Examining Student Cognitive and Affective Engagement and Reading Instructional Activities: Spanish-Speaking English Learners’ Reading Profiles

ABSTRACT

Recent research has emphasized the key role of engagement in helping students succeed in school and beyond. Given the academic struggles that many English learners (ELs) face as they transition to middle school, exploring the facets of engagement in middle school ELs is needed. We established reader profiles for eight sixth grade Hispanic ELs and examined the relationship between these students’ profiles and their engagement using teacher-, student-, and observer-reported data. We further examined the observer data (i.e., coded video) to determine if there were differences in individual students’ cognitive and affective engagement in four different reading activities. We found that, although engagement in the different activities varied by student, guided reading seemed to be the most engaging activity for most of the ELs in the study.

KEYWORDS:

• Affective engagement
• cognitive engagement
• English learners
• Hispanic
• instructional activities
• middle school
• reader profiles
• reading activities

Funding

The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A100297 to the University of Maryland, College Park. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.

Additional information

Funding

The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A100297 to the University of Maryland, College Park. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.