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The Paradox of the Missing Biological Function in
Understanding: Implications for Moral and General
Education
Asghar IranNejad 1
1) The University of Alabama, United States of America
Date of publication: February 24th, 2013
To cite this article: IranNejad, A. (2013). The Paradox of the Missing
Biological Function in Understanding: Implications for Moral and
General Education. International Journal of Educational Psychology,
2(1), 118. doi: 10.4471/ijep.2013.16
To link this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.4471/ijep.2013.16
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IJEP – International Journal ofEducational Psychology Vol. 2 No. 1
February 2013 pp. 1-18.
The Paradox of the Missing
Biological Function in
Understanding: Implications
for Moral and General
Education
Asghar Iran-Nejad
The University ofAlabama
Abstract
This essay argues that the endemic moral crisis and the crisis of confidence in
education are related; and both are a function, in part, of a paradoxical divide
between two types of human understanding: psychological and biofunctional.
In the psychological realm, people cause understanding using the psychological
theories they know. Biofunctionally, understanding is caught by the
understander, by analogy to catching a cold, caused by an unknown biological
function, without the understander (a) having direct access to the cause, (b)
knowing what the cause is, and (c) realizing how the cause works. This paradox
introduces a divide between people’s psychological and biofunctional types of
understanding. Unwarily, people tend to overlook this divide thereby
compromising their full understanding potential. In this essay, I elaborate on
the nature of this paradox, the awesome divide that it causes, and its
implications for moral and general education.
Keywords: moral education, crisis of confidence, biofunctional
understanding, evolution, cognition as computation
2013 Hipatia Press
ISSN 2014-3591
DOI: 10.4471/ijep.2013.16
La Paradoja de la Función
Biológica Perdida en la
Comprensión: Implicaciones
para la Educación General y
Moral
Asghar Iran-Nejad
The University ofAlabama
Resumen
Este ensayo sostiene que la crisis moral endémica y la crisis de confianza en la
educación están relacionadas; y las dos existen en función, en parte, de división
paradójica entre dos tipos de entendimiento humano: el psicológico y el
biofuncional. En el ámbito psicológico, las personas causan el entendimiento
usando las teorías psicológicas que conocen. Biofuncionalmente, el
entendimiento es pillado por quien entiende, como quien -por analogía- pilla un
resfriado, causado por una función biológica desconocida, sin que quien
entiende: a) tenga acceso directo a la causa; b) conozca cuál es la causa; c) se
de cuenta de cómo funciona esta causa. Esta paradoja introduce una división
entre los tipos de comprensión de las personas, el psicológico o el biofuncional.
Imprudentemente, las personas tienden a pasar por alto esta división
comprometiendo su potencial de comprensión completo. En este articulo,
desarrollo la naturaleza de esta paradoja, la formidable división que causa, y
sus implicaciones para la educación general y moral.
Palabras clave: educación moral, crisis de confianza, comprensión
biofuncional, evolución, cognición como computación
2013 Hipatia Press
ISSN 2014-3591
DOI: 10.4471/ijep.2013.16
IJEP – International Journal ofEducational Psychology, 2(1)
M
3
edia reports and scientific publications on the failures of
human morality appear at an alarming rate (Anderson, 2012;
Haque & Waytz, 2012; Smith, 2012). To cite a media
example, in his letter of resignation from Goldman Sachs published in
Times Op-Ed (Smith, 2012) on March 14, Greg Smith stated that it
“makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off.”
These publications are only a passing reminder of the widespread
occurrences of moral disengagement, inhumane conduct, and
dehumanization (Bandura, 1999, 2002; Pekarsky, 1982). Nevertheless,
the fact that departures from moral conduct are reasonably suspected or
claimed to happen so readily in people is astonishing.
Bebeau, Rest, & Narvaez (1999) commented on an ongoing concern
that “American society is in a state of crisis, moral decay, or serious
decline” (p. 18). The investigators further put out a call saying “if
different approaches addressed different dimensions of development, If
viewed as complementary rather than contradictory, we may be able to
move beyond ideological and philosophical disputes to solid theorybuilding based on empirical findings” (p. 18). More than a decade has
passed and morality is still on the list of endangered intellectual
capacities (Carter, 2005). Close to two decades before that, Schön
(1983) had placed education on the list; and I have not seen yet any
shining indicators that it has been taken off the list.
Assuming that both moral and general education are falling short of
the expectation for their missions, I begin in this essay with the why
question and continue to investigate what kind of moral and general
education are likely to change things for the better. I believe a robust
foundation of theory and research already exists for addressing these
questions. Interdisciplinary progress is converging from the related
fields of evolutionary biology (Baumard, André, & Sperber, 2013; IranNejad & Bordbar, 2013), moral development (Rest, Narvaez, Thoma, &
Bebeau, 2000), social learning (Bandura, 1991; Bandura, Barbaranelli,
Caprara, & Pastorelli, 1996), and neuroscience (Greene & Haidt, 2002;
Haidt, 2003) beckoning educational researchers to move beyond
ideology and toward convergent integration (Bebeau et al., 1999).
4
A. Iran-Nejad – Paradox ofthe Missing
Context, Purpose, and Definitions
The central thesis of this essay is that today’s moral crisis and the crisis
of confidence in general education are causally related and due, in part,
to an awesome gap between psychological and biofunctional
understanding (Iran-Nejad & Ortony, 1984). For a clearer focus, it is
useful to microscope the distinction. Biofunctional is the kind of
understanding that is caught spontaneously, rather than caused
deliberately, by the understander (Iran-Nejad, 2012; Iran-Nejad &
Gregg, 2001). It is regulated effortlessly by some evolution-sculpted
combination of multiple internal and external sources working together
simultaneously (Iran-Nejad & Chissom, 1992). The biological person
may be able to advance the causes of this kind of understanding more
readily by developing sensitivity to its overt symptoms (e.g., aha clicks,
hindsight solutions to past problems, or the excitement or interest that
comes with them) than familiarity with covert causes (e.g., how the
mind recalls past ready-made events, how biology sounds understanding
clicks, or what produces spontaneous excitement or interest). By
contrast, psychological understanding is something the understander
causes deliberately using the psychological or mind theories provided
spontaneously by biofunctional understanding. Moral and educational
problem solving can benefit substantially from the complementary ways
biofunctional and psychological kinds of understanding work together
(Iran-Nejad, 2000; Prawat, 2000).
To set the groundwork for where this article is going, I begin with
what is frequently practiced in science, namely, using analogy. Already
overused are the spatial memory metaphors (Roediger, 1980),
technological metaphors such as the bottleneck (Broadbent, 1958), the
telephone switchboard (John, 1972), and the computer (Neisser, 1967).
To be sure, these metaphors have shed much light on people’s cognitive
capabilities; but their continued use can only thwart the progress.
Instead, I turn for new metaphors to biological systems that are also
used from time to time and are becoming more acceptable (Mandler,
2007; Miller, 1978). In particular, there is compelling evidence to
propose that, by evolutionary design, understanding is the special
biological function of the nervous system (Drack, Apfalter, & Pouvreau,
2007; Iran-Nejad & Ortony, 1984; Weiss, 1949) just as breathing is a
5
special function of the respiratory system and fighting germs is a special
function of the immune system (Gomez, 1996; Iran-Nejad & Gregg,
2011). Then, with biofunctional understanding already in place as the
prerequisite, people may use its overt symptoms (e.g., revelation clicks)
to cause their own psychological understanding deliberately using such
psychological tools as theories of how the human mind or biology might
work, learn, or understand. This is analogous to the fact that people can
do things deliberately to an effortlessly functioning respiratory system,
namely, holding one’s breath, taking deep breaths, coughing, smoking,
and the like.
The Paradox of the Missing Biological Function
The sharp distinction between biofunctional and psychological kinds of
understanding uncovers an intriguing paradox. There are several reasons
behind the paradox and its direct tie with biofunctional understanding.
First, the biology of the nervous system controls secretly the causes of
understanding. Some of the covert sources are distal but, nevertheless,
inescapable. They may be hours, days, months, or even years removed
from the proximal symptoms that they remotely produce in the form of
what people experience after the fact as understanding. In addition, the
biology of the nervous system leaves the psychological person of the
understander completely in the dark about how it performs the special
function of biological understanding. As a result, given the concept of
biofunctional understanding and its remote ways and means,
understanders have no psychological idea whatsoever about how that
kind of understanding happens to them, just as someone may catch a
cold or another illness without knowing anything at all about its distant
causes and ways until psychologically detectable symptoms (e.g., the
fever) reveal themselves.
Second, and here is where the paradox begins, people know that they
understand because they experience the symptoms of understanding
psychologically; e.g., they might detect after the fact their own clicks of
understanding (Auble, Franks, & Soraci, 1979; Iran-Nejad & Stewart,
2011). This is analogous to feeling the fever long after the person has
caught the virus.
6
Third, and here is the crux of the paradox, understanders are faced
with the impossible challenge of making biofunctional understanding to
happen without knowing how. As a result they must come up with some
sort of a psychological theory (e.g., "To understand, I must connect
ideas together") without knowing at all if the theory does indeed cause
understanding. This means that there is an awesome divide between
biofunctional and psychological understanding that acts like a mind-tobrain barrier impossible for psychological understanding to cross
directly.
Finally, and we are still caught in the grips of the awesome paradox,
even if an understander happens to hit upon a theory that actually
triggers biofunctional understanding directly, it is going to be
impossible to tell because the resulting psychologically-caused
understanding joins surreptitiously the silence of biofunctional
understanding just as it occurs. The good news is that biofunctional
understanding continues, even in the absence of psychological
understanding just as breathing occurs in the absence of taking deep
breaths or smoking and healing occurs even in the absence of
nursing—sometimes. An even better piece of news is that biofunctional
understanding does not have to wait on being triggered by psychological
theories just as healing does not have to wait for nursing to begin. In
fact, in the absence of psychological theories, the very young children
do and develop most of their biofunctional understanding before they
come up with their very first theories, learn how to use the new theories,
and start reaping the benefits of the psychological symptoms of their
biofunctional understanding or be led or misled by their own mind
theories. As far as the contribution of their psychological understanding
is concerned, many understanders would be confined unwarily to the
realm of their mind theories. The immediate implication for schooling
for moral and general education is to focus on enriching the
pretheoretical sources of biofunctional understanding by virtue of its
overt symptoms, while scientists are learning to close the gap between
psychological understanding and biofunctional understanding
(Donoghue, Nurmikko, Black, & Hochberg, 2007). This is never an
easy task even for scientists given the large diversity of psychological
theories not all of which are a good fit for causing biofunctional
understanding.
7
Cognition in Silent Biofunctional Understanding
The results of a study by Iran-Nejad and Chissom (1992) offer a partial
glimpse at cognition in silent biofunctional understanding. At one
extreme, many psychological theories that leaners invent and use may
cause no biofunctional understanding at all; they may be as ineffective
as inert knowledge (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1985; Renkl, Mandl, &
Gruber, 1996). At a less extreme level, somewhere in between, many
theories may cause biofunctional understanding; but as silently as if no
biofunctional understanding is happening at all. Consider the statement
(1) I make a list of possible exam questions and learn the answers to
them . To those who use it, this statement promises to cause
understanding in an academic setting. Is the theory exemplified by this
statement more effective in causing biofunctional understanding than
the effectiveness of a placebo pill on a growing infection? The answer to
this question may point to significant contributions to learner selfefficacy, learned helplessness, or the like. At the other extreme,
biofunctional understanding may be the very cause of the ubiquitous
clicks of understanding. Compare Statement (1) with Statement (2)
Discovering new ideas causes excitement in me. Excitement may be a
symptom of biofunctional understanding. To many such outcomes of
their biofunctional understanding (i.e., the new ideas and the excitement
that comes with them) may shine as strikingly as the sunshine itself
(Bransford & Schwartz, 1999). Learners might say they had a light bulb
go on in their head; and, again, the frequency by which this occurs to a
learner may be a significant contributor to that learner’s self-efficacy or
learned helplessness. For example, one set of predictions might be that
the theory in Statement (1), if deliberately applied, may promise but
cause no understanding and the outcomes implied by Statement (2) may
be true symptoms of self-efficacy; even though they may emerge
effortlessly and spontaneously, from remote sources of understanding, in
the form of new ideas and excitement in the silence, so to speak, of
biofunctional understanding.
In the Iran-Nejad and Chissom study, 99 undergraduates rated
statements like the above with regards to how frequently they
experienced them in their studies. The results surprised the authors.
Both psychological understanding and biofunctional understanding
8
correlated significantly with cumulative grade point average (GPA),
rs=.22 and .42, respectively. However, the correlation between
psychological understanding and GPA decreased to a nonsignificant
level (partial r=0.13), when the contribution of biofunctional
understanding scores was removed. By contrast, when the analysis
removed the contribution of psychological understanding, the
correlation between biofunctional understanding scores and GPA
remained virtually unchanged (partial r= .39). Given that people spend
so much of their time in an academic setting with their psychological
theories, and so little of it with their biofunctional understanding; it is
surprising how little the former, and how much the latter, did for the
participants of this study. The former literally had no better than a
placebo effect and the latter accounted for all the variability.
It is critical to recognize that the theories that are psychologically
well understood may be rigorous but not necessarily relevant in the
sense described by Schön (1987). Given the paradox of the missing
biological function, relevance is a function of the full cycle of
psychological-biofunctional understanding. This does not reduce the
value of either psychological or biofunctional understanding as distinct
ideologies. It means that the psychological and the biofunctional
complement each other in their contributions to human understanding. A
straightforward and useful way to think about psychological
understanding is in terms of its level of noisiness, so to speak, compared
to the completely silent biofunctional understanding. Clearly, noisiness
of the psychological theories of the participants in the Iran-Nejad and
Chissom (1992) study did not always help them toward their academic
achievement measured by GPA, unless these theories were immediate
outcomes of biofunctional understanding (e.g., discovering new ideas in
an insight). A significant part of the problem is that many students go by
the noise of psychological understanding and have no way of actively
embracing the challenge of the silent biofunctional understanding.
Unfortunately, because of the hitherto unsuspected nature of the
biofunctional understanding, education has unwarily overlooked it and
focused exclusively on psychological understanding.
By the same token many investigators assume that the apparent
effortlessness of the symptoms associated with biofunctional
understanding is the trademark of automatic mind habits. In reality, the
9
seemingly effortless work of biofunctional understanding is neither
effortless nor automatic at all. Rather, it is very hard work of the missing
function that only seems to be effortless because it happens behind the
stage in the silence of biofunctional understanding, a silence that is
suddenly broken into the loud click of understanding of some strikingly
new idea along with considerable excitement as well as the loudly
exclaimed aha outburst (Auble et al., 1979).
These considerations suggest that moral and general educators might
begin by cleaning the house of psychological understanding. There is an
awesome divide between the covert work of biofunctional
understanding and the overt occurrence of psychological understanding
that favors the latter unfairly. The division begins with people’s
potentially-fallacious psychological theories misleading them into
expecting cause-effect access to the full range of genuine human
understanding; while, in actuality, the theories may be delivering
nothing of the sort, as the results of the Iran-Nejad and Chissom (1992)
study might suggest. Moral and general education cannot afford to
disregard this possibility. This divide is awesome because, for unwary
understanders, it could amount to a fruitless journey lasting a lifetime,
not to mention holding back the field of education as a whole.
The journey across the silent stretch of biofunctional understanding
with no contribution from psychological understanding is not very
different from the state of the art in contemporary education. What may
be seen a lot even today in the post-revolution cognitive psychology is
cognition as structural computation inspired by the hardware-software
division of the computer metaphor. Students, who end up believing in
this type of biofunctionally-unrelated cognition, are highly prone to
construct their theories on the basis of the spatial metaphors of the
prevalent storage-retrieval architecture of the information processing
theory (Mayer, 1996; Roediger, 1980). Teachers who believe in these
metaphors build their theories of teaching based on them; and
researchers who believe in them, base their scientific theories on them
(Rosenshine, Meister, & Chapman, 1996; Sweller, Van Merrienboer, &
Paas, 1998). It is not difficult to imagine an epidemic of memory
theories that run counter to the mission of education for understanding
(Bloom, 1984). What is needed is more research along the lines reported
10
by Iran-Nejad and Chissom (1992) for sorting out the effectiveness of
psychological theories in causing biofunctional understanding.
The Biofunctional-Psychological Divide in the PretheoreticalTheoretical Guise
The biofunctional-psychological divide described so far may have been
among us for centuries in philosophy in the guise of a distinction often
reported between people’s pretheoretical intuitions and their official
theories (see, e.g., Nahmias, Morris, Nadelhoffer, & Turner, 2005).
Some psychological theories such as helping the needy are more
biofunctionally transparent to people’s pretheoretical intuitions. For
example, no great distance is apparent between people’s pretheoretical
intuitions about empathy or compassion and the theory that helping the
needy is an intrinsically moral characteristic (Baumard et al., 2013).
Having observed someone to help a person in need, most people are
able to appreciate that empathy and compassion may be behind the
deed. The fact that appreciation, a near synonym of understanding,
closes the gap between pretheoretical intuition and moral theory
supports the assumption that moral intuition is a special kind of
understanding.
By contrast, there is more of a divide between people’s pretheoretical
moral intuitions and their theories behind, for example, paying or
evading taxes (Greene & Haidt, 2002). This is probably why paying
taxes is taken for granted rather than appreciated; and tax evasion is
punished rather than treated by cultivating appreciation for it. The
pattern seems to be the opposite for empathy and compassion. People
appreciate empathy more than taking it for granted; and promote
empathy more than punishing for it. Another way of looking at the
awesome divide is that paying and evading taxes assume psychological
deliberation; whereas empathy and compassion assume nondeliberate
motivation. Why is it harder for people to appreciate paying taxes and
easier to punish tax evasion? Why is it easier for people to appreciate
empathy and harder to punish for evasion of empathy or compassion?
As Greene and Haidt (2002) have suggested, these questions may be
addressed using the differences between evolution-ripe biofunctional
11
understanding and relatively evolution-green psychological
understanding. Similarly, to use Schön’s (1987) language, psychological
theories behind tax payment and evasion are more rigorous--e.g., in
legal terms—than relevant to the person of the individual in the swampy
trenches of real life. By contrast, the theories behind empathy and
compassion are more relevant than rigorous. Schön seems to
recommend a more direct focus in education on people’s pretheoretical
intuitions. Unfortunately, nearly three decades after Schön, people’s
pretheoretical intuitions are not a more well-known target for nurturing
in today’s academic settings.
