The effect of reading strategies instruction on middle school students' metacognitive awareness, reading achievement and self efficacy

Reading strategies are the strategies used to make the process of interpreting the text effective before, during and after reading. In the study, it was aimed to determine the effect of teaching reading strategies on the metacognitive levels of middle school students' reading strategies, their reading comprehension achievements and reading self-efficacy. The research was carried out with students studying at 5th grade in a secondary school in Istanbul in the 2018-2019 academic year. In the research, mixed method was used with the thought of examining the process in detail. Considering that the mixed method is based on qualitative and quantitative data and analysis, it is thought that more valid results can be obtained. In the study, nested patterns, which are mixed method patterns, were used. Reading Strategies Metacognitive Awareness Inventory, Reading Comprehension Achievement Test, Reader's Self-Efficacy Scale in order to collect quantitative data in the research; semi-structured Interview Form and Student Diary, Teacher Diary and Neutral Observer Report were used to collect qualitative data. The experimental design of the research consists of an experiment and a control group. There are 29 students in the experimental group and 28 students in the control group. In the experimental group, a total of 20 lesson hours were both teaching and applications were made over the texts in the textbook. In the control group, considering the Turkish Education Program, the course process was planned with the reading activities in the textbook. During the implementation process, the student diary was distributed to both the experimental group in which reading strategies were taught, and the control group in which reading activities in accordance with the curriculum were given at the end of each text and the students were asked to fill this form. The semi-structured interview form, on the other hand, was applied to 5 randomly selected students by the researcher, considering the impartiality principle among the students in the experimental group. SPSS 22.0 package program was used to perform statistical analysis of the quantitative data of the research. Since the data set did not conform to normal distribution, Wilcoxon was used to compare the averages of two dependent groups from non-parametric hypothesis tests, and Mann Whitney U to compare the averages of independent groups. Chi-square was applied to compare categorical variables. Descriptive analysis was used in the analysis of the semi-structured interview form and student diary, which is one of the qualitative data collection tools. In the study, it was determined that teaching reading strategies positively created a significant difference on students' reading strategies, metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension achievement, and the results obtained from the semi-structured interview form, student diary and impartial observer report also supported this situation. It was determined that it creates a significant negative difference on self-efficacy, on the contrary, in the results obtained from the semi-structured interview form, student diary and impartial observer report, it was determined that it had positive effects on reading self-efficacy.