Reading to Learn: Investigating General and Domain-Specific Supports in a Technology Rich Environment with Diverse Readers Learning from Informational Text

This 2002-2005 research project is funded by the U.S. Office of Educational Research and Improvement. Annemarie Palincsar of the University of Michigan and Bridget Dalton of CAST (bdalton@cast.org) are the Co-Principal Investigators.

Chall, Jacobs, & Baldwin (1990) present evidence suggesting that significant numbers of children demonstrate a decline in their rate of reading progress around the fourth-grade. Explanations for this decline have principally focused on the changing nature of the demands on children as they enter the upper elementary grades. First, there is a change in the purposes for which children are expected to read, which Chall (1983) describes as the shift from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” Second, there is a change in the genre of text students experience in the transition from the primary to upper elementary grades, moving from an almost exclusive reliance on narrative text in the primary grades (Duke, 2000) to increasing use of informational text in the upper elementary grades. Furthermore, increasingly teachers and students are turning to the Internet for curricular support.

These shifts to informational and web-based multi-media texts are significant because the kinds of skills and strategies required for understanding expository and multi-media digital text appear to differ from those required for narrative text (Wilson & Rupley, 1997). Moreover, when students encounter informational and multi-media text, it is unlikely that they have been taught the skills and strategies required to comprehend and use these texts to advance learning (Hiebert & Fisher, 1990; Smolkin & Donovan, 2001, Taylor, Person et al., 2001). These literatures point to the importance of engaging in comprehension research in which upper elementary grade students are being supported to learn from informational digital texts and Web sites.

The Project

In collaboration with Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar at the University of Michigan, CAST is conducting a 3-year study of struggling and typically achieving fourth grade students’ comprehension and learning from informational text in hypertext and Web environments. The computer-based environments will feature supports that include text-to-speech decoding with synchronized highlighting of text and an embedded system of cognitive prompts, hints, and modeling at different levels of difficulty.

The partners will conduct three studies over the course of the grant:

• A baseline descriptive study of students’ use of and learning from digital narrative and informational (science) text and an informational (science) website;
• An experimental study comparing students’ learning from digital informational (science) text with generic vs. domain-specific comprehension and thinking supports; and
• An experimental study comparing students’ learning from an informational (science) website with accessibility vs. domain and generic comprehension and thinking supports.

Funding

Funding for this project was provided by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) in the U.S. Department of Education, Award No. R305G020041. Opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position of the U.S. Department of Education.

References

Chall, J. S. (1983). Stages of reading development. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Chall, J.S., Jacobs, V. A., & Baldwin, L.E. (1990). The reading crisis: Why poor children fall behind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Duke, N.K. (2000). 3.6 minutes per day: The scarcity of informational texts in first grade. Reading Research Quarterly, 35, 202-224.

Hiebert, E. H. & Fisher, C.W. (1990). Whole language: Three themes for the future. Educational Leadership, 47(6), 62-64.

Smolkin, L. & Donovan, C. (2000). The contexts of comprehension: Information book read alouds and comprehension acquisition (Report # 2-009). Ann Arbor, MI: Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement.

Taylor, B. M., Person, P., Clark, K. F., & Walpole, S. (1999). Beating the odds in teaching all children to read (Report #2-006). The University of Michigan, Center for the Improvement of Reading Achievement.

Wilson, V.L., & Rupley, W.H. (1997). A structural equation model for reading comprehension based on background, phonemic, and strategy knowledge. Scientific Studies of Reading, 1, 45-63.