Improving Adult Literacy Instruction Options for Practice and Research (2012) / Chapter Skim
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5 Motivation, Engagement, and Persistence
5 Motivation, Engagement, and Persistence
Pages 130-161
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From page 130... ...
We use the word "persistence" because it aptly describes the situation of adult learning. Many adults want to improve their literacy skills, but they do not persist, perhaps because of competing demands on their time, unpleasant past experiences with learning, or instruction that does not support sustained engagement or that is otherwise ineffective.
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From page 131... ...
to obtain a more complete understanding of where to focus efforts to increase adults' persistence with learning.1 The framework for the chapter, shown in Figure 5-1, specifies the multiple dimensions of persistence and puts at the center the question of how to support it through the design of effective learning environments. Box 5-1 identifies principles that are reasonable to use and further study to determine how best to support adults' persistence in developing literacy given current research.
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From page 132... ...
D • elp learners set appropriate and valuable learning goals. H • et expectations about the amount of effort and practice required to develop S literacy skills.
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From page 133... ...
• exts and tasks for adult literacy instruction. It is important to understand T how the texts and tasks made available to learners, and how their percep tions of these texts and tasks affect motivation to persist, even in the face of linguistic and cognitive challenges.
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From page 134... ...
Many may not have the confidence to enter literacy education programs, and, if they do enter, lack the self-efficacy needed to persist. How, then, might teachers increase self-efficacy?
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Instructors need to assist learners with breaking down their learning goals into short-term literacy goals (i.e., proximal goals) and long-term literacy goals (i.e., distal goals)
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From page 136... ...
. If a teacher emphasizes the importance of mastering literacy skills, students are likely to adopt mastery goals; if a teacher emphasizes relative ability (i.e., the teacher
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From page 137... ...
Much research indicates that both students' personal goals and their perceptions of classroom goal structures predict valued educational outcomes. Personal mastery goals have predicted adaptive outcomes that include persistence at tasks, choosing to engage in similar activities in the future (Harackiewicz et al., 2000)
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From page 138... ...
, for example, suggest that a mismatch between formal school structures and adolescents' development needs produces negative behaviors among adolescents, because, even as youth are exhorted to act as responsible, decision-making beings, the capacity to make decisions and plot a possible future is taken from them by overly controlled school environments. Thus, many adults who seek adult literacy instruction may not have had opportunities to envision and enact a wide range of possible selves and self-regulated practices in past schooling.
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From page 139... ...
Goals should be optimally challenging to increase engagement and persistence with learning as well as progress. If instructors emphasize mastery, effort, and improvement, then students will be more likely to adopt personal mastery goals; the adoption of mastery goals subsequently predicts valued learning outcomes, including persistence at reading, choosing to engage in additional literacy activities in the future, and the use of more effective reading strategies.
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From page 140... ...
Those who have struggled with reading and writing and perhaps with continuing their literacy education in the past are likely to have formed attributions that lead to lack of persistence. To persist, learners need feedback and models that help frame their experiences with learning and develop adaptive explanations for successes and failures.
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From page 141... ...
With repeated reframing, instructors can help learners develop attributional styles that motivate persistence and move beyond dichotomous attributional frames (i.e., "the problem is entirely inside my head or the problem is entirely in the text, task, or setting") and toward frames that allow learners to employ strategies and skills for constructing meaning in a wide range of literacy tasks.
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From page 142... ...
Discourse in the adult education classroom that stresses the importance of assessments and tests can lead students to adopt performance goals (Anderman and Maehr, 1994)
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From page 143... ...
, and others argue that they ultimately lower intrinsic motivation. The case against extrinsic rewards has been confirmed in a meta-analysis of 128 experiments (Deci, Koestner, and Ryan, 1999; see also Deci, Koestner, and Ryan, 2001)
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From page 144... ...
Although the aim of adult literacy programs may be to enhance the literacy skills of adult learners, it is possible that some types of rewards might undermine their motivation to continue to read or write for other purposes, but this is an open research question. If extrinsic incentive programs are offered, then research clearly
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From page 145... ...
