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This article was downloaded by: [Erciyes University]On: 20 December 2014, At: 11:35Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
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Reading competence, interest, andreading goals in three gifted youngadolescent readersEmily Fox a , Daniel L. Dinsmore a & Patricia A. Alexander aa Department of Human Development , University of Maryland ,College Park, Maryland, USAPublished online: 15 Nov 2010.
To cite this article: Emily Fox , Daniel L. Dinsmore & Patricia A. Alexander (2010) Readingcompetence, interest, and reading goals in three gifted young adolescent readers, High AbilityStudies, 21:2, 165-178, DOI: 10.1080/13598139.2010.525340
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13598139.2010.525340
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High Ability StudiesVol. 21, No. 2, December 2010, 165–178
ISSN 1359-8139 print/ISSN 1469-834X online© 2010 European Council for High AbilityDOI: 10.1080/13598139.2010.525340http://www.informaworld.com
Reading competence, interest, and reading goals in three gifted young adolescent readers
Emily Fox, Daniel L. Dinsmore and Patricia A. Alexander*
Department of Human Development, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USATaylor and FrancisCHAS_A_525340.sgm10.1080/13598139.2010.525340High Ability Studies1359-8139 (print)/1469-834X (online)Original Article2010Taylor & Francis212000000December [email protected]
The complex intersection of interest, reading goals, and competence wasinvestigated through qualitative analysis of the cross-domain reading of threemiddle-school highly gifted readers. Students completed knowledge pretests anddomain interest assessments, thought aloud while reading college-level readingand history passages, and completed open-ended questions assessing recall,understanding, and evaluation of the author’s argument. Think-alouds were codedfor reading behaviors, including expressions of interest, and re-coded for inferredreading goals. Individual reading profiles incorporated students’ assessedknowledge and interest, observed interactions with the texts, levels of goals, andoutcome performance. This set of reading profiles informed an elaboratedcharacterization of reading competence. The role of such reading competence indevelopment of competence or proficiency in other academic domains wasdiscussed.
Keywords: reading; think-aloud; competence, middle-school; interest; goals
Reading plays a critical role in development in any academic domain; thus, competencein reading is key to competence in other human endeavors (e.g., Alexander, 2002,2005). There are two possible paths for the development of reading competence, oneoriented toward the pursuit of reading itself, and one oriented toward the pursuit of aspecific academic domain through reading (Alexander et al., in press). What differen-tiates these two paths are learners’ objects; that is, what learners are interested in andmove toward in their pursuit of learning. Interest in and desire for an object of thoughtand the pursuit of knowledge about that object are complementary aspects of the learn-ing experience (Furth, 1987). Interest is associated with a movement of attention, andpossibly effort, toward or away from a potential object of thought (James, 1892). Thisinterest-driven movement is thereby associated with the articulation of learning goals.Learners’ intentionality is key. What learners do in any given situation and acrosssituations is driven in a very basic way by what they are seeking to accomplish, whichwill be guided by what they are interested in doing or learning.
The role of knowledge is often highlighted in considering how readers approach,behave during, and profit from reading situations (e.g., McKeown, Beck, Sinatra, &Loxterman, 1992). Readers’ constructive and integrative activity builds upon andconnects to their relevant prior knowledge (Kintsch, 1998). In the Model of DomainLearning (MDL; Alexander, 1997, 2003), knowledge is one factor that must betaken into account in understanding how learning and development happen in
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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academic domains. However, the MDL does not consider knowledge in isolation,but rather as co-developing and interacting with learner interest and level of strategicprocessing.
In this study, we undertook a qualitative exploration of the nature of readingcompetence within the framework of the MDL by way of the connection of readers’interest and their reading goals. Interest is what singles out the particular object ofknowledge or attention around which goals are framed, while reading goals connectreaders’ knowledge, interest, what they do in the way of strategic processing, and whatthey achieve in the way of a reading outcome. A similar linking of interest, goals,knowledge, processing, and reading comprehension outcomes is outlined in Guthrieand Wigfield’s (1999) Motivational–Cognitive model of reading. Specifically, welooked at cross-domain reading behaviors, interest, goals, and outcomes of threegifted adolescent readers, each of whom manifested aspects of highly competent read-ing. From the three reader profiles generated, we drew out key features of readingcompetence, noting in particular the connection of what was observed in the way ofreading interest and goals with the shape of the reading competence displayed. Ourfinal concern was the extension of this conceptualization of reading competence todevelopment in other academic domains.
