







































 

 

 

 

 

Teacher Support, Reading Strategy and 

Reading Literacy: A Two-Level 

Mediation Model 

Qishan Chen, Yaying Lei, Zhonglin Wen, Shutong Li 

Jieying Li, Yurou Kong 

South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, China

Abstract. The purpose of this study was to use the data consisted of 

5,115 fifteen-year-old Shanghai students in 152 schools from the PISA 

2009, by building cross-level mediation model, to explore how the influ-

ence on students’ reading literacy from teachers’ support through learn-

ing strategy. The results revealed that teacher support is positively di-
rectly related to students’ reading literacy. Students’ learning strategy 

(such as elaboration strategy and control strategy) and metacognition 

strategy were cross-level mediators between teachers’ support and their 
students’ reading literacy. But memory strategy in the learning strategy 

does not play a cross-level mediation effect. 
Best Evid Chin Edu 2019; 2(1):157-170. 

Doi: 10.15354/bece.19.ar1036 

Keywords: Teacher support; Learning strategy; Reading literacy; Hierarchical 

liner modeling; PISA

 

 

 
 

Correspondence to: Qishan Chen, Associate Professor, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, School of 

Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, China. Email: kaisanchan@163.com 

About the Author: Qishan Chen, Associate Professor, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, School of 

Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, China. Email: kaisanchan@163.com 

Yaying Lei, Master’s Degree Candidate, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, School of Psychology, 

South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, China, Email: 248274641@qq.com 

Zhonglin Wen, Professor, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, School of Psychology, South China 

Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, China, Email: 115035333@qq.com 

Shutong Li, Undergraduate, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, School of Psychology, South China 

Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, China, Email: 401048116@qq.com 

(Continued) 



Chen, et al. Teacher Support, Reading Strategy and Reading Literacy 

Vol.2, No. 1, 2019 158 

Introduction 

EADING comprehension is the process by which readers obtain meaning from 

literal symbols and is one of the most unique cognitive activities of human be-

ings. Reading ability has great significance to students’ academic success and 

personal development. Through reading, people can understand, use, reflect on and par-

ticipate in texts in order to achieve personal goals, develop personal knowledge and 

potential, and participate effectively in social activities. In the Program for International 

Student Assessment (PISA), reading ability is also known as reading literacy. 

The Program for International Student Assessment is a worldwide study by the 

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in member and non-

member nations intended to evaluate educational systems by measuring 15-year-old 

school pupils’ scholastic performance on reading literacy, mathematical literacy, scien-

tific literacy and financial literacy (OECD, 2013).  

The test sampling of PISA is scientific, and the sample have a wide coverage 

and high representativeness; and it has high quality control in questions design, data 

collection and cleaning process, so PISA has high reliability and reputation. As a result, 

data and results from PISA have been widely concerned by governments, educational 

management institutions and academic researchers (Martin, Liem, Mok, & Xu, 2012; 

Rogers, 2014; Zhang & Xin, 2012).  

This study intends to use the data of PISA2009 to explore the influencing fac-

tors of students’ reading literacy. Reading literacy is influenced by the external factors 

of students (such as school atmosphere, teacher support, family socioeconomic status, 

etc.) and internal factors (such as learning strategies, learning motivations, etc.) (Kigel, 

McElvany, & Becker, 2015; Netten, et al, 2014). This study focuses on the influence of 

teacher support and learning strategies on students’ reading literacy, proposes and veri-

fies a cross-level mediating effect model: teacher support on students’ reading learning 

not only can directly affect students’ reading literacy, but also can influence reading 

literacy indirectly by influencing students’ learning strategies. In this hypothesis model 

(Figure 1), teacher support is a level 2 organizational variable, learning strategy and 

reading literacy are the level 1 individual variables, so this is a cross-level mediation 

model of 2-1-1 structure. 

