Reading Achievement And Motivation In Boys And Girls

This volume links theoretical and instructional approaches on how reading is motivated and assessed, and examines the interrelationship between reading motivation and achievement among boys and girls in culturally and geographically different settings. Much of the research on children’s reading has focused on cognitive processes; however, reading is an activity that also requires interest and motivation. These attitudes are generally defined as readers’ affect toward reading and their consequence is that children with more positive attitudes are more motivated to read. Taking into account the variability that exists within the notion of gender and age, this volume aims to examine and scrutinize previous research on the topic, as well as test theories on how the different dimensions of reading motivation vary with gender, in relation to cultural issues, motivational constructs, such as engagement and classroom climate, the role of emotions, interests and attitudes towards reading, among others. The book will be of interest to researchers, educators, graduate students, and other professionals working in the area of literacy, reading motivation, reading achievement and gender differences.

This volume demonstrates how promoting children's engagement with reading can greatly enhance reading achievement. From leading literacy researchers and educators, the book illuminates what a child needs to become an engaged reader and presents a set of instructional principles designed to facilitate this goal. Helping teachers offer a coordinated emphasis on competence and motivation in reading instruction, chapters blend research evidence with practical recommendations. Topics covered include ways to provide children with a good foundation at the word level, help if they are in trouble, ample time and materials for reading, opportunities to share in a community of learners, instruction that is coherent, motivating, and responsive to each child's strengths and weaknesses, school-wide coordination of instruction, and continuities between home and school.

Motivation to engage in reading is a consistent problem for students in general and boys in particular. To solve this problem, we often seek answers from everyone but those we are hoping to motivate. We read the latest article on motivation and think we have finally come up with the recipe that will motivate all of the boys in our class. When it doesn’t work for everyone, we go back to the drawing board and try something else until we finally understand that all boys are motivated by different things. That is the basis of this book: nothing will work for ALL boys, but there are ways to equip teachers to find out how the boys in their classes are motivated. It provides them with a direction to go once they’ve established the needs of their students and offers suggestions for how to meet individual motivational needs. Each chapter addresses a different motivational need, providing background information and practical classroom applications.

This book presents cutting-edge research findings in areas critical to advancing reading research in the 21st century context, including new literacies, reading motivation, strategy instruction, and reading intervention studies. While students’ reading performance is currently receiving unprecedented attention, there is a lack of research that adopts an international perspective and draws on research expertise from different parts of the world to present a concerted effort, discussing key research models and findings on how to improve reading education. Addressing this gap in the literature, the book also responds to the challenge of promoting higher levels of literacy, and supporting and developing readers who can enjoy and critique texts of every genre.

This book brings together contributions from different scholarly contexts that address a diverse range of focused topics, as well as empirical and conceptual perspectives, on research with international studies. Some chapters focus on technical aspects, exploring opportunities for drawing causal inferences from the data, and investigating biases originating in distributional scale properties. Others are of a more conceptual nature, addressing changes in the relevance of socio-economic indicators across time and countries, examining the exposure of mother-tongue and English instruction on performance and investigating the effects of test construction on gender difference. The discussion takes a much-needed meta-perspective on the usefulness of international large-scale assessments for educational research and allows reflection upon possibilities and opportunities for their improvement. This book was originally published as a special issue of Assessment in Education.

This new collection of both landmark and current essays provides a comprehensive overview of the major themes and questions that shape literacy studies today. Literacy: A Critical Sourcebook is an indispensable reference tool for anyone interested in the field of literacy studies and ideally suited for use in a wide range of upper-division and graduate classes.

Examines the widespread phenomenon of poor literacy skills in adults across the globe This handbook presents a wide range of research on adults who have low literacy skills. It looks at the cognitive, affective, and motivational factors underlying adult literacy; adult literacy in different countries; and the educational approaches being taken to help improve adults’ literacy skills. It includes not only adults enrolled in adult literacy programs, but postsecondary students with low literacy skills, some of whom have reading disabilities. The first section of The Wiley Handbook of Adult Literacy covers issues such as phonological abilities in adults who have not yet learned to read; gender differences in the reading motivation of adults with low literacy skills; literacy skills, academic self-efficacy, and participation in prison education; and more. Chapters on adult literacy, social change and sociocultural factors in South Asia and in Ghana; literacy, numeracy, and self-rated health among U.S. adults; adult literacy programs in Southeastern Europe and Turkey, and a review of family and workplace literacy programs are among the topics featured in the second section. The last part examines how to teach reading and writing to adults with low skills; adults’ transition from secondary to postsecondary education; implications for policy, research, and practice in the adult education field; educational technologies that support reading comprehension; and more. Looks at the cognitive processing challenges associated with low literacy in adults Features contributions from a global team of experts in the field Offers writing strategy instruction for low-skilled postsecondary students The Wiley Handbook of Adult Literacy is an excellent book for academic researchers, teacher educators, professional developers, program designers, and graduate students. It’s also beneficial to curriculum developers, adult basic education and developmental education instructors, and program administrators, as well as clinicians and counselors who provide services to adults with reading disabilities.

The main purpose of this Research Topic is to analyze and identify the main family and contextual variables that are involved in the process of carrying out homework. This will require studying the role played by teachers, students, and families in order to ensure that schoolwork is a useful learning tool. Although the role of the student is, obviously, crucial in homework, research has focused on the cumulative time spent by the student carrying out homework. However, the time spent on homework is not in itself evidence of the student’s involvement nor is time spent indicative of quality time. Indeed, an excess of time can sometimes denote low competence in a field of knowledge, while spending less time on homework could be indicative of high competence. It is more likely that a high dedication of time spent on homework reflects high motivation, or comprehension deficits, rather than commitment to learning or academic motivation. In tandem with the role of the student, teachers, as responsible for prescribing homework assignments for students, also become central players in the process of completing homework assignments. The decisions that teachers make about homework prescriptions, and the amount and type of tasks they set, will determine, to a large extent, the quality of the homework process including the student’s motivation and the student’s level of engagement with homework. Furthermore, the fact that homework is useful, interesting and motivating for students, will depend on how the teacher prescribes those tasks and the connection established with classroom learning. Teacher feedback also acquires particular relevance for this point by helping the students to accurately estimate the quality of their progress and overcome the difficulties they may have encountered in carrying out their homework. Lastly, the effectiveness of teacher feedback depends on its contribution to the student’s educational progress and how that student will perform in the future. In addition to the student who performs the task and the teacher who prescribes and corrects it, we must not lose sight of parents’ role. Although there are discrepancies regarding the role that parents play in relation to homework, it is evident that their implication has important consequences not only on the final result of those tasks but also on the very process of carrying them out. Everything seems to indicate that the family environment and, more specifically, the support and feedback provided by parents is a factor that can determine the involvement of students in school duties. In this way, providing emotional support encouraging children to get involved can contribute positively to improving their motivation and interest in the performance of homework. The objective of this Research Topic is to provide researchers and professionals in psychology and education settings with some of the most recent empirical evidence regarding the homework process, its prescription and correction. Overall, we aim to cease making homework a source of conflict and controversy at the socio-educational level in order to provide useful instruments for improving the quality of student learning. This work was developed with the financing of the research projects EDU2013-44062-P (MINECO), EDU2017-82984-P (MEIC).