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Article Excerpt
Abstract
This study examined fourth and sixth graders' active and passive beliefs about reading with the use of a Reading Beliefs Inventory. The participants' beliefs were analyzed in relation to grade level, gender, and scores on the Degrees of Reading Power test, which was used to calculate reading comprehension levels. Data analysis indicated that high reading comprehension students had statistically lower scores on passive beliefs than the average and low reading comprehension students.
Introduction
During the last few decades, beliefs have become significant and legitimate constructs of inquiry in the fields of education and psychology (for reviews see Garner & Alexander, 1994; Hofer & Pintrich, 2002; Pajares, 1992). As a result there have been quite a few studies on teachers' and students' beliefs. These studies included, but were not limited to, teachers' beliefs about their teaching practices (Commeyras, 2002; Fresch, 2003; Hallam & Ireson, 2003; Hofer, 2002) and students' beliefs about knowledge (Burr & Hofer, 2002) and science learning (Qian & Alvermann, 2000), as well as about what motivates students to read (Cole, 2002/3) and become engaged readers (Homer & Shwery, 2002). Research in the field of reading, in particular, has provided a significant contribution to understanding the relationship between beliefs and practices (for a review see Johnson, 1992). Research on teachers' beliefs about their reading instruction (Datnow & Castellano, 2000; Hall, 2005) and their theoretical beliefs about literacy (Poulson, Avramidis, Fox, Medwell, & Wray, 2001), as well as research on readers' beliefs about reading (Kamhi-Stein, 2003) and about the texts they read (Garner & Alexander, 1994), have demonstrated the profound influence of belief on reading behavior and performance.
While recent reports about reading acknowledge that a reader's comprehension is enhanced when prior knowledge is used (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000; RAND Reading Study Group [RRSG], 2002), they have not fully recognized the role that readers' beliefs play as a significant aspect of the prior knowledge they bring to text. It is important, however, to examine the role of readers' beliefs about reading and how these beliefs might be related to reading comprehension of students of different grade levels. Given that reading comprehension is central not only to school success but also to competing in the job market, teachers need to learn more about the factors that could be related to their students' prior knowledge and reading comprehension levels.
Theoretical Framework
Straw and Sadowy (1990) argued that nineteenth and early twentieth century scholars in the field of reading moved from a notion of reading as an act of transmission, where the author was the only source and locus of meaning, to a translation notion, where meaning was thought to reside within the structure and style of the text. Whether reading was conceptualized as an act of transmission or translation, the readers' role in the construction of meaning was quite passive. Under that role, it was assumed that there was only one correct meaning that was understood either by memorizing and reciting the author's writings (transmission) or by translating the text's structural features into information without any interpretation (translation). Later, during the second half of the twentieth century, reading scholars viewed reading as a more active process, moving from interaction to transaction notions. When reading was viewed as an interaction, meaning was assumed to reside in the text and could only be understood if the readers had enough world and linguistic knowledge to help them interact with the author through the structure of the text. When, during the last two to three decades, reading was viewed as a transaction it was assumed that meaning was neither present in the text...
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