A similarly awesome divide is often found between scientific theories
and the pretheoretical intuitions of study participants. Consider the
trolley dilemmas, well-known as a challenge to moral researchers and
philosophers (Greene & Haidt, 2002). Imagine a scenario where a
stampeding trolley is about to kill five people caught inescapably on its
tracks. The only hope for them is to hit a re-route switch to send the
trolley to a set of side tracks, killing only one unfortunate soul on its
way. Most participants ok hitting the switch to save the five and kill the
one. This is a rigorous decision based on easy but perhaps less relevant
math, by Schön’s (1987) definition, involving the cognition-ascomputation formula (5-1=4). Unfortunately, as Schön (1987) has
capably demonstrated, the stone-solid rigor of the math on the safe hill
of computational research is irrelevant to the dangers lurking in the
swampy trenches of the real world. In the language of this essay, the
psychological theory of 5-1=4 is inert; it is too lean in biofunctionalunderstanding potential. To appreciate how ingenious Schön’s
observation has been, imagine a similar scenario where no side tracks
exist; but a fat person happens to be standing by who, if toppled would
die but also stop the trolley and save the five. The pretheoretical
intuitions of most participants say no to this one. As Schön would
explain, cognition as computation theories can explain the results of the
first scenario based on rigorous mathematics; but are left in a quandary
with the swampy trench of the second scenario.
12
The Two Sides of the Coin of Moral Understanding
As already suggested, a growing body of research indicates that there
are two sides to the coin of moral understanding. First, from a
theoretical standpoint, the obverse side of this coin is moral engagement
and the converse is moral disengagement (Bandura, 1990; Zengaro,
2010). From the biofunctional standpoint, the obverse is a cohering (or
constructive), healing, and humanizing process and the converse is an
incohering (or unconstructive), hurting, and dehumanizing process.
There is evidence that this cohering/incohering process interacts
intimately with moral performance dispositions (Zengaro, 2010). A
cohering performance disposition encompasses moral engagement,
positive affect, and less negative emotion. In a game of sports, for
example, a winning combination for a team may engage this
performance disposition in its players and their fans. An incohering
performance disposition involves moral disengagement, negative affect,
and less positive emotion. In a game of sports, a losing combination for
a team may engage this moral performance disposition in its players and
their fans. In a structural equation modeling study, Zengaro, employed a
theoretical structural equation model that contained multiple variables
as indicators of cohering (e.g., interest, positive affect, moral cognition)
and incohering (i.e., moral disengagement, negative affect, and general
aggression) performance dispositions. Zengaro found that a cohering
performance disposition was not but an incohering performance
disposition was a significant predictor of the acceptance of sports
aggression in Italian adolescents.
In the process of biofunctional understanding, cohering (or
constructive) mutualistic morality may be spontaneously rewarding as
well as humanizing in the direction of camaraderie and more moral
engagement (Baumard, André, & Sperber, 2013). By the same token,
incohering (or unconstructive) biofunctional understanding might be
spontaneously punishing as well as dehumanizing in the direction of
shame and moral disengagement. In a school setting, obvious cohering
examples are empathy, altruism, passion and compassion. Incohering
examples are selfishness, greediness, aggression and bullying. Whereas
the choices for moral education in schooling should be clear, there is
growing evidence that the academe actually works in favor of the
13
dehumanizing suppression of humanizing emotions such as passion and
compassion (Neumann, 2006), rather than going for the process of
humanizing education. The awesome gap that currently exists between
people’s pretheoretical biofunctional understanding and the formal or
official educational theories that drive the academe business may be in
part responsible.
Conclusion
The paradox of the missing biological function and the resulting divide
between psychological theories and the biofunctional nature of people’s
understanding may be impacting the moral and general wellbeing of the
science and practice of education. A tough immediate challenge is that
we live more than ever in an era of confusion surrounding human and
nonhuman intelligence. To survive this state of confusion, educational
science must be more systematic and unambiguous about the fact that it
is in the business of educating people and their biofunctional
understanding. As Blasi’s (1980) review of the literature pointed out
decades ago, it is not surprising that “the present state of research and
theory about moral functioning is the mixture of opposite terminologies
and metaphors” (p. 4), adding in a footnote that (a) there is “ambiguity
in the terms cognition and cognitive, which has become more apparent
with their increased popularity” and (b) when “these labels are applied
to theories as diverse as Piaget's and W. Mischel's (1973), the result is
utter confusion” (p. 3).
There are definite signs that not everything is well with the way
educational science is serving the citizens. Moral disengagement
(Bandura, 2002), dehumanization (Haque & Waytz, 2012; Pekarsky,
1982), and inhumane conduct (Bandura, 1990) are widespread. Other
educational woes include the pathologies of learning (Shulman, 1999),
the problem of transfer (Bransford & Schwartz, 1999), and the puzzle of
inert knowledge (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1985). A hitherto unsuspected
paradox in the way biofunctional understanding runs its natural course
may be a significant contributor to these problems and the solutions.
The paradox introduces an awesome divide between the
psychological theories people use in diverse settings and their
14
biofunctional understanding (or pretheoretical intuitions). The problem
is exacerbated by the nonhuman metaphors, spatial or technical, that
make up the substance of today’s psychological theories. Therefore, I
have taken the step, long overdue, to turn to biofunctional metaphors for
clarifying the nature of human understanding. A straightforward
implication based on the metaphoric evidence from how other bodily
systems function is that understanding is the special function of the
nervous system. This assumption has led to the discovery of the paradox
of the missing biological function and to the exploration of how
people’s biofunctional understanding is the mirror for reflecting their
pretheoretical intuitions. Educational science and practice, then, can rely
on these pretheoretical intuitions as a compass for using psychological
theories in the service of causing further biofunctional understanding.
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E-mail: [email protected]
“Well, I Have to Write That:” A CrossCase Qualitative
Analysis of Young Writers’ Motivations to Write
Alecia Marie Magnifico1
1) College of Education. University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign,
United States of America
To cite this article: Magnifico, A. M. (2013). "Well, I Have to Write that:"
A CrossCase Qualitative Analysis of Young Writers' Motivations to
Write. International Journal of Educational Psychology, 2(1), 1955. doi:
10.4471/ijep.2013.17
“Well, I Have to Write That:” A
Cross-Case Qualitative
Analysis ofYoung Writers’
Motivations to Write
Alecia Marie Magnifico
University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign
Abstract
Hickey (2003), taking a “stridently sociocultural” position on motivation, notes
that conceptualizations of motivation must shift to successfully study
“motivation-in-context” (p. 401). This study represents an attempt to navigate
such a shift. Rather than taking established understandings of achievement
goals and motivation orientations as given, this interview-based, qualitative
analysis examines three creative writing environments—a secondary
classroom, an extracurricular arts program, and an online game
community—and analyzes adolescent participants’ understandings of their
writing goals and motivations to write in particular settings. While such an
approach relies on self-report and thus cannot capture implicit cognitions, its
goal is to shed light on relationships among writers, contexts, and
cognitions—and how traditional motivational paradigms may need to be
amended to engage with such questions.
Keywords: writing, motivation, goal setting, qualitative analysis
2013 Hipatia Press
ISSN 2014-3591
DOI: 10.4471/ijep.2013.17
“Bien, Tengo que Escribir
Esto:” Un Ánalisis de Casos
Cualitativo de las Motivaciones
de Jóvenes Escritores para
Escribir
Alecia Marie Magnifico
University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign
Resumen
Hickey (2003), tomando una “estridente” postura sociocultural acerca de la
motivación, señala que las conceptualizaciones sobre motivación deben dar un
giro para estudiar con éxito “la motivación en contexto” (p.401). Este estudio
representa un intento de llevar a caso ese giro. En lugar de tomar
comprensiones establecidas sobre objetivos de logro y orientaciones
motivacionales como dadas, este análisis cualitativo basado en entrevistas
examina tres entornos de escritura creativa –un aula de secundaria, un
programa extracurricular de arte y una comunidad virtual de juegos- y analiza
las comprensiones de sus participantes adolescentes sobre sus objetivos de
escritura y motivaciones para escribir en espacios concretos. Aunque este
enfoque se basa en auto-informes y por tanto no puede capturar la cognición
implícita, su objetivo es aclarecer las relaciones entre escritores, contextos y
cogniciones –y cómo los paradigmas tradicionales sobre motivación deberían
revisarse para poder responder a esas cuestiones.
Palabras clave: escritura, motivación, establecimiento de objetivos, análisis
cualitativo
2013 Hipatia Press
ISSN 2014-3591
DOI: 10.4471/ijep.2013.17
I
21
n the wake of findings that discuss how communities shape
language and learning, discussions of situated context have become
a central feature of literacy literatures. Conversations around
research implications have focused on building more effective
environments for literacy learning by designing contexts that
appropriate real-world purposes, genres, and tools for writing and
creation. Fishman, Lunsford, McGregor, and Otuteye’s (2005) research,
for instance, describes how performative contexts such as drama and
spoken word poetry enhance college-level writing, and Shaffer’s (2007)
epistemic games show how students acquire professional language and
ideas through activities that mirror real-world contexts. The Common
Core State Standards (2010) movement in the United States aims its
writing standards at career readiness with such elements as multi-genre
texts, real-world purposes, and technology-based collaboration with
readers. More globally, Gee (1996) and Brandt (2001, 2009) posit that
our language and literacy skills are learned and filtered through,
respectively, Discourse communities and literacy sponsors, while
Kalantzis and Cope (2012) suggest that successful literacy pedagogies
must attend to representational and communicative contexts of students’
work. Each of these pieces rests on the idea that it is impossible for
learning—and, thus, cognition—to escape the topographies of local
contexts.
Motivation literatures feature a similarly recurring construct: a
taxonomy of achievement goals. While contexts are largely represented
as external, students’ internal goals and interests are also central to their
learning. Early motivation findings, described in seminal papers by
Dweck and Leggett (1988) and Ames (1992), continue to shape these
empirical and theoretical conversations: Students who hold learning as
their goal in a particular situation are more willing to persist on difficult
problems and to learn from failures. Students who hold performance as
their goal are eager to prove competence and achieve success by solving
problems effortlessly. While conceptualizations of these goal types have
grown more nuanced over time (see Senko, Hulleman, & Harackiewicz,
2011; Zusho & Clayton, 2011), what remains stable is an understanding
of goals as products of sociocognitive interactions. Learners’ internal
cognitions combine with the structures of educational environments to
produce specific orientations to learning.
22
A. M. Magnifico – Motivations to Write
When situated learning and motivational sciences literatures are
brought together, the contrasts in these frameworks raise important
questions. If situated contexts are paramount, what of learning that
stretches across several settings, like reading and writing? If goal types
are stable, do students hold different goals across settings or tasks? As
Hickey (2003) notes, these questions about “engaged participation” and
motivations to learn are complex (p. 401), but worth continued attempts
at navigation. This qualitative, three-case study brings these
perspectives into conversation with each other by examining young
people’s creative writing and their extended descriptions of motivations
for writing in three settings.
In the environments under study, creative writing was embedded
within different designs and served as a means to ends including
achieving publication, nurturing passion, supplementing school
knowledge, and winning in-game prestige. Each environment was based
on creative and expressive writing and allowed young writers to make
many decisions about their writing and its content. Particularly in the
presence of these choices, what moved these writers to write as they
did? Interventions in achievement goal research have demonstrated that
learners’ goals and motivations are a product of the environments in
which they participate and the tasks that they complete—Dweck and
Leggett (1988) even suggest that teachers can induce such orientations
by foregrounding students’ mastery or performance. As such, contexts
and goals have significant cognitive consequences for how students
perceive themselves and their work (e.g. Kumar, 2006; Nolen, 2007).
Students’ interests, which similarly are affected by contexts and
environments, contribute as well (e.g. Hidi & Renninger, 2006; Lipstein
& Renninger, 2007). But perhaps neither contexts nor goals tell a
complete story.
This study focuses on relationships among contexts, goals, writing,
and adolescents’ motivations to write, and the analysis explores how
participants’ descriptions of these learning elements correspond to
existing conceptualizations of motivation and goal-setting. I examine
two research questions: (1) What motivated these participants to take
part in creative writing communities, both formal and informal? (2)
What can we learn about how writing environments teach writing by
examining students’ diverse goals and motivations to write?
23
Theoretical Framework
Situated frameworks suggest that cognition occurs in everyday events
and intertwines with cultures, settings, and tools (e.g. Greeno, Collins,
& Resnick, 1996). While many situated theorists focus on how physical
and social practices support particular thoughts, actions, and learning
(Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998), Gee (1996) focuses this analysis
on the pervasive tools of language and Discourse. Discourses represent
“ways of being in the world” (1996, p. 190), and wrap together
individuals and communities with common linguistic, social, and
cultural practices. For example, when teachers or mentors establish a
common curriculum of workshop and critique practices, they build this
Discourse community with students (Gee, 1996) and sponsor students’
membership by modeling particular practices (Brandt, 2001).
Within any community context for learning, too, are the participants
and the cognitions and motivations that they bring to their learning.
Without understanding what individuals bring to a community, it is
difficult to comprehensively understand how learning occurs (Pintrich,
2003). One significant factor is goal-setting, an act that requires
building “cognitive representations of the different purposes [they] may
adopt in different achievement situations” (Pintrich, Marx, & Boyle,
1993, p. 176). Environmental structures, such as competence measures
or teacher feedback, play important roles in learners’ goal-setting
(Ames, 1992; Nolen, 2007), as does the framing of learning tasks
(Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Kumar, 2006). Many terminologies have
been adopted within this literature, but the findings are comparable:
When students set learning goals, they develop sophisticated cognitive
processing and study strategies (e.g., Meece, Blumenfeld, & Hoyle,
1988; Pintrich & Schrauben, 1992) and attempt more challenging tasks
(Dweck & Leggett, 1988). When students set performance goals, they
value social comparisons, adopt shallow metacognitive strategies, and
prefer easier tasks.
Over time, many have questioned this goal dichotomy. Theorists have
suggested that a “valence” moderates the influence of goal orientation
(Elliot, 1999), and that performance goals are adaptive in situations
where competence becomes necessary for success (Harackiewicz,
Barron, & Elliot, 1998). In response to these findings, some have called
24
for the dissociation of performance goal aspects, pushing theorists to
examine normative social comparisons separately from competence
(Brophy, 2005; Grant & Dweck, 2003). Still others question whether
goals are static or fluid. Cumming, Kim, and Eouanzoui (2007)
documented multiple goal orientations in a study of English language
learners who were applying to North American universities. This
analysis notes the importance of social context in these motivations:
Students were required to demonstrate content area mastery and develop
good communication skills so that English-speaking colleagues would
understand their speech and writing—and they formulated both
performance and mastery goals. Such findings suggest a resonance
between situated and cognitive frameworks: It was necessary for these
students to successfully learn the curriculum and to join a disciplinary
Discourse community.
Hickey (2003) has called for motivation scholars to focus on these
instances of “engaged participation” within social contexts (p. 401),
arguing that cognitive activities like goal development are inseparable
from situated settings. We cannot understand the goals or achievement
motivations of Cumming, Kim, and Eouanzoui’s (2007) university-level
students without understanding the English-speaking university. We
cannot understand learners’ goals without understanding the spaces in
which they are participating and the ways in which they demonstrate
learning.
Similarities to the authentic writing literature exist here, as well.
Cohen and Riel (1989) and Freedman (1994) showed that middle school
students wrote stronger compositions when they composed letters to
overseas pen-pals than when they discussed similar topics in classroom
writings, and Nolen (2007) described strong relationships between
students’ developing interests in writing and in-class publication of their
stories. Such findings persist across studies: Students more effectively
learn content and maintain motivation to write when they communicate
with readers and when teacher feedback focuses on strengthening their
writing to this end (Lipstein & Renninger, 2007; Purcell-Gates, Duke, &
Martineau, 2007). In each of these studies, young writers had a social
context for their work beyond school, where “knowledge telling” tends
to be the norm (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987). While none of these
studies focused on goal orientation, it seems possible that the presence
25
of an audience was a defining factor in helping students to set goals and
complete written performances (Magnifico, 2010a).
To sum up these linkages between contextual and motivational
literatures, Boscolo and Hidi (2007), like Pintrich (2003), highlight the
changeable, dependent nature of learners’ motivations and goals.
Writers’ understandings of their communicative context, self-concept,
and self-efficacy mediate their learning and influence their general “will
to write” (Boscolo & Hidi, 2007, p. 2). Or, as Hickey, taking a more
“stridently sociocultural” position puts it, the field’s conception of
motivation needs to profoundly shift if we are to successfully study
“motivation-in-context” (Hickey, 2003, p. 401). This study represents an
attempt to navigate such a shift. Rather than taking established
understandings of goals and motivation orientations as given, I adopt a
qualitative approach, examining writers’ own understandings of contexts
and feedback and how these elements contribute to their goal-setting,
motivation, and learning to write. While such an approach relies on
participants’ self-reports and thus cannot capture implicit cognitions, its
goal is to shed light on relationships among writers, contexts, and
cognitions—and how traditional motivational paradigms may need to be
amended to engage with such questions.
Method
Data Collection
In order to address these questions, I collected data from three creative
writing environments and built distinct instrumental case studies (Stake,
1995, 2005). While the creative process, writing process, pedagogical
methods, and audiences were different across the cases, the idea of
writing for an audience remained constant. Each environment allowed
for open-ended interactions with readers. The cases were chosen both
for accessibility (since centers for creative writing are uncommon), and
to exemplify three common arenas in which young people write: an
English classroom, an extracurricular writing camp, and an online
game-based writers’ forum.
26
There were two primary similarities among these three creative
writing environments. First, each of these spaces was primarily
populated by adolescents—or, in the online case, adolescents and
emerging adults (Arnett, 2007). Second, the writing tasks were similar:
In each community, participants worked primarily in the media of
poetry and fiction and chose the content of their writing. In order to
build “thick descriptions” (Geertz, 1973) of these designed writing
communities, I captured participants’ and mentors’ activities through
qualitative research methods including participant observation, semistructured reflective interviews, online (Hine, 2009) and affinity space
ethnography (Lammers, Curwood, & Magnifico, 2012), and artifact
collection. Table 1 details data collection in each site.
Table 1
Data Collected
Data collected
Observation Production
length
cycle length
Classroom 10 weeks
3 weeks
Field notes, interviews, small-group
(~ 2.5 hrs /
workshop conversations, drafts of stories
week)
and poems, students’ final creative
writing portfolios, project syllabi,
assignment handouts.
