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Expanding the science of reading: Contributions from educational psychology
Educational Psychologist
Although links between knowledge and reading comprehension have been widely documented for decades, recent translational science publications (e.g., teacher journals, books, and podcasts) have increasingly referred to studies using baseball (a sport popular in the USA) as a proxy for knowledge to explain those links, especially within science of reading conversations. We conducted a systematic review of studies using baseball as a proxy for knowledge necessary for reading comprehension. After a comprehensive literature search, we found 19 “baseball studies” dating from 1978 to 2018, and we note that 13 of the studies used the same two measures of baseball knowledge. When analyzing the measures of baseball knowledge, we find that their measures of knowledge focused heavily on vocabulary and baseball trivia, and we found that the most common baseball comprehension text was deceptively complex. Finally, we analyzed recent research citations of baseball studies and found that even the oldest baseball studies are commonly cited in high‐impact journals even in the last 5 years. Ultimately, we interrogate the role of baseball knowledge studies in the body of research on knowledge and comprehension. We also call for reliance on non‐baseball studies to create a knowledge–comprehension translational science likely to positively impact systematic curricular improvement, move the science of reading conversation forward, and improve all students' reading comprehension at scale.
Theoretical perspectives within disciplinary fields are often characterized by initially dichotomous frameworks that become more integrative over time. Indeed, popular discourse on the Science of Reading emphasizes dichotomous contributions of word reading and language comprehension to reading. Yet, these skill sets are inherently complex, interact, and must be coordinated by readers. Contemporary models of reading are more integrative, appealing to executive functions (EFs) to explain readers’ handling of complexity, but are similarly limited by dichotomous conceptions of EFs as separate from reading processes. We critique these dominant perspectives and urge a shift toward integrative conceptions of executive control within reading, aligned with work in other fields. As part of this critique, we conducted a meta-analysis of EF intervention effects on reading (31 studies, 109 comparisons) in 2,010 first through eighth-grade students; findings suggested that targeting reading-specific EFs significantly improves reading and confirms prior null effects of domain-general EF interventions on reading. Consideration of EFs’ roles in the science of reading may be particularly important for addressing individual differences in reading and optimizing opportunities for reading achievement for all students. Future challenges for educational psychologists will be to determine domain-specific ways executive control occurs within reading, and ultimately, develop tasks and interventions to improve reading-specific EF processes for students who need such support.
In this article, we discuss using race-focusing and reimaging as a metatheoretical approach to be used during the process of theory building, expansion, and adaptation. To do so, we demonstrate how, over the last decade, the use of race-focusing and reimaging approaches has advanced our understanding of the racialized nature of research in education psychology (DeCuir-Gunby & Schutz, 2024). In addition, we provide a discussion of areas where educational psychologists have yet to theoretically explicate or should further explore in current educational psychology theories.
With a focus on within-person effects, this study investigated mutualism among academic skills (reading, math, science) and between those skills and verbal working memory in a general population sample and groups with high or low skills from Grades 2 to 5 (2010–2016, N = 859–9,040, age 6.27–13.13 years, 49% female, ethnically diverse). Mutualism was found between reading and science in all high-ability groups, and between reading and math and verbal working memory only in high-math students. Results remained the same controlling for socioeconomic status and gender, and with sensitivity analyses. High-ability students (especially high-math students) may improve academic performance through accumulation of academic knowledge and mutualism between academic and cognition. Such mutualism may be driven by high-quality, intensive academic practice.
Pathways of relations of language, cognitive, and literacy skills (i.e., working
memory, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, inference, comprehension
monitoring, word reading, and listening comprehension) to reading comprehension
were examined by comparing four variations of direct and indirect effects model of reading. Results from 350 English-speaking second graders revealed that language and cognitive component skills had direct and indirect relations to listening comprehension, explaining 86% of variance. Word reading and listening comprehension completely mediated the relations of language and cognitive component skills to reading comprehension and explained virtually all the variance in reading comprehension.
Total effects of component skills varied from small to substantial. The findings support the direct and indirect effects model of reading model and indicate that word reading and listening comprehension are upperlevel skills that are built on multiple language and cognitive component skills, which have direct and indirect relations among themselves. The results underscore the importance of understanding nature of relations.
