Mickey’ Dilemma: The Role of Social and Personal Barriers on Students’ Motivation

Mickey is a college reading instructor like myself, hooray!  She also teaches GED courses and God knows what else around the state.  Well, yesterday before class she says to me students are motivated, I was like what?  She says again, I believe students are motivated but social occurrences interfere with learning and development goals.  Hmm, interesting, tell me more.  God knows I hope I’m grabbing her sentiments from yesterday accurately (She’s a feisty one if you get my drift).  Nevertheless, I got about thinking on classroom instructors, sociocultural perspective, and self-determination.  My thoughts are below.   

Some (Whomever that may be) theorize college reading students’ homes, communities, and mostly urban schools have sucked the motivational life out of them.  Often, educators and pundits attest ‘these’ students lack motivation for a quality education. I’m not blogging to discuss these conjectures or provide cynics a point to argue.  Although, these statements fill the air around water coolers and faculty lunchrooms. However, the discussion normally turn back however on students’ individual learning abilities or lack there of.  In other words, some vilify the homes, communities, and schools and then also challenge students’ motivational drive.  In the end, students receive labels as being socially deficient and cognitively (i.e., academic) inept.               

According to Vygotsky and Freire for that matter, students are not empty vessels waiting on spoon feed academic nutrition.  In fact, the self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) suggest learners crave autonomy, relatedness, and competence.  Thus it is safe to assume, college reading students desire to guide their own lives, feel wanted by their communities (i.e., college reading classrooms, college communities), and acquire competence that fosters adaptation and survival skills.  If our learners harbor such natural instincts, how do we construct learning environments to match these traits?  More important, how do we stop blaming homes, communities, schools, and students’ motivational levels and get about teaching and development?   

Mick says, (paraphrasing again) students may lack necessary skills (i.e., self-regulation, motivation) because of additional social factors (e.g., poverty, unemployment, and family issues) pulling their time and attention. This was something to hear from her because as mentioned some educator blame both the learners' social environment and yet also blame students' motivation levels.  I’m not saying who is guilty of this practice but it does occur frequently by educators and pundits alike.  

Going back to Vygotsky, Mick implied social environments have a tremendous impacts on students’ learning and development, really (I’m kidding).  More importantly, she seek to investigate the role of social conditions (e.g., personal and financial barriers) on adult learners.  Hence, Vygotsky’s theory on sociocultural perspective would agree with Mick. I would however theorize social occurrences as difficult habits to break.  I’ll see if Mick will pick on this and write more on it.  

Welcome to the Big League: Construction Integration and Memory

A key aspect of academic success in education reading comprehension (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983).  Reading comprehension is a key factor in students’ academic, achievement, engagement, and persistence (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2003; Pintrich & De Groot, 1990).  Therefore, helping readers acquire comprehension skills that will will increase learning is most significant.  As a college reading instructor, a goal of mine is to help facilitate a suitable match between students’ reading beliefs, text comprehension, and strategy transfer.  

My main objective is to help support students with self-belief and reading strategies transfer across college disciplines (i.e., Social Sciences, Humanities, and Life Sciences).  High-intensity (i.e., expert) reading students utilize deliberate reading objectives, deep-processing reading strategies, and persist at task longer (Alexander, 2005).  These readers during the reading process create inferences, predictions, and questions (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002).  Also, these students use metacognitive skills to monitor comprehension during, and after reading completion (2002).    

On the other hand, low-intensity (i.e., non-experts) readers may lack metacomprehension and self-regulation skills (2002).  So, their ability to regulate cognition and reading comprehension is often not applicable. Conversely, these students may mistake the main details in text and concentrate on unimportant meanings.  Nonetheless, the difference between these two groups is not reading cognitive aptitude (in most cases) but effective strategies and their application.  In other words, some students don’t possess the skills (yet) to call the right plays (i.e., reading strategies), in different situations (i.e., history, psychology, biology).       

