[Xmca-l] Re: A Question about Reading and Motivation
Larry Purss
lpscholar2@gmail.com
Wed Aug 28 21:40:37 PDT 2013
Andy,
I have wondered if in a culture where hunting with bows and arrows is
valued, the child grows ups motivated to be skilled with using a bow. Is
the motivation *learning to read* the identification of wanting to be like
the others who participate in your world.
In our culture, [especially within schools], if reading is the way people
participate in sharing narrative than this MODE of communication is
valued. Is identification with doing what others are doing a motivation?
Beginning reading activity is a form of collaboration. As you mentioned,
collaboration may be master/slave, producer/consumer, or collaboration per
se. However, the activity *learning to read* can be displayed in all three
types of collaboration. The motivation is identification WITH ...??? in all
3 types of collaboration.
Larry
On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 8:19 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:
> So what this leads to is that my earlier formulation of motivations for
> reading which can create the conditions for someone to "learn to read" has
> to be generalised. And I guess that different "interests" or "pleasures" to
> be had from reading can be used to make an effective motive for reading.
> But I am trying to put my finger on the differene between offering a
> "reward" for reading and the object which turns out to be attainable
> essentially only through reading, be that the satisfaction of solving an
> integral equation, or the joy of entering Jane Austen's world or simply
> being able to read what everyone is talking about. Does this mean that the
> teacher's task is to somehow allow the learner, with assistance, to get a
> taste of that object, whichever it is that turns on this reader?
>
>
> Andy
> ------------------------------**------------------------------**
> ------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.mira.net/~andy/
>
>
> mike cole wrote:
>
>> Yes, once one learns to read for meaning in Dewey's sense, and mine,
>> marvelous things may result.
>>
>> The acquisition of reading, however, is not governed by phylogenetic
>> constraints in the same way that the acquisition of oral/sign language is.
>> It is a cultural-historically developed mode of mediated meaning making.
>> With few exceptions, it requires literate others to arrange for it to
>> happen.
>>
>> Consequently, getting there through the meat grinder of modern schooling,
>> is a continuing
>> issue. As is the notion of the violence of literacy.
>>
>> mike
>> (The Dickens freak)
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 4:51 PM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:
>> ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>>
>> Thank you Michael! It is always such a wonderful thing when
>> someone reveals to you what was before your eyes but you didn't
>> see! I had to put down a novel to read your message. I think I
>> take "the world" to be inclusive of imaginative world evoked by a
>> text, and suddenly, yes, I can see that youngsters generally read
>> lots of fiction and if they enjoy it, that is a royal road to
>> becoming a reader - even though, in a sense, the printed words
>> disappear under their gaze as they evoke that imaginary world. I
>> also think the social motivations are broadly covered by my
>> initial very 'utilitarian' view of the object of reading. But what
>> you describe as "the intellectual pleasure of figuring something
>> out," which I guess is one of the things that used to motivate me
>> at school with maths, and that is something else! Thank you. The
>> world is always richer than what one at first thought, isn't it?