 

 

 

 
 

(Continued) 

Jieying Li, Master’s Degree Candidate, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, School of Psychology, 
South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, China, Email: 13349834657@163.com 

Yurou Kong, Master’s Degree Candidate, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, School of Psychology, 

South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, China, Email: 846748468@qq.com 

Funding: This work was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (The Ideas and Results of 

PISA and Its Implications for China’s Education Examination, CBA130127), 13th Five-Year Plan Research Project 
of Philosophy and Social Science in Guangdong, China (GD17XXL02), and Innovation Project of Educational 

Science in Guangdong, China (2016GXJK032). 

Conflict of Interests: None. 

R 



Chen, et al. Teacher Support, Reading Strategy and Reading Literacy 

Vol.2, No. 1, 2019 159 

Figure 1. Hypothesis Model. 

 

 

The Influence of Teacher Support on Students’ Reading Literacy 

Reading comprehension includes two aspects: vocabulary recognition and text compre-

hension, the former refers to the processing of vocabulary sound, font and meaning dur-

ing reading, which is closely related to the reader’s vocabulary knowledge and decoding 

ability; The latter refers to the process of encoding chapter information into memory to 

form a coherent representation, influenced by internal factors such as reader’s prior 

knowledge, learning strategies, meta-cognition, and external factors such as the nature 

of the article and reading scenarios. Alvermann, Unrau, and Ruddell pointed out that if 

a part of the reading fails to function properly, the reader cannot understand the mean-

ing of the article (Alvermann, et al, 2013). It can be seen that reading tasks have high 

requirements for students’ cognitive processing ability and learning strategies. The im-

provement of students’ cognitive processing ability and the use of learning strategies 

not only cannot be separated from school education, and also cannot be separated from 

the teacher support. 

School education is an educational activity with a clear purpose and undertaken 

by professional teachers. The teacher support is considered to be an important factor 

affecting students’ reading ability and reading comprehension (Law, 2011). It has been 

confirmed by a lot of research on reading teaching and teacher support. The National 

Reading Panel and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development 

(2000) reviewed the empirical research on reading instruction for decades, and summa-

rized 16 reading teaching methods from more than 200 studies. According to reports 

from various institutes, they found that monitoring comprehension, asking questions, 

organizing images, analyzing story structures and abstracting can effectively improve 

readers’ reading literacy. A series of studies by Ling-po Shiu and Qishan Chen showed 

that students’ self-regulated reading is not as effective as external feedback and support 

for students’ reading comprehension (Chen & Shiu, 2007, 2008; Shiu & Chen, 2013). 

According to a survey conducted by Weihua Qian, the extracurricular reading of middle 

school students is most affected by teachers, because teachers are the people who have 

the most contact with students except parents and society, and can give students the 

most support. This is true for extracurricular reading outside the classroom, especially 



Chen, et al. Teacher Support, Reading Strategy and Reading Literacy 

Vol.2, No. 1, 2019 160 

for the development of reading literacy in the classroom (Qian, 2013). Cong Yu pointed 

out that language teachers should be the motivators of students’ reading interest, the 

trainer of reading method, the evaluators of reading effects and the creators of reading 

atmosphere (Yu, 2016). It can be seen that for reading teaching, teacher support is cru-

cial to students’ reading literacy, teachers can use systematic, clear and direct methods 

to train students’ basic reading ability and develop their reading literacy. 

Therefore, we proposed that the hypothesis H1: Teacher support has a direct 

positive effect on students’ reading literacy 

 

The Influence of Teacher Support on Students’ Learning Strategies 

Teachers are not only the professors’ instructors of students’ reading knowledge 

and reading ability, but also the promoters of their reading learning strategies. In 

PISA2009, the learning strategy has two aspects of contents investigated. One is the 

examination of the meta-cognitive strategy of reading, that is, the student’s level of 

awareness to which is an effective reading strategy, it. It is divided into the under-

standing and remembering information strategies, and the generalizing information 

strategies; the second is the investigation of the application of three learning strate-

gies: control strategy, memory strategy and accurate processing elaboration strategy. 

