There is little empirical research available on the substantial problem of adult low literacy rates, and limited educational technologies are available to address distinct instructional needs of this population. This paper reports on development and testing of a version of Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking (iSTART) for…

This study looked at the effects of Tier 1 Response to Intervention (RtI) on elementary school reading fluency using I-Station assessment and intervention. The study included four elementary schools within the same school district that represented the four quadrants of the school district so that a variety of factors and the district's demographic…

This mixed-methods research examined student achievement in reading comprehension as measured by the North Carolina End-of-Grade Test for Reading Comprehension, and specific reading strategies (Frayer Model & Summarization/Paraphrasing strategy) in Grades 6-8 classrooms. The purpose of this research was to determine if a difference exists in…

This study will determine the degree to which first grade literacy tests predict third grade reading performance in order to judge their value as "early warning systems" for reading skills. Reading skills are fundamental to many academic outcomes, so having an early sense of how students are reading is critical for schools. The first…

This study investigated the effect of cloze item practice on reading comprehension, where cloze items were either created by humans, by machine using natural language processing techniques, or randomly. Participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk (N = 302) took a pre-test, read a text, and took part in one of five conditions, Do-Nothing, Re-Read,…

The PISA for Development (PISA-D) project aims to make PISA more accessible and relevant to middle- and low-income countries by introducing new features to the assessment, including tests that are specially designed to measure lower levels of performance, contextual questionnaires that better reflect the situations of 15-year-olds across a diverse…

This study used the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) prison sample to explore the predictive contributions of Print Vocabulary and Sentence Processing skills to the Literacy and Passage Comprehension performance of 461 U.S. prisoners. Both predictors were significant, but Print Vocabulary accounted for less…

This paper examined the use of assessment techniques in extensive reading and students' and teachers' perceptions on the practice of extensive reading. A total of 232 university students who were placed at different proficiency levels of classes and 13 professors participated in the study by completing a questionnaire. In-depth interviews were…

Students' freedom of choice is critical to promoting equity and literacy in the classroom. When students choose what they read, they are more likely to find books that represent their lives, interests, and personal desires and feel that they are autonomous and can self-regulate learning. Previous research suggests that offering choice during…

The role of phonics instruction in early reading development has been the subject of significant conjecture. Recently, England implemented a phonics screening check to assess the phonetic decoding of 6-year-old students, to ensure that all students master this foundational literacy skill and attain adequate phonemic awareness in the early years of…

This study compared the effect of two notetaking strategies (Cornell Notes vs. REAP) on EFL secondary school students' critical reading skills. The Alternative Treatment Design with Pretest was used where three intact classes of first-year EFL secondary school students were randomly assigned as a control group and two experimental groups. All…

Recent Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) analyses find that cyber charter schools in seventeen states show consistently low reading and mathematics value-added test scores compared to traditional public schools serving comparable students. This generally accords with prior research. We hypothesize that the relatively poor…

Background: This study aims to empirically answer the question of whether the role of sub-reading skills changes depending on the test format (e.g., multiple-choice vs. open-ended reading questions). The test format effect also addresses the issue of test validity--whether the reading test properly elicits construct-relevant reading skills or…

This study compared the performance of bilingual learners, educated in either a Transitional Bilingual (TB) or Dual Language (DL) program, on the Reading and English portions of the nationally recognized college entrance exam, the American College Test (ACT). A statistically significant difference was found on the t-tests run for the Reading (p…

The vast majority of the studies concerning graphic organizer use for the improvement of reading comprehension have been carried out with first language (L1) learners. The recommendations to employ graphic organizers as part of reading instruction are frequently found in L1 reading literature (Blachowicz & Ogle, 2001; McKenna & Robinson,…