Regional center for in- service training and retraining of teachers under the karakalpak state university

1.2. The role of motivation in reading
Wigfield and Guthrie (1997) investigated how children’s reading motivation related to the amount and breadth of their reading. Wigfield and Guthrie examined the different aspects of reading motivation and the aspects that children value the most. Because research has indicated age and gender play a role in reading beliefs and values,[56;75]Wigfield and Guthrie also investigated the role of grade, time, and gender in motivation. The study included 59 fourth-grade students and 46 fifth-grade students. Of the 105 fourth-and fifth-grade students, 47 were girls and 58 were boys.
Wigfield and Guthrie used several measures to obtain the necessary data to answer each research question. Each student completed The Motivation to Read Questionnaire (MRQ). The MRQ assessed three different aspects central to reading motivation: self-efficacy, intrinsic/extrinsic motivation, and social motivation.
Each of these three aspects of motivation is comprised of several dimensions of reading. Self-efficacy is based on students’ beliefs about their own ability. Dimensions of self-efficacy include reading efficacy, or how successful a student believes he or she can be, and reading challenge, the ability to master text. Intrinsic motivation refers to students who read for personal reasons and the enjoyment of reading. Dimensions of intrinsic motivation include curiosity, the desire to learn about an interesting topic, and reading involvement, the pleasure derived from reading an interesting text. Other dimensions of intrinsic motivation include the importance of reading, and reading work avoidance, or facets of reading students do not like. Extrinsic motivation refers to students who read for rewards or recognition. Dimensions of extrinsic motivation include competition in reading, or wanting to outperform others, recognition in reading, the enjoyment of being recognized for reading accomplishments, and reading for grades, or receiving high evaluations. Finally, social motivation refers to students who share and discuss texts with peers or family. Dimensions of social motivation include sharing the benefits of reading with peers or family, and compliance, or reading because of a requirement.
Wigfield and Guthrie piloted the original version of the MRQ. Because of the pilot study, revisions to the MRQ occurred before the commencement of the formal study. As part of the formal study, Wigfield and Guthrie administered the MRQ once in the fall and again in the spring. The students answered questions about their reading on a scale from 1 to 4. Answers on the scale ranged from 1 = ‘very different from me’ to 4 = ‘a lot like me.’
In addition, The Reading Activity Inventory measured the breadth and frequency of students’ reading. The students answered questions regarding the texts they chose to read and how much they read for fun. Wigfield and Guthrie also created a composite scale using books, sports books, adventure books, and nature books to measure the breadth of reading. No traditional reliability measure was available for the RAI. However, after administering the measure in both the fall and the spring, a correlation of suggested a stable measuring instrument.
Finally, the school had previously participated in a program that promoted reading outside of school. Students and parents had maintained reading logs to measure the amount of reading completed outside of school. The media specialist provided a summary of these data for the past two school years to the researchers. A correlation of the diary data over the two-year period indicated stability for this measure.
In analyzing the data, found that students’ reading motivation predicted the amount and breadth of reading. Therefore, it can be said that students who read more and in a variety of areas are more likely to continue this habit, while those students who read less frequently are less likely to increase time spent reading.
Wigfield and Guthrie stated that students’ intrinsic motivation determined the amount and breadth of reading more than did past amount and breadth. Wigfield and Guthrie suggested that students do not become frequent readers and then become motivated to read. Rather, students are first motivated to read. Then, because of being motivated to read, students will increase the amount and breadth of their reading. This stance supports motivational theorists who argued the importance of intrinsic motivation as predictors of life-long readers.
Finally, Wigfield and Guthrie found that the fifth-grade students were less motivated than fourth-grade students on reading efficacy, reading recognition, and social motivation for the fall measure. In terms of gender, girls tended to be slightly more motivated than the boys. However, there was little change in students’ responses over time. Further longitudinal research could shed more light on that aspect of motivation.
One of the first conclusions Baker and Wigfield reached was that reading motivation is multidimensional[7;56]. Each dimension is a subcategory of one of the three aspects of reading motivation as described by Wigfield and Guthrie. Dimensions of self-efficacy include reading efficacy and reading challenge. Dimensions of intrinsic motivation include curiosity, reading involvement, importance of reading, and reading work avoidance. Dimensions of extrinsic motivation include competition in reading, recognition in reading, and reading for grades. Dimensions of social motivation include sharing the benefits of reading with peers or family and compliance.
This conclusion confirmed what Wigfield and Guthrie suggested based on their limited sample. Data from the MRQ indicated some students scored strong in some aspects of reading motivation while scoring poorly in other aspects. The researchers analyzed each of the motivational dimensions to find out which dimensions students were or were not endorsing. This does not mean that the students were not motivated; rather it is an indication that students were motivated for different reasons. The MRQ separated the different motivational dimensions and measured students’ motivation for each dimension.
Baker and Wigfield’s conclusion that reading motivation is multidimensional added to the evidence proposed by other researchers. For example, because of their research into motivation,[21;128] they have also developed questionnaires that measure similar dimensions of reading motivation. Although these measures are not exactly alike, they are conceptually similar.
In addition, Baker and Wigfield found that the girls’ mean scores on all but two of the dimensions of reading motivation were significantly higher when compared to the boys.
Data analysis also revealed statistically significant and positive correlations between reading motivation and amount of reported reading activity. All of the dimensions of reading demonstrated a positive correlation with reported reading activity, except for ‘Work Avoidance,’ which is expected to be negative. Challenge and Involvement had the highest correlation at .51, while Self-efficacy and Curiosity had correlations of .43. These aforementioned dimensions of reading motivation reflect intrinsic and social reasons for reading. Furthermore, children who believe they are good readers and are intrinsically motivated to read, report frequent reading. These results mirrored the results of Wigfield and Guthrie.
Additionally, data from Baker and Wigfield’s study also indicated a mildly positive relationship between reading motivation and reading achievement, although this relationship was not nearly as strong as is motivation and reading amount. Results showed the relationship between motivation and the specially designed performance assessment to be higher than that of motivation and the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills and the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test.
Baker and Wigfield explained why the relationship between motivation and achievement is weaker than the relationship of motivation and reported reading activity. First, the activity of reading is a choice made by each student. Choice is an intrinsically motivating factor for participating in any event. In contrast, taking the standardized tests for the research study was not by choice. Thus, one could argue that by removing the element of choice, the students were not motivated to perform optimally. Second, the motivation and reading activity measures were self-report methods. Thus, the general limitations of self-report measures apply. Third, although students may read frequently, they may not be reading at a level that advances them academically. Citing Carver and Leibert’s work, Baker and Wigfield stated that although students may read frequently, if the books they read are below instructional level, academic advancement is not likely to occur. However, it must be pointed out that, n order for students to read independently, they must read books at their independent level. Reading books at the instructional level would necessitate assistance and guidance from the teacher. Perhaps a more reasonable suggestion for fostering independent reading as well as academic advancement would be for students to read the most challenging material at their independent level. Future research comparing the MRQ to other measures of reading achievement may help clarify the relationship of motivation to reading achievement.