Identifying the Relationships Between Response Behaviors for Reading Comprehension Items and Student Characteristics

Abstract

The study aimed to identify the students’ characteristics (perception of self-efficacy, resistance, persistence, taking responsibility and competence for their cognitive processes) that might affect the response behaviors of fifth grade students for open ended questions written in different cognitive levels. This study was designed as relational survey model research. Sample consisted of 392 5th grade students selected by purposeful sampling from Yenimahalle, Mamak and Cankaya districts in Ankara city. Data was collected with reading comprehension achievement test, response behaviors form and student information survey. Analysis was conducted with 366 students’ data after missing values were removed. MPlus package program was utilized to analyze data and structural equation modelling was used. The findings of the research revealed that response behaviors for open ended questions written in different cognitive levels in Turkish learning area were found to be predicted low and at a significant level by students’ perception of self-efficacy, persistence, resistance, taking responsibility and cognitive skills. It might be concluded that improving children’s perception for cognitive and metacognitive skills can enhance their thinking process, lead them to perform complex response behaviors and affect positively their higher order thinking process. In other words, students with high cognitive and metacognitive skills show higher level response behaviors such as putting themselves into author’s shoes, relating their own life to the event in the text or using imagination. Therefore, they can comprehend what they read easily and express it back.