Theoretical and research background
The MDL framework
The framework used here, the MDL, offers an account of how learners’ domain andtopic knowledge, situational and individual interest, and deep or surface-level strategyuse are related to their level of development in an academic domain (Alexander, 1997,1998, 2002), with the three key stages identified as acclimation, competence, and profi-ciency. In her discussion of reading capability beyond basic skills, Alexander (2002,2005) outlined a lifespan view of reading development in which competent readers havea relatively broad store of structured and interconnected knowledge about reading, aswell as depth of knowledge of relevant topics invoked during reading. Competentreader also have achieved some automaticity of routine, surface-level processing,enabling them to engage in deeper meaning-building, reflective, or evaluative strategicbehaviors. Moreover, they have interest in reading and in learning from text, whichmeans that their engagement does not primarily depend on the approachability or inter-esting features of the material. By virtue of what they know about reading and abouthow to read, as well as their interest in the activity of reading, competent readers tendto be good learners from text, capable of reading to gain new knowledge about domainsand topics that are relatively new to them.
In its more general framing of academic development, the MDL also identifiesanother form of competent reading; that is, readers who have achieved competence ina given academic domain. When reading in their domain of competence, readers cancall upon their knowledge of and interest in the content and processes belonging to thatdomain to support their success in reading for learning, evaluation, and for the gener-ation of new connections and ideas (Alexander, 1998). We have suggested that thesetwo forms of competent reading are essentially characterized by what is taken as theobject of thought – the focus of interest, effort, and attention around which awarenessand pursuit of higher-order or lower-order goals are framed (Alexander et al., in press).Distinguishing these two forms of competent reading is assisted by determination ofreaders’ levels of domain-related knowledge and interest, and by observation of their
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cross-domain reading performance, goals, and outcomes (e.g., Fox, Maggioni, Dins-more, & Alexander, 2008).
Unlike in Chall’s (1983) stage model, there are no particular ages or levels ofschool experience associated with stages of reading development in the MDL. Quiteyoung readers can be well into competence, and quite mature readers can still be strug-gling toward competence. However, young competent readers are particularly inter-esting from a research perspective because of the potential variability in their reading-specific knowledge vis-à-vis their knowledge about the domains and topics aboutwhich they read, as well as their motivated purposes for reading – purposes that maypropel them to adopt higher-level processing goals, such as criticizing or comparingtexts. In effect, although they are competent readers, they may be in acclimation inother academic domains, so that observing their cross-domain reading could highlightboth their capabilities as readers and their approach to reading in domain-specific textsthat differ markedly in familiarity and interestingness.
Reading competence, reading goals, and interest
Competent readers should be able to read relatively difficult texts with understandingand with interest (Chall, 1983; RAND, 2002). They should be able to focus on theglobal meaning of the text and not get bogged down in word-by-word assembly. Atthe same time, they should be responsible and attentive to the details of the text’smeaning; there should be good interaction between their top-down processing indeveloping a situation model of the meaning of the text and their bottom-up buildingof a textbase representing its propositional content (Kintsch, 1998; Scardamalia &Bereiter, 1991). Competent readers in the first sense previously discussed should beable to do this for a wide variety of reading materials and contents, while those in thesecond sense would perform competently when reading in their specific area ofcompetence.
Awareness and pursuit of multiple levels of reading goals is one of the hallmarksof reading competence (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1991). Readers with low levels ofreading ability, experience, knowledge, or interest are typically more likely to engagein the local-level processing associated with effortful textbase construction, with lesssuccessful construction of an accurate situation model (Fox, 2009). By contrast,higher ability, experience, knowledge, or interest tends to co-occur with engagementthat is more geared toward a global level of understanding, more effective, and moreflexible, leading to more accurate and complete mental representations. The inclina-tion and ability to evaluate text and author critically tends to be reserved to readerswith higher levels of experience and relevant domain expertise.