Reading comprehension understanding and remembering information strategies in 

metacognitive strategies refers to which strategies students consider to be effective 

in understanding and memorizing chapter content and how effective they are; the 

summary generalizing information strategy refers to which strategies students con-

sider to be effective of summarizing the content of the chapter and how effective 

they are. Among the three strategies used in learning strategies, memory strategies 

and accurate processing elaboration strategies are cognitive strategies, while control 

strategies which are monitoring their own learning activities and are meta-cognitive 

strategies. 

Teaching research has always emphasized the influence of teacher support 

on the use of students’ reading strategies, emphasizing that teacher support should 

stimulate students’ background knowledge and use various schemas to help under-

standing. At the same time, they should pay attention to teaching students to use 

various strategies to monitor their reading process and learn to use strategies ac-

cordingly to help understanding (Yuan, et al., 2015). Teacher support is an im-

portant factor influencing students’ learning strategies. By presenting challenging 

assignments to students, teachers can motivate student’s ability of exploring, inter-

preting, and sharing ideas and concepts, as well as the use of memory and accurate 

processing elaboration strategy. Teachers set cognitive cognition confliction in 

reading teaching, allowing students to experience different ideas, explanations and 

solutions, to improve their metacognitive strategies such as reading monitoring and 

reading control regulating. Even the communication and interaction between teach-



Chen, et al. Teacher Support, Reading Strategy and Reading Literacy 

Vol.2, No. 1, 2019 161 

ers and students, and the way teachers deal with students’ mistakes will affect the 

use of students’ learning strategies (Dietrich, et al., 2015). 

Therefore, this study proposes hypothesis H2: Teacher support has a posi-

tive effect on students’ learning strategies. 

 

Mediating Role of Student’s Learning Strategies 

The learning strategies of reading can have a direct impact on the production of reading 

literacy. Readers with high cognitive and metacognitive strategies can link the infor-

mation they read with existing knowledge, monitor the understanding process, and con-

stantly adjust their cognition to improve reading literacy (De Naeghel, et al, 2012).  

The learning strategy of reading has strong plasticity and can be cultivated 

through effective teaching support. Teaching models such as reciprocal teaching (RT) 

(Palinscar & Brown, 2012), transactional strategies instruction model (TSI) (Hilden & 

Pressley, 2007), interactive strategy training for active reading and thinking (iSTART) 

(Jackson, et al, 2015), concept-oriented reading instruction (CORI) (Guthrie, et al, 2012) 

emphasize the promoting effect of the teacher support on the students’ use of various 

reading cognitive and metacognitive strategies, which is supported by a large amount of 

empirical evidence. 

Therefore, it can be inferred that teacher support can improve students’ reading 

engagement by helping students adjust their learning strategies, answering students’ 

questions and providing positive feedback, thus affecting reading literacy. Of course, 

for different dimensions of learning strategies, student’s response for the usefulness of 

teacher support is different. For example, studies have shown that asking students to 

read aloud and recite are generally considered by students to be incapable of arousing 

interest, and answering questions and discussing their own opinions on text content is 

the best way to let the student engage in reading (Finn & Zimmer, 2012). That is to say, 

teacher support affects reading literacy through learning strategies has different mecha-

nisms. Reading comprehension can be carried out at multiple levels, either as a surface 

coding of reading materials or as a deep understanding of reading materials by reason-

ing based on surface coding. In reading teaching, the teacher support mainly focuses on 

how to better construct the meaning of reading materials. Teachers will use clarification, 

contact, summary and other methods in teaching to guide students to understand and 

process reading materials. Students who under teacher support will also monitor their 

own comprehension and control their reading process in a timely manner. In this pro-

cess, memory strategies, elaboration strategies, control strategies, understanding and 

remembering information strategies, and generalizing information strategies may play 

different roles between teacher support and student reading. The more easily the strate-

gies are influenced by the teacher support, such as elaboration and control strategies, the 

more obvious the cross-level mediation effect is. 

In summary, this study proposes the following assumptions, H3: The student’s 

learning strategy can positively predict reading literacy; H4: Learning strategy is a 

cross-level mediator between teacher support and student reading literacy. 



