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Reading comprehension of children of Hawaiian ancestry: a study of motivational and sociocultural factors
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Content
READING COMPREHENSION
OF CHILDREN OF HAWAIIAN ANCESTRY:
A STUDY OF MOTIVATIONAL AND SOCIOCULTURAL FACTORS
by
Colleen Laukiamalu Hew Tano
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION
May 2007
Copyright 2007 Colleen Laukiamalu Hew Tano
Dedication
To my father and mother, Albert and Olga Hew, my first teachers,
and to Darrel, Ben, Leeah, Keao, Amy-Gene, Brett,
Brenden, Kaleb, and all my future grandchildren.
ii
Acknowledgements
For most of my life I worked with children as their teacher. I loved them
and to this day, I can still see many of their faces. Like them, I have needed
support, encouragement, reassurance, and confidence from my teachers to keep
trying, keep moving, and keep believing that I could accomplish this academic
goal. I would like to thank my first teachers, my father, Albert, and my mother,
Olga, for instilling the value of education in my heart; for their constancy,
sacrifices, and faith in me. With little formal education themselves, they set the bar
for me. Their examples taught me to work hard even when you are already tired,
not judge others based on outward appearances, use “common sense”, be kind and
give others the benefit of the doubt, share with others whatever you have even if it
is a little, keep trying especially when you are discouraged, and finally, to have
faith in Heavenly Father because He will always help you. I have needed those
lessons over and over throughout this rigorous process.
A special form of thanks goes to my husband, Darrel, my eternal
companion and best friend, upon whom I have always relied for his steadfastness,
advice, encouragement, strength, love, and paying all my bills. While I am the one
conferred with a title, to me, he personifies true greatness. I also wish to thank my
children, Ben, Keao, Amy-Gene, and Brett, always my teachers, and now my
friends. I would be remiss to not mention my dearest grandchildren, Brenden and
iii
Kaleb, who came into my life during this process, and brought so much light and
love.
I appreciate the models in my dissertation committee: my advisor, Dr.
Robert Rueda, brilliant and responsive; Dr. Melora Sundt, astute and sustaining;
Dr. Stu Gothold, wise and affirming. Despite working in a large university with
multiple and complex demands, they keep their influence personal and caring.
Acknowledgement also goes to the wonderful support of Nadine Singh in the EdD
office, whose timeliness and attention to detail made all the difference. I am
especially grateful to the sharp and timely statistics help and editing from Jon
Nakamoto and Kathy Tibbetts, my anchor in a storm.
I feel an abiding gratitude to Ke Ali’i Bernice Pauahi Bishop, a spiritual
touchstone, who left a legacy of hope and possibilities for Hawaiian children
through her Schools, of which I am a beneficiary. Through each of us who go forth
to teach and serve keiki, her influence lives on.
Finally, I want to thank others: my sister, Arlette, who is my “lighthouse”;
my friends in the USC-Hawaii cohort without whom this process would have been
almost impossible and not as much fun; my former colleagues at Kamehameha
Elementary School who remain my sisters and friends; my colleagues at BYUH,
each of whom are Christ-like mentors; and all of my professors at the University of
Southern California who exemplified the highest levels of teaching and leadership.
With true Trojan spirit, I thank everyone and continue my quest to Fight On!
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication ................................................................................................................ i
Acknowledgments................................................................................................... ii
Abstract ................................................................................................................... v
Chapter 1 ................................................................................................................. 1
Chapter 2 ............................................................................................................... 18
Chapter 3 ............................................................................................................... 79
Chapter 4 ............................................................................................................... 92
Chapter 5 ............................................................................................................. 111
Bibliography........................................................................................................ 133
Appendix............................................................................................................. 147
v
Abstract
Native Hawaiian fourth grade public school students lag in reading and
literacy outcomes. One understudied area has to do with motivational and
sociocultural variables. This study looks at the relationship among reading activity,
11 dimensions of reading motivation, and reading achievement of Native Hawaiian
children. A heterogeneous sample of fourth-grade children completed three
surveys: a Background Survey, the Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ,
Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997), and a Reading Activity Survey (Wigfield & Guthrie,
1997). The background survey explored resources in the home, literary beliefs and
literary activities in the home. The Reading Activity survey assessed reading
choices and frequency. The MRQ assessed 11 dimensions of reading motivation
that included Reading Efficacy, Reading Challenge, Reading Work Avoidance,
Reading Curiosity, Reading Involvement, Importance of Reading, Reading
Recognition, Reading for Grades, Competition in Reading, Social Reasons for
Reading, and Compliance. These subscales related significantly to one another and
negatively to the desire to avoid reading. Closely associated, all of the subscales
related to reading activity with several also related to children’s reading
achievement. This study substantiated previous research that demonstrates reading
motivation is multidimensional.
1
CHAPTER ONE
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM AND SIGNIFICANCE
In Hawaii, public school children trail most of the nation in basic reading
skills. Further, disaggregated data reveal children of Hawaiian ancestry are at the
lowest end of Hawaii’s spectrum of ethnic achievement. The latest National
Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report, a national, ongoing assessment
of student performance, reveals Hawaii’s fourth graders rank 4
th
from the bottom
and Native Hawaiian elementary children have consistently scored roughly 15
points lower than their peers on SAT-9 Reading tests over the past decade
(Kana’iaupuni, et al., 2005). The crisis has been played out for decades, which
means that for many young Hawaiians, they are the fourth or fifth generation of
struggling readers. Despite slight improvement in the last decade, the reading
outcomes for Native Hawaiian children remain among the lowest throughout
elementary and secondary school (Kana’iaupuni, et al., 2005).
Recent reading reform has redoubled efforts influenced by political
decisions and public views placing emphasis on mechanics, phonics and decoding
rather than the construction of meaning and development of higher cognitive
processes. So while students can decode words, they have difficulty understanding
what they read. The Reading Report Card for the Nation and the States (Donahue,
Voekl, Campbell, & Mazzeo, 1999) reports that U.S. schoolchildren are lacking in
basic reading comprehension skills. The problem becomes evident at or right after
2
third grade when reading performance and cognitive demands greatly increase and
become too complex for simple solutions (Tumner, Herriman, & Nesdale, 1988;
Hill, 1995).
One understudied area of this phenomenon has to do with the role of
motivational and sociocultural factors in reading achievement of Hawaiian
children. Minority groups are often less advanced in terms of performance on tests
of academic achievement and cognitive skills (Ogbu, 1992) and this tendency has
been documented worldwide e.g. Britain, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand,
Sweden, the United States and West Germany (Gibson & Ogbu, 1991; Ogbu,
1992). To reduce achievement and motivation to culture alone is understandably
ludicrous, but to analyze achievement and motivation without reference to students’
diverse backgrounds is equally ludicrous, although previous theories of learning
have largely ignored sociocultural factors (Ogbu, 1992; Rueda & Kim, 2001;
Bransford, et al., 2004).
The present tendency to relate learning in sociocultural terms is a turn in
human sciences as a result of new research. There is ample evidence that the
sociocultural context affects individual learning (Ogbu, 1992, Pintrich, 2003,
Prusak, 2003, Lave, 1988, Cole, 1996, Stigler and Hiebert, 1999, Ma, 1999)
particularly reading (Cox & Guthrie, 2001). At the most basic level, motivational
and sociocultural processes of learning along with the deeper, structural and
cultural context of school success or failure remains obscure and largely
3
unaddressed (Levinson and Holland, 1996, p.8), especially for our island keiki
(children). “The point is,” Hostetler (2005) asserts, “somewhere along the line
researchers need to when reading performance and cognitive demands greatly
increase and become too complex for simple solutions (Tumner, Herriman, &
Nesdale, 1988; Hill, 1995).
One understudied area of this phenomenon has to do with the role of
motivational and sociocultural factors in reading achievement of Hawaiian
children. Minority groups are often less advanced in terms of performance on tests
of academic achievement and cognitive skills (Ogbu, 1992) and this tendency has
been documented worldwide e.g. Britain, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand,
Sweden, the United States and West Germany (Gibson & Ogbu, 1991; Ogbu,
1992). To reduce achievement and motivation to culture alone is understandably
ludicrous, but to analyze achievement and motivation without reference to students’
diverse backgrounds is equally ludicrous, although previous theories of learning
have largely ignored sociocultural factors (Ogbu, 1992; Rueda & Kim, 2001;
Bransford, et al., 2004).
The present tendency to relate learning in sociocultural terms is a turn in
human sciences as a result of new research. There is ample evidence that the
sociocultural context affects individual learning (Ogbu, 1992, Pintrich, 2003,
Prusak, 2003, Lave, 1988, Cole, 1996, Stigler and Hiebert, 1999, Ma, 1999)
particularly reading (Cox & Guthrie, 2001). At the most basic level, motivational
4
and sociocultural processes of learning along with the deeper, structural and
cultural context of school success or failure remains obscure and largely
unaddressed (Levinson and Holland, 1996, p.8), especially for our island keiki
(children). “The point is,” Hostetler (2005) asserts, “somewhere along the line
researchers need to gain adequate awareness of, concern for, and understanding of
issues of [motivation and] well-being… inclusive of the diversity of perspectives…
or how issues may be related to motivation and well-being.”
This pinpoints a need for more intense focus on motivational and
sociocultural factors relating to reading skills for children of Hawaiian ancestry.
Consequently, this study looks at literacy development and achievement through a
context-sensitive conceptualization of children’s motivation and sociocultural
perspectives. The chapter begins with the problem statement, a background of the
study, the purpose and significance of this research, definitions and a brief
overview of ensuing chapters.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Native Hawaiian elementary students do very poorly on reading and literacy
outcomes. One understudied area has to do with motivational and sociocultural
variables. This study will investigate the role of motivational and sociocultural
factors in reading comprehension for fourth grade Hawaiian children to help
address the achievement gap.
5
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
At the time of Hawaii’s last reigning monarch, Queen Liliuokalani,
Hawaiians were considered among the most literate people in the world (Kamakau,
1965). Indeed, estimated literacy rates for Native Hawaiians between 1890 and
1910 ranged between 79.8 and 98.6 (Lind, 1980). Today, Native Hawaiian keiki
suffer the effects of a native people disenfranchised in their own land. Far-reaching
ramifications of Hawaii’s geopolitical history and its consequences upon
generations deserve study in a responsible and appropriate way.
Today, Hawaiian children are among the most underprivileged students in
the state’s public schools. A study by Shaun Kana’iaupuni and Ishibashi (2003)
reveal that Native Hawaiian children languish in the public schools when compared
to other ethnic groups in almost every area. A few facts of Hawaiian children
include:
• The standardized test scores of Hawaiian students are the lowest among all
major ethnic groups, consistently lagging behind total Department of
Education (DOE) averages by at least 9 percentiles. Moreover, the gap
between Hawaiian student scores and total DOE averages increases as
students move through the system.
• More than one-half of Hawaiian students receive subsidized lunches
compared to one-third of non-Hawaiian students. This reveals lower socio-
economic status and disadvantaged backgrounds of Hawaiians.
6
• Hawaiian students are more likely than their non-Hawaiian peers to attend
low-quality schools. Fully 79 percent of predominantly Hawaiian schools
are in corrective action, compared to just 17 percent of predominantly non-
Hawaiian schools.
• Disproportionately higher rates of grade retention for Hawaiians
• Hawaiian students are overrepresented in the special education system and
underrepresented in higher education (Office of Hawaiian Affairs, 1994;
Takenaka, 1995).
• By the time students enter 7
th
grade, reading levels are generally two years
below grade level.
• Attrition begins early (by eighth grade) and high school drop out rates are
the highest for Hawaiian youth.
Worst of all, Native Hawaiians constitute the largest share of the state’s adult
incarcerated population. Ka Huaka’i (Kana’iaupuni, Malone, and Ishibashi, 2005)
reports that Native Hawaiians comprise 38.7% of all male inmates and 44.8% of all
female inmates in the state prison system. Indeed, future outcomes appear dismal
for a child of Hawaiian ancestry in Hawaii.
Over the years, tainted explanations of poor school performance of
Hawaiian children ranged from biological determinants or “genetic deficits” to
presumed “cultural deficits” (These kids just aren’t motivated!); posited that
intelligence quotients (IQ), academic achievement and aspirations, language
7
(pidgin’ English), or a culture of poverty inevitably affected achievement. Even
while this kind of explanation has long been discredited (Jensen, 1969; Brace, et al,
1971; Valentine, 1968), decades and decades and decades of misunderstandings
and misperceptions about the motivations and intentions of Hawaiians have been
imposed and perpetuated by several cultures (not just the Western culture) in
Hawaii.
The belief that life chances and opportunities are different when youth are
educated well does not reflect current reality for many Hawaiian children
(Kana’iaupuni & Ishibashi, 2003). The “reductionistic” narrative rendering of
identity persists. Findings by Mayeda, Chesney-Lind, & Koo, (2001), noted that
Polynesian students in Hawaii perceive that their academic development is
impeded by social obstacles and Polynesian children often feel “neglected and
treated unfairly by their teachers” because of their ethnic background. Prior
research has shown that ethnic bias along with the structure of classrooms, and
limited access to curriculum impeded the academic progress of Hawaiians
historically (Mayeda, et al., 2001). Thus addressing poor reading achievement must
include the broader context of reading and the reader, particularly sociocultural and
motivational factors. Fundamental components of a quality education and
particularly, what makes a “good reader” are a concern, as this sets the stage for
successful participation and functioning later in life.
8
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship of motivational
and sociocultural factors in reading comprehension and achievement for fourth
grade Hawaiian keiki. This proposed study is based on the assumption that many
important issues related to low reading comprehension are associated with
motivational factors rather than (or in tandem with) learning and cognitive issues
and require different approaches to realize student gains (Rogoff, 2003; Rueda, et
al., 2001; 2005; Guthrie & Wigfield, 1997; Pintrich & Schunk, 1996). The goal is
to better learn how motivation and sociocultural factors of Hawaiian children relate
to reading comprehension in terms of increasing task value, self-efficacy, and/or
mood, thus resulting in more active choice, persistence, and mental effort expended
on relevant reading tasks and activities (Clark & Estes, 2002; Rueda, 2005). How
well do these factors predict reading achievement?
Given the strong correlation between high-poverty and reading proficiency
(Orfield, 1996; Orfield & Lee, 2005), the achievement gap appears to reflect
differences in the academic skills of students before they enter in school (Kim &
Sunderman, 2005). Children come to school with various experiences and generally
all begin school with great desires to succeed. However, many keiki
have difficulty
in the early years of schooling, primarily because
of the failure to learn to read
(Snow, 1998). According to Snow (1993), if a child does not learn
to read well
within the first few years of school, then the
chances of poor academic performance
9
increase significantly. By grade four, problems in reading begin to be magnified as
the focus of instruction shifts from learning to read to reading to learn (Rueda, et
al., 2001). Support for reading comprehension becomes critical.
An honest analysis must include demographics of the student population
and the special challenges that arise when deeply held values, beliefs, and
understanding of culture that sustains a student’s sense of identity conflict with
what is taught in school (Rueda, 2005). For example, many Hawaiian children may
have an interpretation of classroom discussion or asking for help that is different
from that accepted by the majority. While social and economic capital, influenced
by income level and experiential knowledge, is passed from parents to children in
overt ways, cultural capital, on the other hand, is primarily inherited knowledge –
unspoken attitudes, beliefs, and experiences obtained through interactions that
shape aspirations, expectations, beliefs, and life in general and education
specifically (Bordeau, 1977). Accordingly, this study will link these sociocultural
factors of children because the research shows that when children have positive
ability beliefs about a task, when they value the activity intrinsically, and have
prosocial learning goals and expectations, they choose to do it more frequently and
do better at it (Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997; Wentzel, 1991; Eccles, Wigfield, &
Schiefele, 1998). For example, when a child recognizes cultural values,
understands cues, preferences, and character perspectives in their reading, critical,
empathetic and conceptual understanding increases and interest is enhanced (Louie,
10
2006). This research is formulated on the basis that motivational and sociocultural
factors influence student aspirations, choices and enjoyment that improve
understanding and achievement.
Many researchers have argued for the need to pay attention to the role of
cultural influences on learning that recent research has deemed ‘critical aspects’ of
the learning process (Rueda, 2005; Alexander & Murphy, 1999; Ogbu, 1992;
Gutierrez & Rogoff, 2003, Pintrich, 2003). Quoting Ogbu (1992), “What the
children bring to school – their communities’ cultural models of understanding of
‘social realities’ and the educational strategies that they, their families, and their
communities use or do not use in seeking education are as important as within-
school factors (p.5).” Thus, cultural models of understanding that children bring to
the classroom affect their preferences, responses to literature, ability to relate texts
to self, empathetic understanding of characters, critiquing of context, and
enthusiasm (motivation) for reading activities (Louie, 2006).
Even before the wake of The Reading Excellence Act (1998) and No Child
Left Behind Act (2002), the ASCD Advisory Panel on Improving Student
Achievement (1995, p. 10) declared:
Only when teachers understand the cultural backgrounds of their students
can they avoid…culture clash. In the meantime, the ways in which teachers
comprehend and react to students’ culture, language and behaviors may
create problems. In too many schools, students are, in effect, required to
leave their family and cultural backgrounds at the schoolhouse door and
live in a kind of “hybrid culture” composed of the community of fellow
learners.
11
In addition, changes in student demographics—our new community of
fellow learners—vary widely. Yet most studies on the relation between academic
performance and achievement motivation variables narrowly focus on students
from North America and selected East Asian countries (Awang-Hashim, O’Neil, &
Hocevar, 2002). The need for cross-cultural research that reflects our more diverse
population is necessary and must be contended with, especially for those students
who are less successful academically.
Native Hawaiian keiki comprise the largest ethnic group in the public
school system. This means that the performance of Native Hawaiians, as a group,
has important implications for public education in the state (Kana’iaupuni, et al.,
2005). In a time of increasing emphasis on accountability, Hawai’i’s public schools
will achieve success to the degree that they meet the needs of the group that is their
largest student constituency, Native Hawaiians (Kana’iaupuni et al., 2005).
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
This study is significant because it will probe the diverse perceptions of
Hawaiian children in terms of strength of these motives, attitudes, attributions and
beliefs and the interplay between motivation, reading practices, and reading
comprehension. Many studies have been conducted to understand or estimate
Hawaiian students’ short-term activities and chances for personal and academic
success, but little attention has been given to identify the cognitive and
motivational factors that might influence or determine long-term reading habits,
12
goals and aspirations of Native Hawaiian students (Hagedorn, Tibbetts, Moon,
Lester, 2000). In addition, this study is important because it explores the role of
cultural values in terms of schooling and the means by which school goals are
achieved (Brophy, 1999).
Brophy’s (1999) research posits that the educational goals and the definition
of academic achievement against explicit standards of the last century are relative
in nature and thus limited. By comparison, we are far less knowledgeable about
achievement dynamics as they relate to culture, to the appreciation and valuing of
what one is learning, and to the role sociocultural factors and motivation play in
pursuit of academic tasks, specifically reading comprehension. Is it possible to
affirm culture of a marginalized population and still prepare for high-stakes testing?
Further, Native Hawaiians are one of the most understudied populations in
educational literature (Hagedorn, et al. 2000). This study is a unique contribution to
research literature about Native Hawaiians as well as other indigenous groups. As a
Native Hawaiian, being able to contribute to the greater body of literature makes
this study particularly generative and exciting. Researchers such as Hamrick and
Stage (2004), Flowers et al. (2003), and Covington (2000) have called for further
exploration of the barriers that impede academic achievement and influence the
educational aspirations of minorities. At present, no one has attempted to specify
the potential cognitive and motivational influences of Hawaiian elementary
children in relation to reading. The precise nature of such a complex network of
13
variables is not well understood, and interest in this area outruns the available
evidence (Wentzel & Wigfield, 1998).
Finally, this study is a first step in a struggle against the status quo. If
educators can identify and understand what strengthens motivation for Hawaiian
students’ reading engagement and comprehension, then educators can tailor
effective interventions and policymakers can implement the types of support
required to boost motivation at its first levels and close the reading achievement
gap for keiki. Results of this study can impact programs and dollars directed in
more efficient ways to maximize benefits, financial aid and investments. Findings
can further assist schools, educators, parents and Hawaiian students themselves as
to ways to improve and strengthen self-determination in a positive way, as well as
address barriers to well-being. Often, students and parents have unrealistic
expectations of what can be done for them instead of what they can do for
themselves. Students and teachers must gain a sense of responsibility to assess
reality and critique the forces surrounding them in which their access to power and
enactment of social change reside (Grant and Gillette, 2006).
