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Beyond Cognition: Reading Motivation and Reading
Comprehension
Allan Wigfield, Jessica Gladstone, and Lara Turci
Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland
Abstract
The authors review research on children’s reading motivation and its relation to their reading
comprehension. They begin by discussing work on the development of school motivation in
general and reading motivation in particular, reviewing work showing that many children’s reading
motivation declines over the school years. Girls tend to have more positive motivation for reading
than do boys, and there are ethnic differences in children’s reading motivation. Over the last 15
years researchers have identified in both laboratory and classroom-based research instructional
practices that positively impact students’ reading motivation and ultimately their reading
comprehension. There is a strong need for researchers to build on this work and develop and study
in different age groups of children effective classroom-based reading motivation instructional
programs for a variety of narrative and informational materials.
In their
Child Development Perspectives
article on learning to read, Hulme and Snowling (1)
stated"learning to read is a key objective of early education and difficulties in learning to
read can have serious adverse consequences” (p. 1). They focused on cognitive explanations
for early reading development. Here we build on their insightful paper by discussing reading
motivation and its relation to children’s reading comprehension skills across the school
years. Proficient reading comprehension is crucial for success in every academic domain,
and particularly in courses focused on reading and literature (2). As students advance in their
education, they are expected to read and write across a wide variety of disciplines with
increasing skill, flexibility, and insight (3). Because reading materials become increasingly
demanding in later childhood and adolescence, readers must be fluent in the processes of
word decoding and recognition, continually expand their vocabularies and knowledge base,
and learn to use elaborate cognitive strategies to make inferences and critically analyze text
(4). Hulme and Snowling (1) discuss that the fluency of these skills is dependent upon
development of earlier foundational reading abilities such as phoneme awareness and letter
knowledge in early childhood, two essential components of reading words and sentences.
Because of the hierarchical nature of reading skill development, slow growth along any of
these dimensions can result in significant difficulty and negative consequences for students’
reading comprehension and achievement more generally as they progress through school (1).
To master the skills and strategies just described children must commit time and effort to
learn them; thus students must be
motivated
to learn and then utilize them fully.
Author contact information: Allan Wigfield, Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of
Maryland, College Park MD 20742. Address correspondence to: awigfiel@umd.edu.
HHS Public Access
Author manuscript
Child Dev Perspect
. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2016 September 07.
Published in final edited form as:
Child Dev Perspect
. 2016 September ; 10(3): 190–195. doi:10.1111/cdep.12184.
Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript
Unfortunately, national statistics demonstrate that many children struggle with reading early
in their education and continue to struggle throughout their school years. In 2015, the
National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) found that 64% of fourth-grade, and
66% of eighth-grade, students were at or below proficiency (defined by NAEP as “solid
academic performance”) for reading performance (5). Further, 31% of fourth-grade, and
24% of eighth-grade, students were at or below basic level, which means that they have only
partially mastered the prerequisite knowledge and skills needed for successful academic
performance. These statistics are very troubling, particularly because reading below grade
level in third grade is among the strongest predictors of later school drop out (6).
Reading performance and other achievement outcomes are even bleaker for students of
color; the achievement gap between European American and African American students has
only slightly narrowed since the inception of NAEP in 1992 (5). Students of color who have
fallen behind grade level reading comprehension are especially susceptible to drop out of
school (7). Paired with findings indicating that students of color are disproportionately
affected by poverty, unemployment, and inadequate educational opportunities (8), the
vulnerability of students of color for low reading comprehension and its negative outcomes
is particularly troubling. Poor reading comprehension is thus an integrated component of the
structural inequalities that serve as barriers to fruitful careers and higher education.
As efforts focused primarily on skill building and strategy instruction have continually failed
to improve national student performance and narrow academic achievement gaps, some
researchers have begun to focus on how children’s motivation to read relates to reading
comprehension. We discuss this work in this article, beginning with how we and others
define reading motivation. We then discuss how reading motivation develops, and relates to
different achievement outcomes. We focus next on gender and ethnic differences in reading
motivation and comprehension, followed by discussion of instructional programs designed
to enhance children’s reading motivation and comprehension. We close with suggestions for
future research.
