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1 Differences in the Everyday Reading Practices of Gifted and Non-Gifted Adolescents: Report from a Pilot Study

M Cecil Smith Department of Educational Psychology, Counseling, and Special Education Northern Illinois University DeKalb, IL 60115 (815) 753-8448 p30mcs1@niu

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the MidWestern Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL, October 14-17, 1992.

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Differences in the Everyday Reading Practices of Gifted and Non-Gifted Adolescents: Report from a Pilot Study Abstract We have little knowledge about the everyday reading practices of secondary education students and how these practices affect their academic achievement. Everyday reading consists of individuals’reading activities for a variety of purposes, such as for relaxation or to obtain information Previous research has documented that, from middle childhood through adulthood, reading becomes a major component of studying, and much information learned through studying is initially acquired through reading. The everyday reading activities in which students engage may, therefore, considerably influence their studying skills and subsequent academic performance. This pilot study examined the everyday reading activities and reading attitudes of gifted and non-gifted high school students. The results indicated several differences in reading activities between the two groups pertaining to types of materials read and amount of time spent reading.

3 Differences in the Everyday Reading Practices of Gifted and Non-Gifted Adolescents: Report from a Pilot Study We currently have little knowledge about the everyday reading practices of secondary-level students and how these practices may affect their academic achievement. Everyday reading consists of the reading activities which individuals undertake to suit a variety of purposes, such as for relaxation or to obtain information from documents. Previous research has documented that, from middle childhood through adulthood, reading becomes a major component of studying, and much information learned through studying is initially acquired through reading (Thomas & Rohwer, in press). The everyday reading activities of high school students may, therefore, considerably influence their studying skills and subsequent academic performance. Also, there has been little research concerning how the everyday reading practices of gifted students differ from non-gifted students (DeVall, 1982; Fehrenbach, 1991). The purpose of the present study was to pilot test a data collection tool for gathering information pertaining to students’everyday reading and studying activities. Results from two recent studies provide an important basis for the current study. Anderson, Wilson, & Fielding (1988) examined the relationship between 5th grade children’s out-of-school activities and reading achievement. 155 Ss completed, over 26 weeks, daily activity forms, responding to items such as “I spent __ minutes reading a book.” Data were also obtained on 2nd grade reading achievement to examine changes in reading ability from grades 2-5. Results indicated that most Ss read very little out of school, (i.e., 8-12 minutes per day). Reading books, however, was the single out-of-school activity having the strongest relationship with reading skill, and time spent reading best predicted Ss’growth from 2nd to 5th grades. Taylor, Frye, and Maruyama (1990) had 195 5th and 6th grade students keep reading logs for a 17-week period to examine the relationship between time spent reading and reading achievement. Students were found to read, on average, for nearly 16 minutes in class and for 15 minutes at home. The correlation between reading at home at school achievement was quite modest, r = .16. Regression analyses showed that while in-class reading significantly contributed to reading achievement; reading at home did not. The divergent findings from these studies leave unanswered the question of how important everyday, out-of-school reading activity is to academic

4 performance. Neither of the studies examined reading behaviors of high school students. Perhaps somewhat older students benefit more from out-of-school reading because the wider variety of topics that they read about strengthens and elaborates their knowledge base. Also, standardized test performance is only one aspect of reading ability. Performance on other indicants of reading skill (e.g., classroom assignments) may be more dependent upon the kinds of everyday reading activities in which students engage. The current study examines the everyday reading activities and study skills of high school students in a residential school for gifted students and non-gifted students in a regular high school. The study documents and compares gifted and non-gifted adolescents’reading practices as determined through reading activity diaries. The goal of the pilot study was to identify potential problems in obtaining reading activity data among high school students and to develop hypotheses concerning relationships among everyday reading activities, study skills, reading attitudes, and academic performance, and to test these hypotheses in subsequent research. Method Several data-gathering measures were used to determine relationships among students’everyday reading behaviors, studying skills, and academic performance, including diaries and paper-and-pencil measures. Sample Twenty-one students (12 gifted and 9 regular education) in Grade 12 were subjects in this study. Ss were primarily white, but there were four AsianAmerican Ss. Ss were recruited at a state-supported residential high school for gifted students and a suburban high school in an upper-middle class, predominantly Caucasian community. Ss in both schools were in psychology classes and took part in the study to earn class credit. Measures Daily Reading Diary. Ss kept a structured diary of their reading activities over a 5-day period. The diary method has been used in previous research on adults’reading behaviors (Smith, 1991; Smith & Stahl, 1989), and have proven valuable for obtaining such information. The diaries contain data forms that are color-coded to correspond to four 6-hour periods during a single day (e.g., 6:01 am-12:00 pm, pink form; 12:01 pm- 6:00 pm, green). Data forms allow Ss to

