rueda reading_psychology_teacherbeliefs_accepted_final[1].pdf

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Matthew Quirk, University of California, Santa Barbara; Norman Unrau, California State University, Los Angeles; Gisele Ragusa, Robert Rueda, and Hyo Lim, University of Southern California; Erica Bowers, California State University, Fullerton; Alejandra Velasco, and Kayoko Fujii, University of Southern California; Ann Nemerouf, Montebello Unified School District; Gustavo Loera, National Mental Health Association of Greater Los Angeles. This research was conducted by the Motivation, Instruction, Cognition, Literacy and Learning (MICLL) research group, which is a multi-institution research team. Correspondence regarding this manuscript should be addressed to Matthew Quirk, Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1329 Phelps Hall, Santa Barbara, California 93106-9490. Phone: (805)893-5914, E-mail: [email protected]. Teacher Beliefs about Reading Motivation and Their Enactment in Classrooms: The Development of a Survey Questionnaire Revised and re-submitted to  Reading Psy chology for publication on September 15, 2008 Running Head: Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation

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Matthew Quirk, University of California, Santa Barbara; Norman Unrau, California State

University, Los Angeles; Gisele Ragusa, Robert Rueda, and Hyo Lim, University of SouthernCalifornia; Erica Bowers, California State University, Fullerton; Alejandra Velasco, and Kayoko

Fujii, University of Southern California; Ann Nemerouf, Montebello Unified School District;

Gustavo Loera, National Mental Health Association of Greater Los Angeles.

This research was conducted by the Motivation, Instruction, Cognition, Literacy andLearning (MICLL) research group, which is a multi-institution research team.

Correspondence regarding this manuscript should be addressed to Matthew Quirk,Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1329 Phelps

Hall, Santa Barbara, California 93106-9490. Phone: (805)893-5914, E-mail:

[email protected].

Teacher Beliefs about Reading Motivation and Their Enactment in Classrooms:

The Development of a Survey Questionnaire

Revised and re-submitted to Reading Psychology for publication on September 15, 2008

Running Head: Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 1

Abstract

This study examined teacher’s beliefs about motivating students to read through the development

of a new survey questionnaire. The current investigation reports on initial tests of the scale’s

reliability and validity. The items for this measure were developed from an engagement

perspective to reflect the motivational constructs represented in an established measure of 

student motivation for reading. Tests of internal consistency revealed that teachers’ beliefs about

motivating students to read can be reliably measured. In addition, significant relationships were

found between teachers’ beliefs about motivating their students to read and their teaching self-

efficacy providing initial evidence of the scale’s validity.

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 2

Teacher Beliefs about Reading Motivation and Their Enactment in Classrooms:

The Development of a Survey Questionnaire

Concern about students’ reading performance and their development as readers has

contributed to research that focuses on students’ motivation for reading and reading engagement.

That research has led to the development of a series of instruments, including self-report surveys

and questionnaires that measure students’ motivation for reading. One such measure is the

Motivation for Reading Questionnaire or MRQ (Guthrie, McGough, & Wigfield, 1994; Wigfield

& Guthrie, 1995; Wigfield and Guthrie, 1997; Wigfield, Guthrie, and McGough, 1996). Studies

using the MRQ and other survey instruments have provided evidence for the relationship

between motivation for reading, reading engagement, and reading comprehension among

students (Gottfried, 1990; Guthrie, Wigfield, Metsala, and Cox, 1999; Wang & Guthrie, 2004).

These studies have expanded our knowledge and understanding of factors to which students

attribute their motivation for reading and how we might begin to affect that motivation through

instruction. Although interest in and attention to student motivation and engagement has

increased over the past fifteen years, few studies have explored teachers’ knowledge and beliefs

about motivation and the application of their motivational knowledge and beliefs. In a study of 

beginning teachers, Chant (2002) discovered that teachers’ beliefs influenced their teaching

practice and their students learning behaviors. Therefore, our research team designed a

questionnaire, the Teacher Beliefs about Student Motivation to Read Questionnaire (TBSMRQ),

to discover teachers’ beliefs about motivation for reading and the application of those beliefs in

order to begin to close that gap in understanding.

Teachers’ Knowledge and Beliefs about Motivation and Engagement 

In one of the few studies that have focused on teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 3

motivation for reading, researchers (Sweet, Guthrie, & Ng, 1998) investigated teacher

perceptions of students’ intrinsic motivation for reading from the perspective of self-

determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985) and reading achievement. While the Sweet,

Guthrie, and Ng (1998) study did not directly assess teachers’ beliefs about students’ motivation

for reading, inferences about those beliefs can be made based on the study. Teachers in grades 3

through 6 rated their students on six features of motivation for reading. These included

individual, topical, activity-based, autonomy-supported, socially supported, and writing related

features. The individual motivational construct, which represented intrinsic motivation in SDT,

referred to teachers attributing students’ motivation for reading to an internal or intrinsic

orientation. The topic construct referred to students’ interest in reading about a preferred topic.

The autonomy construct referred to teachers’ view that students were motivated by opportunities

for choice. The activity-based construct described teacher perceptions that students were

motivated by activity-based supports for reading. The writing construct referred to the teachers’

perceptions that some students were motivated by a desire to write about texts they read. The

researchers wanted to discover the magnitude of importance that teachers attributed to the six

features of student motivation for reading, a finding that would help the researchers understand

teachers’ beliefs about motivation for reading among their students.

