Do Supplemental Remedial Reading Programs Address the Motivational Issues of Struggling Readers? An Analysis of Five Popular Programs

Abstract

Five popular, but distinctly different, remedial reading programs were reviewed regarding the potential to motivate children to read. It is argued that current remedial reading program designs and research on program effectiveness ignore the impact that motivation has on struggling readers. In addition, we develop a theory of reading motivation specific to struggling readers that highlights motivational constructs we feel are important to the improvement of reading skill for this population of students. The three aspects of reading motivation most relevant to the instruction of remedial readers include: (a) improving reading self-efficacy; (b) making internal and controllable outcome attributions for successes and failures associated with reading; and (c) establishing personally relevant value in becoming a better reader. We conclude that, while most programs address some motivational issues and other issues not at all, most programs could make minor modifications that would greatly enhance their motivational impact.

According to the latest NAEP statistics, 36% of 4th grade students in the United States are performing at a “below basic” reading level, indicating that they have not demonstrated partial mastery of prerequisite knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient grade-level work (NAEP, 2002). Many students struggling to learn how to read are placed into remedial reading programs designed to accelerate their reading progress so that they can catch up with grade level peers. Remedial reading programs can take many different forms, but perhaps the most popular form is the supplemental remedial program that gives students added reading instruction above and beyond the children’s regular language arts program.

The importance of closing the gap between struggling readers and their grade level peers as early as possible is best illustrated by the well-known Matthew effects in reading (Stanovich, 1986), which is the finding that the gap widens between good and poor readers as struggling readers avoid reading while skilled readers seek out additional opportunities to read. As good readers continue to gain reading skills through extra practice, the poor readers’ skills remain stagnant because they avoid engagement in reading tasks. Studies have suggested that good readers read approximately 5 times as many minutes per day as average readers and nearly 200 times as much as poor readers (Anderson, Wilson, & Fielding, 1988). Thus, the issue of accelerating the development of struggling readers needs to include a motivational component of reading engagement, as it is this component that will allow children to maintain and possibly increase gains in skills that result from participation in a supplemental remedial reading program.

Most of the literature on reading motivation has a general focus that discusses motivational characteristics and contexts relevant to the general population of readers (see Gambrell, 1996; Wigfield, 1997); however, the current discussion is based on the assumption that struggling readers have some common issues that are somewhat different from the general population of readers. Current theories on reading motivation that focus on the general population of normally developing readers emphasize features of reading programs that include book choice tailored to individual interests, student discussions centered around recently read material, and providing appealing, comfortable reading areas (Gambrell, 1996). These are all important features of a motivating reading program and must not be ignored; however, remedial readers who have not mastered basic reading skills and who have experienced repeated failures in reading may need more to become motivated, self-regulated readers willing to read independently outside of school. Merely having interesting books available, an appealing place to read, and discussions around reading may not be enough for struggling readers who probably cannot read such books or participate in these discussions.

Through an examination of the literature on reading motivation, achievement motivation, and remedial reading programs, we will attempt to outline the most important motivational constructs to struggling readers and examine how well five selected remedial reading programs address these issues. The five programs on which this paper will focus include: DISTAR (Englemann & Bruner, 1984), PHAST (Lovett, Lacerenza, & Borden, 2000), Early Steps (Morris, Shaw, & Permey, 1990), Reading Recovery (Clay, 1979), and the Reading Apprenticeship program (Knapp, 1998). After a brief description of each program, we will examine motivational issues that teachers of struggling readers must address, and we will evaluate how well each of the programs addresses them.