Text Processing the CI Way

In our chapter reading (Alvermann, Unrau, & Ruddell, 2013), we had to read and investigate another reading comprehension model, Construction-Integration (CI) Kintsch, (1988).  The gist of the model suggests text H processing occurs along two stages.  The first stage is construction (i.e., concepts, syntax, and semantic) that connect a network of activated concepts.  Continuing, the activation process either strengthens or diminishes links not compatible with the network units or conceptions.  In other words, the weak links are destroyed and stronger ones move up the evolutionary (memory) ladder. 

Ultimately, the second stage (i.e., integration) develops mental representations or as I refer to as, a contextual text screen shot. Jumping way ahead, in short, I’m most interested in the situation model…it is a screen shot of the situations in the academic text (i.e., thesis statement, headers, and graphs).  This all is the result of combining the textbase with the reader’s prior knowledge and experience.  As a result, a strong situation models are theorized to contribute to students’ text learning. I’m not sure if learning is synonymous with comprehension at this point.   Time out. 

2 Minute Warning

I am a college reading instructor because I want to help students learn to implement reading and study comprehension strategies.  So, I want to zero in on the (CI) model for a sec.  I am concern with how memories are constructed in students’ minds and consciousness.  It is not uncommon to hear instructors and theorists discuss prior knowledge or often times referred to as schema, as a file cabinet, (I was guilty of this until Dr. Mandringo hit me up).  

However, back to the lesson at hand, there is a need for a deeper discussion on memory storage and its retrieval cues.  I am reading a book for another class assignment (i.e., Moonwalking with Einstein:  the Art and Science of Remembering Everything, (Foer, 2011).  The author discusses principles for stronger memory capacity and knowledge retrieval strategies.  He points our new memories and experiences become attached to our old memories and experiences.  Then our schemata or mental representations must be organized and stored with a particular distinct pattern or in a social context.  Our memoires stored in this pattern become retrievable (i.e., prior knowledge) to both high and low intensity readers (2011).       

In short, new knowledge and experiences are easier to recall for knowledge and text action if stored inside a social context.  For example, a low-intensity reader who attaches memories to a social context (birthday party) can use memory strategies to retrieve this knowledge. Foer points out, “We don’t remember in isolated facts, we remember things in context” (Foer, p.65).  Conversely, knowledge stored in bits and pieces often becomes obsolete due without connectional cues (social context) with new knowledge. Therefore, new experiences stored in social contexts will help ‘meaningful’ prior knowledge influence new learning and comprehension.

Alexander, P. A. (2005). The path to competence: A lifespan developmental perspective on reading. Journal of Literacy Research, 37(4), 413.

Alvermann, D. E., Unrau, N. J., & Ruddell, R. B. (2013). Theoretical models and processes of reading (Vol. 978).

Foer, J. (2011). Moonwalking with Einstein: The art and science of remembering everything. Penguin.

Kintsch, W. (1988). The role of knowledge in discourse comprehension: a construction-integration model. Psychological Review, 95(2), 163.

Linnenbrink, E. A., & Pintrich, P. R. (2003). THE ROLE OF SELF-EFFICACY BELIEFS INSTUDENT ENGAGEMENT AND LEARNING INTHECLASSROOM. Reading &Writing Quarterly, 19(2), 119–137.

Mokhtari, K., & Reichard, C. A. (2002). Assessing students’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94(2), 249.

Pearson, P. D., & Gallagher, M. C. (1983). The instruction of reading comprehension. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8(3), 317–344.

Pintrich, P. R., & De Groot, E. V. (1990). Motivational and self-regulated learning components of classroom academic performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(1), 33.

Reading Models: More Than Meets the Eye

There are a various schools of thought on reading cognitive processes.  For example, scholars usually subscribe to either a bottom-up or top-down theory, or a combination of the two.  If one is top-down, theorists believes readers’ factors affect understanding and comprehension (i.e. background knowledge, questions) to the reading task. 

If bottom-up, one suggests decoding words are primary in understanding and comprehension.  Regardless of one’s perspective, our instructions, learning, application, and research are linked to these ideals.  I just wish more exposure would have occurred earlier from a practitioner’s’ view.  So, without much ado, I’ll talk about what I knew, and what I wish I known.      

