Background: Research has shown substantial belief change as a result of reading text and the pervasive influence of prior belief in the evaluation of short arguments. Both outcomes have been attributed to the depth to which the text or the argument has been processed. This study brings together critical thinking and text comprehension research by…

In the present study, we assessed students' metacomprehension knowledge and examined the components of knowledge most related to comprehension of expository texts. We used the Revised Metacomprehension Scale (RMCS) to investigate the relations between students' metacomprehension knowledge and comprehension performance. Students who evaluated and…

The goal of this study was to tease apart the roles of phonological awareness (pA) and phonological short-term memory (pSTM) in sentence comprehension, sentence production, and word reading. Children 6- to 10-years of age (N = 377) completed standardized tests of pA ("Elision") and pSTM ("Nonword Repetition") from the…

The ability to identify the main idea through close reading of informational text is a higher-level skill students develop in elementary grades as a foundation for the acquisition of other critical skills in later grades. This article provides instructional strategies for this important skill as well as for improving reading comprehension.

Students engage in higher-order thinking as they read complex texts and perform complex reading-related tasks. However, the most consequential assessments, high-stakes tests, are currently limited in providing information about students' higher-order thinking. In this article, we describe higher-order thinking in relation to reading. We provide a…

According to recently published national standards, elementary students should engage in engineering design activities. This article outlines ways that teachers can use literacy instruction to support young students' engineering design activity, such as by selecting texts in which characters face problems that can be solved through engineering,…

In two experiments, we compared effects of instructions that encourage learners to create referential connections between words and pictures with instructions that distract learners from creating referential connections. In Experiment 1, students read a scientific text under four conditions. In the text-picture condition, students read the…

Even though recurring criticism has been directed against the academic part of teacher education, little research has focused on student teachers as they engage in their academic studies. Reporting on a study of 53 Norwegian student teachers, this article explores student teachers' reading practices in university courses in education. The study…

Although a reader's text-level comprehension is affected by the comprehension of individual sentences in a text, little attention has been paid to the difficulty of sentences. This study investigates whether measures (features) of text difficulty affect the "gradience" observed in sentence difficulty judgments. We examine two traditional…

Reading skills are the key building blocks of a child's formal education. Yet, the national statistics on literacy attainment are profoundly distressing: two out of three American fourth graders are reading below grade level and almost one third of children nationwide lack even basic reading skills. This study reports on an evaluation of the…

The purpose of this phenomenological bound case study was to explore the effect of acquiring sight words on reading fluency and comprehension skills for early literacy learners during a summer reading camp at one elementary campus in south Texas. Study findings indicated that through prescribed learning experiences with sight words that included…

This study aimed to replicate findings that demonstrated impact on students' reading comprehension and social studies content learning. Using a randomized control trial, intervention, and outcome measures, this study was replicated in 85 8th-grade social studies classes with 19 teachers. Teachers were provided professional development on…

This study aimed to replicate findings that demonstrated impact on students' reading comprehension and social studies content learning. Using a randomized control trial, intervention, and outcome measures, this study was replicated in 85 8th-grade social studies classes with 19 teachers. Teachers were provided professional development on…

As far as reading comprehension is concerned, background knowledge bears significance for English as a foreign language (EFL) learners who take high-stake tests such as M.A. University Entrance Examination. The reading part of this test can pose a challenge for Iranian EFL test takers, some of whom may have enough background knowledge to enhance…

This randomized controlled trial focused on 59 struggling readers in the third and fourth grades (30 female, 29 male) and examined the efficacy of an intervention aimed at increasing students' multisyllabic word reading (MWR). The study also explored the relative effects of an embedded motivational beliefs (MB) training component. Struggling…