Blue Willow 1 week
1 week
Field notes, interviews, writers’ circle
writing camp (~ 6 hrs /
workshop conversations, drafts of stories
day)
and poems, exercise handouts, camp
promotional materials, final anthology
magazine.
Neopets
6 months
Variable: 1 Field notes, interviews, screen shots,
online game
day–3 weeks Neomails (on-site email), IM chat logs,
Neopian Times (NT) editorial documents,
drafts of collaborative stories.
Site
This analysis draws primarily from the two interviews that I
conducted with each participant, denoted in the results as interview 1
and interview 2. The first interview, inspired by life history
methodology (Tierney, 2000), documented the writers’ experiences with
and attitudes towards creative writing. These interviews helped me to
contextualize the participants as writers and community members. The
27
second interview focused on events that occurred during observation
and asked writers to reflect on the creative writing processes. The dayto-day writing activities rarely included space to discuss participants’
goals or motivations—and, as such, the post-participation interviews
allowed them to explicitly reflect on these larger questions.
Limited observational data are included here to contextualize
participants’ comments. In each of these sites, I observed and
participated in one full production cycle of work (Halverson, 2010),
although the timeframe and level of detail were defined differently in
each (see Table 1). Including such activities as planning, drafting,
receiving feedback, and revision, the production cycle represents the
duration of activity for a particular written piece.
Participants and Settings1
Classroom Case
The classroom case describes the experiences of nine 11th grade
students (six female, three male) and their teacher, Miles Caswell (all
names in all cases are pseudonyms), during the course of a ten-week
creative writing unit in their International Baccalaureate (IB) English
class. Their school, a K-12 college preparatory school that emphasizes
its writing program, is located outside of a medium-sized Midwestern
city. Participant observations of the in-class “creative writing
workshops” totaled fifteen hours, with additional time spent
interviewing the participants. I observed and recorded field notes when
students were writing individually, but they often asked me and Mr.
Caswell for advice as their small workshop groups met. In a typical
week, the schedule called for two workshop classes (which I observed)
and three literature classes (which I did not observe).
Here, creative writing was a means to a specific evaluative end: As
part of their IB examination in English Literature, the students were
required to orally analyze an unfamiliar piece of prose or poetry. Mr.
Caswell included creative writing in his curriculum so that students
would gain experience with making stylistic, figurative, and linguistic
choices in their own work. He hoped that this expertise would help his
28
students better understand and analyze the work of other authors. He
emphasized that “forms create meanings,” a concept that the students
frequently took up in their own small workshop groups, as well as in
whole-group discussions (field notes). This idea meant that language
choices are consequential for reader understanding; for example, an
author’s choice to write in formal English rather than dialect or slang
contributes to the meaning of the piece and how it will be read.
As a result of this focus on writing as a means to understanding
literary forms, Mr. Caswell structured classroom evaluation to rely on
process. Students’ grades depended on the completion of benchmarks
rather than the quality of their writing. During each of the first two
three-week sections of the unit, students wrote and revised either a fivepage story or several poems, working in small rotating groups to discuss
and provide feedback on each others’ writing. They then chose five
literary techniques from their work to analyze. Students created
portfolio packets of these drafts (often covered in handwritten
comments) and analyses and submitted them for teacher feedback. In
the final section of the unit, students engaged in a “major revision” of
one of these packets, again analyzing five literary techniques and
turning in a portfolio of final work, drafts, and analysis. As Mr. Caswell
explained, this grading scheme was designed to avoid evaluating
students on their creativity; it aimed to motivate students towards deep
engagement in writing, revision, and analysis (assignment documents,
field notes).
Extracurricular case
The extracurricular case describes the experiences of seven high school
students (five female, two male) during a one-week creative writing
summer camp run by a non-profit arts organization in a large
Midwestern city. Rather than “students” and “teachers,” camp
participants identified themselves as “writers” and mentors as “writing
coaches.” Kathy, a professional writer and the director of “Blue Willow
Young Writers,” served as the head of the camp program, but
collaboratively planned each day’s activities with three other coaches,
an assistant, and me. Participant observations totaled thirty hours over
five days; additionally, participants were interviewed outside of camp. I
29
served as a secondary coach, participating in writing, reading, and
critiquing work along with the campers and coaches, although Kathy
explained my researcher role and dissertation study to the young writers
on the first day.
The primary purposes of camp were to provide the time and “sacred
space” for the young writers to pursue the “passion” of creative writing
(“Blue Willow” website), as well as to provide ongoing critique and
mentorship. As such, each day’s activities fell into three major
categories: whole-group writing exercises to experiment with new skills,
small-group “writers’ circles” to read and critique writing, and “sacred
writing time” to write silently and individually. At the end of the week,
each participant prepared a 750-word piece for a “showcase reading”
presented for a local audience. Later, these works were anthologized in a
magazine and mailed to the families of all participants (field notes).
Participation was voluntary—the writers who participated elected (or
were elected by their parents) to join.
Camp was set up in opposition to school writing. Creative writing, at
Blue Willow, was a “passion” that required a “sacred space” in which
young writers could express their ideas freely, rather than within the
constraints imposed by classroom environments, and the participants
were guided by local professional writers rather than teachers’
evaluations.
Online case
The online case describes the experiences of five players of the game
Neopets (all female), who range in age from 15–24. Observations
focused on the written elements of Neopets play, including players’
written and multimodal presentation of themselves and opportunities for
publication offered by the site: weekly writing contests, poetry contests,
and the Neopian Times newspaper (NT). No direct mentorship exists on
the site, although all of the participants described soliciting
collaboration, “beta-reading” (critique of a draft), or mentorship from
more expert writers at various points in their play.
Observations took place over the course of six months, and I
interviewed participants through instant messaging technologies (e.g.
Google’s Gchat). I participated fully in the site throughout my
30
observations, shared a 80-member “guild” space with the five
participants, and worked towards publication of two NT stories. Much
of the existing research on Neopets focuses on the site’s “immersive
advertising” (Grimes & Shade, 2005; Wollslager, 2009), although Lu
(2010) provides an in-depth account of long-time Neopets play, and
Magnifico (2012) conducts a broader analysis of how player-crafted
writing constitutes play. The Neopets audience is diverse, ranging from
elementary school students through grandparents. Quantcast (2011)
demographics reported that in February, 2011, 59% of site users were
female, 36% of site users fell into the 13-17 age group, and another 24%
were 18-24. My study participants, who ranged in age from 15-24 and
had been playing Neopets for between five and nine years at the time of
the study, are consistent with these demographics.
There is no central system of quests or game narrative. Without a
central mission to guide gameplay, it is common for users to specialize
in areas of personal interest. Common site activities include collecting,
buying, and selling virtual items; designing and coding socialnetworking content, layout, and graphics; training pets to fight in a
player-vs-player arena; playing flash games; and producing writing and
art about Neopets and the world of Neopia. Players can earn
achievements in each of these areas. Rewards include virtual currency
(Neopoints), virtual trophies, and chatboard avatars, each of which
confer different kinds of prestige on the site.
Data Analysis
Drawing an analysis from these instrumental cases (Stake, 1995), I
focus on participants’ reports of their motivations to write, their writing
goals, and how these goals and motivations changed throughout the time
of the study. In my first round of qualitative “open coding” or “initial
coding” (Charmaz, 2006; Saldaña, 2009), I used a mixture of
provisional codes (Miles & Huberman, 1994) developed from the
literature and descriptive codes (Saldaña, 2009) to identify passages that
mentioned participants’ reasons for engaging in writing. I coded for
participants’ discussions of their broad experiences of writing within
different settings or writing environments. Additionally, where
participants discussed particular pieces of writing, I noted the meanings
31
participants were working to express, reasons why they wrote that
particular piece, and motivations for writing that particular piece.
During this round of coding, I developed subcodes, such as “figuring
out a character,” “writing for an assignment,” or “trying something
new” to describe these reasons or motivations more specifically.
Through consolidation and pattern coding (Miles & Huberman, 1994;
Saldaña, 2009), I refined these codes into major themes (Boyatzis,
1998). For instance, the codes and subcodes for reasons why to write
and explicit mentions of motivations led to themes that described the
reasons for writing adopted by participants in different settings (settinglevel motivations). The range within and across these themes is captured
in the tables of representative examples that appear in each results
section; themes will be further described in each section.
Results
To focus this study on individuals and their experiences within
particular creative writing environments, each student serves as an
individual unit of analysis. The motivations and reasons for writing that
they describe, however, bunch together in two distinct themes. Each of
these themes comprises a major section of this chapter:
• Theme 1 : Individuals’ motivations to write are affected by the
environment in which they are writing (single-case analysis).
• Theme 2: Individuals’ motivations to write are affected by
personal and functional reasons for working on specific pieces of
writing (cross-case analysis).
The first theme is typical of case study work. Intended to give the
reader a window into the social experience of each case, this section
explores the ways in which the writing environments set expectations
for writing and genre, and supported motivations to write—or, in some
cases, motivations not to write. The second theme, a cross-case look at
motivations and reasons for writing, reflects sociocognitive work in
motivation and goal-setting, although the motivations and goals
examined here do not neatly align with the learning and performance
orientations that are typical in this literature.
32
Theme 1: Individuals’ Motivations to Write are Affected by Settings
Unsurprisingly, each setting set forth distinct purposes and norms for
writing. These norms varied across the three environments, leading to
different participation structures and incentive structures that supported
distinct motivations for the individuals who participated. As such, while
participants’ reasons for writing individual pieces varied substantially
within and across settings (as will be discussed in Theme 2), individuals
who participated in each setting shared several broad reasons to write.
Summed up briefly in the bullet points below, and with representative
examples in Table 2, these motivations may be described in the
following ways:
• Individuals wrote in order to achieve good grades in the
classroom case.
• Individuals wrote in order to get feedback in the extracurricular
case.
• Individuals wrote in order to accomplish game objectives in the
online case.
Table 2
Code Examples: Within-setting Motivations and Reasons to Write
Motivations
Classroom
motivation:
Writing to
achieve good
grades.
Examples
Part of it [my revision] was the fact that it was an assignment to sort
of make it better, although he [Mr. Caswell] didn’t specify how. I
thought of the different aspects of it that you could potentially pursue,
and I thought, well maybe I like this one more (Hazel, interview 2).
Extracurricular
motivation:
Writing to get
feedback.
Just being with other writers and listening to their approach to it and
then just giving their feedback to you on it, is... it helps you improve...
it does. It really does (Tristan, interview 2).
The feedback [is why I like writers’ circles]. I mean, sharing what I've
written, and also the feedback I get from it is always the best part
(Rodney, interview 2).
This is, like, a huge portion of our English grade (Henry, interview 2).
33
Table 2
Code Examples: Within-setting Motivations and Reasons to Write (continued)
Examples
Motivations
Online
Can I say [I started writing to get] the avatar (Rosa, interview 1)?
motivation:
Writing to
accomplish Writing for the NT got me closer to a related goal on Neopets, another
game
avatar (Kay, interview 1).
objectives.
Writing for grades and evaluations: The classroom case
As mentioned in the setting description, the creative writing in Mr.
Caswell’s classroom was open in terms of subject and form, but
constrained in terms of process and evaluation. Students were required
to work on both poetry and prose writing, to preserve drafts and
comments, to periodically submit these documents for evaluation, and to
complete at least one major revision. While the students had varying
opinions of the creative writing as a whole, all of them spoke about how
this assignment structure affected their writing process. In order to
become comfortable with sharing their writing with their classmates and
teacher, some students chose to see the writing as a simple requirement
of their English course. As Eleanor put it, “I got this done because it
needs to be handed in... now you’re getting a grade for this, just do it”
(interview 2).
Many students (6/9) mentioned revising extensively as a result of
process requirements. These students described themselves as grademotivated, but also discussed what they liked and how they wanted to
refine their work. They used feedback from Mr. Caswell and their
classmates as guides for revision. Many of the students asserted that this
revision and analysis work improved their stories and poems, even if
they would not have revised without the external grade motivation.
Jared described revision in this way: “I got to keep a lot of the elements
that I liked but I was able to change individual parts [of the poem]
around and make them better so the whole meaning was kept, but the
poem got the meaning across much better” (interview 2). Revisions may
34
have been compelled by the process-based evaluation, but helped many
students to recognize, refine, and clarify the meanings that they wanted
to express.
Writing for feedback in the extracurricular case
Young writers attended Blue Willow’s writing camp because of their
interest in creative writing. Most of these writers—including all of the
seven participants who took part in this study—had attended at least one
writing camp or school-year writers’ circle in years past. On the first day
of camp, coaches shaped the sacred writing time and writers’ circle
activities using suggestions and ideas from the campers (field notes).
These discussions suggested that many participants came to camp
prepared with writing work to accomplish; most described being
motivated to do so, but needing the time, structured writing activities,
and intensive critique provided by writers’ circles. In her final interview,
Melanie told me that, in retrospect, she had “definitely saved [an] idea”
for camp because this space would provide her with focused time to
work on the story idea (interview 2).
6/7 of the Blue Willow participants described enjoying their
participation in a writers’ circle, noting this particularly “helpful”
element of their camp experience (Katrina, interview 2), even if it was
sometimes “nerve-wracking” to share new writing (Rica, interview 2).
While many of the young writers wrote on their own during the school
year, the chance to speak with other writers and solicit critique was a
rare opportunity. As Sara noted, “I put everything into it [writing at
camp] so I know I’ll get something out... I don’t get that when I’m
writing at home cuz there’s no one I’m sharing it with” (interview 2).
Many (4/7) writers felt isolated at home and school, and lamented the
difficulty of getting good feedback in these settings. They worked to
complete writing for each day’s writers’ circle and welcomed the chance
to hear critique that was unavailable elsewhere.
Writing to accomplish game objectives in the online case
is an open world with little central narrative, significant
interaction with other players, and several achievement paths that
Neopets
35
involve writing or publication. Many players describe being motivated
to write because Neopets makes writing a highly visible, sometimes
lucrative element of play. Successful writers’ profiles are decorated with
trophies for NT articles, poetry contest wins, and storytelling contest
wins, and each week, the site news announces the NT by featuring
player-written articles (field notes). By highlighting these achievements,
site developers call attention to Neopian writers’ work. As a direct
result, such players are well-known and respected.
Most (4/5) study participants mentioned these publication rewards as
motivations to engage in this kind of play. The weekly NT is the best
known of the venues for writing, and ten successful publications result
in not only ten trophies, but the NT-themed “secret avatar” for use on
the chat boards. Winning this prize is regarded as one of the most
difficult challenges in the game, but the general presence of these
rewards lead many Neopian writers to write for multiple site
publications. Rosa describes “At times, it felt like even the writing was
a competition because of the avatars... [but] the trophy aspect got me
writing poetry and [into trying] the ever-frustrating storytelling contest”
(Rosa, interview 2). Some players additional tied their motivations to
writerly identities outside of the game. Kay wanted to collect the NT
avatar and trophy achievements, but also shared personal reasons for
seeking NT publication:
I felt (and continue to feel) like an idiot for not pursuing the NT
since my chosen profession is writing... I feel embarrassed whenever
I tell anyone on Neopets this, and do not have more publications in
the Neopian Times (interview 1).
Competition is fierce, however. Between the large number of
submissions and the small amount of generic feedback that NT editors
and contest judges provide, NT publication and writing contest wins are
challenging goals.
Additionally, like most publications, writing for Neopets means
conforming to content guidelines. These strict limitations include: “if it
isn’t about Neopets in some way, it will not be published,” and “avoid
sensitive subjects such as death. If your story is too controversial, we
will not be able to publish it” (Neopets. com , n.d.). 3/5 of the writers
36
noted that these guidelines were de-motivating. Kay explained that “I
feel forbidden from exploring situations I normally would... I write
fantasy because I like to toy with all aspects of a world—politics,
religion, geography, etc... I can’t do that with Neopets” (interview 1).
Scarlet, however, described enjoying the challenge of learning how to
write in this restrictive environment: “I’ve always favored things that
were quite grim... I’ve gotten better at still including some of the things
that are... on the borderline of acceptability. As I write more I get better
at hedging that line of violence or relationship” (interview 1). While
Neopian writers like Scarlet thrived, many players in this study
described frustrations with such obstacles to publication and
recognition.
Theme 2: Individuals’ Motivations to Write are Affected by
Personal Experience and Interest
Moving beyond individual contexts, each of the interviews elicited
information about participants’ goals and motivations for writing
particular pieces. Participants rarely articulated these broader ideas
about a piece of writing during observations; rather, larger goals for a
particular form, genre, or topic seemed embedded in pre-writing or
planning processes. Once the writing had begun, particularly in the
classroom and extracurricular cases, writers and mentors worked with
existing drafts rather than reflecting on plans or goals. Similarly, in the
online case, few participants spoke with others about larger goals for
their writing outside of direct collaborations (for discussion of Neopets
collaborations, see Curwood, Magnifico, & Lammers, in press, and
Magnifico, 2012).
Summed up briefly in the bullet points below, and with representative
examples in Table 3, motivations from across the cases may be
described in the following ways:
• Individuals wrote stories and poems to explore themes or ideas
that interested them.
• Individuals wrote stories and poems to express identity, emotion,
or personal experience.
Table 3
37
Code Examples: Cross-setting Motivations to Write Individual Pieces
Examples
Motivation for
writing
individual
pieces
Interesting
Well I was thinking about how it would feel, like she [Sandra Day
themes or
O’Connor] gave up all her time for him [her husband, who developed
ideas
dementia]. He might not even remember who she is, maybe she
visited him every day, and then he falls in love with someone else...
And I was thinking what she was thinking then, and how she dealt
with it, and so I thought, ‘well, I have to write that’ (Melanie,
extracurricular case, interview 2).
A lot of times Bishop will look at something in nature and sort of
compare it to like a human item, like in The Cold Spring she compares
fireflies to champagne bubbles, but I wanted to do sort of the opposite,
and I wanted to look at a person and describe them as nature (Kira,
classroom case, interview 2).
I mostly identify with the characters I’ve created that are the
“rescuers.” I guess at heart a piece of me wants to save everyone from
their own pain. It’s an impossible task... but I can at least write stories
where someone discovers for themselves that they don’t have to suffer
(Scarlet, online case, interview 1).
Expressing “I reflected [my main character], like reflected myself to him, so like
I’m on the way but I’m trying to find some way to go. That’s why I’m
identity or
understanding studying abroad now, I’m trying to find a way” (Dae, classroom case,
interview 1).
personal
experience
Well, me and my little brother and my older brother, we always go out
on the roof, and I was just thinking about... that, I guess. I was
inspired by a lotta conversations that I’ve had with my little brother”
(Rica, extracurricular case, interview 2).
