International comparative measures show that South Africa has extremely low standards in reading. A variety of programmes aimed at boosting reading have been developed, however, the effectiveness of these programmes is unclear. Prior reviews of effective reading instruction practices have focused almost exclusively on learners whose first language…

Reading comprehension instruction was identified by the National Reading Panel as an effective instructional practice to improve students' reading comprehension. Teacher professional development (PD) is essential for effective reading comprehension instruction to occur in schools. The aim of this meta-analysis is to examine the extent to which…

Theoretical models of reading comprehension have consistently highlighted the importance of inference generation in the meaning-making process. Additionally, previous research has indicated that instruction in making inferences is effective at improving inference ability and general reading comprehension. In this meta-analysis, we aimed to further…

More than 800,000 students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are served in U.S. public schools, a number that has increased annually for almost 20 years since Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) included ASD as an eligibility category. These students often experience widespread and persistent reading comprehension challenges. A…

Background: Foundation Phase teachers in the South African Department of Basic Education system daily encounter a challenge with learners struggling to read with understanding. This motive was displayed and made available to readers and authors by the recent Progress in International Reading Literacy 2021, which articulated that learners in the…

Strategy instruction is a common instructional method for teaching academic skills, particularly reading comprehension, and it is commonly combined with self-regulation components (e.g., goal setting, self-monitoring). Previous meta-analyses and reviews have examined the effectiveness of strategy instruction on reading comprehension, but have not…

More students with disabilities (SWDs) are being educated in the general education classroom than ever before. This means that SWDs are spending more time in middle school science classrooms. SWDs may struggle to access information from science textbooks and lessons for multiple reasons, including reading difficulties. In this article, the authors…

This systematic literature review examined the research on prior knowledge and its activation to ascertain how these terms are defined, what specific techniques have been empirically investigated, and the conditions under which prior knowledge activation facilitated students' comprehension. Fifty-four articles met the inclusion criteria and…

Many studies have shown that morphological knowledge has effects on reading comprehension separate from other aspects of language knowledge. This has implications for reading instruction and assessment: it suggests that children could have reading comprehension difficulties that are due to a lack of morphological knowledge, and thus, that explicit…

The present study examines the existing published research about the effectiveness of learner-generated highlighting and instructor-provided highlighting on learning from text. A meta-analysis was conducted of scientifically rigorous experiments comparing the learning outcomes (i.e., performance on memory and/or comprehension tests) of students…

A systematic literature review was conducted to determine the effects of reading comprehension instruction beyond vocabulary instruction for students with intellectual disabilities. Database and ancestral searches from 2000 to 2018 were conducted to identify experimental and quasi-experimental studies that were published in peer-reviewed journals.…

The purpose of this meta-analytic study is to evaluate the effects of innovative approaches and practices in teaching poetry on academic performance, including reading, writing, and understanding. A total of 574 studies were initially identified using relevant keywords from the Web of Science, Taylor & Francis, Science Direct, Scopus, and ERIC…

Based on 52 studies with samples mostly from English-speaking countries, the current study used Bayesian network meta-analysis to investigate the intervention effectiveness of different reading comprehension strategy combinations on reading comprehension among students with reading difficulties in 3rd through 12th grade. We focused on commonly…

This literature review provides language teachers and researchers with an overview of the studies conducted in the last 20 years regarding the use of text-related videos to teach reading comprehension in second/foreign language classrooms. Articles were systematically selected from six data bases: Google Scholar, Quick Search, Wiley Online…

While most educational models point toward cognitive and metacognitive skills to promote reading comprehension, recent studies indicate that motivation also plays a key role. Consequently, studying social factors that may support reading motivation represents an interesting research avenue. We therefore performed a systematic review of the…