systematic Observation
• Frequency Count
• Record number of times a particular behavior occurs within a given
time period
Reading Journals
• Variety of purposes
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Assess reading self-efficacy
Keep record of what student has read
Build writing skills
Gain insight into student’s choices and interests
• Should not be treated like book reports
Sentence Completion
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“The best thing about school is_____.”
“My teacher helps me ____.”
“The thing I hate most about school is ___.”
“I like to read about____.”
“When I am older I want to read about ____.”
“My friends think reading is ____.”
“My favorite book is ___.”
“The thing I hate most about reading is ____.”
“My favorite time to read is _____.”
The Affective Elements of Reading
Motivation (e.g., Attributions, Beliefs,
Interests, Self-Efficacy)
How Related Affective Elements
Are Assessed
Interest Inventories
• Figure 3.4
• The Reading and Activity Interest Inventory (RAII)
Attitude Surveys
• Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERAS), developed by
McKenna and Kear (1990) to determine student attitudes
toward recreational and academic reading activities
• Only 20 items
• Assesses academic and recreational reading attitudes
• Normed on national database
Attitude Surveys
• Reader Self-Perception Scale (RSPS), developed by Henk and
Melnick (1995) to assess how students feel about themselves
as readers, consists of 33 items along four dimensions of selfefficacy
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Progress
Observational Comparison
Social Feedback
Physiological States
• RSPS2 is similar to SPS but is appropriate for older students
(i.e., adolescents)
Attitude Surveys
• Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ) scale, developed
by McKenna and Stahl (2009) to assess various dimensions of
elementary-age students reading motivations
• 54-item questionnaire
• Takes about 20–25 minutes to administer
Attitude Surveys
• Reading Motivation Scale (Bell & McCallum, 2015)
• Table 3.1
• Determines a student’s level of reading enjoyment and motivation
• 20-item self-report scale can be administered to students who are
capable of reading the items in group form
• Can be read to younger or less capable students
• Readability of directions is 5.3 grade level based on Flesch-Kincaid in
Microsoft Word; the actual items are at a much lower readability level
Attitude Surveys
• Adolescent Reading Attitudes Survey (ARAS), developed by
McKenna, Simkin, Conradi, and Lawrence (2008)
• Determines reading attitudes of adolescents regarding recreational and
academic content in either print or digital format
• Can be scored to reveal positive, somewhat positive, neutral/indifferent,
somewhat negative or negative attitude about recreational reading in
print settings, recreational reading in digital settings, academic reading
in print settings, and academic reading in digital settings
Interviews
• Can help determine student reading-related interests and
motivation
• Interview is driven by kind of information sought
• Initially ask general, open-ended questions, followed by
increasingly specific questions
• Interviews may be helpful in obtaining information about a
student’s goals for reading, interests, hobbies, and beliefs
about reading success and failure (e.g., attributions)
Assessing Attributions
• Attributions are studied because of their power to influence
academic and social skills success (Bell & McCallum, 1995)
• Ability
• Effort
• Luck (or Chance)
• Task Difficulty (or Context)
Incremental View of Ability
• Effortful students are more likely to hold an incremental view
of intelligence and related abilities, including reading, rather
than an entity or innate view. They are more likely to assume
that their ability is malleable, fluid, and changeable, and so is
reading success.
• Students who believe that reading ability is innate, fixed and
stable, i.e., out of their control, have an entity view and are
more susceptible to the effects of learned helplessness and are
more likely to give up if they perceive reading as difficult.
Student Reading Attribution Scale (SRAS)
Table 3.2
• SRAS informally assesses the reading attributions most related
to reading success and failure.
• 20 hypothetical reading success or failure scenarios (items)
• Can be administered in group form or individually
• Students rate their level of agreement for two attributions that might
account for outcomes described
• Score indicates the extent to which students express incremental versus
entity or innate view of reading success and failure
(Bell & McCallum, 2015)
Teacher Self-Assessment
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“My classroom décor promotes interest in reading because ___.”
“I encourage students to read by___.”
“Good things happen in my class when___.”
“I hold students accountable (nonpunitively) for reading by___.”
“When I model reading behavior, students ___.”
“When I encourage weak readers to read more, they ___.”
“When I encourage good readers to try new genres, they ___.”
Summary
• The Relation Between Reading and Motivation
• Motivation Leads to Engagement