The selection of these particular programs was based on three main criteria. First, all of these programs are designed to accelerate reading development for struggling readers by supplementing more holistic classroom language arts programs. Second, each program selected has at least a modest research base supporting the rationale for program design and evaluating program effectiveness. Finally, because this review is an attempt at identifying motivational characteristics inherent in remedial reading programs, it was necessary to select programs that are representative of a wide range of underlying philosophies regarding how children develop into proficient readers. After looking across various programs, it seems to us that the programs included in the current analysis can be distinguished along four dimensions, which can be found in Figure 1: (a) emphasis on explicit phonics versus embedded phonics instruction; (b) group versus one-on-one instruction; (c) the use of highly regulated, decodable text versus free text choice; (d) one-size-fits-all versus individualized instruction centered around individual child’s reading needs. We believe that it is likely that program choices along these dimensions may have implications, not only for their effectiveness, but for children’s reading motivation as well. Our goal in choosing these programs is not to conduct a detailed analysis of their effectiveness in enhancing reading skill, but to discuss how program choices may have implications for reading motivation. We will also discuss what modifications in programs might be needed to enhance reading motivation.

Figure 1.

Distinguishing Dimensions of Selected Remedial Reading Programs

DISTAR

DISTAR reading lessons are derived from the basic principles of the Direct Instruction (DI) Model. The DI Model has three basic underlying assumptions: 1) all children can be taught; 2) compensatory education programs need to focus on the development of basic skills and their application in higher order skills; 3) disadvantaged students need to be taught at an accelerated rate in order for them to catch up with their peers (Englemann, Becker, Carnine, & Gersten, 1988). Student time on task is maximized through the use of explicitly scripted daily lessons where the teacher follows a step-by-step procedure, correcting students when they deviate from the script in any way.

DISTAR reading’s focus on the mastery of basic skills implies a bottom-up philosophy toward early reading development. Letter-sound correspondences are taught in a carefully sequenced hierarchy designed to reduce confusion and build toward more difficult sound blends and eventual whole word reading. The program also uses controlled vocabulary readers that put the sounds and words that the students have mastered into a story-like structure. The text is highly controlled and instruction is done in small groups. The same program is employed for all children in the group.

Many studies have been conducted over the past three decades testifying to the effectiveness of the DI model for reading achievement (Lloyd, Cullinan, Heins, & Epstein, 1980; O’Connor, Jenkins, Cole, & Mills, 1993; Sexton, 1989; Traweek & Berninger, 1997). Other studies have not found such achievement gains (Kuder, 1990; Ogletree, 1977; Serwer, Shapiro, & Shapiro, 1973), and still others have found more isolated benefits on specific reading subscales (Kuder, 1990). We have found no research, however, examining the reading motivational effectiveness of this program.

PHAST

The PHAST (Lovett, Lacerenza, & Borden, 2000; Lovett, Lacerenza, Borden, Frijters, Steinbeck, & DePalma, 2000) program is a combination of the Word Identification Strategy Training (WIST) and the Phonological Analysis and Blending/Direct Instruction (PHAB/DI). The PHAB/DI portion of the PHAST program uses selected sections of the Reading Mastery Fast Cycle I/II Program (Englemann & Bruner, 1988) and employs direct instruction techniques for delivering this portion of the material to the students. The program takes a strictly bottom-up approach to reading instruction, where the students are taught individual letter sounds and then taught to blend these sounds in a left to right sequence. The training also consists of some rhyming where students use word rimes (e.g., an) to practice initial stop consonants (e.g., m and f) through building rhyming words.

The WIST portion of the PHAST program instructs children on the use and monitoring of four different word attack strategies. Each strategy is taught and practiced individually with the goal of teaching readers to use what they already know to decode unfamiliar words that they encounter. The four strategies taught are a) using analogies of familiar words to figure out similar but unfamiliar words (rhyming words), b) breaking words into parts and looking for familiar word parts, c) attempting the different vowel pronunciations within a word, and d) “peeling-off” prefixes and suffixes at the beginnings and endings of words.