Defining Reading Motivation
Prominent theoretical models of achievement motivation focus on children’s beliefs, values,
and goals as the primary “drivers” of their motivation (see 9, 10). Central motivational
beliefs include competence-related beliefs such as self-efficacy, or one’s confidence in one’s
ability to accomplish different tasks (11), and the sense of control and autonomy individuals
have over their learning (12). When students believe they are efficacious at a given activity
such as reading they do better, even when controlling for previous performance (11).
Researchers also have discussed different ways in which individuals value activities,
including how important they are to the individual, how useful they might be, and whether or
not they are interested in the activity (13). Students’ valuing of activities such as reading are
particularly important influences on their choice to do them. Researchers distinguish
between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for different activities, with intrinsic motivation
arising from the individual’s own self-expressed interests and extrinsic motivation based on
outside influences such as rewards and grades. Ryan and Deci (12) reviewed much work
showing that intrinsic motivation relates to longer-term engagement in achievement
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activities. Individuals have different kinds of goals and goal orientations for the achievement
activities in which they engage, such as the goal of increasing one’s knowledge (mastery
goal orientation), or the goal of outperforming others (performance goal orientation) (14).
These goal orientations relate in systematic ways to different achievement outcomes (15)
and it is important to note that many students hold both of them. Finally, although
motivation often is considered an individual variable or characteristic, social context and
social relations impact students’ motivation as well, particularly during the early adolescent
years (2).
Development of Reading Motivation
Wigfield et al. (10) review extant work on the development of children’s achievement
motivation. In brief, many young children tend to have a strong sense of their competence
for the different activities they do in school. Children also initially find most school activities
to be interesting and exciting, resulting in enthusiasm and valuing of academic activities.
Unfortunately, for many children this optimistic beginning does not last. Researchers have
found children’s competence beliefs, intrinsic motivation, and valuing of academic subjects
decrease across the school years (16). Researchers focusing on the development of reading
motivation in particular generally have found decreases over age in reading attitudes and
motivation (see 17, for review). For instance, McKenna, Kear, and Ellsworth’s (18) work on
children’s attitudes toward reading shows that across the elementary school years, children
report liking reading less each year. The 2015 NAEP report supports these findings and
indicates that many children in middle school become actively resistant to engaging in
reading (5). Guthrie, Klauda, and Morrison (8) found that middle school students
overwhelmingly describe the information texts they read in science classes as boring,
irrelevant, and difficult to understand—hardly a recipe for positive motivation to read this
material.
These changes in students’ competence beliefs, values, and intrinsic motivation have been
explained in two main ways: Intrapersonal change and environmental change. Through the
school years, children’s capacity to understand their own performance increases (see 10).
They receive more and more feedback about their performance in school, and become more
sophisticated at understanding its meaning. Evaluative information such as report cards and
feedback about performance on academic projects and tests can lead some children to realize
that they are not as capable as their peers; also potentially resulting in a decrease in intrinsic
motivation to learn.
A second (and related) explanation focuses on how certain evaluation practices contribute to
the decline in some children’s motivation. Researchers and policy makers have discussed a
variety of such practices (see 19 for detailed review). These practices include the following.
Due to an increase in educational accountability at different levels, school administrators
require teachers to implement more formal and frequent evaluations of their students.
Practices that emphasize social comparison and encourage excessive competition among
children (e.g., class ranking, spelling bees) may lead them to focus on how their skills
compare to others. Such practices can deflate children’s competence beliefs, particularly
those of children doing less well (see 20).
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Certain instructional practices can undermine children’s intrinsic motivation for learning as
well. Instruction that makes few attempts to spark children’s interest and, as mentioned
earlier, utilizes unappealing texts can decrease intrinsic motivation. If teachers overly restrict
student choice of reading topics or materials, they risk stifling intrinsic motivation and
autonomy (12). Finally, Assor, Kaplan, and Roth (21) found that when students do not see
the relevance of what they are learning to their own values and goals, they are less engaged
in learning.
Relations of Reading Motivation to Different Reading Outcomes
But why should we be concerned about these declines? One major reason is that reading
motivation is strongly associated with reading outcomes, such as students’ reading
comprehension, use of effective strategies, and course grades (22). In this section we discuss
how the motivational belief, value, and goal variables defined above relate to children’s
reading outcomes.
