Program Announcement: Reading for Understanding Research Initiative CFDA 84.305F

Program Officers:
Dr. Elizabeth Albro
Elizabeth.Albro@ed.gov
(202) 219-2148

Dr. Karen Douglas
Karen.Douglas@ed.gov
(202) 208-3896

Purpose

The Reading for Understanding Research Initiative (Reading Initiative) is intended to support applied basic research to (a) identify underlying processes that are malleable and potential targets for intervention, (b) develop and evaluate interventions (e.g., instructional approaches, curricula, technology, teacher professional development programs) to improve reading comprehension for students in prekindergarten through Grade 12, and (c) develop and validate assessments of reading comprehension. The Reading Initiative will take a comprehensive approach to tackling the problem of improving reading comprehension. In addition, the Institute plans for the Reading Initiative to change the way in which research on reading has been conducted by accelerating the research process and creating a tightly linked network of researchers.

Background

A. The Challenge

Although the nation has invested billions of dollars in teaching children to read, many American students continue to struggle in reading. The latest data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that 1 out of 3 fourth-graders and 1 out of 4 eighth-graders cannot read at the basic level. That is, when reading grade appropriate material, these students do not understand what they read. It is difficult to imagine that students who cannot understand what they read will be successful in school or gain the skills necessary to succeed in the 21st century workforce.

Much of the research informing reading instruction today was grounded in the theoretical framework known as "The Simple View of Reading" (Gough & Tunmer, 1986). According to this model, reading comprehension emerges from two distinct strands of knowledge, both of which are necessary for comprehension. One strand emphasizes word recognition skills; the other strand focuses on language comprehension and the skills needed to integrate oral language knowledge with word recognition skills. Decades of reading research have focused on word recognition skills — phonemic awareness, phonological processing, and decoding. This research is the foundation for developing instruction to enable children to "crack the code" — to get the words off the page — but mastering word level skills by themselves does not enable children to read with understanding. Word level skills are certainly necessary for children to be able to read but not sufficient for enabling children to read with understanding (Bowery, 2007; Nation, 2007).

B. Overview of the Reading for Understanding Research Initiative

Through the Reading for Understanding Research Initiative, the Institute intends to establish a Research and Development (R&D) Network that focuses on the development of reading comprehension from prekindergarten through Grade 12. The R&D Network will be comprised of a small number of Core Teams and one or two Assessment Teams. The collaborative efforts of the R&D Network will be guided by the Leadership Team, which will be comprised of two members from the Institute and two members from each of the funded Core and Assessment Teams.

The work of the Core Teams includes (a) examining underlying processes of reading comprehension and identifying malleable processes that may be targets of interventions for enhancing reading comprehension and (b) developing and testing interventions intended to improve reading comprehension. Each Core Team will be comprised of scientists who focus on (1) understanding the underlying cognitive processes (e.g., oral language and development of general knowledge, text processing, reading comprehension), (2) developing interventions (e.g., instructional approaches, curricula, technology, teacher professional development), and (3) evaluating the impact of interventions. In addition, each Core Team will include school and district personnel who will contribute to the development of interventions that are feasible and practical for implementation within existing school structures. The work of each Assessment Team is to (a) advance our theoretical understanding of reading comprehension, (b) conduct research that examines the underlying model of the development of reading comprehension from prekindergarten through Grade 12, and (c) develop and test a set of summative reading comprehension assessments.