In addition, the quest to gain awareness and understanding of the
sociocultural motivational variables concerned with reading comprehension along
with reading instruction for children of Hawaiian ancestry is of concern not only to
the Hawaiian population and the schools that serve them, but to all learners in
Hawaii’s classrooms as well. Given the dominance of multicultural students in
14
Hawaii’s classrooms, reading success for one group based on broader sociocultural
understanding would certainly benefit all readers.
Like all good research, my aim is to find beneficial information that helps
the reading achievement of Hawaiian keiki that they might realize a more
promising future.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
To these ends, the research questions are:
1. What are the relationships among sociocultural factors, reading
motivation, and reading activities?
2. How well do they predict student outcomes (achievement)?
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The critical analysis of this study on sociocultural and motivational factors
of fourth grade Hawaiian students’ reading comprehension is based on
motivational, sociocultural and cognitive theory. The important aspect of this
problem solving model to my study is the investigation of motivational and cultural
variables as they impact the achievement of learning goals, specifically, reading
comprehension and purposeful approaches to reading. What can we learn about
sociocultural factors (values, family background, beliefs, practices) as they relate to
motivation and achievement?
I will discuss the interplay of these factors in Chapter Two.
15
DEFINITION OF TERMS
1. Reading comprehension – the ability to think and understand the words read
while bringing into account the reader’s background knowledge to understand
text (National Institute for Literacy, 2001).
2. Reading engagement – the joint functions of motivations and strategies in
reading (Newman et al., 1992)
3. Phonemic awareness – the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the
approximate 41 phonemes in the English language. Phonemic awareness
focuses on the child’s ability to understand that words have separate
distinguishable phonemes (National Institute for Literacy, 2001).
4. Motivation – the psychological processes that initiate and sustain goal-directed
activity and determine the amount of mental “work” someone is prepared to
invest in achieving a novel goal (Clark, 2005).
5. Affect – the feelings or emotions that individuals typically have that influence
their thoughts and behaviors (Ames & Ames, 1985).
6. Learner centered – refers to environments that pay careful attention to the
knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs that learners bring to the educational
setting. This term includes teaching practices that have been called “culturally
accommodated instruction (Rueda, 2005), “culturally responsive,” “culturally
appropriate,” “culturally compatible,” and “culturally relevant” (Ladson-
Billings, 1995).
16
7. Encoding – the input from text, teacher or peer discussions
8. Keiki – Hawaiian word for children
9. Hawaiian – “Any descendent of the aboriginal peoples inhabiting the Hawaiian
Islands which exercised sovereignty and subsisted in the Hawaiian Islands in
1778, and which peoples thereafter have continued to reside in Hawai’i” (OHA,
2002).
10. Native Hawaiian – “An upper case ‘N’ refers to all persons of Hawaiian
ancestry regardless of blood quantum” (OHA, 2002).
11. native Hawaiian – “A lower case ‘n’ refers to those who have 50% or more
Hawaiian blood” (OHA, 2002).
12. Local – a person who resides in Hawai’i and has adopted the island lifestyle.
13. Hawaiian-focused evaluation - frameworks, measures, and procedures that most
fairly represent the experiences of Hawaiian peoples and that yield information
most useful to them.
ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY
Chapter 1 of the study has presented the introduction, the statement of the
problem, the background of the study, the purpose of the study, the significance of
the study, the questions to be answered, the theoretical framework, and the
definitions of terms.
17
Chapter 2 is a review of relevant literature. It addresses the following
topics:
1. Native Hawaiian Children
2. Sociocultural Factors and Reading Achievement
3. Motivation and Reading Achievement
4. Reading Activities and Practices and Reading Achievement
Chapter 3 presents the methodology used in the study, including the
researcher’s reasons for interest in the study and relevant background; the
participants in the study; the selection process and rationale; the research design;
and the procedures used.
Chapter 4 submits the findings of the study.
Chapter 5 presents analysis, discussion, the significance of the study, implications
for practice, as well as conclusions and recommendations.
18
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
The poor reading performance of fourth grade children of Hawaiian
ancestry revealed in the latest NAEP 2005 report vividly points to a marked
achievement gap and the need for increased attention of educational researchers
and practitioners. As Native Hawaiian children comprise the largest share of the
public school population and continues to grow, it becomes imperative, both for the
Hawai’i Department of Education and the Native Hawaiian community, to address
the educational needs of Native Hawaiian children in the public school system
(Kana’iaupuni, et al., 2005). The call to improve academic development and
literacy outcomes while Hawaiian keiki are young can set the stage for more
successful functioning later in life.
National leaders and educational experts have exerted pressure to improve
early literacy as evidenced by several programs and mandates including the
Reading Excellence Act (1996) and the No Child Left Behind Act (2002), which
specifically requires all children to read at, or above grade level by the end of third
grade (No Child Left Behind, facts about, 2002). In addition, the new science of
learning calls for increased conceptual understanding and better comprehension
skills in addition to the emphasis on phonemic awareness, phonics and decoding
fluency, especially as students switch from learning to read to reading to learn in
the fourth grade (Rueda, 2005).
19
This phenomenon in fourth grade labeled a “reading slump” is especially
common and poses a considerable problem as research has shown that students
who are poor readers in third grade generally do not catch up to their peers even by
the ninth grade (Francis, Shaywitz, Stuebing, Shaywitz, & Fletcher, 1996). The
decline in positive attitudes toward reading probably occurs as difficulty and poor
performance become established around the 4th and 5th years of schooling, a
period also noted where children distinguish, with increasing age, between feeling
competent in reading and liking reading (Chapman and Tunmer, 2003).
But even as the field of cultural considerations in education has been
broadly affirmed and developed with values and ideals that espoused conceptual
clarity, difficulty in operationally defining and quantifying culture for analytic
purposes remains a problem. Sociocultural processes in learning have been
perceived as lacking definition and purpose (Gibson, 1976, 1984; Hoffman, 1996;
Bennet, 2001). Critics ask for research studies to show the relationship of
sociocultural factors and motivation to reading achievement. This study that
explores the motivational and sociocultural factors related to reading
comprehension for fourth grade Hawaiian children addresses that call with hopes to
improve literacy outcomes and achievement.
The literature review is divided into three sections. The first subsection
addresses reading comprehension, followed by a discussion of the relationship of
sociocultural factors and reading achievement. The second subsection explores the
20
two other main avenues that operate to influence reading outcomes positively:
motivation and reading engagement. These will be explored with the goal of
guiding future research and theory building. While not comprehensive, the selected
research reviews are taken from publications in scholarly journals with rigorous
review, or included because of their unique Hawaiian perspective and saliency to
the study. Although each area is explained separately, these factors are best
understood as a whole supporting each other.
Before beginning, a brief description and educational assessment of Native
Hawaiian children in general, and fourth grade readers specifically, will be
provided.
Native Hawaiian Children
In 2005, the Policy Analysis and Systems Evaluation (PASE) department
of the Kamehameha Schools published the third Native Hawaiian Educational
Assessment, Ka Huaka’i, as a source of data for researchers, practitioners,
policymakers, families, and the community at large (Kana’iaupuni, Malone,
Ishibashi, 2005). Extracting a few portions of it, the information provides a useful
backdrop.
Figure 2.1 shows that Native Hawaiians constituted the largest single ethnic
group within the public school system (Kanaiaupuni et al., 2005).
21
Figure 2.1 Ethnic Composition of Hawaii’s Public Schools
Figure 2.2 shows how the ethnic composition of public school students in
Hawai’i has changed over the past twenty years. Native Hawaiian students account
for a growing percentage of the student body while the percentage of students
identified as Chinese, Japanese and White are declining.
22
Figure 2.2 Growth of Hawaiian Population to Other Ethnicities
These trends suggest that the Native Hawaiian population will continue to grow,
thus making it imperative that the Hawai’i Department of Education and the
Hawaiian community find more effective strategies to meet the needs of keiki
(Kana’iaupuni et al., 2005).
Figure 2.3 shows Native Hawaiian children as a percentage of students in
each grade level in the public school system. The pattern reflected shows a steady
decline in Native Hawaiian school enrollment with each successive grade level. In
the school year 2003, the concentration of Native Hawaiians was highest in grades
7 and 9, which typically mark transitional years non-Hawaiian families move their
children into private schools (Kana’iaupuni et al., 2005).
23
Figure 2.3 Hawaiian population by grade levels
One important factor that impacts Native Hawaiian children’s reading is the
fact that keiki are more likely to have grandparents who actively take care of them
than non-Hawaiian children. The prevalence of grandparents who functioned as
sole care-giver was twice as high among multigenerational Native Hawaiian
households as it was across the state. When grandparents function as sole care-
giver, problems with financial security and adequacy of resources may arise,
especially if grandparents are retired and living on a fixed income. With little or no
education themselves, many grandparents cannot or do not provide books,
computers or Internet access for keiki.
Figures 2.4 and 2.5 (below) show the inequitable distribution of
experienced teachers in public schools with high concentrations of Native Hawaiian
24
students (Kana’iaupuni et al., 2005). Predominantly Native Hawaiian schools have
a significantly higher proportion of emergency- or provisional-hire teachers than do
schools with lower levels of Hawaiian enrollment. These teachers who are not yet
certified and have had little or no training in reading instruction, would
significantly affect the quality of reading instruction keiki receive.
Figure 2.4 shows the provisional or emergency hire teachers in proportion
to Native Hawaiian students. A study by researchers Kana’iaupuni and Ishibashi
(2005) shows a statistically significant relationship between the proportion of
Native Hawaiian students and teacher experience. As the proportion of Native
Hawaiian students enrolled at a school increases, the average number of years of
teacher experience decreases. This relationship exists even after adjusting for
factors such as poverty, limited English proficiency, special education, and
disadvantaged school funding (Kana’iaupuni et al., 2005).
25
Figure 2.4 Schools with emergency or provisional hire teachers in proportion to
Hawaiian enrollment
Figure 2.5 shows the average years of experience among teachers at public
schools by keiki enrollment. Turnover and longevity are usually indicators of
stability and teacher experience (Kana’iaupuni et al., 2005). Figure 2.5 indicates
that as the proportion of Native Hawaiian students enrolled at a school increases,
the teacher experience decreases. In Hawaii, due to a shortage of teachers, some
schools have provisions for teachers to work without being fully credentialed while
they pursue further training. Educational researchers have noted that instruction in
these classrooms are characterized by drill and practice activities, worksheets, and
teacher-directed work and such instruction generally characterizes the education of
students from low SES backgrounds (Thompson, Mixon, Serpell, 1996). Moreover,
26
new teachers who are recruited from the mainland U.S., have not experienced
island culture and have trouble understanding keiki pidgin’ English.
Although pidgin’ is considered English, it is a dialect with its own form,
and it needs interpretation to a novice ear. New mainland recruits are placed in
rural areas where teacher shortage is highest and those rural areas are the very areas
where standard English is spoken the least. Vygotsky’s research (1986) showed
that as children interact with their peers and teachers, they use language to
construct knowledge of the world around them. Feelings of inadequacy arise when
their oral language abilities are deemed weak and difficulties arise early in
communication and developing literacy skills. According to sociocultural
researchers, mismatches in communicative practices between non-mainstream
children and mainstream teachers can lead to miscommunication and misjudgments
(Gee, Michaels and O’Connor, 1982) and the internalization of negative
stereotypes by minority groups (e.g. Native American, Latinos, Native Hawaiians)
as well as resistance to schools and a perception that schools are oppositional
(Ogbu & Matute-Bianchi, 1986).
Hawaii Department of Education statistics show that these mainland recruits
remain in Hawaii for an average of three years.
27
Figure 2.5 Teachers with at least 5 years of experience at current school as a
percentage of all public school teachers, by level of Native Hawaiian
enrollment [state of Hawaii, school year 2001–02]
Figure 2.6 (below) shows corrective action schools that have repeatedly
failed to meet benchmarks set by the state. Schools with high concentrations of
Native Hawaiian students struggle more to meet NCLB benchmarks than do other
public schools. The yearly assessments of adequate yearly progress (AYP) result in
schools being assigned to one of three categories: (1) corrective action, (2) needs
improvement, or (3) good standing. As a result, schools with a large Hawaiian
population are in restructuring and the mandated reading programs are largely
phonics and vocabulary driven rather than centered on constructing meaning
(Kana’iaupuni et al., 2005).
28
Figure 2.6 Corrective action schools, by level of Native Hawaiian enrollment
[state of Hawaii, school year 2001–02]
Finally, achievement outcomes for Native Hawaiian children remain the
lowest of all major ethnic groups in Hawai’i public schools throughout elementary
and secondary school. Figure 2.7 shows SAT-9 reading data aggregated across
years 1999, 2000, 2002, and 2003. The following points were observed:
• Native Hawaiian reading scores lagged behind total public school
averages by 9 to 12 percentiles across all grade levels tested.
• The reading scores of Native Hawaiian students were consistently about
30 percentiles lower than the highest scoring ethnic groups in the public
school system, Japanese students.
29
• Native Hawaiian third graders scored, on average, at the 38
th
percentile in
reading
• Native Hawaiian students were significantly more likely than their non-
Hawaiian peers to perform below average in reading (Kana’iaupuni et
al., 2005).
Notably, figure 2.7 (next) also illustrates Native Hawaiian reading
proficiency rates were roughly 30 percent lower than statewide rates and less than
half the rates achieved by Japanese students.
Figure 2.7 Reading proficiency rates by grade and ethnicity
This brief review of academic trends and characteristics of keiki outline
general patterns and it should be recognized that there is considerable within-group
diversity. Nonetheless, great academic challenges face families, researchers,
30
teachers and especially keiki. What can we find out about sociocultural factors and
motivation of our keiki in the area of reading that can improve text comprehension
and performance outcomes? The next subsection discusses reading comprehension
and will be followed by a discussion of the role of sociocultural factors and reading
comprehension, motivational factors for reading and their relation to reading
engagement and achievement.
Reading Comprehension
It is important to understand that the reading comprehension curriculum that
is present in today’s schools had its roots in the strong behavioral and task oriented
notions about learning. In the 1970s and 1980s, reading comprehension was viewed
as a skill that could broken into a set of sub-skills involving decoding and
comprehension. Comprehension skills included sequencing events in a story,
predicting outcomes of a story, finding the main idea, and so forth. It was believed
that teaching students each of those necessary sub-skills could improve
comprehension and that reading comprehension equaled the aggregate of all those
sub-skills. This view meant that once the skills were mastered, readers became
experts who could comprehend what they read. Skills-based readers were passive
recipients of information as meaning was believed to reside in the text itself and the
goal of the reader was to reproduce that meaning (Dole et al, 1991, 1996).
Studies done by Haller, Child, and Walberg (1988), Pearson and Dole
(1987), Pearson and Fielding (1991) and others generally followed the following
31
format: Researchers believed that if students reacted to text (e.g. relating it to prior
knowledge, seeking clarification or asking questions), or constructed a type of
representation (e.g. mental images representing the text) comprehension, meaning
and long-term memories of text would improve. Some type of objective test of
understanding would then measure the students. The students receiving
comprehension strategies instruction on such tests were compared to the
performances of control students who did not receive the instruction and who
prepared as they normally would on their own to take an objective test. If the
students receiving strategy training outperformed the control students on the test,
conclusions such as the following were made: a) students were not using
comprehension strategies on their own or were not using it systematically or
b) students could be taught to use the strategies.
From that wave of research, educational researchers, psychology and
linguistics began to build and verify theories on comprehension strategies such as
activating prior knowledge, making predictions (Levin, 1986), identifying main
ideas, constructing mental images of text (Pearson & Fielding, 1991), summarizing
(Berkowitz, 1986; Taylor, 1982) questioning and analyzing (Short & Ryan, 1984).
The 1980s and 1990s brought a second wave of research featuring the
packaging of selected strategies such as Palincsar and Brown’s (1984) reciprocal
teaching. Reciprocal teaching taught students to use four comprehension strategies:
prediction, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing. In their study, seventh grade
32
students who were experiencing comprehension problems were instructed on each
strategy. The teacher assigned one of the two students being taught to be the
“teacher.” Following a reading, the (student) “teacher” modeled each strategy and
then asks other students to try to use those strategies when they read on their own.
Students took turns as the student teacher. The students were informed that using
those strategies would benefit them on upcoming tests. At the end of each day,
participants read a 400-475 word assessment passage and then answered 10
questions about the content of the assessment passage. Reciprocal teaching
positively impacted comprehension in that study as well as follow up studies by
Palincsar and Brown (1984).
More research by Rosenshine and Meister (1994), on reciprocal teaching
also showed consistent effects on cognitive process measures but results on
standardized comprehension were less striking, with an average effect size of 0.3
SDs. One conclusion that emerged from Rosenshine and Meister (1994) was that
reciprocal teaching was more successful when there was direct teaching of the four
strategies than when there was not.
Much of the strategies instruction occurred as a result of Rosenblatt’s
(1978) earlier proposal that reading is a transaction between the reader and the text.
Rosenblatt (1978) believed that readers establish and construct their own meanings
and in the context of small-groups, readers can share those understandings. The
resulting methodology led to the idea that children learn language holistically and
33
the whole-language approach to reading sparked integration of all aspects of
literacy using authentic literature.
The whole-language approach during the 1980s and 1990s revealed that
there is no one way to think about reading development. It became clear that a
balanced, comprehensive approach should provide systematic explicit instruction in
both decoding and key comprehension strategies (Snow et al., 1998). Cognitive
psychology developed the notion of the learner as a processor of information rather
than a respondent to stimuli or passive recipients of their surroundings (Gagne &
Dick, 1983).
The new view of comprehension emphasizes the interactive nature of
reading (Rumelhart & Ortony, 1977) and the constructive nature of comprehension
(Anderson et al, 1977; Rumelhart, 1980). While decoding and the ability to
recognize words has been shown to be one of the most important features of the
beginning stages of reading and reading development (Juel, 1991; Adams, 1990,
Stanovich, 1991), comprehension relies on both word recognition skills and higher
order thinking skills (Juel, 1988; Nichols, Rupley & Wilson, 0000).
Comprehension strategies are thoughtful behaviors that students use to facilitate
their understanding of text (McLaughlin & Allen, 2002). Some strategies are
cognitive – they involve thinking or cognition; others are metacognitive – students
reflect on their thinking; and still others are broader, social, situational and
34
discourse-based (Eccles, et al., 1996, 1998; Rogoff, 2003; Rueda, et al., 2001; Gee,
1992; Tharp and Gallimore, 1988).
Comprehension is a complex process that has many facets and has been
understood and explained in multiple ways. A definition by The RAND Reading
Study Group (2002) states that comprehension is…the process of simultaneously
extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with
written language (p. 11). Duke (2002) defined comprehension using terms such as
“navigation” and “critique” because she believed that readers move through text,
evaluating relevance and meaning, finally arriving at a “self-selected location”
(italics added). According to Van Den Broek & Kremer (2000), readers construct a
mental “picture” or representation of the text and its interpretation through the
comprehension process. Guthrie and Cox (2001) added “engagement” to refer to
students who are intrinsically motivated; who read frequently for enjoyment and
widely enough to be strategic in self-monitoring and inferencing to understand text.
These complementary perspectives of reading comprehension and the wide variety
of research-based models designed to engage readers and attain comprehension
demonstrate that reading comprehension is multifaceted and complicating to
achieve (Rueda, MacGillivray, Mozo, Arzubiaga, 2001; Anderson & Pearson,
1984; Hammerberg, 2004; Alexander & Murphy, 1994).
When children advance from the acclimation stage to the fluent stage of
literacy, they begin to read longer, more complex stories that contain more difficult
35
words that may not be in their listening vocabularies. Fluent readers may be able to
decode the more difficult words, but word meanings often present a challenge.
Because children are well on their way to mastering decoding skills, does not mean
word recognition ensures comprehension. Knowing how to decode difficult or
unfamiliar words can free a child to think about what they are reading, however
some children may read every word correctly and not understand what they have
read. Fluency in reading is related to reading proficiency, but fluency alone is not
sufficient enough for proficient reading comprehension.
