Julie Coiro

University of Rhode Island | URI · School of Education

Systemic oppression includes inequitable education that historically does not fully prepare students for comprehensive participation in society. The tools of science education, however, uniquely enable students to explore social inequities as well as the natural world. Thus, a role of education can be to embed social justice in science curricula. P...

This chapter presents synthesized insights from rich and varied literatures about pedagogies in higher education for equity and justice. The authors summarize key empirical, theoretical, and best practice literature about designing and implementing socially-just pedagogies in higher education. The synthesis is organized into three sections that mir...

This chapter presents synthesized insights from rich and varied literatures about pedagogies in higher education equity and justice. The authors summarize key empirical, theoretical, and best practice literature about designing and implementing socially-just pedagogies in higher education. The synthesis is organized into three sections that mirror...

Students face several challenges when asked to locate relevant and credible information from the internet. This article introduces three principles for designing online inquiry lessons and documents what we learned from five language arts teachers from Finland who implemented and provided feedback on a learning unit framed in those design principle...

In this commentary, the author explores the tension between almost 30 years of work that has embraced increasingly complex conceptions of digital reading and recent studies that risk oversimplifying digital reading as a singular entity analogous with reading text on a screen. The author begins by tracing a line of theoretical and empirical work tha...

This study examined upper secondary school students’ citations of self-selected online sources in their essays. Students (n = 140) conducted online inquiry about either effects of social media on people’s quality of life (SM) or allowance of genetic manipulation of organisms (GMO). Students, working either individually or in pairs, explored online...

Varying information quality and an increase of misinformation on the Internet accentuates the importance of supporting students' competencies to critically evaluate information. This study compared how individuals and pairs of secondary students worked to evaluate the quality of online information across two inquiry topics. Two similar studies were...

Online inquiry, or using the Internet to generate questions and then search for, analyse, and synthesise information about these questions, is an essential part of digital literacy. However, processes involved in online inquiry are substantially complex. Prior research suggests that digital platforms can scaffold online inquiry processes. Moreover,...

Multiple-source inquiry that involves collaboration and deliberation is a complex construct; accordingly, valid measurement of these related competencies should require students to demonstrate their collaborative inquiry and social deliberation skills as part of an integrated performance. In this article, we report findings from the first phase of...

We describe efforts to design and validate a digitally-based assessment of collaborative online inquiry and social deliberation using a digital virtual world platform with embedded supports for real-time collaboration. Cognitive validity studies were conducted to examine the collaborative prompts and the overall task, with 21 dyads participating in...

The authors introduce readers to three design features of the University of Rhode Island's Summer Institute in Digital Literacy, a 42‐hour, weeklong professional learning experience in digital literacy for educators, librarians, college faculty, and other adult learners. The program is explicitly designed to promote reflection on one's motivations...

Identifying the factor structure of online reading to learn is important for the development of theory, assessment, and instruction. Traditional comprehension models have been developed from, and for, offline reading. This study used online reading to determine an optimal factor structure for modeling online research and comprehension among 426 six...

As teachers' self-efficacy has been shown to be a crucial factor in technology integration, there is a need to understand the mechanisms that may raise teachers' self-efficacy toward technology integration. This article seeks to understand what sources of self-efficacy hands-on experiences with technology may provide to pre-service teachers. The pa...

This study examines students (n = 89; 16–18 years of age) sourcing practices when composing an essay on the basis of online research. Students were asked to conduct online research in preparation for writing an essay about whether or not social media enhances peoples’ quality of life. In the essay, students should explore the issue from different p...

This chapter outlines three interconnected lines of work conducted in the USA to advance reading engagement and achievement from a new literacies perspective of online research and comprehension. These areas focus on developmentally appropriate practices for supporting educators and learners as they use the Internet for personal inquiry, active cit...

This paper reports on two studies designed to examine pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs. Study I investigated the measurement properties of a self-efficacy beliefs questionnaire comprising scales for computer self-efficacy, teacher self-efficacy, and self-efficacy towards technology integration. In Study I, 200 pre-service teachers comple...

This paper describes a theoretically informed Online Inquiry Tool designed to support the exploration of controversial issues on the Internet. The tool's design is grounded in principles associated with theories of online research and comprehension, argumentation for learning, representational guidance, and cognitive load. The purpose of the tool i...

This piece introduces a framework for how to envision Personal Digital Inquiry (PDI) in K-8 classrooms. To conceptualize what teaching and learning might look like in these classrooms, important practices are situated along a two-dimensional continuum of digital inquiry that varies in terms of levels of support and purposes of technology use. We th...

Hobbs and Coiro describe a new approach to the professional development of educators, librarians, and media professionals that emphasizes the value of collaborative, interdisciplinary relationships. The authors explore why creative collaboration using digital media texts, tools, and technologies is vital to support the professional development of e...

The ability to ask questions is essential to learning, reasoning, and understanding. This column introduces a sequence of activities that incorporate the use of digital images and online texts into intentional opportunities for even the youngest learners to work with their teachers and classmates as they wonder, anticipate, explore, and think deepl...

This article presents qualitative findings from a study that examined the types of criteria that middle school students use to evaluate the quality of online information and sources for a Web-based research assignment. Open-constructed responses from four critical evaluation items were compiled from diverse seventh graders in a representative, two-...

