Reading: strategies and engagement

Reading Reflection #1: Strategic Reading Comprehension and Motivating Contexts For Developing Offline Reading Comprehension

Based on the texts:

Guthrie, J.,Wigfield, A., & You, W. (2012). Instructional contexts for engagement and achievement in reading. In S.L. Christenson, A. L., Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Student Engagement (pp. 601-634). New York, NY: Springer Science.

Paris, S., B. Wasik, & Turner (1996). The development of strategic readers. R. Barr, M. Kamil, P. Mosenthal and P. D. Pearson. Handbook of reading research, Volume 2, (pp. 609-640). New York: Longman.

Swan, E. A. (2003). Why is the north pole always cold? In Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction: Engaging Classrooms, Lifelong Learners (pp. 1-13). New York, NY: Guilford Publications. Available at: http://www.cori.umd.edu/professional-development/modules/

An attempt to answer to the following questions proposed by Prof. Julie Coiro:

STRATEGIC READERS

·       What makes a reader strategic?

·       How do more strategic readers differ from less strategic readers? 

·       What does development have to do with strategic reading and comprehension?

·       What appears to be some of the key research that informs how we currently define reading comprehension and how to teach it to learners of various ages?

FACTORS INFLUENCING READING COMPREHENSION

·       What does age have to do with development of reading comprehension?

·       What role does motivation play in strategic reading comprehension?

·       What role do dialogue and discussion play in strategic reading comprehension?

CONNECTIONS/IMPLICATIONS/QUESTIONS/CRITIQUES

·       What connections do you see across the texts and ideas?

·       What connections do you see between these ideas and things happening in your teaching/learning context?  Teaching practices?  Student behaviors? Classroom climates?

·       What implications do these ideas have for your work in education?

·       What questions do you have? (e.g., clarifying terms, broader applications, extended wonderings, critiques)

      Do these ideas spark any interests for your final project?

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According to the texts readers should be able to use efficient ways to approach texts and build meaning from them. Using efficient reading strategies is the best way to do that.

Guthrie, Wigfied & You, 2012 define strategy as “students’ multiple cognitive processes of comprehending, self-monitoring, and constructing their understanding and beliefs during reading.” (p. 603). According to Paris, Wasik, & Turner, (p. 611) “strategic readers are note characterized by the volume of tactics they use but rather by the selection of appropriate strategies that fit the particular text, purpose and occasion.”

Reading in these texts is considered as a cognitively demanding activity that involves many different cognitive skills. “These range from processing individual words to generating meaning from complex texts” (Guthrie, Wigfied & You, 2012, p.602). Reading requires deep as well as superficial strategies. “Deep processing strategies consist of making inferences, forming summaries, integrating diverse elements, and monitoring one’s comprehension during reading. Superficial strategies are typified by underlining, memorizing, and seeking to complete tasks rather than comprehending fully.” (p. 615)

Strategic readers usually decode fast, have a “large vocabulary, phonemic awareness, knowledge about the text features and a variety of strategies to aid comprehension and memory” (Paris, Wasik & Turner p.609). “Novice readers, in contrast, often focus on decoding single words, fail to adjust their reading to different texts of purposed, and seldom look ahead or back in text to monitor and improve comprehension” (Paris, Wasik, & Turner, p.609)

As readers get more experience on reading they tend to develop strategies that help them to become better readers, but in many cases, explicit instruction will make the students understand all the work involved in text comprehension.

According to the texts, we reading comprehension involves identifying main ideas, making inferences, connecting ideas, making and answering questions, synthesizing, communicating (socializing). In order to do that, the reader must be motivated and engaged.

Guthrie, Wigfied, & You, 2012 define engagement “as involvement, participation, and commitment to some set of activities.” (p.601), so engaged readers are “motivated to read, strategic in their approaches to comprehending what they read, knowledgeable in their construction of meaning from text, and socially interactive while reading” (p. 602)

Engagement is the result of many aspects that work together. If the student is engaged, it is because there are some aspects that are contributing to it: previous knowledge, reading skills, interest, motivation, aim, the text is meaningful, and this lead to engagement and consequently to success.

There is a cycle here: motivation leads to engagement that leads to good reading behaviors. One aspect retro feed the other. When one of these aspects is missing, the others might fail too. There is also a negative cycle – if reading is a struggle, it lacks pleasure, meaning, and consequently, efficacy, motivation and engagement. This will lead the student to avoid reading or giving up on reading. So, one very important aspect in teaching reading comprehension: is to promote the reader motivation and engagement, generation the positive cycle that will make him wanting to read more.