According to reading experts (Tompkins, 2005; Sweet and Snow, 2003),
successful comprehension depends on the interaction of both reader and text
factors. Reader factors include the background knowledge and sociocultural factors
that readers bring to the reading process as well as their purpose, motivation and
the strategies they know to use while reading. The Rand Reading Study Group
Report (2002) further elaborates the role of the reader:
“The reader brings to the act of reading his or her cognitive capacities
(attention, memory, critical analytic ability, inferencing, and visualization),
motivation (a purpose for reading, interest in the content, self efficacy as a
reader), knowledge (vocabulary, domain, and topic knowledge, linguistic
and discourse knowledge, knowledge of comprehension strategies), and
experiences.” (p. xi-xii).
Text factors include the author’s ideas, words, idea organization and
presentation. Both reader factors and text factors affect comprehension. Figure 2. 8
presents an overview of both factors (Tompkins, 2006).
36
Figure 2.8 Overview of Comprehension Factors
Overview of Comprehension Factors
Type Factor Role in Comprehension
Reader Background
Knowledge
Students activate their world knowledge and
literary knowledge to understand what they are
reading.
Purpose Students are more actively involved in the
reading process and they direct their attention
to the big ideas when they read with a purpose.
Fluency Students have adequate cognitive resources
available to understand what they are reading
when they read quickly, expressively, and with
little effort.
Comprehension
Strategies
Students actively direct their reading when they
use strategies such as predicting, visualizing,
questioning, and monitoring.
Making
Inferences
Students understand non-explicitly stated ideas
by making inferences based on their
background knowledge and the clues they
notice in the text.
Motivation Students who like to read expect to be
successful, become more engaged in reading,
and are more likely to comprehend
successfully.
Text Structure The organization of the text provides a skeleton
for comprehension and students who recognize
this structure use it to scaffold their
understanding.
Genres Genres, such as myths and biographies, have
unique characteristics and features, and when
students are familiar with a genre, this
knowledge provides a scaffold for
comprehension.
Content and
Vocabulary
Topics involve specific content information
and technical vocabulary, and students draw on
their background knowledge of content and
vocabulary as they read.
37
Thus we see that reading achievement requires attention to the personal aspects of
reading comprehension (the reader) and the types or kinds of material in which
readers engage (text).
In a research synthesis supported by the American Psychological
Association (APA), Alexander & Murphy (1994) distilled five general statements
that specify important learner-centered principles (Alexander & Murphy, 1994;
Alexander & Judy, 1988; Alexander & Kulikowich, 1994).
Figure 2.9 Learner-Centered Principles
Five General Statements Related to the
Learner-Centered Principles
The knowledge base
• One’s existing knowledge serves as the foundation of all future learning by
guiding organization and representations, by serving as a basis of association
with new information, and by coloring and filtering all new experiences.
Strategic processing or executive control
• The ability to reflect on and regulate one’s thoughts and behaviors is essential
to learning and development.
Motivation and affect
• Motivational or affective factors, such as intrinsic motivation, attributions for
learning, and personal goals, along with the motivational characteristics of
learning tasks, play a significant role in the learning process.
Development and individual differences
• Learning, although ultimately a unique adventure for all, progresses through
various common stages of development influenced by both inherited and
experiential/environmental factors.
Situation or context
• Learning is as much a socially shared undertaking as it is an individually
constructed enterprise.
38
These statements (see figure 2.9 above) emphasize that one of the primary
characteristics of learning is the active involvement of the learner and that learning
must be embraced as a socially shared undertaking.
One of the most consistent findings from cognitive research over the past
several decades is that we now understand that students’ background knowledge
plays an extremely powerful role, because a) it determines what information they
attend to (Anderson, Pichert, & Shirey, 1983; Reynolds & Shirey, 1988); b) how
that information is perceived (Gibson, 1966); c) what is judged by the learner as
relevant or important (Alexander, et al., 1994; Pichert & Anderson, 1977; Schraw
& Dennison, 1994); and d) what is comprehended and remembered (Alvermann, et
al., 1985; Anderson et al., 1977; Pritchard, 1990). Cognitive activities that include
reading comprehension are not possible without the active involvement and
engagement of the learner (Alexander, 1997). Basically, the knowledge base means
that people construct new knowledge from what they already know and believe
(e.g., Cobb, 1994; Piaget, 1952, 1973a, b, 1977, 1978; Vygotsky, 1962, 1978).
Based on that research, Alexander and Murphy (1994) forwarded salient
characteristics of reading comprehension development:
• Readers’ knowledge of language and knowledge of content domains are critical
forces in developing competence.
• Readers’ personal interest in reading becomes a driving force in their
development as competence is achieved.
39
• Reading development is a lifelong journey that unfolds in multiple stages.
• Lifespan development involves systematic changes in readers’ strategic
processing.
• Profiles of successful and struggling readers are reflective of developmental
forces.
• Readers in acclimation are especially vulnerable and in need of appropriate
scaffolding and support.
All readers, novices and experts alike, use their existing knowledge and
range of cues from the text and situational context in which the reading occurs to
construct meaning. This means that novice readers can be expert when they possess
the appropriate base knowledge and conversely, expert readers can be novices
when presented with obscure texts (Dole, et al., 1996). The important point is that
children constantly create literacy in multiple ways that are meaningful to them
(Vygotsky, 1978; Guthrie & Cox, 2001; 2002).
In short, competence in reading comprehension ranges from the seriously
challenged to the highly competent (Alexander, 2002). Highly competent readers
have knowledge about language and a sufficient base of world knowledge. They
can employ a variety of reading strategies for a range of text-based tasks they
encounter (Paris, Wasik, & Turner, 1991). More importantly, they display interest
in reading and when confronted with unfamiliar content or barriers to
comprehension; they can draw on well-honed strategic processes and their personal
40
interest in reading to carry them forward (Alexander, 1996).
Seriously challenged readers, at the other end of the continuum, display a
complex array of reading comprehension problems. Among them are language-
processing difficulties, limited background knowledge, strategic insufficiencies,
and negative motivational conditions (Curtis, 2002; Alexander & Murphy, 1998).
Anderson warns:
Without significant attention to all aspects of reading development (e.g.,
knowledge, interest, and strategic processing), these seriously challenged
readers may never be able to progress beyond the initial phases of
acclimation. They may never be able to feel competent in or the pleasure of
reading that others sense. They will be left behind, as others continue their
developmental journey.
Facing the challenges of attaining educational parity with majority groups,
and pushing for answers to the relatively low school performance of some minority
groups, sociocultural theorists have proposed broader perspectives on learning and
the reading comprehension process of making meaning. Sociocultural theory calls
for a look at additional factors considered critical such as children’s interaction
with and within the larger sociopolitical and sociocultural context (Vygotsky, 1978;
Rogoff, 1994, 1995; Rueda, et al. 2001). This next section will specifically explore
how sociocultural theorists link sociocultural factors with reading engagement,
motivation and achievement.
41
The Role of Sociocultural Factors in Reading Comprehension and Achievement
Research on literacy, schooling, and family support suggest that efforts to
build children’s literacy that do not build on the strengths of families may succeed
for parents and children in the short term but fail on a long-term basis (Gadsen,
1998). These reports that emphasize the role of sociocultural factors in reading and
achievement encourage researchers and teachers to approach the work on literacy
from perspectives and models that enable students and their families to access and
use resources effectively.
In studies done with families from diverse backgrounds on literacy learning
(Gadsen, 1995; Brofenbrenner, 1986), family cultures are shown to be built upon
intergenerational practices, and learning within families are formed around several
factors: accepted ethnic traditions, cultural rituals, sociopolitical histories, religious
practices and beliefs, and negotiated roles within families over time. According to
Gadsen (1998), family members not only influence, but often dictate the following
deeply embedded characteristics: a) Beliefs, talk, and problems about race,
discrimination, and culture b) the ways that individual family members think about,
use, and pursue literacy, and c) how individual family members persist in
educational programs.
Family members, Gadsen (1998) claims, define the life trajectory of
children. Families vary in their level of desire to adapt these cultures, depending on
the degree to which family members accommodate change. Family members
42
construct traditions, practices, and behaviors they consider critical to survival and
achievement and that are linked to a sense of their own family histories. Stack and
Burton (1993) call this familial influence “kinscripts,” analogous to written text or
instructions carried out in specific, automated ways. In psychology, “script” refers
to the social role or behavior appropriate to particular situations that an individual
absorbs through cultural influences and association with others. The important
point is that these factors influence children’s choices and persistence in literacy
activities.
Previous efforts to identify factors influencing children’s reading
engagement began with more external factors such as language proficiency and
theories that students had different learning styles or multiple intelligences (Kolb,
1984; Dunn, et al., 1992; McCarthy, 1986; Gardner, 1984). Research was based on
individuals’ cognitive development e.g. mental skills, and intelligence in isolation
(Adams, 1990; Barr, Kamil, Mosenthal, & Pearson, 1991). As interdisciplinary
inquiries converged, evidence became clear that all learning occurs in a dynamic
process of participation and engagement with a balance between cognitive and
affective aspects of reading (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000; McCombs, 1989). Better
understanding of this dynamic process has proposed that learning also takes place
in settings that have particular sets of political, cultural or social norms and
expectations and that these settings influence learning and transfer in powerful
43
ways (Vygotsky, 1978; Rogoff, 1994, 1995, 2003; Rueda, et al., 2001; Gee, 1992;
Ogbu, 1990; Bransford, 2004).
In the 1980s, the work of Leo Vygotsky (1978) in Mind in Society, argued
that all human development unfolds within a wide variety of cultural contexts; the
concept of human development is socially embedded, thereby emphasizing the
importance of culture and the world that surrounds the child. Vygotsky’s theory
(1978) posited that practices of literacy and ways of understanding depend on the
social conditions in which they are learned. Vygotsky argued that the ways of
thinking along with concepts and skills a child uses reflect the social group and
community in which the child belongs, i.e., children learn by internalizing the
activities, habits, vocabulary and ideas of the members of the community in which
they grow up. Recent extensions of sociocultural theory increase our view of
learning and shows that one’s level of engagement and participation changes over
time with a child’s understanding of the task, its meanings, and the beliefs and
values ingrained in them (Rueda, et al., 2001). The overall context of a situation
shapes not only comprehension but what it means to be literate, the type of texts
used, the type of reading activities expected, and links these to the identity of the
readers (Rogoff, 2003; Gee, 1992; Sfard & Pusak, 2005).
Accordingly, interest in the cultural, motivational and affective components
of reading engagement has spurred research to delve further into the
understandings, perceptions and diverse background interests of students (Rogoff,
44
1994, 1995; Rueda, 2005; Sfard & Prusak, 2005). Consider the following two
definitions of reading comprehension:
1. The National Institute for Literacy (2001):
“…the ability to think and understand the words read while bringing into
account the reader’s background knowledge to understand text.”
2. The Rand Reading Study Group (2002):
“…the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning
through interaction and involvement with written language. Comprehension
has these elements: the reader, the text, and the activity, or purpose for
reading. These elements define a phenomenon – reading comprehension –
that occurs within a larger sociocultural context that shapes and is shaped
by the reader and that infuses each of the elements. All are influenced by
the broader context.” (p.xi). (italics added)
Rosenblatt’s (1978) model of transactional theory highlights the transaction
that occurs between the reader and the text. Social constructivist or sociocultural
theories have proposed a “tighter connection” between cognitive (including
motivational) and sociocultural factors (Rueda & Dembo, 1995). Rosenblatt’s
model (see figure 2.10) illustrates the innumerable reader/text/sociocultural
factors/context interactions that can occur and how they relate to the transaction of
comprehension.
Those initial understandings can have a powerful effect on forming and
integrating new concepts and information. Not surprisingly then, when children’s
understandings are accurate, they provide a base for building new knowledge.
However, when prior knowledge is inaccurate, misconstrued, missing or in conflict,
45
it can be detrimental to future learning if they are not identified and addressed
(Jonassen & Gibrowski, 1993). When preconceived knowledge is inaccurate,
students can be made aware of how their existing conceptions fall short and
students can be provided with more or better alternatives. However, in reading
comprehension, if prior knowledge is missing, in conflict, or if students have
misconceptions, those cannot be easily observed or understood and becomes
especially challenging as student diversity (including within-group differences) can
quickly grow to potential points of conflict, school-home mismatches,
miscommunication and/or misjudgment (Rueda, et al., 2001).
A Sociocultural View of Motivation and Reading Engagement
A sociocultural view of motivation focuses on social features of the task
and setting as well as cultural-historical factors as they are embedded in both the
activities and the social organization of the context (Rueda, et al., 2001). A key
feature of a sociocultural perspective is the shift of the unit of analysis from the
isolated individual to the individual in interaction with and within the larger
sociocultural context (Rogoff, 2003; Rueda, et al., 2001; Gee, 1996).
A review of literature on cognitive psychology and achievement reveals
several traditional assumptions that focus on individual characteristics without
recognizing the importance of social context to learning and motivation. Gee
(1992) points to a few of those assumptions:
a) thinking and speaking are functions of individual minds;
46
b) literacy is an individual mental skill involving the ability to read and
write;
c) knowledge and intelligence are individual, private mental possessions.
In contrast, socio-cultural theorists recognize the importance of social context to
motivation and reading comprehension (Ames, 1992; Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000;
Rueda & Dembo, 1995; Rueda, et al., 2001; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988) and replace
those assumptions with the following (Gee, 1992, p. 41):
a) thinking and speaking are functions of social groups and their specific
discourses
b) literacy is a social skill involving the ability to take a functional part in a
given social group’s discourses, attained through guided participation and
built on trust; and
c) a good part of knowledge (what people have a right to claim to know)
resides not in their minds, but in the social practices of the groups to which
they belong.
This shift is particularly crucial for students from nontraditional and diverse
backgrounds, as it may explain the variability in their achievement patterns in
comparison to the wider society (Rueda, et al., 2001).
Thus, sociocultural studies are concerned not only with individual
understandings, but also with home knowledge, language, cultural models or
influences that shape children’s perceptions and how they process and negotiate
47
text. This type of understanding requires examination of everyday life, activities,
cultural tools, technologies and children’s involvement in daily practices that
impact school-based reading activities and motivation (Rueda, et al., 2001; Rogoff,
2003; Perez, 1998; Baker & Wigfield, 1999; Guthrie, 2000; Wigfield & Guthrie,
1997). Instead of being competing ways to examine reading comprehension, each
focus informs the others (Rogoff, 2003).
Two studies highlighted here examine the relationships between
sociocultural factors and literacy achievement among diverse groups of learners.
Robert Rueda and his colleagues (2001) conducted a multilevel study with Latina/o
children, their teachers and parents. Kathryn Au (1980, Au & Mason, 1981, Au,
2000) studied the effects of discourse style and manner between Hawaiian children
and their teachers during instruction and how it affected the achievement of keiki.
In the study by Rueda, MacGillivray, Monzo and Arzubiaga (2001), 21
poor non-English speaking Latina/o children (first and second graders) from an
impoverished neighborhood school in Southern California were evaluated in their
classroom, home, and community contexts. Researchers used a range of data that
included individual assessments of motivation to read, school file data (test scores,
grades, and teacher comments), teacher perceptions of students’ motivation to read,
classroom observations (field notes), focus groups and interviews with teachers and
parents as well as home visits. Their study suggests relationships between
ecocultural factors, motivation measures and achievement.
48
They forwarded these salient points:
• Children’s individual characteristics cannot be considered in isolation;
rather, a broader perspective on reading motivation should include one
that considers family values, beliefs, resources, and constraints, since
they are at the core of children’s daily practices. Acknowledging the
variability among the children, families, and community can offset
group labels and explanations.
• While all the children observed came from the “same” cultural
background, there were great within-group differences and variability in
terms of academic trajectories related to reading orientations,
motivations and practices.
• Past literature on at-risk status indicated that features such as intact
family, parental interest in school achievement, appropriate models, and
the presence of literacy materials in the home are predictors of
differences. However, this study notes that the resources of even the
“advantaged” students seemed miniscule in comparison to those most
middle-class children enjoy.
• Critical elements important for school success must include
participation in discourse at school (Gee, 1998) and access to high-
quality literacy materials (Madrigal, Cubillas, Yaden, Tam & Brassell,
1999) since they may not be provided elsewhere.
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• Cross-disciplinary perspectives prove invaluable in studying culture and
the diverse backgrounds of students as culture develops over time in
response to adaptive challenges (Wesner, 1984).
The larger external sociopolitical, sociocultural issues such as state and local school
policies, and sociohistorical factors were seen as equally critical because they were
more likely to differentiate minorities from mainstream groups, yet they are
understudied and remain a challenge.
Similarly, studies by Au (1980, 1981) examined the sociocultural
relationship to reading achievement of Hawaiian elementary students. One study
(1980) conducted with 20 part-Hawaiian second graders from an urban elementary
school in Hawaii, found that using a familiar format of discourse (talk-story) in
instruction improved academic achievement. Au reported a positive way of
nurturing academic excellence was by being culturally responsive to keiki home
linguistic culture in the classroom. The talk-story manner was more comfortable
for the children, less formal, and consistent with the children’s home culture.
Another study by Au (1981), of seven-year-old part-Hawaiian students examined
the social interaction between teacher and students. The language conversations in
these studies were highly interactive discussions that respected and, in many cases,
assumed the community linguistic style of the learner, Creole or pidgin’ English.
Au’s studies (1980, 1981, 2000) found the talk-story style of the Hawaiian
community, characterized by overlapping speech, voluntary turn taking,
50
co-narration, and joint construction of story, gave ownership of literacy to the keiki.
This ownership related to proficiency in literacy, i.e., keiki were more attentive
during instruction, discussed more ideas and made a greater number of inferences.
In an effort to operationalize or systematically spell out the elements of
cultural factors in learning, Tharp (1989) forwarded the following “psychocultural
variables:”
• Social organization – how people organize themselves in groups or
as individuals; for example, if they have a group or individualistic
orientation to accomplishing tasks.
• Sociolinguistics – the conventions of interpersonal communication
different groups follow, such as wait time, proximity, rhythm and
flow of conversation, and how turn-taking is organized;
• Cognition – patterns of thought that can influence learning new
skills and knowledge, such as specific cognitive abilities or
cognitive styles; and
• Motivation – values, beliefs, expectations, and aspirations that
influence how, whether, and why individuals approach and persist at
specific goals or tasks (Tharp, 1989).
Tharp also identified two “constants” that would hold true in any culture. They are
a focus on language development and contextualized instruction, as these factors
contribute to culturally compatible learning environments, which presumably lead
51
to improved student outcomes (Rueda, 2005).
Consistent with Tharp’s (1989) theory are several others (Bruner, 1996;
Perez, 1998, Vygotsky, 1978; Rosenblatt, 1978), which emphasize the importance
of the social worlds of children. These sociocultural theories propose that the act of
reading is an interactive process involving the use of cultural ways of thinking and
making meaning. The assumption is that engaging in cognitively rich interactions
with other people can develop thinking skills. Cognitive development and reading
comprehension, then, is not merely acquiring knowledge or skills, but rather an
undertaking of a socially based, discursive, active form. Literacy is more than just
reading or writing, decoding, technical skills; and more than cognitive capabilities
to engage with a text (memory, attention, etc.). Cognitive development consists of
children changing their ways of understanding, perceiving, noticing, thinking,
remembering, classifying, reflecting, problem setting, and so on, due to shared
experiences and beliefs. In short, people and communities mutually create each
other (Rogoff, 2003).
In a report by the Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and
Education of the National Research Council (NRC) and the Committee on Learning
Research and Educational Practice, researchers argued “…that in order to truly
understand how and why some children appear motivated and strategic as readers,
research in this area must begin to conceive of motivation constructs as products of
sociocultural and historical phenomena (Bransford, et al., 1999). Key findings
52
from that report shed more light on cultural factors and sociocultural processes as
they relate to student achievement. The report offers the following points to
consider:
• All existing knowledge of families is sociocultural in nature -meaning
that it is socially transmitted and negotiated, embedded in specific
sociocultural context or ecocultural niches, and is culturally-laden and
political in nature.
• A sociocultural perspective allows us to see that family values and their
social, economic and political niches must be central in attempts to
transmit knowledge and practices compatible with a different cultural
context.
• A sociocultural perspective assumes that knowledge is socioculturally
constructed and has deep sociocultural and historical roots.
Another sociocultural dimension focuses on the ways that children use
literacy, particularly reading, to achieve personal goals in a variety of contexts
(Gee, 1992; Perez, 1993). For example, Brian Street (1995) advanced a perspective
of “social literacies” pointing out his theory that literacy was used by the West to
disguise a power dimension and access to literacy served to maintain privilege and
domination. Literacy in terms of reading comprehension, reading activities and
writing, from Street’s (1993) view, could also be seen as social practices embedded
within structures of power.