Reading competence and academic development
Proficiency in most academic domains is highly contingent upon being able toread successfully, where what counts as successful reading will involve domain-appropriate strategic tools and outcomes. On the one hand, it would appear that themore readers are prone to awareness and successful pursuit of higher-level readinggoals in their own independent and self-regulated reading, the more prepared theywould be to use reading to move toward proficiency in any domain. On the otherhand, it would be possible to shape one’s reading toward what is required for profi-ciency in a given domain, being propelled by knowledge and interest in the domain
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itself, without necessarily having such an approach to reading in general. One couldhave a shallow or passively adaptive approach to the general activity of reading or toreading in an unfamiliar area, but nonetheless be able to read relatively proficiently inone’s domain by virtue of one’s deep and active approach to the subject about whichone was reading (e.g., Haas, 1994).
Our investigation of the connection of interest, reading goals, and reading compe-tence will focus on the reading of three young gifted readers presented with twodemanding reading situations in two different academic domains, in which they weregiven no specific reading goal. Our research questions were:
● What connections of interest and reading goals can be seen in the cross-domainreading behaviors and responses of young highly competent readers?
● What do these connections reveal about the nature of reading competence andits developmental potential?
Methods
Participants
Selected cases were three middle school girls identified as highly gifted readers bytheir school system and recommended by their reading teacher as willing and ableparticipants: two 12-year-olds who had just finished sixth grade (Jessica and Sarah)and one 13-year-old who had just finished seventh grade (Alexa). Two were ofEuropean-American background, while one (Sarah) was of Asian-American andEuropean-American background. All attended a competitive-entry program for thehighly gifted focusing on the humanities. Entrance screening for this programincludes a timed group testing session in which applicants complete a test ofnonverbal intelligence (Raven’s Progressive Matrices) and an above-level (eighth-grade) standardized reading test. Only 75 out of 400+ applicants are accepted eachyear.
Measures
Interest
A 20-item interest rating questionnaire assessed interest in the academic domains ofscience, reading, history, and art. Responses were on a one to five scale, where ‘1’ wasstrongly disagree and ‘5’ was strongly agree. There were five items for each academicdomain, and items were parallel in construction. Items addressed interest in thedomain and its underlying processes, frequency of thinking about what is involved inthe domain, personal importance, and enjoyment. Mean interest scores by domain foreach participant are given in Table 1.
Knowledge
Participants completed knowledge measures assessing domain and topic knowledge inreading and history, validated by a history and a reading expert for appropriateness ofdomain and topic representation and accuracy of the ranking of answer choices. Thedomain knowledge measures were 20 multiple-choice items requiring completion ofa given analogy. A graduated response scoring scheme (‘4’, ‘2’, ‘1’, ‘0’) was used to
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reflect four levels of knowledge (Alexander, Murphy, & Kulikowich, 1998). The topicknowledge measures assessed knowledge about passage topics. There were 15 multi-ple-choice items requiring sentence stem completion, using the same graduatedresponse scoring scheme. The topic for the history measure was slavery; the readingmeasure covered psycholinguistic theory. Knowledge scores for participants are givenin Table 1.
Passages
The reading task involved texts about reading and history. The passages were compa-rable in terms of their length, structure, and reading level. The reading passage wastaken from an article on practical applications of a psycholinguistic model of reading,and addressed word identification processes in skilled reading (Pearson, 1978). It was1173 words long, with Flesch-Kincaid reading level of 12.0, and Flesch reading easescore of 40.5. The history passage was taken from a text on United States history, andaddressed the origins of slavery in colonial Virginia (Takaki, 1993). It was 1393words long, with Flesch–Kincaid reading level of 12.0 and Flesch reading ease scoreof 38.5. Each passage forwarded a non-explicit argument.
Learning outcomes
Participants completed four open-ended questions from memory after reading eachpassage:
● Write down as many important points as you can remember from this passage.● Write down anything else you can remember from the passage.● Write down the argument the author is making in this passage.● Write down what you think about the argument.
Participants were given a full blank sheet of paper for each question.
Table 1. Knowledge and interest data.
Alexa Sarah Jessica Mean (sd)
Domain knowledge scoresReading 51 32 41 41.33 (9.50)History 30 34 47 37.00 (8.89)
Topic knowledge scoresReading 29 22 36 29.00 (7.00)History 32 28 35 31.67 (3.51)
Subject interest meansReading 4.8 4.8 4.6 4.73 (0.11)History 3.0 4.8 1.0 2.93 (1.90)Science 3.2 4.2 2.0 3.13 (1.10)Art 4.8 4.8 3.0 4.20 (1.04)
Notes: Domain knowledge scores have a possible range of 0 to 80; topic knowledge scores have a possiblerange of 0 to 60; subject interest means have a possible range of 1 to 5.