>> Andy
>> ------------------------------**------------------------------**
>> ------------
>> *Andy Blunden*
>> http://home.mira.net/~andy/ <http://home.mira.net/%7Eandy/**>
>>
>>
>>
>> MICHAEL W SMITH wrote:
>>
>>
>> A colleague and I just completed a study of the nature and
>> variety of pleasure adolescents take from their out-of-school
>> reading that draws on Dewey’s delineation of four kinds of
>> educative interest in /Interest and Effort in Education. /One
>> kind of pleasure we identified is what we call work pleasure
>> in which readers use a text as a tool to accomplish some other
>> end. That’s the kind of pleasure that Andy seems to be talking
>> about when he writes about someone’s struggling to read a
>> philosophical text to get something out of it that could then
>> be usefully employed in some other context. But there are
>> other kinds of pleasure. As Dewey explains “There are cases
>> where action is direct and immediate. It puts itself forth
>> with no thought of anything beyond. It satisfies in and of
>> itself. The end is the present activity, and so there is no
>> gap in the mind between means and end. All play is of this
>> immediate character.” Readers experience the pleasure of play
>> when they read narratives to immerse themselves in a story
>> world. What matters to them is the pleasure they get from
>> living through the experiences of characters in the here and
>> now not what they can accomplish as a consequence of their
>> reading at some future time. Another kind of pleasure is
>> intellectual pleasure. Dewey explains that “instead of
>> thinking things out and discovering them for the sake of the
>> successful achievement of an activity (work pleasure),” we may
>> institute an activity for the intellectual pleasure of
>> figuring something out. An example would be reading to
>> unravel the complexities of poem as an end in itself. Finally
>> there are social pleasures in reading. People read to
>> affiliate with others. That seems to me to be a kind of
>> pleasure people on this listserv take. Or people read to mark
>> their place in the world. They do a kind of identity work by
>> using their reading to assert their difference from others.
>> One of the informants in our study avoided reading the books
>> that were most popular among her friends and instead read what
>> she called dark fiction. That reading was an important part of
>> how she understood herself. As she said “I’m weird in the way
>> that [I don't have] inhibitions like most people. I can read
>> dark fiction and not be disturbed by it.” I’d argue that
>> teachers are most likely to foster motivation to read by
>> creating contexts in which students can experience all four
>> kinds of pleasure.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 4:43 AM, rjsp2
>> <r.j.s.parsons@open.ac.uk <mailto:r.j.s.parsons@open.ac.**uk<r.j.s.parsons@open.ac.uk>
>> >
>> <mailto:r.j.s.parsons@open.ac.**uk <r.j.s.parsons@open.ac.uk>
>>
>> <mailto:r.j.s.parsons@open.ac.**uk <r.j.s.parsons@open.ac.uk>>>>
>> wrote:
>>
>> The first thing I thought on reading "assistance is given
>> to kids to
>>
>> read in order to find out something they want to know
>> about the world"
>> was "This is basic Freire". Adult literacy had the same
>> problem of
>> meaningless texts till Freire came along and started
>> teaching them
>> about
>> things that mattered to them. It also made me reflect on
>> the idea of
>> motive, whihc has for a long time been a question I have been
>> intending
>> to examine "when I have time". When I met the activity
>> triangle,
>> one of
>> the most obvious issues about it was that it contains no
>> separate
>> place
>> for motive. After a while that seemed logical because the
>> motive
>> was in
>> the object, and maybe one of our difficulties is that we
>> separate
>> motive
>> out from object in order to understand it better, and then
>> forget
>> to put
>> it back in again.
>>
>> Children are just like people, they do need a reason to do
>> things.
>> I've
>> always been puzzled by the idea of andragogy, the
>> suggestion that
>> adults
>> learn differently from children. Proponents usually list
>> several
>> reasons
>> which usually make no sense to me. One of the reasons
>> usually given is
>> that adults need to know why they are doing something, the
>> unspoken
>> contrast being presumably that children happily do what
>> they're told.
>> The kind of research you refer to here, Andy, suggests that
>> children do
>> need to know why they are doing something, but lack the
>> power to
>> say so.
>> Hence, I think, a lot of the problems evident in our UK
>> schooling
>> system
>> (lots of great schools, in my opinion, dreadful
>> educational policies
>> dictate that children are machined through exams in order
>> to maintain
>> the school's place in the league table. So there is a
>> reason why the
>> children do what they do, it is just not relevant to the
>> child.)
>>
>> Rob
>>
>>
>> On 28/08/2013 08:27, Andy Blunden wrote:
>>
>> Re: Peg Griffin -
>> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/**
>> xmcamail.2011_05.dir/msg00530.**html<http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2011_05.dir/msg00530.html>
>> and Peg and Mike et al:
>> http://lchc.ucsd.edu/People/**NEWTECHN.pdf<http://lchc.ucsd.edu/People/NEWTECHN.pdf>
>>
>> The first article sets up a scenario in 5thD where kids
>> "sneak" a look
>> at piece of writing in order to find an answer to a
>> current
>> affairs
>> question. As opposed to telling the kids to read a
>> text and
>> then (for
>> example) testing them on it.