5 record the following information: (1) source (e.g., magazine or book); (2) reading time (i.e., number of minutes); (3) reading volume (i.e., number of pages read); (4) strategies used to help one understand and remember text; (5) purpose for reading (e.g., for school); (6) enjoyment rating (5 = “very much”, 1 = “not at all”). Other measures included the following: Adult Survey of Reading Attitude (Smith, 1988). The ASRA is a 40 item scale designed to assess adults’attitudes about reading. The ASRA was employed in the current study to determine if it is a useful instrument for assessing adolescent’s reading attitudes. The scale has been shown to have good reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = .93) and reasonable construct validity (Smith, 1991). Rhody Secondary Reading Attitude Assessment (Tullock-Rhody & Alexander, 1980). This a 25-item measure designed to obtain high school students’feelings about reading. The scale has good measurement properties (reliability, r = .84) and reasonable construct and predictive validity. Students completed the ASRA and Rhody scales prior to completing the diaries. Results Descriptive Data I first examined the total number of reading events recorded per group to determine if differences existed. The twelve gifted students recorded a total of 295 reading events over five days; the nine non-gifted students recorded 223 events, or nearly 25 reading events for each student per group. Combined, students’reading events recorded per day ranged from a high of 129 events on Day 1 to a low of 86 events on Day 4. Over three-fourths of their reading (77%) occurred during weekdays rather than weekend days. Fifty-six percent of reading activity occurred during the hours from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., indicating that most of students' reading occurred in school rather than outside of it. Across groups, students' reading consisted of a variety of sources. Thirtytwo percent (32%) of students' reading involved textbooks and classroom materials, as would be expected given that nearly half of their reading activities occurred in school. Twenty-one percent (21%) of students' reading was general books (e.g., novels) for both leisure and school-related reasons. Seventeen percent (17%) involved functional reading sources (e.g., instructions), 12% was periodicals, and 11% involved computer-related sources. Over one-half (53%) of students' reading was for school-related purposes.

6 Another one-third (36%) of reading activity was for leisure purposes. No other purposes accounted for as much as 10% of reading activity. Sixty percent of students' reading occurred for periods of 25 minutes or less; in fact, one-quarter (24%) of their reading was eight minutes or less in duration. Students' reading volume was also quite low; nearly three-quarters (72%) of their total reading activity was reading 10 or fewer pages of text. Students' ratings of their enjoyment of reading were fairly evenly distributed across the five-point Likert scale. Slightly over one-third of their reading (38%) was rated as unenjoyable, while another 37% was rated as enjoyable. A chisquare test was used to further examine students' enjoyment of reading. The original nine categories of reading sources were collapsed into four (correspondence and functional, personal and general books, school, and miscellaneous) to avoid having empty cells. The chi-square was significant, X2 = 194.07, df = 12, p < .01. Students' school reading was much more likely to be rated as very unenjoyable (69 cases) than very enjoyable (4 cases). On the other hand, personal and general book reading was more likely to be rated very enjoyable (51 cases) than very unenjoyable (10 cases). A chi-square test also examined enjoyment ratings by reading purposes. The chi-square was significant, X2= 140.26, df = 16, P < .01. Students' leisure reading was much more likely to be very enjoyable (77 cases) than very unejoyable (17 cases). On the other hand, students' school reading was much more likely to be very unenjoyable (79 cases) than very enjoyable (18 cases). Students were also asked to list or describe any strategies (e.g., notetaking, underlining) they used to help them to understand and remember information from their reading. Fourteen percent of the strategies listed were to review; another 9% concerned note-taking activities. More than half of the time (55%), students indicated no particular strategies to aid their learning. Because students did a large amount of leisure reading relative to other types of reading, it is not surprising that so much of their reading activity was non-strategic. Differences between Gifted and Non-gifted Students Group differences in reading activity were examined next. A chi-square test compared the number of reading events per sources. Nine categories of reading sources were identified: correspondence, functional (e.g., instructions), general distribution materials (e.g., catalogs), periodicals, textbooks, general books (e.g., novels), classroom materials (e.g., workbooks, one's own writing), religious, and miscellaneous (e.g., computer screen). The chi-square was significant, X2 =