I first got the idea [for my story] when I wanted to play 20 Questions
with a friend and she refused. She's a bit mysterious and has a
traumatic past, which I wanted to help with. I wrote Questions to
express my frustration that she was unwilling to open up to me...
Questions ends with the side character accepting that you cannot force
people to get help, which I had to accept for myself... She plays
Neopets too, so this was a way of discreetly expressing to her through
my characters what I wanted to tell her (Addie, online case, interview
1).
I felt that sometimes it was almost too much of myself that I was
showing people... but with the very experiential way that I took
poetry, I think it was kind of an approach to certain things in my life
that aren’t really out there as much... I think it allowed my writing to
be less for me and more for the understanding of the experience
(Henry, classroom case, interview 2).
38
Motivations to write individual pieces of creative writing.
Individuals wrote stories and poems to explore specific themes or
ideas.
In each writing environment, participants described their work as rooted
in their exploration of a particular idea. Some of these inspirations
represented long-standing, personally-relevant themes or interests, while
others arose after exposure to a particular author or poet. The majority
of these responses take the form of ‘I had an idea about (a topic), and
that made me want to write (this piece of writing).’ Table 3 provides
three representative examples of different aspects of this
motivation—writing from inspiration, writing to practice a technique,
and writing to express personal interest. The examples mentioned in the
subsequent paragraphs are described in quotations by Melanie, Kira, and
Scarlet at greater length in Table 3.
Melanie spent the full week of writing camp working on a short story
that was inspired by her family’s dinner table discussion of Justice
Sandra Day O’Connor’s struggle with her husband’s dementia. Melanie
became interested in Justice O’Connor’s story because she couldn’t
imagine “what she was thinking then” as her husband’s personality
slowly slipped away, and decided to write a story to better understand
these feelings. Similarly, Scarlet describes her identification with
“rescuer” characters, and her desire to save characters “from their own
pain” in her Neopets writing, even if this task is impossible in her reallife dealings with people. Finally, in the classroom case, Kira described
her shifting interests as she started considering poetry as a way to
experiment with new techniques. As she grew to appreciate Elizabeth
Bishop, whose work was assigned by Mr. Caswell, she adapted similar
metaphorical structures and topics.
While these writers drew on different kinds of inspirations—from
others’ stories, from their own lives, or from techniques or
ideas—writers in each setting described personal interests as key jumpstarts for their writing work. For participants across the three settings, an
open, productive idea spun images, techniques, backstories, characters,
or themes that became catalysts for story or poem development.
39
Individuals wrote stories and poems to express identity, emotion, or
personal experience.
Autobiographical writing was not encouraged in any of these
environments. In the school case, Mr. Caswell asked the students to
think carefully before divulging secrets in their writing (field notes), but
three students spoke at length about the tension between their desire to
write from their own experiences and not to reveal personal details to
their teacher and schoolmates. To skirt similar difficulties in the
extracurricular case, coaches instructed writers’ circles members to
assume that all pieces were fictional (field notes). Finally, in the online
case, NT content restrictions forbade discussion of real-life situations,
likely to avoid connections between Neopets users and their real-world
identities. Despite this ban, two Neopian writers spoke about how their
stories typically connect to personal experiences in some way.
Several participants across the settings chose to write about their lives
in one or more of their stories or poems. Additionally, a few participants
mentioned “venting” (Henry, classroom case, interview 1) or writing for
an “emotional outlet” (Kira, classroom case, interview 1) in journals or
blogs that they kept for themselves. None of the writers who completed
such pieces directly revealed that their writing told personal stories, but
in their interviews, they discussed trying to understand questions about
their lives, experiences, and identities through story and writing. The
four representative examples mentioned in the subsequent paragraphs
are described in quotations by Dae, Rica, Addie, and Henry at greater
length in Table 3.
Dae, an Asian exchange student, used her classroom writing to
consider her life’s path and to imagine the advice that she hoped to
receive during her travels. Her story followed a young man on a long
journey that mirrored her time abroad in many ways, and “reflected
myself to him.” Similarly, Addie used a Neopets story to help herself
understand a difficult conversation with a friend and, ultimately, accept
her friend’s decision. Somewhat differently, Rica described finding
inspiration for stories in real conversations. The second piece she
brought to writers’ circle was “inspired by a lotta conversations” with
her brother and told the story of a girl who was working to come to
terms with a sibling’s accidental death. Rather than thinking about
40
literal experiences, Rica considered alternate possibilities.
Henry, too, used classroom writing as a tool for understanding and
resolving his own emotions. But differently from Addie, Dae, and Rica,
whose stories reflected their experiences but were not explicitly
personal, Henry wrote emotional poetry about a variety of topics
including his religious beliefs. He described developing a better
understanding and expression of his thoughts and emotions, but because
the classroom design compelled him to workshop the poems with his
classmates he felt uncomfortable after “showing people... too much of
myself.”
Even while these writing environments placed safeguards around
students’ personal lives, either through conversations between mentors
and writers (in the school and extracurricular cases) or outright content
restrictions (in the online case), several participants found personal
understanding or solace through writing. They wrote stories that were
important to them, grappled with how others would “[understand] the
experience,” as Henry explained, and shared—even published, in
Addie’s case—this emotional work, despite the potential discomfort of
explaining their meanings, situations, and personal inspirations to their
readers.
Motivations to write genres of creative writing
In addition to particular pieces of writing, participants in all three spaces
described reasons for choosing genres of writing, most often discussing
how a genre matched the style of an idea or their personal interests.
Although some young writers discussed their desires to extend their
skills and try new things, many described themselves according to an
archetype: some writers are poets, some are novel writers, and so on.
Two related themes were represented in these responses. Summed up
briefly in the bullet points below, and with representative examples in
Table 4, participants wrote within genres for the following reasons:
• Individuals chose genres based on personal preferences.
• Individuals chose genres based on perceived limits or
affordances.
41
Table 4
Code Examples: Cross-setting Motivations to Write Genres
Examples
Motivation for
writing genres
Personal
With poetry you can play with your language more so. You can say
preferences things that are just totally random and abstract, and they would still be
okay because it’s poetry (Elizabeth, classroom case, interview 2).
Well, with fantasy, I just feel freer. Like, the thing that I like about
fantasy is that like, like, I get, I get characters... I don’t even try to do
that with poetry. I sit down and write a poem and I realize that, as free
and emotional as it can be, I just don’t get the joy from it that I get
from making a world (Tristan, extracurricular case, interview 2).
I actually prefer to write articles for the NT. They seem to come more
easily to me. There's always an edge of humor, and I find I can stay
within the confines of the world more easily than when I try to write
short stories (Kay, online case, interview 1).
I felt motivated to work on the poetry... I felt like it was a way to kind
Perceived
of get in touch with my emotions, initially, and then kind of refine
limits or
affordances them [in] a way that’s approachable for a lot of people as opposed to
just a way that’s approachable for me (Henry, classroom case,
interview 2).
Most of the time they [my stories] are, admittedly, moral based
because that's what gets in [to the NT]... Every one of my stories has
some sort of character revelation or every day “truth” to it. For
example my most recent publishing explains how everyone has self
worth (Rosa, online case, interview 1).
When I read them [short stories], I feel like I don't have as much time,
the time that I’d like to connect with them, and when I write them... I
feel like I’m cheating my readers or something. I feel like there's more
to tell, and I could tell it better in a longer piece of work (Rodney,
extracurricular case, interview 2).
Individuals chose genres based on personal preferences.
The most common motivation for genre choice was personal preference.
Participants noted various characteristics of different genres that made
them more or less desirable, including levels of description, personal
affinity, or acceptability of characteristics like humor or drama. The
representative examples mentioned in the subsequent paragraphs are
described in quotations by Elizabeth, Tristan, and Kay at greater length
in Table 4. Tristan, a fantasy novelist, and Elizabeth, who preferred
42
poetry in her classroom writing, both describe their genre preferences in
terms of affinity, which was a common theme in these responses—styles
in which participants enjoy writing. Elizabeth described the free
possibilities of “play[ing] with language” that are acceptable when
writing poetry, while Tristan noted a different kind of “freedom” in
fantasy, that of world-making.
In the school case, genre choice was fraught for many participants
because the assignment dictated the necessity of attempting both prose
and poetry, and many students were intimidated by this requirement. In
the extracurricular case, mentors encouraged participants to try
something new in a “writer’s stretch” (field notes), and several
participants declared a genre outside of their comfort zone as their
stretch for the week. On Neopets, genre was significantly limited by the
content restrictions and publication norms. Across cases, writing outside
of their preferred genres pushed writers’ boundaries and comfort levels,
regardless of the environment or context.
Individuals chose genres based on perceived limits or affordances.
Participants described selecting genres based on their perceptions of a
genre’s boundaries and how these limits aligned with their ideas. For
instance, Rodney noted that novels are particularly good for
“connecting” with stories, and Henry believed that poetry is particularly
good for “getting in touch with emotions” and “refining” ideas. Finally,
some participants described favoring a genre but only in certain
contexts. For instance, Kay described fictional fantasy as her usual
preferred genre, but she preferred writing descriptive articles for the NT
because she found it easier to “stay within the confines of the world”
and conform to content restrictions.
Particularly for the experienced Neopets writers, genre and theme
choices were often related to publication possibilities. As Rosa
described, “most of the time they [my stories] are, admittedly, moral
based because that’s what gets in.” As described in the first results
theme, Scarlet tried to challenge herself to write stories of personal
interest while remaining within the NT content restrictions. Differently,
Kay and Rosa took a more functional approach, choosing genres that
aligned with their understanding of “what gets in” to the NT. This
43
functional writing for publication seemed typical among Neo-writers
who were motivated by awards or achievements. Similar to the above
discussion of themes and ideas, genres can provide a first step or a
challenge for writers in search of a place to begin writing. While some
writers stretched themselves by stepping outside of their preferred
genres, situations that forced writers into less comfortable themes and
genres led to difficulty and loss of flow and motivation.
Discussion
While many of these findings are consistent with existing studies of
achievement goals and motivation, the interviews and observations
presented in this study suggest that participants held multiple
simultaneous goals that were situated within their written participation,
but rarely suggested a straightforward pattern of learning or
performance goals. The young writers described some of their
motivations as developing in concert with the social context of the three
settings and some as developing separately, rooted in their views of
themselves as writers, students, Neopets players, or a combination of
these roles and identities. As such, these findings present a complex,
context-entwined picture of why young writers write, and they lend
support to a “universalist” or “person-in-context” (Hickey, 2003)
approach to the continued “culturalizing” of the motivational sciences
(Zusho & Clayton, 2011). Such a conclusion is perhaps to be expected
from a qualitative, multiple-case design (Magnifico, 2010b) whose
primary aim was to document relationships among individual writers,
motivations to write, creative writing communities, and available
audiences in creative writing spaces.
Caveats and Limitations
Given the descriptive, qualitative nature of this research, it is possible
that these findings occur primarily as a result of the methodologies
employed. While much of the work on achievement goals, motivation,
and interest has employed highly-structured survey or experimental
designs, this study explored observations and interviews. Such methods
44
focus on extended self-reports of participants’ interests, goals, and
motivations—one that was designed to elicit elaborations of
experiences. Participants had many opportunities to characterize their
reasons for writing, and other than a semi-structured interview script, no
attempts to standardize their language were made. Instead, these young
writers constructed and reflected on narratives of their writings and
practices that captured their motivations, emotions, and experiences
over time.
Different Goals for Different Contexts
Hickey (2003) argues that researchers in the motivational sciences must
better consider the role of setting and context in the development of
students’ motivations and goals. This conversation has begun fruitfully
with studies that examine the role of context and feedback in the
development of students’ motivations to participate in classroom
activities (e.g. Kumar, 2006; Lipstein & Renninger, 2007; Nolen, 2007).
Such examinations show that the person-in-context construct is a useful
way to theorize sociocognitive factors. As Hickey (2003) puts it,
cognition is a result of, not a precursor to, participation in an
environment. In this study, young writers articulated writing goals as
they engaged in creative writing. Their settings supported these goals
and motivation orientations through design elements such as
achievement structures and evaluations—and the consequences of these
choices are present in participants’ descriptions of their goals and their
reasons for working on particular pieces of writing.
The most complex case of contextual design choices, goals, and
participation occurred in Mr. Caswell’s classroom, where students
undertook process-oriented creative writing to prepare for their IB
examination. Students chose writing topics and critiqued each others’
work with little teacher intervention, and motivational research would
likely predict that this “de-centering” of the classroom would be
associated with a mastery-oriented environment. One of Nolen’s (2007)
writing classrooms was a space where “writing was an important social
act, where being a writer was an important identity, and where all
students could become writers” (p. 254). The creative writing in Mr.
Caswell’s class was designed in similar ways, and several students
45
slipped easily into authorial roles and described drafting and revising in
order to clarify the meanings that they wanted to express.
At the same time, Mr. Caswell’s design did not remove the students’
attention to evaluation and assessment. Many students discussed their
performance-focused orientation: They expressed concern about sharing
unpolished drafts, asked for clarification of requirements, and worried
about their English grades. This finding reflects Kumar’s (2006)
observation that teachers’ perceptions of their classroom design as
mastery- or performance-oriented may not mirror students’ experiences
of the same space. Mr. Caswell developed a curriculum that evaluated
students on their incremental progress, but many students focused on the
final outcome. It was unclear whether taking up this performancefocused orientation affected students adversely, however. Students
concerned with their grades mentioned that they might not have revised
as extensively without Mr. Caswell’s requirement for “significant
revision,” but noted that their stories and poems improved with this
additional work.
Neopets players described more consistent motivations, likely
because the setting presented one clear path to success. Some Neowriters wrote solely to make a space for themselves and their pets
within the broader game, but the emphasis on achieving publication in
the NT or writing contests reinforced a orientation to performance and
held consequences for young writers’ perceptions of themselves, their
goals, and Neopets more broadly. As Dweck and Leggett (1988)
demonstrate, when tasks are demonstrably difficult and performance
becomes central, many learners lose their motivation to learn beyond the
assignment at hand. Two participants’ descriptions of working quickly
and sacrificing story quality embodied such performance-oriented
characterizations. These categories did not hold true for those who had
already achieved significant Neopets writing achievements, however.
Others described challenging themselves in mastery-oriented ways,
attempting to write real-life experiences into Neopets contexts or
treading a line between publication requirements and personallyinteresting topics. While these achievement structures played a role in
the development of these young writers’ goals, their experiences suggest
complex interactions among setting, writerly identity, interests, and
reasons to write.
46
In the extracurricular case, the community-based nature of Blue
Willow’s writing curriculum supported mastery-oriented approaches to
writing. Experimentation and expression were encouraged by open topic
choice, daily feedback, and diverse writing exercises. These constructs
did not stop many young writers from feeling nervous about others’
opinions, but they described positive feelings about writers’ circles
because this critique consistently helped them improve their stories and
poems. Even while sharing early drafts made them uneasy, the Blue
Willow young writers described trusting in the processes of a
community that they regarded as a safe space for experimentation and
feedback.
All in all, setting-level differences in individuals’ self-described
motivations to write were expected and present. As many studies from
this area of study have suggested, pedagogical and design-level choices
significantly affect learners’ cognitions and experiences, including their
development of goals, interests, and self-efficacy (e.g. Dweck &
Leggett, 1988; Kumar, 2006; Lipstein & Renninger; 2007; Nolen,
2007). This work concurs with sociocultural studies that show how
communities dictate acceptable forms of communication, interaction,
and participation (Gee, 1996; Lave & Wenger, 1991). Overall, each
setting in this study had distinct objectives, which in turn supported
different goals for the participants—primarily, writing for grades in the
classroom case, writing for feedback and critique in the extracurricular
case, and writing to achieve game objectives in the online case.
Similarities Across Goals and Contexts
Additionally, however, participants described goals and reasons to write
that were common across the three settings. Young writers in all three
environments shared many reasons for choosing particular genres for
their pieces and directions for their work: They wrote to explore
personal interests, to reflect on life experiences, and in response to their
perceptions of genre constraints and affordances. In short, participants
reported that many of their goals were linked to their ideas about,
interests in, and inspirations for specific pieces of writing.
All three groups of writers focused on smaller goals for individual
pieces or genres. Participants chose to write particular pieces because of
47
personal interest or affiliation with a particular form or topic. While
genre was more conflated with environments (particularly in the
classroom and online cases), they chose genres for reasons of affinity
and function, as well. For example, writers chose novels when their
ideas were long and rambling—because the genre suited the story.
Others wrote poetry because they enjoyed poetry—because the genre
suited their interest. These piece-level and genre-level reasons to write
did not align well with individual mastery or performance patterns;
rather, the two were typically mixed. For instance, Addie’s experience of
writing a Neopets story to help herself accept that she could not force a
friend to seek help suggests writing for understanding. Ultimately,
though, she submitted it to the NT, a venue that reinforces performance
with trophies. Cases like this do not appear—as Cumming, Kim, and
Eouanzoui’s (2007) studies of ESL students’ evolving goals do not—to
conform easily to traditional motivational categories, patterns, or
analyses.
Implications
These findings carry implications for writing teachers and researchers in
the areas of literacy and the motivational sciences. In the school context,
students focused on getting good grades. This pre-set performance
context is a significant hurdle to overcome for teachers who seek to
emphasize the communicative nature of writing and literacy. Similarly
to Nolen’s (2007) study of elementary literacy classrooms, students can
learn how to write for the sake of writing, and many develop interest in
writing as a result, but this process may require un-learning of typical
school contexts.
The remaining two cases present counterpoints to the writing
classroom. While Mr. Caswell worked to change his classroom’s culture
and context by employing workshop-based writing, the Blue Willow
and Neopets contexts remained stable. At Blue Willow, experienced
young writers accepted writers’ circles as beneficial, audience-driven
spaces to receive formative feedback on the writings that they valued.
The Neopets writers, on the other hand, reported a variety of responses
to their evaluative, publication-based context. While some questioned
their writerly identities on the basis of unsuccessful performance, others
48
seemed to treat the content restrictions as part of their play, attempting
to blend site content and personal experience to achieve publication.
Aside from evaluation contexts, taken together, these three cases
additionally confirm Nolen’s (2007) findings around creative
participation and reveal a central implication for writing instruction.
