Reading comprehension of scientific texts is a well-recognized, powerful vehicle for engaging students' minds and helping them construct scientific inquiry habits, reach a deep conceptual understanding, and attain science achievements (Graesser et al., 2002; Krajcik and Sutherland, 2010; Pearson et al., 2010; Yore and Tippett, 2014; van Rijk et al., 2017; Sason et al., 2020). However, researchers have asserted that the mere provision of reading opportunities and strategies is often insufficient to effectively develop science literacy without explicit scaffolding to support readers' self-regulated learning (Lai et al., 2014; Murphy et al., 2017). The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) defines science literacy as “the ability to engage with science-related issues, and with the ideas of science as a reflective citizen” (Organisation for Economic Co-operation Development, 2015a, p. 50).

Motivation plays an important role in science students' reading by determining the extent to which students engage with science texts and persevere in applying effort, without aborting, until successfully completing the texts' accompanying reading comprehension tasks (see review by Morgan and Fuchs, 2007). Thus, when facing a reading task, students must not only attain knowledge about reading comprehension strategies such as locating ideas in text and processing and integrating information—namely, cognitive self-regulation skills—but also must attain knowledge about how and when to apply these different cognitive strategies—namely, metacognitive self-regulation skills (e.g., Schreiber, 2005; Roebers, 2017; Jian, 2018; Pamungkas et al., 2018; Farhana et al., 2020). Students must also acquire explicit strategies for self-regulating their own motivation—deciding how to approach the knowledge acquisition process and how much effort to invest—to cope with what may be a cognitively, emotionally, and temporally demanding task (e.g., McClelland et al., 2007; Guthrie and Coddington, 2009; Kelley and Decker, 2009; Logan et al., 2011; Skibbe et al., 2011; Liew et al., 2019; Li et al., 2020).

Most prior research on learners' self-regulation in the reading context has focused on supporting the cognitive and metacognitive aspects of self-regulated learning (also see Ahmadi et al., 2013; Rastegar et al., 2017; see reviews in Ali and Razali, 2019 and Deliany and Cahyono, 2020). In contrast, the motivational aspect has been under-investigated (McNamara, 2017; Egloff, 2019; Egloff and Souvignier, 2020). Embedment of self-questions into learning material to guide students' autonomous or collaborative self-regulation of their own learning processes (e.g., Kramarski and Mevarech, 1997 “IMPROVE” method) has been shown effective for enhancing science and math learners' cognitive and metacognitive self-regulation as well as for promoting their academic achievements (Michalsky, 2013, 2020; Michalsky and Schechter, 2018). However, most prior research on self-questioning supports has been conducted in the context of cognitive and metacognitive self-regulation components rather than the motivational self-regulation component.

At the focus of the current study, previous research has not yet sufficiently explored when best to specifically embed motivational scaffolding to maximize science learners' active engagement in, and comprehension of, reading tasks. Although scaffolding to support self-regulated learning processes may be implemented at different chronological phases of learning—at the forethought, performance, or retrospective self-reflection phases (Zimmerman, 1990)—little attention has been given in the empirical literature to the relative effectiveness of the before-task vs. during-task vs. after-task timeframe for delivering motivational regulation support for scientific text reading. The current study aims to narrow this gap by expanding the literature on the benefit of scaffolding for the motivational aspect of self-regulated learning in a science reading context and, in particular, on the design of its optimal conditions.

Motivational self-regulation, otherwise termed “metamotivation,” refers to the conscious processing of monitoring and controlling one's own motivation to increase effort and persistence when completing a task or achieving a particular learning goal (McNamara, 2017; Schwinger and Otterpohl, 2017). Specifically, motivational regulation includes two main component processes: monitoring and control (Corno, 1993; Boekaerts, 1995; Kuhl, 2000; Wolters, 2003, 2011; Pintrich, 2004; Sansone and Thoman, 2005, 2006; Schwinger and Stiensmeier-Pelster, 2012). Metamotivational “monitoring” refers to self-awareness or self-evaluation of one's motivation, whereas metamotivational “control” refers to self-management and self-regulation of one's motivation and efforts (Zeidner and Stoeger, 2019), operating as reciprocal processes that form a feedback loop (Miele and Scholer, 2018).