53
In addition, literacy can include a particular situation as well as a type of
text; in that comprehension can be “reading” the situation to respond appropriately
in it (Gee, 1996). This expanded notion of reading means knowing how to be, act
and think appropriately with the type of text, situation or discourse (Gee, 1996). It
organizes literacy along with what counts as literacy (Perez, 1998). An added
dimension, it would have us recognize these students as sources of knowledge and
as consumers and producers of multiple literacies (Guerra, 1998; Luke, 1995).
This view of reading comprehension seeks to understand the cultural
context of students and how they interpret who they are in relation to others. From
this frame, the terms text, reading comprehension and identity can be distinct from
traditional understandings to which text may not always be in print form, but may
also include oral or visual communications (National Council of Teachers of
English & International Reading Association, 1996; Sfard & Prusak, 2005;
Hammerberg, 2001). For example, literacy in traditional Hawaiian forms is
characterized as oral histories, stories, ceremonies, mele (songs) and chants along
with petroglyphs and print (Kamakau, 1965). Like other indigenous people, the
traditional Native Hawaiian methods were learned in context, i.e., in cultural
settings with abundant daily opportunities for ‘ohana (kinship) to embed stories,
legends, chants of knowledge, skills and values into the lives of their children.
These stories and legends were their identity and that sense of identity could
predispose intrinsic motivation for achievement (Sfard & Prusak, 2005). As literacy
54
varies from context to context and group to group, literacy, in terms of finding and
making meaning becomes a tool that is culturally determined and learned anew or
passed down from generation to generation (Rogoff, 2003).
One issue that arises has to do with the assumptions educators make in
assessing children’s reading performance without regard to the larger context.
While this discussion will not examine this issue in depth, raising the questions
builds a stronger case for thinking with the tools of a sociocultural perspective.
Rogoff (2003) posits that behavior is often treated as the “outcome” of independent
cultural values. The “influence” of culture on individuals is frequently studied by
“measuring” some characteristics of culture and some characteristics of individuals
(e.g. intelligence measures) and then correlating them. This contrasts with
approaches that examine the contributions of individuals and cultural practices as
they function together in mutually defining processes.
Rogoff’s framework (1994, 1995) proposes that learning and development
takes into account three levels:
• The personal plane: This involves individual cognition, emotion,
behavior, values, and beliefs.
• The interpersonal or social plane: This includes communication, role
performances, dialogue, cooperation, conflict, assistance and
assessment.
• The community or institutional plane: This level involved shared
55
history, languages, rules, values, beliefs and identity. This is sometimes
called districts, neighborhoods, tribes, or culture.
Sociocultural theory emphasizes the interdependence of all three planes (Rueda, et
al., 2001).
Duke and Purcell-Gates (2003) called attention to the fact that poor
performance on cognitive tasks at school may be based on literary experiences of
children that have little or no overlap between the home (the real world) and
school. Their research to account of genres used at home and in school was based
on two studies of low SES families living in an urban area in Massachusetts. One
study used 20 low-SES families, each with at least one child in the home between
the ages of 4 and 6. This study used observers who observed the families in their
homes and were of the same ethnic heritage as the family they observed. The other
study observed 10 first grade classrooms in a low-SES setting in Boston,
Massachusetts. Observers noted genres commonly used in both settings or in only
one setting or the other. Approximately 65 genres were identified at home and 55 in
school.
Genre, as the authors define it, refers to patterns in the way language is
used and defined by culture; patterns in the situation in which the text is used and
patterns in the features of that text – format, structure, content. This venn diagram
by Duke and Purcell-Gates (2003) allows one to visually see that a child’s existing
knowledge and family literacy activities are not always compatible with the way
56
schools approach literacy (see figure 2.11)
Figure 2.11 Genres Used at Home and School
Summary of
narratives
Pledges
Webs
Personal
narratives
Punctuation
Steps
Check stubs telephone Word walls Headings
directory
Lottery Tickets Diagrams
Advertisement Tens and ones charts
Children books
Adult Books
Messages
Individual
words
Individual
words
Labels
Signs Titles
Letters (correspondence)
Greeting
Informational
text
Name
Newspaper
Individual
Map List
Descriptive
Alphabe
Caption
Schedule
Magazine
Instruction
Calendar
Song
Applications
Recipes
Receipts
Biblical text
Trading Cards
Mail
Pamphlet
Notices
Notes
Game-related print
Menus
Address books
Coupons
Catalogs
Cookbooks
Appointment books
Bills
Activity books
Fliers
TV guides
Scribbles
Broachers
Scripts
Print on TV
Thermometers
Reports
Comic
Comic books
Currency
Gift tags
Announcements
Tallies
Charts Word or sentence
to picture
Dates
Reading Posters Poems
Worksheets
Graphs
Estimation charts
Opinions
Thinking question
Individual
Story problems
Student Journals
Dedication; about the
author page;
table of contents
Yesterday/today/
tomorrow charts
Covers Questions of the day
Note: Within the overlapping area, placement approximates relative frequency of use in each setting (e.g.
newspapers are on the far edge of the overlapping area toward home settings because they were frequently
used in the home and only very rarely used in schools).
There are fewer genres found in both settings. The authors suggested that
school genres are particularly unfamiliar to low-income students and may be one
cause of children’s difficulties with literacy tasks required of them in the school
classroom. For example, the frequent literary experiences of a child at home may
be limited to trading cards, the television guide, grocery lists, comics or
advertisements whereas fourth grade classrooms rely heavily on familiarity with
charts, graphs, chapter books, worksheets, narratives and textbooks. Culturally
57
constructed literacy involves connecting what students participate in at home and
what they engage in at school, a step toward amending home and school
mismatches.
Given the highly interdependent role of sociocultural factors and context on
the comprehension process, children who lack this contextual or mainstream
knowledge (cultural capital) can be at a disadvantage when they read because they
lack critical background knowledge to make inferences. For example, a text that
reads, “Sam left five dollars under his plate,” might baffle fourth grade keiki as
they may lack specific knowledge of a typical restaurant experience like leaving a
tip. Geography also plays a role for the development of what is “common
knowledge” for something as basic as the seasons of the year. Fall, Spring and
Winter are not typical dimensions of life on a tropical island and keiki would not be
familiar with the concepts of “dropping temperatures” or the need to read or be
cognizant of weather temperatures when the weather swings generally from rainy
to sunny. In addition, local families do not use cardinal directions such as north,
south, east or west and keiki would not know where north or south is. Instead, one
either heads mauka (to the mountain) or makai (to the ocean), Diamond Head (to
the south) or Ewa (to the north).
Hammerberg (2004) asserted that because reading comprehension can
change on the basis of the social and cultural context, sociocultural theories see
identity as fluid and changing too. One’s identity as abled or disabled, poor student
58
or good student can change according to what is “read” in context. She asserts this
understanding becomes significant when we think about individual and group
stereotypes and how they affect identity.
Another study that helps us to alter our view of learning and development
studied the issue of how we can assess and interpret children’s literacy
performance. In a study by Scribner and Cole (1981), cognitive theories and
interpretations were challenged. The authors argued that specific social practices of
Western-style schooling, define what our culture thinks of as “higher” cognitive
functions, such as abstract thinking and writing. Scriber and Cole (1981) examined
Vai in Liberia. Some Vai acquired English in formal school settings, others had an
indigenous language passed down within the community, and still others were
nonliterate. In performance tests of “higher order thinking” skills, subjects were
asked to perform categorization and syllogistic reasoning tasks such as sorting,
logic explanation, grammatical rules explanation, game instructions
(communication) and answers to questions. The authors noted that in our culture,
the highest determinant of performance was discursive ability or “talking about”
ability. They noted, “…Once we move away from verbal exposition, we find no
other general patterns of cross-task superiority. (p. 242). The authors did not find a
difference in actual performance on reasoning tasks between groups. Some, they
noted, simply “talked about them better.”
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While simply explained, the relationship between knowledge and
comprehension is not that simple. Sometimes knowledge is inert and not brought to
bear in the comprehension process (Bransford & Johnson, 1972). Other times the
knowledge is incomplete, fragmented, naïve, or even misleading (Lipson, 1982;
Dole, et al., 1996). And when students possess knowledge that conflicts with the
information encountered in a text, students’ existing knowledge can and often does
prevail over textual information (Anderson & Smith, 1987; Dole & Smith, 1987).
That fact alone, speaks to respecting the dignity and humanity of persons,
particularly, our children.
To sum, scholars interested in explaining academic success of minority
children have found sociocultural factors significantly associated with reading
achievement (Arzubiaga, Rueda & Monzo, 2002; Guthrie,1997, 2000, 2001;
Guthrie, 2000; Guthrie & Cox, 2001; Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997; Rueda, 2001;
Rueda, et al., 2001). Social and cultural contexts influence children’s personal
stores of existing knowledge and personal practices (Vygotsky, 1978; Rogoff,
2003; Eccles et al., 1998; Alexander & Judy, 1988). The key feature is a shift from
analysis of isolated individuals to individuals in interaction with the social practices
of the groups to which they belong. This approach
a) keeps us from situating the problem solely in the individual,
b) seriously looks at mediating the sociocultural context e.g. schools,
institutions, and society that surrounds the child; and
60
c) builds literacy as cognitive and social skills through guided practice built on
trust.
The process of reading achievement is unending; acquisition of new aspects
of reading, language and other factors continue through interactions and
experiences. This process of reading engagement and achievement involves a series
of behaviors that occur over time, beginning with activating prior knowledge and
continues to develop as students read, respond, explore, and apply their reading.
What keeps a student motivated to continue this quest? This next section explores
motivation and reading engagement.
Motivation Theory
Motivation theorists study what moves people to act, keep moving and get
jobs done (Eccles, et al., 1998; Pintrich & Schunk, 1996). Research has shown that
one’s engagement in a task depends upon beliefs about one’s competence, the
extent to which one values a task, and whether that value is intrinsic or extrinsic in
origin (Deci & Ryan, 1985). In other words, critical determinants of achievement-
related behavior are these individual beliefs, value of the task, and purposes for
achievement (intrinsic or extrinsic (Wigfield & Eccles, 1992) because they
determine decisions about which activities to do, how long to do them, and how
much effort to put into them (Bandura, 1997; Eccles, Wigfield, & Schiefele, 1998;
Pintrich & Schunk, 1996; Wigfield, Eccles, & Rodriguez, 1998). Wigfield (1997)
conceptualized these constructs in the following questions:
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• Can I succeed?
• Do I want to succeed and why? And
• What do I need to do to succeed?
Drawing from this work, researchers (Pintrich & Schunk, 1996; Wigfield,
1997) pinpoint motivation as one of the “big three” causes of performance gaps.
The three critical factors are:
1. People’s knowledge and skills;
2. Their motivation to achieve the goal (particularly when compared with
other work goals they must also achieve); and
3. Organizational barriers such as a lack of necessary equipment and
missing or inadequate work processes.
According to Pintrich & Schunk (1996), motivational causes of gaps are more
complex than knowledge and skill causes because motivational research is yet to be
adequately understood and communicated. There are many misconceptions about
motivation that act as barriers to improved performance, which I will discuss later.
Figure 2.12 illustrates how motivation theorists envision the three facets of
motivation combine to result in success and the achievement of goals (2002, p.81).
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Figure 2.12 Three Facets of Motivated Performance
Active Choice Persistence Mental Effort
Increased Performance
Increased motivation combines
with effective knowledge, skills,
and work processes to result in
goal achievement.
Following their illustration, we see that the nature of motivation and reading
achievement involves a) arousing and directing children’s interests to read (active
choice), b) sustaining student involvement in productive reading activities rather
than other activities (persistence), and c) helping them invest adequate energy to
make meaning from their reading (mental effort) to achieve the goal (reading
comprehension). The latter index, mental effort, entails yet another layer of
understanding. Pintrich & Schunk (1996) link mental effort to a child’s self-
confidence. In large part, mental effort is determined by a child’s confidence.
They purport that children who lack confidence tend not to invest much mental
effort in a task because they basically believe they will fail, which results in
problems of choice and persistence. Conversely, overconfidence is also a problem
when children misjudge their own abilities. Overconfident children may think the
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task is too easy, and fail to work very hard at it. Overconfidence can cause children
who make mistakes to take no responsibility for them. The authors claim both
overconfidence and under-confidence weakens effort.
Considerable research includes motivational beliefs in expanded cognitive
models of learning (Chapman & Tunmer, 2003; Bandura, 1993; Schunk, 1999;
Zimmerman, 1995, 2000). The next section draws from this body of work to
approach motivation research applied to reading engagement.
Motivation Research Applied to Reading Engagement and Achievement
Guthrie and Wigfield (2000) stated, “motivation is what activates behavior”
(p. 406). In terms of reading engagement, even the most able or skillful students
may not engage in reading if they lack motivation. In order for students to develop
into effective readers, they must possess both the skill and the will to read (Paris &
Oka, 1986). Several studies examined the motivation aspect of achievement in
learning (Bandura, 1997; Guthrie & Wigfield, 1999; Guthrie, et al., 1999; Pintrich
& Schunk, 1996; Rueda, et al., 2001; Covington, 2000; Okazaki) particularly in
reading engagement and text comprehension. We now know that there is a clear
relation between beliefs, attitudes, and values as mediators of task engagement
(Wigfield & Eccles, 1992). Motivational variables contribute to reading
achievement and text comprehension through several paths (Guthrie, et al., 1999).
The constructs related to achievement behaviors include perceptions of ability and
self-efficacy, task values, achievement goals, control beliefs, intrinsic and extrinsic
64
motivation, and achievement attributions (Rigby, Deci, Patrick, & Ryan, 1992;
Wigfield & Eccles, 1992).
In recent years, motivation science has taken its place along with cognitive
science, affective science and developmental science in the realm of the learning
sciences (Pintrich, 2003). In fact, the affective (motivational) factors have been
deemed essential characteristics of reading by researchers at the National Reading
Research Center. One implication is that the multidimensional and
multidisciplinary nature of human behavior requires a multidisciplinary approach to
the problems of motivational and learning science (Pintrich, 2002; Cairns et al,
1996; Cervone & Mischel, 2002).
Stiggins (2001) stated, “We cannot separate affect and achievement from
one another in the classroom. As teachers, we must know how to help students
develop academically empowering dispositions” (p. 340, emphasis in original).
Stiggins is not alone in this view. Researchers, here and abroad (e.g., Segers,
Dochy, & Eduardo, 2003), have been developing new modes of assessment that
take into consideration the relationship between students’ motivational beliefs and
academic achievement.
Central to reading engagement is the role of motivation or internalized goals
that lead to literacy choices and comprehension strategies (Pintrich & Schrauben,
1992). Fundamentally, engaged reading refers to the joint functioning of
65
motivations and strategies during reading (Newman, Wahlage & Lamborn, 1992)
and is one of the primary goals to increase literacy development.
Besides a cognitive task, basically, constructing meaning during reading is a
motivated act (Guthrie, et. al, 1999). The student is performing deliberately and
purposefully; the reader attends to the text, chooses to make meaning from it, and
expends effort to construct knowledge. Therefore, an explanation of motivation is
also tied to an explanation of reading comprehension (Guthrie, et al. 1999);
This view regards motivation as a socially negotiated cultural norm that
“results in an observable manifestation of interest and cognitive and affective
engagement” (Sivan, 1986, p. 210). It encourages involving thinking with social
relations and cultural experience as well as shifting our understanding of cognition
from solitary individuals to shared endeavors in larger communities (Rogoff, 2003;
Rueda, et al., 2001). In fact, Alexander and Murphy (1998) insist that any
educational change or reform cannot be realized unless the powers of the social or
contextual factors involved in learning are also given credence.
Thus achievement gaps in reading that may presumably be due to
motivation are indicated by (Pintrich & Schunk, 1996):
• Belief of lack of confidence of reading ability
• Lack of self motivation shown by students in not initiating or starting
reading activities
• Not persisting in reading activities
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• Letting other activities distract them from reading activities and goals
• Not reading without external rewards or inducements
• Beliefs they have little or no control to change their situation, i.e., the
reading is too hard, the tests are hard, the language of the texts is
confusing, the reading is meaningless and boring, etc.
• Unclear, neutral or negative personal goals
Groundbreaking work with social-cognitive learning theory by Albert
Bandura (1993) explains the positive role of self-efficacy to success and
achievement. According to Bandura, sources of self-efficacy are mastery
experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion, and physiological and
emotional states. Bandura argues that belief that one can be successful at reading
affects children’s decisions about reading, how long to read, and how much effort
to put into reading. These influences are closely related to perceptions and what
learners believe and value. Behavior, environment and persons are the three points
Bandura argued that influence each other.
Recently the importance of “self-system” variables (self-concept, self-
efficacy, self-regulation, etc.) in cognition and learning are recognized. Borkowski
and colleagues (1990) argued that the self-system helps to determine the quality of
academic achievement. More specific studies by Kurtz-Costes and Schneider
(1994) suggested that academic self-concept may start to influence achievement
between grades 3 and 5. A similar study by Helmke and van Aken (1995) also
67
observed reciprocal interactions between self-concept and achievement during
grades 5 and 6. These findings concur that achievement-related self-perceptions
reflect patterns of achievement or non-achievement. More discussion on this will
follow later.
A better understanding of essential components of literacy reveal that
reading comprehension and engagement are associated more with motivational
factors as opposed to cognitive skills (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000; Chapman and
Tunmer, 1995; 1997; McCombs, 1989; Rueda, 2005). For example, a student may
be acquainted with certain techniques or reading strategies, but that acquaintance or
knowledge per se, does not account for the students’ willingness to use the
strategies (Sfard and Prusak, 2005; Rueda, 2005). This is especially true for
students who are considered at-risk for academic failure (Snow, Burns & Griffin,
1998; Rueda et al., 2001).
A strong Reading Engagement theory done by Guthrie and colleagues
(1997) showed three motivational processes (beliefs, values, and goals) accompany
cognitive processes and have important influences on text comprehension. The
authors revealed the inter-relationship of the three facets of motivation and its
effectiveness on reading. Their study showed both predictive power of motivational
processes to higher text comprehension and causal relations to higher text
comprehension (Guthrie & Wigfield, 1999).
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• Student self efficacy (beliefs about ability to achieve).
This construct is based on Bandura’s (1997) study on self-efficacy. This
prominent study claims that student beliefs of their abilities or evaluations
of their own competence are a major determinant of choosing an activity,
persisting at it, and being willing to expend effort in order to achieve their
goal. People who believe they are capable will achieve significantly more
than others who are just as capable but tend to doubt their own abilities
(Bandura, 1977, 1997). Asserted negatively, students who are pessimistic
or believe that they cannot be effective no matter what they do will not
actively pursue work goals, persist so that they avoid distractions, or invest
enough mental effort to do their best. The important implication for
motivation for reading is that when children believe they are competent at
reading, they are more likely to engage in reading (Schunk, 1991; Wigfield
& Guthrie, 1997).
• Purposes for doing different tasks (task values, intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation, and achievement goals). I will discuss each in their order.
Several major studies relate task values, intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation, and achievement goals to reading engagement and achievement
(Bandura, 1997; Pintrich & Schunk, 1996; Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997;
Eccles, Wigfield, & Schiefele, 1998; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). Wigfield
and Guthrie (1997) claim that even if children believe they are competent
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and efficacious in reading they may not engage in reading if they have no
purpose for doing so. Eccles and colleagues (1983), differentiated the
various components of task values, which include interest value (how much
the child likes reading), similar to the construct of intrinsic motivation;
attainment value (the importance of reading); and utility value (the
usefulness of reading), which captures more “extrinsic” reasons for
engaging in a task, such as doing a task not for its own sake but to reach
some desired end state (Deci & Ryan, 1985). In a model called the
expectancy-value theory, Eccles, Wigfield, and their colleagues (1984,
1983, 1994, 1992), claimed that student expectancies (ability beliefs
focused on the future) and values, not only influence but predict intentions
(active choice), actual decisions to keep taking math and English
(persistence) and performance. Expectancies and values are assumed to be
influenced by task-specific beliefs such as ability beliefs, the perceived
difficulty of different tasks, and individuals’ goals, schema, and affective
memories (Eccles et al., 1983).
Another construct of understanding how purpose relates to
motivation is intrinsic motivation, which refers to choosing to do an activity
for its own sake, as opposed to extrinsic motivation which refers to
choosing to do an activity for external rewards such as pay, recognition or
grades. Two researchers linked intrinsic motivation to achievement.