Instruction each day is a combination of teaching requisite skills for strategy application, as well as monitoring, and techniques for strategy choice decisions. The combined approach uses the PHAB/DI program as a foundation and introduces the four decoding strategies periodically allowing time for practice in strategy application, strategy selection, and self-monitoring skills along with continued work from Reading Mastery Fast Cycle I/I (Englemann & Bruner, 1988). Like DISTAR, instruction is carried out in small groups using highly regulated texts. All children are instructed similarly. Lovett, Lacerenza, Borden and Frijters, et al. (2000) found that participants in the PHAST program increased their phonological decoding skills by 1–1.5 SD’s on standardized measures and that this increase in phonological decoding skill generalized to gains in non-word reading, word identification, and passage reading skill measures. We know of no research that has studied the motivational features of this program.

Early Steps

Early Steps (Morris, Shaw, & Perney, 1990) borrows many of its ideas from the Reading Recovery Program. Early Steps is designed to take a balanced approach at remedial reading instruction combining many of the authentic reading and writing activities used in Reading Recovery with explicit phonics instruction through the use of systematic word study. The position of the program is that systematic word study should enhance the likelihood that high-risk struggling readers can make significant progress toward catching up with their grade level peers. The Early Steps program devotes 15–20 minutes of each 30-minute one-on-one session reading leveled texts at or slightly above the student’s independent reading level. The program also includes instruction in metacognitive knowledge and strategies for reading and writing. The Early Steps program devotes another 5–6 minutes each day on word study lessons where systematic usage of decoding strategies is emphasized and another 5–8 minutes writing where the students are encouraged to apply strategies and skills from the word study portion of the lesson to their writing. Instruction is carried out one-on-one and is tailored to the reading needs of the child. Children are allowed to select from a variety of decodable texts at their current reading level.

Studies conducted on the Early Steps program by Santa and Hoien (1999) and Morris, Tyner, and Perney (2000) found compelling evidence of accelerated reading growth in a diverse spectrum of struggling readers including the significant improvement of participant’s spelling, sight word, and passage reading when compared with a control group. Unfortunately, neither of the studies assessed motivational effects resulting from program participation.

Reading Recovery

Reading Recovery (Clay, 1979) is a program designed for early identification and intervention with students who continue struggling with reading following one full year of formal reading instruction. The instructional program is designed to meet students’ individual needs and is implemented in one-on-one settings with a highly trained Reading Recovery (RR) teacher (Pinnell, 1989). Each student receives 30 minutes of instruction each day in addition to his or her regular language arts instruction. Although there is not one uniform program for all children, the daily lessons are designed within a general framework (Center, Wheldall, Freeman, Outhred, & McNaught, 1995). Each day begins with the child rereading familiar leveled trade books written specifically for the program. Next, the student reads a book that was introduced the day before as the teacher takes a running record of the strategies the student is using while reading. Then the student writes a short response to the story or some other topic of interest and reads their response to the teacher. The teacher uses this written piece to teach specific sounds and letters. Finally, the child reads a new book.

Regardless of methodological issues that have brought criticisms of some of the claims made by the program’s developers (Hiebert, 1994; Rasinski, 1995; Shanahan & Barr, 1995) it is difficult to argue that the program does not have at least moderate success at remediating reading difficulties for its participants. Even many critical reviews of the program acknowledge that it does have a positive effect on the overall reading development of many of its participants (Center, et al., 1995; Shanahan & Barr, 1995). However, despite the large number of studies that have been conducted on the Reading Recovery program, none has systematically examined motivational effects of program participation.

Reading Apprenticeship

The Reading Apprenticeship program (Knapp & Winsor, 1998) takes an explicitly Vygotskian approach in working with delayed readers through supported practice reading authentic texts with a mentor that is a skilled reader. The program was included in this analysis of remedial programs because it eschews the explicit emphasis on decoding skills and leveled or decodable texts common to the other programs. The program pairs one moderately trained tutor with one struggling reader. The program is structured rather flexibly and only requires four criteria be met within each 30-minute session (Knapp & Winsor, 1998). First, the novice and skilled partner must be jointly engaged in an authentic and personally chosen (by the novice) reading task. Also, the task that is chosen needs to involve both partners in alternating opportunities to read and comment on what is read so that the thinking of each partner is made audible and explicit. Third, the skilled reading partner needs to adjust scaffolding levels to ensure that the novice does not become frustrated, but also allows the novice to participate at a level that encourages development of strategic and skilled reading. Finally, the partners need to take turns so that the skilled partner is given ample opportunities to model reading attitudes, skills, and strategies for the novice and keeps the task moving along at a reasonable pace.

