NIU Professor is Motivated by Motivation - Stephen Tonks

Stephen Tonks

How much do you agree with the statements “I really like to read” and “I am good at reading”?

According to NIU Associate Professor of Educational Psychology Stephen Tonks in the College of Education, these statements are typical of many assessments of reading motivation.

“Motivation is something inside or outside us that drives us to action, and reading motivation is that which drives us to read,” explained Tonks. “Motivation involves beliefs about one’s abilities, one’s values, and one’s goals.”

Tonks should know: he is an expert on motivation and reading.

Motivation is not only of central interest to educators and researchers working in education and in psychology; it is routinely mentioned by laypersons in everyday life. We often say that a student lacks motivation if they do not complete assignments, miss class, or would rather spend hours playing video games than studying.

“‘Motivation’ is an abstract notion that helps us to explain behaviors. But because it is difficult to observe, it is normally measured by behaviors and what people tell us, usually in surveys,” elaborated Tonks.

Therein lies a challenge.

“Most surveys use general statements that reflect people’s traits. And they are also devoid of context. So, when someone answers the question ‘How much do you like to read?’, their answer might not reflect the fact that they absolutely love reading romance novels but hate reading other genres. If given the opportunity, the person would probably want to answer the question with something like, ‘It depends,’” reflected Tonks.

Did you experience this conflict at all when you answered the question?

The lack of context in the assessment may lead to measurement error and relatively low correlations with measures of reading comprehension, at least compared to cognitive measures that are much closer to reading, such as vocabulary knowledge.

This led Tonks to rethink how to measure and study reading motivation.

He is now exploring a situational approach to studying reading motivation that gives more context to the questions.

In a recently published study, he and his colleagues gave students passages to read immediately before having them answer questions regarding their motivation. The passages gave the students a context in which to answer the questions. Some questions were about their perceived competence in reading (e.g., “How successful were you in understanding the passages?”) and others were about their value of reading (e.g., “How useful were the passages to you?”). The researchers also derived measures of inferences from answers to questions that were periodically asked as students read the passages (e.g., “What are you thinking?”). The participants also completed assessments of foundational reading skills (e.g., vocabulary, syntactic knowledge) and reading comprehension.

“Interestingly, we found that the measure of reading value predicted the number of inferences they generated, and the number of inferences predicted reading comprehension. Foundational skills predicted reading value and perceived competence. Not surprisingly, the foundational skills also predicted reading comprehension,” summarized Tonks.

This and other emerging research is highlighting the fact that motivational constructs are related to basic reading skills necessary for comprehension, lending support to the usefulness of a situational approach.

“It was exciting to see that the motivation items predicted performance above and beyond the cognitive-related measures,” said Tonks. “Most surveys measuring motivation do not predict performance as well as expected given the importance of the construct.”

When asked ways to increase students’ motivation in the classroom, he offered some advice to instructors:

•  Try to play down rewards (extrinsic motivators) and play up intrinsic motivators by giving students some freedom as to how they approach the task;
• Make the material more interesting or engaging to your students; ask yourself, “How would I feel about doing this?”
• Try to highlight how the material is relevant to students;
• Ask them about their perceived competence (self-efficacy). If it is low, the instructor may encourage them to try their best, help them see the tasks as doable, and consider starting with tasks they can accomplish. He also remarked that students who need a motivational boost might seek out a personal, long-term purpose in the class.

Tonks is indeed motivated to study motivation. He is busy with his research that also includes motivation in other cultures and summarizing research for a general audience that includes teachers.

About the author: Keith Millis is on CISLL’s executive board and is a Professor of Psychology at NIU.