Differences in the everyday reading practices of gifted and nongifted adolescents: Report from a pilot study

8/14/2019 Differences in the everyday reading practices of gifted and nongifted adolescents: Report from a pilot study

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Differences in the Everyday Reading Practices of Giftedand Non-Gifted Adolescents: Report from a Pilot Study

M Cecil Smith

Department of Educational Psychology,Counseling, and Special Education

Northern Illinois UniversityDeKalb, IL 60115(815) 753-8448p30mcs1@niu

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the MidWestern EducationalResearch Association, Chicago, IL, October 14-17, 1992.


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Abstract

We have little knowledge about the everyday reading practices of

secondary education students and how these practices affect their academic

achievement. Everyday reading consists of individuals reading activities for a

variety of purposes, such as for relaxation or to obtain information Previous

research has documented that, from middle childhood through adulthood,

reading becomes a major component of studying, and much information learned

through studying is initially acquired through reading. The everyday reading

activities in which students engage may, therefore, considerably influence their

studying skills and subsequent academic performance. This pilot study

examined the everyday reading activities and reading attitudes of gifted and

non-gifted high school students. The results indicated several differences in

reading activities between the two groups pertaining to types of materials read

and amount of time spent reading.


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We currently have little knowledge about the everyday reading practices of

secondary-level students and how these practices may affect their academic

achievement. Everyday reading consists of the reading activities which

individuals undertake to suit a variety of purposes, such as for relaxation or to

obtain information from documents. Previous research has documented that,

from middle childhood through adulthood, reading becomes a major component

of studying, and much information learned through studying is initially acquired

through reading (Thomas & Rohwer, in press). The everyday reading activities

of high school students may, therefore, considerably influence their studying

skills and subsequent academic performance. Also, there has been little

research concerning how the everyday reading practices of gifted students differfrom non-gifted students (DeVall, 1982; Fehrenbach, 1991). The purpose of the

present study was to pilot test a data collection tool for gathering information

pertaining to students everyday reading and studying activities.

Results from two recent studies provide an important basis for the current

study. Anderson, Wilson, & Fielding (1988) examined the relationship between

5th grade childrens out-of-school activities and reading achievement. 155 Ss

completed, over 26 weeks, daily activity forms, responding to items such as I

spent __ minutes reading a book. Data were also obtained on 2nd grade

reading achievement to examine changes in reading ability from grades 2-5.

Results indicated that most Ss read very little out of school, (i.e., 8-12 minutes

per day). Reading books, however, was the single out-of-school activity having

the strongest relationship with reading skill, and time spent reading best

predicted Ss growth from 2nd to 5th grades.

Taylor, Frye, and Maruyama (1990) had 195 5th and 6th grade students

keep reading logs for a 17-week period to examine the relationship between time

spent reading and reading achievement. Students were found to read, on

average, for nearly 16 minutes in class and for 15 minutes at home. Thecorrelation between reading at home at school achievement was quite modest, r

= .16. Regression analyses showed that while in-class reading significantly

contributed to reading achievement; reading at home did not.

The divergent findings from these studies leave unanswered the question

of how important everyday, out-of-school reading activity is to academic


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performance. Neither of the studies examined reading behaviors of high school

students. Perhaps somewhat older students benefit more from out-of-school

reading because the wider variety of topics that they read about strengthens and

elaborates their knowledge base. Also, standardized test performance is only

one aspect of reading ability. Performance on other indicants of reading skill(e.g., classroom assignments) may be more dependent upon the kinds of

everyday reading activities in which students engage.

The current study examines the everyday reading activities and study skills

of high school students in a residential school for gifted students and non-gifted

students in a regular high school. The study documents and compares gifted

and non-gifted adolescents reading practices as determined through reading

activity diaries. The goal of the pilot study was to identify potential problems in

obtaining reading activity data among high school students and to develop

hypotheses concerning relationships among everyday reading activities, study

skills, reading attitudes, and academic performance, and to test these

hypotheses in subsequent research.