Both quantitative and qualitative studies that Sweet and her associates conducted revealed

that the teachers saw higher achieving readers to have relatively higher intrinsic motivation than

extrinsic reading motivation. This finding provided indirect evidence of teachers’ beliefs about

students’ motivation to read. Statistical analyses based on the whole sample of teachers revealed

a main effect for motivation across all grade levels (3 through 6) with the individual category

significantly below the means for topical, activity-based, autonomy-supported, and socially

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 4

supported categories. However, an analysis using students’ data whose reading achievement was

in the upper and lower 20%, revealed that all six categories were perceived to have been more

strongly exhibited in a positive direction among students in the upper 20%. Furthermore, the

individual category that represented intrinsic motivation and a self-determination perspective and

the topic category that reflected students’ interests were significantly higher in relative strength

compared with the other four constructs. Lower achievers, however, were perceived to be more

motivated by external factors, such as autonomy support, activity-based instruction, and social

scaffolding.

Based on these findings, the researchers argued that teachers hold implicit theories and

beliefs about motivation that align with a self-determination perspective of motivation and

reading achievement. Teachers believed that students experience literacy growth more rapidly if 

they become “agents” of their own literacy development. Furthermore, the study confirmed

Gottfried’s (1985) conclusion that teachers’ perception of intrinsic motivation and achievement

in reading were positively related. It also supported the findings of Nolen and Nicholls (1994)

who found that experienced teachers believed motivation can be increased through providing

choices, promoting cooperation, providing stimulating tasks, and giving student responsibility

for their learning. In sum, Sweet, Guthrie, and Ng (1998) concluded that teachers in the study

appeared to hold an implicit theory of association of self-determination and achievement that the

researchers considered to be “remarkably compatible” (p. 220) with self-determination theory

(Deci & Ryan, 1985). 

 Development of the Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ)

Research on motivation for reading by the National Reading Research Center (NRRC)  

(Guthrie, McGough, & Wigfield, 1994; Wigfield & Guthrie, 1995, 1997; Wigfield, Guthrie, &

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 5

McGough, 1996) served as a base for the development of our teacher questionnaire. We believe

that developing a measure of teacher beliefs about reading motivation that aligned theoretically

with a measure of student motivation for reading would enable us to examine and interpret these

relationships in later studies. Inquiry related to motivation at NRRC was grounded in an

engagement perspective integrating cognitive, motivational, and social aspects of reading with

achievement motivation theory, which includes readers’ competence and their beliefs about their

own efficacy as readers, as well as intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and purposes for

achievement. Using those domains of research and theory as resources and building on previous

related investigations, Guthrie, Wigfield, and associates developed the Motivation for Reading

Questionnaire (MRQ), which consists of 11 dimensions of reading motivation: (a) self-efficacy,

(b) challenge, (c) work avoidance, (d) curiosity, (e) involvement, (f) importance, (g) recognition,

(h) grades, (i) competition, (j) social motives and (k) compliance. The MRQ was initially

designed to assess upper elementary school students motivation for reading through self-reports.

Combining theoretical and empirical perspectives, Wigfield and Guthrie (1997) created intrinsic

and extrinsic composites of reading motivation based on their research using the MRQ scales.

Although intrinsic and extrinsic composites were adapted through the years (Guthrie, et al.,

1999), the intrinsic composite proposed by Wang and Guthrie (2004) consisted of the curiosity,

involvement, and challenge scales from the MRQ, whereas their extrinsic composite included the

recognition, grades, social, competition, and compliance scales. The research that has been

conducted using the MRQ has led to the understanding that students’ motivation to read is

comprised of a multifaceted system of interrelated constructs and is related to a number of 

student outcomes including the amount of reading that children engage in and various aspects of 

their reading achievement (Guthrie, et al., 1999; Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997; Wigfield, 1997). The

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 6

instrument designed for our study was constructed to closely align to the constructs in the

elementary school students’ MRQ.

 Autonomy Support 

Although the MRQ includes scales sensitive to many dimensions of motivation for reading,

one dimension not explicitly developed in the questionnaire is that of autonomy support. 

Autonomy is our capacity to make independent decisions, have our actions arise from within

ourselves, and feel that those actions are our own rather than arising from some external source

(Deci & Ryan, 1985). When students are autonomously motivated, they report that the cause for

their actions comes from within themselves and sense they have a choice over those actions

(Reeve, Jang, Carrell, Jeon, & Barch, 2004). They feel uninhibited during the self-chosen

activities and are able to make decisions about when, how, and whether to pursue them.

Inflexible, externally controlled assignments exemplify the flip side of autonomy.

Autonomy support occurs when a teacher nurtures student’s internally centered, freely

chosen actions. Nurturing may take many forms in school settings. It occurs when teachers ask 

students what or how they want to learn. Whenever teachers find ways to identify and increase

their students’ internally initiated acts of learning, whether those acts entail a choice over

curriculum or the independence to ask and answer their own questions, they are engaged in

autonomy support (Reeve & Jang, 2006; Stefanou, Perenceivich, DiCintio, & Turner, 2004).

The significance of teachers’ belief in autonomy support and in their acting on that belief 

in classrooms is apparent in recent studies demonstrating the impact that autonomy support has

on student motivation. Researchers (Reeve et al., 2004) interested in the effects of autonomy

support trained high school teachers across content areas to nurture student interest, provide

rationales for assignments, and use non-controlling language. The more teachers used autonomy

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 7

support during instruction, the more their students were engaged (Reeve & Jang, 2006).

Evidence suggests that literacy programs emphasizing autonomy support, including a wide range

of choices in learning opportunities, can promote intrinsic motivation, conceptual understanding,

and perceived confidence, all of which enable students to engage more deeply in the

development of their literacies (Stefanou et al., 2004). This dimension may be especially

important for students in urban schools. One common response to low achievement in urban

school settings is to reduce autonomy in terms of curriculum and activities by enforcing

standardization of practice and materials. This enforced standardization has the perhaps

unintended motivational effect of reducing autonomy for both students and teachers.