. The reward should be contingent on the student's having learned specific literacy skills or reached specific goals, rather than for simply engaging with or completing a literacy task or course, which is more likely to be experienced as controlling (Deci, 1975; Deci and Ryan, 1987)
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From page 146... ...
. Instructors can use this information to select meaningful texts, tasks, and writing prompts and assignments to engage learners, support feelings of autonomy and control, and facilitate continued intrinsic motivation and engagement (Padak and Bardine, 2004)
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From page 147... ...
CORI involves firsthand experiences, reading, strategy instruction, peer collaboration, and public forms of communication. Key to the success of the CORI model is that instruction focuses on integrating instruction designed to motivate readers, develop conceptual knowledge in the domain, and foster the use of reading strategies.
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From page 148... ...
. Adults are likely to enter literacy instruction holding beliefs about the degree to which they value or like reading and writing and the types of literacy activities they value given that such beliefs form early in childhood and predict engagement with literacy activities in later grades (Durik, Vida, and Eccles, 2006)
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From page 149... ...
If the task is new or especially challenging, an individual may appreciate having little autonomy. Providing people with choice about what activities to do and how to do them can increase intrinsic motivation (Zuckerman et al., 1978)
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From page 150... ...
There are a number of ways that adult education instructors can provide their students with opportunities to experience autonomy that do not require sacrificing such best practices as giving specific feedback, explicit and clear modeling of strategies, presenting challenging literacy tasks, and helping to monitor progress, all of which develop proficiencies and so support greater autonomy. The choices allowed can be quite small and still have important effects on motivation.
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From page 151... ...
, but limited systematic intervention research is available to help address these issues. In this section we draw mainly from the literature in social psychology, anthropology, sociology, the learning sciences, and reading to identify features of the learning context, including social structures and systems, texts, and tasks with potential to motivate or demotivate adult learning and persistence.
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From page 152... ...
These studies of how both social structures and the corresponding structures of formal schooling shape aspirations, persistence, and attainment shed light on why some adolescents and adults in literacy programs may have left school and how their motivation to learn may have been, and may continue to be, compromised. As a result, these studies offer important implications for different ways of structuring adult literacy programs, especially when considered in concert with psychological perspectives on autonomy and intrinsic motivation, already reviewed.
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From page 153... ...
Engaging learners in working together may have positive social and literacy learning benefits.
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From page 154... ...
, young people were able to engage in identity construction that supported persistence, motivation, resilience, and attainment in school and social settings. These studies suggest that adult literacy programs might benefit from engaging learners in opportunities to use reading and writing to examine social and political issues of interest to them (see Freire, 1970, for an example of success in teaching basic reading skills to illiterate adult peasants in Brazil)
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From page 155... ...
In addition to increasing the utility of literacy-based tasks and the sense of autonomy and control people have over their lives, collective literacy activities may provide them with the community support needed to persist in literacy learning even in the face of challenge. Potentially Negative Effects of Stereotype A robust literature on what Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson (1995)
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From page 156... ...
Importantly, stereotype threat studies have been conducted largely among college students at elite universities. Thus, the history of struggle that many who attend adult literacy programs bring into the classroom has the potential to further divide groups on the basis of race, class, gender, and skill differences.
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From page 157... ...
Older interviewees reported that there was less stigma related to not completing high school in the past, and consequently they felt less reason to enroll in adult education courses in the present; they did not believe that adult literacy courses would be useful to them. Women, but not men, said they would attend to help their children with school.
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From page 158... ...
Thus, experimental research is needed that not only evaluates ways to help students develop proficiencies for meeting an immediate literacy goal, but that also encourages continued learning to meet longer term literacy needs.
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From page 159... ...
The few promising instruments that exist could be developed further and specifically for adults seeking literacy instruction. For instance, one reliable and valid measure of adult reading motivation contains subscales that assess reading efficacy, reading as part of one's identity, reading for recognition, and reading in order to excel in other life domains (Schutte and Malouff, 2007)
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From page 160... ...
? What texts are available to learners in formal adult literacy programs?
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From page 161... ...
Adult literacy programs can offer significant and sustained means of supporting persistence. The contexts, texts, tasks, systems, and structures of adult literacy instruction require as much research-based attention as do the individuals who must persist in learning.
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