You Got Reading Models?

LTRE 712 reveals more about reading than meets the eye, or at least my eyes.  As a college student and reading teaching assistant, I have a dual role of learner and instructor.  As an instructor, I assist first year students in learning, practicing, and transferring learning strategies across disciplines (e.g., biology, history, psychology).  My first exposure to reading models occurred in LTRE 719 several years back.  I recall being indoctrinated with Rosenblatt’s Transactional theory.  This theory was my professor’s recommendation and a solid evidence-based reading model. 

In adopting Rosenblatt’s Reader Response theory, I subscribed to a top-down view on reading understanding and comprehension.  This indicated that readers bring ‘things’ to text engagement (i.e., prior knowledge, questions).  As a consequence, the reader is not at the mercy of the banking paradigm.  Yet, I cannot recall the bottom-up theories as much.  As a result, over the years, I became a one-eyed reading theorist and learner.

Reading assistants and learners need a historical understanding of reading models and processes.  While investigating and learning various reading models (Top-down, bottom-up) in LTRE 712, I had a cognitive dissonance thing going on a bit.  The knowledge exposure was welcoming but sobering as well.  It’s all somewhat new as mentioned but learning about it will help me build my toolbox. 

What Matters?

As a teaching assistant, I was on autopilot regurgitating the company’s line on reading and study strategies.  These strategies are foundational and evidence-based and I support them. Yet, in recent weeks, my exposures to additional reading models and processes illuminated a personal abyss.  I needed to learn more about various schemes and their relevance or irrelevance.  Without them, I am not doing my students or myself a good service.     

All models are not designed alike; therefore reading assistants should understand the different nuances. Our 712 class texts are Lenses on Reading (2^nd edition) and Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading (TMPR).  The latter, TMPR, provides a compilation of past and present theories on reading representations and methods, a must have for researchers.  In our previous class, our discussion centered on cognitive processing reading models.  A few models (i.e., Automation Information Processes, Dual Coding) theorized what goes on underneath the hood (i.e., cognitively) of a reader novice and expert alike. I have learned that the field seems still divided over which model (top-down/bottom-up) works best.

Kintsch (2005) suggests theorists’ not waste time on the issue…

“Both top down and bottom processes are integral parts of perception, problem-solving and comprehension.  The question for theorists is not top-down or bottom, but how do these processes interact to produce fluent comprehension?”

The author states quite succinctly that no one model meets all requirements for reading understanding comprehension.  He suggests we must focus on the learner.  Subsequently, what matters is how we learners comprehend text fluently. Our professor has challenged us to create our own reading conceptual model and theoretical framework.  I admit this is the deepest I’ve ventured into such thinking on reading.  My eyes are wide open now.  

BDJ 

The First Step of Thousands: My Doctoral Blog

I'm up early as normal 4am.  Welcome, all blogomites.  This blog site will serve as my launching pad for the ridiculous and empirical. I've blogged since 2007 over at the Invisible Dragon, check it out if you get a chance.  It talks about my spiritual journey through my life, past and present.   I love the Dragon, absolutely love it. But how in the hell did I get into blogging for academic gold?

This blog was created as a class requirement for LTRE 712, Correlates of Effective Reading class I take on Monday night.  Our professor, Dr. Michael Manderino, required the doc students to write a blog four times during the semester.  First, I was luke warm about it, ugggh!!! But last night in another class, it hit me.  You jackass, blogging is the trolley car of your consciousness.  Frankly, I love talking and listening to the "White Page".  So, this brother from the hood, will embark on another journey through the "White Pages".  Talking, listening, and working his doctoral path, which has no beginning and no ending.


This Monday we'll have to throw something together on Reading Models for our first blog, I'm looking forward to this.

I write very succinctly. My words are simple, my thoughts at times complex.  I write for the common brothers and sisters of the world.  Race is not a factor in this regard.