Although instruments, such as the MRQ, have been developed to provide rich

information on students’ motivation for reading and studies conducted to discover students’

motivational responses to teachers’ autonomy support, little is known about teachers’ knowledge

of students’ motivation for reading and how that knowledge is applied in classrooms. This gap in

the research provided the impetus for creation of our teacher questionnaire. 

In spite of a few exceptions, the limited attention to the study of teachers’ knowledge and

application of motivation may, in part, be a result of recent educational emphasis on standards-

based curriculum developed at the state level, the realization of those standards, and the

assessment of students to discover their progress toward meeting state standards. Two

questionable assumptions that educators embrace may also contribute to limited attention to

motivational issues (Bartholomew, 2007). One of these is the belief that curriculum and

instruction will adequately and automatically address the motivational needs of students.

However, curriculum and instruction may not address what is driving students’ interests, what

makes them curious, what gives them a sense of challenge—all of which lead to deeper student

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 8

engagement. A second questionable assumption is a belief among educators that classroom

management is likely to address students’ motivation and engagement. While teacher credential

programs commonly include at least one course in classroom management which is often viewed

as the solution to student engagement and learning issues, such courses rarely include significant

exposure to motivational theory and its practical classroom application, especially from a

diagnostic perspective that would encourage a close look at individual student and class-wide

motivational needs.

One of the early challenges we faced in our investigation was the development of an

instrument that would be sensitive enough to detect and measure teachers’ beliefs about

motivation and their enactment of those beliefs during instruction. To develop this instrument,

we turned to the MRQ because of its being based on an engagement view of motivation for

reading and its role in the study of reading motivation. Essentially, we used the MRQ as a

foundation to design the Teacher Beliefs about Students’ Motivation for Reading Questionnaire

(TBSMRQ).

Teacher Efficacy and Teacher Performance

Although few studies have investigated teachers’ beliefs about students’ motivation and

the teaching behaviors they base on those beliefs, a number of studies have explored teachers’

own self-efficacy and its effects on teaching. Because we intended to explore relationships

between the results of our TBSMRQ and teachers’ beliefs about their own self-efficacy, we also

sought instruments that would measure teacher self-efficacy independent of our own TBSMRQ.

Grounded in social cognitive theory, the construct of self-efficacy was primarily

developed by Albert Bandura (1994) within the context of self-regulatory processes that affect a

person’s selection and construction of environments. Self-efficacy beliefs affect one’s cognitive,

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 9

motivational, affective, and selection processes. Self-efficacy may be defined as one’s judgments

of his/her capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated

performance (Bandura, 1994). Efficacy is primarily associated with judgments of how one can

perform with the skills one possesses. Self-efficacy plays a role in the effort a person devotes to

accomplishing a specific outcome as it relates to the person’s beliefs about his or her capabilities

to achieve that outcome (Garcia, 2004). Efficacy has been found to be situational and contextual

(Bandura, 1994; Pintrich and Schunk, 2002).

Teacher self-beliefs in the form of expectations and predispositions about themselves and

their students are important mediators of teachers' experiences and teaching behavior, (Ashton

and Webb, 1986; Clark & Peterson, 1986; Pajares, 1992; Yeh, 2006). This self-belief, when

measured in teachers, is often referred to as teacher efficacy (Dembo & Gibson, 1985; Pajares &

Bengston, 1995). Research has revealed that teachers with higher levels of teaching efficacy use

techniques and strategies that are more challenging and enhance student mastery of cognitive and

affective goals in their classrooms (Puchner & Taylor, 2006). It is well documented that teachers'

self-efficacy beliefs and attitudes toward teaching change during the course of their years of 

teaching (Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001). Efficacy beliefs of preservice and

beginning teachers have been linked to attitudes towards children and control (Woolfolk & Hoy,

1990). Teachers with a low sense of teaching efficacy have been found to have an orientation

toward control, taking a pessimistic view of students’ motivation, relying on strict classroom

regulations, extrinsic rewards, and punishments to make students engage in school work (Egyed

& Short, 2006; Zimmerman, 1995). 

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 10

Purpose for This Study

In light of our limited knowledge of teachers’ beliefs about student motivation for

reading and their use in classrooms, we designed a survey questionnaire to explore the scope and

depth of knowledge about motivation that teachers bring to their classrooms and how they use

that knowledge when planning lessons and interacting with students. To ascertain that

information, we developed and administered the TBSMRQ, a teacher-oriented survey based

upon the MRQ that focused on teachers’ beliefs about students’ motivation for reading. The

current study aimed to answer the following research questions:

1) 

Can teachers’ beliefs about student motivation for reading be reliably measured?

2)  What are teachers’ beliefs about student motivation for reading?

3)  What is the relationship between teachers’ beliefs about student motivation for

reading and their teaching self-efficacy?