Metamotivational monitoring refers to students' evaluation of the quantity and the intrinsic or extrinsic quality of their own motivation to achieve a goal or complete a task. In the context of science text comprehension, students must be motivated to invest effort in trying to understand the written material and in monitoring their comprehension to observe lapses in understanding (Oakhill and Cain, 2012; Dutke et al., 2016; De Smedt et al., 2020). Such monitoring includes recognizing what motivated one to read about a science topic in the first place, what decreases one's motivation, how one's current motivation can be informed by motivation in prior similar tasks, and what one still needs to monitor so as to remediate discrepancies in one's motivation to read. According to Meniado (2016), the development of science reading comprehension skills is significantly better for learners who monitor their reading motivation.

Metamotivational control refers to choosing and actively performing strategies that strengthen or shift one's motivation. Such strategies include the use of self-talk to regulate efforts and actions, environmental control efforts to establish external conditions that are more conducive to learning effectively, and “self-consequating” behaviors, where students promise themselves a reward or reinforcement after achieving their academic goal (Schwinger and Otterpohl, 2017). Students who manage their motivation while reading—by taking a more active interest in the topic, finding a personal connection to the material, trying to reduce outside distractions, and mobilizing attention to decipher difficult ideas presented in the text—have reported experiencing a more successful learning process, gaining a sense of satisfaction and enjoyment from learning, and understanding the study topics better (Kamil et al., 2008; Salinger, 2010; Schwinger and Otterpohl, 2017).

In the context of comprehending written scientific content, metamotivational monitoring can encourage students to think about (i.e., to self-evaluate) what motivates them to comprehend a text. Having identified their reasons, readers can then take actions to self-manage (i.e., control) their engagement with the task, with the aim of increasing their motivation and, in turn, their reading comprehension (Bråten et al., 2013). For example, Azhari (2020) has recently reported that monitoring of reading motivation is a driving factor that encourages students to manage and meet their expressed goals. The experiments of Nguyen et al. (2019) have also demonstrated that, to manage motivational states effectively, students must at minimum possess self-awareness or self-evaluation about which states would be more/less advantageous for a particular task and how to produce them.

Thus, to promote students' reading comprehension and achievements, researchers have strongly underscored the importance of explicitly training students to both monitor and regulate their own motivational processes (Reynolds, 2017; Schwinger and Otterpohl, 2017). However, prior research has not yet sufficiently investigated when best to embed explicit metamotivational scaffolding to enhance learners' active, effective engagement with science reading comprehension tasks and to promote their science literacy.

Schon (1996) distinguishes between in-action and on-action reflective self-questioning. Reflection-in-action describes interaction with a “live” problem as it unfolds during task performance—also termed by Raelin (2001) as “contemporaneous reflection,” occurring at the moment. Reflection-on-action describes activation of reflection processes after task performance, which enables learners to construct and evaluate explicit theories of action for solving future scientific problems—termed by Raelin (2001) as “retrospective reflection” for looking back at the experience. According to Seibert (1999), students tend to deal with live problems spontaneously, using their tacit knowledge, even when problems elicit uncertainty or surprise; hence, at the in-action (during-task) phase, reflection processes are generally not activated. In contrast, on-action (after-task) reflection processes are activated whenever a problem contains ambiguity or conflict because learners must consciously confront their tacit theories of action to evaluate their problem solution.

While Schon's work is highly regarded, it does not refer to the activation of before-action reflection processes (Hackett, 2001). Reflection-before-action has been described as a “pre-reflection” stage (Dewey, 1997) or as “anticipatory reflection,” often occurring at the planning stage (Raelin, 2001). In pre-task reflection, teachers may provide students with self-directed questions that give external structure to the self-regulation process in the form of a general work routine.

Researchers have begun to construct innovative instructional methods for science students based on metamotivational reflection as supported by self-directed questioning (Puteh and Ibrahim, 2010; Salinger, 2010; Schwinger and Stiensmeier-Pelster, 2012; Bråten et al., 2013; Michalsky, 2013; Frankel, 2016). However, empirical studies to date have not yet simultaneously compared the three possible metamotivational scaffolding timeframes corresponding with the forethought, performance, and retrospection phases of self-regulated learning of Zimmerman (1990).

Research to date examining before-task scaffolding for self-regulated learning, delivered only at the reflection-before-action phase (per Dewey, 1997; Raelin, 2001), has not sufficiently investigated science reading or scaffolding that specifically focused on metamotivation. In the math and literature learning contexts, pre-task scaffolding given to high-school students to support their cognitive and metacognitive (but not motivational) self-regulated learning (i.e., before math problem solving or literature reading comprehension) has been found to promote learners' motivation to perform the task as well as their academic-domain achievements (Mevarech and Kramarski, 2017; Reynolds, 2017). These findings for before-task cognitive and metacognitive scaffolding suggest the possible benefits of pre-action self-questioning of a metamotivational nature. Scholer and Miele (2016) have recommended using metamotivation processes before the learning action to enhance learners' fuller engagement in tasks and higher self-efficacy for successfully activating cognitive processes, compared with conditions where metamotivation is used during and or after cognitive processes.

Little research has examined the efficacy of retrospective metamotivational self-questioning in the form of instructional scaffolding presented to learners only after completing their task (reflection-on-action per Schon, 1996). In one study, Scholer and Miele (2016) have shown that scaffolding for metamotivation reflection delivered after completing a science learning task improves university students' achievements, compared with students who do not receive such scaffolding.

With regard to during-task scaffolding, delivered only at the reflection-in-action phase (per Schon, 1996), comparative research has shown that high school students exposed to metamotivational self-questioning instructional methods during their reading of microbiology texts significantly outperform their peers who do not receive metamotivational self-questioning support, as assessed on measures of general science literacy and domain-specific microbiology knowledge (du Boulay, 2011; Mahdavi and Tensfeldt, 2013; Michalsky, 2013).

In one of the rare studies to date comparing the three timeframes for self-regulatory scaffolding of reading comprehension, Michalsky (2013) has presented IMPROVE self-questions to elementary school students before, during, and after reading science texts (albeit addressing metacognitive regulation, not motivational regulation). Findings have indicated that these younger children perform best when they receive the metacognitive self-questioning after their text reading, as assessed by measures of general and domain-specific science achievements and metacognitive awareness. Prior research has also shown improvements in all three components of self-regulation [cognition, metacognition, and motivation as assessed using the measure of Pintrich (1999)] when secondary school students adapt their trained reading methods to a specific text via the use of a preplanned external procedure that helps structure students' processes of cognitive and metacognitive (but not motivational) self-regulation as implemented before, during, and after the reading task (Souvignier and Mokhlesgerami, 2006).

In line with the call of Lajoie (2005) to examine not only what and how to scaffold for reading comprehension but also when to scaffold and when to fade scaffolding, the current study's preliminary exploration aims to narrow the gaps mentioned earlier in the literature. The present quasi-experiment compared the effectiveness of the three timeframes for introducing metamotivational self-questioning support—before, during, or immediately after reading scientific texts—as compared with a control group receiving no metamotivational support at all. To comprehensively assess the impact of the four different intervention conditions, gains were measured in general science literacy, domain-specific knowledge, and metamotivational skills following the intervention.

This study focused on 10th graders because, during adolescence, students' engagement in and motivation for reading decrease (Wigfield et al., 2016). Specifically, with regard to the field of science literacy, students often report a strong dislike of reading, which may be attributed to age-related decreases in self-efficacy beliefs about their adequacy of skills and knowledge for comprehending increasingly complex secondary school science texts (Guthrie and Coddington, 2009; Cunningham and Zibulsky, 2014).

Based on prior literature indicating that supporting students' motivation for reading enhances scientific text comprehension (e.g., Scholer and Miele, 2016; Reynolds, 2017), all three metamotivational groups were expected to outperform the control group on all three dependent variables. Due to the paucity mentioned earlier of comparative research regarding the timing of metamotivational scaffolding for secondary students' scientific text comprehension (see, for example, rare studies on motivation and cognition aspects by Souvignier and Mokhlesgerami, 2006; Logan et al., 2011), no explicit assumption was formulated about the effects of the “before” vs. “during” vs. “after” metamotivational scaffolding approaches embedded at three different phases of the scientific text reading.

All students in all eight classrooms studied the “The World of Microorganisms” study unit for 3.5 months during 10th grade as part of a series of science study units entitled Invitation to Scientific Inquiry (National Research Council, 2015). All eight classrooms used the same textbook and read the exact same scientific texts comprising the inquiry-based “Microbiology” unit for three lessons per week over 14 weeks. The experiment was delivered in six of the eight classrooms, in only one of their three weekly microbiology lessons. Once weekly, the six teachers in the “BEF,” “DUR,” and “AFT” groups (two teachers per group) implemented their assigned metamotivational self-questioning scaffolding method for their 10th graders' reading comprehension of scientific texts, whereas the two teachers in the control condition used traditional instruction for all three weekly lessons.

For the first 2 weeks of the 14-weeks period, the two classrooms comprising the control group introduced standard instructional methods for scientific text comprehension, with no metamotivational scaffolding. In the remaining six of the eight classrooms, the teachers in the three experimental groups dedicated their first two weekly lessons to introducing their assigned IMPROVE self-questioning model (BEF, DUR, or AFT) that students would utilize before, during, or after reading scientific texts, respectively. During these two introductory training lessons, the instructors in the three experimental groups provided demonstrations and modeling of their respective metamotivational scaffolding conditions to initially train students in the utilization of these scaffolds for attempts to monitor and manage their motivation and efforts.

For all four learning conditions, each of the remaining 12 lessons contained three parts: outline, practice, and summary phases (see Appendix A). In the practice phase that comprised most of each lesson (~30 min), all students practiced comprehension of the lesson's scientific texts and, based on their reading, worked to solve related scientific exercises. Each student in all four groups received a personal copy of the printed worksheet presenting that lesson's microbiology text and accompanying exercises. The scientific texts were related to the microbiology phenomena that all students were learning in their other two weekly classes. For the three treatment conditions only, the worksheets additionally presented the metamotivational scaffolds, differing between the BEF, DUR, and AFT groups only in the timing of their embedment.

As shown in Table 1, for all four groups, each round of engagement with a science reading comprehension task comprised two phases: (a) individual reading and individual exercise performance, followed by (b) small-group discussion and joint reflection on the individual students' exercise solutions. Only in the BEF/DUR/AFT conditions (but not in the control condition) did students receive and respond to metamotivational training scaffolds during these two engagement phases.

Students in the three experimental conditions (BEF, DUR, and AFT) were all exposed to the same series of four self-addressed metamotivation questions, based on the IMPROVE method of Kramarski and Mevarech (1997) as updated by Michalsky (2013). These four self-questioning scaffolds for each microbiology reading comprehension task pertained to Comprehension (task knowledge), Connection (inter-task knowledge), Strategies (strategy knowledge), and Reflection (self-knowledge). The three experimental training groups' metamotivational scaffolds differed from one another only in (a) the timing of their embedment in the worksheets (e.g., see Appendix B for the DUR group) and (b) their use of appropriate tense: future tense for the BEF group, present tense for the DUR group, and past and future tense for the AFT group (see left column of Table 2).

During the two introductory training lessons (Lessons 1 and 2), the instructors in the three experimental groups demonstrated to students how to utilize the four IMPROVE self-questioning scaffolds throughout their individual and small-group phases of engagement with the study unit's assigned science texts and to accompany reading comprehension exercises, according to each condition's timing for embedment (see Table 1).

During reading task practice for the experimental conditions in Lessons 3–14, the individual engagement phase was accompanied by an individual responding to the four metamotivational self-questioning scaffolds (see Table 2 for excerpts from students' utilization of these training scaffolds in the individual phase). Then, the small-group engagement phase in the three groups was accompanied by joint discussion and reflection on their metamotivational responses.

To be noted, the Comprehension, Connection, and Reflection self-questions scaffolded students' motivational monitoring or awareness, whereas the Strategy question uniquely scaffolded students' attempts to control and manage their motivation and efforts. Thus, to scaffold the training procedure for the Strategy question in each lesson, each student in all three treatment conditions also received a personal copy of a user-friendly printed card cueing them about the repertoire of eight possible strategies for managing their own motivation (e.g., how to apply self-talk in their science reading task; see left column of Table 3). The instructor had modeled and exemplified these eight motivational management strategies in Lessons 1 and 2, based on Schwinger and Otterpohl (2017), according to each condition's timing for the Strategy self-question. Each treatment condition's worksheets and cards were included in the teachers' guidebook.

To prevent treatment diffusion and compensatory rivalry, each pair of teachers (in the BEF, DUR, AFT, and control conditions) participated in a separate 2-days (6-h) in-service training program on the instruction of scientific text comprehension. The training instructor (the author) holds expertise in science text reading comprehension and the different metamotivational support conditions.

