Sketchnoting as a Reading Strategy: Effects on Motivation, Self-Efficacy, and Comprehension in a High School English Class

Students across the United States of America are struggling to achieve college and career readiness in reading before they graduate from high school. The phenomenon of reading comprehension in older adolescent students plagues teachers because of its complexity and the perceived need for multiple solutions. However, close inspection of the research reveals factors such as self-efficacy, motivation, and lack of skills with regards to using reading strategies all contribute to the problem. The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of sketchnoting as a reading strategy on student self-efficacy for reading, motivation for reading, and reading comprehension in a high school classroom setting. With words, symbols and pictures, sketchnoting as a reading strategy provides students with a platform to interact with their text while recording key ideas and details as well as connections they make to the text. While there are several theoretical frameworks that guide research on reading, this concurrent, mixed methods, action research study specifically focuses on Collaborative Learning Theory, Self-determination theory, and Schema Theory. These theoretical frameworks also establish a foundation for the study of methods to address the problem. This framework is rooted in the constructivist perspective in that each student brings to the learning environment their own levels of motivation and self-efficacy as well as their own perspectives on the truth to be learned. The participants of this study were juniors in a required English 11 class that I was teaching. There were six instruments used for this study: pre- and post-reading survey, Qualitative Reading Inventory (QRI), Reading Skills Assessment, general observations, sketchnote assessment, and interviews. Results of the semester-long study show that while there statistically was no evidence of a relationship between student use of sketchnoting as a reading strategy and an increase in reading motivation or self-efficacy for reading, there was evidence to show that there is a relationship between student perception of sketchnoting being meaningful to their understanding of the text and their motivation and self-efficacy. Sketchnoting as a reading strategy did not have a statistical influence on student reading comprehension; however, the students reported that they remembered the details of the text they read better when using sketchnoting and that sketchnoting helped them make connections to the text they read. This research showed that sketchnoting as a reading strategy provided students with a tool to help them identify the key ideas and details of a text and it also provided them with a platform to take them beyond the key ideas and details through making connections.