Method

Participants and Procedures

Participants for this study included 86 teachers of urban classrooms in the southwestern

United States. The respondents’ teaching experience ranged from less than 1 year to 37 years (M

= 10.38, SD = 7.82), with 30.6% having taught for 5 years or less, 23.5% having taught for 6-10

years, 28.2% having taught for 11-15 years, and 17.6% having taught more than 15 years. Of the

participating teachers, 42% were Caucasian, 36.4% Hispanic, 5.7% African-American, 6.8%

Asian-American, 6.8% multiracial, and 2.3% other. All of the participating teachers taught in

either the upper elementary or middle school grade range (grades 3-8), with 66.3% of teachers

reporting that they taught all or most school subjects, 18.8% taught only English/language arts,

6.2% team taught and were responsible for the language arts instruction, 6.2% didn’t teach

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 11

language arts, and 2.5% reported that they integrated language arts instruction into their content

area teaching. A battery of three surveys was administered to gather data on 1) teachers’ beliefs

about student motivation for reading, 2) teachers’ teaching self-efficacy, and 3)

background/demographic information. The surveys were delivered to participating teachers

either in hard copy or electronically using Survey Monkey™, a web-based survey generating

platform via a web link to the questionnaires. The online survey platform provides a convenient

and secure user interface for data collection. Two methods of data collection were utilized to

maximize the potential for teacher participation. Data collection was accomplished over a four

week period through the platform. Responses were collected in a database which was

downloaded and cleaned of cases with missing data (total N = 86).

 Measures

Teachers’ Beliefs about Students’ Motivation for Reading. The Teacher Beliefs about

Students’ Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (TBSMRQ) was developed from a theoretical

base resulting from Wigfield, Gurthie, and McGough’s (1996) research on the Motivation for

Reading Questionnaire (MRQ), which is a measure designed to assess upper elementary school

students’ self-reported motivation for reading. This work has led to the understanding that

students’ motivation to read is comprised of a multifaceted system of interrelated constructs and

is related to a number of student outcomes including the amount of reading that children engage

in and various aspects of their reading achievement (Guthrie, et al., 1999; Wigfield & Guthrie,

1997; Wigfield, 1997). The TBSMRQ was constructed to closely align to the constructs in the

elementary school student’s Motivation to Read Questionnaire (MRQ).

Our reasons for choosing the student MRQ as a model for the development of the

TBSMRQ were threefold. First, when we examined the existing research base for all published

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 12

instruments designed to assess students’ reading motivation, the MRQ’s was the most

extensively used including a number of studies that have primarily focused on its psychometric

development/validation (Baker & Wigfield, 1999; Wigfield and Guthrie, 1997; Wigfield,

Guthrie, and McGough, 1996). Second, our group holds a shared belief in the multi-faceted and

interrelated nature of academic motivation; therefore, the breadth of the MRQ (spanning a wide

range of motivational constructs) was particularly appealing. Third, our interest in examining

teachers’ beliefs about student motivation is driven, at least in part, by our curiosity regarding

how these beliefs relate to student outcomes. Therefore, we determined that having a measure of 

teacher beliefs that aligned theoretically with a measure of student motivation could strengthen

our ability to examine and interpret these relationships in subsequent research.

To develop the TBSMRQ, a team of researchers from four urban universities with

expertise in educational psychology, literacy, teacher practice, and teacher education came

together with a shared interest in studying teacher belief systems and reading motivation. Our

team thoroughly analyzed the MRQ and its constructs and carefully crafted parallel survey items

that addressed the major constructs measured in the MRQ. Several iterations of the TBSMRQ

were vetted within the team over a 9 month time period. The resulting 64 item survey was

designed to asked teachers to rate the importance of addressing various aspects of their students’

motivation for reading including reading self-efficacy (4 items), challenge (6 items), work 

avoidance (6 items), curiosity (9 items), involvement (5 items), importance (2 items), recognition

(5 items), grades (6 items), competition (5 items), social reasons for reading (6 items),

compliance (3 items), and autonomy support (7 items).

Reading self-efficacy items were designed to assess the importance that teachers place on

helping students come to see themselves as a good reader. Challenge items were developed to

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 13

assess the importance teachers place on using challenging reading materials to motivate their

students to read. The work avoidance subscale items were written to measure teachers’

awareness level regarding why students persist or give up when reading challenging materials.

Items from the curiosity subscale were designed to assess the importance that teachers place on

piquing student curiosity to increase their reading motivation. The items on the involvement

subscale were written to assess whether teachers believed it was important to encourage students

to become deeply involved in what they are reading. Items on the importance subscale were

written to assess whether teachers perceived it was necessary to establish the importance of 

becoming a good reader to their students. The items from the recognition subscale were designed

to assess whether teachers emphasized the use of recognition to motivate their students to read.

The grades subscale consisted of items that were developed to assess whether teachers felt that

grades were an important motivator for students. Items from the competition subscale were

written to capture whether teachers believed it was important to use competition to motivate their

students to read. The social subscale items were developed to assess whether teachers felt it was

important to motivate students to read through emphasizing the many ways you can socialize

around reading material. Finally, the compliance subscale was designed to assess whether

teachers believed that students were motivated to read by feelings of wanting to comply with the

wishes of authority figures. In addition to the 11 subscales that were developed from the original

MRQ framework, a twelfth subscale consisting of 7 items was added to assess the perceived

importance that teachers place on supporting their students’ autonomy in reading.

All items on the TBSMRQ were scored on a 7 point Likert-type scale with a 1 indicating

“not at all like me” and a 7 indicating “very much like me.” A pilot test screening procedure was

completed by having two teachers complete the survey and then complete an interview whereby

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 14

they answered questions about the survey related to item clarity, variation, ease of completion,

and mutual intelligibility.

