Relation Between Elementary Students' Perceptions of Teacher Behaviors and Reading Strategy

This study examined the relationship between elementary students' perceptions of instructional behaviors and students' reported cognitive strategy use during reading comprehension. Students were asked to silently read a narrative passage and then respond to a series of questions about their use of strategy and teacher behaviors associated with strategy use and reading instruction. Descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations) and t tests were used to describe and compare students' perceptions of teacher behaviors and students' reports of strategy use. Canonical correlation analysis was used to determine the maximum correlation between students' perceptions of teacher behaviors and reported cognitive reading strategies and which variables contributed most to the relationship between the two sets of variables. Results of the descriptive analysis and t tests revealed a significant difference in students' perceptions of strategy use and instruction; they reported more strategies in reading. Results of the canonical correlation analysis between the set of teacher behaviors and the set of student strategies produced four statistically significant canonical coefficients. Examination of the four canonical variates reveals several patterns of relationships between students' perceptions of teacher behaviors and their reported use of cognitive reading strategies. In general, the results suggest that student interpretations of particular combinations of teacher behaviors may influence their strategy use. In particular, the analysis provided information about the conditions surrounding students' perceptions of the use of three individual strategies: rapid reading, predicting outcomes, and seeking help from peers.