Motivation+for+Adolescents+to+Read


 * Assessment of Motivation for Adolescents to Read **

//Education is not the filling of a pail // //but the lighting of a fire. // //~ // William Butler Yeats Teachers at all levels of education are devoted to the various aspects of their jobs, including those responsibilities that are not explicitly stated in their contracts. Primary teachers provide more than simply reading, writing, and math instruction; they understand the necessity of also teaching socialization skills such as manners, how to share, and other general rules of acceptable behavior. Middle school teachers build upon those academic and social lessons learned in elementary schools, teaching not only course content, but organization skills and responsibility while guiding students through sometimes extreme hormone changes. Unlike elementary and middle grade teachers, some high school instructors are simply unaware that delivery of only their course content is not sufficient to meet the goal of a secondary teacher--preparing students for college and/or entry into the job market. Along with subject-area content, multiple literacies must also be addressed in high school classrooms, with the most basic (and arguably the most important) strands of literacy being reading ability and comprehension. Understanding how to motivate students is a crucial skill that high school teachers should aspire to attain. Often, instructors miss opportunities to capitalize on the strengths of those they teach by not tapping in to what excites them. Although it may be time-consuming, numerous connections could be made to all content areas that could spark a genuine interest within students (Guthrie et al., 2000). It is understandable with all the responsibilities placed on instructional leaders to “cover” a wide breadth of content preparing students for mandatory accountability testing that they may be reluctant to implement all the suggestions offered by experts on motivation (Lenters, 2006), but it is possible that they could adapt a few of the most highly recommended into their classroom management strategies or teaching techniques. Once teachers understand the benefits of their efforts, both in student performance and attitude, they will likely be motivated to incorporate more, adjusting procedure and effectively changing the culture of their classrooms (Hall, 2005). Like their primary and middle school counterparts, high school teachers can learn of the importance of the provision of proper motivation, understanding that the delivery of their content alone is insufficient. (1) What are the differences between strategies, practices, and beliefs that teachers believe motivate their students to read and what students report motivate them to read? (2) What are the differences in strategies, practices, and beliefs that students who have a high value reading find motivational and those with a low value of reading? (3) What are the differences in strategies, practices, and beliefs that students who have high self-perceptions as readers and low self-perceptions as readers find motivational? After analysis of several published survey instruments and review of findings from current research, a list of strategies, assignments, practices, beliefs, and attitudes that have been found to affect motivation to read were compiled. Each item was accompanied with a five-point Likert scale. In addition, five questions were designed to determine subjects’ self-perception as a reader and six questions were designed to determine subjects’ value of reading to correspond to the concepts of ability (self-perception) and valence (value) important in the expectancy model of motivation. The resulting list of items was given to a focus group of 58 eleventh- and twelfth-grade students. After responding to the survey, the participants were questioned regarding their understanding of the items, the construction of the survey, and the scope of the survey with a specific focus of what important aspects had been overlooked. Based on input from this focus group, the survey was revised to include strategies, practices, and beliefs that the group felt was important and five items were reworded for clarity of understanding. The resulting survey was sent to all the English teachers at Daviess County High School. English courses were chosen as they are required for all students each year and no student may be enrolled in more than one core English course at once, so there was no possibility of overlap. Also, there was an even number of English courses being taught at each grade level during the semester allowing for the possibility of equal representation among grade levels. Nearly half of the school’s 1500 students were enrolled in English courses at the time of distribution, making the pool of subjects approximately 750 students. Of those, 281 students responded to the survey. Representation of grade levels was nearly even among the tenth (56 students), eleventh (62 students) and twelfth (53 students) grades, but by far more freshmen responded to the survey (110). Home
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