Chen, et al. Teacher Support, Reading Strategy and Reading Literacy 

Vol.2, No. 1, 2019 162 

 

Application of Cross-Level Mediation Effect Model 

Individual attitudes and behaviors are influenced by many factors from individuals, 

groups, and societies; this has led today’s researchers to focus on the function and ex-

planatory power of multi-level variables for dependent variables (Klein & Kozlowski, 

2000; Li & Chang, 2013). In this study, students were nested in the school. The stu-

dent’s reading literacy and learning strategies belong to the first level of the data struc-

ture, and the teacher’s reading support is the second level of the data structure. If we 

ignore the hierarchical structure of the data, use traditional linear models (such as anal-

ysis of variance and regression analysis) to analyze data, it will not only weaken the 

explanatory power of the theory, but also reduce the externality effect of the research 

results (Zhang, 2010). At present, there are few research reports that use multi-level 

perspectives to analyze the factors affecting academic literacy, especially for Chinese 

students. Chen et al. (2017) pointed out that PISA data has multiple levels, and different 

levels will affect each other. It is recommended that researchers use advanced statistical 

methods that are more suitable for PISA data patterns and features, such as Hierarchical 

Linear Models to perform data analysis and model construction. Therefore, this study 

uses a multi-level linear model to comprehensively examine the influence of teacher 

support and learning strategies on reading literacy, and has certain value in both theoret-

ical construction and analysis methods. 

Method 

Sample 

A total of 5,115 students from Shanghai city who participated in the PISA 2009 test 

were tested and with age between 15 years and 3 months to 16 years and 2 months. 

Among them, girls were 2,587 (50.6%) and boys were 2,528 (49.4%). 52 were in the 

7th grade (1.0%), 208 were in the 8th grade (4.1%), 1,924 were in the 9th grade 

(37.6%), 2,908 were in the 10th grade (56.9%), 22 were in the 11th grade (0 .4%), 1 

person was in grade 12. All the students were from 152 schools in Shanghai, among 

them, there were 2 schools both had 21 participants, 1 school for 3 participants, and the 

remaining 149 schools had 30-35 participants. 

 

Research Variable 

Teacher Support 

The teacher support uses the “Inspired Reading Participation Strategy” score in PISA as 

an indicator, which measures the teacher support on the motivating learning strategies 

and reading skills of the students. The frequency of the 7 teaching activities (such as 

“require students to explain the meaning of the text”) by the teacher in the language 

lesson was reported by students, on a 4-point scale, from “no or almost no” to “in all 



Chen, et al. Teacher Support, Reading Strategy and Reading Literacy 

Vol.2, No. 1, 2019 163 

lessons”, the α coefficient is 0.78.  Each item score is combined with a weighted likeli-

hood estimate to synthesize the total score. Teacher support is a variable at the school 

level. 

Learning Strategy 

Learning strategies are variables at the student level, including the use of learning strat-

egies and reading metacognitive strategies. There are 13 items in the use of learning 

strategies. Among them, the memory strategy subscale has 4 items, the α coefficient is 

0.74; the elaboration strategy contains 4 items, and the α coefficient is 0. 72; the control 

strategy has 5 items with an α coefficient of 0.72. There are 11 items for reading meta-

cognitive strategies. Among them, understanding and remembering the information 

strategy contain 6 items, and the α coefficient is 0.83; the generalizing information 

strategy has 5 items, the α coefficient is 0.80. All of the above items were assessed on a 

six-point scale, from “not at all useful” to “very useful”. 

Reading Literacy 

The PISA reading test examines reading literacy by setting up four test scenarios based 

on personal purpose, public purpose, occupational purpose, and educational purpose, 

through two kinds of reading materials: continuous reading texts (such as explanatory 

texts, argumentations) and non-continuous texts (graphs, tables) to investigate the three 

levels of reading literacy: retrieving and inference, integrating and interpreting, and 

evaluating and reflecting. The PISA2009 reading test consisted of 13 sets of test ques-

tions, the tested students were randomly assigned to a set of questions, and the students’ 

original scores were transformed and estimated using the item response theory (IRT) 

technique. The reading literacy test score was the average of five plausible values (α 

coefficient of 0.92) for the total score of the reading cognitive test. This variable is at 

the student level. 