Teacher Efficacy. Teachers’ sense of teaching efficacy, or their confidence in their ability

to teach effectively, was assessed using 8 items selected from a 12 item scale developed by

Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk Hoy (2001; Ohio State Teacher Efficacy Scale-OSTES: Short 

Form). The original OSTES: Short Form was a 12 item scale; however, our research team

removed the four items associated with the instruments’ classroom management subscale as this

subscale was not a focus of the study. The remaining items assessed teachers’ efficacy in student

engagement (4 items) and efficacy in instructional strategies (4 items). They were scored on a 9

point Likert-type scale with responses ranging from 1 (Nothing) to 9 (A Great Deal). The items

asked teachers to rate their confidence in their ability to effectively teach students with items

such as, “How much can you do to get students to believe they can do well in school?” Internal

consistency reliability (coefficient alpha) for the instructional and engagement efficacy subscales

was .73 and .76 respectively. The teacher efficacy composite (combining both subscales) had an

overall coefficient alpha of .85.

Teacher Background. Demographic and relevant background information was obtained

from the participating teachers using items that were selected or adapted from the NAEP’s

Teacher Background Questionnaire (White, 1994). The selected items asked teachers to identify

their ethnic background, years of teaching experience, highest academic degree held, any

specialized training they have completed in either undergraduate or post-graduate studies, the

type(s) of teaching credentials/certificates held, type of classroom organization they teach

(number of students per class), and the amount of time that they spend focusing on

reading/language arts during instruction. They were also asked to identify any instructional

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 15

practices they used (from a list of 15 potential reading instructional practices) if they taught

reading/language arts.

Results

 Item Analysis: Development of the Final Scales

Various analyses were conducted in an attempt to identify whether the same constructs

identified empirically in research on student motivation to read (using the MRQ) could be

empirically identified in teachers’ beliefs about student motivation to read. To this end, our

initial task was to examine how well the newly developed TBSMRQ items were functioning

across the twelve hypothesized subscales. Therefore, we conducted a series of item-analyses on

the 64 item TBSMRQ including an examination of subscale internal consistency (using

coefficient alpha), inter-item and item-total correlations, and relationships between the various

subscales.

 Internal consistency. Coefficient alpha was computed for each of the twelve hypothesized

subscales on the TBSMRQ. Reliability coefficients for each of the subscales can be found in the

left half of Table 1. The most reliable scales included the self-efficacy, competition, importance,

grades, and autonomy subscales, all of which had alpha coefficients greater than .77. The internal

consistency coefficients for the remaining subscales were not as strong, indicating that there

were some items that did not cohere with one another on each of the remaining subscales. Item-

total correlations were subsequently investigated to identify these potentially problematic items.

 Item-total correlations. After closer examination of the item-total correlations for

items on each individual subscale, it was clear that most items were moderately to highly

correlated with their respective subscale’s total score. It was common to find that one or two

items on each subscale were the primary cause of the relatively low subscale internal consistency

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 16

found in our previous analysis. Any item that had an item-total correlation below the

conventionally acceptable level (r < .30) was considered for removal from the revised scales.

This process resulted in the identification of 12 items with low item-total correlations, including

items from the social (3 items), compliance (1 item), grades (1 item), curiosity (2 items),

involvement (2 items), challenge (2 items), and autonomy (1 item) subscales. In addition, this

analysis revealed that there were more significant problems with the recognition and avoidance

subscales, which were removed from subsequent analyses. While disappointing, the difficulties

with these subscales were not completely surprising, given that previous research has shown

these subscales are often among the least reliable on the student version of the MRQ (Wigfield &

Guthrie, 1997).

Following the removal of items with low item-total correlations, the alpha coefficients for

each revised subscale increased significantly. Internal consistency coefficients for the revised

subscales ranged from .79 to .91 and the overall internal consistency of the TBSMRQ increased

from .90 to .94. A listing of the internal consistency coefficients for the revised scales can be

found in the right half of Table 1.

 Examination of content validity. To guard against the elimination of items that might

compromise the content validity of the instrument, our research group convened periodically

throughout the revision process to discuss the implications of suggested revisions. This process

helped to guard against the strictly statistical decision to remove items that are theoretically

important to the construct being assessed. In fact, these discussions resulted in the retention of 5

items that would have been removed if the decision were based solely on their statistical

significance to their respective subscale. This included the retention of items which had low

item-total correlations on the grades (1 item), self-efficacy (2 items), curiosity (1 item), and

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 17

competition (1 item) subscales. The internal consistency coefficients reported in Table 1 reflect

the revised subscales including these retained items. Sample items from each subscale on the

revised 41-item TBSMRQ can be found in the Appendix.

Correlations of the motivation scales. Correlations between the subscales on the

TBSMRQ were examined to see if their relationships were similar to those found in research on

the student MRQ. Correlations between all of the motivation scales are presented in Table 2. In

particular, the relationships between subscales hypothesized to represent intrinsic motivational

variables and those hypothesized to represent extrinsic motivational variables were important to

examine. Using the works of Wigfield and Guthrie (Guthrie, et al., 1999; Wang and Guthrie,

2004; Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997) as a guide, we determined that the grades and competition

subscales represented extrinsic constructs and the efficacy, challenge, curiosity, involvement,

and autonomy subscales represented intrinsic constructs. An examination of Table 2 reveals that

the grades and competition subscales were significantly correlated with one another (r = .48, p <

.01). All of the subscales from the intrinsic composite were moderately to highly correlated, with

the correlation coefficients ranging from .60 to .82 ( p < .01). As expected, no significant

correlations existed between subscales from the extrinsic and intrinsic composites, providing

discriminant validity evidence for the intrinsic and extrinsic composites used in subsequent

analyses.

