Candace Landreth currently teaches developmental reading and English at Ozarks Technical Community College in Springfield. She earned her master's degree in literacy and a special K-12 reading certificate from Missouri State University. She has a BA in English from California State University, and she is certified to teach language arts and English.
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Results
I hypothesized that there would be a significant difference in the change in college students’ reading attitude and in their reading achievement during a one-semester college developmental reading course. From the results, I found a significant difference in the
students’ reading achievement, but there was a lack of significant difference in the students' reading attitudes. However, there was a strong shift toward the positive, having an 8% decrease in the spread between the negative and positive attitudes assessed through the survey questions. A post-hoc analysis of each survey answer uncovered the possibility that some of the questions might have been misread and thereby answered incorrectly.
Discussion
The gain of nine points in students’ scholastic achievement represented a significant difference, but this gain was the class average and did not individually reflect how much progress each student made over the course of the semester. A variety of factors can attribute to a fluctuation of individual scores on the ACT Compass (2014) pre- and post-tests including feelings of tiredness or illness, personal stresses at the time, test-taking anxieties, or disruptions during the test. At the time of the fall post-test finals week, snowstorms caused numerous class cancel-lations and a rescheduling nightmare that might have had an effect on some students’ test-taking readiness and thus the results of this study as well.
Even though there was no significant difference, the students’ post-reading attitude surveys did show an overall positive improvement from their pre-tests. The standard deviation showed only a 4.69 point change between survey administrations, but based on the Likert scale design of the Rhody survey, where there are positive and negative responses, it is more accurate to state there was an 8% decrease in the spread between the negative and positive attitudes. Analyzing each question and answer led to the suspicion that a few students, based on their answers to similar questions, misread some of the questions and thereby answered them incorrectly. This can occur because of the Rhody survey question design in which agreeing to a question can be a negative response and disagreeing to a question can be a positive response. This possibility could have affected the results of this study.
Conclusion
It is important to keep in mind, when discussing college-level developmental reading courses, that students' reading struggles and negative attitudes did not occur overnight, but were created and reinforced over the course of years. Therefore, it may be difficult to overcome or turn around those students’ long-held opinions about reading after just one semester of a college reading course--even one designed to specifically help struggling readers. Utilizing the Rhody Secondary Reading Attitude Assessment (Tullock-Rhody & Alexander, 1980) at the beginning of a term can be extremely helpful because “[m]erely considering the questions posed by affective assessments forces them [students] to think about the roles that reading and, more generally, literacy and language, play in their lives” (Givens, 2010, p. 13). Obtaining this information from students is critical “if we are to have any positive effect on them during the short time they are in our courses” (Givens, 2010, p. 12).
In addition to identifying students’ attitudes about reading, the type of instruction used should be evaluated for effectiveness and
"...it is important to keep in mind....that students' reading struggles and negative attitudes did not occur overnight, but were created and reinforced over the course of years."