While situative theories note that participants do learn to conform to
particular contexts through participation (Gee, 1996), young writers in
all three contexts described subverting norms to explore their lives
through writing, like Dae, Henry, and Addie—or losing motivation
when this task seemed impossible, like Kay. Even in contexts that
placed safeguards around autobiographical work, young writers
persisted in writing for themselves. Young writers need support to use
writing in these ways, however: Mentors must establish writing
communities that are open to expression, as well as reasonable limits to
help young writers consider what emotions and experiences to reveal in
their work.
Conclusions
This study shows that adolescents’ writing goals and motivations
respond to their settings but are additionally tied to their individual
writing identities: their ideas about, interests in, and inspirations for
particular works. As such, these findings raise questions about the broad
generalizability of goals and motivations, and about the necessity of
examining the multiple, complex—and sometimes conflicting—reasons
that lead adolescents to participate in writing communities. Researchers
in the fields of literacy and motivation must continue to experiment with
methods and observe settings in order to reach more thorough
understandings of how writers think and learn through writing, sharing,
and getting feedback from readers and mentors. We must work across
paradigms, bringing together sociocognitive factors like motivation,
rhetorical concepts of audience, and sociocultural understandings of
writing as social discourse to do so. These findings argue that we must
complicate conceptualizations of writing and motivation, and that we
must seek these new understandings by studying adolescents’ writing
cognitions and communities in context, continuing to learn about how
these factors combine to cultivate learning.
49
Notes
1
A table detailing all participants’ characteristics may be found in Appendix 1.
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55
Appendix
All Participants (all names are pseudonyms)
Pseudonym
Dae
Eleanor
Elizabeth
Hazel
Henry
Setting
classroom
classroom
classroom
classroom
classroom
Grade
11th
11th
11th
11th
11th
Jared
Kira
classroom
classroom
11th
11th
Nasha
Noah
Katrina
classroom 11th
classroom 11th
writing camp 9th
Leanne
Melanie
Rica
Rodney
Sara
writing camp
writing camp
writing camp
writing camp
writing camp
Tristan
writing camp 10th
Addie
online
10th
Kay
online
Rosa
online
Scarlet
online
Sheena
online
MFA
(age 23)
college
(age 19)
college
(age 20)
college
(age 19)
10th
9th
10th
12th
10th
Creative writing experiences
none prior to Mr. Caswell’s class
English class creative writing (middle school)
personal poetry & journaling; English class
creative writing
personal poetry & journaling; English class
creative writing
English class creative writing
3 years writing camp; school creative writing
course
2 years writing camp
4 years writing camp; English class creative
writing
4 years writing camp; English class creative
writing
4 years NT writing; 4 years of Fanfiction.net
writing
2 years NT writing; online role-playing;
original fiction novel
2 years NT writing; 5 years online journaling;
school creative writing courses
4 years NT writing; original fiction; in-process
original fiction novella
4 years NT writing; original fiction; short story
collection for young readers; self-published
fantasy novel; 2 years reporting for college
newspaper
Encyclopedic Memory: LongTerm Memory Capacity for
Knowledge Vocabulary in Middle School
Alain Lieury 1 & Sonia Lorant 2
1) Université Européenne de Bretagne, France
2) Universite de Strasbourg, France
To cite this article: Lieury, A. & Lorant, S. (2013). Encyclopedic
Memory: LongTerm Memory Capacity for Knowledge Vocabulary in
Middle School. International Journal of Educational Psychology, 2(1),
5680. doi: 10.4471/ijep.2013.18
IJEP – International Journal ofEducational Psychology Vol. 2 "o. 1
Encyclopedic Memory: LongTerm Memory Capacity for
Knowledge Vocabulary in
Middle School
Alain Lieury
Université Européenne de Bretagne
Sonia Lorant*
Université de Strasboug
Abstract
This article is a synthesis of unpublished and published experiments showing
that elementary memory scores (words and pictures immediate recall; delayed
recall, recognition), which are very sensitive to aging and in pharmacological
protocols, have little or no correlation with school achievement. The alternative
assumption developed is that school achievement strongly depends on the longterm memory of scholastic knowledge (history, literature, sciences, maths, etc),
called encyclopedic memory.
A longitudinal study from the grade 6 to the grade 9 of a cohort of eight
classes of a French college, was undertaken in order to observe the implication
of the encyclopedic vocabulary (i.e. Julius Caesar, Manhattan, Shangaï,
Uranus, vector) in school performance. An inventory in the school textbooks
gives approximately 6000 encyclopedic words in grade 6 to 24000 in grade 9.
The encyclopedic storage capacity was estimated at the end of each year by a
multiple-choice questionnaire with random samples of words (800 items; 8
subjects). The results show an estimation of 2500 words acquired at the end of
grade 6, to 17000 at the end of grade 9. The correlations range from .61 to .72
between the score of encyclopedic memory and the average school grades.
Keywords: encyclopedic memory, long-term memory, capacity, knowledge,
school achievement.
2013 Hipatia Press
ISSN 2014-3591
DOI: 10.4471/ijep.2013.18
IJEP – International Journal ofEducational Psychology Vol. 2 "o. 1
Memoria Enciclopédica:
Capacidad de Memoria a Largo
Plazo para el Conocimiento de
Vocabulario en la Escuela Media
Alain Lieury
Université Européenne de Bretagne
Resumen
Sonia Lorant
Université de Strasboug
Este artículo es una síntesis de experimentos no pubicados y publicados que
muestran que los resultados en memoria básica (memoria inmediata de palabras
y dibujos; memoria retardada y reconocimiento) que es muy sensible a la edad
y a los protocolos farmacológicos tienen poca o ninguna correlación con el
rendimiento escolar. La asunción alternativa desarrollada es que el rendimiento
escolar depende fuertemente de la memoria a largo plazo o memoria escolástica
(historia, literatura, ciencias, matemáticas, etc.), llamada memoria
enciclopédica.
Se llevo a cabo un estudio longitudinal desde el sexto hasta el noveno curso
de una promoción de ocho clases de una universidad francesa para observar la
implicación del vocabulario enciclopédico (i.e. Julio César, Manhattan,
Shangaï, Uranus, vector) sobre el rendimiento escolar. Un inventario en los
libros de texto ofrece aproximadamente 6000 palabras enciclopédicas en el
sexto curso y 24.000 en el noveno curso. La capacidad de almacenamiento
enciclopédico se estimó al final de cada año con un cuestionario de respuestas
múltiples con muestras de palabras al azar (800 ítems; 8 asignaturas). Los
resultados mostraron una estimación de 2.500 palabras adquiridas al final del
sexto curso y hasta 17.000 al final del noveno curso. Las correlaciones van de
0.61 a 0.72 entre el resultado en memoria enciclopédica y la media de las notas
escolares.
Palabras clave: memoria enciclopédica, memoria a largo plazo, capacidad,
conocimiento, rendimiento escolar.
2013 Hipatia Press
ISSN 2014-3591
DOI: 10.4471/ijep.2013.18
58
Lieury & Lorant – Encyclopedic Memory
M
emory has always been considered important for academic
achievement. But, knowing the variety of mnemonic
mechanisms, it is not easy to ascertain which of them are
concerned in school performance. Indeed, while some indicators of
memory are very sensitive to ageing or to pharmacological protocols
(Lieury, Trebon, Boujon, Bernoussi, & Allain, 1991; Allain, Lieury, &
Gandon, 1993), they appear to be correlated only slightly or not at all
with school results of pupils or students.
Standard Test of Memory (SM9) and Performance in the College
Thus, during studies of validation of a test intended for a
pharmacological use (the SM9, “9 Scores of Memory”: Lieury et al.,
1991) experiments were carried out, one of which with middle school
pupils. The SM9 is a test of memory conceived to evaluate tests of
clinical pharmacology. It is a video test and is composed of 9 subtests of
memory suitable for calculating fundamental memory scores : words
and pictures, immediate and delayed recall; words, pictures, familiar
and not-familiar faces recognition (Lieury et al., 1991) and lastly, a test
of semantically organized recall (the only test which is presented on
paper rather than on video).
These memory scores were correlated with the annual school grades
averages in three subjects for 181 last-year middle school students of the
French “Lycée” (average age, 17 years). As the correlations were almost
null, we suspect that the grades were not comparable from one class to
the other. Thus the school averages in these subjects were standardized.
The correlations, however, were very weak, (see Table1) not exceeding
.20, the majority being close to 0. What dominates, on the whole, it is
the absence of relation between the elementary mechanisms of the
memory, as measured by the SM9, and school performance.
One could think that the weak or negligible correlations are the result
of an absence of fidelity in grades obtained in school (professors noting
in a variable way amongst themselves and over time) but the school
grades are in moderate correlation (.28 between maths and
history/geography; and .34 between languages and history/geography),
59
which is more than they are with the elementary mechanisms of the
memory, measured by this battery.
Table 1
Correlations between Scores of memory (SM9)and school averages in three
subjects in middle school students (average age : 17 years; n = 181)*,
Maths
Immediate Recall of Pictures
Immediate Recall of Words
Delayed Recall of Pictures
Delayed Recall of Words
Organization
Recognition of Pictures
Recognition of Words
Recognition of familiar faces
Recognition of not familiar faces
-.17
-.04
-.08
.06
-.03
-.11
-.20
.08
.09
Foreign HistoryLanguages Geography
-.08
.01
.02
.09
.03
-.03
.00
.14
.04
-.00
-.05
.05
.11
.15
.00
.03
.06
.15
* The correlations are significant to .05 starting from r = .13 (n = 181).
Reasoning and School Performances
It is probably because of the lack of predictability of this type of
memory tests (short-term memory or rote learning) that tests of
reasoning were more widely used. However, validation studies of these
tests of reasoning also give medium or weak correlations. The most
complete French research is unknown as it is related in an unpublished
thesis (N'Guyen Xuan, 1969; see Lieury 2012). Anh N'Guyen Xuan
built 12 tests of reasoning (15 in other studies), 4 of verbal reasoning, 4
of numerical reasoning and 4 of spatial reasoning and the correlations
related to hundreds of pupils of various levels of middle school (grade 6
to 9).
60
All in all, the results indicate weak correlation with school subjects.
For example according to the tests, between .20 to .26 with the life
sciences, from .01 to .28 with history/geography, i.e. as much as with
drawing class. In fact the tests of numerical reasoning are best
correlated with mathematics and the tests of verbal reasoning with the
French essay. This probably shows the role of former training and not of
a pure reasoning independent of the contents. Indeed, a more detailed
examination confirms this. Certain correlations show the importance of
specificity for mathematics: the correlations with the four tests of
numerical reasoning are the following ones: “Operations to supplement”
.51, “Numerical Series”, .42, “Operations” .63 and “Algebra” .45. Two
items from the best correlated test (Operations) are these: “How much
do you add to the numerator of the fraction 5/24 to make it equal to 1/3”
or “Which is the odd number whose triple lies between the square of 4
and the square of 5”. Obviously, more knowledge in mathematics is
required than simply “pure” reasoning. In the same way, some of the
tests of verbal reasoning are related to former knowledge (proverbs,
analogies).
One could suppose that reasoning is more important in the older
classes. But another study, Aubret (1987) concerning a thousand of
pupils of grade 9 from 48 classes of 16 middle schools, using the tests of
N'Guyen Xuan and others (in particular a test by Spearman) shows
equivalent results. A pupil's future in the school system is expressed on
a five point scale: those who leave school after grade 9 are graded “1”;
those who continue on to obtain the “Baccalaureat»(the final exam in
the French middle school system) are graded “5”. Tests of reasoning
only modestly predict (.30 to .41) the future after the grade 9, whereas
grades obtained in school at the end of the grade 9, predict with a
correlation of .60.
Vocabulary and Encyclopedic Memory
Another assumption is that scholastic performance could be related to
the long-term memory of the school knowledge vocabulary.
61
Vocabulary
The idea is not new and goes along with the empirical discovery of the
importance of vocabulary in cognitive development. From the beginning
of experimental psychology, vocabulary was a very important
component of the composite tests of Binet and Terman (cf. the subtests
of vocabulary in the Wechsler tests) and was even the subject of certain
specific tests (Mill Hill, Peabody test, Binois-Pichot). This showed up in
an old and forgotten study by Pichot and Rennes 1949. They correlated
average grades in French, Maths, Science, History, and Geography for
263 pupils in 6th grade with the results of a Binois-Pichot vocabulary
test, obtaining a correlation of .57. A correlation between those same
grades with a test of reasoning (Matrices of Raven) resulted in only .15.
Vocabulary still remains a very important field of research with
highly varied prospects. Some studies make inventories, an already
extremely complex feat, like those of Nagy & Anderson (1984).
Regarding to French vocabulary, several inventories have been made
(Lété, 2004; Lété, Sprenger-Charolles & Colé, 2004) but only two of
them are known to use their inventories to estimate the number of words
memorized at school . These two studies come to the same estimates.
Ehrlich, Bramaud du Boucheron and Florin (1993) start from a
preselection of 2 700 words (adapted from a word dictionary, sorted by
students) and come to an estimate of 9 000 known words at the end of
French elementary school (grade 5; 10 years old). Déro has carried out a
computerized counting from elementary school handbooks and has
estimated, with an MCQ test, the acquired vocabulary for each school
grade. He also came to about 9 000 words memorized at the end of
grade 5 (Déro, Fenouillet & Lieury, submitted).
However, the majority of researchers seems more interested in
learning mechanisms, in particular in young children (Hepburn, 2010;
Marulis & Neuman, 2010), but also in specialized vocabularies like
those of mathematics (Brown, 2008). Others again are interested in
other school or cognitive performances, reading in particular, or
comprehension of stories (Verhoeven, 2011; Lee, 2011). Many
researches focus on the acquisition mechanisms of new words. To that
purpose, a frequent hypothesis made is that both the phonological
62
memory and the repetition are strongly implied (Camba & Morra, 2009;
Rosenthal & Ehri, 2011). However several researches also show the
importance of vocabulary knowledge, interpreting that new words
memorization is all the more easy that the phonological units have
already been memorized (Camba & Morra, 2009). Thus, in a sample of
40 Greek children studying English at school, the learning speed of new
English words was strongly influenced by their long term English
vocabulary, but was independent of the phonological short term
memory (Masoura & Gathercole, 2005). In the same way, the 9/10-yearold children’s interpretation of new words did not seem to depend on
the short-term memory span, but on the working memory and
vocabulary knowledge (Cain, Oakhill & Lemmon, 2004).
Encyclopedic memory
The concept of Vocabulary is generally used as a whole (without
subject’s distinction), this is probably due to the fact that the majority of
studies concern young pupils (elementary school). On the contrary,
starting from middle school (French college, grades 6 to 9), the learning
refers to subjects of a great specificity, History, Geography, Maths,
Physics, Literature, Foreign Languages,…. This specific knowledge
probably depends mainly on lexical and semantic memory. But by their
specificity, their link to numbers (Maths, Physics and Chemistry,
History, Geography), faces (History), spatial maps (Geography) or
diagrams (Life and Earth sciences), our assumption is that encyclopedic
memory is perhaps based on psychologically and neurologically specific
mechanisms. Thus, many words are proper names “Julius Caesar,
Manhattan, Shangaï, Uranus”, or concepts which have meanings
different from their equivalents in everyday life :for example the lexical
unit “disc”, which evokes a music CD, while solar disk in History, or
“disc” in the mathematical sense, have different meanings.
To refer to the specialized vocabulary of these disciplines, we have
proposed the concept of “Encyclopedic Memory” (Lieury, Van Acker,
Clevede, & Durand, 1995a; Lieury, Van Acker, & Durand, 1995b) in
reference to the “Encyclopédistes”, the 18th century scientists Diderot
63
and d’Alembert. The encyclopedic memory thus represents the whole of
the knowledge, words, categories, images, which are the stored base of
our knowledge in long term memory. For greater simplicity and
homogeneity, we concentrated on vocabulary to the exclusion of other
knowledge, numbers, formulas, faces or maps, which could be subjects
of later research.
Few studies have been done on these long-term memories for school
knowledge and they often focused on university students. “The
forgetting of Spanish” was studied by Bahrick (1984) over a period of
50 years. He discovered a rapid decrease of the vocabulary knowledge
during the first year and a certain stability during the following years.
He thus came to the conclusion that a stable amount of knowledge
called “permastore” exists. In a review, Conway, Cohen and Stanhope
(1992) show a comparable pattern regarding mathematics,
sciences…where a rapid decline is noticed during the first years (1-6
years) to attain a stable retention (over 30 years). They proved the
inaccuracy of the belief that knowledge acquired at school is rapidly
forgotten. This conclusion was recently confirmed by Custers (2011)
regarding scientific knowledge. Custers has studied the basic science
knowledge (Physics, Chemistry, Biology) for medical students and
doctors up to 25 years of practice. One of his interesting results was
that, contrary to the popular thinking, the vocabulary was not that much
forgotten during the two years which followed the studies. It was then
subjected to a fast decline to reach a stability of 25/30% after two years
of practice. The importance of scientific knowledge is also noticed
through a multimedia learning situation about tectonic plates. The high
prior knowledge learners take better advantage of the instructional
explanations whereas the low prior knowledge learners need further
explanations about their mistakes (Acuña, Rodicio & Sánchez, 2011).
Knowledge importance is not systematically spotted by an increase of
performance but can be by a strategy variability. Indeed Guo and Pang
(2011) have shown that a partial learning strategy for geometry ( notion)
is more efficient for the grade 4 pupils who have no geometry notions
than for grade 6 pupils, for who simultaneous multiple figures
presentation were sufficient.
Varied and extensive knowledge should thus be of a great importance
to determine cognitive performances. But what is the long term memory
64
capacity of this knowledge?
A synthesis of several of Lieury’s researches on middle school pupils
(unpublished (grade 6) or only published in French is presented
hereunder.
Inventory of the vocabulary specific to school disciplines from grade
6 to grade 9
Even though there is an introduction to history and sciences in
elementary school, the early years of French middle school (grades 6 to
9) are characterized by the massive appearance of specialized subjects,
History, Mathematics, Biology, etc. Although knowledge is not limited
to words but also depends on images (e.g. volcano, pyramid), faces
(bust of Cleopatra, Louis XIV…), procedures (rules of syntax, rules of
algebra…). For instance, Kyttälä et Lehto (2008) have shown
connections between the working memory’s spatial components and
performances in different mathematics tasks. Nevertheless it was more
achievable to make an inventory of words only. The inventory of words
became (in particular in grade 8 and grade 9) sufficiently gigantic to
justify this choice. Moreover, it is possible that words represent the
majority of knowledge. Thus, it has been demonstrated that memory of
images depends on denomination (Dual coding theory; Paivio & Csapo,
1969; Lieury & Calvez, 1986). In the same way, Kidd and Kirjavainen
(2011), have shown that, contrary to a likely hypothesis, the acquisition
of past tense morphology in Finnish does not imply the procedural
memory but only the declarative memory for children aged 4 to 7.