Three studies conducted on the program (Knapp, 1998; Knapp, 2000; Knapp & Winsor, 1998) have produced rather consistent results. In each study participants showed modest gains in reading skill, as measured by the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement (KTEA), and more significant gains in attitude toward reading, as measured by both teacher reports and scores on the Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERAS) compared with control children. The gains in skill and attitude were not accompanied by increases in reported strategy usage for decoding difficult words (Knapp, 1998). The change in participants’ attitudes toward reading suggests a motivational benefit from program participation.

Motivational Constructs for Struggling Readers

Enhancing motivation to read is important for several reasons: First, children who are motivated to read are more likely to spend more time reading, which has been directly linked to improved reading achievement (Taylor, Frye, & Marigamu, 1990). Second, scales of reading motivation account for approximately 10% of the variance in reading performance measures (Wigfield, Wilde, Baker, Fernandez-Fein, & Scher, 1996). Thus, improvement in reading motivation in children who are having difficulty learning to read seems important in mediating the predictable cycle of frustration, failure, and avoidance that is typical amongst young struggling readers (Chapman & Tunmer, 2003).

The current discussion focuses on three motivational constructs that we view as most important to the sustained improvement of overall reading achievement level for struggling readers enrolled in supplementary remedial reading programs. These three key motivational constructs include: Reading Efficacy, Outcome Attributions, and Task Value. It is important to note that all of these motivational constructs are related to one another. Any fluctuations in one component will likely impact motivational effects in others. In addition, we will examine how well the five remedial reading programs previously discussed address these issues and we will make suggestions as to how these programs could improve their motivational approach.

Reading Efficacy

Domain specific derivatives of Bandura’s (1977) self-efficacy construct, reading efficacy and reading challenge are defined as a person’s beliefs regarding their ability to accomplish tasks within the domain of reading and the satisfaction of mastering complex ideas in challenging texts. Reading efficacy and reading challenge are determinants of a student’s activity choice, willingness to expend effort, and persistence within reading (Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997).

Even as early as kindergarten, students have domain specific ability beliefs (Marsh, Craven, & Debus, 1991). Although these early beliefs may or may not apply specifically to reading, the early emphasis on learning to read in school and at home would surely focus these beliefs on reading by the end of the 1st grade. The fact that students develop domain specific ability beliefs in their early elementary years makes early experiences with reading critical to the development of healthy reading efficacy beliefs. Unfortunately, most of the students involved in early remedial reading interventions have already suffered through at least a year of repeated reading failure.

Studies have shown that people who have low efficacy for a given task are more likely to avoid engagement in that task (Baker & Wigfield, 1999; Schunk, 1991). As noted at the outset, the choice of either engaging or avoiding reading activity has an impact on students’ overall reading achievement. If a remedial reading program is to interrupt this cycle it needs to improve each student’s reading skill. When made explicit to the student, the realization of increased skill should increase efficacy for future reading tasks. This realization by the student that one is becoming a better reader could begin a positive motivational cycle where increases in reading efficacy would lead to increases in reading activity and the reading of more difficult material, which would further develop reading skill. Schunk (1991) gives a good conceptualization of what is meant by the cyclical nature of motivation and achievement.

As they (students) work at the task, they engage in activities they believe will lead to goal attainment: attend to instruction, rehearse information to be remembered, expend effort, and persist. Self-efficacy is substantiated as learners observe goal progress, which conveys they are becoming skillful… Heightened self-efficacy sustains motivation and improves skill development (p. 213).