One of the field of psychology’s stated goals is to produce scholarship with findings that benefit the world. Over the last 10 years, psychology scholarship and its presumed societal benefits have been called into question due to the field’s history of questionable research practices, racism, and epistemic oppression. Calls for methodological, ethical, and practical reforms are essential to building a psychological science that is just, effective, reliable, and beneficial. Recently, these calls have been complemented by a push to reform how theory is developed and used in psychology. There is great need for better understanding and implementation of theory development, both in the field of psychology broadly as well as in its subdisciplines, including educational psychology. At the same time, educational psychologists have much to contribute to the tripartite calls for methodological, ethical, and theory reforms. In this paper, I explore theory development in psychology by discussing the importance of developing both the descriptive and explanatory aspects of theory as well as the need to refine how theory is evaluated and integrated. Then, I review how innovations and practices in educational psychology can inform the broader theory reform movement in psychology writ large. Finally, I identify important future directions for further advancing theory reform in psychology, including addressing ableism in the field, increasing the field’s hospitability for theory revision, furthering theory development transparency, and more deeply integrating theory development into preparation programs.
In this chapter, the authors highlight advances in the study of skilled reading, from word identification to comprehension, emphasizing language and writing system influences, the convergence of brain and behavior data, with brief links to reading difficulties and learning to read. They begin by replacing their metaphor of stream currents with a static representation of what reading science seeks to explain, drawing on the Reading Systems Framework. The authors apply the framework to examine research progress, describing three significant advances. These include: the word‐identification system in skilled alphabetic reading; comprehending while reading; and toward a more universal science of reading. Moving beyond alphabetic writing toward a more universal perspective, orthographic depth was extended to nonalphabetic writing, for example, the consonant‐based Abjad system and morpho‐syllabic Chinese. Comparative research has stimulated the extension of models of alphabetic reading to nonalphabetic reading.
Computational modeling is a powerful tool for studying reading and other complex behaviors. This chapter focuses on the role of computational modeling. It begins by showing that simulations presented as supporting the dual‐route cascade (DRC) model differed from the corresponding behavioral studies. The DRC models were succeeded by a series of hybrid, “connectionist dual process” models. These models replaced the grapheme‐phoneme correspondence rules with connectionist networks, but retained a separate lexical route. The dual‐route theory remains influential in areas where computational modeling results are not well known. These include reading acquisition and instruction, where research and pedagogy still focus on learning pronunciation rules and adding sight words to the lexicon, and in some areas of cognitive neuroscience. The chapter concludes by considering the relevance of computational modeling for understanding how children learn to read.
We developed a sustained content literacy intervention that emphasized building domain and topic knowledge from Grade 1 to Grade 2 and evaluated transfer effects on students’ reading comprehension outcomes. The Model of Reading Engagement (MORE) intervention emphasizes thematic lessons that provide an intellectual framework for helping students connect new learning to a general schema (i.e., how scientists study past events). A total of 30 elementary schools (N = 2,952 students; N = 144 teachers) were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group. Over 12 months, the treatment group students participated in (a) spring Grade 1 thematic content literacy lessons in science and social studies followed by wide reading of thematically related informational texts during summer, and (b) fall to spring Grade 2 thematic content literacy lessons in science. After implementation of Grade 1 thematic content literacy lessons and summer support for reading, treatment group students experienced smaller summer losses on a domain-general measure of reading than control group students. Following the sustained implementation of thematic content literacy lessons in science through Grade 2, treatment group students also outperformed their control group peers on a science content reading comprehension outcome (ES = .18). Furthermore, we found transfer effects on science content reading comprehension that varied by passage-item type (near-, mid-, and far-transfer passages determined by the inclusion and number of directly taught words in passages). A sustained content literacy intervention that aligns content and instruction across grades can help students transfer knowledge to novel reading comprehension tasks.
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 additional understandings about reading. In this article, we synthesize research documenting three of these advances: (1) Reading difficulties have a number of causes, not all of which fall under decoding and/or listening comprehension as posited in the simple view; (2) rather than influencing reading solely independently, as conceived in the simple view, decoding and listening comprehension (or in terms more commonly used in reference to the simple view today, word recognition and language comprehension) overlap in important ways; and (3) there are many contributors to reading not named in the simple view, such as active, self‐regulatory processes, that play a substantial role in reading. We point to research showing that instruction aligned with these advances can improve students’ reading. We present a theory, which we call the active view of reading, that is an expansion of the simple view and can be used to convey these important advances to current and future educators. We discuss the need to lift up updated theories and models to guide practitioners’ work in supporting students’ reading development in classrooms and interventions.