Subscales not included in either the intrinsic or extrinsic groups were also significantly

correlated with most of the other scales on the TBSMRQ. The social scale correlated

significantly with all of the subscales (r = .28 to .65, p < .01) except for the competition scale (r  

= .16, N.S.). The compliance subscale was significantly correlated with both the competition (r =

.34, p < .01) and grades (r = .45, p < .01) subscales which was expected given that it is

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 18

considered to be a somewhat extrinsic indicator of motivation. In addition, the importance

subscale, which is viewed to be somewhat intrinsic, was moderately to highly correlated with all

of the intrinsic subscales with correlation coefficients ranging from .57 to .81 ( p < .01). On the

other hand, the involvement subscale, which is a component of the intrinsic composite, was not

significantly correlated with competition and grades. These results provide preliminary evidence

to support the construct validity of the various subscales measured on the TBSMRQ.

Teachers’ Beliefs Regarding Student Motivation to Read 

We computed means and standard deviations for the motivation scales on the TBSMRQ

to get a preliminary picture of what teachers believed about the importance of fostering various

aspects of student motivation to read. These descriptive statistics are presented in Table 4.

Overall, the self-efficacy (M=6.59), challenge (M=6.38), and importance (M=6.38) subscales

received the highest mean ratings by the teachers. These results indicated that the teachers

believed it was most important to foster students’ reading motivation by creating an environment

where students feel they can succeed, by using materials that challenge their reading skills, and

by establishing the importance of becoming a good reader. On the other hand, the teachers’

lowest mean ratings were on the competition (M=2.57), grades (M=3.85), and compliance

(M=4.53) subscales. These results indicated that the teachers believed it was least important to

foster student motivation by creating competitive environments, by using grades, and by utilizing

students’ feelings that they need to comply with the orders given by authority figures. Overall,

the teachers tended to rate the relatively intrinsic motivational scales the highest and the

relatively extrinsic motivational scales the lowest.

Following our examination of subscale means for all of the teachers surveyed we

conducted a series of analyses to examine whether there were significant differences in their

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 19

beliefs across meaningful subgroups of teachers. These analyses showed no significant

differences in teachers’ beliefs about student motivation for reading across 1) years of teaching

experience, 2) role in teaching language arts, and 3) teachers with high vs. low teaching self-

efficacy.

 Examining the Relationship between the TBSMRQ and Teachers’ Self-Efficacy

The correlations of the TBSMRQ subscales to the teacher efficacy subscales

(instructional efficacy and engagement efficacy) are located at the bottom of Table 2. Both of the

teacher efficacy subscales correlated significantly with the social, involvement, autonomy,

curiosity, and challenge subscales of the TBSMRQ. All of these subscales, except social, were

included in the intrinsic motivation composite. Perhaps more compelling is the finding that

neither of the teacher efficacy subscales correlated significantly with the extrinsically oriented

subscales of the TBSMRQ (competition and grades).

To follow-up on these initial findings, we subsequently examined the relationships

between the two scales of teacher efficacy (instructional and engagement efficacy) with the

intrinsic composite (comprised of the efficacy, challenge, curiosity, involvement, and autonomy

subscales of the TBSMRQ). The results of this analysis are presented in Table 3. Similar to the

results of the previous analyses, both of the teacher efficacy subscales (instructional efficacy and

engagement efficacy) were positively correlated with the intrinsic composite of the TBSMRQ (r  

= .37 and .41, p < .01, respectively). Again, neither of the teacher efficacy subscales correlated

significantly with the extrinsic composite of the TBSMRQ.

Discussion 

 Development of the TBSMRQ

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 20

An important result of this study is the finding that teachers’ beliefs about student

motivation to read can be reliably measured across a range of motivational constructs. Following

revision of the TBSMRQ, ten of the twelve subscales revealed good to excellent internal

consistency, with the exception of the Avoidance and Recognition subscales. Most importantly,

the ten adequately functioning subscales captured teachers’ beliefs regarding aspects of 

motivation that have been identified in previous research to relate to key aspects of students’

reading development, such as reading amount and reading comprehension growth (Wigfield &

Guthrie, 1997; Guthrie, Hoa, Wigfield, Tonks, Humenick, & Littles, 2007). Additionally, the

adequately functioning subscales included all of the motivational constructs in the intrinsic

(efficacy, challenge, curiosity, involvement, and autonomy support) and extrinsic (grades and

competition) composites which were the primary focus of our subsequent examinations of the

relationship between teachers’ motivational beliefs and their teaching self-efficacy.

The low internal consistency of the Avoidance and Recognition subscales was not

surprising given that they have been among the least reliable subscales in several studies on the

student MRQ (Baker & Wigfield, 1999, Guthrie et al., 2007; Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997).

However, we believe that understanding teachers’ beliefs about students’ avoidance behaviors

has potentially important implications for classroom practice; therefore, we have decided to re-

examine the Avoidance construct in future versions of the TBSMRQ. As Baker & Wigfield

(1999) suggest, it is possible that the Avoidance construct manifests itself within multiple aspects

of motivation, which might explain the difficulty in measuring it as a unified construct. For

example, it may be that students avoid reading due to low self-efficacy, lack of interest, and/or

fear of competition.

Teachers’ Beliefs about Student Motivation to Read 

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 21

Our inquiry affirmed the existence of a clear belief among the teachers in our sample that

the development of intrinsic motives for reading warrants far greater attention than extrinsic

ones. Research conducted by Sweet and her colleagues (1998) led them to argue that teachers

hold implicit theories and beliefs about motivation for reading that align with a self-

determination perspective (Deci & Ryan, 1985) of motivation and reading achievement.