Remedial reading programs are able to improve reading skill through a variety of instructional methods, as is demonstrated by the range of programs reviewed here, but the most important factor in improving reading efficacy is that the program must make gains in reading skill explicit to the students so that they are able to observe progress toward personally relevant reading goals. Schunk (1991) points out those self-set goals that are proximal and specific are most likely to foster self-efficacy. These self-set, specific goals should be challenging yet attainable to maximize motivation. Perhaps the most efficient way for supplemental programs to address reading efficacy issues would be to incorporate a few minutes each day (for small group formats) or each week (for one-on-one programs) where the teacher meets with students individually to discuss progress toward self-set reading goals, including specific examples of observable increases in reading skill. These discussions would make students more aware of individual progress toward their reading goals and support a growing belief that with effort they are capable of improving.

An obvious prerequisite to the success of these individualized meetings would be that the program effectively accelerates growth in reading skill so that decided progress can be observed. Of the programs reviewed, all show evidence of at least modest growth in reading skill resulting from program participation; however, only the DISTAR, PHAST, Early Steps, and Reading Recovery programs show significant improvement in specific reading skills, which would make it easier for the students in these programs to observe such progress during weekly meetings with the teacher. For students not making observable progress, the meetings would allow the teacher and student to discuss any adjustments that could be made regarding reading goals. They might discuss possible reasons for the lack of progress and potential solutions that could lead to future progress.

Beyond the impact that increased skill can have on reading efficacy, research has demonstrated a connection between strategy instruction and increased efficacy for successfully completing various learning tasks. Teaching strategies engenders a sense of self-control in students over their learning and has been found to raise self-efficacy (Bandura, 1982). Schunk and Cox (1986) found that having learning disabled students verbalize the steps in a strategy while applying it raises motivation, efficacy, and skill. Thus, remedial reading programs that teach a variety of reading strategies give their students an assortment of options to deal with difficult situations, which increases their sense of control over the ability to read difficult texts successfully.

Although it is accomplished through a variety of methods, the PHAST, Early Steps, and Reading Recovery programs all provide explicit instruction of reading strategies to their students. The four strategies taught explicitly in the PHAST program include: a) using analogies of familiar words to figure out similar but unfamiliar words (rhyming words), b) breaking words into parts and looking for familiar word parts, c) attempting the different vowel pronunciations within a word, and d) “peeling-off” prefixes and suffixes at the beginnings and endings of words. The Early Steps program uses a variety of decoding strategies in the word study portion of the program and illustrates how these strategies can be applied during the daily reading of leveled texts. The Reading Recovery program takes an embedded approach to teaching strategies where the teacher models and encourages the student to apply different strategies during the completion of daily reading and writing tasks. Despite the fact that all of these programs use strategy instruction to improve reading skill, none of them have considered the impact this instruction might have on each participant’s reading efficacy or overall motivation to read.

Outcome Attributions

One characteristic that is commonly found amongst struggling readers is a passive response to the interactive process of reading (Johnston & Winograd, 1985). This passive response to reading tasks is the result of damaging attributions regarding past failures in the area of reading. Many struggling readers attribute successes and failures to factors that they perceive to be uncontrollable, such as ability or task difficulty, which suggests that extra effort in the future will not be of much help. Students who do not have problems with reading will often times attribute successes and failures to effort or strategy usage, which are internal and highly controllable attributions suggesting the possibility of changing their performance on future tasks.