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Procedure
The first author met participants in their homes to administer the measures. In the firstsession, participants completed the interest and knowledge measures. Two partici-pants (Alexa and Jessica) saw the history knowledge measures first, while Sarahstarted with the reading measures. There were no time limits for any tasks. In thesecond session, a few days later, participants read each passage while thinking aloud,and then completed the outcome measures for each passage. The order of presentationof the passages matched the order of administration of the knowledge measures in thefirst session. Participants practiced thinking aloud and then read and thought aloud foreither the reading or history passage. This thinking aloud was audiotaped. Participantswere instructed that they could read the text aloud or not. They were told that whenthey finished reading the passage, they would be asked to respond to open-ended ques-tions regarding what they remembered and what they thought about the passage. Noother explicit reading purpose was given.
When participants finished reading, the passage was taken away, and they were giventhe packet of outcome questions. They were told that they could complete the questionsin any order and look back and forth between their responses to the different questionsif they wished. Upon completing the outcome questions, the participants were againreminded of the think-aloud directions and given the other passage, following the sameprocedure just described. Participants took about the same time across passages.
Think-aloud coding
Think-alouds were coded for strategic and evaluative/monitoring behaviors by thefirst author, using a set of 26 codes taken from Pressley and Afflerbach’s summativeoverview of verbal protocols of reading (1995) and adapted to the relevant behaviorsdemonstrated in this situation; a list of these codes is given in Appendix 1. The secondauthor coded the think-alouds independently, with interrater agreement of 79% forexact agreement of code assignment. Differences were resolved by discussion.
The second coding considered what evidence the coded think-alouds providedabout awareness or pursuit of particular reading goals. A theoretically-derived taxon-omy of possible goals while reading was used (Appendix 2), along with a set of link-ings of specific think-aloud codes with likely related reading goals (Fox et al., 2008).These hierarchically ordered goals are: remembering the text, understanding the text,evaluating the text’s message, and evaluating the text as a medium (with possible localor global sub-goals). The first and second authors coded all of the think-alouds inde-pendently for evidence of awareness or pursuit of different reading goals. There was79% agreement in linking specific behaviors to particular goals, and 83% agreementoverall in the goals identified for each participant and passage. Differences wereresolved by discussion. Goal codings for each participant are given in Table 2.
Results: reader profiles
Alexa: competent reading with low-level goals
Alexa came into this reading situation with much stronger knowledge in reading thanin history (see Table 1), although her topic knowledge was similar across topics. Alexareported high positive interest in reading (4.8) and in art (4.8), but had a relativelyneutral level of interest in history (3.0) and science (3.2). Alexa’s think-alouds were
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not extensive, although she verbalized more for the reading passage. For the readingpassage, she saw it as appropriate and possible to evaluate her agreement with theclaims being made about reading. She also took steps to address gaps in her compre-hension. In line with Alexa’s somewhat more active approach to the reading passage,her most evident goal was the local understanding of the reading text, with regard towhich she struggled with the vocabulary used. She also evaluated the argument quality,considering whether she agreed with the author’s claims, and made an effort to buildglobal understanding of the text. For the history passage, she questioned why peoplewould behave in the way described, but assumed the description to be itself unques-tionable, a matter of facts. Her goals included local understanding of the argument andof the text, and global evaluation of the quality of the argument (where she identifiedthe passage as being all facts).
Alexa’s responses to the outcome questions indicated that she had come out of thereading situation without a clear sense of the structure of the texts as building an argu-ment. While she was successful at pulling out and retaining important information foreach passage, she lacked the coherence that would enable her to organize what she hadin memory. She invented her own explanations in lieu of providing the author’s argu-ment for each passage, and did not respond to the question asking for her evaluationof the argument.
Alexa’s approach to reading in this challenging situation indicated that she haddifficulty in finding her footing, which she expressed directly while grappling with thereading passage. Her interest and domain knowledge related to reading were unable tocarry her past the barrier of the unfamiliar vocabulary presented, although she diddraw where possible upon her own experience as a reader to evaluate the author’sclaims. Although in her reading of the history passage she indicated empathy andwondered about people’s motives, she did not connect this type of interest in peoplewith the aims of historical inquiry. She viewed the passage as presenting a set of facts,and was unable to see it as presenting an argument about people and their motives,which might have had more interest for her. Her efforts at understanding for both
Table 2. Behaviours associated with identified goal levels.
