Article Summary and Analysis 5

Article Title: Dimensions of children’s motivation for reading and their relations to reading activity and reading achievement

Author: Baker, L. and Wigfield, A.

Journal: Research Reading Quarterly 34 (4), Winter 1999, pgs. 452-477.

Summary

              In this article, Baker and Wigfield look to further research some of Wigfield’s earlier work in categorizing children’s reading motivation.  In a 1997 study, Wigfield and another researcher, Guthrie, “conceptualized 11 different dimensions of reading motivation” (Baker & Wigfield, 1999) but when those dimensions were studied, only eight of them produced enough evidence to prove.  This 1999 study looked to find evidence for the other three dimensions, and build stronger evidence for the proven eight, by using a larger sample size.

              The eight proven dimensions of reading motivation are:

·       self-efficacy

·       challenge

·       work avoidance

·       curiosity

·       involvement

·       recognition

·       competition

·       social

The three proposed dimensions that were not proven are:

·       importance

·       compliance

·       grades

              Through questionnaires and reading tests given to 371 elementary students, the 1999 study found evidence to support all of the original proposed eleven dimensions.  The dimensions that were the most strongly related to reported reading activity were self-efficacy, challenge, curiosity, and involvement.  The study also went further into breaking down ties between motivation and reading performance, and the differences in motivation among races and gender, but since those are not applicable to my proposed research study, I will not include those.

Analysis

              After reading other articles regarding reading motivation, I kept seeing Wigfield’s name pop up in literature reviews, so I figured I would go straight to the source and find out what his work was about.  This study is helpful to my proposed study because it breaks down different factors of reading motivation.  The eleven dimensions listed above were put into three categories: competence and efficacy, intrinsic and extrinsic, and social purposes.  While I have seen these three areas of motivation pop up in other studies I have read, I had not seen them broken down further.  This will be useful information for my literature review to further define research and clarify my aim.  I feel that my proposed interview questions, while not as detailed as the ones Baker and Wigfield used, do address these three categories of motivation, but now I can point to which subcategory they target. 

References

Baker, L. & Wigfield, A. (1999). Dimensions of children’s motivation for reading and their relations to reading activity and reading achievement. Research Reading Quarterly 34 (4), 452-477. Retrieved from www.jstor.org