 

Data Analyses 

Data analyses and model construction were carried out using SPSS 20.0 and HLM 6.08. 

In this study, the teacher support is a level 2 organizational variables, and the students’ 

reading literacy and learning strategies belong to level 1 variables, and they have a nest-

ed relationship in the data structure. Therefore, this model is a cross-level of low-level 

mediation model, a 2-1-1 model. According to the recommendations of Fang (2010) 

and Zhang (2009), in order to separate the between-group mediation effect and within-

group mediation effect, and to more accurately estimate the cross-level mediation effect, 

we centered mediating variables of the level 1 by group mean and at the same time, the 

group mean is placed in the level 2 intercept equation, then follow the steps below to 

perform model checking. 

In the first step, a zero model (model M0) is tested to determine if multi-level 

analysis is required. The M0 decomposes the equation into intra-class variance caused 

by individual differences and between-class variance caused by group differences; we 



Chen, et al. Teacher Support, Reading Strategy and Reading Literacy 

Vol.2, No. 1, 2019 164 

examine the percentage of the variance of the dependent variable explained by the se-

cond level of variables, i.e. Intra-class Correlation Coefficient (ICC). A multi-level 

analysis is necessary if the ICC is greater than 0.06. In the second step, the direct effect 

c of the level 2 independent variable X·j on the level 1 dependent variable Yij (model M1) 

is examined. In the third step, the direct effect a of the independent variable X·j on the 

dimensions of the mediator M ij (model M2) is examined. In the fourth step, the effects c’ 

and b of the independent variable X·j and the mediator M ij are simultaneously applied 

to the variable Yij, (model M3). According to the results of the significance test of each 

regression coefficient, it can be judged whether or not the hypothesis model is verified. 

 

Result 

Descriptive Statistics 

The descriptive statistical results are shown in Table 1. Since the teacher sup-

port is a level 2 variable, there is no correlation coefficient with the variables of t level 1. 

In level 1 variables, except that the correlation coefficient between the memory strategy 

and the generalizing information strategy is not significant, the correlation coefficients 

among the other variables are significant at 0.01 level. 

Table 1. Variable Description Statistics. 

 M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 

1 Teacher Support 0.14 0.88 –       

2 Memory Strategy -0.06 0.8 – –      

3 Control Strategy -0.28 0.82 – 0.54** –     

4 Elaboration Strategy 0.16 0.82 – 0.40** 0.61** –    

5 Understanding and Remembering 
Information Strategies 

0.14 0.97 – 0.40** 0.15** 0.07** –   

6 Generalizing Information Strategy 0.06 0.9 – 0.02 0.16** 0.10** 0.39** –  

7 Reading Literacy 556.2 76.97 – 0.05** 0.29** 0.16** 0.35**  – 

Note: ** p < 0.01; 0 = Female, 1 = Male; Teacher support is level 2 data, so there is no correlation coeffi-
cient with level 1 data. 

 

Cross-Level Mediation Effect Model Test 

First, a zero model (M0) test is performed. The M0 model is as follows: 

Level-1:                  

Level-2:             

The results show that                     = 2,880.19/(2,880.19/3,106.36) 

= 0.48, indicating that for the total variance of reading literacy, the school level factor 

explains 48%, it is necessary to build a multi-level linear model. 

The second step is to examine the effect c of teacher support (STIMREAD) on 

reading literacy, M1 model is as follows: 

Level-1:                   



Chen, et al. Teacher Support, Reading Strategy and Reading Literacy 

Vol.2, No. 1, 2019 165 

Level-2:           
                 

The results showed that teacher support had a positive effect on reading literacy 

(   
  = 107.37, p < 0.001). 