This meta-analysis examines the inconsistent findings across experimental studies that compared children’s learning outcomes with digital and paper books. We quantitatively reviewed 39 studies reported in 30 articles (n = 1,812 children) and compared children’s story comprehension and vocabulary learning in relation to medium (reading on paper versus on-screen), design enhancements in digital books, the presence of a dictionary, and adult support for children aged between 1 and 8 years. The comparison of digital versus paper books that only differed by digitization showed lower comprehension scores for digital books. Adults’ mediation during print books’ reading was more effective than the enhancements in digital books read by children independently. However, with story-congruent enhancements, digital books outperformed paper books. An embedded dictionary had no or negative effect on children’s story comprehension but positively affected children’s vocabulary learning. Findings are discussed in relation to the cognitive load theory and practical design implications.
A high level executive summary of the book, Reaping the rewards of the Reading for Understanding Initiative
In this meta‐analysis, the authors synthesize results from 44 (quasi‐)experimental studies on informational and narrative text structure interventions involving students in grades 4–6 in regular school settings. Findings show that text structure instruction had positive immediate effects on students’ reading comprehension but that effect sizes varied largely across outcome measures: questions (Hedges’ g = 0.25), summarization (g = 0.57), recall (g = 0.37), and knowledge about text structure (g = 0.38). However, students who received text structure instruction no longer outperformed control groups at delayed posttests. Content‐related features, such as a focus on paragraph‐level structure, active construction of graphic organizers, and teaching rule‐based summarization techniques, moderated the effectiveness of text structure instruction, but these effects also varied across outcome measures. Instructional features moderated delayed effects: Interventions with opportunities for individual student practice resulted in higher delayed effects for comprehension questions. The authors argue that text structure instruction deserves a place in the primary school curriculum so the positive effects on reading will be maintained.
Self-determination theory (SDT) is a broad framework for understanding factors that facilitate or undermine intrinsic motivation, autonomous extrinsic motivation, and psychological wellness, all issues of direct relevance to educational settings. We review research from SDT showing that both intrinsic motivation and well-internalized (and thus autonomous) forms of extrinsic motivation predict an array of positive outcomes across varied educational levels and cultural contexts and are enhanced by supports for students’ basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Findings also show a dynamic link between teacher and student motivation, as teachers are themselves impacted and constrained by controlling mandates, institutional pressures, and leadership styles. Ironically, despite substantial evidence for the importance of psychological need satisfactions in learning contexts, many current educational policies and practices around the globe remain anchored in traditional motivational models that fail to support students’ and teachers’ needs, a knowledge versus policy gap we should aspire to close.
Handbook of Strategies and Strategic Processing provides a state-of-the-art synthesis of conceptual, measurement, and analytical issues regarding learning strategies and strategic processing. Contributions by educational psychology experts present the clearest-yet definition of this essential and quickly evolving component of numerous theoretical frameworks that operate across academic domains. This volume addresses the most current research and theory on the nature of strategies and performance, mechanisms for unearthing individuals’ strategic behaviors, and both long-established and emerging techniques for data analysis and interpretation.
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 that both informs and complicates our understanding of digital literacy and, more specifically, digital reading. Then, a heuristic is proposed to systematically organize, label, and define a multifaceted set of increasingly complex terms, concepts, and practices that characterize the spectrum of digital reading experiences. Research that informs this heuristic is used to illustrate how more precision in defining digital reading can promote greater clarity across research methods and advance a more systematic study of promising digital reading practices. Finally, the author discusses implications for assessment, research, practice, and policy.
Scholarship on the science of reading (SoR) has, in some instances, taken up more narrow views of reading in discussions and instantiations of reading assessment that do not center equity and justice, especially in schools. This can lead to less valid and even harmful reading assessment, especially for students from historically marginalized communities with diverse language, cultural, and neurological differences. Here, we draw on critically-minded reading research, as well as on work in equity-oriented educational assessment, to inform a justice-based reading assessment framework that can guide research, theory, policy, and practice. Using an equity-oriented and justice-based lens, the framework outlines three interwoven components: (1) relational and humanizing assessment practices; (2) justice-based products and outcomes; and, (3) a critical construct of reading. The framework compels designers, developers, and users to center the needs of rights-holders, and especially those from historically marginalized communities, throughout the assessment process. To do so, the framework outlines five principles that include orienting to equity and justice; prioritizing humanizing and critical assessment practices; grounding assessment in a complex, dynamic, and critical construct of reading for diverse populations; designing for justice-based social consequences, and engaging in critical debrief throughout. These principles guide eight phases of assessment, which we outline in detail. Finally, we discuss conceptual contributions as well as practical implications.