One reason that struggling readers make maladaptive outcome attributions is that students who struggle to learn often feel incompetent, shifting their focus onto comparisons with others who are also struggling (Thorkildsen & Nicholls, 2002). For this reason, struggling readers tend to hold a performance goal orientation, where they use comparisons between their reading performance with that of their peers to show competence. This performance goal orientation creates a competitive atmosphere. Competitive tasks are more likely to induce external and uncontrollable attributions than cooperative tasks or individual tasks (Johnston & Winograd, 1985). This point is important, especially when considering small group remedial programs, like the DISTAR and PHAST programs, due to the fact that many of these programs unintentionally create environments that are competitive rather than cooperative. Programs like PHAST and DISTAR that work with students in small groups need to guard against practices that promote competition, such as public displays of individual progress and round robin readings where students are asked to read their best in front of the rest of the group. Although avoiding competition completely is most likely impossible, remedial reading teachers should try to minimize competitive feelings by creating an atmosphere that focuses on each individual and allows for cooperative work when individual attention is not possible. This could be accomplished in many ways including: replacing round robin readings with partner reading where the students are asked to work through a piece cooperatively and by using public displays of group progress rather than individual progress toward a common reading goal.

The ability to modify these self-defeating attributions becomes more difficult with age as repeated failures solidify past beliefs (Johnston & Winograd, 1985). Therefore, early reading interventions, like the Early Steps and Reading Recovery programs that are conducted in first grade present the best opportunity to modify these beliefs before they become entrenched in the participating students.

Chapman and Tunmer (2003) suggest that attribution retraining in combination with a program that provides a variety of word attack strategies can overcome these early maladaptive attributions that contribute to each student’s low reading self-efficacy. They suggest that attribution retraining should include specific feedback from the teacher aimed at breaking down the student’s self-perceptions that his or her problems are due to a lack of ability or that extra effort will not help to overcome these difficulties in the future. The teacher needs to reassure the student that he or she is capable of succeeding with adequate effort and focus the student on specific skills and strategies he or she can use to get through difficult texts. This type of attribution retraining could easily be accomplished in all of the remedial reading programs being reviewed through weekly individual teacher/student meetings where gains in skill and progress toward reading goals are discussed.

Bandura (1982) has shown that teaching strategies engenders a sense of self-control in students over their learning. If students have a wide range of strategies to choose from, they are able to attribute failures to usage of the wrong strategy. This implies that choosing a better strategy in subsequent tasks could result in improved performance. Many struggling readers are unable to attribute failure to misuse of reading strategies because they rely on one or two strategies to overcome a wide range of reading difficulties. The PHAST, Early Steps, and Reading Recovery programs use varying forms of explicit instruction (explicit instruction with isolated words, instruction within the context of book reading, and instruction through writing) designed to provide students with a variety of strategies from which to choose. Potentially, this allows the students to become flexible and self-regulated readers who work through difficult texts without giving up or avoiding reading all together. The Reading Apprenticeship program could implement attribution retraining, but currently does not do so explicitly. The program would have to train tutors on distinct reading strategies and their appropriate use so that the strategies could be taught and recognized. However, this would entail a higher level of training than the program currently uses. The DISTAR program does not provide students with a wide range of reading strategies. Instead it focuses strictly on letter/sound correspondences designed to improve the students’ decoding skill. This focus limits the DISTAR program’s ability to implement an attribution-retraining component into its existing program structure. Moreover, it would not fit well into the Direct Instruction model of teaching.

Because most programs are designed to provide instruction in reading strategies aimed at improving reading skill, they provide an ideal forum for attribution retraining. The keys to improving student outcome attributions are focusing on individual improvements in strategy usage and general reading skill, engendering a sense of self-control, de-emphasizing competition, and stressing that increased effort can lead to improved performance in the future.

Task Value

One problem that remedial reading programs fail to address is that many students participating in these programs may not have a clear understanding of the value of becoming a better reader. Such students may come from households where reading is not highly valued, or may have parents or guardians who de-emphasize the personal value of reading because they themselves are poor readers. Expectancy-value theory relates personal beliefs that one will succeed at a given task to how much the person values success at the given task (Eccles, et al., 1983). Expectancy-value theorists would argue that the extent to which a task is valued is key to explaining an individual’s choice, persistence, and performance on it (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). Because gains in reading skill are directly related to the amount of reading activity in which students choose to engage (Anderson, Wilson and Fielding, 1988), it is necessary for remedial reading programs to establish relevant reasons for students to perceive engagement in reading activity to be valuable to them.