Teaching reading comprehension involves helping the students to be good decoders and  good meaning builders. They also need to be critical readers. Teaching to read involves teaching reading strategies that the students can use before, during and after reading. A very important one is monitoring the processes of reading, that is why metacognitive instruction is pointed by Paris, Wasik, & Turner (1996) as an essential way to promote strategic reading.

The three texts complement each other.

Paris, Wasik, & Turner (1996) explain in details what are the main strategies that readers need to develop, showing that there are strategies that can be used before, during and after reading and how important it is for the student to select well which one to use in each circumstance. They also discuss how the teacher can help the students to develop reading strategies by direct explaining them to the students by describing them, explaining the benefits of using them, how to use them, when they should be used as well as evaluating their use of the strategies. They also discuss the importance of peer interactions and the classroom climate, defending a multidimensional classroom that “avoid normative evaluations and stratification of students by abilities” and that “provide meaningful literacy tasks, employ a variety of instructional methods, apply multiple performance standards, and afford all students opportunities for success” (p.629) 

In defending a multidimensional classroom, they weave a criticism on the traditional educational approach, curricula and assessments, proposing a new agenda for reading instruction that would emphasize teaching strategies for constructing meaning, the use of Socratic methods to promote cognitive and motivational aspects of learning.

It is a text written in 1996, and today, almost 20 years later, we still do not see those changes in school, that still do work with a curricula that is “disjointed and incompatible with strategic, metacognitive and motivated aspects of reading” (p. 632). There are many aspects mentioned in this text, and reinforced by Guthrie, Wigfied, & You, (2012), that are still not included in school routines, practices or beliefs.

Guthrie, Wigfied, & You, (2012) review research on students’ engagement in reading activities and how classroom instructional practices influence engagement in reading and other academic activities.They show very clearly a cycle, also mentioned by Paris, Wasik, & Turner (1996), that relates instruction, motivation, engagement and achievement. “Behavioral engagement in reading impacts reading compentence, and motivation to read impact behavioral engagement in reading” (p.604)

They present many classroom practices that impact students’ motivations as autonomy support, relevance, quality of teacher-student relationships, the kind of Feedback, the adequacy of the material used, and we can summarize those practices in an idea of a student centered approach that indeed respect and value the students.

A presentation and discussion of CORI closes this chapter. “CORI includes the classroom practices of providing relevance, choices, collaboration, leveled texts, and thematic units. This cluster of practices is designed to increase intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, social motivation, and valuing for reading” (p.628)

Swan’s text is all about CORI, that is to say, it shows how CORI would work in a real class situation, and how it foster students engagement, development of strategies and mainly raising questions.

We can see very clearly, once again, the cycle formed by motivation, engagement, strategy use and reading. And how important is the role that the teacher plays, not only by making questions but by having the students raise and answers their own questions as a regular activity of the daily life.

It seems the formula is simple: treat the students with the respect they deserve, making a student-centered environment, develop deep reading skills in a context that is meaningful for the students and deal with some metacognition to make them aware of what reading/learning is.

It was very good to read these texts, because, as a follower of Socrates, Vygstsky, Paulo Freire, Emilia Ferreiro, among others, I believe that the student needs to build his knowledge, and that we learn better what is meaningful to us and what relates to our lives and interests.

Unfortunately, the school have a tight agenda, a closed curriculum, and many mistaken beliefs that do not enable the teacher and the students work to build meaning in a reasonable, intelligent, interactive, interdisciplinary way. This is not respectful to the students and nor either to the teachers, that could work in more pleasant and productive environment.

This sad reality of the majority of the schools, at least in Brazil, sometimes make me think that I might be wrong, or that this is not a kind of work that can be applied for many different reasons. Texts like the ones we read, reviewing so much research, the aspects of Finish education we had the chance to hear Pasi talking about, added to the work of a few teachers and schools in Brazil that believe learning is an active and pleasant process, make me believe that school could and should be different.

I try my best to work this way, although I have to struggle to convince my students that they are not at school to get a good grade, but to learn a lot about subjects that they will fall in love with and have many questions about. I try to promote a climate of friendship, partnership, trust, respect, autonomy, and I hope that by the end of the semester, they are convinced that studying hard and learning a lot can be fun.

I always considered reading strategies as important, but I think I have to find a way to teach them more explicitly to the students or work with a metacognitive approach, having them think more about the strategies they use or should use.

Those texts are closely related to my project, because I need to think about other strategies that reading and learning online require from the reader.