Nell K. Duke

University of Michigan | U-M · School of Education

Inequality in reading outcomes is perhaps the single greatest social justice issue faced by school psychologists, and school psychologists need a better understanding of reading theory and its application to intervention to better combat the important issue. The present study examined the active view of reading (AVR; Duke & Cartwright, 2021), by co...

The authors discuss the typical practices of “March is Reading Month” and suggest modifications to better support students’ reading motivation and engagement all year.

The simple view of reading is commonly presented to educators in professional development about the science of reading. The simple view is a useful tool for conveying the undeniable importance—in fact, the necessity—of both decoding and linguistic comprehension for reading. Research in the 35 years since the theory was proposed has revealed additio...

Decades of research offer important understandings about the nature of comprehension and its development. Drawing on both classic and contemporary research, in this article, we identify some key understandings about reading comprehension processes and instruction, including these: Comprehension instruction should begin early, teaching word‐reading...

The collection of papers represented in the Integrative Research Review responds to the question: How can we study children’s/youth’s out of school experiences to inform classroom practices? Using a variety of lenses to address the question, the authors consider how to understand, respond to, and serve children and youth in a variety of contexts. D...

This cluster randomized controlled trial investigated the impact of project-based learning with professional development supports on social studies and literacy achievement and motivation of second-grade students from low–socioeconomic status school districts. At random in within-school pairs, 48 teachers were assigned to the experimental or compar...

Putting math and science at the center of children’s experiences, with a special focus on children using language and literacy as tools to learn and communicate information and to solve problems, creates a vibrant new approach to early education. We illustrate this approach with a unit that builds not just children’s STREAM skills, but also address...

This study examined the role of science domain knowledge, reading motivation, and decoding skills in reading comprehension achievement in third-grade students who are English learners (ELs) and students who are monolingual, using a nationally representative data set. Multigroup probit regression analyses showed that third-grade science domain knowl...

As the popularity of project‐based learning grows, so does the importance of understanding how this instructional approach can support students’ learning and development. The authors describe a project‐based approach to literacy and social studies instruction that research has shown to be effective. Key characteristics of the approach and illustrat...

This department highlights literacy leaders across the globe who are working in the field of literacy education. It features a variety of invited authors whose work is timely and relevant to the theme of access.

Reading involves and is influenced by many factors, which makes reading difficult to understand, teach, and explain to parents, policymakers, and other stakeholders. A metaphor of driving, which likens reading to an everyday practice, demystifies complexities inherent in reading. Both reading and driving are active, strategic processes. Just as dri...

Recent articles in The Reading Teacher have communicated contributions of reading research over the last three decades. In this article, the authors focus on a type of research that has contributed to our understanding of practice: studies of exemplary teachers of literacy. The authors discuss three studies and their findings: a study of a teacher...

In Becoming a Nation of Readers (BNR) (1985), Richard C. Anderson, Elfrieda H. Hiebert, Judith A. Scott, and Ian A. G. Wilkinson argued that the quality of teaching is a powerful influence on children’s reading development—more powerful than the influence of the general teaching approach or materials used. In this article, we focus on one research...

The popularity of project-based learning has been driven in part by a growing number of STEM schools and programs. But STEM subjects are not the only fertile ground for project-based learning (PBL). Social studies and literacy content, too, can be adapted into PBL units to benefit teaching and learning, the authors argue. They review key studies on...

Although assessment of student progress in word reading skills is common, students’ knowledge and skills for comprehending informational text are rarely assessed. Despite research indicating the need for instruction in this area and a growing national understanding of its importance that is reflected in the Common Core State Standards, few formativ...

Drawing on the literature on concepts of print and graphics in text, as well as informal observations of children, we identified eight concepts that we posit are fundamental to understanding how graphics work in text: Action (static graphics can be interpreted as representing dynamic action), Intentionality (graphics are chosen by authors to accomp...

The Common Core State Standards place unprecedented emphasis on visual textappropriately so, as visual components are increasingly ubiquitous in many kinds of text. This shift in emphasis requires substantial changes in our teaching. Concepts of print need to be expanded to include concepts of graphics, and specific graphical devices, such as diagr...

Research Findings: Examining the effects of professional development of the early childhood workforce that fit within the constraints of government policy is crucial for identifying types and amounts of effective training and informing child care policy. The present study used a cluster-randomized trial to evaluate the effects of a professional dev...

Summary : Almost fifteen years have passed since the publication of the National Research Council’s seminal report Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, which provided research-based recommendations on what could be done to better position students in prekindergarten through third grade for success in grade four and above. This article...

This study addresses the question: Do second-grade students from low- socioeconomic-status (SES) schools taught with an iteratively designed project-based approach to social studies and content literacy instruction: (a) make statistically significant gains on standards-based social studies and content area literacy assessments, and (b) reach a benc...

This article introduces a framework designed to improve students' awareness of the need to critically evaluate websites as sources of information and to improve their skill at doing so. The framework, called the WWWDOTframework, encourages students to think about at least six dimensions when evaluating a website: (1) Who wrote this and what credent...

Much research has demonstrated that students are largely uncritical users of Web sites as sources of information. Research-tested frameworks are needed to increase elementary-age students’ awareness of the need and ability to critically evaluate Web sites as sources of information. This study is a randomized field trial of such a framework called W...