Method

Several data-gathering measures were used to determine relationships

among students everyday reading behaviors, studying skills, and academic

performance, including diaries and paper-and-pencil measures.Sample

Twenty-one students (12 gifted and 9 regular education) in Grade 12 were

subjects in this study. Ss were primarily white, but there were four Asian-

American Ss. Ss were recruited at a state-supported residential high school for

gifted students and a suburban high school in an upper-middle class,

predominantly Caucasian community. Ss in both schools were in psychology

classes and took part in the study to earn class credit.

Measures

Daily Reading Diary. Ss kept a structured diary of their reading activities

over a 5-day period. The diary method has been used in previous research on

adults reading behaviors (Smith, 1991; Smith & Stahl, 1989), and have proven

valuable for obtaining such information. The diaries contain data forms that are

color-coded to correspond to four 6-hour periods during a single day (e.g., 6:01

am-12:00 pm, pink form; 12:01 pm- 6:00 pm, green). Data forms allow Ss to


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record the following information: (1) source (e.g., magazine or book); (2) reading

time (i.e., number of minutes); (3) reading volume (i.e., number of pages read);

(4) strategies used to help one understand and remember text; (5) purpose for

reading (e.g., for school); (6) enjoyment rating (5 = very much, 1 = not at all).

Other measures included the following:Adult Survey of Reading Attitude (Smith, 1988). The ASRA is a 40 item

scale designed to assess adults attitudes about reading. The ASRA was

employed in the current study to determine if it is a useful instrument for

assessing adolescents reading attitudes. The scale has been shown to have

good reliability (Cronbachs alpha = .93) and reasonable construct validity

(Smith, 1991).

Rhody Secondary Reading Attitude Assessment (Tullock-Rhody &

Alexander, 1980). This a 25-item measure designed to obtain high school

students feelings about reading. The scale has good measurement properties

(reliability, r = .84) and reasonable construct and predictive validity. Students

completed the ASRA and Rhody scales prior to completing the diaries.

Results

Descriptive Data

I first examined the total number of reading events recorded per group to

determine if differences existed. The twelve gifted students recorded a total of

295 reading events over five days; the nine non-gifted students recorded 223events, or nearly 25 reading events for each student per group. Combined,

students reading events recorded per day ranged from a high of 129 events on

Day 1 to a low of 86 events on Day 4. Over three-fourths of their reading (77%)

occurred during weekdays rather than weekend days. Fifty-six percent of

reading activity occurred during the hours from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., indicating that

most of students' reading occurred in school rather than outside of it.

Across groups, students' reading consisted of a variety of sources. Thirty-

two percent (32%) of students' reading involved textbooks and classroom

materials, as would be expected given that nearly half of their reading activities

occurred in school. Twenty-one percent (21%) of students' reading was general

books (e.g., novels) for both leisure and school-related reasons. Seventeen

percent (17%) involved functional reading sources (e.g., instructions), 12% was

periodicals, and 11% involved computer-related sources.

Over one-half (53%) of students' reading was for school-related purposes.


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Another one-third (36%) of reading activity was for leisure purposes. No other

purposes accounted for as much as 10% of reading activity.

Sixty percent of students' reading occurred for periods of 25 minutes or

less; in fact, one-quarter (24%) of their reading was eight minutes or less in

duration. Students' reading volume was also quite low; nearly three-quarters(72%) of their total reading activity was reading 10 or fewer pages of text.

Students' ratings of their enjoyment of reading were fairly evenly distributed

across the five-point Likert scale. Slightly over one-third of their reading (38%)

was rated as unenjoyable, while another 37% was rated as enjoyable. A chi-

square test was used to further examine students' enjoyment of reading. The

original nine categories of reading sources were collapsed into four

(correspondence and functional, personal and general books, school, and

miscellaneous) to avoid having empty cells. The chi-square was significant, X2

= 194.07, df = 12, p < .01. Students' school reading was much more likely to be

rated as very unenjoyable (69 cases) than very enjoyable (4 cases). On the

other hand, personal and general book reading was more likely to be rated very

enjoyable (51 cases) than very unenjoyable (10 cases).

A chi-square test also examined enjoyment ratings by reading purposes.