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Csikszentmihalyi (1978) describes the flow experience, which occurs when
one loses track of time and becomes completely involved in an activity such
as reading a book. Nell (1988) refers to this state as an “intense and highly
energized state of concentrated attention” (p. 263) and believes many
individuals seek to obtain it.
Reading researchers look primarily at children’s attitudes toward
reading (Matthewson, 1994; McKenna, 1994) and children’s interest in text
comprehension (Alexander, Kulikowich, & Jetton, 1994; Renninger, 1992).
They found that interest in the materials enhanced comprehension, even of
materials that were difficult for the readers.
Finally, related to intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are achievement
goals, which refer to goal orientations of children. Three studies
demonstrate that the types of goals children internalize directly relate to
positive motivation in school. Dweck & Legget (1988) describes the goal
orientation as performance goals versus learning goals. Nicholls et al,
(1989) used the terms ego-involved goals versus task-involved goals and
also included work-avoidant goals, referring to students who do as little
schoolwork as possible. Performance goals describe student orientations
that underlie external evaluations of ability. Questions like “Will I look
smart?” and “Can I beat others?” reflect performance goals. Learning or
mastery goals, on the other hand, focus on mastering tasks and increasing
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competence. Questions such as “What will I learn?” and “How can I do this
task?” reflect learning goals. Children who have learning goals as opposed
to performance goals are more likely to maintain positive motivation in
school, and work-avoidant students are disengaged from school (Wigfield
& Guthrie, 1997).
Not surprisingly, researchers (Ames, 1992; Pintrich & Schunk, 2002) have
found that the classroom environment has a powerful influence on students’
motivational beliefs. Teachers should, therefore, continually monitor how their
classroom procedures and activities influence students’ achievement goal
orientations. This is particularly important when it comes to classroom evaluation
procedures. Motivational theorists (Ames, 1992; Pintrich & Schunk, 2002)
maintain that the way in which students are evaluated has a strong influence on the
goal orientations they adopt.
A few examples will serve to illustrate why classroom teachers need to
monitor students’ goal orientations when evaluating the success of their
instructional efforts. Consider a teacher who relies heavily on timed skill and drill
worksheets to improve students’ standardized test scores in reading. Even though
test scores might initially increase, students who once held an adaptive goal
orientation toward reading may now feel pressured to succeed, fear they can no
longer be successful at reading, and do everything they can to avoid looking
“dumb” (e.g., engage in cheating or some form of self-sabotage). In rendering a
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judgment of whether the instructional approach was a success, we would need to
weigh the negative impact on students’ achievement goal orientations against the
positive gains in test scores. Conversely, consider how favorable an outcome it
would be for a student who, after spending a year in a teacher’s classroom, feels
like – for the first time in her academic career – she can be successful in reading,
personally values the activity, and wants to understand and read more.
By including the assessment of students’ goal orientations in their
evaluations, teachers communicate to students that positive motivation beliefs are
valued. In doing so, they are actually supporting the development of such beliefs in
students (Ames, 1992; Pintrich & Schunk, 2002). In addition, assessments of
students’ goal orientations provide teachers with important information they can
use in formative evaluations of their own teaching. Based on this information,
teachers can make necessary and timely adjustments to their instructional practices
and thereby support students’ academic learning.
This chapter highlighted multiple theories that jointly combine to shape
student motivation, learning and achievement. Educational psychologists,
sociologists, motivation scientists, cognitive scientists and anthropologists help to
explain the roles of needs, motives, beliefs, values and culture that integrate
implicit, unconscious processes with more explicit and conscious processes (Ogbu,
1986, Pintrich & Schunk, Wigfield, Eccles, Covington, Rueda, 2003, 2005; Clark
& Estes, 2002). In a nutshell, education scientists emphasized the integration of
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multiple theories that jointly combine to shape learning and achievement of
minority children.
Cultural Considerations
The constructing of culturally responsive methods and protocols for
indigenous evaluation research are obligatory even while the “rules” are unspoken.
It is therefore prudent to follow traditional values and practices for Hawaiian study
(Mataira, 2003). Some key evaluation planning considerations are:
• Build in relationship-binding principles including respect, honesty,
confidentiality and integrity.
• Set in place protocols for transferring/feeding back information to
participants in a clear and non-technical and culturally appropriate
manner. This means that the local “talk story” model works best -
informal, friendly and unhurried time together is appropriate and
effective before and after the surveys are administered.
• Set into the research design assurances of reciprocity. Researchers such
as Hostetler (2005) and Spradley (1979) remind us that another goal of
research is not merely to gain deeper understanding but to serve relevant
needs. Research should translate to positive action. These purposes
should be shared with informants as well as possible ways to continue
working together toward desires goals.
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With the current thrust of indigenous research ethics, the question of who is
qualified to conduct evaluation research is critical to the integrity of research.
According to Mataira (2003), “Qualifying competency – technical and cultural –
implies not just having the right skills, but whether one has any legitimate right of
access.” Further, he asserts, “There has to be a degree of authenticity that connects
the results of an evaluation to the implementation of these results. Employing
empirical methods will help set our conceptualization of adopting interwoven
methodologies, if done well will allow theory to guide research and research to
guide theory, or, at least inform it.” It is imperative that Hawaiian research scholars
construct Hawaiian theory that empowers Hawaiians through knowledge
transference and bringing unspoken values and beliefs to light in order to build
others’ awareness and inclusivity for Hawaiian views and beliefs. Such research
acknowledges meaning as defined by Hawaiian people, and that relationships
between theory and experience have to be grounded in cultural milieu (Mataira,
2003). In short, Hawaiians have to recognize and/or ascertain the authenticity of the
results themselves.
CONCLUSION
Native Hawaiian elementary students lag in reading and literacy outcomes.
The broad question that roots this study asks what are the relationships among
sociocultural factors, motivation and reading activities to keiki achievement.
Sociocultural factors were found to be significantly associated with reading
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achievement (Guthrie, 1997, 2000, 2001; Rueda, 2003, 2005) and emphasize the
need to connect learning to students’ daily lives so learners can construct meanings
of their world as they organize, restructure and represent what they already know
(Jonassen & Reeves, 1996; Montgomery, 2000). Even so, Brophy charged that
educational goals and the definition of academic achievement against explicit
standards of the last century are relative in nature and thus limited. He asserted that
we are far less knowledgeable about achievement dynamics as they relate to
culture; to the appreciation and valuing of the one who is learning, and to the role
culture and motivation play in pursuit of academic tasks.
To most researchers, the evidence is clear that motivation affects cognitive
processing and cognitive processes affect motivation. The cognitive aspects of
motivation are perceptions, expectancies, values, interests, goals and attributions
(Bandura, 1997; Pintrich & Schunk, 2002; Eccles, et al., 2001; Ormrod, 2002).
Pintrich (Pintrich, 1991; Pintrich et al., 1993) explains that it is useful to view
motivation as the general process by which the individuals’ needs and desires are
activated and, thus, directs their thoughts and their behaviors. This cyclic process of
interplay between motivation, individual needs and resultant thoughts and
behaviors are illustrated by the fact that young children’s reading self-concept,
academic self-concept, and reading self-efficacy can develop as early as the first
year of schooling (Chapman & Tunmer, 2003). Ongoing success or difficulty in
reading occurs early and thus contributes to positive or negative achievement-
76
related self beliefs and reading engagement which can become problematic around
the fourth grade.
Motivation is the energy for learning like gasoline is to a car (Clark, 2005).
Motivation is defined as the psychological processes that initiate and sustain goal-
directed activity and determine the amount of mental effort someone is prepared to
invest in achieving a novel goal. A review of key motivational generalizations from
Pintrich (2003) includes:
• Adaptive self-efficacy and competence beliefs motivate students
• Adaptive attributions and control beliefs motivate students
• Higher levels of interest and intrinsic motivation motivate students
• Higher levels of value motivate students
• Goals motivate and direct students (p.672).
Research in motivation is well documented and proposes clear relations
between beliefs, attitudes, and values as mediators of task engagement (Rueda,
2005; Wigfield & Eccles, 1992). Alexander and Murphy (1994) documents study
after study that learners who have positive self-concepts (Wigfield & Karpathian,
1991; Wylie, 1974, 1979, 1989), believe themselves to be in control of their
learning (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 1991; Deci et al., 1991), and have goals of
understanding rather than performing (Dweck, 1986; Nicholls, 1984) are more apt
to achieve in schools. Further, students who are capable of setting appropriately
high goals for themselves (Bandura, 1977, 1993; Schunk, 1991) and those who find
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their classroom work personally relevant are more likely to succeed in schools
(Lepper, 1988; Maehr & Braskamp, 1986; Meece et al, 1988). Research goes so far
to say that when the teacher acknowledges students’ personal interests, or when
students perceive the classroom climate as supportive and encouraging, they are
more likely to perform well in the academic environment (Ames, 1992; Pintrich, et
al., 1993).
A sociocultural view of motivation emphasizes social features of the task
and setting as well as sociopolitical-historical factors (Rueda, et al, 2001).
Motivation, in this view, is less a feature of the individual than of the interaction of
both the individual and the larger social context in a dynamic interplay (Rueda &
Dembo, 1995).
Although current research emphasizes the role of motivational and
sociocultural variables in reading achievement, there is a lack of research that
focuses on these variables of fourth grade children of Hawaiian ancestry. What do
the voices of Hawaiian fourth graders have to say about their perceptions of reading
interests, habits, tasks and goals? Can we raise test scores and still affirm culture?
As Hawaiians comprise the majority group in Hawaii’s public schools
(Kana’iaupuni et al., 2005), finding favorable outcomes has deep implications for
Hawaii’s keiki, their families, policymakers, educators, and our island future.
The next chapter outlines the research design of this inquiry and the
methodology used to collect data for the following research questions:
78
1. What are the relationships among the sociocultural (background) factors,
reading motivation, and reading activities/practices?
2. How well do they predict student achievement?
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CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of motivational
and sociocultural factors in reading comprehension and achievement for fourth
grade Hawaiian keiki. This proposed study was based on the assumption that many
important issues related to low reading comprehension are associated with
motivational factors rather than (or in tandem with) learning and cognitive issues
and require different approaches to realize student gains (Rogoff, 2003; Rueda, et
al., 2001; 2005; Guthrie & Wigfield, 1997; Pintrich & Schunk, 1996). The goal was
to better learn how motivation and sociocultural factors of Hawaiian children relate
to reading comprehension in terms of increasing task value, self-efficacy, and/or
mood, resulting in more active choice, persistence, and mental effort expended on
relevant reading tasks and activities (Clark & Estes, 2002; Rueda, 2005). How well
did these factors predict reading achievement?
The first two chapters laid the foundation for the present study exploring
motivational and sociocultural theory as a framework for reading engagement and
text comprehension. Fourth grade has been described as the period generally after a
stage called acclimation, beginning a more challenging stage called middle
competence (Alexander, 1994). A failure of motivation (disengagement or apathy)
at this point could stifle their progress and halt their development toward increased
competence. The complexity of their difficulties and the multifaceted nature of
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reading engagement and comprehension require an understanding that is equally
multifaceted, rather than concrete definitions. What parents, teachers,
administrators and counselors may assume is a culture of reading may differ from
students’ view of their experiences.
This chapter explains the methods and measures used regarding the
sociocultural and motivation theories of reading engagement. Second, this chapter
explains the sampling procedure and population, instrumentation, and procedures
for data collection used.
Research Design
The design of this study was descriptive and correlational. This study
employed a survey/correlational design for Question 1 that focused on relationships
among key dimensions to reading based on Wigfield and Guthrie’s (1997)
Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ), such as children’s reading efficacy
(beliefs and attitudes), reading activities, language proficiency level, and others.
Concerned with achievement, I used multiple regression for Question 2 to help
make predictions.
Figure 3.1 illustrates the variables that were used in this study’s correlation
model and figure 3.2 illustrates the variables that were used in the multiple
regression model.
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Figure 3.1 Variables used in Correlation model
Sociocultural
Factors
Reading
Activities
Reading
Motivation
Figure 3.2 Variables used in the Multiple Regression model
GOALS SOCIAL PURPOSES FOR READING GOALS
FOR FOR
READING READING
READING
ENGAGEMENT &
ACHIEVEMENT
Competition
Grades
Recognition
Importance
Involvement
Curiosity
Work
avoidance
Self-efficacy Challenge
Social Compliance
COMPETENCE AND EFFICACY BELIEFS
I chose to use self-administered questionnaires and school information such
as grades and reading test scores because of the advantage of identifying attributes
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of a large population from small groups of individuals. The surveys were cross-
sectional, with the data collected at one point in time.
The research questions for this study were the following:
QUESTION 1: What are the relationships among sociocultural factors,
reading motivation, and reading activities?
QUESTION 2: How well do they predict student outcomes (achievement)?
Methodology
Research Population
The population study group included fourth grade students from random
areas of high Hawaiian populations. Students ranged from low SES to middle
income families. In one of the schools, 100% of the students were documented part
Hawaiian descent. In the other schools, students self reported their ethnicity. The
target sample size was 300.
Schools selected were from various locations on the islands of O’ahu.
Schools were both private and public schools with some of the schools considered
rural and others, urban. In a small island state, this was relative. The process of
selection follows. Schools were selected by the prevalence of a Hawaiian
population based on Hawaii DOE statistics. Emails were sent to the principals of
those schools asking for permission to conduct the study. Letters and samples of
the questionnaires were attached. Four principals responded affirmatively, although
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two principals later declined due to busy school demands and another principal
who originally declined later granted permission for the study. Teachers were then
contacted by email, telephone or in person, to arrange for times to conduct the
survey.
Instrumentation
The following existing instruments designed for research were used to
collect student data. (See Appendix A)
1) Student Background Questionnaire – This questionnaire elicited basic
background information and reading-related information. It was adapted
from the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) 2005
protocol and contained 18 fill-in items.
2) Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ) – This questionnaire was
developed by Wigfield & Guthrie (1995). It was designed to measure
diverse dimensions and aspects of elementary school-aged children of
reading motivation. The MRQ measured growth on motivational
outcomes in 11 areas: Reading Efficacy, Reading Challenge, Reading
Curiosity, Reading Topics Aesthetically Enjoyed, Importance of
Reading, Reading Recognition, Reading for Grades, Social Reasons for
Reading, Competition in Reading, Compliance, and Reading Work
Avoidance. It was a 48 item questionnaire that used a four point Likert
scale.
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3) Reading Activity Inventory (RAI) – This inventory was developed by
John Guthrie (1994). It was a 26-question inventory that was used to
assess reading interest and reading activities of keiki.
4) Teacher Rating – Teachers were asked to rate each student in one of the
following categories: High reader (performing above 90th percentile),
Good reader (performing above 80th percentile), Fair reader
(performing above 70th percentile), or Poor reader (performing below
70th percentile). Teachers rated students on this four-point scale based
on standardized test scores, classroom grades and classroom
performance.
Procedure
The collection of data involved the following steps:
1. A request to conduct this study was sent to the principal of each school.
2. Upon approval, a letter was sent to each fourth grade teacher at the school
explaining the study, its requirements and requesting his or her support.
3. Permission was solicited from students and their parents to participate in the
study.
4. The Principal Investigator conducted the surveys in the classrooms.
5. Names on the surveys were cut off, then collected and analyzed.
6. Results will be shared with schools, teachers and students.
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Validity and Reliability
The surveys and questionnaires used for this study have been used and
validated in previous studies. The Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ)
was developed by Wigfield and Guthrie (1997) and used in their study as well as
subsequent others (Rueda et al., 2001). Exploratory factor analyses of the
individual item sets, item-total correlations, and reliability analyses showed that all
of the proposed dimensions were clearly identified and had good internal
consistency reliabilities (Baker & Wigfield, 1999). This study replicated this
theoretically grounded MRQ reported by Wigfield and Guthrie (1997) and Baker
and Guthrie (1999), only this study was with fourth grade children of Hawaiian
ancestry.
In previous computations of internal consistency reliabilities for the scales
(Baker and Guthrie, 1999), scaled scores for each of the dimensions of reading
motivation were summed on each item on the scale and the mean computed.
Researchers also computed internal consistency reliabilities for the scales, shown in
Table 3 (Baker & Guthrie, 1999). Reliabilities greater than .70 indicated reasonably
good internal consistency. Five of the scales had internal consistency reliabilities
greater than .70, or had reliabilities closely approaching .70. The Work Avoidance
scale was the only one with questionable reliability.
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Table 3 Reliabilities and means and standard deviations for the motivation
scales
Scale Number Alpha M SD
of items
Self-efficacy 4 .66 3.09 0.65
Challenge 5 .72 3.08 0.66
Work avoidance 4 .55 2.43 0.76
Curiosity 6 .69 3.20 0.61
Involvement 5 .66 3.14 0.62
Importance 2 .76 3.40 0.79
Recognition 5 .74 3.25 0.66
Grades 4 .68 3.58 0.59
Competition 4 .72 2.62 0.71
Social 6 .75 2.62 0.71
Compliance 3 .68 3.37 0.67
The Reading Activity Inventory (RAI) was also developed by Guthrie and
colleagues (1994) and although there is no traditional reliability for this measure
(breadth and frequency of students’ reading), previous administrations of the
measure correlated .54 (p <,991, suggesting a substantial level of stability in the
measure (Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997).
Reliability was estimated to increase as the sample size increased. The
reliability of the results of each aspect of children’s motivation scale was
computed.
Data Analysis
This study used descriptive statistics to investigate the existence and extent
of relationships among selected variables. Descriptive statistics included
frequencies, means, and standard deviations for the dependent variable, reading
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achievement. The statistical software package SPSS, version 14.0, was used for this
information.
This research focused on variables that predict reading engagement and
achievement of fourth grade Hawaiian children. A frequency analysis was used to
check for the size of the number of respondents in the different subgroups. In this
study, the dependent variable was Reading Achievement. The study planned for
the goal of 300 participants. Relying upon consistency and repetition of results, the
data analysis was assumed to operate more as a detective looking for clues rather
than like a bookkeeper seeking to prove out a balance. The analysis determined
whether the proposed aspects of reading motivation and sociocultural factors could
be identified empirically. A factor analysis to assess the different proposed
motivation aspects was also included. An examination whether the reading
motivation or sociocultural factors predicted reading amount, breadth and
achievement was done.
Sample and Power Analysis
Four statistical concepts were important considerations when designing this
study, and they worked together to form a closed system. These included: desired
significance level, statistical power, anticipated effect size, and study sample size.
A significance level of .05 was the goal, but others (e.g., .10, .01) were also
utilized. In addition, it was desirable to have a power value of at least .80,
indicating the study had an 80% chance of yielding a significant finding.
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When three of these quantities were known or estimated, the fourth was
calculated using a procedure called power analysis. Thus, power analysis allowed
the researcher to estimate the strength (i.e., power) of certain statistical tests to
identify findings (with specified significance) given the samples upon which the
tests were conducted and depending upon the magnitude of the underlying effect.
In other words, it provided the researcher with an estimate of how likely the
statistical tests would uncover or identify existing differences between groups or
relationships among variables. Power analysis also allowed for the estimation of
necessary sample sizes assuming certain effect sizes, desired power levels, and
statistical significance for the statistical tests to be conducted.
The anticipated effect size in this study was predicted on a conservative
estimate of the strength of the estimate of the relationship among sociocultural and
motivational variables and reading comprehension. A relatively small effect size of
.20 to .25 was anticipated. The conservative approach taken was to ensure that the
study possessed sufficient power to detect effect sizes at the lower end of the
anticipated range. In that way, the study was robust enough to detect both smaller
and more substantial effects of the relationships.
In this study, a correlational/regression approach was taken. With an
expected effect size of .20, a regression analysis with a significance level of .05 and
power of .80 would require a sample size of approximately 200 subjects. The goal
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of the project was to recruit a sample sufficient in size to provide a representative
picture of the population in question and to permit sufficient power in the analyses.
Ethical Considerations
It was important that the analysis be useful to Hawaiians and particularly, the
Hawaiian children. Such evaluation included the following:
• The building of internal mechanisms of control such as allowing informants
a chance to look at the evaluation and give feedback.
• Linking findings to overall strategic goals.
• Generating credible research data.
• Linking information to community aspirations, hopes and well-being.
• Endorsing Hawaiian traditional values while acknowledging others.
• Endorsing education as a vital key to success.
