When to Scaffold Motivational Self-Regulation Strategies for High School Students' Science Text Comprehension

Abstract

Noting the important role of motivation in science students' reading comprehension, this 14-weeks quasi-experiment investigated the optimal timing for implementation of metamotivational scaffolding for self-regulation of scientific text comprehension. The “IMPROVE” metamotivational self-regulatory model (Introducing new concepts, Metamotivation questioning, Practicing, Reviewing and reducing difficulties, Obtaining mastery, Verification, and Enrichment) was embedded at three different phases of secondary students' engagement with scientific texts and exercises (before, during, or after) to examine effects of timing on groups' science literacy and motivational regulation. Israeli 10th graders (N = 202) in eight science classrooms received the same scientific texts and reading comprehension exercises in four groups. Three treatment groups received metamotivational scaffolding before (n = 52), during (n = 50), or after text engagement (n = 54). The control group (n = 46) received standard instructional methods with no metamotivational scaffolding. Pretests and posttests assessed science literacy, domain-specific microbiology knowledge, and metamotivation regulation. Intergroup differences were non-significant at pretest but significant at posttest. The “before” group significantly outperformed all other groups. The “after” group significantly outperformed the “during” group, and the control group scored lowest. Outcomes suggested delivery of metamotivational scaffolding as a potentially important means for promoting students' science literacy and effortful perseverance with challenging science tasks, especially at the reflection-before-action stage for looking ahead and also at the reflection-on-action stage for looking back. More theoretical and practical implications of this preliminary study were discussed to meet the growing challenges in science teaching schoolwork.

Stay motivated and carry on: A meta-analytic investigation of motivational regulation strategies and academic achievement, motivation, and self-regulation correlates.

“…Interventions that promote motivational regulation might also be a promising practice to consider as well (Michalsky, 2021). In a digital learning environment, Daumiller and Dresel (2019) found that both metacognitive and motivational regulation prompts were effective in improving task value, metacognitive control, task-related learning activities, and knowledge in a digital media learning environment.…”

Comprensión y alfabetización científica en la escuela: Revisión sistemática

“…Comprensión y alfabetización científica en la escuela: Revisión sistemática La mayor parte de estudios realizados corresponden al nivel secundaria y pocos los estudios que se centran en las características de la ciencia en el nivel primaria, siendo generalmente la metodología de investigación de tipo descriptivo interpretativo (Ezquerra et al, 2019;García-Carmona, 2021) necesario un andamiaje metamotivacional para que el estudiante regule y permita la reflexión de su aprendizaje (Michalsky, 2021) , lo que permitirá entender y comprender información de tipo científica a fin de tomar decisiones informadas integrando y evaluando el contenido de diversas fuentes, aspecto fundamental para convertirse en ciudadanos responsables que tomen decisiones acertadas (Feucht et al, 2021). El hecho de tener una buena comprensión lectora permite a una persona a nivel virtual tener mejores estrategias para poder seleccionar y discernir sobre sitio de internet que brinde credibilidad e información veraz a fin de mejorar la calidad de la argumentación así como un buen rendimiento científico (Castells et al, 2022;Cruz Neri et al, 2021a;Härtig et al, 2022).…”

Overview of SimpleText 2021 - CLEF Workshop on Text Simplification for Scientific Information Access

“…Besides, people prefer to read a short document instead of a long one. Since motivation to understand a scientific text is of importance for readers, the simplified options depends on the motivation of readers [39]. Thus, the information in a summary designed for a scientist from a specific field should be different from that adapted for general public and we should take into account differences in narrative and information texts comprehension while evaluating the comprehensibility level of simplified texts in different readership.…”