The third step is to test the direct effect a of teacher support on the dimensions 

of the learning strategy (Medij). The M2 model is as follows: 

Level-1:               

Level-2:           
                  

The results showed that teacher support has a positive effect on them. 

The fourth step is to examine the effects c’ and b of teacher support and learn-

ing strategies on reading literacy: 

Level-1:                                    

Level-2:            
  

                           

       
  

The results (Table 2) showed that: (1) The within-group effect (   
 =14. 00, p < 

0.001) and the between-group effect (γ02 = 135.09, p < 0.001) of the control strategy 

had significant effects on reading literacy, and the influence of teacher support on read-

ing literacy is not significant (   
 =22.45, p>0.05). That is, the control strategy is a 

cross-level mediator between teacher support and reading literacy, and the mediating 

effect is 27.88%. (2) Within-group effect (   
 

=6.59, p < 0.001) and between-group ef-

fect (γ02 = 74.92, p < 0.001) of elaboration strategies were significant, and the influence 

of teacher support on reading literacy decreased but remained significant (   
 

 = 65. 60, 

p < 0. 01). The elaboration strategy is a cross-level mediator with a mediating effect of 

5.24%. (3) Understanding and remembering the information strategy’s within-group 

effect (   
 

=17. 01, p < 0.001) and between-group effect (   
  = 128.11, p < 0.001) were 

significant, and the influence of teacher support on reading literacy (   
  = 62.20, p < 

0.001) was significantly reduced but still significant. Understanding and remembering 

information strategy was a cross-level mediator with a mediating effect of 8.73%. (4) 

The generalizing information strategy also belongs to the cross-level mediator because 

its within-group effect (   
 

 = 19.29, p < 0.001) and between-group effect (γ02 = 140.22, 

p < 0.001) were significant, and the influence (   
  = 42.53, p < 0.001) of teacher sup-

port on reading literacy is significant but significantly decreased, with a mediating ef-

fect of 16.95%. (5) The within-group effect of memory strategy (   
  = 2.80, p < 0.05) 

and teacher support (   
 

 = 108.31, p < 0.001) were significant, but between-group effect 

(γ02 = - 4.25, p > 0.05) was not significant, so no cross-level mediation effect was found.  

 

Discussion 

The Influence Mechanism of Teacher Support and Learning Strategies 

on Students’ Reading Literacy 

 



Chen, et al. Teacher Support, Reading Strategy and Reading Literacy 

Vol.2, No. 1, 2019 166 

Table 2. Test of the Effect of Cross-Level Mediation of Learning Strate-
gies. 

 γ00 γ01 γ02 γ10 τ00 σ
2
 

M0 555.19***     3,106.36 

M1 539.43*** 107.37***    3,106.27 

M2 (Memory) -0.10*** 0.21***    0.63 

M2 (Control) -0.37*** 0.62***    0.63 

M2 (Elaboration) 0.08*** 0.55***    0.63 

M2 (Understanding & Remem-
bering) 

0.08*** 0.35***    0.64 

M2 (Generalizing) -0.10 0.45***    0.89 

M3 (Memory) 539.08*** 108.31***  -4.25 2.80* 0.75 

M3 (Control) 590.24*** 22.45  135.09*** 14.00*** 3,092.76 

M3 (Elaboration) 534.12*** 65.60**  74.92*** 6.59*** 2,958.13 

M3 (Understanding & Remem-
bering) 

529.27*** 62.20***  128.11*** 17.01*** 2,843.42 

M3 (Generalizing) 540.86*** 42.53***  140.22*** 19.29*** 2,824.21 

Note: *p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001; τ00 is the residual of the intercept, and σ
2
 is the residual of 

level 1. 

 

 

Cross-level Mediation Effects of Control, Elaboration, Understanding and Re-

membering Information, and Generalizing Information Strategies 

Strategies such as control, elaboration, understanding and remembering information, 

and generalizing information can be improved by teacher support, and as a cross-level 

mediator affects students’ reading literacy. This provides further evidence for the theory 

of various learning strategies and teaching modes. On the other hand, we have a deeper 

understanding of the influence and mechanism of the interaction between teacher sup-

port and student learning strategies on the improvement of reading comprehension. 

