I Can, But I Won't: A Study of Middle School Reading Engagement

Ohio Reading Teacher, Fall 2003-Spring 2004 by Baer, Allison L

Introduction

"I don't really like to read." So said Annette as we were driving to a field trip. "I start a book then put it down. Nothing seems to interest me' so I don't bother." Thinking that she had not found anything of interest to read, I asked her about her interests outside of school. "I want to be an actress or a singer. I just love Michael Jackson." Noting that she had started reading some books about the theater and Michael Jackson, she restated that she just doesn't like toread, so she never finished any of the books. It's not that she can't read, she just doesn't. Annette is an excellent student receiving high grades on most of her school work. Both of her parents are educated. In fact, they are both teachers. She just doesn't read outside of the minimal textbook reading required in her classes. She doesn't like to so she doesn't. End of discussion.

Mark Twain once said that those who don't read have no advantage over those who can't read. How true that is. This isn't limited to children - many adults who can read choose not to read. Apart from the occasional daily newspaper, the TV listings, or the Internet, many people do not read for the pleasure of the act of reading. As children progress through elementary into middle and high school, their interest in reading tapers off and explicit negative feelings become ingrained in their attitude toward reading in general, thus creating schools filled with non-readers (Allington, 2001; Worthy, 1998). Gambrell (1996) reported that third grade students valued reading far more than fifth grade students. What happens to these students so eager to read in the primary grades? How is it that they are engaged in reading in our elementary schools but would rather do anything than read a book outside of, let alone inside of, class in the middle school? What can we, as educators, do to engage these young people as readers? This article will first address the research on reading engagement and then offer solutions to the problem of engaging students in reading.

Defining the Engaged Reader

Engaged readers are motivated to read for knowledge and pure enjoyment. They use a variety of reading strategies to comprehend text. They are frequent readers, and they read a wide variety of genres (Guthrie & Cox, 2001). Gambrell (1996) agrees with this, saying that these readers are motivated to read for a variety of purposes, they are knowledgeable and take information to and from text and apply that knowledge in a variety of ways: they employ cognitive strategies to comprehend text while self-regulating the reading process to meet their goals, and they are socially interactive in that they communicate with others in the process of constructing knowledge.

Landis (2002) expands the idea of engagement to include any classroom activity, be it reading, completing a worksheet, or listening to a lecture. He contends that engagement exists where students interact with each other. In a discussion of his experiences teaching a Kazak fairy tale, Landis (2002) further states that "cognitive, affective, motivational, and environmental factors influence reading engagements" (p. 476). Linnenbrink and Pintrich (2003) explored the idea of self-efficacy (the belief in one's own ability) and found that self-efficacy facilitates behavioral, motivational, and cognitive engagement in the classroom. The authors define behavioral engagement as something that can be easily seen by the teacher as students physically attend to some occurrence in the classroom. Motivational engagement is defined as being "engaged in the content or tasks in terms of their interest, value, and affect" (p. 125) while cognitive engagement is illustrated as students being "minds-on" not just "hands-on" (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2003).

Spangler (2000) states that "teaching children to read is not a sufficient goal for literacy learning. Instead, the goal should be one that teaches children to value reading, so that they will read for both information and pleasure." In a 2001 CIERA (Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement) report, Rueda, MacGillivray, and Monzo (2001) state, "just because someone is able to engage in a behavior does not mean that he or she will be willing to do so" (p. 1). Engagement relates to the very core of the educational goal of creating life-long learners. In a discussion on creating voluntary readers, Morrow (2003) asserts that educators should be less concerned with creating capable readers and more concerned with encouraging lifelong, engaged readers. If our goal is to create productive members of a democratic society, we are then faced with the awesome task of involving all of our students in classrooms that encourage and generate engaged readers.

Armed with this research, this article will now turn to the problem of Annette and what can be done to help her become a more engaged reader. Conclusions from the research related to motivation and engagement lead to the hypothesis that students will become engaged readers if educators build intrinsic motivation to read, create an environment built around reading, and provide sufficient student choice in all areas of reading.