Learning Goals during Reading Comprehension Instruction.

A study investigated the effects of goal setting on children's self-efficacy and skillful performance during reading comprehension instruction. Subjects, 17 fourth graders and 16 fifth graders from one elementary school, had regularly received remedial reading comprehension instruction. Subjects were administered a pretest consisting of a self-efficacy test assessing children's perceived capabilities for correctly answering different types of questions that tapped comprehension of main ideas, and a reading comprehension skill test. Following the pretest, subjects were randomly assigned within sex and grade level to one of three experimental conditions--process goal, product goal, and instructional (general) goal. All students received 35-minute training sessions over 15 consecutive school days. Subjects' perceptions of their goals during the instructional sessions were assessed on the day following the last session, and subjects were also administered a posttest identical to the pretest except that a parallel form of the skill test was used. Results supported the theory that providing students with a specific learning goal can have important effects on achievement behaviors. Compared with students who received a general goal of working productively, those given either a process goal of learning to use a comprehension strategy or a product goal of answering questions demonstrated significantly higher self-efficacy on completion of the instructional program. Findings also showed that pursuing a learning process goal led to the highest comprehension skill. (One table of data is included and 35 references are appended.) (MM)