Learning strategies are cognitive activities that readers plan to do before, dur-

ing, and after reading in order to gain a full understanding of the text, avoid and solve 

various problems encountered in reading (McNamara, 2007). Learning strategy teach-

ing is an important method for students to learn to use learning strategies and improve 

reading literacy. For the scientific and effective learning strategy teaching, scholars 

have developed the reciprocal teaching, transactional strategies instruction model, inter-

active strategy training for active reading and thinking, concept-oriented reading in-

struction and many other modes. Although the specific operating methods of these 

teaching models are different, their theoretical and empirical studies have shown that 

teacher support can promote students to effectively use a variety of cognitive and meta-

cognitive learning strategies to improve reading literacy. 

The reciprocal teaching mode allows teachers and students to exchange roles, 

the “teacher” guides the “student” to use the learning strategies such as prediction, 

questioning, clarification and summarization to conduct teaching dialogues, jointly real-



Chen, et al. Teacher Support, Reading Strategy and Reading Literacy 

Vol.2, No. 1, 2019 167 

ize the construction of the meaning of the article, and let the students learn how to use 

learning strategies in the teacher-student interaction to further improve reading literacy 

(Rosenshine & Meister, 1994). The transactional strategies instruction model advocates 

the interaction between students and articles, the interaction between teachers and stu-

dents, and the interaction between team members to improve students’ ability to use 

prediction, visualization, questioning, clarification, contact and summary strategies and 

reading literacy. The interactive strategy training for active reading and thinking mode 

provides interactive and appropriate training for students to flexibly and actively use 

learning strategies such as comprehension monitoring, interpretation, prediction, and 

accurate processing to improve their reading literacy through multimedia technology 

(Graesser, et al, 2005). The learning strategies involved in these teaching models, such 

as prediction, questioning, clarification and summarization, visualization, connection, 

comprehension monitoring, interpretation, accurate processing, etc., are all related to 

the elaboration strategy, understanding and remembering information strategy, general-

izing information strategy in PISA evaluation. It is not difficult to understand that these 

strategies can play a cross-level mediation effect between reading teaching and reading 

literacy. 

The discovery of the cross-level mediation effect of each dimension of the 

learning strategy in this study make us has a deeper understanding of the role of learn-

ing strategies in reading comprehension and reading literacy training. 

Learning strategies can effectively promote students’ reading comprehension 

and reading literacy. This role can be explained by a self-regulating comprehension 

model. When reading, the metacognitive level monitors the activity state and process of 

the cognitive level, helping the reader to conduct an understanding assessment, and pay-

ing attention to whether the cognitive activities of the cognitive level and the metacog-

nitive level are consistent. If it is consistent, it will be judged that the chapter is under-

stood, and reading will continue; if there is a difference, the reader will feel doubts and 

troubles, and be aware that appropriate strategies should be taken to identify and solve 

the problem, and to eliminate doubts and problems (Chen, 2009, 2010). The under-

standing of self-regulation is conditional: the reader’s understanding of monitoring 

should be sufficiently precise. If the reader’s learning strategy is based on inaccurate 

understanding of monitoring, its effectiveness will be greatly compromised. Unfortu-

nately, a large number of studies have shown that the reader’s understanding of moni-

toring is not accurate; the average of monitoring accuracy coefficient is 0. 25 approxi-

mately; Moreover, such inaccurate monitoring seems to be an inherent part of human 

cognition inadequate (Xu & Chen, 2013). Therefore, we have to consider “when” learn-

ing strategies can effectively affect reading comprehension performance and reading 

literacy. 

If the reader knows the “when to use”, “what to use” and “how to use” learning 

strategies, there is naturally no problem, which can promote reading comprehension. 