The chi-square was significant, X2= 140.26, df = 16, P < .01. Students' leisure

reading was much more likely to be very enjoyable (77 cases) than very

unejoyable (17 cases). On the other hand, students' school reading was much

more likely to be very unenjoyable (79 cases) than very enjoyable (18 cases).Students were also asked to list or describe any strategies (e.g., note-

taking, underlining) they used to help them to understand and remember

information from their reading. Fourteen percent of the strategies listed were to

review; another 9% concerned note-taking activities. More than half of the time

(55%), students indicated no particular strategies to aid their learning. Because

students did a large amount of leisure reading relative to other types of reading,

it is not surprising that so much of their reading activity was non-strategic.

Differences between Gifted and Non-gifted Students

Group differences in reading activity were examined next. A chi-square test

compared the number of reading events per sources. Nine categories of reading

sources were identified: correspondence, functional (e.g., instructions), general

distribution materials (e.g., catalogs), periodicals, textbooks, general books (e.g.,

novels), classroom materials (e.g., workbooks, one's own writing), religious, and

miscellaneous (e.g., computer screen). The chi-square was significant, X2 =


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60.06, df = 8, p < .01. Gifted students read significantly more correspondence,

functional and classroom materials, and miscellaneous sources than did

nongifted students. The nongifted students read more textbooks than the gifted

students.

Next, group differences in purposes for reading were subjected to a chi-square test. There were five categories of reading purposes: for school, leisure,

personal-functional, work, and other-miscellaneous. The chi-square value was

nonsignificant.

Next, a chi-square test compared amount of time spent reading per group.

There were five categories of amount of reading time: 1-10 minutes, 11-20 mins.,

21-40 mins., 41-60 mins., and 61+ mins. There was a significant difference

between groups, X2 = 23.27, df = 4, p < .01. Gifted students did more reading of

20 or more minutes than did non-gifted students. Group differences on amount

of reading time X purpose was tested via a two-way ANOVA. There was a

significant main effect for purpose only, F = 4.57, df = 4, 55, p < .01. A follow-up

Scheffe test revealed differences in amount of time spent reading favoring

school and leisure reading over personal-functional and miscellaneous reading.

Across groups, students read an average of 390 minutes for school and 340

minutes for leisure, but only 26 minutes for personal-functional, and 15 minutes

for miscellaneous reading.

The next chi-square test compared volume of reading (i.e., amount of

pages read) per event by group. Six categories of reading volume per eventwere created: 1-5, 6-10, 11-19, 20-28, 30-50, and 51+ pages. The chi-square

was nonsignificant. Group differences on volume of reading by purpose were

tested via a two-way ANOVA. Both main effects (group, reason) and the

interaction were nonsignificant.

Finally, group differences on the two reading attitude measures were tested

via one-way ANOVAs. These tests were nonsignificant; generally, students'

attitudes toward reading were very positive.

Discussion

Educators need to understand how students everyday reading activities

are related to academic performance, as this knowledge is important for

developing appropriate study skills programs which build upon students existing

abilities. The pilot study reported here was a first effort at employing a data


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collection tool--a reading activity diary--to obtain information about high school

students' reading activities. A related purpose was to examine differences

between gifted and non-gifted students' reading activities.

Although self-report methods have limitations, many of the limitations of the

reading activity diary (see Smith & Stahl, in press, for a description of theselimitations) can be overcome to obtain reasonably reliable and valid data.

Students need to be given very specific instructions about what information to

provide in the diaries, and frequent, structured feedback regarding the adequacy

of their diary-keeping. Unfortunately, I had the opportunity for only one brief

question-and-answer follow-up session on the third day after students began

their diary-keeping for this pilot study. More structured, one-on-one feedback

sessions will be used in future studies to help students to provide more

informative data.

Generally, the students in this pilot study were vigilant diarists and

recorded, on average, 25 reading events per day, which varied from reading less

than one page of text to over 200 pages in a single instance. Given the wide

variety of opportunities that high school students have to read on a daily basis

(everything from candy bar wrappers to biology textbooks), the average number

of times that students reported reading in this pilot study may be somewhat low.