Students’ competence beliefs and self-efficacy
Research has revealed that students reporting higher levels of self-efficacy and perceived
competence obtained higher reading comprehension scores than students reporting lower
levels of perceived competence, even when previous performance is controlled (11).
Furthermore, students with high self-efficacy see difficult reading tasks as challenging and
work towards mastering them, utilizing cognitive strategies productively in the process (11).
High self-efficacy has also been found to improve performance on standardized reading tests
in middle school students (23).
Perceived autonomy
The relationship between perceived autonomy and reading achievement has been well
documented, particularly in elementary school students (24). Elementary school students’
perceived autonomy in the form of being allowed to select books to read and valuing book
selection predicted their growth in reading comprehension across four months (24). Children
who valued choosing their own books subsequently developed elaborate strategies for
selecting books and reported being more intrinsically motivated readers.
Students’ valuing of reading
As noted earlier students’ valuing of reading and other subjects predict their choice of
activities (13). Durik, Vida, and Eccles (25) found that children’s valuing of reading in
fourth grade predicted their leisure time reading activities in 10th grade, and 10th grade
students who valued reading read for career aspirations. Children’s valuing of reading also
correlates with their reading achievement and engagement in school reading tasks at the
primary and secondary school levels (26).
Students’ intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation
Student’s intrinsic motivation correlates positively with their reading achievement and
predicts their reading achievement over time (27, 28). By contrast, Meece and Miller (29)
found that students’ extrinsic motivation related to the use of surface strategies for reading
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and the desire to complete a task for a grade rather than to understand the task. These
findings suggest that although extrinsic motivation is positively associated with reading
grades it is less likely to positively influence reading comprehension (28).
Students’ goal orientations
Students with mastery goals make more metacognitive comments, paraphrase text more
often, and make more connecting inferences than students who have a performance goal
orientation (28); however, mastery goals often do not relate to indicators of performance like
grades. By contrast, students’ performance goals do relate to their reading grades (28).
Social motivation
Children who like to participate in a group of learners by completing needed tasks are likely
intrinsically motivated readers and subsequently have more positive reading outcomes (30).
Social motivation also leads to increased amounts of reading, more effort, and higher levels
of achievement in reading (31).
In summary, students’ reading motivation correlates with their reading comprehension in
important ways. Do these results apply to different kinds of students? We turn to that topic
next.
Gender and Ethnic Differences in Reading Motivation and Comprehension
There are important group-level differences in the patterns just discussed; we focus on
gender and ethnic differences in children’s reading motivation and comprehension because
they have been researched the most to date.
Gender differences
Researchers have found that throughout elementary and secondary school, females
outperform males on various measures of reading achievement both in the U. S. (32) and in
the PISA international comparison studies (33). Girls also report higher reading motivation
than do boys (27, 34). Interestingly, Jacobs et al. (16) found that male and female students
had similar competence beliefs in reading in the first two years of elementary school but
both the male students’ competence beliefs and value of reading subsequently declined more
rapidly than did females. These findings may reflect cultural expectations that females will
be more positive about reading than males (35), and suggest that research needs to focus on
improving male students’ competence beliefs and value of reading alongside current efforts
to foster female students’ involvement in the sciences.
Ethnic differences
Although the research on this issue is more limited than that on gender differences,
researchers have found that African American students report higher self-efficacy, intrinsic
motivation, and valuing of reading than do their European American peers (27, 36), despite
often performing more poorly on the reading outcomes measures.. In addition, the relation
of children’s reading motivation to their performance varies across ethnic groups (27, 28,
37). Unrau and Schlackman (37) found that intrinsic motivation related more positively to
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reading achievement for Asian American students than for Latino students. Baker and
Wigfield (27) found that European American students’ reading motivation related more
strongly to their reading achievement than that of African American students, and Wang and
Guthrie (28) found intrinsic motivation to relate positively, and extrinsic motivation to relate
negatively, to text comprehension at similar levels for both American and Chinese students.
These variations suggest the significance of ethnicity in shaping students’ reading
motivation and the extent to which it affects academic performance, and thus should be
explored further.