I f learning to read effectively is a journey toward ever-increasing ability to comprehend texts, then teachers are the tour guides, ensuring that students stay on course, pausing to make sure they appreciate the landscape of understanding, and encouraging the occasional diversion down an inviting and interesting cul-de-sac or byway. The evidence f...

Reading professional Nell K. Duke replies to questions posed via e-mail or Facebook on the topic of expository text.

Project LISTEN’s Reading Tutor listens to children read aloud, and helps them learn to read, as illustrated on the Videos page of our website. This Interactive Event encompasses both this basic interaction and new extensions we are developing.

Television continues to be an important part of young children's daily lives. Therefore, an important question lies in how popular television programs depict aspects of children's development and learning, including literacy. Through a content analysis, this study analyzed the top 10 programs for viewers between the ages of 2 and 5 for portrayals o...

This descriptive study explored different reading strategies 12 adult good Internet readers used while doing 3 Internet reading tasks, each with a different reading purpose: seeking specific information, acquiring general knowledge, and being entertained. This study investigated whether readers' strategies differed by reading purpose. Purposive sel...

How can an automated tutor assess children's spoken responses despite imperfect speech recognition? We address this challenge in the context of tutoring children in explicit strategies for reading comprehension. We report initial progress on collecting, annotating, and mining their spoken responses. Collection and annotation yield authentic but spa...

THIS STUDY explored, with both experimental and correlational designs, the roles of (a) authentic, communicatively functional reading and writing and (b) the explicit explanation of genre function and features on growth in genre-specific reading and writing abilities of children in grades two and three. The genres used for this exploration were inf...

While most parents understand the importance of promoting literacy in their young children, they often aren't sure how to do it. This book provides guidance. Taking a “literacy-throughout-the-day” approach, the authors organize the book around spaces in the home-the kitchen, bedroom, living room, and so forth-and suggest fun, stimulating activities...

Authentic literacy activities in the classroom replicate and reflect literacy activities that occur in people's lives outside of school and instructional contexts. A growing body of research supports use of such activities in teaching and learning. The authors elaborate on the definition of authentic literacy, describe supporting research and theor...

The reasons some children struggle with reading are as varied as the children themselves. From trouble decoding words to problems retaining information, reading difficulties are complex. All kids, says the International Reading Association, "have a right to instruction designed with their specific needs in mind." The question is how to identify and...

Research shows that literacy—the ability to listen, view, speak, read, and write - begins developing long before children enter elementary school. This book helps early childhood educators nurture that development. It begins with an argument for offering children literacy-rich activities and creating an environment for carrying out those activities...

One of the most rapidly developing areas of educational innovation involves the texts available to young readers and their teachers, leading to a host of new issues regarding the characteristics and roles of text that support young children's learning. This article describes research conducted by investigators at the Center for the Improvement of E...

Book reviewed in this article: Language, Literacy and Cognitive Development: The Development and Consequences of Symbolic Communication. Edited by Eric Amsel & James P. Byrnes. 2002.

Incl. bibl., abstract. In this article, Michael Pressley, Nell Duke, and Erica Boling call for a second generation of scientifically based reading instruction that goes beyond the evidence currently informing public policy. The authors argue that the federal government's position on what constitutes "scientific research" embraces only a narrow rang...

The four strategies that can improve the ability to read informational text are discussed. The effectiveness of incorporating information text in the curriculum in the early years of school is presented.

R eading comprehension research has a long and rich history. There is much that we can say about both the nature of reading comprehension as a process and about effective reading comprehension instruction. Most of what we know has been learned since 1975. Why have we been able to make so much progress so fast? We believe that part of the reason beh...

Summary of the research available to guide reading comprehension instruction at the turn of the century.

In this Critical Issues, we argue that the preparation of novice literacy researchers should change in response to the growing diversification of epistemologies and methods employed in literacy research. We assert that the preparation of novice literacy researchers should be aimed at developing students who understand and appreciate a broad range o...

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1999. Includes bibliographical references. Article 1. For the rich it's richer: Print experiences and environments offered to children in very low- and very high-SES first grade classrooms -- Article 2. 3.6 minutes per day: The Scarcity of informational texts in first grade. "Running head: SES...

This study investigates whether there are differences in the print environments and experiences offered to children in 20 first-grade classrooms chosen from very low- and very high-socioeconomic status (SES) districts. Each classroom was visited for 4 full days over the course of a school year. On each visit, information was recorded about the clas...

Although scholars have called for greater attention to informational texts in the early grades for some time, there have been few data available about the degree to which informational texts are actually included in early grade classrooms, and in what ways. This study provides basic, descriptive information about informational text experiences offe...

In recent years, many scholars have called for greater inclusion of expository texts in early schooling. A first step in assessing the wisdom of these calls is to examine what young children actually know, and can learn, about the language of these reputedly-difficult texts. This study provides information about 20 preliterate kindergartners' knowl...

Presents case studies of two struggling reader/writers who found a "way in" to the world of literacy through nonnarrative texts. Argues for greater attention to nonnarrative in early literacy education. (SR)

Here's how one teacher created a classroom environment in which students were encouraged to read and write for a variety of reasons.

How should an automated Reading Tutor that listens and speaks teach reading comprehension strategies? Research on effective classroom reading comprehension instruction suggests key elements to incorporate: (1) use of fictional narrative texts and informational texts well-suited to reading comprehension instruction (e.g., with strong story structure...