Contribution of children's reading motivation and prosocial efficacy to reading growth

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Highlights

  • Initial intrinsic regulation was related to students’ reading growth in comprehension skills.

  • Initial extrinsic regulation was not related to students’ reading growth.

  • Initial prosocial efficacy moderated the linear relationship between initial intrinsic regulation and students’ reading skill growth.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships among summer reading camp participants' initial prosocial efficacy, reading motivation, and their reading skill changes. Despite the theoretical explanation of social and emotional learning (SEL), there is a lack of empirical studies demonstrating the complex relationships and processes among students' social-emotional competencies and beneficial academic learning outcomes. The Freedom Schools reading camp provides learning opportunities during the summer vacation for children primarily from low-income families and minoritized racial and ethnic backgrounds. This study tested the linear relationship between students' initial reading motivation and reading growth with prosocial efficacy as a moderator (n = 67). We found that initial intrinsic regulation was related to students' reading comprehension skill growth, and prosocial efficacy moderated the relationship between reading skill changes and intrinsic regulation. Results provided clues about how students' efficacy for prosocial behavior could explain the relationship between students' reading motivation and reading growth.

Section snippets

Social and emotional competencies and effective learning

The classroom setting can provide an effective learning environment for school-age children (Bergin, 2018; Yan et al., 2011). Students experience emotional attachment and develop prosocial skills through various communications in a classroom (Wentzel & McNamara, 1999). SEL scholars theorize that when students enhance their social and emotional competencies, they become better-prepared learners (Bridgeland et al., 2013; Jones & Kahn, 2017). Jones and Kahn pointed out that “the quality and depth

Reading program context

Freedom Schools camp is a unique summer program focused on preventing reading loss during out-of-school time. The reading program was designed to help students from underserved groups, who have fewer learning opportunities during the summer, to prevent summer reading loss (Mesa et al., 2021). Freedom Schools, which follow an intergenerational model, differ from many other summer reading programs because they target a wide range of grade levels (often K-12) at one site. The participants are

Preliminary analyses

Descriptive results, including the means and standard deviations of the moderator, the predictors, and outcomes related to the tested moderation models, are presented in Table 1. The participants' initial prosocial efficacy and reading motivation subscale scores tended to be high. In the dataset, there were no serious issues regarding skewness or kurtosis. The average change scores in reading skills were all positive. For example, the average passage fluency change score was 0.37, representing

Discussion

The major goal of this study was to explore how some students more effectively develop their reading skills under similar academic conditions. Based on the common findings from previous child reading studies (Guay et al., 2010; Marshik et al., 2017; Solomon et al., 2000), this study explored two research questions. First, we tested to what extent students' initial intrinsic regulation has a meaningful linear relationship with reading skill growth. Second, we explored to what extent students'

Conclusion

The findings of this research provide insights for elementary and middle school teachers about how supporting students' intrinsic regulation and prosocial efficacy may also make a positive interaction effect on students' positive reading growth. Overall, this study suggests that if teachers support children's positive emotional experiences (e.g., intrinsic regulation) by encouraging students to have social interactions and to build up positive relationships, students may have effective reading

Declaration of competing interest

We wish to confirm that there are no known conflicts of interest associated with this manuscript.

Acknowledgments

This study was supported in part by grants from the Institute of Education Sciences (Grant # R305B170017).

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