A longitudinal study listing encyclopedic vocabulary over the four
years was thus undertaken (Lieury et al., 1992; Lieury et al., 1995a and
b; Lieury, 1996) in the largest college (8 classes in each of the four
levels) in Rennes, France. Having failed to deal with the heterogeneous
teachers' courses, the inventory was made using the college’s textbooks.
Those classes not having textbooks (technology, music), were not taken
into account. As the inventory was to be specific to “encyclopedic”
fields, usual vocabulary was excluded. Not having at that time a relevant
database, the encyclopedic vocabulary was selected subjectively by
various judges with reference to an inventory of the elementary school
65
vocabulary (Dottrens & Massarenti, 1963). Thorough research on
elementary school vocabulary (Ehrlich et al., 1978; Déro et al.,
submitted) showed higher estimates: 9000 words at the end of Primary
education (grade 5). The “fundamental” vocabulary of Dottrens and
Massarenti thus probably corresponds to the very frequent words. It
should be noted that one of major difficulties of such inventories is their
sheer size (Nagy & Anderson, 1984), which often obliges researchers to
work only on samples. We opted to work on the total corpus of
textbooks, accepting a certain amount of subjectivity of the judges
(student or professors) to remove the usual vocabulary.
Inventories are always complex operations, hence the dissensions
between authors (Nagy & Anderson, 1984; Nagy & Hermann, 1987).
Indeed, words differ not only by their graphic components and their
grammatical alternatives (e.g. conjugated verbs) but also by their
meaning (semantic memory). Thus, the word “disc” has different French
meanings (CD), in sport (throwing the discus), in history (solar disk), in
mathematics (full circle), in everyday life (parking disc); the lexical
item “disc” thus refers at least to five different concepts. Rules of
inventory were made respecting the general principle of dissociating all
different semantic units. Thus we kept the same lexeme in various fields
when it corresponded to different meanings, as in the example of disc.
In the same way, plurals were differentiated when they referred to
different concepts, as in “glass” and “glasses” (astronomical). On the
other hand, when several grammatical forms, for example, combined
forms of a verb, corresponded to the same meaning, only one word was
counted. Naturally, in many cases, it is sometimes difficult to decide
(e.g. to live and living). The rule was then to refer to several judges and
to retain several units if they were considered semantically different.
The second rule is that of specificity. Generally, in the event of
redundancy, a word is retained in the more specific field of reference;
for example if “Cleopatra” is listed in both History and French, the word
is only kept in the inventory of the most specific field, in this case,
History. However, when a word (or proper name) appears only once in a
nonspecific matter for example “Marie-Antoinette” (wife of Louis XVI)
in French vocabulary in 3rd (grade 9), it was preserved.
The third rule was to make inventories of the school levels without
repeating words from the previous years. For example, “Ramses,
66
Pyramid, …” were not added to the vocabulary of grade 7. A
comparison of the vocabularies of grade 6 and grade 7 (Lieury et al.,
1992) showed only weak overlap, 13% on average, from 5% in history
(where the programs are very different) to 34% in foreign language
(English).
Table 2
Inventory ofvocabulary in textbooks of4 levels ofcollège according to subjects
(except usual vocabulary).
Grades
French
6
1 989
7
2 692
8
5 379
9
7 049
History
1 088
2 841
3 257
6.722
Geography
824
1 370
2 636
**
Civics
872
421
1 646
2 917
402
776
1 099
2 456
Foreign language *
716
1 164
2 354
2 272
Physics and chemistry
259
212
1 131
2 133
Maths
167
203
571
440
Total
6 317
9 679 18 073 23 989
School Biology (Geology in grade 8)
subjects
* English being chosen by 90% of pupils, total includes only vocabulary of this
foreign language; the second foreign language from grade 8 was not
inventoried.
** In the grade 9 program level, history and geography being very close, a
common inventory was carried out.
The inventories (see Table 2) show a considerable increase in the
number of words in obligatory textbooks, from approximately 6 000 on
the first level of “collège” up to 24 000; this confirms the “ocean of
words” expression of Nagy and Hermann (1987) with which pupils are
confronted. The analysis by subject reveals, moreover, considerable
67
disparities between them, indicating indirectly that declarative memory
is probably not solicited with the same importance, in particular in
mathematics (which is the most dependent on reasoning or procedural
memory).
Estimate of Encyclopedic Memory in Pupils
MCQ of Encyclopedic Memory
The estimate of encyclopedic storage capacity was deduced from
responses on a MCQ. This was primarily aimed at testing the semantics
of the words. For this purpose, a sample of one hundred words, for each
of the height domains, was selected by quota (words arranged
alphabetically); so there is a total of 800 items per school level.
The method of the MCQ (derived from the technique of recognition
in memory, with the choice between a target and one or more lures) was
to surround the target (i.e. the right semantic answer) with two lures; the
last choice being “I do not know” so as not to force pupils to make
errors. In order to allow short items, the test is to surround the answer
“closest” (the target) to the test item. Examples are given before the test
to show some types of right answers and lures: the “closest” answer is a
translation in Languages, a synonym in French, but the country for a
city or a river in Geography or History. Here some examples of items
for each subject (see Table 3).
Table 3
Examples ofquestions for each ofthe eight subjects in the MCQ ofgrade 8: the
questionnaire comprises hundred questions by subject (800 on the whole)
(adapted from MCQ in French for this publication).
HISTORY
Marie-Antoinette
1 - Wife of Louis XVI
2 - Sister of Louis XIV
3 - Mistress of Louis XV
4 - I don’t know
GEOGRAPHY
Cuba
1234-
Island close to America
Island of Pacific
Island close to Africa
I don’t know
CIVIC EDUCATIO
ONU
1234-
For health
For Peace
For Europe
I don’t know
68
Table 3
Examples ofquestions for each ofthe eight subjects in the MCQ ofgrade 8: the
questionnaire comprises hundred questions by subject (800 on the whole)
(adapted from MCQ in French for this publication).
GEOLOGY-BIOLOGY
Pyroxène
1234-
Ire
1234-
Weeding
Glass resisting
Mineral of basalt
I don’t know
FRECH
Anger
Song of bird
Guru
I don’t know
PHYSICS-CHEMISTRY
Uranus
1234-
Meteorite
Galaxy
Planet
I don’t know
EGLISH*
Pepper
1234-
Poivre
Menthe
Epuisette
I don’t know
Vector
MATHS
1 - Point
2 - Oriented line
3 - Non oriented line
4 - I don’t know
Sanft
1234-
DEUTCH*
Without
Soap
Soft
I don’t know
*Pupils fills one MCQ of language corresponding to their 1st foreign language.
Although the structure of MCQ is especially oriented to test semantic
storage, we have used the technique of placing lexical lures
(phonological or orthographical), to test possible confusions with
similar words. For example “courroux” (“anger” in French”) is used as a
lure (see Table 3) for pupils for whom this word would wrongly evoke
“gourou”(“guru”); in the same way the lure “Australia” for “Austral”
(“southern”) etc.
Each year, experimentation proceeded as late as possible in the school
year (the last week or last two weeks of June) to allow for maximum
acquisition of concepts. The place was the “Hautes Ourmes” middle
school in Rennes (France). The testing was collective, monitored by
several professors and students. The testing took two mornings at the
rate of four MCQ per morning with breaks; time was free within the
limits of the morning, the fastest pupils could go out after completing
two tests. Invigilators (teachers and students) and experimenters were
available to pupils who had problems understanding some items. On the
whole, MCQ were appreciated by the pupils, some of whom asking
69
whether the experiment would continue the following year. The pupils
were informed that the test did not count for examinations but was part
of a study on the difficulty of school textbooks.
Estimate of the Encyclopedic Memory of Pupils
Compared to the psychometric method (selection of the discriminative
items), the main aim of the experiment was to evaluate encyclopedic
storage capacity of pupils, viewed as the capacity of long term memory.
This is why the items of MCQ were randomly selected, 100 items per
subject. The estimate of vocabulary known at the end of the year by a
pupil is made by applying the percentage of successes to the totality of
words inventoried in one subject. For example, the inventory of words
in History in grade 6 numbering 1088, a pupil who has 40% success is
regarded as having acquired 435 words. A total is then made for the
eight subjects.
This estimate gives in grade 6 (N = 190) approximately 2500 words
acquired on average at the end of year, approximately 5000 words at the
end of grade 7 (N = 212; Lieury et al., 1995a and b), approximately
11500 in grade 8 (N = 147, Lieury, 1995a) and approximately 17000 (N
= 174 pupils) in end of grade 9 (Lieury et al., 1995b). The rate of
acquisition would thus not be linear but would approximately double
each year for this school period (see Figure 1).
Moreover, there are enormous disparities in pupils’ long-term storage
capacities, in terms of thousands of words; for example the lowest
estimate at the end of grade 6 is of 1000 words stored by some pupils
against 4000 for pupils having the best estimate. And in grade 9 (on the
same cohort, but without those pupils who have repeated the year), the
variations go from 10 384 words to 20 562 for the best estimate; this
difference is about ten thousand words, which is enormous compared to
differences in scores on tests of short-term memory, or declarative
memory in laboratory conditions.
70
Estimate of encyclopedic storage capacity measured by
number of words acquired at the end of year, from grade 6 to grade
9 of middle school.
The average relates to eight classes on each level, minimum and
maximum correspond to least (min) and to best (max) scores.
Figure 1.
Encyclopedic Memory and Academic Achievement
Correlations between encyclopedic memory and school results
The implication of encyclopedic storage capacity in school
performances was measured by the correlations between various scores
of MCQ and annual averages, by subject or general average grades.
These results were published but only in French (Lieury et al., 1992;
Lieury et al., 1995, a and b) so a selection of results is given in this
synthesis article.
Generally, the corrected score, “Successes minus Errors” (S-E), gives
better correlations than a simple score of success, which does not take
into account errors (in particular errors on lexical lures). At grades 8 and
9, we considered that a score “Successes-Errors/2 decreasing the score
of successes only by half of the score of errors, was more logical since
71
there were always two lures per target. Practically, correlations between
S-E and S-E/2 were very similar.
Table 4
Correlations between total score (S-E or S-E/2) with encyclopedic MCQ of
memory and annual school average (Lieury, 1991; Lieury et al. , 1992; Lieury
et al. , 1995a, 1995b) in function ofgrade.
Average
school
grades
grade
MCQ
n
6
7
8
9
Brevet *
.69
.72
.69
.61
.64
190
138
147
174
174
* “Brevet” is a national final examination after 4 years
of college (grade 9) including three tests (Maths,
French and History-Geography).
Calculation of correlations was in general carried out with average of
annual grades in subjects which we called “specific”, i.e. corresponding
to those in which we made inventories. All in all, correlations (S-E in
grade 6 and 7 or S-E/2 in grades 8 and 9) are high, between .60 and .70
with annual average of school grades (see Table 4). The correlations
appear higher than those obtained with tests of reasoning (N'Guyen
Xuan, 1969) and especially higher than those with tests of short-term or
episodic memory (rote learning). In addition to these tests, grade 9
pupils were also tested with two working memory tests: a backward
digit span and sequential memory test, (Larson & Saccuzzo, 1989). The
correlations with academic achievements were moderate, for Backward
span (.23) and sequential memory test (.40) and higher for encyclopedic
memory test (.62) (Van Acker, Vrignaud & Lieury, 1997).
72
Encyclopedic Memory and Follow-Up after 4 Years
Although this research followed the same group of pupils, each study
presented was done as a cross-sectional study because certain pupils,
during our follow-up, repeated a year and others only entered the school
after grade 6 (e.g. recent arrival). The fact of not taking account of
repeating pupils in the longitudinal study leads to skewed correlations,
since the weakest pupils are absent from the measurements. The totality
of the cohort of grade 6 was thus analyzed to observe the implication of
encyclopedic memory up to four years later. For that, pupils were
classified in 8 levels according to their “school careers”. Three levels
are reserved for pupils who repeat a year (grades 6, 7 and 8); the levels
1 to 5 corresponds to five groups of grades according to their average on
the final examination (grade 9 = “Brevet” in France). Note that this
examination was corrected by teachers from outside the school. Each
level represents a progression of 2,5 grade points (on a total of 20): level
1 <7.5/20; level 2 <10; level 3 <12,5; level 4 <15 and level 5 >15.
There were 162 pupils whose files were complete; of the pupils who
began the experiment (in 1990), 28 left the school during the four-year
experimentation. The results show the strong correlation of .71 between
the scores of encyclopedic memory (S-E/2 on MCQ in end of grade 6
and scholastic success (see Table 5). Note, however, that the best
predictor of school evolution is still the general average of all grades,
with a correlation of 0.84.
Table 5
Correlations between grade average and encyclopedic memory at grade 6 and
school “career” 4 years later (grade 9), (" = 162).
Encyclopedic memory
(MCQ in grade 6)
Grade average in grade 6
Grade average
in grade 6
School
« career »
4 years later
.71
.71
.84
73
It is noticed that the encyclopedic score of memory is surprisingly
predictive, being of .712 with the school average of grade 6, and is still
of .714 with scores obtained four years later. This result is very
important because it shows that an encyclopedic questionnaire of
memory has a very important degree of generalization beyond the
program from which words are extracted. The results from the
questionnaire could be thought to be well correlated with results of the
same year, because in fact partly the same words are in the
questionnaires and the interrogations. However, the extent of one year's
knowledge is very predictive. Reasons are probably multiple. The extent
of vocabulary probably measures the capacity of long-term memories,
seen as the “hard drive” of human memory, but also the capacities of
abstraction which allow us to differentiate between similar concepts,
like divider and dividend, king and pharaoh, etc. Moreover, if inference
from context is a major mechanism in learning new words (Nagy &
Anderson, 1984; Sternberg, 1987), the more words a learner knows, the
greater his capacity to make inferences about a new word. Thus, on the
eight classes of the cohort, it is always the same two pupils who have
the best scores of encyclopedic vocabulary (Lieury et al., 1995b)
throughout the four years, and who have the best performances on the
final examination in grade. Also let us note that reliability of school
grades is very good.
As we have mentioned, a correlational study over several years can
be skewed by the pupils who repeat a year (Lieury, 1996). In our test
group, 51 pupils repeated a year, 22 in grade 6, 23 in grade 7 and 6 in
grade 8, i.e. 31% of the participants. Thus, if we remove these “repeat”
pupils, correlation between encyclopedic MCQ in grade 6 and the
average grades on the final examination drops to .58 (instead of .71).
According to our estimates on the basis of success on the multiplechoice questionnaire (random sampling of all words, by subject), the
pupils who repeated a year had a score of encyclopedic memory lower
or equal to 2500 words in end of grade 6: 2195 for repeating their year
in grade 6, 2491 for the pupils who repeated the grade 7 and 2070 for
those who repeated the grade 8. The pupils having the best scores
(average point higher than 15/20) had a capacity of 3500 words out of
approximately 6000 words inventoried in the textbooks at the end of
6th.
74
Discussion and Conclusion
If memory is generally important, traditional laboratory tests (Recall,
Recognition…) sensitive to aging, have little or no correlation to school
or university achievement. On the contrary, what is crucial is long-term
acquisition of encyclopedic knowledge, called “encyclopedic memory”.
In the follow-up of a cohort of approximately 200 pupils of French
collège from the grade 6 (11 years) to the grade 9 (14 years),
encyclopedic memory score is surprisingly predictive. At .712 with the
school average of grade 6, it is still at .714 with scores obtained up to
four years later. This result shows that an encyclopedic memory
questionnaire has a high degree of generalization beyond the program
from which the words are extracted. The mechanisms are probably
multiple. Extent of the vocabulary probably measures the capacity of
long-term memory, seen as the “hard drive” capacity of human memory;
but also the capacities of abstraction which make it possible to
differentiate between related concepts, like “divider” and “dividend”, or
“king” and “pharaoh”, etc. Moreover, if inference from context is a
major mechanism in learning new words (Nagy & Anderson, 1984;
Sternberg, 1987), the more words are known, the greater will be the
ability to understand a new word. Thus, out of the eight classes of the
cohort, it is the same two pupils who have the best scores of
encyclopedic vocabulary (Lieury et al., 1995b) during the four years and
who have the best performances on the national evaluation in grade 9.
Is the “encyclopedic memory” term useful? It has principally been
used to distinguish the specific teaching knowledges in middle school;
History, Geography, Mathematics, Physics, Literature, Foreign
Languages … This specific knowledge probably mainly depends on the
lexical and semantic memory. But by the specificity of this vocabulary;
its link to numbers (Maths, Physics and Chemistry, History,
Geography), faces (History), spatial maps (Geography) or diagrams
(Life and Earth sciences), the hypothesis presented here is that
encyclopedic memory might be based on psychological and
neurological specific mechanisms that can be different from the
common vocabulary ones. The authors ‘abilities are not sufficient
enough to make a neurological researches synthesis in this discussion.
However, it seems interesting to point out some researches which
IJEP – International Journal ofEducational Psychology,
2(1) 75
appear to show possible specific neurological mechanisms. The
specificity is being detected at the cortical level, for example for
numbers (in particular the parietal cortex, Dehaene, 2003) or for faces,
which activate the spindle-shaped gyrus more intensely than do
manufactured objects (Joseph & Gathers, 2002). Moreover, recent
research shows one specialization during the child's development:
ventral recognition of faces and objects in all children from 5 to 11
years, while in adults and children of 9 to 11, faces activate more
specifically the spindle-shaped gyrus (Gathers, Bhatt, Corbly, Farley &
Joseph, 2004). Richardson, Thomas, Filippi, Harth and Price (2010)
shows the implication of the left posterior supramarginal gyrus in the
learning phase (in teenagers) while the temporal cortex is activated, at
all ages (teenagers or adults) for acquired vocabulary. In the acquisition
of a foreign vocabulary through the use of semantic or pictorial
procedures, Macedonia (2010) demonstrates an implication of the left
angular gyrus as well as of the left extrastriate cortex.