Successful comprehension is only possible when children draw inferences about ideas implicit or missing in discourse. Supporting inference-making with explicit instruction must start early given its importance in comprehension and knowledge development. However, students who experience difficulties with early reading skills often do not receive adequate instructional support for inference-making because oftentimes inference-making is taught in the context of written texts. In this article, we describe the potential of using video-based technology in teaching inference-making in young students who experience difficulties in early reading skills. First, we discuss why inference-making is crucial for comprehension and elaborate on a theoretical framework that addresses how video-based technology can support inference-making independent of basic reading skills. Next, we share our experiences designing web-based software featuring interactive videos. Finally, we describe how teachers can design their own inference instruction using video-based technology to support young students with difficulties in comprehension and basic reading skills.
Knowledge activation and knowledge building are essential for reading comprehension. Yet, how can teachers support students in accessing and applying their existing knowledge and experiences during reading? This article provides six evidence‐based principles to consider during literacy instruction, which are drawn from a recent systematic literature review that examined prior knowledge activation instructional scaffolds. These principles are: (a) activate knowledge before, during, and after reading; (b) activate knowledge collaboratively; (c) support students in understanding connections between concepts; (d) support students in recognizing discrepancies between their knowledge and the text; (e) address misunderstandings; and (f) consider the amount of topic‐specific knowledge that students have. These principles have the potential to shift how teachers think about the role of knowledge activation throughout the reading process.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a transformative force in education. Realizing the full potential of AI in education requires a multidisciplinary and holistic AI literacy framework that can inform research, practice, and policy. This novel ED-AI Lit framework includes six components: Knowledge, Evaluation, Collaboration, Contextualization, Autonomy, and Ethics. This framework stresses the importance of developing a deep understanding of how AI systems function, critically evaluating their implications, and fostering collaborative relationships between individuals and AI.
In this article, we present some considerations for abandoning decontextualized strategy instruction and instead provide some ideas for how to shape comprehension instruction around the texts we use in the classroom. We offer some guiding theories, some key considerations, and we present examples for classroom teachers.
Generating accurate inferences is crucial for the successful comprehension of text and is a skill that needs to be supported starting in the early grades. Teachers can support inference‐making during read‐aloud lessons by asking inferential questions and providing scaffolding and feedback on students' inference‐making. In this article, we describe instructional principles to support students' inference‐making specifically during read‐alouds. We also share findings from our research in K‐2 classrooms that show how inferential questions, scaffolding, and feedback in read‐aloud lessons can support primary‐grade students' inference‐making. Finally, we describe steps to design and implement read‐aloud lessons for supporting the development of inference‐making in primary‐grade students.
We examined the efficacy of a Technology-Based Early Language Comprehension Intervention (TeLCI) designed to teach inferencing in a non-reading context. First- and second graders identified as at risk of comprehension difficulties were assigned randomly to a business-as-usual control group or to use TeLCI over an 8-week period. TeLCI comprised three learning modules per week that involved (a) learning new vocabulary, (b) watching fiction or nonfiction videos, and (c) answering inferential questions. Students also engaged in small-group read-alouds with their teachers once per week. Students who experienced TeLCI improved their inferencing and benefited from scaffolding and feedback provided during the intervention. Students' pre- to posttest inferencing gains were comparable with those of control students. Female students and those receiving special education services appeared less likely to benefit from TeLCI, whereas multilingual students were more likely to respond. Further work is needed to determine the optimal conditions under which TeLCI will benefit young children.
This systematic literature review examined the research on prior knowledge and its activation to ascertain how these terms are defined, what specific techniques have been empirically investigated, and the conditions under which prior knowledge activation facilitated students’ comprehension. Fifty-four articles met the inclusion criteria and revealed that the terms prior knowledge and prior knowledge activation were often vaguely defined. Further, 30 unique techniques for activating readers’ prior knowledge representing eight different categories were identified. Those categories were open-ended prompts, procedural or strategic supports during reading, visual representations, analogical reasoning, text alteration, augmented activation, extratextual activities, and spontaneous activation. Techniques meant to facilitate knowledge activation prior to reading were most common, although the prompting of students’ existing knowledge was beneficial during and after reading as well. Variability in the effectiveness of activation techniques was related, in part, to the amount, accuracy, and specificity of students’ knowledge. Based on the key findings identified in this review, recommendations for future inquiry are forwarded, including suggested definitions of prior knowledge and prior knowledge activation.