Alexa Sarah Jessica
Goal level R H R H R H
B1a Understand text (local) 5 1 7 4 5B1b Understand text (global) 1 1 1 2B2a Understand argument (local) 2 1 2B2b Understand argument (global) 2B3 Understand argument in context 1C1a Evaluate text content (local) 8C2a Evaluate argument content (local) 2 5 1D1a Evaluate text quality (local) 1 7D2a Evaluate argument quality (local) 1 2D2b Evaluate argument quality (global) 1
Notes: R = reading passage, H = history passage; numbers give observed behaviors associated with aspecific inferred goal. For example, 2 under Alexa – History for goal B2a reflects the determinationthat Alexa’s behaviors of twice questioning the reason behind an action reflected the goal of building alocal-level understanding of the argument being presented in the history passage.
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passages revealed lower-level goals, and were directed at aspects of the situation thathad immediate salience for her: the difficulty of the vocabulary and connection withher own experience for the reading passage, and understanding people’s motives forthe history passage.
Sarah: interest in learning
Sarah approached the texts with comparatively little knowledge in either domain (seeTable 1). On the other hand, Sarah had broad interests as a learner, reporting strongpositive interest in all four domains assessed. Sarah’s think-alouds showed her to bea strong, confident reader focused on building meaning. She made relatively fewcomments, but they revealed her to be actively working at understanding and inter-preting the text, and to be monitoring her understanding. In the reading passage, sherephrased, interpreted and elaborated for herself as she went along, working primarilyto understand the text at a local level, although she did indicate some effort at buildinga larger, global understanding as well. Overall, as she monitored her level of under-standing and agreement, she found that the passage was making sense to her and thatshe agreed with the author’s statements, evaluating the argument content locally as shewent along. Sarah had less to say as she was reading the history passage. Her dominantbehaviors again were to restate, interpret, and elaborate on what she was reading, devel-oping a local understanding of the text. She also made evident efforts to understandthe author’s argument, at both a local and a broader, more global level.
Sarah’s performances on the outcome measures indicate that she gained a goodunderstanding of the passages. Her responses to the questions asking for importantpoints and other information from the passage were accurate, extensive, and appropri-ately organized for both passages. She responded in complete, well-formed, and occa-sionally deep, thoughts, especially in the case of the history passage. When asked forthe argument in the history passage, Sarah hit the mark exactly. For the readingpassage, she produced a reasonable version of the argument, but missed a critical pieceinvolving the minimization of the role of decoding for skilled readers. Sarah producedthoughtful and considered paragraphs in response to the fourth question asking for herevaluation of the author’s argument. For the history passage, she noted that the onlylevel on which she could respond was a moral one, and was aware of lacking enoughknowledge to support any other criticism. For the reading passage, Sarah did feel ableto evaluate the text, supported by her own reading of the text and her own experienceas a reader.
Even though she came into the reading situation with low levels of relevant priorknowledge, Sarah’s approach to both texts seemed driven by interest in determiningwhat she thought each text meant, while for the reading passage she additionallyconsidered whether she agreed with the text. Her performance on the outcome taskssupports this view of her approach, as do the different levels of goals identified.Although Sarah was focused on her own understanding, she was attentive to andrespectful of what the author had presented, as her ability to report accurately importantideas from and identify the arguments in these challenging texts demonstrated.
Jessica: interest in reading
Jessica had very high scores on the knowledge measures for both reading and history.However, Jessica’s interest showed strong domain-related variation (see Table 1). Her
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mean interest score in history was the lowest possible score, 1.0. She had relativelylow interest in science and art as well. With reference to reading, however, Jessicareported quite strong interest, with a mean score of 4.6.
Jessica’s think-aloud transcripts revealed that she had quite well-defined expecta-tions about what makes an enjoyable reading experience. She paid particular attentionto her own level of interest (positive or negative), which could be sparked both by thetext content and by the author’s writing style. She was quite critical of the quality ofthe text for the history passage, where she focused on author choices in presenting herwith quotations, old-fashioned language, and foreign languages (Latin). Jessica’s atten-tion initially focused on understanding the general concern addressed by the historytext, as she argued with the author and questioned his purpose in writing. However,her attention turned away from content to aspects of the text presentation. By the endof the passage, her comments were primarily negative evaluations of her interest andcomprehension. Jessica was much less critical in the reading passage than in the historypassage, but experienced similar difficulties in getting the more global-level meaningof the text. In contrast to her negative interest for the history passage, she expressedpositive interest in the content of the reading passage. She more than once indicatedagreement with the author’s point, and made reference to her own experience as areader. Jessica monitored her understanding of the texts for both passages, but withoutnecessarily exerting the effort to resolve comprehension difficulties when theyoccurred.