The idea of subjective task value has been broken down by Eccles et al. (1983) to include multiple levels including interest value, attainment value, and utility value. Interest value is defined as how much an individual likes or is interested in the activity. Attainment value pertains to the importance of doing well at a given activity. Finally, utility value is the perceived usefulness of the activity. Thus, a child may be interested in music for its own sake, but may decide that it is not important to do well at the activity because there is no future use for it; therefore, one might not engage in practicing. Eccles et al. (1983) claim that a high subjective task-value in combination with a high personal expectation for success will result in activity choice and engagement in a given task.

None of the remedial reading programs being reviewed explicitly addresses the value in becoming a better reader to its participants. The Reading Recovery, Early Steps, and Reading Apprenticeship programs do address these issues implicitly by engaging students in authentic reading and writing tasks of personal interest to their participants. These activities indirectly show students that improved reading can be in their best personal interest by utilizing their improved skills to complete personally interesting and significant reading and writing tasks. The DISTAR and PHAST programs do not address the issue of task value in any way. Students in these programs only apply their improved skills in the reading of strictly controlled basal readers that hold no personally relevant significance to the students and that are of limited interest generally.

Remedial reading programs must establish the value in becoming a better reader at many levels to engender a sense of intrinsic interest in engaging in program tasks designed to improve reading skill. To achieve this, the program must establish the general importance of becoming a better reader. The most effective way of accomplishing this would be to promote all three forms of task value (attainment, interest, and utility) and show how participation in the program might be appealing to each child in a variety of ways. For example, the remedial reading teacher could periodically lead discussions on how becoming better readers will allow the students access to a wider variety of reading material that is of interest to them. By doing this, the teacher is providing evidence to the students that through participation in the program they will gain skills that will be useful (utility value) to them in pursuit of learning about a topic of personal interest (interest value). If the program is successful at fostering these beliefs, it will be more likely to summon attainment value in the tasks required by the program. This will encourage the students to reach the suggested goal of improved reading skill and lead to the availability of a wider selection of interesting reading material. Engagement in reading is more likely to occur when students not only value the activity, but also view improved skill as the key to attaining the personally relevant, self-set reading goal that they might have.

All of the programs being reviewed could establish the value in becoming a better reader rather easily. Even if time constraints only allow for 5 to 10 minutes per week devoted to establishing the value of becoming a better reader, these brief discussions may have a profound impact on student engagement in daily program activities. Short, small group or one-on-one discussions of why becoming a better reader is important could be an effective way to bring these issues to the students’ attention. In these short discussions, teachers should prompt students’ thinking with questions like: Why is reading important, what types of things would you like to read that you are not quite able to read yet, what are some things that reading can help you do inside and outside of school, how can reading help you attain a personal goal, etc. For many of the children, these discussions might be the first time that they have taken any of these issues into consideration beyond the goal of doing well in school.

Motivating Children in Supplemental Remedial Reading Programs

When these key motivational constructs are considered it is impossible to ignore the potential motivational impact that remedial reading programs may have on their participants. These effects need to be included in future research on and discussions of reading achievement gains resulting from various reading interventions. Understanding the motivational nature of specific remedial reading programs might help to explain individual differences in response to, and the robustness of effects from, each respective program. An examination of Table 1 reveals that existing remedial reading programs do not adequately address the majority of issues regarding reading motivation for their participants; however, there are many areas that could be improved upon significantly without making drastic changes in the programs. It is possible that existing remedial reading program structures already have a motivational effect; however, until these effects are taken into consideration explicitly, they will remain in the background and this will limit program effectiveness. In light of this information, characteristics of individual programs that might influence the reading motivation of its participants need to be taken into consideration.

Table 1.

