Examining a motivational treatment and its impact on adolescents' reading comprehension and fluency

The authors' purpose was to examine adolescents' reading motivation in relation to standardized assessments of reading comprehension and fluency. After a reading pretest, 60 ninth-grade students (M age = 14.9 years) were randomly assigned to two groups. Compared to those in the control condition, those administered brief oral feedback intended to improve motivation indicated an increased focus on mastery goals and greater perceived control during a reading posttest. No differences were found with regard to four other aspects of motivation. Students in the treatment condition, including struggling readers more specifically, did not score better on the posttest measures of reading comprehension or fluency. Hence, results failed to replicate Zentall and Lee's (2012 Zentall, S. S., &; Lee, J. (2012). A reading motivation intervention with differential outcomes for students at risk for reading disabilities, ADHD, and typical comparisons: ‘Clever is and clever does’. Learning Disability Quarterly, 35, 248–259. doi:10.1177/0731948712438556[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) findings with younger readers. Findings are discussed with regard to the theoretical and practical implications for understanding reading motivation.     

Contextual differences in student motivation and self-regulated learning in mathematics,English, and social studies classrooms

Recent research on self-regulated learning has stressed the importance of both motivational and cognitive components of classroom learning. Much of this research has examined these components without consideration of potential contextual differences. Using a within-subject correlational design, the present study assessed mean level differences in students' task value, self-efficacy, test anxiety, cognitive strategy use, regulatory strategy use, and classroom academic performance by gender and across the subject areas of mathematics, social studies, and English. In addition, the relations among the motivational, strategy use, and performance measures were assessed using multivariate regressions. The participants were 545 seventh and eighth grade students (51% females) who responded to a self-report questionnaire. Results revealed mean level differences by subject area and gender in the motivation and cognitive strategy use variables, but not in regulatory strategy use or academic performance. In contrast, results indicated that the relations among these constructs was very similar across the three subject areas examined. Findings are discussed in terms of their importance for understanding the contextual nature of students' self-regulated learning.     

Stability of processing and regulation strategies: Two longitudinal studies on student learning

The way students approach their study tasks isoften assumed to be dependent on the learningcontext. This assumption has received littleresearch attention in terms of longitudinal, orwithin-subjects, designs. In the presentarticle, two longitudinal studies are described which investigate the extent to which learningstrategies change. The strategy part of theInventory of Learning Styles of Vermunt and VanRijswijk (1988) was used to measure the waystudents learn. Repeated measures analyses showa number of statistically significanttrends. The article concludes by comparing thetwo studies, and by suggesting future researchdirections.     

Assessing and Predicting College Students’ Use of Strategies for the Self-Regulation of Motivation

College students (N = 215) completed a self-report instrument designed to assess different regulation of motivation strategies as well as aspects of their motivational beliefs, use of cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies, and procrastination. The study serves to extend the research on the self-regulation of motivation through three related findings. One, results indicate that the instrument evaluated in the study provides a reliable and valid method for assessing six motivational regulation strategies in a college population. Two, analyses revealed differences in the extent that students reported using the regulation of motivation strategies, while also showing them to be related to other aspects of self-regulated learning in a theoretically consistent way. Last, findings from a series of multiple regressions indicate that students’ engagement in motivational regulation is a function of their existing motivational beliefs and attitudes.     

The part-whole schema and artithmetical problems

This article consists of a review of work done by Dutch and Belgian researchers on arithmetical problems, especially word-problems, involving addition and substraction. The purpose of this review is to synthesise the research on the relationship between instruction in the part-whole line diagram and the solution of arithmetical problems. In the discussion part of this paper, these findings are interpreted from a logical (mathematical) as well as from a psychological point of view.     

The Relation between Students’ Epistemological Understanding of Computer Models and their Cognitive Processing on a Modelling Task

While many researchers in science education have argued that students’ epistemological understanding of models and of modelling processes would influence their cognitive processing on a modelling task, there has been little direct evidence for such an effect. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the relation between students’ epistemological understanding of models and modelling and their cognitive processing (i.e., deep versus surface processing) on a modelling task. Twenty‐six students, working in dyads, were observed while working on a computer‐based modelling task in the domain of physics. Students’ epistemological understanding was assessed on four dimensions (i.e., nature of models, purposes of models, process of modelling, and evaluation of models). Students’ cognitive processes were assessed based on their verbal protocols, using a coding scheme to classify their types of reasoning. The outcomes confirmed the expected positive correlation between students’ level of epistemological understanding and their deep processing (r = 0.40, p = .04), and the negative correlation between level of epistemological understanding and surface processing (r = ?0.51, p = .008). From these results, we emphasise the necessity of considering epistemological understanding in research as well as in educational practice.