Jessica’s goal codings reflect her evaluative focus as well as her differentapproaches to the two passages. For the history passage, she engaged primarily in eval-uation of text quality, as well as evaluating argument quality and argument content.She aimed at understanding the text at a global level and understanding the argumentat a local level. For the reading passage, Jessica worked at local understanding the text,and at local evaluation of the text content and quality. She also made an effort to builda global understanding of the text.
Jessica’s outcome measures indicated that her learning experience was consider-ably different across the two passages. Jessica successfully picked up broad themesfrom each passage, which she reported in the first outcome question asking for impor-tant points. In response to the second outcome question, asking for anything else shecould remember from the passage, she reported instead about her perception of the textquality, for history noting her distaste for the use of quotations and foreign phrases andfor the reading passage commenting on her own awareness of greater interest. Jessicaexpressed unawareness that there was an argument presented in the history passage,while for the reading passage, she stated a somewhat stunted version of the author’sargument, and felt confident enough to offer an evaluation of his argument as sheunderstood it, using her own experience as a reader as a touchstone.
Jessica did not appear to be seeking to learn from the texts so much as to engagein the reading of them. Although she did pull out some of the text content successfully,her effort was not directly toward building conceptual understanding, but rather wasexpended on connecting to her own expectations and experience as a reader. Her inter-est in reading as an activity appeared to enable rather effective engagement with thereading passage, while her lack of interest in history made it difficult for her to main-tain focus on the content of the passage, shifting instead to something she did take aninterest in, which was her own reading response. Her heightened awareness of herown experience as a reader supported her view of the author as a writer makingstylistic choices, which seems like an important step in moving toward a critical and
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evaluative perspective. Without a connection of the stylistic choices to the author’spurpose, however, such criticism stays at a surface level and does not lend itself tobuilding of deeper understandings.
Discussion
Reading goals and interest
Our adolescent participants came into this reading situation with varying degrees ofknowledge and interest related to the domains of reading and history. All of these youngreaders are what we would characterize as highly competent, yet their reading manifestssome interesting differences in reading behaviors, interest, and associated readinggoals. In their reading of the two passages, they differed in the degree to which theyengaged in or indicated awareness of the appropriateness of the goal of evaluating thetext content or quality. They also differed in the degree to which they balanced out afocus on global processing and more local-level processing. Further, they differedconsiderably in their outcome performance, particularly with regard to success atidentifying the author’s argument and how they approached evaluation of that argumentfor the two passages. Finally, and most obviously, they differed in what we havecharacterized as their overall approach to reading, in what they seemed to be orientedtoward as the purpose of reading in this situation. Their different orientations in termsof interest, in particular for history, may have reflected as well a different orientationin terms of what they took to be the object of their attention and efforts while reading.
The nature of reading competence
In their reading of passages, participants were generally quite fluent in processing thesechallenging texts. They had few difficulties at the word or syntax level; any such diffi-culties tended to be domain-specific vocabulary or unfamiliar text formats. Eachparticipant was aware of and to some degree appeared to be working toward construc-tion of meaning at a more global level, while none were engaged in the sentence-by-sentence disconnected processing more typical of readers with less ability, knowledge,and experience (Fox, 2009). Moreover, these highly-able students responded flexiblyto different passage demands, engaging in different forms of processing and acknowl-edging different levels of goals as appropriate in these two situations. As far as theirsuccessful construction of a representation of what they had read, each came away withsome grasp of the salient fundamental themes of these two passages.
However, in this situation in which no assigned reading goal was given, how theirreading competence came into play differed markedly. Their self-selection of goalsand responses to the challenges presented by the texts were guided by their awarenessor lack of awareness of a focal object for their reading. These three young competentreaders’ orientation toward the text and toward what they took to be its purpose andchose as their purpose showed strong variation related to their success in performancein the outcome tasks. Differences in the direction and strength of their interestsappeared strongly relevant.