The Institute intends for the Reading for Understanding R&D Network as a group to cover reading comprehension from prekindergarten through Grade 12. Each Core Team will address the improvement of reading comprehension for a specific grade range that covers at least 5 years between prekindergarten and Grade 12: (a) early grades from prekindergarten through Grade 3 or 4 or 5; (b) middle grades from Grade 3 or 4 or 5 through Grade 8 or 9; and (c) upper grades from Grade 7 or 8 through Grade 12. The Institute anticipates that there will be some overlap across teams with respect to grades covered (e.g., one core team covering prekindergarten through Grade 4 and another core team covering grades 3 through 8). The reading comprehension assessment team(s) will cover assessment of reading comprehension from prekindergarten through Grade 12. The basic organizational structure for the R&D Network is depicted below. Although the Institute anticipates funding at least one Core Team in each age span and at least one Assessment Team, funding will depend on the receipt of meritorious applications and the availability of funds. In FY 2010 the Institute will not fund more than two applications that cover the same (or approximately the same — for example, prekindergarten through Grade 3 and prekindergarten through Grade 4) grade span. In FY 2010, the Institute will not fund more than two assessment team applications. The figure below is intended to show the general organizational structure of the R&D network (i.e., the leadership team with, for illustrative purposes only, five Core Teams, and one Assessment Team) as well as the anticipated organizational structure for one Core Team.

In conceptualizing the Reading for Understanding R&D Network, the Institute began with a general theoretical framework for reading comprehension that includes word level, oral language, and text processing skills. Although the Institute recognizes that there are a number of models of reading comprehension, for the purpose of illustration, Perfetti's (1999) model, which integrates these three components, is described here. In this model, reading comprehension depends upon word knowledge to support both word recognition and comprehension processes. Perfetti specifies a word recognition component that includes a mapping from the visual presentation of the word to the phonological representation of the same word. This mapping is informed by reader's recognition of letters, as well as their ability to map the visual representation of the word to the word's meaning. Consequently, the process of word recognition informs (and is informed by) comprehension processes. Comprehension processes, in turn, depend upon the reader's ability to use word level information to build a representation of the text being made, to draw inferences from the text, and to represent the meaning of the text. In addition, he posits that comprehension depends upon the reader's linguistic and general knowledge.

As many reading researchers acknowledge, there are many ways in which a child can fail to comprehend what he or she has read. The research supported through the Reading for Understanding R&D Network will focus on developing interventions designed to improve the comprehension outcomes of students across the school years.

a. Oral language and general knowledge of the world

When children are first learning to read, the correlation between oral language and reading comprehension is low (e.g., Sticht & James, 1984). Word-level skills are the most important factor in determining reading comprehension for beginning readers. However, once children have mastered word level skills, the correlations between oral language and reading comprehension increase. Longitudinal studies indicate that measures of preschool children's oral language directly predict reading comprehension outcomes in fourth grade (e.g., Storch & Whitehurst, 2002). Among college students, correlations of .90 have been obtained between oral language and reading comprehension (Gernsbacher, Varner, & Faust, 1990). Other studies of adult learners with varying reading skill levels also find high correlations between listening comprehension and reading comprehension (e.g., Braze, Tabor, Shankweiler, & Mencl, 2008), as well as substantial contributions of vocabulary knowledge to reading comprehension. In addition, a number of studies have documented strong correlations between background knowledge and reading comprehension (e.g., Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Bransford & Johnson, 1972). Whereas the growth of understanding of word recognition skills has been exponential over the past 25 years, substantially less is known about how to develop oral language and background knowledge and how to support the integration of that knowledge with word level skills to foster reading comprehension. Although we recognize that children with large vocabularies are typically skilled readers, research on how to develop oral language in the context of school is still in its infancy.

What are the challenges? Language development begins early, and there are vast differences in children's vocabularies by the time they reach preschool. The average vocabulary score of children entering Head Start in 2003 was 85.6, a standard deviation below the national average of 100.¹ How can we change the trajectory of young children's oral language development for those children who enter preschool or kindergarten substantially behind their peers? We need to discover how to markedly increase the rate of growth of children's oral language and with that growth in oral language also growth in general knowledge about the world. How can we sustain an accelerated rate of growth for children who begin school behind their peers so that they can catch up and maintain a rate of growth sufficient to keep the reading gap closed across the school years?

