Diventare lettori maturi e consapevoli: la validazione nel contesto italiano del Motivation for Reading Questionnaire

Promoting the pleasure of reading and making the interest in different types of books more mature is one of the challenges to raise long-lasting readers over time. The strategic role played by the reading motivation has been broadened by educational research, which have highlighted the correlation between reading motivation and learning outcomes (Gambrell, 1996; Froiland & Oros, 2014; Schiefele, Stutz, & Schaffner, 2016). Teachers can help students become mature and aware readers. Therefore, they should be able to understand the students’ individual needs and to identify the most effective teaching strategies (Lumbelli, 1988; Moretti, 1993; Cardarello, 2004). This paper intends to share with the scientific community a tool capable of detecting the reading motivation of the students of the last classes of primary school. The Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (Wigfield & Guthrie, 1997) has been translated and adapted to the national context by conducting exploratory factorial analysis. In the Italian version, the questionnaire was reduced and four factors were identified: «Recognition», «Engagement», «Competition», «Sharing and sociability». The results of the research are reported to disseminate the outcomes with researchers, teachers and educators interested in deepening the theme of reading motivation.