The Relationship Between Students’ Reading Orientations and their Strategic Activity During a Collaborative Reading Task

Abstract

This study examined the connection between middle school students’ beliefs about reading and their use of comprehension strategies during a collaborative reading activity. Seventy-one fifth- and sixth-grade students were videotaped while they worked in small groups to read and discuss short texts describing the reading habits and abilities of four fictitious readers. Students’ conceptions of successful reading were determined based on their rankings of these fictitious readers, and their strategic activity was indexed by coding their use of strategies and the participation roles they assumed while working together. The analyses revealed a strong relationship between students’ conceptions of reading and their patterns of interaction during the collaborative activity. The findings enrich our understanding of this relationship and raise important questions for future investigations.

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by a grant from the Internal Research Enhancement Office, Peabody College at Vanderbilt University, awarded to Carin Neitzel and in part by Vanderbilt's Experimental Education Research Training (ExpERT) grant (David S. Cordray, Director; grant number R305B040110).

Notes

1. In the remainder of this article, the word cluster refers to the orientation groupings we created, and the word group refers to the three-person collaborative groups students worked with to read the four vignettes.