THE INFLUENCE OF THE PSYCHO-COGNITIVE AND SOCIO-CULTURAL FACTORS IN THE PROCESS OF THE REALIZATION OF UNDERSTANDING IN READING

Abstract

In the last two decades, we have observed a clear and growing interest in the didactics and assessment of meaningful reading as an indication of linguistic sub-competence. Many scholars have considered it as a complex and multidimensional process because understanding was considered in a large percentage the reason for a student’s success or failure and in many respects it constitutes the criterion for being considered a literate or educated person. This study is focused on the problems of implementing the teaching of meaningful reading as a psychological phenomenon. If the scholars agree on the definition of meaningful reading, the on-going instructional debate has to do with the finding of a kind of consensus on the realization of meaning in reading. It is difficult to achieve a full understanding of the meaning of the cognition and metacognition processes, due to their indeterminate nature. Nevertheless, the data from the research literature in the field of reading competence indicate that there exists a growing consensus concerning the effective teaching practices, in addition to the pedagogical models, and this is very promising for the improvement of meaningful reading skills.  The aim of this study is to argue for the best psycho-pedagogical models, which constitute the basis of finding a growing consensus of the best practices of effectively teaching meaningful reading.  The most representative models of the study of meaningful reading are divided into three main categories: Models of Cognitive Psychology, those of Socio-cultural Psychology and those of Social-cognitive Psychology. In the didactic practice of learning meaningful reading, certain interactive reading process models are used. These are oriented towards the mental processes of learning in a continuous exchange of information between the student and the text, as well as towards the social-cultural linguistic factors of the text (the functional grammar of the text) conditioned by the situational context of the communication. The holistic contemporary model of the meaningful reading process is built on the basis of these models. The problems raised have to do with two factors: first, is the teaching of meaningful reading mostly focused on the grammar of the text? Or second, on the activation of higher-order thinking skills which engage the learner’s critical thinking skills?

Realization of the study: in order to study the didactic approaches and influences on meaningful reading (as a dependent variable), two independent variables have been determined: (a.) linguistic-social-cultural factors of the text (i.e. the functional grammar of the text) conditioned by the social-cultural context of the communication.  (b.) The reflective mental activities utilized to understand the meaning of the text (graphic organizers and Higher-order thinking). This study will analyse the influence of the linguistic socio-cultural factors of the text and that of the Higher-order thinking skills of the student-reader on the development of critical thinking while reading, based on the didactic activities of teaching in the book of Albanian language 6-9.

The method of research is the study of the relations between the factors as a cause and effect relationship type through the results of statistical processing of quantitative and qualitative data using the software SPSS (version 21). 

Article visualizations: