What really matters: The role of behavioural engagement in multiple document literacy tasks

One‐hundred and twenty‐seven Norwegian upper‐secondary school students completing college preparatory courses (41% female) were asked to select the texts they wanted to use in order to write a letter to the editor about a socio‐scientific topic, with 60 students assigned the topic of climate change and 67 students assigned the topic of nuclear power. Afterwards, they were asked to justify their text selections, read the selected texts and write their letters to the editor. Across both topics, hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that students' behavioural engagement in the selection, justification, reading and writing tasks contributed to their performance over and above their reading comprehension, topic knowledge and topic interest. Specifically, behavioural engagement in the selection and justification tasks improved the prediction of their content‐based and source‐feature based justifications for text selection, and behavioural engagement in the reading and writing tasks improved the prediction of the content coverage and content integration observed in their written products, with large effect sizes obtained for behavioural engagement across the two topics. The theoretical and educational significance of the study is discussed and directions for future research are suggested. Highlights What is already known about this topic Reading and writing tasks involving multiple documents are a great challenge for many students. Theory and research in this area have emphasised the importance of cognitive competencies and motivational dispositions. What this paper adds The findings indicate that the time, effort and persistence that students put into multiple document tasks may matter more that their cognitive competencies and motivational dispositions. Prior research in multiple document literacy may have underestimated students' competencies because it has not taken their behavioural engagement (or lack of it) into consideration. Implications for theory, policy or practice Theoretical frameworks of multiple document literacy need to address the importance of behavioural engagement in multiple document task contexts. Literacy educators in the 21st century need to focus on the promotion of student engagement in challenging reading tasks involving multiple documents.