Control and value appraisals and online multiple‐text comprehension in primary school: The mediating role of boredom and the moderating role of word‐reading fluency

• Published in: British journal of educational psychology Vol. 92; no. 1; pp. 258 - 279
• Main Authors: Raccanello, Daniela, Florit, Elena, Brondino, Margherita, Rodà, Antonio, Mason, Lucia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Wiley 01.03.2022; British Psychological Society; John Wiley and Sons Inc
• Subjects: Boredom; Cognitive ability; Comprehension; control; COVID-19; Educational Change; Educational psychology; Efficacy; Elementary School Students; Elementary schools; Emotional Response; Fluency; Grade 5; Homework; Humans; Learner Engagement; Literacy; online multiple‐text comprehension; Original; Pandemics; Psychological Patterns; Reading; Reading Comprehension; Reading Fluency; SARS-CoV-2; Schools; Students; task‐value; Tests; word‐reading fluency; boredom; control; task-value; online multiple-text comprehension; word-reading fluency
• ISSN: 0007-0998; 2044-8279
• DOI: 10.1111/bjep.12448

Background Online multiple‐text comprehension is a key skill of the 21st Century, yet the study of its relations with boredom in young students has been disregarded. Boredom is an achievement emotion expected to be predicted negatively by antecedents like control and value appraisals and to be associated to a negative performance. Notwithstanding its documented domain‐specificity, scarce attention has been paid to investigating these relations with primary‐school students in the reading domain, and specifically for online multiple‐text comprehension, and to how such relations are moderated by basic cognitive abilities. Aims Considering separately two settings (homework, test), we studied the mediation of boredom in the relation between control‐value appraisals and online multiple‐text comprehension in primary‐school students, focusing on the moderating role of word‐reading fluency. Sample Participants were 334 fourth and fifth graders. Methods We evaluated students’ reading‐related self‐efficacy and task‐value, reading‐related boredom for homework and tests, word‐reading fluency, and online multiple‐text comprehension. Results Path analyses revealed negative relations between control‐value appraisals and boredom for homework and tests, and between boredom and online multiple‐text comprehension for tests only. For the latter, word‐reading fluency moderated the relation between appraisals, boredom, and comprehension: Boredom negatively related to comprehension only for students with high word‐reading fluency. Conclusions Findings are discussed focusing on antecedents of online multiple‐text comprehension as a literacy skill critical in the 21st Century. We underlined their implications for learning in general and specifically for the current educational changes due to the COVID‐19 pandemic.