b. Development of text processing skills for reading

In addition to enhancing word recognition skills and oral language, cognitive psychologists argue that reading instruction should incorporate a third element — a focus on developing the skills unique to reading texts (e.g., O'Reilly & McNamara, 2007; Snow, 2002). Good readers build inferences, self-monitor their comprehension, understand different text structures, and use multiple strategies, such as question asking and summarization, to build understanding during reading. Although we do not yet know how each text-related skill contributes to reading comprehension (or if the full set of text-related skills has been identified), we are beginning to recognize the importance of teaching children text-related skills. However, there is limited research on how to teach children these skills.

c. Development and validation of reading comprehension measures

Research and practice to improve word-level skills benefited from fundamental research to identify and assess the component skills that constitute word-level decoding skills. Likewise, we need to develop and validate reading comprehension measures, particularly for use in classroom settings. Much of the progress made in understanding the development of word level skills has come from the availability of reliable, sensitive, and valid measures of those skills (e.g., Capsize & Fuchs, 2005; Connor, et al., 2009; Wood, Hill, Meyer, & Flowers, 2005). Equivalent measures that can be used in the context of reading comprehension instruction in upper elementary school and beyond simply do not exist.

References

Anderson, R. C., & Pearson, P. D. (1984). A schema-thematic view of basic processes in reading comprehension (pp. 255-291). In P. D. Pearson, R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, & P. Mosenthal (Eds.), Handbook of Reading Research. New York: Longman.

Bowery, J. A. (2007). Predicting individual differences in learning to read. In M. J. Snowling & C. Hulme (Eds.), The Science of Reading: A Handbook (pp. 155-172). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Bransford, J. D., & M. K. Johnson (1972). Contextual prerequisites for understanding: Some investigations of comprehension and recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11: 717-726.

Braze, D., Tabor, W., Shankweiler, D. P., & Mencl, W. E. (2008). Speaking up for vocabulary: reading skill differences in young adults. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 40(3), 226-243.

Capsize, A. M., & Fuchs, L. S. (2005). Effect of curriculum-based measurement with and withoutdiagnostic feedback on teacher planning. Remedial and Special Education, 26, 159–174.

Connor, C. M., Piasta, S. B., Fishman, B., Glasney, S., Schatschneider, C., Crowe, E., Underwood, P., Morrison, F. J. (2009). Individualizing Student Instruction Precisely: Effects of Child x Instruction Interactions on First Graders' Literacy Development. Child Development, 80: 77-100.

Gernsbacher, M. M., Varner, K. R., & Faust, M. E. (1990). Investigating individual differences in general comprehension skill. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 16, 430-445.

Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W.E. (1986). Decoding, reading and reading disability. Remedial and Special Education, 7, 6-10.

Nation, K. (2007). Children's reading comprehension difficulties. In M. J. Snowling & C. Hulme (Eds.), The Science of Reading: A Handbook (pp. 248-265). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

O'Reilly, T., & McNamara, D. S. (2007). The impact of science knowledge, reading skill, and reading strategy knowledge on more traditional "high-stakes" measures of high school students' science achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 44(1): 161-196.

Perfetti, C. (1999). Comprehending written language: A blueprint of the reader. In C. Brown & P. Hagoort (Eds.), The neurocognition of language (pp. 167-208). Oxford University Press.

Snow, C. E. (2002). Reading for understanding : toward a research and development program in reading comprehension. Report of the RAND Reading Study Group. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.

Sticht, T.G., & James, J. H. (1984). Listening and reading. In R. Barr, M. Kamil, and P. Mosenthal (Eds.), Handbook of Reading Research. New York: Longmans.

Storch, S. A., & Whitehurst, G. J. (2002). Oral language and code-related precursors to reading: Evidence from a longitudinal structural model. Developmental Psychology, 38 (6), 934-947.

Wood, F. B., Hill, D.F., Meyer, M. S., & Flowers, D. L. (2005). Predictive assessment of reading. Annals of Dyslexia, 55(2), 193-216.