Construct systems of seventh grade students and their relationships to reading achievement :

Abstract

The study investigated the construct systems of seventh-grade students at varying reading achievement levels and analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively the metacognitive awareness that these students' constructs reflected as they compared and contrasted different reading materials. Thirty-five subjects (5 at each decile from the 30th through 90th on the California Achievement Test) were asked to consider nine types of materials in triadic sorts (Kelly, 1955). Verbal labels or constructs were analyzed as to: (a) frequency, (b) depth (surface level and deep level), (c) content categories, and (d) patterns. A correlation was found to exist between: (a) construct frequency and achievement and (b) deep level constructs and achievement. Significant differences were found to exist on the number of total and the deep level constructs among the low, middle, and high ability groups. Although high achievers were found to use more deep level constructs which were elaborated and refined, they did not reduce their number of surface or low level constructs. The ten core content categories that emerged from the verbal labels or constructs were found to be highly similar for all achievement levels. Cluster diagrams, produced by the Focus computer program (Shaw, 1980), were analyzed to determine common sorting patterns for each achievement level. Cluster patterns that represented organization of materials according to similarity of reading purposes were found in a moderate degree at the middle achievement levels; however, complexity in cluster organization, construction, and integration was evidenced only in higher achievement levels. Metacognitive awareness within the construct systems of low achieving readers was characterized by a restricted ability to: (a) differentiate among the reading materials according to their purpose, features, or structure; and (b) generate or relate inferential constructs about reading materials. Conceptual deficiencies appear to limit the way low achieving readers approach reading tasks. Readers' constructs appear to determine strategies used to make sense of context and those intentions guide the reading process with prediction and control. Low achievers' interpretations of the sorting task reflected limitations within their cognitive systems to approach reading materials with an organized set of constructs necessary to make sense of reading context.