As a conclusion it is interesting to note for future researches that this
study concentrated on vocabulary to the exclusion of other knowledges,
numbers, formulas, faces or maps. The mechanism of “dual coding”
(Paivio & Csapo, 1969; Lieury & Calvez, 1986) which holds that
pictures are coded verbally as well as in image code, would contribute
an additional reason for the efficiency of vocabulary. In the same way
(Lorant & Lieury, unpublished) in a study on the maps used in
Geography, the names of cities were more crucial than their spatial
placement in the learning of a map. And Kidd and Kirjavainen (2011)
have shown that past tense morphology acquisition in Finnish does not
involve procedural memory but only the declarative memory. However,
the vocabulary does not cover the whole knowledge, the faces of
famous historical people (Julius Caesar, Nefertiti), the continents and
country shapes, the mathematical formulas and the chemistry symbols
also play a role. This knowledge could be the subject of later research.
otes
* Thanks to the translators Sharyn Thepot and Emeline Kenward.
76
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Alain Lieury is professor of cognitive psychology and researcher
at the Laboratoire de Psychologie Expérimentale, Université
Européenne de Bretagne (Rennes 2).
Sonia Lorant is professor of cognitive psychology and researcher
at the Laboratoire Interuniversitaire des Sciences de l'Education et
de la Communication, Université de Strasbourg.
Contact Address: Direct correspondence to Sonia Lorant, LISEC,
Université de Strasbourg (IUFM d’Alsace) 141 Avenue de Colmar,
67100 Strasbourg. E-mail: [email protected]
The Development and Psychometric Assessment of a Scale
to Measure the Severity of Examination Anxiety among
Undergraduate University Students
Dalia Bedewy1 & Adel Gabriel 2
1) Departament of Educational Psychology, Tanta University, Egypt
2) Department of Psychiatry & Community Health Sciencies, University
of Calgary, Canada
To cite this article: Bedewy, D. & Gabriel, A. (2013). The Development
and Psychometric Assessment of a Scale to Measure the Severity of
Examination Anxiety among Undergraduate University Students.
International Journal of Educational Psychology, 2(1), 81104. doi:
10.4471/ijep.2013.19
The Development and
Psychometric Assessment of a
Scale to Measure the Severity
of Examination Anxiety among
Undergraduate University
Students
Dalia Bedewy
Tanta University
Abstract
Adel Gabriel
University ofCalgary
The study reported here aimed to develop and psychometrically assess an
instrument to measure examination anxiety among undergraduate university
students. Based on empirical evidence and recent literature review we
developed a 12 item scale to measure the severity of examination anxiety. The
instrument was administered to students, two weeks before they wrote their
examinations. Experts (n=10) participated in a validation process of the
instrument before it was administered to students (n= 40). Internal consistency
reliability for the instrument was 0. 82 (Cronbach's alpha) and there was 92 %
overall agreement between experts about the relevance of the instruments’
items to measure students’ examination anxiety, providing evidence for content
validity. Factor analysis resulted in three cohesive and theoretically meaningful
factors. There is evidence for content and convergent validity. The developed
instrument is a reliable, valid and empirical measure to assess the severity of
examination anxiety. The scale will take five minutes to complete.
Keywords: examination anxiety, measurement scales, university students.
2013 Hipatia Press
ISSN 2014-3591
DOI: 10.4471/ijep.2013.19
El Desarrollo y Evaluación
Psicométrica de una Escala
para Medir la Severidad de la
Ansiedad Vinculada a los
Exámenes entre Estudiantes
Universitarios
de
Grado
Adel Gabriel
Dalia Bedewy
Tanta University
Resumen
University ofCalgary
El estudio que compartimos en este artículo se dirigió a desarrollar y evaluar de
forma psicométrica un instrumento para medir la ansiedad ante los exámenes
entre estudiantes universitarios de grado. En base a evidencias empíricas y una
revisión de la literatura reciente desarrollamos una escala de 12 ítems para
medir la severidad de la ansiedad ante los exámenes. El instrumento se
administró a los estudiantes dos semanas antes de que realizaran sus exámenes.
Expertos (n=10) participaron en un proceso de validación del instrumento antes
de que se administrara a estudiantes (n=40). La fiabilidad consistencia interna
del instrumento fue de 0.82 (alfa de Cronbach) y hubo un 92% de acuerdo
general entre expertos acerca de la relevancia de los ítems del instrumento para
medir la ansiedad de los estudiantes ante los exámenes, evidenciando esto la
validez del contenido. El análisis de factores resultó en tres factores coherentes
y significantes teóricamente. Existe evidencia sobre la validez convergente y de
contenido. El instrumento desarrollado es una medida fiable, válida y empírica
para evaluar la severidad de la ansiedad ante los exámenes. Completar la
escala lleva cinco minutos.
Palabras clave: ansiedad ante los exámenes, escalas de medida, estudiantes
universitarios.
2013 Hipatia Press
ISSN 2014-3591
DOI: 10.4471/ijep.2013.19
T
83
est anxiety is defined as a special form of anxiety, which is
characterized by somatic, cognitive and behavioral symptoms of
anxiety in situations of preparing and performing in
examinations (Latas, Pantić, & Obradović, 2010). The fear of negative
evaluation, may lead to poor study skills and poor test performance
(Chapell, Blanding, Silverstein, Takahashi, Newman, Gubi, & McCann,
2005; Szafranski, Barrera, & Norton, 2012).
Nicaise (1995) also defined test anxiety as an individual’s
physiological, cognitive, and behavioral responses that stimulate
negative feelings about an evaluation. When an individual becomes
anxious, the physiological system becomes aroused, such as the heart
beating faster or the sweat glands producing more perspiration. At the
same time, the individual may experience apprehension and a higher
sense of inadequacy. When an individual experiences test anxiety, these
physical and cognitive responses may lead to negative feelings and
cognitions about testing situations (Nicaise, 1995).
The size of the problem
Many college students experience anxiety during their examinations,
and in fact, previous research suggests a modest prevalence rate of 10 35% of college student’s experience functionally impairing levels of test
anxiety (Naveh-Benjamin, Lavi, McKeachie, & Lin, 1997). The severity
of anxiety symptoms and the associated academic impairments were
found to be higher in females, than in males, in younger age group, and
higher prevalence rates were reported in medical students who presented
moderate level of test anxiety (Latas et al., 2010; Schaefer, Matthess,
Pfitzer, & Köhle, 2007; Eum & Rice, 2011). In several studies, female
students had statistically significant more intense symptoms of test
anxiety than male students. For example, in a recent study (Szafranski et
al., 2012) examined changes in the Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI) scores
in college undergraduates (n=437). Authors reported significant
increases in TAI scores for females while the same remained constant
for males (Szafranski et al., 2012). In a larger study by Schaefer et al.
(2007) it was reported that about 10 % of students (n=945) suffer from
test anxiety to such an extent that treatment is warranted. The
84
Bedewy & Gabriel – Examination Anxiety Scale
correlation of high test anxiety with other mental disorders and study
success is rarely investigated (Schaefer et al., 2007).
Those undergraduate college students, who experience functionally
impairing levels of test anxiety, may suffer from poor academic
performance (Strumpf, & Fodor, 1993; Cassady, 2004; Raju, Mesfin, &
Alia, 2010). Empirical findings have consistently reported that high
levels of cognitive test anxiety were negatively correlated to global
indices for academic performance, such as scores on standardized
achievement tests, grades, and overall grade point average (GPA)
(Putwain, Connors, & Symes, 2010), and it was concluded that
cognitively test-anxious persons might have greater abilities than they
commonly show (Lang & Lang, 2010).
Components of test anxiety
Within the test anxiety literature, it is a widely held belief that test
anxiety is comprised of two main common components: ‘‘worry’’ or
aversive cognitions related to testing stimuli, and ‘‘emotionality’’ or
physical symptoms of anxiety while in testing situations (Liebert &
Morris, 1967).
Cognitive features
It is emphasized that anxiety is a response to the perceived inability to
handle a challenge in a satisfactory manner (Klinger, 1975). Also among
the characteristics of cognitive anxiety responses are the following; 1)
The situation is seen as difficult, challenging, and threatening, 2) The
individual sees himself or herself as ineffective in handling, or
inadequate to do the task at hand, 3) The individual focuses on
undesirable consequences of personal adequacy, 4) Self-depreciatory
preoccupations are strong and interferes with task-relevant cognitive
activity, and 5) The individual expects and anticipates failure and loss of
regard by others (Sarason, 1978). These negative cognitions often lead
to students’ inability to concentrate on the immediate task, thus making
it more likely for them to encounter negative outcomes (e.g., poor test
performance).
85
Some types of examination format were associated with more anxiety
than with others. For example, it was demonstrated that state anxiety
during the Observed Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCE) was
associated with the level of preparation for the examination (Brand &
Schoonheim-Klein, 2009), which suggests that appropriate level of
arousal might be necessary for an optimal performance. Conversely,
excessive cognitive test anxiety was found to be inversely associated
with performance indicators, and positively associated with maladaptive
perfectionism (Eum & Rice, 2011). Hancock (2011) and Hembree
(1988) reported that negative cognitions related to examinations, when
such students underestimate their own abilities, or overestimation the
consequences related to their failure, are often accompanied by higher
anxiety levels, and poor performance (Hancock, 2011; Hembree, 1988).
Somatic and psycho-biophysiological features
Physical symptoms associated with test anxiety can be as intrusive as
the negative cognitions. The somatic presentations of test anxiety may
include number of autonomic responses and bio-physiological changes
which essentially are transient in nature. Evidence for stressful
situations such as test situations and examinations were investigated
extensively in research. For example, it was confirmed in a number of
studies that routine academic events may cause stress and produce
temporary elevations in pulse, blood pressure, and that there is strong
positive correlations between the self-rating anxiety score and the blood
pressure and heart rate increase amplitudes (Conley & Lehman, 2012;
Pramanik, Ghosh, & Chapagain, 2005; Zhang, Peng, Yang, & Cheng,
2011). Also, it was demonstrated that there was a statistically significant
decrease in auditory reaction time, galvanic skin resistance and
eosinophil count (eosinophils are components of white blood cells. They
make about 1-6% of white blood cells, they help fighting infections, and
they tend to increase in number as a result of allergic reactions, parasitic
infections, and certain autoimmune disease), before the examination as
compared to the control readings, in 30 male and 25 female medical
students appearing for their Bachelor of Medicine final examinations
(MBBS) viva-voce examination (Malathi & Parulkar, 1992).
86
Laboratory research has confirmed that social-evaluative threat has a
significant influence on the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis (HPA).
For example, cortisol concentrations were elevated on the examination
day, with increased concentrations before but not after the examination
(Preuss, Schoofs, Schlotz, & Wolf, 2010). Others investigated the
respiratory response to stress. For example, (Liu, Coe, Swenson, Kelly,
Kita, & Busse, 2002) evaluated 20 college students with mild asthma
during the stress phase of the final examination week. Students' anxiety
and depression scores were found to be significantly high during the
examination period, and sputum eosinophils levels significantly
increased and were enhanced during the stress phase (p < 0.01). These
findings suggest that stress associated with final examinations can act as
a cofactor to increase eosinophilic airway inflammation and thus may
enhance asthma exacerbations in some patients (Liu et al, 2002). Also
changes in the resting metabolic rate and triglycerides were associated
with high anxiety scores (Maimanee, 2010; Schmidt, O'Connor,
Cochrane, & Cantwell, 1996).
Given the impact of test anxiety on students’ performance, it is
important to identify students who are at risk for developing anxiety,
particularly because both pharmacological and non-pharmacologic
options such as cognitive-behavioral therapy are effective in the
management of anxiety before taking tests. Therefore prediction and
detection of anxiety will provide key opportunities for preventive or
early therapeutic interventions to improve academic outcomes, and
students’ psychological health. There is empirical evidence that
therapeutic interventions studies have proved efficacy in the
management of examination anxiety. For example, problem-focused
coping strategies including optimistic action and social support to deal
with stress (Wang & Yeh, 2005). Also, emotional disclosure, and writing
repeatedly about personal stressful experiences may lead to improved
academic performance of college students (Radcliffe, Stevenson,
Lumley, D'Souza & Kraft, 2010), and self affirmation may attenuate
sympathetic nervous system responses of anxiety (Sherman, Bunyan,
Creswell, & Jaremka, 2009).
Other medical interventions including antianxiety medications were
needed in a subgroup of students For example, it was reported that those
87
who scored either very high for test anxiety had higher scores on
anxiety trait tests, and consumed more medication, and that 7 % of the
students with high test anxiety were in psychotherapeutic treatment
(Schaefer et al., 2007).
Measuring Test Anxiety
Over the last fifty years, few instruments were developed to measure
and examine test anxiety. One of the earliest was the Test Anxiety Scale
(TAQ). This scale was described by Sarason & Mandler (1952) (the test
Anxiety Questionnaire), consists of 37 items. However, later after
revisions, the Test Anxiety Scale (TAS) which consists of 21- true - false
items, was described. Few revised versions for this instrument were
developed later and they were used till late 1970s, and the scale was
tested in college students (Sarason & Mandler, 1952; Sarason, 1978).
The following are examples of items of the Test Anxiety Scale (TAS);
(T) 1. While taking an important exam I find myself thinking of how
much brighter the other students are than I am; (T) 2. If I were to take an
intelligence test, I would worry a great deal before taking it; (F) 3. If I
knew that I was going to have a test, I would feel confident and relaxed,
beforehand. In the opinion of authors that the weakness in this scale lies
in the fact that its responses are categorical with either TRUE or
FALSE, for a subtle measure such as anxiety, which could be better
measured on a continuum.
In 1980, Spielberger, described the Test Anxiety Inventory
(Spielberger, 1980) with its 20 item. This was used extensively among
undergraduate students, and it takes 10 minutes to be completed. The
TAI was utilized in test anxiety research extensively as a primary
outcome variable (Spielberger, 1980). The TAI was psychometrically
assessed in college undergraduates in 1980, and displayed good
convergent validity. The Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI) is widely used in
research and practical settings and has particular application to the
assessment and treatment of test anxiety in student populations
(Spielberger, 1980). However, Taylor & Deane (2002) attempted to
avoid the limitations created by lengthy scales, and developed a short
form of the (TAI) (Appendix), which consists of a 5-item only. Short
88
form of the (TAI), was extracted from the 20- item (TAI). This
instrument was tested in the 3rd year undergraduate psychology students
(n=333) (Taylor & Deane, 2002). Although the psychometric properties
of the five-item short form of TAI are strong, some of its items are
vague, such as the item 2, about feeling panicky, which could be
misinterpreted. Also, another limitation with using present scale which
were developed at least 30 years ago is problematic because the
academic landscape has altered in a variety of ways in the past 30 years,
particularly in areas like quantity of student enrollment, age of students,
percentage of first-generation students (i.e., neither parent has graduated
nor attended college), full time vs. part time students, as well as ethnic
and gender diversity (Szafranski et al., 2012). The Egyptian academic
landscape is no exception as it has witnessed many academic changes
such as a dramatic increase in the number of undergraduate students, the
development of many privately owned universities and the significant
increase in tuition fees and expenses of education. This has been the
cause of stress among students, which hardly addressed in research. For
example, El-Zahhar & Hocevar (1991) examined cultural and sexual
differences in test anxiety in samples of high school students in Egypt
(N= 277), Brazil (N = 234), and the United States (N = 141). Authors
reported higher trait anxiety and arousability among high school
students in Egypt, compared to both the United Statess and Brazil
students. United States greater test anxiety was found in Egypt on both
the worry dimension and the emotionality dimension. Also, they found
that in all three cultures females reported greater worry, emotionality,
trait anxiety, and arousability than males (El-Zahhar & Hocevar, 1991)1 .
In the present review, authors were not able to identify recent studies
to examine examination anxiety among Egyptian undergraduate
university students.
To the best of authors’ knowledge, there is no published
psychometrically assessed scale that was developed to measure
examination anxiety among Egyptian university undergraduate students.
Objectives of the Study
The objective of this study is to develop and psychometrically assess a
scale, to measure examination anxiety in university undergraduate
89
students just before taking end of the third year examinations in
psychology. Also, it was aimed at developing an instrument which is
not, too long or too short, with an optimal number of items that could be
completed by students in short time; in order to avoid and remedy some
limitations in previously developed test anxiety scales. Therefore there
is need to develop a reliable measure of examination anxiety, with
demonstrated evidence of validity, which could be a utilized to identify
students who are at high risk of developing excessive anxiety before
taking examination, and to manage their anxiety experiences as early as
possible accordingly.
Method
Participants
Students
There were 40 students, both men and women, ranging from 19 - 26
years of age (mean = 20.5 years) that participated. The proportion of
male to female participants was 30/10 (75 % / 25%). All the
participating students were from the third year, education psychology
class at Tanta University Egypt. Students were included if they were
planning to sit their 3rd year final course examinations in educational
psychology. All students who participated in this study did not have a
history of diagnosed psychiatric disorders, and all provided their
consent to be included in the study.
The examination process involved taking a three – hour written essay
paper, and an oral examination in the same day, which followed the
written examination almost immediately. The written examination
carried 75% of the total mark, and the oral examination carried the rest
(25%). Students did not receive any credits for any assignments, or any
home work, which they did during the whole year. Students therefore
have to memorize a large amount of knowledge, for the two main
semesters which they attended throughout the year.
90
Psychology and Psychiatry Experts
Both male and female experts (more than 15 years of experience as
independent psychiatrists or psychologists), were invited to participate
in the present study. Participated ten experts (female / male =3/7, mean
age = 48 years; SD=8.8, and mean years of experience as independent
Psychiatry or Psychology consultants = 21; SD = 6.7). Among experts,
there were eight from the University of Calgary, and two from Tanta
University Egypt who collaborated in this project. Letters of invitations
were sent by e mail or face to face inviting experts to participate in the
validation process. There was also one on one discussion, and feedback,
about each item of the scale with regard its relevancy to sample
examination anxiety among undergraduate students. Among experts,
there were three at the rank of professor, one at associate professor, and
six at assistant professor. Initially experts provided opinion about the
overall content of the instrument. Each expert reviewed and provided
comments on the relevance of the scale to be developed before testing
the instruments with students.
Procedure
The design involved the development and the psychometric assessment
of a scale to measure examination anxiety. Following extensive
literature review, a table of specification with the initial items was
created to guide item construction for developing the scale. We were
able to identify a list of specification with two main components to
characterize test anxiety, 1) cognitive anxiety, and 2) somatic anxiety.
The items of cognitive anxiety, and somatic anxiety symptoms, on the
list of specification, were converted to a12-item, 5-point Likert
questionnaire, resulting in the Examination Anxiety Scale (EAS).
The volunteer panel of experts discussed and reviewed with the items
to examine the appropriateness and clarity of items, and to ensure that
each item assessed students’ examination anxiety as they present
clinically.
