Direct and Indirect Effects of Teacher Instruction and Feedback on Student Adaptive Help Seeking in Upper Elementary Literacy Classrooms.
Year: 2014

Ninety three fourth and fifth grade students were observed once weekly for one semester during reading and writing instruction. A structured observational protocol was used to record information about instruction and feedback provided to these students by their teachers, as well as the students' participation, regulation, and self instruction behaviors. A path analytic model was tested to investigate the direct and indirect effects of teacher instruction and feedback on student self instructive information pursuits or adaptive help seeking behaviors. The findings reveal that some aspects of teacher instruction and feedback influence student self instructive information pursuits directly; however, the primary influence of teacher instruction occurs indirectly through effects on students' patterns of participation and monitoring. A student's personal pattern of participation and monitoring during teacher directed instructional episodes was an important determinant of self instructional information pursuits during independent literacy activities in the upper elementary school classroom. The transition from lower elementary (K 2) to upper elementary (3 5) is a time characterized by increased academic demands along with changes in the division of roles in the classroom. The renegotiation of responsibilities is especially apparent in reading and writing instruction. Upper elementary students are expected to make an abrupt shift from instruction focused on decoding words to instruction focused on meaning making and deep processing of texts (Chall, Jacobs, Baldwin, 1990) After third grade, the amount of time devoted to reading instruction significantly decreases, and students are expected to independently complete more lengthy reading and writing assignments (Durkin, 1974 1975) Not all students negotiate this transition successfully; consequently, even once successful students in lower elementary may begin to struggle with the new academic expectations of the upper elementary. It is important to understand the instructional practices and student learning behaviors and dispositions that may facilitate (or hamper) this transition and promote independent learning in reading and writing. Self regulated learners autonomously direct and manage their own learning instead of relying on continual guidance from external agents (Zimmerman, 1989) During teacherdirected instruction, self regulated learners engage in the learning process through the employ of a variety of participation strategies. They answer questions, provide examples and make connections, generate solutions, and acquire and apply heuristics to help manage their cognitive loads. Self regulated learners also are aware of what they know Journal of Research in Education Volume 24, Number 1 Spring and Summer 2014 54 and don't know (Winne, 1995; Zimmerman, 1995) When more information is needed to complete a task or master a concept, self regulated learners use their teachers and peers as resources to acquire this information. Upper elementary teachers often expect students to have developed already a healthy repertoire of self regulatory strategies. Although teachers may spend little time deliberately assisting their students along the path toward autonomous learning, even incidental interactions in the classroom may direct the course of students' development as effective independent learners. Research is needed that can assist educators in upperelementary classrooms to better understand the development of self regulation, the instructional practices influencing its development, and their critical role in the process. The purpose of this study is to investigate how information and feedback provided by teachers during literacy instruction relate to students' strategies for participation and regulation and eventual self initiated and directed information pursuits. Proposed Model of Adaptive Help Seeking Information Pursuits The goal of independent learning does not preclude use of external resources. A successful self regulated learner initiates information pursuits about academic topics, tasks, strategies, or performances, among other participation options. These interactions are a forum for students to access, elaborate, organize, integrate, or verify information and enhance understanding (Butler Winne, 1995; Woloshyn, Pressley, Schneider, 1992) Self instructional behaviors such as these are critical ingredients for literacy success. Therefore, understanding the factors that may contribute to the development of these self instructional strategies is crucial. The present study seeks to test a model of students' self instruction which hypothesizes that a student's use of an important component of self instruction information pursuit is influenced by levels and types of instructional information and feedback available in the classroom as well student's own patterns of participation and regulation within instructional interactions with the teacher. Help seeking, or information pursuit behavior, is an important strategy used by selfregulated learners. Whereas some types of help seeking behaviors require excessive dependency on the teacher, adaptive help seeking refers specifically to a set of behaviors that contribute to increased cognitive autonomy. Adaptive help seeking is a selfregulatory behavior used by a learner when he/she asks for assistance or information that is intended to facilitate his/her independent learning (Newman, 2002) Adaptive help seeking is a complex process involving specific competencies and resources, including: knowing what help is necessary, how to formulate an appropriate question, knowing who to ask for help and how to ask in a socially appropriate manner, willingness to admit that help is needed, and a classroom context that supports help seeking behavior (Newman, 2002) Help seeking behaviors in elementary school children vary depending on several social and contextual factors (Newman Schwager, 1995) Information made available by classroom teachers through direct instruction is a primary influential source in the development of academic self regulation (Bronson, 2000; Neitzel Stright, 2003; Scarr, 1992) Contingent on the content of these academic interactions, Journal of Research in Education Volume 24, Number 1 Spring and Summer 2014 55 students may begin to assemble a repertoire of general heuristics or learning strategies (Schunk Cox, 1986) models or behavior scripts or routines (Schunk, 1987, 1997) and a set of performance standards and criteria (Zimmerman Ringle, 1981) fundamental tools for self regulation (Bugental Goodnow, 1998; Winne, 1996) A student's beliefs about help seeking are influenced by the way teachers respond to help seeking behavior; in an effort to avoid negative evaluations, a student will act more passively when his/her help seeking is viewed negatively by a teacher (Newman, 2002) Adaptive help seeking or informational pursuit is a strategy that can only be employed once a student has achieved a certain level of metacognitive competence; therefore, the questions and probes used and metacognitive information provided by teachers can help students become more skilled in recognizing gaps in their understanding and in asking questions (Newman 2002) Thus, teacher feedback plays two important roles in influencing help seeking behavior. First, the type of feedback a student receives in response to his/her help seeking attempts may determine the student's subsequent use of the strategy. Second, a student's exposure to teacher modeling of effective questioning may result in increased helpseeking competence. Although certain invitations to participate may be extended during teacher led instruction, students choose to engage in numerous ways. For example, they may simply recount rote facts and content information, forms of interaction that can be accomplished with only lower levels of information processing. Alternatively, students may choose to engage in the discussion of strategies, make personal connections and predictions, or selfevaluation or process assessments; forms of interaction that require deeper levels of information processing. In addition a student's active monitoring, either internally (e.g. independent, self directed review of the accuracy of one's own work) or socially (e.g. comparing one's work to that of a peer) may be necessary to ensure appropriate and effective use of self instructional skills. Before students can pursue additional information from the resources available in the classroom, they must perceive a gap between actual performance and desired performance Butler Winne, 1995; Nelson Le Gall, 1985) We propose that students' select participation and regulation patterns ultimately may determine whether or not the students derive maximum benefit from social contextual affordances of the classroom and function effectively with selfinstructional tasks such as adaptive help seeking pursuits.