Measuring strategic processing when students read multiple texts

Abstract

This study explored the dimensionality of multiple-text comprehension strategies in a sample of 216 Norwegian education undergraduates who read seven separate texts on a science topic and immediately afterwards responded to a self-report inventory focusing on strategic multiple-text processing in that specific task context. Two dimensions were identified through factor analysis: one concerning the accumulation of pieces of information from the different texts and one concerning cross-text elaboration. In a subsample of 71 students who were also administered measures of intratextual and intertextual comprehension after responding to the strategy inventory, hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated that self-reported accumulation of information and cross-text elaboration explained variance in intertextual comprehension even after variance associated with prior knowledge had been removed.Keywords Multiple-text comprehension strategies . Multiple-text comprehension . Prior knowledge . Measuring strategic processingThe main purpose of this study was to design and validate a task-specific self-report measure of strategic multiple-text processing. Building upon the strategy conceptualizations of Weinstein and Mayer (1986) and Alexander et al. (1998), Bråten and Samuelstuen (2004) defined text comprehension strategies as forms of procedural knowledge that readers voluntary use for acquiring, organizing, or transforming text information, as well as for reflecting on and guiding their own text comprehension, in order to reduce a perceived discrepancy between a desired outcome and their current state of understanding. There is much prior research documenting that the use of deeper-level strategies falling in the broad categories of organization, elaboration, and monitoring is particularly important for successful comprehension performance when students read single texts (McNamara 2007; National Reading Panel 2000;Trabasso and Bouchard 2002). Especially, analyses of thinkaloud protocols (Ericsson and Simon 1980) have shown that good readers are strategically Metacognition Learning (2011) 6:111-130 DOI 10.1007 I. Bråten (*) : H. I. Strømsø Institute for Educational Research, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1092 Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway e-mail: ivar.braten@ped.uio.no active as they read, predicting upcoming text content, drawing inferences, asking and answering questions, creating images, reflecting on main points, and constructing personal interpretations (Pressley and Afflerbach 1995). In addition, good readers often jump back and forth in text and distribute their attention unequally, that is, paying more attention to some parts of the text than to others (Pressley and Harris 2006). In contrast, a hallmark of poorer readers seems to be that they read less actively, failing to produce the strategies when reading that good readers use to comprehend text. Moreover, poorer readers are much more likely to read word by word in a linear way (Duke et al. 2004;Pressley and Harris 2006). However, as shown by A...

Revising the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory (MARSI) and testing for factorial invariance

“…There are also issues with the generalized nature of the MARSI directions: students use strategies to a different extent in different contexts, even in academic reading, and context-free measures do not accurately reflect strategy use for all of those contexts (e.g., Bråten & Strømsø, 2011;Hadwin, Winne, Stockley, Nesbit, & Woszczyna, 2001;Pressley, 2000;Veenman, 2011). However, contextualizing the instrument to focus on specific readings would necessarily limit its generalizability.…”

Prompted Journal Writing Supports Preservice History Teachers in Drawing on Multiple Knowledge Domains for Designing Learning Tasks

“…Bråten and colleagues investigated the relation between comprehension and repetition as well as between comprehension and elaboration. They assessed strategy use by analyzing note taking (Hagen, Strømsø, & Bråten, 2009) and a task-specific self-report inventory (Bråten & Strømsø, 2011). The results of their study indicated that integration strategies showed positive effects, whereas repeating factual information from single documents had negative effects on comprehension.…”

Lectura crítica hipertextual en la web 2.0. / Hypertextual critical reading on web 2.0

“…Sin embargo, también requiere un ejercicio metacognitivo, sensible al contexto, autorregulado, disciplinado, orientado a la resolución de problemas y a la generación de conocimiento (Spicer y Hanks, 1995;Ennis, 1996;Lipman, 1998;Pinzás 2006). Además, son necesarias habilidades de lectura cruzada, en donde se encuentre coincidencias, se compare, se aplique, se identifique la forma en que está presentada la información, y se analicen las contradicciones y las coincidencias de la información (Bråten y Strømsø, 2011).…”

“…En cuanto a la evaluación del uso de estrategias de lectura hipertextual, los instrumentos de medición son limitados (Bråten y Strømsø, 2011), por lo que los indicadores en este trabajo pueden considerarse una contribución en esta área del conocimiento. La diferencia con los autores mencionados reside en que la medición de los ítems la efectuaron a partir de un caso en concreto y con la estrategia de "pensar en voz alta" (Thinking aloud) como un trabajo intenso en el aula.…”