Chapter 35: The Role of Responsive Teaching in Focusing Reader Intention and Developing Reader Motivation

“The Role of Responsive Teaching in Focusing Reader Intention and Developing Reader Motivation,” by Robert B, Ruddell and Norman J. Unrau is an article that looks at the exploration of the characteristics that responsive, reflective teachers bring to teaching. From studying influential teachers, their behavior in the classroom, and their impact on students a person can acquire insights into responsive teachers and ways they promote literacy engagement. Former students sometimes identify with an influential teacher because that teacher has had a significant influence on the student’s academic or personal success in school.

Influential teachers share characteristics in several areas. These teachers:
*Show that they care about their students.
*Assist their students in understanding and solving their personal and academic problems.
*Show an excitement and enthusiasm for what they teach.
*Adapt instruction to meet individual needs, motives, interests, and aptitudes of their students as well as having high expectations for them.
*Use motivating and effective strategies when they teach, that are clear, consist of concrete examples, analyze abstract concepts, and apply concepts to new contexts.
*Engage students in a process of intellectual discovery.
*Are twice as likely to be identified as an influential teacher by high achieving students than by low achieving students.

The bases for these findings are brought forth in this article through Ms. Hawthorne’s dilemma. Ms. Hawthorne, an influential teacher who is striving to redesign her instructional program to promote her students’ literacy and learning through an integrated language arts and history curriculum. Psychological and instructional factors are critical to the development of both reader and teacher intention and motivation and are the focus of investigation that will bring clarity to the dilemma and its’ resolution. They are the developing self, instructional orientation and task-engagement resources.
In order to understand these critical factors better, a look a Ms. Hawthorne’s dilemma is necessary. While working at Taft Junior High School in central Los Angeles, She was discontented with the language arts and history program. Some of her seventh-grade students read books and completed the assigned tasks but all too many only did so unenthusiastically, rarely, or not at all. Knowing her students could do better, she decided, with the encouragement of others, to examine what she would need to do to redesign the program to engage more students.
To start her action research, she collected as much information about her students to discover who they are- not only as readers but also as people. To gain better knowledge of her students, Ms. Hawthorne conducted a few tutorial sessions with individual students, which allowed her to understand their motivation and reading strategies.
While several students responded, one student, Cynthia, jumped at the opportunity. At first meeting, Ms. Hawthorne got the feeling that Cynthia was slightly hyperactive and a bit social. At subsequent meetings, Ms. Hawthorne realizes Cynthia to be a bit more complex. Cynthia is a good student, likes school. And has many friends to whom she socializes with. She was thinking about being a nurse, like her mother, but she also sees herself being a storywriter, a travel agent, a model, and a fashion designer. This shows Ms. Hawthorne that Cynthia is exploring the possibilities for herself.
She told Ms. Hawthorn about her two goals for the year were to improve her reading and to reduce the number of mistakes she made in her writing. To gain a sense of Cynthia’s reading level, Ms. Hawthorne gave her an individual reading inventory. The results showed that Cynthia’s independent reading level was that of fourth grad, her instructional level was that of fifth grad and her frustration level was that of sixth grade. While Cynthia says she understands what she had read, she was unable to answer many literal and interpretive questions about the text. In addition to struggling to comprehend the material she read, Ms. Hawthorne also saw Cynthia struggle to connect concepts to make meaning thus causing Cynthia to give up easily.
Ms. Hawthorne was impressed to see Cynthia’s enthusiasm for writing. She could complete concept maps and finish five paragraph essays in one period. In analyzing her writing, Ms. Hawthorne saw that Cynthia’s writing was rudimentary in context and structure. In addition to containing simple sentences, there were often many grammar and spelling errors.
As their meetings continued, Ms. Hawthorne noticed that Cynthia’s self-projected image of an enthusiastic learner did not always match her behavior. While it appeared to Ms. Hawthorne that Cynthia was seeking help for her literacy needs, it became clear to Ms. Hawthorne that she may actually be trying to avoid regular class work. This inconsistency and irresponsibility marked her performance showing issues with self-regulation in her schoolwork. This portrait of Cynthia is similar to that of many middle school students.
While the outcomes of a reader’s reading and a teacher’s instructional design are quite different, they have some of the same characteristics. They are developing self, instructional orientation, and task-engagement resources.
-Developing Self consists of the following aspects that shape the reader’s or teacher’s life‘s meaning and purpose. They are:
*Identity and self-schema- who am I vs. who will I become?
*Self-efficacy and self-worth,- the more efficacious I am, the more I will try but only if it does not make me look unintelligent.
*Expectations- personal expectations influence their level of aspiration and how teachers communicate different expectation messages to students whom the teacher considers to have high or low expectations.
*Experiential self- processes imagery, narratives, and metaphors to give us a sense of our experience’s meaning.
*Self knowledge- connections between students’ own emerging identities and the lives of fictional through classroom dialogue and reflective writing allows students to gain a deeper knowledge of themselves.
-Instructional Orientation consists of the alignment of teacher or student with a teaching or learning task, affects intention and motivation. It is made up of the following critical factors:
achievement goals- engagement of the learner in selecting, structuring, and making sense of achievement experience
T*wo kinds of goals-
Mastery- task oriented
Performance- ego oriented
*task values- finding the balance between challenge and boredom. Areas to consider are:
*attainment value
*intrinsic-interest value
*utility value
*cost of success
sociocultural values and beliefs- students are vulnerable to breakdowns in communication if their sociocultural values and beliefs are not the same as those of the teacher or if the teacher is not responsive to cultural differences
stance- perspective and orientation that a reader adopts toward the reading of a particular text.
Task-Engagement Resources consists of information structures that enable a teacher or a reader to undertake a learning task. Task-engagement resources provide the following:
· Reader text-processing resources include knowledge of language, word analysis, text-processing strategies, metacognitive strategies, knowledge of classroom and social interaction, and world knowledge not only focuses attention but also allows construct meaning to be negotiated through classroom discussions.
· teacher instructional design resources include knowledge of students and their meaning-construction process, knowledge of literature and content areas, teaching strategies, world knowledge, and metacognitive knowledge which allows teachers to create learning environments that nourish the developing self and activate students’ instructional orientation
This all relates to focus of intention in the central point of
the mind’s intent (e.g. of its direction, purpose, and
intensity when interacting with a learning environment).
To have readers engage with reading, interact in the classroom community, and participate in the meaning-negotiation process, they need motivation to read and to learn, if prior knowledge is activated, if tasks are personally relevant, and if they are encouraged to actively construct meanings. There is an interactive nature that occurs between the meaning-negotiation process teachers, readers, and the classroom community encounter in the classroom. This occurs through the teacher and reader bringing their interpretation of the text to the classroom and through discussion engaging in meaning. This is not a linear event and thus circles through the discussion about the text. This in addition to the psychological and instructional factors that are critical to the development of both reader and teacher intention and motivation can be used to foster an ideal learning environment.
Taking all this into consideration, Ms. Hawthorne decided to redesign her curriculum to a student-centered environment from a teacher directed environment. This she felt would help to build intrinsic motivation in her students.