>> The second talks about "reading for meaning" where
>> assistance
>> is given
>> to kids to read in order to find out something they
>> want to
>> know about
>> the world. As opposed to decoding "Jack and Jill" stories
>> containing
>> nothing of interest to them at all (and actually
>> humiliating).
>>
>> I am trying to get my head around the issue of the
>> motivation
>> which
>> the teachers are trying to engender in the child which
>> facilitates
>> learning to read.
>>
>> Following A N Leontyev, Peg talks about the "merely
>> understood" motive
>> for the child "to be a productive, informed, literate
>> citizen"
>> which
>> is what the education system is supposed to be doing.
>> Peg says
>> this
>> motive was "in the social interactions and ready to
>> replace the
>> 'really effective' motives that got the kid to come
>> to/put up
>> with our
>> reading group." ... *in the social interactions*!
>>
>> Generally speaking I think there is no doubt that the
>> distinction
>> between "really effective" and "merely understood"
>> motives is
>> valid,
>> and that in general children who have difficulty in
>> reading,
>> read only
>> for "effective" but "external" motives which do not
>> succeed in
>> them
>> learning to read effectively. Further, the task of the
>> teacher
>> may be
>> or may be supposed to be to get the child to learn to
>> read so
>> as "to
>> be a productive, informed, literate citizen." This
>> objective is
>> somewhere in the complex of motives underlying a teacher's
>> motives,
>> certainly in 5thD, but I suspect often a "merely
>> understood"
>> motive
>> for many teachers, alongside earning a wage for their
>> own family,
>> having a quiet day and the kids getting good test
>> scores, etc.
>>
>> But I question whether it is *ever* the child's motive
>> "to be a
>> productive, informed, literate citizen." This may be
>> an "internal
>> reward" for learning to read, but not for learning to
>> read any
>> particular text or even a particular type of text.
>>
>> Would this explanation make sense: Learning to read is
>> like
>> happiness.
>> It does not generally arise through being the
>> motivation of the
>> activity which produces it. People learn to read as a
>> byproduct of
>> struggling to get something they want out of
>> particular texts. And
>> this applies to adults as much as children. I think
>> people can
>> only
>> learn to read philosophy if they are struggling to get
>> something out
>> of a book on philosophy (other than pass the exam or
>> acquire
>> an air of
>> erudition). In Peg's email message we learn that the kids
>> jumped on
>> the newspaper article to extract information they
>> wanted in
>> (what they
>> took to be) /another/ task. In the QAR story, adults
>> mediate kids'
>> relation to a text which is in turn mediating their
>> real and
>> meaningful relation to the world. (I think if a kid is
>> strongly enough
>> motivated to pass a reading test, and assisted, they
>> will usually
>> manage to learn to read, but it is for those for whom
>> this doesn't
>> work that the issue arises, isn't it?)
>>
>> But in general I think it is neither necessary nor
>> likely that
>> a child
>> has their eye on becoming a literate citizen when they
>> struggle with a
>> text and learn to read in the process. Isn't it always
>> more
>> proximate
>> motives? The "internal" reward in reading a particular
>> text is the
>> particular content of that text, not actually anything
>> to do with
>> books, or texts, or reading or citizenship.
>>
>> I know there are dozens of experts in literacy
>> education out
>> there, so
>> please help me.
>>
>> Andy
>>
>>
>> -- The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC
>> 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity
>> registered in Scotland (SC 038302).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -- Michael W. Smith
>> Professor and Chair
>> Department of Teaching and Learning
>> Temple University
>> College of Education
>> 351 Ritter Hall
>> 1301 Cecil B. Moore Avenue
>> Philadelphia, PA 19122
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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