Motivational Practices in Reading Interventions for Students With or at Risk for Dyslexia

The purposes of this study were to (a) describe the extent to which motivational practices are incorporated in foundational reading interventions for students with or at risk for dyslexia in kindergarten through Grade 5 (K–5) and (b) explore whether the presence and type of motivational practices (i.e., supports vs. strategies) within foundational reading interventions influenced the magnitude of the intervention effects on reading outcomes. We analyzed the same set of studies as Hall et al. (2022), who meta-analyzed experimental and quasi-experimental research of reading interventions implemented with K–5 students with or at risk for dyslexia from 1980 to 2020. Results of the current study show that only 44% of the interventions included motivational practices. The majority (84%) of those interventions addressed student motivation and engagement through motivational supports, such as game-like activities, paired work, and setting improvement goals. A much smaller percentage (16%) provided explicit motivational strategy instruction. Results indicated that reading interventions that include direct motivational strategy instruction tend to have larger effects on reading outcomes than both interventions without any motivational practices and those that include motivational supports only. The positive effect of motivational strategy instruction was stronger on measures of word reading than overall reading or reading comprehension outcomes. These findings highlight the need to address motivational challenges of students with reading difficulties and lend insight into how foundational reading skills interventions can be bolstered through incorporating motivational strategy instruction.