The past century has seen a debate on what characterises a scientifically literate citizen. Originally, scientific literacy implied that a citizen should know the products of science but has grown to incorporate processes of science and aspects of the nature of science. Studies on students’ epistemic knowledge are rarer than ones on students’ content knowledge. However, PISA has made an innovative attempt to measure epistemic knowledge. The purpose of this study is to investigate qualitative features in student responses to epistemic items in PISA. Six constructed response items on epistemic knowledge from PISA 2018 Science were chosen. The student responses coded as ‘full credit’ were put aside and thematic analysis was used to analyse the remaining ‘no credit’ responses. The results show that it is common to focus on the scientific phenomenon (content knowledge) or the method itself (procedural knowledge) instead of epistemic knowledge. One feasible explanation is that epistemic knowledge is intellectually demanding; another is that epistemic knowledge is still overshadowed firstly by content knowledge and secondly by procedural knowledge. The fact that students tackle epistemic aspects of science as content or procedural knowledge suggests that teaching should more explicitly distinguish between these different aspects of scientific knowledge.
Motivation science has advanced tremendously in the past decade. However, it is now clear that future progress is going to be stalled by the extent of disagreement among motivation scientists to some basic, yet controversial, questions. To help move motivation science toward greater coherence, the editors recruited prominent scholars to debate their contrasting perspectives. Such debate is not only interesting, but it also makes future research, discoveries, collaborations, and applications more fruitful. Because many excellent handbooks on motivation exist, the editors wanted to try something different—be provocative. They wanted to provoke creative ideas among the authors and readers. To achieve that end, they asked 10 thought-provoking questions that define contemporary motivation science’s most important, controversial, and provocative ideas. The questions deal with the nature of motivation, cultural differences in motivational processes, evidence-based strategies to enhance motivation, unresolved controversies, predictions of the future, and more. This volume features 67 individual author responses to these questions. Multiple authors shared their current thinking and insights to the same controversial question. This volume provides readers with a rare opportunity to see how different theorists and researchers recognize, evaluate, and prescribe solutions to the same motivation problem. By sharing current thinking and providing innovative insights into the important questions and controversies in the study of motivation, this volume informs readers about cutting-edge theory and research in motivation that they can use to generate fresh and effective applications and interventions.
The present study tested the postulation that “knowledge begets reading, which begets knowledge.” Using Random Intercepts Cross‐Lagged Panel Models (RI‐CLPM), we analyzed a U.S. nationally representative data set to examine the directionality and magnitude of the longitudinal relation between domain knowledge (operationalized as science domain knowledge) and reading throughout the elementary years (from kindergarten to fifth grade), while accounting for important covariates, such as working memory, cognitive flexibility, English language proficiency, basic literacy skills, and demographic information. Moreover, we conducted multi‐group RI‐CLPM analyses to examine whether language status (being bilingual or monolingual) moderates the longitudinal relation between domain knowledge and reading. The results showed that the relation between domain knowledge and reading is bidirectional and positive throughout the elementary years, providing empirical evidence that domain knowledge and reading may mutually enhance with each other. In addition, language status did not moderate the relation between domain knowledge and reading, suggesting that the directionality and magnitude of the relation were similar between bilingual and monolingual students. Taken together, the results have important implications for integrating content knowledge and English language arts core instruction in elementary grades.
The ability to read and comprehend texts is essential for all aspects of our lives – work, education, participation in society, everyday life, and enjoyment. This chapter consists of three sections: a brief historical review of major theoretical developments in the study of the processes and outcomes of comprehension, a comprehensive conceptualization of discourse comprehension based on insights from these theories and the research they sparked, and an overview of central issues in current research. The focus is on discourse comprehension in children and adults who are skilled word readers. A complete model of reading in all its facets would also include other, more basic components (e.g., fluent word recognition) which provide the input from print to comprehension processes. Early psychological models of reading comprehension posited that successful readers derive meaning from a text by constructing a coherent mental representation in which elements of the text (e.g., propositions, clauses) are connected via semantic relations.
