This content analysis used a critical lens to analyze the portrayal of characters victimized by abuse in adolescent literature. Child abuse is an issue prevalent around the globe (Berkowitz, 2017). The study analyzed ten adolescent novels published over a period of sixteen years to determine character traits and themes. The analysis was conducted…

Disabled girls of color have unique intersectional schooling experiences. Yet, they are underrepresented in educational research, and often unheard. Grounded in Disability Critical Race Theory and sociocultural learning theory, this study expands current understandings of how academic and social opportunities are afforded or constrained in schools…

Transactional distance theory (Moore, 1973, 1993, 2013, 2019) identifies transactional distance as a psychological or communication gap that can be perceived by learners based on their personal educational needs and/or preferences. These perceptions of distance can occur in any learning environment but especially in distance learning or online…

Working through four key tenets of Deleuze-Guattarian theory, the authors describe how contemporary affect theory offers a radically different perspective on reading. Asking how we can conceptualize reading differently if we conceptualize affect differently, we argue that possible meanings of reading or experiences of reading must be considered…

Semiotics as a broad field of study encompasses Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). SFL has paved the way for Multimodality which is the study of different sources of meaning. This study was conducted to analyze the visual sources of meaning in children's storybooks on the basis of what Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) developed and called visual…

Poet and essayist Gary Soto considers the senses while reading and the purpose of maintaining a reading life. According to the author, it's the pleasure of a story, and the intimacy of getting to know the characters well enough to exercise tenderness (or dislike) toward them. It's to weigh but not judge the behavior of characters, who are like…

Two experiments investigated how writing an explanation after studying a multimedia lesson influences restudy behavior (eye movements) and learning. In Experiment 1, college students who wrote a retention-based explanation ('Explain how the car's brake system works') spent more time focusing on the text and less time on the picture during the…

This study was designed to examine the ability of poor comprehenders to identify, attend, and remember central and peripheral ideas during and after reading. To address these goals, good and poor comprehenders, matched on reading (word decoding) skills and non-verbal intelligence, read three expository texts, while their eye-movements were…

Scientific texts are often multimodal, consisting of both text and illustrations. However, previous research indicates that young readers are poor at using text-and-illustration integration strategies and at in-depth processing of scientific illustration information. This study used an experimental paradigm to teach strategies of illustration…

Citations provide truncated yet socially complex information about sources in academic texts which students are obliged to read, comprehend, and then ultimately produce as part of an academic discourse community. While researchers have observed a developmental process whereby students produce citations during source-based writing, little work has…

Prior research has suggested that episodes of mind wandering not only negatively impact text comprehension but also are associated with fluctuations in reading behavior. However, these studies typically do not account for differences in the fundamental nature of the text itself, namely, whether it is narrative or expository in structure. As much…

As a novel that asks how we can live in a world of uncertain values and urgent identity politics, James Joyce's Ulysses could be more relevant than ever, but its textual complexity poses a steep burden to new readers. Teaching Joyce's Ulysses models a new method of teaching Joyce's novel using the theory of fictional possible worlds, which…

Ongoing research-practice conversations between teachers and researchers have identified a practical tension faced by teachers of upper primary/early secondary students whose progress has slowed. Teachers report that a researcher-led push to develop more sophisticated readings of complex texts results in less reading mileage, potentially impacting…

In this study, the authors examined how parents, preservice teachers, and teens responded to their reading of one controversial young adult novel. Analyzing the discourse of participants through the lens of positioning theory, the authors found that student readers approached the book as a story, examining its various literary elements. Youths…

With increased availability of information in modern societies, individuals are often faced with complex decisions regarding how to integrate and judge the veracity of available information. Generally, these issues have been approached using computational techniques to "detect" and "reduce" the spread of information across…