• Resolving conflicts and dilemmas in culturally appropriate ways.
Ethical considerations were very important. If one of the following
unspoken rules were broken, trust could have been compromised. A few included:
• Respect for others.
• Presenting yourself ‘face to face.’
• Look and listen before speaking.
• Share, be generous. (Food is very important in local traditions, so snacks
were available.)
• Do not trample on the mana (individual spirit or power) of others.
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• Do not flaunt your knowledge.
• Trust your gut instincts.
Developing rapport was very important. For example, introductions were
important, small talk sessions before and after were appreciated; giving thanks,
giving credit to those who made the meeting possible, etc. When possible, it was
important that Hawaiian practices and protocol were involved in the data collection
phase.
Limitations of the Study
The most important limitation in this study is defining who was Hawaiian.
No legal documentation of ethnicity was gathered, but rather students self reported
their ethnicity. Only one of the schools in the survey required documentation of
Hawaiian ethnicity.
Another limitation was building relationships of trust with the constraints of
this study’s deadlines. Traditionally, Hawaiians are reluctant to talk or divulge
information about personal views to others very freely. The philosophy behind that
is “You should know already. And if you do not know, then you do not ask about
it. One must observe and watch until you ‘get it’.” Thus, building relationships of
trust takes time.
Finally, Crotty (2003) speaks to the nature of participant observation laden
with personal assumptions that relate to issues of intersubjectivity and
communication. I know I hold many assumptions because I am Hawaiian, and the
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majority of others may not share my experiences. Social constructionism is
relativist. Thus my conclusions of the findings will be a translation.
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CHAPTER 4
RESULTS
Chapter 4 of this dissertation answers the questions:
1. What are the relationships among sociocultural factors, reading
motivation, and reading activities?
2. How well do they predict student outcomes (achievement)?
This study was designed to assess the reading activities and proposed dimensions
of reading motivation (Baker & Wigfield, 1999; Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997) and
examine how these dimensions related to reading (comprehension) achievement of
Hawaiian children. The answers were provided by exploring the relationships
among key dimensions of reading motivation and activity (question 1) followed by
analyzing the statistical significance of the contribution of each independent
variable on reading achievement using multiple regression (question 2). The
findings will be reported in two sections. The first section presents data considering
the relationships among dimensions of reading motivation and the reported levels
of reading activity and sociocultural factors of Hawaiian keiki. The second section
will present data answering the second question of the study that asks how well
these variables predict reading achievement. All data manipulations and statistical
analyses were conducted using SPSS version 14.0.
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The data reported in this study were collected as baseline assessments for
fourth grade keiki from Research Question 1: What are the relationships among
sociocultural factors, reading motivation, and reading activities?
Participants in this study were fourth grade students from various areas on
the island of O’ahu. The school sites were selected because the students were
predominantly part-Hawaiian. Information about ethnicity was provided through
self-reports from the Student Background Questionnaire (SBQ). The sample of 193
students was comprised of 102 girls (52.8%) and 91 boys (47.2%).
Teachers were asked to rate students’ reading comprehension on a 1 (Poor
reader) to 4 (High reader) scale based on past reading comprehension test scores
taken from Gates-MacGinitie, SAT-9 or Hawaii Standards Assessment tests, along
with classroom performance. In this study, 17.7% (n = 34) of the keiki were rated
as high readers, 33.3% (n = 64) were rated as good readers, 39.6% (n = 76) were
fair readers and 9.3% (n = 18) were deemed poor readers by their teachers. The
reading achievement mean was 2.59 (SD = 0.89). However, the fair readers, for
example, should have represented roughly 70% of the sample if the teachers had
been making the ratings based on the percentile guidelines. It appears instead that
the teachers were using the names (e.g., good reader) of the categories and rating
the children on a four point scale.
The background questionnaire did not require students to report any socio-
economic status information on their family, such as income level, occupation, or
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level of educational attainment, or information such as their parents’ marital status,
because fourth graders may not be aware of that kind of information.
Motivation for Reading Dimensions
Wigfield and Guthrie (1997) developed a theoretically grounded
questionnaire, the Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ), to assess 11
dimensions of reading motivation comprehensively. These eleven dimensions were
substantiated in a later study by Baker and Wigfield (1999) and used in this study.
The theoretical taxonomy consists of three categories.
Belief and Competence
Self-efficacy
Challenge
Work Avoidance
Motivation
Intrinsic
Curiosity
Involvement
Importance
Extrinsic
Recognition
Grades
Competition
Social
Social
Compliance
This 48-item questionnaire asked children to answer each item on a 1 (very
different from me) to 4 (a lot like me) scale.
Table 1 displays the means and standard deviations for the 11 subscales for
the current sample (see columns under Hawaiian). The reliabilities of the 11
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subscales for the current sample are also shown in Table 1. With the exception of
the compliance subscale, all of the reliabilities were within the range of reliabilities
reported by Baker and Wigfield (1999) and the compliance subscale was retained to
be consistent with their results. None of the 11 subscales showed marked
departures from normality. The mean scores were highest for Grades, Recognition,
and Curiosity and low for the Challenge and Social subscales. Work Avoidance,
which is the only subscale where higher scores indicate less motivation for reading,
had the second lowest mean score. The subscales with the largest variability were
Importance, Work Avoidance, and Challenge. Overall, these scores indicate that
students generally characterized themselves as motivated readers.
Based on previous research done by Baker and Wigfield (1999) measuring
motivation dimensions of African American students and White students, Table 1
also shows the MRQ performance means for African American and White fourth
graders from their sample. An interesting pattern is that all of the means of keiki
are below their African American and White counterparts. The only exceptions are
the Work Avoidance subscale, which is slightly higher for the keiki, but is
nonetheless very comparable across the three groups, and Competition where the
keiki’s means were in between the other two groups. This means that even
dimensions that are high for the keiki, such as Grades and Recognition, are still
lower than their counterparts’ means on the same subscales. All three groups
reported Grades and Importance as strong motivating dimensions.
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Table 1
Children’s Reading Motivation by Ethnicity
Motivation
scale Hawaiian
African
American White
M SD α M SD M SD
Reading
Efficacy
2.85 0.82 .68 3.32 0.58 2.97 0.64
Reading
Challenge
2.76 0.82 .73 3.25 0.61 3.00 0.67
Reading Work
Avoidance
2.45 0.85 .57 2.44 0.84 2.41 0.72
Reading
Curiosity
2.94 0.67 .69 3.32 0.57 3.17 0.58
Reading
Involvement
2.91 0.74 .70 3.21 0.62 3.06 0.60
Importance of
Reading
2.93 0.92 .55 3.64 0.65 3.28 0.81
Reading
Recognition
2.99 0.77 .76 3.46 0.58 3.16 0.67
Reading for
Grades
3.29 0.69 .66 3.63 0.54 3.44 0.58
Competition in
Reading
2.90 0.80 .69 3.14 0.79 2.87 0.81
Social Reasons
for Reading
2.40 0.74 .78 2.65 0.77 2.48 0.69
Compliance 2.76 0.60 .30 3.50 0.62 3.30 0.72
Note. African-American and White means and standard deviations are from Baker
and Wigfield (1999) and the Hawaiian means are from the current study.
Based on previous research done by Baker and Wigfield (1999) measuring
motivation dimensions of African American students and White students, Table 1
also shows the MRQ performance means for African American and White fourth
graders from their sample. An interesting pattern is that all of the means of keiki
are below their African American and White counterparts. The only exceptions are
97
the Work Avoidance subscale, which is slightly higher for the keiki, but is
nonetheless very comparable across the three groups, and Competition where the
keiki’s means were in between the other two groups. This means that even
dimensions that are high for the keiki, such as Grades and Recognition, are still
lower than their counterparts’ means on the same subscales. All three groups
reported Grades and Importance as strong motivating dimensions.
For African American students, none of the dimensions of reading
motivation were statistically significantly to achievement. Five dimensions were
statistically significant correlates to reading achievement for the White students:
Self-efficacy, Recognition, Competition, Compliance, and Work Avoidance. For
children of Hawaiian ancestry, all of the dimensions were closely associated with
strongest dimensions found in Competition in Reading for Grades and Reading
Recognition.
The Reading Activity Inventory
The Reading Activity Inventory was developed by Guthrie et al. (1994) and
used in several prior studies. The children were asked 10 pairs of items about which
genres of literature they read (e.g., sciences books, comics, etc.). The first question
for each pair of items asked if they had read a particular genre in the last week and
was scored 1 for yes and 0 for no. The second question in each pair asked the
children to report how often they read a book in that genre on a 1 (almost never) to
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4 (almost every day) scale. The means and standard deviations for the 10 pairs of
questions are shown in Table 2.
Table 2
Means and Standard Deviations for the Items in the Reading Activity Inventory
Yes/No Frequency of reading
M SD M SD
Books for school
1. Science book 0.61 0.49 2.32 1.06
2. Literature/fiction 0.78 0.42 2.63 0.96
3. History book 0.56 0.50 2.33 1.07
Own enjoyment
4. Fiction book 0.79 0.41 2.61 1.05
5. Sports book 0.58 0.50 2.20 1.10
6. Nature book 0.42 0.50 1.79 0.95
7. Romance book 0.21 0.41 1.38 0.82
8. Biography 0.56 0.50 1.72 0.85
9. Comic book 0.65 0.48 2.55 1.16
10. Other kind of book 0.55 0.50 2.32 1.18
Note. A mean of 0.61 for the Yes/No items represents 61% of the children
responding with a Yes. The scale for the “Frequency of reading” items ranges from
1 (almost never) to 4 (almost every day).
The results revealed that the majority of the sample reported reading science books,
literature/fiction, and history books for school in the previous week. Additionally,
the sample reported reading these same types of books for school, on average,
between “about once a month” and “about once a week”. The children’s answers
for the books that they read for their own enjoyment showed greater variability.
For instance, the majority of the sample reported reading a fiction book for
enjoyment for during the previous week while only a minority of the sample
reported reading a romance book for enjoyment in the previous week. There was
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similar variability with respect to how often the children reported reading these
same genres of literature. The results showed that on average, the children reported
reading these genres between “almost never” and “about once a month” as well as
between “about once a month” and “about once a week”.
Consistent with the method outlined by Baker and Wigfield’s (1999), each
of the scores in the Reading Activities Inventory was converted to a z-score. There
were 13 missing values for two of the items and the means (i.e., a z-score of 0)
were substituted for them. The z-scores for each pair of items were then summed.
These 10 composite variables showed adequate reliability ( α = .71) and were
averaged to form a composite variable (M = 0.02, SD = 0.90). This composite
variable was used for all subsequent analyses.
The Student Background Survey
A Student Background Survey based on the NAEP reading test background
survey was adapted and used in this study. The children were asked 18 questions
about their sociocultural and literacy background. The first question ascertained
ethnicity and asked, “Which of the following best describes you?” Choices were
“Native Hawaiian, Japanese, Filipino, Other Pacific Islander, Chinese, Caucasian,
Other”.
Since the following results are merely descriptive of the keiki to provide a
context for the study, a frequency analysis was used for the background questions.
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With regard to availability of literacy resources in the home, 93.3% (n =
180) of keiki reported receiving a newspaper at home “at least a couple times a
week” and nearly every student reported access to a dictionary in their homes
(89.6%; n = 173). Sixty three percent of student homes have enough books (i.e.,
25-100 books) to fill at least one bookcase and 36.8% (n = 71) had enough books
to fill several bookcases. These findings suggest adequate access to some print
resources.
Two questions probed the role of technology in the home, often considered
cultural capital. The results indicate that a computer at home for keiki’s use
appeared to be widespread. A majority (92.2%; n = 178) of children reported access
to a home computer. However, the item did not ask them to specify whether usage
was for educational purposes or for recreational or social purposes (e.g., games,
online activities such as blogging, instant messaging, email, My Space, etc.).
A second question explored students’ technology access for homework
assistance through the Internet or a set of books. Internet access or encyclopedias
were found to be very frequent (86.0%; n = 166) at home. The results suggest that
most children seemed to have informational resources including sufficient
technology to support them with their homework.
With regard to the amount of daily reading in which keiki engage, more
than half (55.9%; n = 108) of the children read at least 16 pages a day in school and
at home for homework. Seventeen percent (n = 33) read 11-15 pages a day,
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13.5% (n = 26) read 6-10 pages a day and 13.5% (n = 26) read 5 or fewer pages a
day. This result suggests keiki are active readers and appears to support teacher
ratings of student performance, with 51% of the students rated as Good or
Excellent readers. Additionally, the majority of the students reported being never
being absent (47.7%; n = 92) or being absent one or two days (32.6%; n = 63) from
school in the previous month. However, 19.7% (n = 38) reported being absent 3 or
more times in the previous month.
While not specific to reading, literacy behaviors such as talking or holding
conversations in the home about reading were explored with two questions. The
results showed that the majority (71.6%; n = 138) of the students reported
conversing with their parents for about 30 minutes per day or less. One question
asked about who talks to the student about reading in the home. A frequency
analysis revealed that 52.8% (n = 102) of students reported that their mother was
the person who talked to them most about reading. An additional 28.5 % (n = 55)
indicated their father and 7.8% (n = 15) indicated a grandparent talked about
reading to them.
A second question about the students’ conversations asked the children to
report how often they talked to others in the home about how they feel after reading
on a 1 (usually) to 4 (never) scale. The results revealed that 19.7% (n = 38)
“usually” talk to parents or family members about how they feel after reading,
34.7% (n = 67) reported they “sometimes” do and 45.6% (n = 88) reported they
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“hardly” or “never” talk about their feelings after reading to family. This means
that the majority of children talk to parents or family members only “sometimes” at
best after reading. This reflects the fact that keiki’s families engage in minimal
discussion or conversation time.
Associations between the Background Factors, Reading Activity Inventory, and the
MRQ Subscales
The relations between the self-reported academic engagement items, the
Reading Activity Inventory, and the 8 MRQ subscales with adequate reliabilities
(Work Avoidance, Importance, and Compliance were removed from further
analyses) were examined using Pearson correlations. The three academic
engagement items of interest asked about how often the keiki talked about their
studies with a family member, how many pages a day they read, and how many
days absent they were in the previous month. Additionally, given the concern that
the scales for the items investigating the academic engagement items did not
produce interval/ratio measures, Spearman rank-order correlations were carried out
as well. Table 3 displays the correlations between the three academic engagement
items of interest, the Reading Activity Inventory, and the 8 MRQ subscales. The
Pearson correlations are shown below the diagonal and the Spearman correlations
are shown above the diagonal. The differences between the two halves of the
correlation matrix were generally not large.
(r = .21) subscales from the MRQ.
The number of pages that the children reported to have read was negatively
associated with the number of days they reported to be absent from school (r = -
.25) but was not significantly correlated with their score on the Reading Activity
Inventory. The number of pages read also correlated positively with the challenge
(r = .20) and grades
An inspection of the correlation matrix revealed that more conversation
about a child’s studies was positively associated with the number of pages they
reported to read (r = .19) and their score on the Reading Activity Inventory (r =
.24). More conversation about a child’s studies was negatively associated the
number of days they reported to be absent from school (r = -.30). Additionally, the
conversation item correlated significantly with a number of the MRQ subscales.
The highest correlations were with the involvement (r = .39) and social (r = .35)
subscales.
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104
Table 3
Correlations between the Background Factors, Reading Activity Inventory, and the MRQ Subscales
__________________________________________________________________________________________
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
__________________________________________________________________________________________
1. Talk about studies - .19
**
-.31
***
.21
**
.27
***
.27
***
.25
**
.37
***
.24
**
.26
***
-.02 .32
***
2. Num. pages .19
**
- -.22
**
.06 .04 .20
**
.08 .12 .02 .19
**
-.10 -.04
3. Absent -.30
***
-.25
**
- -.14 -.19
**
-.16
*
-.18
*
-.20
**
-.06 -.09 -.05 -.18
*
4. RAI .24
**
.06 -.21
**
- .33
***
.49
***
.41
***
.38
***
.30
***
.28
***
.31
***
.48
***
5. MRQ Self-Eff. .30
***
.06 -.21
*
.35
***
- .66
***
.52
***
.47
***
.54
***
.38
***
.31
***
.52
***
6. MRQ Challenge .30
***
.20
*
-.24
**
.50
***
.67
***
- .61
***
.55
***
.54
***
.48
***
.44
***
.58
***
7. MRQ Curiosity .27
***
.08 -.22
*
.43
***
.51
***
.64
***
- .59
***
.57
***
.56
***
.44
***
.61
***
8. MRQ Invol. .39
***
.11 -.17
*
.40
***
.48
***
.60
***
.63
***
- .56
***
.58
***
.38
***
.64
***
9. MRQ Recog. .27
***
.00 -.04 .29
***
.55
***
.56
***
.58
***
.60
***
- .63
***
.63
***
.57
***
10. MRQ Grades .28
***
.21
**
-.07 .31
***
.44
***
.52
***
.53
***
.60
***
.66
***
- .38
***
.45
***
11. MRQ Compet. .03 -.08 -.03 .29
***
.32
***
.44
***
.46
***
.40
***
.66
***
.44
***
- .41
***
12. MRQ Social .35
***
-.01 -.20
**
.49
***
.54
***
.62
***
.65
***
.70
***
.60
***
.50
***
.41
***
-
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Note. Pearson correlations are shown below the diagonal and Spearman correlations are shown above the diagonal.
*
p < .05.
**
p < .01.
***
p < .001.
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The number of days that the children reported that they were absent from
school was negatively associated with their score on the Reading Activities
Inventory (r = -.21) and significantly associated with a number of the MRQ
subscales. For instance, the absence item negatively correlated with the challenge
(r = -.24) and curiosity (r = -.22) subscales. Additionally, the children’s scores on
the Reading Activities Inventory showed significant correlations with the eight
subscales from the MRQ. The highest positive correlations were with challenge (r
= .50), social (r = .49), and curiosity (r = .43).
Finally, the correlations between the subscales of the MRQ were inspected.
Consistent with Wigfield and Guthrie’s (1997) findings, the majority of the
subscales of the MRQ significantly correlated with one another. The magnitude of
some of these correlations suggested that some of the subscales did not measure
separate constructs with the current sample. For instance, competition and
importance correlated very highly (r = .90). The association between recognition
and importance (r = .70) and the correlation between involvement and social (r =
.70) showed high correlations as well.
Relationships to Reading Achievement
Multiple regression was performed to explore part of Research Question 2:
How well do the children’s reading activities and reading motivation predict their
reading achievement? Multiple regression allowed for an investigation of the
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unique contribution of the students’ reading activity score and their reading
motivation in the prediction of their reading achievement.
Principal Components Analysis with the MRQ
Prior to the multiple regression analysis, the MRQ subscales were
consolidated. A principal components analysis with a varimax rotation was carried
out with eight of the subscales from the MRQ to inform the consolidation of the
subscales and to see if they loaded on higher order dimensions of reading
motivation. Like the previous analyses, the work avoidance, compliance, and
importance subscales were removed from this analysis because of their low
reliabilities. The analysis produced a one-factor solution (see Table 4 for the factor
loadings).
Table 4
Factor Loadings for the 11 Subscales of the MRQ
1
Subscale
Self-Efficacy .73
Challenge .81
Curiosity .81
Involvement .81
Grades .75
Social .81
Competition .65
Recognition .84
This factor consisted of subscales meant to tap aspects of intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation, beliefs about competence, and social aspects of reading. This factor,
tapping a broad range of reading motivation, showed excellent reliability (α = .91)
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and the eight items were averaged to form a composite variable with a mean of 2.88
(SD = 0.59).
Multiple Regression Analysis
The Reading Activities Inventory composite variable and the MRQ factor
were entered as simultaneous predictors of the children’s reading achievement.
The full model was significant, F(2, 189) = 8.10, p < .001, and the R
2
was .08.
Table 5 shows the regression coefficients and their standard errors as well as the
standardized regression coefficients. Only the children’s scores the MRQ factor
were a unique predictor of their reading achievement. These results suggest that
the higher they scored on a composite variable representing a broad spectrum of
their reading motivation the higher their teachers rated them on their reading
achievement.
Table 5
Summary of the Multiple Regression Analysis Predicting the Children Reading
Achievement
Variable B SE B β
Reading Activities Inventory -0.04 0.08 -.05
MRQ Factor 0.45 0.08 .30
***
***
p < .001.