Teachers in the US are increasingly required to use scripted curricula. Such instructional materials often reflect the overwhelming whiteness of the publishing industry through a lack of representation of authors and protagonists outside of white, middle-class normative characters. Implementation of such curricula stands in direct contrast to studies finding that culturally relevant pedagogy and curricula benefit students across racial and ethnic groups. This paper describes a qualitative analysis of the scripted Wit and Wisdom English Language Arts curriculum for grades K-8 guided by the research question: How might the curriculum reproduce a white supremacist master script? Following a quantitative analysis of racial representation across all core and supplementary texts in the curriculum, the research team used guiding questions grounded in a critical discourse and anti-racist teaching framework to qualitatively analyse teacher-facing materials at each grade level. The findings of this study indicate that whiteness is centred at every level of the curriculum in text selection and thematic grouping of texts, as well as through discursive moves in teacher-facing materials (e.g. essential questions for learning modules). Based on the findings, the research team suggests mechanisms for individual and collective efforts to resist whiteness-centred curricula at the system, school, and classroom level.
We now know a huge amount about early reading development, about the various skills that learners have to master and integrate to be not only effective word readers but also good comprehenders. The body of work referred to with the term ‘science of reading’ has helped illuminate these processes, and offers important guidance for the learning opportunities that educators should be making available to students in kindergarten through third grade. We argue, though, that the great advances of the last 50 years in the ‘science of reading’ need to be complemented with equivalent attention to the ‘science of teaching reading.’ We maintain that science of teaching reading is insufficient, and that learning how literacy is actually taught in the classroom and how pre-service and in-service teachers learn about how to teach reading is an important research agenda on its own, if researchers are to collaborate with practitioners effectively to improve reading outcomes.
Translanguaging pedagogy is an approach to educational equity that harnesses multilingual learners’ communicative repertoires (e.g., home languages, non-standard varieties, and gestures) by strategically incorporating them in the classroom to ensure students’ active participation and meaningful learning. This paper proposes a research-informed continuum that captures a range of possibilities for integrating translanguaging in language and literacy instruction. This continuum provides insight into how educators may make socially just instructional and curricular decisions that are based on recognizing multilingual students' languages, cultures, and ways of knowing as valuable assets in the classroom.
If the science of reading is the solution, then why are so many Black and Brown children not reading well in school? Reconciling the science with the lived experiences of children who are vulnerable to poor academic achievement in school may be requisite to unlocking the transformative innovation needed to ensure that every child can read and succeed in school.
According to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, the U.S. educational system has consistently failed Black and Brown children across both reading and mathematics. Educational research has further uncovered the ways that reading and mathematics assessment and curriculum are often biased and culturally and linguistically unresponsive. In this article, we examine traditional reading and mathematics research to determine how Black and Brown children might be better served through historically responsive literacy. We delineate the Historically Responsive Literacy model and its five learning pursuits of identity, skills, intellect, criticality, and joy. Finally, we provide three historically responsive lessons across kindergarten, third, and sixth grade reading and mathematics. It is our hope that this work may help teachers refuse ahistorical curricular frameworks in order to better center our students’ reading and mathematics education within the pursuits of intellect, skills, identity, criticality, and joy.
Educational psychology is a field of inquiry that involves the application of psychological science to the investigation and improvement of educational phenomena, and reciprocally, to the enhancement of psychological science itself. Surprisingly, until relatively recently, the concept of identity has been mostly missing from the extensive educational psychological literature. Much more common has been the use of the related concept Self, reflecting diverging theoretical traditions that identity scholars and educational psychologists have drawn upon. However, during the past two decades this has been changing. In the current chapter, we provide a framework to consider the diverse ways by which educational psychologists have employed the concept of identity to conceptualize and investigate learning, motivation, and achievement in educational settings. We begin by briefly reviewing three different categories of perspectives on identity and their complementary foci: (1) social cognitive and social psychological perspectives that foreground identity content; (2) psychosocial perspectives that foreground identity structure and formation processes; and (3) social cultural perspectives that foreground the role of culture in identity and its formation. We then describe an emerging integrative perspective of identity as a complex dynamic system and its application in educational psychological scholarship. We conclude by noting several emergent areas of identity research in educational psychology and by emphasizing the potential of identity research from integrative perspectives to bridge educational psychological scholarship with educational practice and policy.
