Relying on multiple documents to answer questions is becoming common for both academic and personal inquiry tasks. These tasks often require students to explain phenomena by taking various causal factors that are mentioned separately in different documents and integrating them into a coherent multi-causal explanation of some phenomena. However,…

This dissertation study investigated the comparability of reading comprehension of narrative and persuasive text by applying a convergent parallel mixed method design. Participants were middle school students (Grades 6 - 8, N=6). The purpose of the study was to address a gap in reading comprehension research about how students comprehend narrative…

Background: Previous studies have shown that undergraduates improve their answering and monitoring accuracy when they exclusively practice and expect inferential questions after reading. This study examined whether children with poor comprehension, who struggle particularly with inferential questions, would benefit from similar practice with and…

Agreement has become widespread that students' peer-to-peer argumentation should play a central role in science classrooms. Coordinating evidence with claims lies at the heart of a skilled argument. Yet evidence takes numerous forms that pose different interpretational challenges. Might cognitive limitations on the part of the individual student…

Background: Reading and writing are both fundamental activities for successful learning. However, little is known about the effect of reading comprehension performance on writing, as well as the pedagogical guidelines that can be drawn from this influence. Method: Thus, the purpose of the present investigation was to examine the influence of…

Students' critical thinking is often researched using quantitative tests designed to measure critical thinking. In contrast, this study qualitatively analyses group and whole-class dialogues in an interdisciplinary SSI project by focusing on students' critical thinking practices. As such, the study provides an in-depth example of an immersion…

An inferential comprehension intervention addressing reading comprehension difficulties of middle schoolers was tested. Method Students in Grades 6 to 8 (n = 145; 53.8% female; 71% White; 24% Black) who failed their state literacy test, were randomly assigned to tutor-led, computerized, or business-as-usual [BaU] interventions. Results The…

The aim of this research is to determine the strategies used by the 8th grade Turkish teachers in the teaching-learning process of the Turkish lesson for teaching comprehension (reading). The model of the research is the case study model, which is one of the qualitative research methods. The participants of the research are five Turkish teachers…

We explored relations between reading comprehension performance and self-reported components of metacognition in middle-school children. Students' self-reported metacognitive strategies in planning and evaluation accounted for significant variance in reading comprehension performance on questions involving inferences. In Study 2, middle school…

The current study used microanalytic interviews and behavioral traces to examine sequential phase relations among forethought, performance, and self-reflection processes, and to investigate the predictive influence of these processes on mathematics performance of 96 eighth grade students. Consistent with expectations, students' microanlaytic goals…

This study utilized the Simple View of Reading (SVR) model cognitive subtypes to determine the impact of text-to-speech (TTS) software on the reading comprehension of 94 grade 8 students with reading difficulties. Method: paired samples t tests for all four SVR groups were conducted to examine reading comprehension scores under TTS and no-TTS…

This study explores the use of the Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS), a neuro-fuzzy approach, to analyze the log data of technology-based assessments to extract relevant features of student problem-solving processes, and develop and refine a set of fuzzy logic rules that could be used to interpret student performance. The log data that…

The present study investigated whether text structure inference skill (i.e., the ability to infer overall text structure) has unique predictive value for expository text comprehension on top of the variance accounted for by sentence reading fluency, linguistic knowledge and metacognitive knowledge. Furthermore, it was examined whether the unique…

The aim of this study was to investigate the extent of embodying thinking levels in the eighth-grade textbook and teachers' classroom questions and exams. Five teachers who teach eighth grade were chosen from schools that obtained the highest and lowest TIMSS results in Zarqa City, Jordan. Textbook content analysis, teachers' classroom observation…

Although the popularity and use of graphic novels in literacy instruction has increased in the last decade, few sustained analyses have examined adolescents' reading processes with informational texts in social studies classrooms. Recent research that has foregrounded visual, emotional, and embodied textual responses situates this qualitative…