The Presence of Specific Motivational Issues Related to Remedial Reading Programs

Motivational Feature	DISTAR	PHAST	Early Steps	Reading Recovery	Reading Apprent.
Reading Efficacy
Readers explicitly observe skill progress	N*	N*	N*	N*	N*
Readers gain meaningful skill	Y	Y	Y	Y	N
Students establish self-set reading goals	N*	N*	N*	N*	N*
Teacher and student explicitly monitor progress toward self-set reading goals	N*	N*	N*	N*	N*
Instruction in reading strategies and self-monitoring	N	Y	Y	Y	N
Outcome attributions
Focus is on individual learning with as little competition as possible	N	N*	Y	Y	Y
Teachers provide students with specific feedback aimed at breaking down self-defeating outcome attributions	N	N*	N*	N*	N
Teacher focuses student attention on successes attributed to improving skill and/or appropriate usage of strategies	N	N*	N*	N*	N
Emphasis on flexible usage of reading strategies	N	Y	Y	Y	Y
Task value
Interest value (book/activity choice)	N	N*	Y	Y	Y
Attainment value (personally perceived importance of doing well at the activity)	N*	N*	N*	N*	Y
Utility value (usefulness of improved reading skill)	N*	N*	Y	Y	Y

Note: “Y” indicates that the program already addresses the issue

“N” indicates that the program does not adequately address the issue

“N*” indicates that although the existing program does not address the issue, it could be easily incorporated into the existing program’s structure

An examination of Table 1 indicates that most existing remedial reading programs are likely to foster motivation in some respects. For example, nearly all the programs increase meaningful skill. Nearly all the programs emphasize the flexible use of reading strategies at least to some small extent. These features should foster reading efficacy in the students participating in the programs.

Table 1 also indicates some worrisome aspects to these programs with regards to their positioning on important elements of reading motivation. It is clear that most programs are missing key elements that might serve to promote reading motivation. For example, none help students to establish self-set reading goals or help children monitor progress towards those goals. Thus, key goal setting features are absent. None provide children with feedback to retrain self-defeating outcome attributions. None focus children on how their actions are relevant to their success. Thus, particularly with regards to providing children with corrective attribution retraining these programs are faulty. Finally, only one program works on directly enhancing children’s understanding of the importance of doing well in reading.

Table 1, however, does provide a generally optimistic picture regarding what these programs could be with some relatively minor changes in existing program structure. In nearly every respect, the PHAST, Early Steps, Reading Recovery, and Reading Apprenticeship program could be motivationally enhanced without compromising basic program philosophy or structure. Teachers could work with children on coming up with self-set reading goals, and help them monitor progress to those goals. They could provide evidence that would help children change potentially defeating attributions regarding their successes or failures. They could link reading to important life goals. In summary, it is essential for an effective remedial reading program to balance skill and strategy instruction with meaningful and interesting reading activities that allow the students to apply their improving skills in authentic and interesting tasks. Teachers need to find time to meet with each student individually each week to track individual growth. They need to work on each student’s attributions for successes and failures associated with reading. In addition, it is vital to any remedial reading program’s success that coherence between the remedial and regular literacy programs is maintained through commnunication between the remedial reading teacher and each student’s regular classroom teacher.

The current evaluative review has been an attempt to establish the importance of motivational effects on early reading development. There has been an enormous amount of work done over the past few decades that explores the most effective ways to improve reading achievement in delayed readers. Despite the fact that many of these methods differ significantly in their underlying philosophies regarding early reading development, they all seem to be at least partially effective at improving the achievement of struggling readers. Unfortunately, very little attention has been focused on what (if any) motivational effect these programs have at fostering a value for and enjoyment of reading for all students participating. This is an important oversight due to the fact that time spent reading independently is such a strong predictor of continued success in reading related tasks. Although many of the remedial programs previously discussed do have success at improving reading skill, many times these effects tend to dissipate over time, suggesting that these students will not maintain these gains unless they continue to use their improved skill through independent practice. The only way to influence students’ independent practice is to develop students who understand the utility of becoming a skillful reader and who intrinsically enjoy the challenges that reading can impose upon them.