Teachers in their study believed that students tend to experience more literacy growth when they

become agents of their own literacy development. In our investigation, the belief that intrinsic

motivation can propel reading and ought to be developed in students found confirmation in the

self-reports of the teachers we surveyed. This belief was manifested in their relatively higher

rating of TBSMRQ subscales that contributed to the questionnaire’s intrinsic composite, namely,

efficacy, challenge, curiosity, involvement, and autonomy. Meanwhile, scores for subscales

composing aspects of extrinsic motivation were among the lowest ratings on the TBSMRQ:

competition, grades, and compliance. The implications of this motivational orientation for

instructional practices in classrooms of students who may not be motivated to read for intrinsic

reasons could be far-reaching.

In studies using the MRQ with elementary and middle schools (Wigfield & Guthrie,

1997; Unrau & Schlackman, 2006), students frequently reported that they view themselves

moved to read far more by extrinsic factors, such as grades, than by intrinsic ones, such as

curiosity and challenge. If teachers’ beliefs about intrinsic motivation override attention to

extrinsic motivators in their instructional programs or lead to the derision of extrinsic motives for

reading, that could have implications for student engagement in reading. Undoubtedly, the

gradual internalization of intrinsic motives for reading while providing extrinsic rewards and

support would seem to be a productive developmental path to follow and one encouraged in

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 22

studies of self-determination theory (Deci, Eghrari, & Patrick, 1994; Lepper & Henderlong,

2000).

As we have discovered, our knowledge of the relationship between teachers’ beliefs

about motivation to read and the actions they take in classrooms based on those beliefs is quite

limited. However, Guthrie (2008) has designed questionnaires to identify adolescent students’

motivation for reading and to clarify middle and high school teachers’ own efforts to motivate

their students by providing meaningful reading instruction, choice, social support, growth in self-

efficacy, and connections between personal interests and reading. Teachers in secondary schools

can use these instruments to measure their students’ levels of engagement and to clarify their

own beliefs and practices regarding reading motivation. Further development, testing, and

implementation of instruments like these could enable teachers at all grade levels to deepen their

understanding of the role that motivation for reading plays in the lives of their students and how

that motivation might be increased.

 Relationship between Teachers’ Beliefs and their Teaching Self-Efficacy

The results of our study revealed a clear relationship between teachers’ beliefs about

student motivation to read and their teaching self-efficacy. Specifically, our results indicated that

teachers whose ratings favored intrinsic approaches to fostering student motivation felt more

confident in their abilities to instruct and engage students in their classroom. This finding is

consistent with previous research which has indicated that teachers with higher levels of efficacy

use teaching techniques and strategies that are more challenging and enhance student mastery of 

cognitive and affective goals (Puchner & Taylor, 2006). Our results also indicated that there was

no relationship between teachers’ ratings on the extrinsic motivational factors and their teaching

self-efficacy. This finding is consistent with previous research which has indicated that teachers

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 23

with a low sense of teaching efficacy have an orientation toward control, taking a pessimistic

view of students’ motivation, relying on strict classroom regulations, extrinsic rewards, and

punishments to make students engage in school work (Egyed & Short, 2006; Zimmerman, 1995).

The fact that our results align with the results of previous research on teachers’ sense of self-

efficacy and their classroom practices was an important source of initial criterion-validity

evidence for our newly developed measure.

 Implications for Future Research

The development of a reliable measure of teachers’ beliefs regarding student motivation

to read is an important first step in conducting additional research examining how these beliefs

might influence important student outcomes in the area of reading. In particular, additional

research is needed to examine how the structure of teachers’ beliefs about student motivation to

read is similar to or different from the structure of student’s motivation to read. While we began

the process of addressing this issue in the current investigation, we acknowledge that studies

with larger samples of teachers are needed so that factor analysis can be used to examine this

issue more deeply. In addition, the relatively small sample of teachers in this study limited our

ability to examine potential differences in teachers’ beliefs about student motivation for reading

across potentially meaningful subgroups of teachers. Accordingly, additional research utilizing

classroom observations are necessary to explore the relationship between teachers’ self-reported

beliefs of student motivation and their actual classroom practices. This type of research would

provide crucial information needed to better understand the accuracy of teachers’ self-reported

beliefs and their connection to instructional practices and student outcomes. Finally, we hope

that continued research in these areas will inform the development of teacher preservice and

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 24

inservice programs aimed at increasing teachers’ awareness of and ability to activate student

motivation through their instruction and thus deepen reading engagement.

Our review of the literature related to teachers’ beliefs about students’ motivation for

reading and how those beliefs are enacted in the classroom confirmed our belief that little has

been done to investigate this important and rich domain. We suspect that further investigation

into teacher’s beliefs about motivation for reading holds significant promise, especially in an era

in which emphasis on direct or “scripted” reading instruction has limited teachers’ autonomy and

their support of their students’ autonomy in literacy development. This study initiated our efforts

to deepen our knowledge of teachers’ beliefs about reading motivation and how they act on those

beliefs in classrooms.

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motivation 25

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Table 1

 Internal consistency (alpha coefficients) for each subscale: Full and revised 

N (full) Alpha (full) N (revised) Alpha (revised) Increase in Alpha

social 6 .50 3 .85 .35

compliance 3 .66 2 .79 .13

importance 2 .82 2 .82 n/a

self-efficacy 4 .91 4 .91 n/a

competition 5 .88 5 .88 n/a

involvement 5 .37 3 .82 .45

autonomy 7 .78 6 .81 .03

curiosity 9 .53 7 .81 .28

grades 6 .80 5 .89 .09

challenge

avoidance*

recognition*

6

6

5

.53

.16

.32

4

6*

4*

.84

.46*

.60*

.31

.30

.28

TMRQ (total) 64 .90 41 .94 .04

 Note. The avoidance subscale’s revision involved the elimination of the reverse scoring for items 59 and 60 but

did not include the elimination of any items; * signifies that the avoidance and recognition subscales were

dropped from all other correlational analyses due to low reliability (thus they are not included in the TBSMRQ

total for the revised scale numbers); n/a signifies not applicable.