7 60.06, df = 8, p < .01. Gifted students read significantly more correspondence, functional and classroom materials, and miscellaneous sources than did nongifted students. The nongifted students read more textbooks than the gifted students. Next, group differences in purposes for reading were subjected to a chisquare test. There were five categories of reading purposes: for school, leisure, personal-functional, work, and other-miscellaneous. The chi-square value was nonsignificant. Next, a chi-square test compared amount of time spent reading per group. There were five categories of amount of reading time: 1-10 minutes, 11-20 mins., 21-40 mins., 41-60 mins., and 61+ mins. There was a significant difference between groups, X2 = 23.27, df = 4, p < .01. Gifted students did more reading of 20 or more minutes than did non-gifted students. Group differences on amount of reading time X purpose was tested via a two-way ANOVA. There was a significant main effect for purpose only, F = 4.57, df = 4, 55, p < .01. A follow-up Scheffe test revealed differences in amount of time spent reading favoring school and leisure reading over personal-functional and miscellaneous reading. Across groups, students read an average of 390 minutes for school and 340 minutes for leisure, but only 26 minutes for personal-functional, and 15 minutes for miscellaneous reading. The next chi-square test compared volume of reading (i.e., amount of pages read) per event by group. Six categories of reading volume per event were created: 1-5, 6-10, 11-19, 20-28, 30-50, and 51+ pages. The chi-square was nonsignificant. Group differences on volume of reading by purpose were tested via a two-way ANOVA. Both main effects (group, reason) and the interaction were nonsignificant. Finally, group differences on the two reading attitude measures were tested via one-way ANOVAs. These tests were nonsignificant; generally, students' attitudes toward reading were very positive. Discussion Educators need to understand how students’everyday reading activities are related to academic performance, as this knowledge is important for developing appropriate study skills programs which build upon students’existing abilities. The pilot study reported here was a first effort at employing a data

8 collection tool--a reading activity diary--to obtain information about high school students' reading activities. A related purpose was to examine differences between gifted and non-gifted students' reading activities. Although self-report methods have limitations, many of the limitations of the reading activity diary (see Smith & Stahl, in press, for a description of these limitations) can be overcome to obtain reasonably reliable and valid data. Students need to be given very specific instructions about what information to provide in the diaries, and frequent, structured feedback regarding the adequacy of their diary-keeping. Unfortunately, I had the opportunity for only one brief question-and-answer follow-up session on the third day after students began their diary-keeping for this pilot study. More structured, one-on-one feedback sessions will be used in future studies to help students to provide more informative data. Generally, the students in this pilot study were vigilant diarists and recorded, on average, 25 reading events per day, which varied from reading less than one page of text to over 200 pages in a single instance. Given the wide variety of opportunities that high school students have to read on a daily basis (everything from candy bar wrappers to biology textbooks), the average number of times that students reported reading in this pilot study may be somewhat low. It is very unlikely that students recorded every instance of their reading. Further work is needed to determine the best method for capturing the whole of students' reading activities. Students also did more reading in school than out of school. Previous work (Anderson et al., 1988) has documented the importance of out-of-school reading activity to reading achievement--which is, of course, related to academic achievement. It would appear, then, that these students might benefit from independent reading rather than within the context of the classroom and the school. Although all of the students in this study were performing well in school (as determined by self-reported GPA or gifted status), the fact that these very able students devoted so little time to reading--particularly for leisure--is troubling. In addition, the students reported using relatively few--and unsophisticated--strategies for studying the texts that they read. Most of these strategies were of the reread-and-underline variety involving little cognitive activity that would serve to elaborate text information or to link it to prior knowledge. High-achieving students such as those in this study may, however, have sufficiently learned cognitive strategies to the point that they are used