It is very unlikely that students recorded every instance of their reading. Further

work is needed to determine the best method for capturing the whole of students'

reading activities.Students also did more reading in school than out of school. Previous work

(Anderson et al., 1988) has documented the importance of out-of-school reading

activity to reading achievement--which is, of course, related to academic

achievement. It would appear, then, that these students might benefit from

independent reading rather than within the context of the classroom and the

school. Although all of the students in this study were performing well in school

(as determined by self-reported GPA or gifted status), the fact that these very

able students devoted so little time to reading--particularly for leisure--is

troubling. In addition, the students reported using relatively few--and

unsophisticated--strategies for studying the texts that they read. Most of these

strategies were of the reread-and-underline variety involving little cognitive

activity that would serve to elaborate text information or to link it to prior

knowledge. High-achieving students such as those in this study may, however,

have sufficiently learned cognitive strategies to the point that they are used


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routinely and automatically; they may have difficulty identifying what these

strategies are that they use. This explanation may account for the finding that

students seldom reported using learning strategies.

The sample size was too small to determine reliable differences between

gifted and non-gifted students pertaining to their reading activities. Nonetheless,some differences were suggested by the data. Gifted students, for example,

reported reading more correspondence, functional and classroom materials, and

miscellaneous reading, such as computer printouts. Non-gifted students, on the

other hand, reported reading more textbooks. Because the reasons for these

differences are not clear, this suggests that interviews with students, teacher

classroom assignment records, and other data sources may need to be

examined to learn more about students' reasons for reading (e.g., personal

choice, classroom assignment). Gifted students also tended to read for longer

durations--20 minutes or longer--than did the non-gifted students. This

difference may have been due to the gifted students having longer, more

rigorous reading assignments, or spending more time at their computers reading

text off of a monitor. In future studies, I will attempt to obtain students'

classroom assignments (e.g., type, length), examine their written work, and

survey their favorite types of reading (e.g., science fiction) in order to ascertain

the factors leading to differences in reading time and volume.

Finally, several changes will be made to future versions of the reading diary

format to obtain additional reading behavior data. Subjects will be asked toidentify the setting in which the reading occurs (e.g., classroom, library, home)

and to rate their perceived degree of effort at reading (and learning text

information) on a 5-point scale (e.g., 5="much effort needed"). The pilot study

has also indicated the need to provide specific instructions regarding how and

when to record one's reading activities.

Among the hypotheses suggested by this pilot work is that gifted students'

academic assignments, homework, and interests requires more time and reading

volume, and a greater variety of sources, than does regular education students'

academic assignments. This and other hypotheses remain to be examined in

future research. I am currently planning a larger study to examine the role of

reading activity in gifted and nongifted students' academic performance. The

results of this study will be reported at a later time.


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References

Anderson, R.C., Wilson, & Fielding, L.G. (1988). Growth in reading and howchildren spend their time outside of school. Reading Research Quarterly, 23,285-303.

DeVall, Y.L. (1982). Some cognitive and creative characteristics and theirrelationship to reading comprehension in gifted and non-gifted fifth graders.Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 5, 260-273.

Fehrenbach, C.R. (1991). Gifted/average readers: Do they use the samereading strategies? Gifted Child Quarterly, 35, 125-127.

Smith, M.C. (1988). A longitudinal investigation of the development of readingcomprehension skills, metacognitive reading skills, and reading attitude:Childhood to adulthood. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University ofWisconsin-Madison.

Smith, M.C. (1991, November). An investigation of the construct validity of theAdult Survey of Reading Attitude. Paper presented at the annual meeting ofthe College Reading Association, Arlington, VA.

Smith, M.C., & Stahl, N.A. (1989, December). Differences between professionaland pre-professional teachers reading habits and attitudes. Paperpresented at the annual meeting of the National Reading Conference,Austin, TX.

Smith, M.C., & Stahl, N.A. (in press). The use of the reading diary as a methodfor obtaining reading behavior data among adults. Illinois Reading CouncilJournal: Twenty-fifth anniversary monograph.

Taylor, B.M., Frye, B.J., & Maruyama, G. (1990). Time spent reading andreading growth. American Educational Research Journal, 27, 351-362.

Thomas, J.W., & Rohwer, W.D., Jr. (in press). Studying across the life span. InS.R. Yussen & M.C. Smith (Eds.), Reading across the life span. New York:Springer-Verlag.

Tullock-Rhody, R., & Alexander, J. E. (1980). A scale for assessing attitudes

toward reading in secondary schools. Journal of Reading, 23, 609-614.

Documents

Differences in the everyday reading practices of gifted and nongifted adolescents: Report from a pilot study