Choo Mui Cheong

Reading engagement is a multidimensional construct encompassing motivational, behavioural, and cognitive dimensions, each characterized by distinct features. Although prior research has identified associations among some of these features, few studies have examined them simultaneously or explored their interactions and joint relationships with reading comprehension. This gap limits our understanding of how multiple engagement-related variables may operate together to support reading. Thus, using psychometric network analysis to represent the intricate psychological constructs withinteractions among the variables, this study analysed student questionnaire and reading test data from Hong Kong participants in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2021. The sample included 3830 fourth grade students with 49% boys and 51% girls. The findings indicate that intrinsic motivation emerged as a central bridging component within the engagement network, connecting cognitive and behavioural engagement and organizing their relations with reading achievement. Self-efficacy was most strongly connected to reading achievement, with which negative need for cognition and boredom show negative associations. Extrinsic motivation formed a distinct cluster, negatively linked to reading achievement and weakly connected to other engagement dimensions. The findings underscore the associations between reading engagement features and reading achievement, suggesting that educators should consider the interconnected and mutually reinforcing relationships among reading engagement features.

Adaptability refers to a long-term, self-regulating process that enables learners to respond effectively to situational uncertainty and developmental challenges. However, research on adaptability in writing remains relatively limited. Existing studies suggest that adaptability in writing can be supported by cognitive resources like growth mindset (GM), emotional resources like grit, and behaviours resources like strategy use (SU). Yet, little is known about how these resources jointly support writing performance. The present study examined the interrelationships among these three resources from 783 Chinese fourth graders in the Greater Bay Area. Structural equation modelling (SEM) revealed that, overall, grit and SU jointly mediated the association between GM and writing performance. Multi-group SEM analyses further showed region-specific patterns. For Guangdong students, GM played a more prominent role than grit, whereas for Hong Kong students, grit emerged as the stronger contributor. These findings together enrich our understanding of how cognitive, emotional, and behavioural resources support adaptability in writing, thereby contributing to the theoretical account of writing adaptability. Drawing on differences in pedagogical practices between Guangdong and Hong Kong, we further discuss how learning environment may shape adaptive learning mechanisms. Implications are provided for instructional practices to foster students’ adaptive capacities in writing.

This study investigated how intrinsic motivation (IM) and extrinsic motivation (EM) shape Chinese fourth graders’ higher‐order comprehension (HO) through the mediating roles of reading strategy use (SU) and lower‐order comprehension (LO). A total of 564 students from Chinese mainland completed a literary and an informational reading passage. Structural equation modeling was applied. Results showed that both IM and EM predicted HO indirectly via SU, underscoring strategy use as a pivotal metacognitive mechanism. Notably, EM exerted a stronger indirect effect than IM, reflecting the cultural and curricular contexts where extrinsic incentives effectively prompt systematic strategy application. By contrast, IM uniquely predicted HO through LO, highlighting that foundational skills of retrieval and straightforward inference act as a cognitive gateway to deeper comprehension. Pedagogically, this suggests fostering IM to strengthen LO as scaffolding for higher‐order reasoning, while thoughtfully leveraging EM to encourage metacognitive strategy use in structured classroom settings .

The use of more digital devices in learning has motivated the transition from paper-based to computer-based formats in large-scale international assessments, with typewriting as the prevalent input method in such educational studies. However, there remains limited exploration on whether differences arising from varied encoding systems in keyboarding methods impact on students’ literacy performance. The current study, utilizing Item Response Theory, aims to investigate whether the use of different keyboarding methods has an effect on students’ reading performance based on the 2021 digital Progress of International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), with a particular focus on the constructive response items. The participating countries were divided into three groups based on the consistency between their test language’s writing system and its representations on the keyboard—with Group 1 having the highest consistency and Group 3 (Chinese is the only language in this group) the lowest. Results revealed that a significant keyboard effect exists for students with higher-than-average reading ability. Specifically, Group 3 scored lower than Groups 1 and 2, while Groups 1 and 2 did not exhibit significant differences in their reading performance. This suggests that for students with similar higher-than-average reading ability, typing in Chinese appears to be at a disadvantage compared to other input methods. This study emphasizes the importance of considering keyboard effects when designing and scoring future large-scale assessments in order to improve the overall validity of the tests.

Multimodal reading skills are essential for 21st‐century students to interpret and navigate information across various modalities on the Internet and in multimedia environments. While previous studies have delved into the effects of lower‐ and higher‐level cognitive skills on traditional reading comprehension, which involves solely written texts, relatively, few have investigated their influence in the context of multimodal reading, where texts are combined with images, audio, video, and other modalities. This study aimed to explore the relationships among lower‐level cognitive skills (i.e., word decoding, listening comprehension, and image comprehension), higher‐level cognitive skills (i.e., prior knowledge and inference), and multimodal reading. A total of 251 fourth grade students from Hong Kong participated in this study. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to analyze the data. The results indicated that both lower‐ and higher‐level skills positively influence multimodal reading. Moreover, the mediating role of inference between lower‐level skills and multimodal reading and the moderating role of word decoding between inference and multimodal reading were identified. This study enriches the literature on the influence of various cognitive factors in the multimodal reading process and offers significant implications for enhancing multimodal reading skills and designing effective instructional strategies.