Reading competence and development in academic domains
Our final consideration pertains to reading and reading competence as bound up withdevelopment in other academic domains. Reading competence is a complex construct.
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The nature of a given individual’s competence in reading has implications for his orher further development in reading or toward other forms of academic expertise (seeAlexander, Murphy, & Kulikowich, 2009, for a more extensive discussion of expertisedevelopment). Learning from text in an academic domain does not happen automati-cally or identically; the roles of knowledge and interest in shaping strategic processingand supporting learning have long been recognized. Here we would like to link interestto goals in reading, and to suggest that interest and epistemic stance toward the objectof thought or the activity of thinking are two sides (affective and cognitive) of the samephenomenon. In order to understand what readers get out of reading it seems essentialto consider what they are trying to get out of reading. We suggest that this will hingeto some degree on what they think reading is, or their epistemic (i.e., knowledge-related) orientation toward reading, to some degree on what they think learning is, ortheir general epistemic orientation toward learning, and to some degree on what theytake as their object of thought, or their epistemic orientation toward the particularreading content (Alexander et al., in press). Each of these epistemic orientations hasan associated dimensionality of interest, positive and negative, which will shape thereader’s approach to the reading situation and engagement in the reading task.
Educational and research implications
Even with our three highly competent readers, we saw that interest and knowledge didnot always work together, that interest could evoke both movement toward and rejec-tion, and that interest could be interest in learning, interest in a particular thoughtobject, or interest in the very activity of reading, each of which plays out differentlyin stimulating reading goals and supporting reading engagement. Instructional impli-cations arising from these findings include the potential for important variability inperformance even among readers at high levels of competence, related to the learner’sview of (and interest in) reading, learning, and the particular object of knowledgepresented. Further, our selected cases were all females; it is highly likely that addi-tional profiles of high competence would emerge among male students (e.g., Manzoet al., 2000). Explicit discussion of the nature of reading, of different approaches toreading and different ways to be a good reader, and of how interest and reading goalswork together could form a valuable addition to both teacher training and instructionfor highly gifted readers.
Implications for research include the need to take account of the possible negativevalence of motivational factors among even competent or highly competent learners(see, e.g., the discussion of reading avoidance in Guthrie, Coddington, & Wigfield,2009), and the need to account for the role of epistemic beliefs in understanding howreaders approach and engage in a particular reading experience. Future research effortscould profitably take up the investigation of the questions addressed in this study withlarger and more diverse samples and more ecologically valid texts and tasks. Explicitconsideration of the nature and role of reading competence and of the degree to whichthe full range of reading interests and goals are and can be shaped by instruction isneeded, and gifted readers are a critical population to study in this regard.
AcknowledgementsA version of this paper was presented at the EARLI Biennial Conference, August 2009,Amsterdam.
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Appendix 1. Codes for think-alouds
Strategic behaviors
● Reading aloud● Guessing the meaning of a word in context● Questioning:
word meaningreasonmechanismauthor intenttext qualitytext feature
● Restating (paraphrase) or repeating text information:local (word, phrase, sentence level)global (paragraph, passage level)
● Making connections:to background knowledgeto personal experienceto prior text
● Interpreting/hypothesizing (a statement building upon what directly said in the text)● Elaborating (a statement moving away from what is directly said in the text)● Arguing with the text
Evaluative/expressive behaviors
● Evaluating (positive or negative):comprehensionagreement with texttext qualityargument qualityinteresttask difficultytask completion
● Expressing:empathysurpriseamusement
Appendix 2. Text-related goals
(A) Remembering
(1) Remembering text details(2) Remembering text important points
(B) Understanding
(1) Understanding the text content:(a) local understanding of text (word or sentence level)(b) global understanding of text (paragraph or larger level)
(2) Understanding the author’s meaning – the argument:(a) local understanding of argument (sentence level)(b) global understanding of argument (paragraph or larger level)
(3) Understanding the argument in context – as situated in domain discourse:
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(C) Evaluating the message
(1) Evaluating agreement with the content of the text (accuracy of text): (a) local(b) global
(2) Evaluating agreement with the argument: (a) local(b) global
(3) Evaluating the argument in context – as situated in domain discourse
(D) Evaluating the medium
(1) Evaluating text quality: (a) local(b) global
(2) Evaluating argument quality: (a) local(b) global
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