Instructional Programs to Enhance Reading Comprehension
Given that many students’ reading motivation declines and their reading motivation relates
to their comprehension, it is crucial to work with teachers and other educators to enhance
students’ reading motivation. Researchers now have identified a set of instructional practices
that can foster students’ reading motivation and engagement, focusing on the motivation
constructs discussed earlier in this article (see 38 for review). These practices include
facilitating students’ success to build their self-efficacy, helping them to see the importance
and relevance of what they are learning, giving them some autonomy over their learning, and
allowing many social interactions around reading.
Researchers examining the effectiveness of these practices in laboratory studies that have
focused on one of these practices have shown that they impact positively students’ reading
motivation and comprehension (22, 38). We know of only one large scale classroom-based
instruction program that has examined how a focus on reading motivation in classroom
instructional practices impacts students’ reading motivation and comprehension: Concept
Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI). CORI was developed by Guthrie, Wigfield, and their
colleagues (39, 40), and the instructional practices in CORI focus on enhancing children’s
reading motivation and comprehension within a content domain—usually science or social
studies. In CORI teachers provide reading strategy instruction and also implement teaching
practices that focus on enhancing the motivation variables just described: Students’ self-
efficacy, autonomy, value of reading, intrinsic motivation, and collaboration in reading. For
instance, to enhance students’ perceived autonomy in reading students are given many
choices regarding what they read. To enhance their self-efficacy teachers ensure students at
all reading levels experience success with the materials they are reading.
At both the elementary and middle school levels, students who experienced CORI had
higher reading motivation, greater engagement in reading, and higher reading
comprehension for different reading activities than did students in strategy-instruction only
conditions (in which they were taught a variety of successful reading strategies as
documented in the National Reading Panel Report or traditional school instructional
programs (41). These effects have been documented in studies using both quasi-
experimental and switching replication designs (42, 43).
In explaining CORI’s effectiveness, Guthrie, Wigfield, Barbosa, et al. (42) discussed how its
motivation and strategy instruction practices likely interacted to influence student motivation
and comprehension in positive ways. As students’ motivation increases they likely use the
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reading strategies more, which further improves their comprehension. Interestingly, CORI
students’ reading strategy use (measured behaviorally) was higher than that of students in
the strategy instruction condition, further showing the potential power of motivation in
changing students’ cognitive approach to reading. Continuing to explore the complex
relations and interactions of students’ motivation and cognitions as they engage in reading is
a priority for future research.
Summary and Conclusions
For many years the reading field was dominated by a focus on the cognitive processes and
strategies involved in learning to read (41). As important as this work was and is to our
understanding of the development of reading comprehension it did not include http://
www.wmata.com/index.cfm? http://www.wmata.com/index.cfm? enough attention to
children’s motivation for reading. Teachers with extensive knowledge of the most effective
reading strategies with which to instruct their children will only be successful to the extent
that their students are motivated to learn and use those strategies.
Over the last 20 years we have learned much about the nature of children’s reading
motivation and how it relates to both the amount and types of reading children do, and their
reading comprehension. We also have learned much about effective instructional practices
that lead to improvements in elementary and middle school children’s reading motivation.
Yet much research remains to be done with respect to understanding the development of
children’s reading motivation and what kinds of interventions can improve it. With respect to
understanding reading motivation most of the work to date has involved self-report
measures. Such measures provide essential information about how children view their
motivation, but they have many limitations, especially when used with young children.
Teacher ratings of student motivation and engagement are one alternative; they are reliable
and relate to different outcomes (19). However, researchers should explore observational and
other types of measures of motivation, in reading and other areas.
Regarding interventions, CORI remains the only broad scale classroom based instructional
program that systematically incorporates teaching practices focused on motivation. Its
effectiveness needs to be assessed in larger, randomized control trial studies. Also, it would
be informative to examine whether a core subset of the motivation practices (whichever
those might be) would be as effective as the entire set. Yeager and Walton (44) reviewed the
research on brief, social psychological motivation interventions that focus on students’
thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about school. Such interventions have been remarkably
effective in improving students’ motivation and achievement in different areas. They should
be assessed in reading as well. Finally, researchers studying the success of different
intervention programs show that their effects are moderated by different child
characteristics, including their gender, ethnicity, and achievement level (45). Such effects
should be examined in future reading motivation intervention studies.
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