The problem is that readers usually cannot accurately judge “when to use” or “what to 

use”, and the “how to use” learning strategy. Fortunately, we can use the external sup-

port form of teacher support to teach students “when to use,” “what to use,” and “how 



Chen, et al. Teacher Support, Reading Strategy and Reading Literacy 

Vol.2, No. 1, 2019 168 

to use” learning strategies (Shiu & Chen, 2013). In other words, the reader’s self-

regulated reading is an effective way to read; but because the reader’s understanding of 

monitoring is usually not accurate enough, it is not always effective; and learning strat-

egies based on external feedback, such as teacher-led are more accurate, effective and 

easy to implement. 

Why Does the Memory Strategy Have No Cross-Level Mediating Effect? 

The student’s memory strategy will be improved by teacher support, but it is less rele-

vant to reading literacy and does not have a cross-level mediating effect between teach-

er support and reading literacy. This result may be discussed in terms of the theory of 

reading processing and the characteristics of PISA evaluation. Reading comprehension 

is a process of constructing a series of simple or complex psychological representations 

based on the surface coding, text representation and situational models of reading texts. 

Understanding can occur at different levels, so the reading test can be either a surface 

memory based on article information or a deep understanding based on the content of 

the article. By setting different reading scenarios, PISA examines the reading literacy 

level of readers’ ability in retrieving and inference, integrating and interpreting, and 

evaluating and reflecting, which focus on the reader’s deep understanding of the article 

rather than the surface memory of the article. The memory strategies in the PISA as-

sessment (such as “repeated reading texts”, “remembering details”, etc.) are more fo-

cused on the surface memory of the article. Perhaps for this reason, memory strategies 

are less relevant to reading literacy and do not play a cross-level mediating role between 

teacher support and reading literacy. 

 

Implications 

This study explores the influence of teacher support and various learning strategies on 

students’ reading literacy, and finds that the various components of learning strategies 

play different roles. The findings of this study have both theoretical and practical impli-

cation. 

From a theoretical point of view, we have deepened our understanding of the role 

of learning strategies between teacher support and reading literacy. Moreover, it tells us 

that in the empirical study of the influence of learning strategies, different strategies 

should be examined independently, rather than simply merging and averaging. 

From a practical point of view, as Confucius said, “Don’t go to guide him until he 

tries to figure it out and cannot get it. Don’t inspire him until he understands it but can-

not speak it.” Teacher support is not a blind infusion, but a targeted suggestion at the 

right time. Not all the support can promote students’ reading literacy. Teacher support is 

the easiest to improve their students reading literacy by promoting the use of student 

control strategies. It also has a certain effect on the role of elaboration strategies and 

metacognitive strategies, but not for memory strategies. What could we know is that 

only leads students to read mechanically will not produce good results, and retelling the 



Chen, et al. Teacher Support, Reading Strategy and Reading Literacy 

Vol.2, No. 1, 2019 169 

text simply will learn only about the text itself which may not play a great role in stu-

dents’ learning ability? 

 

Conclusion 
Teacher support can directly affect students’ reading literacy, and can also influence 

reading literacy through the cross-level mediation effect of learning strategies. The 

cross-level effects of learning strategies of different dimensions are different. Control 

strategies, elaboration strategies, understanding and remembering information strategies, 

generalizing information strategies have cross-level mediating effects, while memory 

strategies does not have it. 

 

 

 

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Received: 21 April 2019 

Revised: 13 May 2019 

Accepted: 21 May 2019 

 

 

The Chinese version of this article has been published in Global Edu 2018; 47(12):51-61. The 

English version has been authorized for being publication in BECE by the author(s) and the 

Chinese journal. 

陈启山, 雷雅缨, 温忠麟, 李舒彤, 李洁莹, 孔雨柔. 教师指导, 学习策略与阅读素养的关系: 

基于 PISA测评的跨层中介模型. 全球教育展望 2018; 47(12):51-61. 


	Article-QishanChen-BECE_title_31May2019
	Article-QishanChen-MainText-BECE_31May2019