Given the concern that the teacher’s ratings of their children’s reading
achievement were not on an interval/ratio scale, an identical multiple logistic
regression was carried out. The reading achievement scores were split into high
(i.e., high readers and good readers) and low (i.e., fair readers and poor readers)
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reading groups. The multiple logistic regression analysis mirrored the results from
the ordinary least squares multiple regression analysis and showed that only the
children’s scores on the MRQ factor were a significant predictor of the
dichotomous outcome variable after accounting for the effects of the other
predictor. The results showed that the having higher scores on the MRQ factor
greatly increased a child’s chances of being in the high reading group.
Summary of Findings
To accomplish the goals of this study, participants were asked to complete
three questionnaires in one survey. One hundred ninety three 4th graders attending
public and a private school from several areas on the island of O’ahu completed the
survey. The schools were selected because of the predominance of Hawaiian
children. Information about ethnicity was obtained through self-reporting. Teachers
were asked to rate students’ reading comprehension on a 1 (Poor reader) to 4
(High reader) scale based on past reading comprehension test scores taken and
classroom performance. Of the 193 students surveyed, 17.7% of the students were
rated as excellent readers, 33.3% were rated good readers, 39.6% of the students
were rated as fair, and 9.3 were evaluated as poor readers.
The quantitative research method was used to assess background factors,
reading activity and the multidimensionality of reading motivation of keiki through
a Background Survey, Reading Activity Inventory and a Motivation for Reading
Questionnaire. While the Background Survey was adapted for this study, the
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Reading Activity Inventory (RAI) and Motivation for Reading Questionnaire
(MRQ) were taken from Baker and Wigfield’s (1999) previous study.
The MRQ mean scores for Hawaiian students indicated students felt they
were generally motivated. Dropping Compliance and Work Avoidance, all of the
subscale reliabilities were within the range of reliabilities reported by Baker and
Wigfield (1999). None of the remaining subscales showed marked departures from
normality. The mean scores were highest for Grades and Recognition, although
they were all generally associated closely with each other. The subscales with the
largest variability were Challenge and Self-efficacy.
The RAI indicated the majority of keiki reported reading science books,
literature/fiction, and history books about once a week for school. The children’s
answers for the books that they read for their own enjoyment showed greater
variability with literature/fiction, comics, biographies, and sports books indicated
most popular choices. The results of a Pearson Correlation analysis revealed
reading activity is strongly correlated to all the dimensions of reading motivation.
The strongest correlations are found among reading activity and the following
motivation dimensions: Competition, Grades, Importance, Recognition, Self-
efficacy and Social.
The Background Survey asked students to answer 18 questions about their
sociocultural and literacy background. Questions did not assess socio-economic
status but were descriptive of keiki backgrounds to provide a context for the study.
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Generally, students had sufficient resources in the home such as a newspaper,
computer, Internet access, dictionary, and books. Their relationship to reading
achievement was not significant.
With regard to the amount of daily reading in which keiki engage, more
than half (55.9%; n = 108) of the children read at least 16 pages a day in school and
at home for homework. Seventeen percent (n = 33) read 11-15 pages a day. This
result suggests keiki are active readers and appears to reflect teacher ratings of
student performance, with 51% of the students rated as Good or Excellent readers.
The results showed that the majority, nearly 72%, of the students reported
conversing with their parents for about 30 minutes per day. A little over half of
keiki reported that their mother was the person who talked to them most about
reading and nearly 30% indicated their father talked to them about reading.
Students reported minimal conversations with their parents about their studies at
school or what they read.
A discussion of these findings follows in Chapter 5.
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CHAPTER 5
SUMMARY, DISCUSSION, IMPLICATIONS, AND CONCLUSIONS
This study probed the diverse perceptions of Hawaiian fourth grade children
in terms of strength of reading motives, attitudes, attributions, and beliefs, and the
interplay between motivation, reading practices, and reading achievement. The
sample was comprised of 193 poor readers to excellent readers. This chapter
summarizes the first four Chapters, discusses how the results compare to previous
research, offers implications for educators and parents, and closes with a final
commentary.
Summary of the Study
Reading outcomes for children of Hawaiian ancestry remain the lowest
throughout elementary and secondary school. This study was inspired by research
findings that noted motivational and sociocultural factors influence student
aspirations, choices and enjoyment, and improve understanding and achievement of
minorities. At present, no one has attempted to specify the potential sociocultural
and motivational influences of Hawaiian elementary students in relation to reading.
The first research question for this study was, What are the relationships
among sociocultural factors, reading motivation, and reading activities? Chapter
Four answered this question by exploring the relationships among key dimensions
of reading motivation, reading activity, and student background factors. Fourth
grade keiki completed a Background Questionnaire, Reading Activity Inventory
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and Motivation for Reading Questionnaire and responses were analyzed using
frequency analysis and Spearman’s Rank Order Correlation. Question two was,
How well do they predict student outcomes (achievement)? Statistical significance
of the contribution of reading activity, student background factors, and 11
dimensions of motivation to reading achievement was assessed using multiple
regression. The following is a discussion of this project to earlier studies and
implications to educators ending with a final commentary.
Comparison to Previous Research.
Major conclusions from this study support previous research that reading
motivation is multidimensional. While previous studies have indicated children
have multifaceted senses of themselves as readers, the goal of this study was to take
first steps to describe this multidimensionality of reading motivation and include a
brief look at sociocultural factors and relations among keiki’s reading activity and
achievement. Consistent with other researchers (Pintrich and Schunk, 1996; Eccles
et.al, 1998; Anderson et al., 1988; Rueda and Dembo, 1995; Cipielewski &
Stanovich, 1992; Cunningham & Stanovich, 1991) this study endorsed the notion
that reading motivation of keiki was also found to mediate the amount of reading
and achievement. This study was further indication that there is a strong connection
and interdependence of cognitive, motivational and sociocultural factors as posited
by Rueda and Dembo (1995). Rather than think that keiki have dichotomous levels
of motivation, i.e., high or low, this study showed that keiki have a mixture of
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closely associated motivational characteristics that may facilitate their engagement
in reading or lead them to disengage in reading affecting reading outcomes.
An indication that reading motivation is multidimensional for children of
Hawaiian ancestry adds to the converging evidence from previous studies. Like
Baker and Wigfield’s (1999) study, analysis of the mean scores on the different
subscales showed that keiki endorsed some dimensions of reading motivation more
than others. In Baker and Wigfield’s study, both extrinsic and intrinsic dimensions
were included among the most strongly-endorsed scales with Social and Work
Avoidance the least endorsed dimensions. For children of Hawaiian ancestry, the
extrinsic dimensions (e.g., Grades and Recognition) were also included among the
most strongly-endorsed subscales with Social and Work Avoidance the least
endorsed dimensions, just as their counterparts reported. The similarities and
consistency of high and low subscales for all three ethnic groups suggest a strong
pattern that fourth grade children are generally highly motivated by grades but do
not seem to be highly motivated to read for social interaction per se.
On the other hand, unlike their counterparts, keiki reportedly have lower
levels of reading Self-efficacy. Consistent with Bandura’s (1997) theory, keiki who
indicated lower measures of reading self-efficacy may not believe they were
successful in reading, and may not believe they can be successful, consequently
avoiding competition in reading activities. Recall Bandura (1997) argued that
children low in Self-efficacy will not seek challenging activities. Interestingly,
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this is also supported by the reported lower measures in the Challenge dimension as
well. Other studies by Chapman and Tunmer (1995) add that student perceptions of
reading competence and perceptions of the difficulty of reading shape readers’
sense of themselves in multifaceted ways. Nicholls and his colleagues (Nicholls et
al., 1989) suggested that children with ego-oriented goals such as Recognition will
often avoid competition when they think they cannot win, and Paris et al. (1991)
suggested avoidance may be a tactic of students who are not achieving well. This
study lends weight to these interpretations from earlier studies. The combination of
higher scores for Grades and Recognition with lower scores from keiki in Self-
efficacy and Challenge support these theories. Accordingly, this may also explain
why keiki who reported extrinsic goals avoid work in reading. Unless keiki were
recognized for their reading, they reportedly shy away from difficult reading
activities because reading is seen as a situation with the potential to make them
look bad. Unfortunately for those keiki who reported lower levels, this may
naturally lead to less exposure to print and fewer opportunities for growth in
reading comprehension (Stanovich et al., 1996), thereby exacerbating the situation
for those keiki.
Again, the strength of Grades, Recognition, and Importance reflect Bandura’s
work on self-efficacy and competition (Bandura, 1977; Schunk, 1991; Wigfield &
Eccles, 1992) and notes strong keiki desire to outperform others, receive tangible
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forms of gratification in terms of recognition for success, or favorable evaluation
by the teacher. Recall the statements were:
• I like being the only one who knows an answer in something we read.
• I like being the best at reading.
• It is important for me to see my name on a list of good readers.
• I try to get more answers right than my friends.
• I like to finish my reading before other students.
Earlier studies have shown that performance oriented students refer to doing
an activity for what it brings you rather than for its own sake (Pintrich & Schunk,
1996; Guthrie, et al., 1996). Conversely, significant differences favored
intrinsically motivated children for all the amount and breadth variables. Students
highest on the intrinsic motivation composite in Guthrie’s (1999) study read nearly
three times as many minutes per day as the group lowest on that composite creating
a major advantage for the group highest in intrinsic motivation. The results of this
study corroborated this relationship by showing that as performance oriented
students, keiki reading activity was comparatively low. In spite of that, at least half
of the students were rated as good readers, even with reported low reading activity.
This suggests that teacher ratings may not be as reliable or valid as a standardized
test. It may also imply that teachers have low expectations for readers. Perhaps
when teachers are exposed to fair or poor reading performance on a daily basis,
soon their belief is that fair or poor reading performance is the norm.
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Next, I would like to discuss the ethnicity differences in the MRQ in terms
of reported high and low subscales. It is interesting to note that the top three
subscales for both African Americans and Whites were Grades, Importance and
Compliance versus Grades, Importance and Recognition for keiki. For Hawaiian
children, Compliance ranked the lowest of all the subscales. Like the dynamics of
Competition, where children avoid competition when they think they cannot win;
perhaps when keiki perceive the teacher has permanent or fixed negative views of
them, they are more likely to be impervious to do what the teacher wants. Highly
sensitive, when keiki are embarrassed or perceive negative evaluations of their
performance by their teacher, they may become defensive, opposing and
challenging, giving the appearance that they do not want to perform rather than
reveal the fact that they cannot perform. Recall again the statements included for
the Compliance subscale:
• I read because I have to.
• I do as little schoolwork as possible in reading.
• I always do my reading work exactly as the teacher wants it.
• Finishing every reading assignment is very important to me.
Many classroom settings are familiar with the few children who not only
recognize they are non-compliant but flaunt brazen attitudes with challenging
behaviors. While those keiki who reported low levels of compliance in reading
pose a big challenge for teachers, recognizing who these children are may be an
117
important first step in attempting to foster their reading motivation. On a personal
side note, as a former teacher of keiki for many years, it was my experience that
even recalcitrant keiki were more likely to be amenable, obedient and persist at
hard tasks, when they were encouraged and felt assured they were liked by the
teacher. Developing high levels of trust and caring takes time but continued efforts
to establish trust and caring pays off with enhanced levels of compliance and
motivation to persist. This observation needs further study.
Conversely, for White fourth graders, Compliance was second only to
Grades. African American students also reported high levels in this subscale. The
marked contrast of ethnic differences of reported student levels of compliance also
denotes a need for additional research.
Still on the subject of compliance, the fact that performance orientation
figures prominently in keiki motivation to read suggests keiki are especially
vulnerable to external evaluations of their ability, internalizing favorable
evaluations (“Will I look good?”) or minimizing negative evaluations of ability
(Baker and Guthrie, 1999). I suggest that the performance orientation for keiki lay
not so much in internalizing favorable evaluations, but in minimizing negative
evaluations of ability. Making this distinction is an important point for keiki as this
phenomenon (minimizing negative evaluations of ability) has become much of a
socially negotiated cultural norm. Observable manifestation of my suggestion is
found in the popularization of the local word, “ainokea” (pidgin’ English for “I
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don’t care”). Ainokea has become not just a prevalent, but a fashionable sentiment
in Hawaii glorified in bumper stickers, t-shirts, labels, and a store chain. Who
would identify with such a term? Its popularity among the locals implies that locals
identify to this term as something they hold in common, influenced by experiential
and environmental factors. It is a cultural understanding as noted by Gallimore and
Goldenberg (2001), representing… “historically evolved and shared ways of
perceiving, thinking, and storing possible responses to adaptive challenges and
changing conditions.” Even while negative, the mantra, “ainokea”, appears to be
valued as a socially shared understanding: we are not alone. The sentiment is
potent because it has evolved in some extent to become an identity of sorts, flagged
on clothing and on cars. In an adverse way, it empowers and protects those who
believe they are a people culturally abused historically.
As previously discussed in Chapter 2, it was Vygotsky’s theory (1978) that
argued children learn by internalizing the activities, habits and ideas of the
members of the community in which they grow up. Rogoff (2003) and Gee (1992)
added that the context of a situation shapes and links to even the identity of the
reader. Even while this study was not a study in culture per se, culture cannot be
totally ignored (Rueda and Dembo, 1995) because our keiki may enter classrooms
with this invisible affect, “ainokea”. This is a powerful sociocultural implication of
motivation for keiki and their educators, leaders and families supporting Ogbu’s
(1992) reasoning, “What the children bring to school – their communities’ cultural
119
models of understanding of ‘social realities’….are as important as within-school
factors (p.5).”
The good news is that learning and one’s level of engagement and
participation changes over time with the child’s understanding of the task, its
meanings, and the beliefs and values ingrained in them (Rueda, et al., 2001).
Another consideration to take into account is the fact that having similar cultural
models does not confine or limit within-group differences nor does it fix individual
characteristics. Much work lies ahead in this area and longitudinal studies on keiki
are recommended.
Another interesting pattern of ethnic differences in motivational dimensions
is the fact that all of the means of motivation dimensions of keiki except Work
avoidance and Competition are below African American children who are below
their White counterparts. This means that while keiki generally feel positive about
their motivational levels, when compared to African American and White fourth
graders, their levels were below the others. Even dimensions that are reportedly
high such as Grades, Recognition, and Curiosity, are lower than their counterparts.
Bearing in mind the higher score on the reading Work Avoidance scale means that
the student is more positively disposed toward that dimension, the report seems to
suggest keiki are frankly open about their reading Work Avoidance dispositions.
Even while keiki want good grades, recognition, and to be considered important,
their propensity for avoiding work at reading is even greater. Work Avoidance
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could mean keiki do not find reading meaningful, and thus avoid it as an extraneous
activity requiring empty work. It was Vygotsky (1978) who heralded the
importance of creating literacy in multiple ways that are meaningful to children.
Applying his theory in reading instruction for keiki can hold promise for them. It
appears that reading Work Avoidance is a differentiating motivation dimension that
can affect reading activity and achievement. Further analyses are needed.
Turning to relations among reading activity and reading motivation, the
results showed significant correlations with 10 of the 11 subscales from the MRQ.
The highest positive correlations were with Challenge, Social and Curiosity. These
findings were very similar to previous studies by Baker and Guthrie (1999) and
Guthrie (1997). Although these findings seem to contradict the MRQ results
showing Challenge and Social dimensions low, it is important to distinguish that
when correlated to reading activity, these dimensions were statistically significant.
This means that those keiki (along with their counterparts) who believe they are
capable of reading well and are intrinsically motivated to read, report that they
read more frequently (Bandura, 1997; Baker and Guthrie, 1999).
The dimensions most strongly related included Challenge, an intrinsic goal-
related dimension, and Curiosity and Social, both social reasons for reading. These
particular correlations are remarkably similar to the two previous studies, providing
assurance that the measures of reading activity tapped similar constructs.
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Moving to the relations of motivation to reading achievement, again the
results were very similar to earlier studies. The results suggest that having higher
scores on the MRQ factor greatly increased a child’s chance of being rated in a
high reading group. Although correlations were significant they were not as strong
as those with reading activity. One possible explanation may be that students may
be getting good grades that indicate to them and to their parents that they are
making good progress, yet on standardized reading tests, performance is below
national norms. Students may be motivated to read more, but if they read books
below their instructional level, they may not show gains in achievement. The books
they selected may not have been sufficient to promote reading gains (Baker and
Guthrie, 1999). Thus, children’s reading motivation related more strongly to their
reading activity than their achievement.
Recalling the subanalyses for ethnicity, results were consistent with
motivation theorists, Bandura (1997) and Deci and Ryan (1985), who found that
efficacy-based scales and intrinsic reasons for reading related to achievement. The
MRQ factor for keiki showed that their MRQ scores were a significant predictor of
being in the high reading group. Baker and Guthrie (1999) remind us that both
intrinsic and extrinsic reasons for reading relate to achievement as this study also
showed. Further, this study provided evidence that extrinsic goals are not
necessarily counterproductive, and that when they co-exist with intrinsic goals they
can be a unique predictor of reading achievement.
122
The evidence from this study revealed that relations between motivation
and achievement were also consistent with preceding studies, particularly
Stevenson et al.(1990) who found statistically significant correlations were stronger
for white children than African American children. Stevenson et al. (1990)
suggested that if achievement norms are low, perhaps children are led to
overestimate their competencies. Could it mean that like their African American
counterparts, Hawaiian students are less likely to receive reliable and appropriate
feedback about their performance in school? These ethnicity differences in
motivation-achievement relations clearly point to the need for more research to
help find plausible and helpful explanations.
The complexities of literacy experiences demand caution against developing
limitations of cultural perspectives of reader responses. Beach reminds us, “Given
differences in …purposes, needs, expectations, or social context, the same reader
may apply quite different formations (p. 151).” Motivational and sociocultural
perspectives on reading comprehension hold that reading is not a stand-alone
practice, but rather one embedded in socially situated identity and activity. Scholes’
(1985) study concluded that “even ‘taste’ is never a truly personal thing but a
carefully inculcated norm.”
Finally, this study supports the claim that reading amount and reading
motivation are important to increase reading achievement. Even in some less than
positive ways, this study is further evidence that learning and achievement occurs
123
in a dynamic process of participation and engagement with a balance between
cognitive and affective aspects of reading (Rueda and Dembo, 1995; Guthrie and
Wigfield, 2000) and, like previous studies, adds predictive power to aid keiki
success.
Implications for Educators and Final Comments
Any study that attempts to look at psychocultural variables involved in
motivation to read- values, beliefs, expectations, and aspirations that influence
how, whether, and why individuals approach and persist at reading – particularly in
young children, can expect unclear issues, implications and more questions than
answers. Clearly, the relationships among motivation and achievement are not
simple and direct. While some facets are a little clearer, more questions remain as
to whether the generalizations can be valid and helpful, particularly with ethnicity
differences in motivation. Perceptions of keiki, particularly self-reported
perceptions, that operate to produce desired academic outcomes, are complicated at
best and not easily quantifiable. For each response, there is a need for further
explanations and individual clarifications. With this in mind, I will proceed to offer
personal conclusions based on integral aspects of the study beginning with student
background followed by reading activity and reading motivation.
The descriptive results of the student background survey suggested that
family goals of keiki are positive and supportive. For example, results indicated the
presence of a daily newspaper in the home, a dictionary, books, a computer and
124
Internet access for keiki. Students did not mind reading in public or carrying books
in public. At least one parent talked with their child about their studies in school
and about their reading, albeit dialogue and conversations with their parents did not
indicate a lot of time spent together in this activity. More than half of the students
reported reading at least 16 pages a day for school or homework purposes.
Generally, this is good news and signals progress for Hawaiian families. Contrary
to previously held beliefs about lack of resources and their effect on reading
achievement, educators can and should raise expectations to help keiki access
information effectively and use technology to learn. For keiki today, the Internet
provides venues for recreation and entertainment as much if not more than venues
for information and research keiki can employ to help achievement. The challenge
for parents and educators is to be vigilant about what and how students are using
the computer.
The Reading Activity Inventory was more specific and revealed that even
while students reported positive levels of reading at least 16 pages a day in the
background survey, when asked to confirm the frequency of specific reading tasks
in the RAI, the results were less than positive. Specifically, the results of how often
students read science, literature, or history books for school, showed an average
somewhere between about once a month and about once a week which essentially
means they do not read enough to make substantial academic gains on a daily or
even weekly basis. Although students’ perceptions of reading activity were positive
125
in the Background Survey, the mean levels from the RAI indicated keiki are
basically non-readers, reporting reading activity in every single genre between
about once a month and about once a week. Nature books, biographies and
romance novels were somewhere between almost never and about once a month.
