The effect of tutoring and metacognition on 5th- and 6th-grade students' reading strategies, reading comprehension, and attitude toward reading

Although the direct instruction of cognitive and metacognitive strategies in reading has been found effective in improving students' cognition and affect, there are virtually no studies that attempt to study how, and in what situations, students might construct knowledge of reading strategies and their use. The purpose of this study was to systematically observe middle school tutors' use of reading strategies while tutoring primary students and compare the strategies that tutors, with and without metacognitive guidance, used. It was further designed to assess the impact that tutoring and knowledge about reading as a problem-solving activity had on 5th and 6th-grade tutors' strategy knowledge and use, reading comprehension, and attitude. Sixty-two elementary students participated over 11-weeks, 43 students as tutors and 19 as nontutors. To examine both tutoring and metacognitive effects, half of the tutors were guided in reading as a problem solving activity (+RPS tutors), while others tutored with no guidance (-RPS). A third group of students were guided in RPS but did not tutor (RPS only). It was hypothesized that +RPS tutors would make greater gains than -RPS tutors, and tutors would make greater gains than would nontutors. Students were pre- and posttested on experimental measures of reading strategy knowledge and use, reading comprehension, and attitude towards reading and tutoring. Thirty-three tutoring sessions were systematically observed during which the strategy use of seven +RPS tutors and eight -RPS tutors were recorded.;Tutors were observed to implement an array of strategies. The two brief metacognitive sessions on thinking about reading as problem solving appeared to have an impact on students' tutoring; +RPS tutors used significantly more decoding strategies while tutoring than their -RPS counterparts. However, +RPS tutors did not, generally, maintain the greater strategy use when resolving problems to their own reading. One global reading strategy significantly differentiated the three conditions, and all tutors performed marginally better than nontutors on a measure of reading comprehension. Overall, attitude towards reading scores decreased significantly over time and across conditions. However, tutoring may have a protective effect on students' attitude; both tutor conditions maintained significantly better attitudes than did nontutors.