Experts were invited to formally rate each item for its relevancy in
measuring anxiety severity, on a five point Likert scale (1= extremely
irrelevant, 2 = irrelevant, 3 = slightly relevant, 4 = relevant, and 5 =
91
strongly relevant). The objective of consultation with experts was to
provide both face and content validity by providing their agreement
about the relevance for each item separately as a measure of students’
examination anxiety. For the purpose of developing the EAS, it was
agreed to include only items receiving a mean score above 3.5 rating
from experts, as relevant to develop the scale. This process resulted in
selecting the Examination Anxiety Scale (EAS, n =12 items).The EAS
includes two main subscales: the cognitive anxiety subscale (5 items),
and the somatic anxiety subscale (7 items).
Table 1
Table ofspecification and experts’ ratings ofthe examination anxiety scale
1. Cognitive and avoidances Subscale
Am afraid of failure when I go to the exam
I do not have confidence in myself to pass
Even when I’m well prepared for the exam, I feel
anxious about it
My anxiety interferes with my performance in the
exam
Am preoccupied with failure just before exams
Experts' Responses
Min-Max (Mean ± SD)
4-5
4-5
4-5
4.6 (.53)
4.6 (.53)
4.9 (.38)
4-5
4.8 (.38)
4-5
4.6 (.53)
4-5
2-5
4-5
3-5
4-5
3-5
3-5
4.7(.49)
4.3 (1.1)
4.7(.49)
4.3 (1.0)
4.7(.49)
4.4(.79)
4.6(.79)
4.6 (92 %)
2. Somatic anxiety subscale
I experience an upset stomach during exam days- 8
My sleep is disturbed during exams
Exams make feel shaky
Exams make me unable to relax
My heart beats fast (races) during exams
I tend to have breathing difficulty on the exam day
I develop diarrhea around the exams
Average ratings
Note. Experts’ responses:
(1= extremely irrelevant – 5 = very relevant)
92
Format, Layout, and Language Review of Instruments
All items were reviewed by an English literature teacher for clarity and
grammatical corrections. After the scale was written, the Microsoft
Word computer program was used to assess the grammar. This was
carried out to ensure that students could easily understand and interpret
each item. Given the fact that students are studying psychology in
English language, it was decided that the EAS could be administered in
English and not in Arabic language.
Administration to Students
The scale was pilot tested among four students. Students concerns and
feedback were sought in the following aspects of the scale:
1.Clarity of items, identifying and reporting any ambiguous items and
items difficult to interpret.
2.Difficulties with language, technical jargon, or any offending
language.
3.Reactions and responses to the format and layout of each item. 4.Time needed to complete the scale.
After slight modification based on expert and students’ input, the
Examination Anxiety Scale (EAS, items = 12) was distributed to all
students in the 3rd class of educational psychology (n= 60), by e mail,
two weeks before they wrote their examination. Forty students (40/60,
66.6%) returned the completed EAS. Students were asked to rate on a 5point Likert scale (from 1= strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) their
perceptions and experiences about each item in measuring examination
anxiety. At the same time, students were asked to complete the Sheehan
Patient-Rated Anxiety Scale (SPRAS) (Sheehan, 1999). This is a 35item, patient rated scale, with four specific items which evaluate
situational anxiety, unexpected anxiety, unexpected limited symptom
attack, and anticipatory anxiety. Students were also asked to provide
demographics including age, sex, and if they had any history of
diagnosed psychiatric disorders or anxiety. SPRAS is utilized as a
criterion measure, to assess criterion related validity of the newly
developed scale.
93
Data Collection and Analysis
Responses from psychology, and psychiatry experts were used to
provide evidence for content validity for the instrument, while students’
responses and performances on the instrument was utilized to provide
evidence for internal consistency reliability, and convergent validity as
adduced in correlation analysis of the patients’ responses on the
subscales of the instrument. Students needed on average, five minutes
to complete the EAS.
Results
The results of experts’ and students’ responses are summarized in table
1 and table 2, respectively. The internal consistency reliability
(Cronbach's alpha) was 0.82 for the 12 items of the EAS. Analyses of
variance (ANOVA) indicated that there were no significant differences
in the mean EAS score, between sexes, age groups in the severity scores
of anxiety symptoms.
Experts’ Responses
A close inspection of table 1, there were no significant differences in
ratings among experts based on their length of experience (p < .06).
Expert’s ratings for all items on the scale ranged from a minimum of 3.7
to a maximum of 5 and an average rating for all the instrument items of
4.6. This yields an overall agreement of 92% among experts about the
12 items to assess students’ examination anxiety.
Students’ Responses
A close inspection of table 2 will show that the level of the anxiety
reported by students was in the moderate range for most scales’ items.
Utilizing Pearson product moment correlations students’ scores
correlated significantly on the two subscales; the cognitive and the
somatic (r= .579, p< .001).
94
Table 2
Students’ ratings ofthe examination anxiety scale
1. Cognitive and Avoidance Subscale
Even when I’m well prepared for the exam, I feel
anxious about it
My anxiety interferes with my performance in the
exam
I experience an upset stomach during exam days- 8
Average ratings
Note. Students’ responses:
Students' Responses
Min-Max (Mean ± SD)
1-5
1-5
1-5
3.7(1.5)
2.1(1.1)
2.7(1.4)
1-5
3.5(1.1)
1-5
2-5
1-5
1-5
1-5
1-5
1-5
1-5
3.5(1.4)
3.1(1.3)
3.5(1.2)
3.1(1.3)
3.5(1.2)
3.3(1.4)
2.6(1.4)
2.8(1.5)
3.1 (62%)
(1= strongly disagree to 5= strongly agree)
Factor Analysis
Several exploratory principal component analyses were conducted on
the 12-item scale. Based on the Kaiser rule (eigen values > 1.0), the
percentage of variance accounted for, and the cohesiveness of the
factors (i.e., patterns of loadings), a three factor solution appeared
optimum. The three factors accounted for 59.1% of the variance in
responses related to students’ experiences of examination anxiety, and
the varimax rotation converged in four iterations. Table 3 contains the
factor loadings, the internal consistency reliability analysis, and the
proportion of observed variance for each factor.
95
Table 3
Rotated Factor Matrix Examination Anxiety Scale scores
Items (n=12) of the Examination Anxiety Scale (EAS)
Factors Extracted
Factor Loadings
F1
F2
F3
.77
My anxiety interferes with my performance in the exams
.70
.68
.66
.54
.74
.73
.67
Even when I’m well prepared for the exam, I feel anxious
about it
.60
.50
.75
I experience an upset stomach during exam days
.63
.53
Internal Consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) for each factor
.78
.72
.72
Proportion of Observed Variance for each factor (%)
34.8
16.2
8.0
Principal components extraction, Varimax rotation with Kaiser
Normalization
Rotation converged in four iterations
Note.
†Factor loadings < . 40 have been excluded
Factor 1: Excessive performance anxiety
Factor 2: Negative academic selfconcept and excessive autonomic response
Factor 3: Familiar test anxiety
96
Factor 1: Excessive performance anxiety
This component consists of four items, has an internal consistency of
0.78, and explains 34.8% of the observed variance. It refers to the
excessive preoccupation with poor performance and the fear of failure
in the examination, the inability to relax, and the experience of racing
heart.
Factor 2: Negative academic self concept and excessive autonomic
response
This component consists of five items, has an internal consistency of
0.72, and explains 16.2% of the observed variance. The component
refers to feeling stigmatized, poor self concept, lack of confidence in
academic abilities, and the fear of failure despite preparation for the
exams.
Factor 3: Familiar test anxiety
This component consists of six items, has an internal consistency of
0.72 and explains 8% of the observed variance. It refers to the
commonly encountered experiences of examination anxiety such as
reporting poor sleep, and butterflies in the stomach.
Factor scores were intercorrelated with Pearson product moment
correlations and with the total scores of the Sheehan Patient-Rated
Anxiety Scale (SPRAS). Sheehan self-report scale. These results are
summarized in table 4. A close inspection of table 4, reveals that there
is significant correlation between the three factors of the EAS, and there
was significant correlation between EAS factor scores, and the mean
scores of (SPRAS), especially factor 2 scores “Negative academic self
concept and excessive autonomic response”,. Also, the mean EAS score
correlated significantly (r = .35, p < .01), with the mean SPRAS score.
Between group differences were analyzed using ANOVA. There were
no significant differences between males and females, or between age
groups, in the mean scores of the scale’s factors.
97
Table 4
Pearson Product Moment Correlations between factors Scores and Sheehan’s
self- report scale
EAS Factors
1: Excessive
performance
anxiety
2: Negative
academic self
concept and
excessive
autonomic
response
3: Familiar test
anxiety
Factor 1: Excessive 1.00
performance anxiety
.37 b
.74b
.17
Sheehan PatientRated Anxiety Scale
(SPRAS)
.37 a
.267
Note. aCorrelation
is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). bCorrelation is
significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Discussion
In the present study, examination anxiety symptoms among the 3rd year
psychology students, just before taking their examination were included
in a 12-Likert-type item scale that had an overall reliability internal
consistency of 0.82. There was 92% overall agreement among experts
about the relevancy of its contents to measure students’ examination
anxiety. Students’ experience of anxiety just before sitting the
examination was generally rated as moderate, and there were no
differences between male and female students in the severity of anxiety,
and factor analysis revealed three factors that explained 59.1%, of the
variance for this scale. The anxiety items clustered into constructs (i.e.,
factors), which resulted in three components. The factors are
theoretically meaningful and cohesive, as it was demonstrated in the
significant correlations between their scores, supporting evidence for
convergent validity. The three extracted factors, factor 1, ``Excessive
performance anxiety`, factor 2, ` Negative academic self concept and
excessive autonomic response, and factor 3, `Familiar test anxiety``, are
in concordance with previous research, are theoretically meaningful and
cohesive within the framework of test anxiety.
98
In the current study, Factor 2 `Negative academic self concept and
excessive autonomic response` which accounts for 16.2 % of the
variance, represents a more intense experience of anxiety, especially at
the cognitive level and was associated with poor academic self concept.
However all students who completed the EAS, in the current study did
not have history of diagnosed anxiety disorders. In the current study,
only two students with a history of anxiety or depression were excluded.
These findings replicate and extend the findings from other studies,
which lend credibility to the construct validity of our scale (Hembree,
1988). In the current study, contrary to what was reported in previous
research authors did not find any significant differences in anxiety
scores between males and females (El-Zahhar & Hocevar, 1991; Latas
et al., 2010; Szafranski et al., 2012).
Evidence for Content Validity
The considerable effort to carefully develop a table of specifications
with items for the present scale, plus the systematic input from
psychiatric experts enhanced the content and face validity of the scale.
The follow-up by the experts further enhanced the content validity
because of their very high agreement on the relevance of the items.
Evidence for Convergent and Criterion-Related Validity
From the correlations between the two subscale scores, and the three
factor scores, there is evidence to support convergent validity for this
scale. Convergent validity was demonstrated in the positive significant
correlations between the three factors, and also by the significant
positive correlation between scores of the second factor “Negative
academic self concept and excessive autonomic response” and the mean
score of SPRAS. This was further supported by the significant
correlation between the mean EAS score, and the mean SPRAS score.
Since test anxiety essentially is situational in nature, the EAS was
administered in the current study two weeks before taking the
examinations. This was supported by most research in which anxiety
measures were administered either before taking the tests, during
99
preparing for, or immediately after taking the examinations (Latas et al.,
2010; Malathi and Parulkar, 1992; Preuss et al., 2010; Zhang et al.,
2011).
Limitations of the Study
This study has a series of limitations that must be taken into account in
reading the findings discussed here. In particular, those limitations refer
to the sample which, on the one hand, was not large and, on the other
hand, was homogenous, as all patients were recruited from one class.
Conclusion
Further research is needed utilizing a larger, heterogeneous sample of
students, from different students in different classes, and from different
undergraduate students. Also, testing the instrument in different cultural
backgrounds, and different examination sittings, may support its
reliability and validity to be used in such sittings.
Notwithstanding the limitations of the present study, a brief self
report scale to measure student’s examination anxiety was developed.
There is acceptable internal consistency reliability, and there is evidence
for face, content, convergent and criterion related validity for this
instrument. In future research the scale should be administered to a
lager, heterogeneous sample of students, and in different educational
and cultural sittings. Also future research should examine the
relationship between examination anxiety and psychiatric disorders
especially depression and anxiety disorders, which is lacking in
literature.
Notes
*This research project was presented and published as an abstract in the International
Journal of Psychiatry in Clinical Practice, 16(supp1), 28. The 12th International Forum
on Mood and Anxiety Disorder proceedings; Barcelona Spain, 7th – 9th November
2012.
100
**This project did not receive any funding, and there is no conflict of interests of any
kind.
1 For further reading about the background, nature and structure of Egyptian higher
education the reader should refer to this website for details http://www.egy-mhe.gov.eg/
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104
Appendix
Short form of the TAI (Taylor & Deane, 2002)
Items (n =5)
1. During the test I feel very tense
2. I wish examinations did not bother me so much
3. I seem to defeat myself while working on important test
4. I feel very panicky when I take an important test
5. During examination I get so nervous that I forget facts I
really know
Yes / No
Improving Research Through User Engagement
María del Mar Prados Gallardo1
1) Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Universidad
de Sevilla, Spain.
Date of publication: February, 24th 2013
To cite this review: Prados Gallardo, María del Mar. (2013). Improving
research through user engagement [Review of the book Improving research
through user engagement], International Journal of Educational Psychology,
2(1), 105107.
doi: 10.4471/ijep.2013.20
To link this review: http://dx.doi.org/10.4471/ijep.2013.20
IJEP – International Journal of Educational Psychology Vol. 2 No. 1
February 2013 pp.105107.
Review
Rickinson, M., Sebba, J., & Edwards, A. (2011). Improving Research
Through User Engagement. London: Routledge.
ISBN: 9780415461696
One criticism that is often made to researchers in social sciences is the
lack of connection between their research and interests and needs that
exist in the study field. For instance, in the case of educational research,
it is common to enter the classroom to collect data in order to analyze it
and try to answer some research questions –which are, undoubtedly,
important– but without taking into account the needs of the educational
community. Furthermore, the results of this type of research are, at
best, reported in scientific journals, which are not usually accessible to
those communities. For that reason, the impact of educational research
is usually far from what the researchers would like to be. Similarly, the
flow of information between academics and policymakers is very
limited. In this sense, research does not influence policy as much as its
policymakers would like.
“Relationships between researchers and research users are the key to
ensuring that research is relevant and timely” (p. 7). This is the main
thesis of the book. The arguments and examples presented in this work
stem of the Thematic Seminar Series “Making difference: working with
users to develop educational research” within ESRC´s Teaching and
Learning Research Programme in UK. Five oneday seminars were held
in 2005 and 2006, which served as a forum for discussion to examine
the processes and implications of user engagement in teaching and
learning funded research. The participants in the seminar were
university researchers, senior civil servants, representatives of funding
organizations, education practitioners, research mediators, government
2013 Hipatia Press
ISSN 20143591
DOI:10.4471/ijep.2013.20
106 Prados, M. Improving Research Through User Engagement
analysts and policy advisors, researchers from education, social and
health workers, a few parents and carers as well as children and young
people The authors see user engagement in research as a means for
bringing together different practices in a common endeavor, each of
them with its particular area of expertise and valueladen goals. But it is
important to emphasize that it is not a question of any type of
participation. Therefore, “a key theme is that user engagement should be
seen as an opportunity for flows of knowledge from the field of study to
research and from research to the field of study” (p.17). That is, “an
approach to research that engages with the motivations and anticipations
of the participant and the demands that they face” (p. 19).
Throughout the book we can see five broad approaches to working
with user engagement: creating feedback loops, universityled
participatory research, combing smallscale studies, coresearch for
conceptual development and userled research. In the first two
approaches knowledge is negotiated across boundaries between research
and professional practices; in the other three approaches knowledge is
negotiated within research projects that operated as sites of intersecting
practices where new understandings are coconstructed (p. 33). Despite
differences, all five types of engagement involve, to some degree,
important challenges for project management, such as: a) to make
explicit the purposes and motives of each participant and to negotiate
power issues, roles and ownership during projects; b) to schedule
different timescales for different groups of participants depending on the
different rhythms in the organization in which they are based or c) to
develop new forms of relational expertise, in order to strengthen the
mutual commitment and research itself. These challenges require
specific skills such as the ability to recognize and work alongside the
expertise and motives of other professionals.
Finally, the challenges of user engagements have important
implications for researchers and research projects –the repercussions for
research design and project management, recognition of the importance
of" know who" and "know when" within researchers’ skills and
expertise, training courses for early career researchers and project
leaders, or to increase the funding associated with the smooth operation
of user engagement– and for research users –the expectations of users to
engage with research vary for different users, infrastructure and also
IJEP – International Journal of Educational Psychology, 2(1) 107
depending on the support for research engagement or training courses
available for research users–.
Undoubtedly, after reading the book, it is clear that user engagement
is closely related with both the overall relevance and the improvement
of quality research and with wider knowledge enhancing production and
research use and impact.
María del Mar Prados Gallardo
Universidad de Sevilla
[email protected]
List of Reviewers
To cite this review: (2013). List of Reviewers. International Journal of
Educational Psychology, 2(1), 108. doi: 10.4471/ijep.2013.21
IJEP - International Journal ofEducational Psychology Vol. 2 o. 1
February 2013 p. 108
List of IJEP 2012 Reviewers
The International Journal of Educational Psychology thanks the group of
reviewers listed below for their quality work in revieweing the articles
submitted to IJEP over 2012. Their work has contributed to the quality of the
journal and I am grateful to them.
Sandra Racionero-Plaza
Editor
Aguilera, Antonio
Aris, Núria
Barba, José Juan
Beth Bass, Michelle
Burgués de Freitas, Ana
Carpenter, Mick
Chen, Eva Yi-Ju
Ferrada, Donatilda
Gallego, Beatriz
García, Juan
García Carrión, Rocio
García Monge, Alfonso
García-Pérez, Daniel
Gómez, Aitor
Guay, Mary
Hsin, Ching-Ting
Liu, Katrina
Martin, Noemí
Merrill, Barbara
2013 Hipatia Press
ISSN 2014-3591
DOI: 10.4471/ijep.2013.21
Mondejar, Eduard
Padrós Cuxart, Maria
Pulido, Cristina
Pulido, Miguel
Ramis, Maria del Mar
Redondo, Gisela
Rodríguez, Andrea
Rodríguez, Henar
Rodríguez, Jesús
Sícilia, Álvaro
Serrano, Maria Ángeles
Soler i Gallart, Marta
Tellado, Itxaso
Yuste Munté, Montse

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