The first day of training was the same for all four conditions (BEF, DUR, AFT, and control), emphasizing the importance of strengthening students' science literacy and discussing the possible difficulties students encounter in comprehending scientific texts. The second day differed according to the assigned condition. The two teachers in the control group received the standard national 10th-grade approaches for reading science texts relevant to the study unit, and the instructor demonstrated teaching methods for enhancing scientific text comprehension in the classroom. Each of the three metamotivational conditions (two teachers each) received an introduction to the rationale and techniques of their assigned IMPROVE scaffolding method (BEF, DUR, or AFT). For these six teachers, the instructor accentuated the importance of metamotivation for encouraging scientific text reading, demonstrated the assigned timing and procedure for the IMPROVE self-questions' implementation in the classroom, and also modeled the use of the eight motivational management strategies based on Schwinger and Otterpohl (2017).

Throughout both days of training for all eight teachers, the instructor strongly emphasized the benefit of encouraging students to initiate discourse with their small-group team members through instructions such as: “Discuss your scientific ideas and reasoning with your team” or “Explain your answers to your peers.”

To ensure teachers' adherence to the scaffolding methods, all eight classrooms were observed by the author every other week across the 12-weeks experiment (8 classes × 6 observations = 48 observations in total). For the three treatment conditions (BEF, DUR, and AFT), observations were conducted in the one weekly biology lesson (out of three) when the teachers applied their assigned metamotivational scaffolding. For the control group, the observed lessons were selected randomly. After every observation, the instructor gave feedback to each observed teacher, answered teachers' questions, and offered recommendations for improvement if necessary. Overall, the teachers adhered well to the training they had received, both (a) regarding the microbiology unit's correlation to the standard national science curriculum and pedagogic inquiry strategies and (b) regarding their assigned scaffolding approach (or none) for reading scientific texts.

Three measurements were each completed by students at the pretest and posttest intervals.

The research reported in this study involving human participants was approved by the Research Ethics Board at Bar-Ilan University in accordance with ethical standards comparable to the 1964 Helsinki declaration. The eight participating teachers in the current study were randomly selected from 21 teachers who volunteered for further training and research on scientific text comprehension, following their participation in the Invitation to Scientific Inquiry in-service training program held in central Israel. The eight teachers were then randomly assigned to one of the four intervention conditions (two teachers each to the BEF, DUR, AFT, and control conditions). The purpose of the study and the existence of the other intervention conditions were masked; teachers were only informed by the training instructor that they were participating in an experiment on new pedagogical approaches to enhance scientific text comprehension.

All students were administered the three pretests (on science literacy, domain-specific microbiology knowledge, and motivational regulation strategies for reading science texts) during their biology lessons within the first 3 weeks of the school year, immediately before beginning the 3-months “The Microorganisms' World” science learning unit. At the end of the 3-months unit, all students completed the three measures again in their biology classrooms (posttests).

One-way within-subject analyses of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures were conducted, with treatment (four groups) as the independent variable and with posttest performance measures (for the three tests separately) as the dependent variables. Analyses of the total scores were followed by analyses of component subscales. Post hoc comparisons were conducted as needed in the form of pairwise contrasts. In addition, correlations were calculated among the three dependent variables at the end of the study (Time 2) for each of the four research groups.

Findings from the current quasi-experiment clearly highlighted the advantage of metamotivational scaffolding's embedment in 10th-graders' scientific text reading over the effectiveness of standard instructional methods that do not include any such scaffolding. Namely, as expected, all three student groups who received support for motivational self-regulation were found to outperform the control group on all studied variables: not only on their ability to regulate their own motivation to read about science but also on their general and domain-specific science achievements. With regard to the main focus of this study—identifying the optimal phase for embedding metamotivational scaffolding—high school students who received such scaffolding before the reading task significantly outperformed the other two groups who received metamotivational scaffolding either during or after reading, regarding all of the outcomes assessed in the present study. More extensive consideration is given next to these findings.

Although no explicit assumptions could be formulated about the comparative effectiveness of the three timeframes due to the paucity of research in this area, the current preliminary study's outcomes highlight the potential impact of the current metamotivation instructional framework. Especially when delivered at the reflection-before-action stage for looking ahead and also at the reflection-on-action stage for looking back, metamotivational scaffolding may offer important means to promote science students' capacities and to meet the growing challenges in science teaching schoolwork.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary Material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author/s.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Bar Ilan University Ramat-Gan 5290002. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants' legal guardian/next of kin.

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.