9 routinely and automatically; they may have difficulty identifying what these strategies are that they use. This explanation may account for the finding that students seldom reported using learning strategies. The sample size was too small to determine reliable differences between gifted and non-gifted students pertaining to their reading activities. Nonetheless, some differences were suggested by the data. Gifted students, for example, reported reading more correspondence, functional and classroom materials, and miscellaneous reading, such as computer printouts. Non-gifted students, on the other hand, reported reading more textbooks. Because the reasons for these differences are not clear, this suggests that interviews with students, teacher classroom assignment records, and other data sources may need to be examined to learn more about students' reasons for reading (e.g., personal choice, classroom assignment). Gifted students also tended to read for longer durations--20 minutes or longer--than did the non-gifted students. This difference may have been due to the gifted students having longer, more rigorous reading assignments, or spending more time at their computers reading text off of a monitor. In future studies, I will attempt to obtain students' classroom assignments (e.g., type, length), examine their written work, and survey their favorite types of reading (e.g., science fiction) in order to ascertain the factors leading to differences in reading time and volume. Finally, several changes will be made to future versions of the reading diary format to obtain additional reading behavior data. Subjects will be asked to identify the setting in which the reading occurs (e.g., classroom, library, home) and to rate their perceived degree of effort at reading (and learning text information) on a 5-point scale (e.g., 5="much effort needed"). The pilot study has also indicated the need to provide specific instructions regarding how and when to record one's reading activities. Among the hypotheses suggested by this pilot work is that gifted students' academic assignments, homework, and interests requires more time and reading volume, and a greater variety of sources, than does regular education students' academic assignments. This and other hypotheses remain to be examined in future research. I am currently planning a larger study to examine the role of reading activity in gifted and nongifted students' academic performance. The results of this study will be reported at a later time.

10 References Anderson, R.C., Wilson, & Fielding, L.G. (1988). Growth in reading and how children spend their time outside of school. Reading Research Quarterly, 23, 285-303. DeVall, Y.L. (1982). Some cognitive and creative characteristics and their relationship to reading comprehension in gifted and non-gifted fifth graders. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 5, 260-273. Fehrenbach, C.R. (1991). Gifted/average readers: Do they use the same reading strategies? Gifted Child Quarterly, 35, 125-127. Smith, M.C. (1988). A longitudinal investigation of the development of reading comprehension skills, metacognitive reading skills, and reading attitude: Childhood to adulthood. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Smith, M.C. (1991, November). An investigation of the construct validity of the Adult Survey of Reading Attitude. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the College Reading Association, Arlington, VA. Smith, M.C., & Stahl, N.A. (1989, December). Differences between professional and pre-professional teachers’reading habits and attitudes. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Reading Conference, Austin, TX. Smith, M.C., & Stahl, N.A. (in press). The use of the reading diary as a method for obtaining reading behavior data among adults. Illinois Reading Council Journal: Twenty-fifth anniversary monograph. Taylor, B.M., Frye, B.J., & Maruyama, G. (1990). Time spent reading and reading growth. American Educational Research Journal, 27, 351-362. Thomas, J.W., & Rohwer, W.D., Jr. (in press). Studying across the life span. In S.R. Yussen & M.C. Smith (Eds.), Reading across the life span. New York: Springer-Verlag. Tullock-Rhody, R., & Alexander, J. E. (1980). A scale for assessing attitudes toward reading in secondary schools. Journal of Reading, 23, 609-614.