Under which conditions does reading attitude most influence reading achievement?

Abstract

Reading is an essential skill for academic and workforce success; however, recent data-driven accountability initiatives have led to schools’ overreliance on reading achievement data for tracking and placement purposes. Such limited data do not give a comprehensive representation of the reader, and instructional decisions based on this narrow view can undermine students’ motivation and weaken achievement. Attitude has been associated with achievement, but using reading attitude data could be more useful if the relationship between reading attitude and reading achievement were better understood. This study sought to expand on the reading attitude-reading achievement relationship by exploring specific teacher and student gender related conditions. The study culminated in investigation of the strength of the relationship between reading attitude and reading achievement for girls and boys with gender matched and unmatched teachers. The findings revealed that reading attitude only predicted reading achievement for students with gender matched teachers. The strongest link was for boys taught by male teachers.