ENGAGEMENT AND MOTIVATION “Reading engagement is more important than students’ family background consisting of parents’ education and income. Reading engagement connects to achievement more strongly than to home environment.” —Dr. John Guthrie, National Reading Research Center at the University of Maryland,
KEY FINDINGS
> > Motivation and reading comprehension go hand in hand; avid readers read extensively with deep comprehension (Duke, et al., 2011). > > Motivation works in a spiral: avid readers read more, and their reading prompts increased learning and a passion for even more reading. The reverse is also true (Guthrie et al., 2012). > > “A motivated reader is one who engages in significantly more reading than one who is not motivated to do so. Wigfield and Guthrie (1997) identified a 300% difference in time spent reading between intrinsically motivated and unmotivated fourth- and fifth-grade readers” (Fisher, Frye, and Lapp, 2012). > > Intrinsic motivation drives student reading and reading achievement; students who read only for external reasons—prompted by grades, rewards, or recognition—do not read as often or as deeply (Guthrie, et al., 2012). > > A meta-analysis of 128 studies on the effects of rewards concludes that, “tangible rewards tend to have a substantially negative effect on intrinsic motivation. Even when tangible rewards are offered as indicators of good performance, they typically decrease intrinsic motivation for interesting activities” (Deci, Koestner, and Ryan, 1999; cited in Miller and Sharp, 2018). > > Readers motivated for personal reasons are more likely to remain interested in reading than readers who are externally motivated through rewards (Marinak and Gambrell, 2008). If we strive to encourage lifelong reading habits, rewarding and incentivizing reading is detrimental (Miller and Sharp, 2018). > > Inviting students to choose their own books or suggesting books that they can read and want to read has a profound positive effect on both motivation and comprehension (Miller and Sharp, 2018; Gallagher and Kittle, 2018; Beers and Probst, 2017; Harvey and Ward, 2017; Allington, 2012; Wilhelm and Smith, 2013).
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ENGAGEMENT AND MOTIVATION
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