Die erfolgreiche literale Entwicklung von risikobehafteten Jugendlichen – motivationale Aspekte

Literal competences are the basis of participating in social discourse and developing in private and professional areas. The PISA studies have proved the existence of a substantial group of adolescents in Switzerland who have not acquired sufficient reading competences at the end of their formal education. A large part of this group comes from backgrounds alien to literal activities. The research project on which this article is based investigates adolescents from such groups who, in spite of a risk background, have managed to develop successfully in reading and/or writing. The results presented demonstrate that these resilient pupils differ from the non-successful adolescents among other things in their motivation structure. They view reading and writing as easy fun activities with a high degree of emotional gratification. Their non-successful mates on the other hand tend to associate reading and writing mainly with strenuous effort and norms difficult to achieve. The conclusion could therefore be drawn that for adolescents from backgrounds alien to literacy it is important to experience reading and writing not only as a hard and difficult matter but also as activities associated with meaning for the individual. Little is known however as to how school, the formal instance of literal socialization, can stimulate positive literal motivations without neglecting the normative aspect of reading and writing.