Metacognition and journaling in process reading: Their relationship to reading comprehension, and motivation to read

The purpose of this study was to investigate relationships between metacognitive skills occurring during journaling in process reading and reading comprehension and the motivation to read. The researcher investigated metacognitive skills developed through journaling (measured by rubrics to score journals) and correlated them with standardized measures of comprehension (Gates MacGinitie Comprehension Test) and motivation to read (The Elementary Reading Attitude Study).;Two fifth grade elementary classrooms participated in this study from February, 1996 to May, 1996. A small town elementary school, with a total population of 702 students in grades kindergarten through sixth, was used as the source of subjects. Two intact classrooms of children were studied in one school building so that the method of instruction was as uniform as possible within the framework of one study.;Descriptive statistics were presented and t tests of correlated samples were conducted to determine if there were any significant differences between pre test and post test scores of both the reading comprehension and reading motivation tests. Time series (secular trend) analysis was conducted on the mean performances of metacognition evaluations using the scoring rubric. Partial correlation coefficients between metacognition, comprehension, and the motivation to read were calculated to determine if there were any statistically significant relationships between any two reading variables, holding the third constant, within each weekly evaluation period.;Reading comprehension was found to increase over the twelve week study when process reading was used as the method of teaching reading and a consistent pattern was found between reading comprehension and metacognition.;Using a pre test and post test model, the researcher tested the sample group in the areas of reading comprehension and reading motivation before and after a twelve week study in which the sample population was instructed in the process reading approach to reading instruction. Twelve journaling questions were scored weekly using a rubric created by the researcher to evaluate metacognitive responses.