Prior knowledge is one of the strongest contributors to comprehension, but there is little specificity about different aspects of prior knowledge and how they impact comprehension. This article introduces the Multidimensional Knowledge in Text Comprehension framework, which conceptualizes prior knowledge along four intersecting dimensions: amount, accuracy, specificity, and coherence. Amount refers to how many relevant concepts the reader knows. Accuracy refers to the extent to which the reader’s knowledge is correct. Specificity refers the degree to which the knowledge is related to information in the target text. Coherence refers to the interconnectedness of prior knowledge. Conceptualizing prior content knowledge along these dimensions deepens understanding of the construct and lends to more specific predictions about how learners process information. Considering knowledge across multiple dimensions is crucially important to the development and selection of prior knowledge assessments and, in turn, educators’ ability to capitalize on learners’ strengths across various comprehension tasks.
The purpose of this mixed-methods experimental study was to investigate the effects and social validity of a text structure intervention for reading and writing in upper elementary grades. Fourth-and fifth-grade teachers (N = 11) in three elementary schools were randomly assigned to implement the text structure intervention or a comprehension strategies intervention. The student sample (N = 351) comprised 160 students who received the text structure intervention and 191 students who received the comprehension strategies intervention, across grades 4 and 5. Quantitative measures of text structure awareness, reading comprehension, and writing quality were analyzed using three-level hierarchical linear modeling. Qualitative interviews were analyzed typologically to assess upper elementary teachers' perceptions of the social validity of each intervention. Quantitative results indicated that students who received the text structure intervention outperformed the students who received the comprehension strategies intervention on a measure of text structure awareness, a graphic organizer task, and use of ideas and details in informational writing. Qualitative findings indicated that teachers found the goals, procedures, and effects of the text structure intervention to be socially valid for upper elementary grades.
Knowledge plays an inarguably critical role in reading comprehension. When
considering the science of reading, it is important to engage with varying
theoretical frameworks and empirical research that inform our collective
understanding regarding the intersection of knowledge and literacy in K–12
classrooms. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to consider sociocultural
and cognitivist perspectives on the role that knowledge plays throughout the
reading process and to examine whose knowledge matters. Then, the authors
address three tensions related to the role of knowledge in K–12 literacy instruction
and offer research-based perspectives on how educators, researchers,
school leaders, parents, and community leaders can rethink knowledge
to support students in learning from texts. First, the authors reframe the
knowledge gap and suggest ways that teachers can privilege students’ knowledge
as assets during literacy instruction. Second, the authors address the
importance of supporting students in activating, integrating, and revising
their knowledge during text processing and suggest evidence-based instructional
techniques that support students’ learning from texts. Finally, the authors
contend that content knowledge is not the only type of knowledge that
matters in reading and suggest how teachers can support readers in using
other types of knowledge that are crucial to comprehension.
Well‐established theoretical models and a body of empirical research elucidate the critical role of content knowledge in comprehending texts. However, the potential of supporting knowledge in service of enhancing linguistic and reading comprehension has been a relatively neglected topic in the science of reading. The authors explicate why knowledge building in English language arts instruction (i.e., content‐rich instruction) can support language and content knowledge, leading to better linguistic and reading comprehension, based on theoretical arguments and empirical studies. In particular, the authors review the evidence on this claim, paying special attention to experimental trials conducted in K–2 settings. The authors also share preliminary findings from a novel intervention study testing one instantiation of a widely used content‐rich English language arts curriculum. Whereas this growing literature base demonstrates evidence of promise, further rigorous trials are needed to examine the efficacy of this integrative approach to teaching reading for understanding.
This article discusses a sociocultural approach we have developed, which we refer to as funds of knowledge. The emphasis of the funds of knowledge work has been to develop both theory and methods through which educators can approach and document the funds of knowledge of families and re-present them on the bases of the knowledge, resources, and strengths they possess, thus challenging deficit orientations that are so dominant, in particular, in the education of working-class children. In this article, I present a translocation view of funds of knowledge and what we can learn theoretically and methodologically from this body of work. I review four studies conducted in different countries and sociocultural contexts. In each context, the researchers reorient the concept of funds of knowledge to address issues germane to their settings. The four studies from New Zealand, Spain, Australia, and Uganda used funds of knowledge to generate new ideas and positionalities regarding work with teachers, students, and families. None of the projects simply replicated the original studies conducted in the United States. The four studies documented empirically and represent pedagogically families and students as resourceful and helped educators arrange environments that are academically sound and strongly oriented to building on such resources for learning.