Puzzle Them First! —
Abstract of

Chapter 2
Question-Finding and Motivation

A. Vincent Ciardiello

Adolescents tend to lose interest in school subjects as they advance in their education. At the same time, adolescents also develop advanced literacy needs and reasoning powers such as thinking divergently, dealing with ambiguities, and synthesizing ideas from multiple sources. Question-finding is an instructional strategy that attempts to address this educational dilemma. In this chapter, the author provides classroom vignettes and learning models highlighting the influence of question-finding activities in enhancing student academic motivation in different content areas of the adolescent curriculum. Each of the vignettes and models indicates how question-finding stimulates the development of such motivational constructs as situational interest, curiosity, independent thinking, and self-efficacy in the adolescent learner.

Ciardiello, A. (2006). Question-Finding and Motivation. In Puzzle Them First! (pp. 24-43). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.