I am left to conclude that both reading activity and motivation need to
improve in frequency and breadth in order to improve reading achievement.
According to Guthrie and Cox (2001), “engagement” refers to students who are
intrinsically motivated; who read frequently for enjoyment and widely enough to be
strategic in self-monitoring and inferencing to understand text. For keiki, reading
literature, science, or history books not even about once a week cannot result in this
type of engagement that can improve reading comprehension and academic
success. It is not enough for keiki to believe they are avid readers and not spend the
time necessary to develop solid reading habits, interests, and critical thinking skills.
The critical key for keiki is for homes and schools to raise the bar for keiki. Higher
expectations for reading need to be recognized and emphasized. Immediate and
accurate feedback is needed to scaffold keiki performance and relationships of trust
and caring are needed to influence choice and sustain persistence.
Keiki focus on external and superficial results rather than processes that
require more effort and long-term follow-through undermine their own
achievement. Previous explanations include self-protective factors, social
comparison processes, or social desirability. These suggest that keiki may believe
126
they are victims of external measures of how society judges them, i.e., extrinsically
rather than intrinsically. This can be dangerous. While school reading programs
that emphasize recognition of the children’s reading can account for increased
reading, the real work and challenge for parents, teachers and leaders lie in greater
patience and effort to scaffold and encourage small steps of progress, de-
emphasizing contests, grades, and other extrinsic rewards. One important
implication is that keiki and their parents may hold unrealistic expectations of what
can be done for them instead of what they can do for themselves. The goal is to
help keiki and their parents assess reality and critique the forces surrounding them
in which their access to power and enactment of social change reside.
These goals do not have to be complicating to achieve. To start, there are
multiple research-based models designed to engage readers based on what is
important, relevant to students’ prior knowledge, and appropriate for differing
backgrounds and personal interests, such as John Guthrie’s Concept Oriented
Reading Instruction (CORI), Palincsar and Brown’s reciprocal teaching, and David
Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction (2002). These approaches to instruction
capitalize on students’ prior knowledge and background and encourage active
problem solving, critical thinking, application and integration of knowledge in
ways that are meaningful and relevant to students, boosting their intrinsic
motivation impacting reading outcomes positively.
127
Next, following motivational theorists Pintrich and Schunk (2002), teachers
and leaders can be champions for our youth by being sensitive about the manner
and ways in which students are evaluated, including multiple and alternative
assessments as they have a strong influence on the goal orientations keiki adopt.
We are in the people business, serving the consumer – keiki and their families. We
must have courage to boldly look to educational research in order to be open to new
ways of thinking and operating. This study was a first step in changing status quo
for keiki.
This study basically began with a desire to gain adequate awareness of,
concern for, and understanding of issues of motivation and well-being inclusive of
the diversity of perspectives to help Hawaiian children improve their reading
outcomes. Throughout the process, I was intrigued at how one can gain more
knowledge from reliable quantitative statistics. Scores, tables and matrices certainly
lent more answers to questions, satisfying requirements for facts and precision.
However, in this final section, I would like to focus on the other integral part of this
study – the personal.
The interactive nature of reading and motivation, and the constructive
nature of comprehension show us that engaged readers use not only cognitive
strategies in their reading, but also rely on the personal facets of making meaning
from reading. Indeed the first layers of understanding are based on student
background knowledge, having to activate their own world understanding and
128
literary knowledge in order to understand what they are reading. Statistics provided
the evidence for much information and details, but in the final analysis, when all
the layers are collapsed, there is left the unique, individual person – dispositions,
goals, disappointments, strengths, talents, and abilities. Certainly this study
recognizes the awesome breadth and exceptionality that is complicating to unveil
for each individual child. Yet so often in our educational settings, we lose sight of
the fact that the focus is on person, not program, and the things we do are the
means of helping individuals, not the end.
Personal means there are multiple ways to develop and assess keiki reading
motivation and profiles. I would like to draw on a personal example of my
grandson. At three years old, he has already been identified by state personnel as
having language processing difficulties and is receiving services to learn how to
make the appropriate sounds of the English language. We have been advised that
his academic future, particularly in reading, can be fraught with obstacles, and he
already qualifies for special services in preschool. Children with his impairment lag
behind their peers from the start. Yet recently, while flying inter-island on an
airplane, my grandson exclaimed, “Look, grandma!” As I looked out of the
window, all I could see was a vast blue ocean. “What do you see?” I inquired. He
replied, “I thee kid, thing way, dowfin, wayo, octopu, arfi!” (Interpreted, he said, “I
see squid, sting ray, dolphin, whale, octopus, starfish!”) I was amazed at his
incredible response! Thinking about his educational diagnosis and what I know of
129
the school system, I wondered who would be willing to listen and try to understand
what he really knows. I wondered if the phonics instruction he receives in
kindergarten would squeeze his knowledge into “fish” or “duck” and if he could
not read it, he would be deemed “remedial” or worse, “dumb”. How long, I
wondered, would he enjoy picking up a book and how long would it be before he,
too, would be deemed “unmotivated”? That thought was too scary for me to dwell
on. On a more positive note, I know that my grandson and other keiki, even
“impaired” ones, possess infinite stores of imagination and knowledge for those
willing and able to step into their personal worlds of understanding. Thus
“struggling” or “marginalized” is only useful if we understand it identifies those
keiki not connected to literacy in classrooms; for those who have language or
cultural understanding and practices different than those valued in school.
“Personal” means to model genuine relationships of caring and trust with
each and every child so that keiki learn to focus on the more important intrinsic
values including their own worth; those behaviors that value a child’s efforts and
struggles while nudging them to strive for higher levels of excellence. Personal
means to pay attention to the diverse backgrounds of keiki enough to learn about
those deeply held unspoken values and beliefs; to honor those that are good and
help them to replace self-destructive models. It is not only about being effective but
also about being appropriate.
130
My hope is that this study can help educators recognize and tailor effective
personal interventions and help policymakers provide multiple and specific types of
personal support that are essential to boost motivation at its first levels and close
the reading achievement gap of each keiki. Our challenge remains to teach and
influence in such a way that every keiki can develop a vision of personal
possibilities.
Limitations
It is important to point out that the measure of work avoidance did not
distinguish between reducing effort or avoiding failure. For example, one Work
Avoidance question in the survey stated, “Complicated stories are no fun to read.”
While keiki responded affirmatively to that statement, there is a good chance keiki
would change their response if they were given an example of the Harry Potter
series, popular stories with thick and complicated plots that won the Nene Award in
Hawaii, the best book of the year voted by keiki themselves. Almost every
statement can be qualified by probing further for clarification.
Other questions in the background survey need further clarification such as
the group of questions that probe talking in the home. Lots of talking could be
indicative of homework being really hard and parents are helping the child through
it or lots of talking could be indicative of a child being really excited about what
they are reading.
131
A huge issue for a study on Hawaiians is the fact that virtually all
Hawaiians on O’ahu are of mixed ethnicities. A child who reports they are
Hawaiian may be 1/64
th
Hawaiian and 63/64
th
Chinese. Given the social history of
Hawaii, it is likely that the only pure Hawaiians reside on or recently moved from
the island of Ni’ihau. Thus it is difficult to respond definitively to either question:
“Who is Hawaiian?” or “What is Hawaiian?” Within group differences vary
broadly depending on the ethnicity the child relates to the most. Making
generalizations about Hawaiians is difficult to support.
The most critical limitation was the fact that reading performance was based
on teacher ratings rather than a standardized test score. Teacher ratings may be less
reliable than test scores, in part because teachers rated students using only a four-
point scale. The reason I had to use teacher ratings was because the schools (public
and private) used different reading tests.
I conclude on a methodological note. Answering the questions of what is
effective (motivation) and what is appropriate (sociocultural) require future studies
that combine both qualitative along with quantitative measures for clarification,
probing understanding and other indirect data. Another recommendation that could
profit further understanding of keiki is a longitudinal study testing fourth graders at
the beginning of the school year and again at the end of the school year. Recording
gender is recommended as this study did not ask for gender. These approaches keep
132
the relationships of reading activity, reading motivation and reading achievement
centered on the success and well-being of our keiki.
133
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147
APPENDIX A
READING ACTIVITY INVENTORY
Directions: We are interested in knowing about your activities and in
finding out how often you do them. Circle the answers to some of the questions,
and write the answers to the others.
Practice Questions
1. Do you have a first name? (Circle only one.)
No 1
Yes 2
2. How often do you tell another person your first name? (Circle only one
number.)
Question about Your Activities
Almost
Never
About
Once a
Month
About
Once a
Week
Almost
every
day
1. How often do you listen to
music?
1 2 3 4
2. How often do you watch
television?
1 2 3 4
3. How often do you play outside? 1 2 3 4
4. How often do you go to the
movies?
1 2 3 4
5. How often do you do your
chores at home?
1 2 3 4
148
Question about School Reading
Directions: In this section, think about the reading you do fro school and
for homework. Include
textbooks and other books in your answers.
6. Did you read a science book or science textbook for school last week?
(Circle only one answer.)
No 1
Yes 2
Almost
Never
About
Once a
Month
About
once a
Month
Almost
every
day
7. How often do you read a
science book or science textbook
for school?
1 2 3 4
8. Did you read a book of literature or fiction last week for school?
(Circle only one number.)
No 1
Yes 2
Almost
Never
About
once a
month
About
once a
month
Almost
every
day
9. How often do you read a
literature or fiction book for
school?
1 2 3 4
10. Did you read a book about history or a history textbook last week for
school? (Circle only one number.)
No 1
Yes 2
149
Almost
Never
About
once a
Month
About
once a
month
Almost
every
day
11. How often do you read a
book about history or a history
textbook for school?
1 2 3 4
Questions about Reading for Your Own Enjoyment
Directions: In this section, think about books that you read for your
own interests that are not assigned for school or homework.
12. Did you read a fiction book, like a mystery or an adventure book, last
week for you own interest? (Circle only one number.)
No 1
Yes 2
Almost
Never
About
once a
Month
About
once a
month
Almost
every
day
13. How often do you read a
fiction book, like a mystery or an
adventure book, for your own
interest? (Circle only one
number.)
1 2 3 4
14. Did you read a sports book last week for your own interest?
(Circle only one number.)
No 1
Yes 2
150
Almost
Never
About
once a
Month
About
once a
month
Almost
every
day
15. How often do you read a
sports book, for your own
interest? (Circle only one
number.)
1 2 3 4
16. Did you read a nature book last week for you own interest?
(Circle only one number.)
No 1
Yes 2
Almost
Never
About
once a
Month
About
once a
month
Almost
every
day
17. How often do you read a
nature book, for your own
interest? (Circle only one
number.)
1 2 3 4
18. Did you read a romance book last week for you own interest?
(Circle only one number.)
No 1
Yes 2
Almost
Never
About
once a
Month
About
once a
month
Almost
every
day
19. How often do you read a
romance book, for your own
interest? (Circle only one
number.)
1 2 3 4
151
20. Did you read a biography last week for your own interest? (Circle only
one number.)
No 1
Yes 2
Almost
Never
About
once a
Month
About
once a
month
Almost
every
day
21. How often do you read a
biography book, for your own
interest? (Circle only one
number.)
1 2 3 4
22. Did you read a comic book or magazine last week for you own interest?
(Circle only one number.)
No 1
Yes 2
Almost
Never
About
once a
Month
About
once a
month
Almost
every
day
23. How often do you read a
comic book or magazine for
your own interest? (Circle only
one number.)
1 2 3 4
24. Did you read any other kind of book last week for your own interest that
was not mentioned? (Circle only one number.)
No 1
Yes 2
Almost
Never
About
once a
Month
About
once a
month
Almost
every
day
25. How often do you read this
kind of book? (Circle only one
number.)
1 2 3 4
152
Almost
Never
About
once a
Month
About
once a
month
Almost
every
day
26. How often do you read
written directions or instructions
that tell you how to do
something you enjoy, like for
putting together a model
airplane, or baking a cake, or
some similar activity? (Circle
only one number.)
1 2 3 4
153
MOTIVATION FOR READING QUESTIONNAIRE
Directions
We are interested in your reading.
The statements tell how some students feel about reading.
Read each statement and decide whether it talks about a person who is like
you or different from you.
There are no right or wrong answers. We only want to know how you feel
about reading.
Here are three examples.
If the statement is very different from you, circle a 1.
If the statement is a little different from you, circle a 2.
If the statement is a little like you, circle a 3.
If the statement is a lot like you, circle a 4.
154
CIRCLE ONE ANSWER FOR
EACH QUESTION, USING THESE
ANSWERS:
Very
different
from me
A little
different
from me
A little
like me
A lot
like me
1. I like ice cream. 1 2 3 4
2. I like to swim. 1 2 3 4
3. I like spinach. 1 2 3 4
4. I visit the library often with my
family.
1 2 3 4
5. I like hard, challenging books. 1 2 3 4
6. I know that I will do well in reading
next year.
1 2 3 4
7. I do as little schoolwork as possible
in reading.
1 2 3 4
8. If the teacher discusses something
interesting, I might read more about it.
1 2 3 4
9. I read because I have to. 1 2 3 4
10. I like it when the questions in
books make me think.
1 2 3 4
11. I read about my hobbies to learn
more about them.
1 2 3 4
12. I am a good reader. 1 2 3 4
13. I read stories about fantasy and
make-believe.
1 2 3 4
14. I often read to my brother or sister. 1 2 3 4
15. I like being the only one who
knows an answer in something we read.
1 2 3 4
16. I read to learn new information
about topics that interest me.
1 2 3 4
17.My friends sometimes tell me I’m a
good reader.
1 2 3 4
18. I learn more from reading than most
students in my class.
1 2 3 4
155
CIRCLE ONE ANSWER FROM
EACH QUESTION, USING
THESE ANSWERS:
Very
different
from me
A little
different
from me
A
little
like
me
A lot
like
me
19. I like to read about new things. 1 2 3 4
20. I like hearing the teacher say I
read well.
1 2 3 4
21. I like being the best at reading. 1 2 3 4
22. I look forward to finding out my
reading grade.
1 2 3 4
23. I sometimes read to my parents. 1 2 3 4
24. My friends and I like to trade
things to read.
1 2 3 4
25. It is important for me to see my
name on a list of good readers.
1 2 3 4
26. I don’t like reading something
when the words are too difficult.
1 2 3 4
27. I make pictures in my mind
when I read.
1 2 3 4
28. I always do my reading work
exactly as the teacher wants it.
1 2 3 4
29. I usually learn difficult things by
reading.
1 2 3 4
156
30. I don’t like vocabulary questions. 1 2 3 4
31. Complicated stories are no fun to
read.
1 2 3 4
32. I am happy when someone
recognizes my reading.
1 2 3 4
33. I feel like I make friends with
people in good books.
1 2 3 4
34. My parents often tell me what a
good job I’m doing in reading.
1 2 3 4
35. Finishing every reading
assignment is very important to me.
1 2 3 4
36. I like mysteries. 1 2 3 4
37. I talk to my friends about what I
am reading.
1 2 3 4
38. If I am reading about an
interesting topic, I sometimes lose
track of time.
1 2 3 4
39. I like to get compliments for my
reading.
1 2 3 4
40. Grades are a good way to see
how I’m doing in reading.
1 2 3 4
41. I like to help my friends with
their schoolwork in reading.
1 2 3 4
42. I read to improve my grade. 1 2 3 4
43. My parents ask me about my
reading grade.
1 2 3 4
44. I enjoy a long, involved story or
fiction book.
1 2 3 4
45. I like to tell my family about
what I am reading.
1 2 3 4
46. I try to get more answers right
than my friends.
1 2 3 4
47. If the project is interesting, I can
read difficult material.
1 2 3 4
48. I enjoy reading books about
people living in different countries
1 2 3 4
157
First name ____________________/ _____/ ___
Zipcode __________
**Note: Name will be cut off before returning.
Mahalo for your time!
In this section, please tell us about yourself and your family.
1. Which of the following best describes you? (You may check one or more)
_____ Native Hawaiian _____ Other Pacific Islander
_____ Japanese _____ Chinese
_____ Filipino _____ Caucasian _____Other
2. How often does your family get a newspaper at home?
_____ Everyday _____Couple times a week _____ Not at all
3. About how many books are there in your home?
_____ Few (0-10)
_____ Enough to fill one shelf (11-20)
_____ Enough to fill one bookcase (25-100)
_____ Enough to fill several bookcases (more than 100)
158
4. Is there a computer at home that you use?
_____ Yes _____ No
5. Do you have Internet or a set of books (encyclopedia) to help you do
your homework?
_____ Yes _____ No
6. Do you have a dictionary at home that you can use?
_____ Yes _____ No
7. About how many pages a day do you have to read in school and for
homework?
_____ 5 or fewer _____ 6-10 _____ 11-15
_____ 16-20 _____ More than 20
8. How often do you talk about things you have studied in school with
someone in your family?
_____ Never or hardly ever _____ About once a week
_____ Two or three times a week _____ Everyday
9. How do you feel about your teachers?
_____ Like a lot _____ Like a little _____ Don’t care
10. How do you think your teacher feels about you? (Check all that apply)
______Likes me a lot _____Likes me a little _____ Doesn’t like me
___Don’t know
159
11. How do you think your teacher feels about your capabilities?
_____Thinks I’m smart _____Thinks I’m not smart
_____I don’t know
12. Who talks to you the most about reading at home?
(Check all that apply)
_____ Father _____Mother _____Grandparent
_____Brother _____Sister _____Other relative
13. How do you feel about reading in public? (Check all that apply)
______Proud _____It’s okay _____I don’t want to
_____I don’t want others to see me reading
14. How do you feel about carrying books in public?
(Check all that apply)
_____It’s okay _____I don’t want to
_____I don’t want others to see me carrying books
15. Do you ever talk to your parents or a family member about how you
FEEL after you read a book?
_____Usually _____Sometimes _____Hardly _____Never
160
16. About how much do you talk (converse) with your parents a day?
_____Lots (Hour +) _____About 30 min. _____ About 15 min.
_____Less than 10 min. _____Never
17. Who do you see reading the most at home?
_____ Father _____Mother _____Grandparent
_____Brother _____Sister _____Other relative
18. How many days were you absent from school in the last month?
_____ None _____ 1-2 days _____ 3-4 days
_____ 5 days _____ 6 days or more
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
Native Hawaiian fourth grade public school students lag in reading and literacy outcomes. One understudied area has to do with motivational and sociocultural variables. This study looks at the relationship among reading activity, 11 dimensions of reading motivation, and reading achievement of Native Hawaiian children. A heterogeneous sample of fourth-grade children completed three surveys: a Background Survey, the Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ, Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997), and a Reading Activity Survey (Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997). The background survey explored resources in the home, literary beliefs and literary activities in the home. The Reading Activity survey assessed reading choices and frequency. The MRQ assessed 11 dimensions of reading motivation that included Reading Efficacy, Reading Challenge, Reading Work Avoidance, Reading Curiosity, Reading Involvement, Importance of Reading, Reading Recognition, Reading for Grades, Competition in Reading, Social Reasons for Reading, and Compliance. These subscales related significantly to one another and negatively to the desire to avoid reading. Closely associated, all of the subscales related to reading activity with several also related to children's reading achievement. This study substantiated previous research that demonstrates reading motivation is multidimensional.
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Tano, Colleen Laukiamalu Hew
(author)
Core Title
Reading comprehension of children of Hawaiian ancestry: a study of motivational and sociocultural factors
School
Rossier School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Education
Degree Program
Education (Leadership)
Publication Date
05/08/2007
Defense Date
01/17/2007
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
Hawaiian children,motivational and sociocultural factors,OAI-PMH Harvest,reading comprehension
Place Name
Hawaii
(states),
USA
(countries)
Language
English
Advisor
Rueda, Robert S. (
committee chair
), Gothold, Stuart E. (
committee member
), Sundt, Melora A. (
committee member
)
Creator Email
tano@usc.edu
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m489
Unique identifier
UC1235226
Identifier
etd-Tano-20070508 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-494958 (legacy record id),usctheses-m489 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
etd-Tano-20070508.pdf
Dmrecord
494958
Document Type
Dissertation
Rights
Tano, Colleen Laukiamalu Hew
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Repository Name
Libraries, University of Southern California
Repository Location
Los Angeles, California
Repository Email
cisadmin@lib.usc.edu
Tags
Hawaiian children
motivational and sociocultural factors
reading comprehension