Young Children's Motivation to Read and Write: Development in Social Contexts

Abstract

In a 3-year longitudinal, mixed-method study, 67 children in two schools were observed during literacy activities in Grades 1-3. Children and their teachers were interviewed each year about the children's motivation to read and write. Taking a grounded theory approach, content analysis of the child interview protocols identified the motivations that were salient to children at each grade level in each domain, looking for patterns by grade and school. Analysis of field notes, teacher interviews, and child interviews suggests that children's motivation for literacy is best understood in terms of development in specific contexts. Development in literacy skill and teachers' methods of instruction and raising motivation provided affordances and constraints for literate activity and its accompanying motivations. In particular, there was support for both the developmental hypotheses of Renninger and her colleagues (Hidi & Renninger, 2006) and of Pressick-Kilborne and Walker (2002). The positions of poor readers and the strategies they used were negotiated and developed in response to the social meanings of reading, writing, and relative literacy skill co-constructed by students and teachers in each classroom. The relationship of these findings to theories of motivation is discussed.

Motivation for Reading and Writing in Kindergarten Children

“…However, despite the wide range of investigation concerning emergent literacy, the affective components of this process-attitudes and motivation for reading and writing-are not well characterized in preschool-age children. The existing work concerning the affective components of the literacy apprenticeship process is mainly focused on children who are already attending primary school or are even older (Baker & Wigfield, 1999;Gambrell, Palmer, Codling, & Mazzoni, 1996;McKenna, Motivation for Reading and Writing 273 2001;McKenna, Kear, & Ellsworth, 1995;Monteiro & Mata, 2001;Nolen, 2007;Wilson & Trainin, 2007). Nevertheless, children interact with written language from very early on and develop early concepts concerning its functions and conventions.…”

Interventions and Classroom Contexts That Promote Self-Regulated Learning: Two Intervention Studies in United Kingdom Primary Classrooms

“…Researchers have also explored how the overall support and structure of classroom environments impact on students' self-regulation (Jang, Reeve, & Deci, 2010;Meyer & Turner, 2002b;Nolen, 2007;Perry & Vandekamp, 2000). This research has largely been informed by self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), looking at the extent to which classroom environments and instructional practices allow students to meet belonging, autonomy, and mastery needs.…”

“…As stated by Pintrich and Zusho (2002), "self-regulation is not just afforded or constrained by personal cognition and motivation, but also privileged, encouraged, or discouraged by contextual factors" (p. 279). Consistently, a growing number of studies has been conducted in the past 20 years in real classrooms with the aim of identifying types of activities, instructional practices, and classroom arrangements that afford opportunities for children to engage in SRL (Meyer & Turner, 2002a, 2002bNolen, 2007;Perry, 1998;Perry & Vandekamp, 2000;Webb, 2013). …”

New Pedagogies of Motivation: Reconstructing and Repositioning Motivational Constructs in the Design of Learning Technologies

“…Hickey (2003) calls for motivation scholars to study 'engaged participation', arguing that cognitive activities are inseparably connected to the settings in which they occur (see Wertsch, 1998). Nolen (2007), in a comparative case study, describes two educational writing environments and explicates several ways in which these classrooms supported particular kinds of social interactions around and interests in writing.…”