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Teachers’ Beliefs about Reading Motiv

Table 2

Correlations between TMRQ motivation scales

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1. Social -

2. Compliance .28** -

3. Importance .63** .28* -

4. Efficacy .61** .26* .81** -

5. Competition .16 .34** .07 -.04 -

6. Involvement .65** .15 .57** .62** .05 -

7. Autonomy .63** .22* .66** .74** -.03 .82** -

8. Curiosity .55** .12 .64** .70** -.05 .74** .75** -

9. Grades .31** .45** .23* .15 .48** .11 .16 .14 -

10. Challenge .61** .33** .71** .77** .01 .72** .79** .70** .19 -

11. TE-Instructional .29** .11 .33** .31* -.11 .34** .34** .27* .09 .40** -

12. TE- Engagement .25* .09 .21 .27 -.17 .42** .43** .28* .13 .39** .7

* p < .05, two-tailed. ** p < .01, two-tailed.

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Table 3

Correlations between the intrinsic and extrinsic composites

of the TBSMRQ and the teacher efficacy (TE) subscales

1 2 3 4

1. Intrinsic --

2. Extrinsic .09 --

3. Instruction TE .37** -.01 --

4. Engage TE .41** -.02 .75** --

______________________________________________

** p < .01, two-tailed

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Table 4

 Means and Standard Deviations for Teachers’ Beliefs on the TBSMRQ Subscales

N Mean

Standard

Deviation

social 86 6.18 1.03

compliance 86 4.53 1.53

importance 76 6.38 .92

self-efficacy 86 6.59 .81

competition 86 2.57 1.44

involvement 86 6.24 .95

autonomy 86 6.20 .86

curiosity 86 5.98 .83

grades 86 3.85 1.44

challenge 86 6.38 .87

TBSMRQ total 86 5.39 .72

 Note. Teachers’ mean ratings across subscales are based on a scale from 1-7 with a rating of 1 indicating the aspect

of student motivation as less important and a rating of 7 indicating the aspect of motivation as very important.

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Teachers’ Beliefs About Reading Motivation 33

Appendix

Items from the TBSMRQ (41-Item Revised Scale)

 Note. Items were randomized on the instrument that was administered to teachers

Self-Efficacy

1.  I believe it is important for students to feel that they can improve as readers while they

are in my class.

2.  I believe it is important for students to feel that they can learn from reading in class.

3.  I believe it is important that students see themselves as a good reader.

4. 

I believe it is important for students to feel that they can succeed in reading in the

classroom.

Challenge

1.  I believe it is important for students to have access to readings that challenge them at

their level.

2.  I believe it is important to give students questions about their reading that make them

think.

3.  I believe students will read more difficult material when it is interesting to them.

4.  I believe it is important to give students opportunities to learn difficult things through

reading.

Curiosity

1.  I believe it is important for students to read new information about topics that interest

them.

2.  I believe it is important to verbally encourage students to find out what interests them.

3.  I believe it is important for students to read about new things that interest them.

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Teachers’ Beliefs About Reading Motivation 34

4.  I believe it is important for students to be so interested in what they are reading that they

lose track of time.

5.  I believe it is important for students to read about a wide variety of topics.

6.  When I don’t know students’ interests, I believe it is important to choose readings on

topics that will arouse their interests.

7.  When I see that a student has an interest in a topic, I believe it is important to give that

student readings that are centrally related to that topic.

Involvement

1. 

I believe it is important to select readings that are likely to draw students into a story’s

narrative.

2.  I believe it is important to encourage students to enter the world that the author has

created.

3.  I believe it is important to encourage students to make pictures in their minds when they

read.

Grades

1.  I believe it is important that students read to improve their grades compared to other

reasons for reading.

2.  I believe it is important that students look forward to finding out their reading grades.

3.  I believe it is important that students think that grades are a good way of finding out how

they are doing in reading.

4.  I believe it is important that students’ parents ask about their reading grades.

5.  I believe grading is an important way to foster reading development for students.

Competition

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Teachers’ Beliefs About Reading Motivation 35

1.  I believe that it is important for students to enjoy being the only one who knows an

answer in something they read.

2.  I believe that it is important for students to strive to get more answers right than their

friends.

3.  I believe that it is important for students to like finishing their reading before other

students in the class.

4.  I believe that it is important that students are driven to work hard in order to get better at

reading than their friends.

5. 

I believe that it is important to use competitive activities to promote reading growth.

Social

1.  I believe it is important that students read to their brother(s) or sister(s).

2.  I believe it is important that students tell their family about what they are reading.

3.  I believe it is important that students visit the library often with their family.

Compliance

1.  I believe it is important that students try to finish their reading on time.

2.  I believe it is important that students value finishing every reading assignment.

Importance

1.  I believe it is necessary for students to think it is important to be good readers.

2.  I believe it is necessary for students to view reading as one of the most important activity

that they do.

Autonomy Support

1.  I believe it is important to ask students what they want to read.

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Teachers’ Beliefs About Reading Motivation 36

2.  I believe it is important to acknowledge students’ perspective even though it may differ

from the teacher’s perspective.

3.  I believe it is important to provide time for students to read independently.

4.  I believe it is important to explain to students why a strategy being taught to them will be

useful.

5.  I believe it is important to explain to students why they are reading a particular book.

6.  I believe it is important to encourage students to generate questions rather than answer

the teacher’s questions.