This piece is framed by questions we are often asked when we talk about online reading assessments and instruction with teachers. We begin with some of the lessons we have learned in our own experiences with designing measures of online reading comprehension. Then we share our thoughts about key design considerations as well as some of the biggest...

This chapter explores online research and comprehension in terms of both instruction and assessment, and does the following: 1) Defines the new literacies of online research and comprehension an reviews research in this area; 2) Defines the emerging framework for Internet Reciprocal teaching (IRT), and instructional model used to teach online rese...

This paper details a number of challenges and opportunities for today’s learners when reading for information on the Internet. After defining online reading comprehension from a new literacies perspective and how it appears to be different than offline reading comprehension, I highlight details about four of the biggest challenges for today’s learn...

Digital information sources can form the basis of effective inquiry-based learning if teachers construct the information and exercises in ways that will promote collaboration, communication, and problem solving.

We provide descriptions of technology-based assessments and reliability and validity results for two different formats of online research and comprehension assessments (ORCAs) from the ORCA Project (Leu, Kulikowich, Sedransk, & Coiro, 2012): ORCA-Closed and ORCA-Multiple Choice. ORCAs are performance based measures of students’ ability to conduct o...

This study examined the social and cognitive interaction patterns of third, fourth, and fifth graders as they collaboratively read on the Internet and responded to an inquiry prompt. Data analysis revealed patterns of cognitive strategy use that intersected with social forms and functions of dialogue. Dyads that exhibited higher levels of cognitive...

This manuscript introduces a multidimensional framework for academic literacies to help instructors become more aware of different aspects of literacies and how they might be used to plan and orchestrate meaningful, multifaceted literacy experiences in their classes. More specifically, this broad framework for literacy and learning explicitly consi...

This study examines peer collaboration among four pairs of seventh graders who read online to determine what caused the downfall of the Mayan civilization. More and less productive collaborative interactions are presented through snippets of dialogue in which pairs negotiated complex texts. Few examples of how teachers can skillfully facilitate col...

Research in four areas has the potential to dramatically improve how practitioners address the challenges of integrating digital texts and tasks into their literacy curriculum. Advances in defining and measuring key components of online reading comprehension are rapidly emerging. In addition, instructional models, such as Internet reciprocal teachi...

Students' perceptions about the Internet's usefulness and potential to engage them in academic learning tasks have been found to influence their success in reading for information in online tasks. This article helps to understand the types of dispositions that adolescents may have toward reading on the Internet and how to characterize these disposi...

This study investigated the extent to which new reading comprehension proficiencies may be required when adolescents read for information on the Internet. Seventh graders (N = 109) selected from a stratified random sample of diverse middle school students completed a survey of topic-specific prior knowledge and parallel scenario-based measures of o...

Julie Coiro and Sara Kajder converse about how they use digital tools with teachers and children. We are excited to share their experience and insights about how teachers can incorporate these options in the classroom.

CTELL, Case Technologies to Enhance Literacy Learning, provides a new and innovative method for preparing literacy educators for the 21st century. Through the use of case-based technologies delivered via the Internet, instructors help their preservice teachers connect theory to practice with virtual visits to classrooms through CTELL’s interface. T...

This article highlights four cognitive processes key to online reading comprehension and how one might begin to transform existing think-aloud strategy models to encompass the challenges of reading for information on the Internet. Informed by principles of cognitive apprenticeship and an emerging taxonomy of online reading comprehension strategies,...

This mixed-method study investigated the extent to which new reading comprehension proficiencies may be required on the Internet. It a lso explored the nature of online reading comprehension among adolescent readers who read online at different levels of proficiency. Results of a hierarchical regression analysis of da ta from a stratified random sa...

ABSTRACTS The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the nature of reading comprehension processes while reading on the Internet. Eleven sixth‐grade students with the highest combination of standardized reading scores, reading report card grades, and Internet reading experiences were selected from a population of 150 sixth graders in thre...

The purpose of this sequential mixed-methods study was to investigate the extent to which new online reading proficiencies (Leu, Kinzer, Coiro & Cammack, 2004) may be required to comprehend information on the Internet. It also sought to explore the nature of online reading comprehension among three adolescent readers who read online at different le...

I consider myself incredibly privileged; my work has allowed me to develop far more questions than answers. This, of course, is a result of what some might call the First Principle of Reading Research: The more we study something, the more we realize how little we understand. Today, I want to share some of my questions with you and a few of the pos...

This article is a juxtapositional book review of two texts, "The Flickering Mind: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom and How Learning Can Be Saved" by Todd Oppenheimer and "New Literacies: Changing Knowledge and Classroom Learning" by Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel.

Every teacher recognizes that children have special ways of looking at the world that are honest, often funny, and yet express central truths about life. Many children's authors have crafted memorable characters and an entire genre around this particular insight, from Beverly Cleary's Ramona to Barbara Park's Junie B. Jones. Children teach us impor...

T he essence of both reading and reading instruction is change. Reading a book changes us forever as we return from the worlds we inhabit during our reading journeys with new insights about our surroundings and our-selves. Teaching a student to read is also a transforming experience. It opens new windows to the world and creates a lifetime of oppor...

This paper draws on the well-articulated model of reading comprehension outlined in the RAND Reading Study Group’s report (2002) to explore the changing nature of reading comprehension. The author argues that the Internet forces us to expand our understanding of each element of the Rand Model (e.g., text, reader, activity, and context) by consideri...