Co-Principal Investigator: Annemarie Palincsar, University of Michigan

Purpose: There is a significant knowledge base that the reading community has developed regarding what successful students know about reading, what instructional opportunities are necessary to support the development of successful readers, and what teachers need to know in order to teach reading. However, there is a much less well-established knowledge base informing efforts to translate knowledge about reading into knowledge designed for use by teacher-educators. Furthermore, the preponderance of research that has been conducted on teacher education in reading has been by researchers in the context of their own teaching. In order to address this problem, the researchers will identify the current knowledge base for teaching reading comprehension and translate that knowledge base into high-leverage practices that could serve as the core of reading methods courses.

Project: The researchers will develop, assess, and refine five Reading Comprehension Instruction Modules for use by teacher-educators in the preparation of teachers who work with students in grades 4 through 8. These modules will address five topics: reading comprehension processes and impediments to reading comprehension, text analysis, planning and enacting robust reading comprehension instruction with a particular focus on the use of discussion to support text comprehension, assessing comprehension, and comprehension instruction with on-line text. Moreover, the researchers will examine the role of declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge in reading instruction, and investigate the translation of this knowledge into pedagogical content knowledge for teaching reading comprehension. Finally, they will study how pedagogical content knowledge is revealed and developed by prospective teachers whom the field is preparing to be well-started beginners, as well as current teachers who are returning to teacher education programs for professional development.

Products: The expected outcomes of this research include the development of reading comprehension modules (teacher and student resources) for use in pre-service and in-service teacher professional development, and published reports on the development and effects of the modules on teacher educators' knowledge of reading comprehension instruction and on their students' reading comprehension.

Structured Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this project is to develop concrete resources that will translate the significant knowledge base that has now accrued regarding the teaching of reading comprehension into high-leverage teaching practices designed to serve as core components of reading methods courses.

Setting: The setting for this project includes teacher professional development sessions, both pre-service and in-service, located in 8 different states in the midwestern, southern, and eastern regions of the United States.

Population: The participants in this project include 10 teacher educators from 8 different states who teach pre-service and in-service undergraduate and Masters' students in public and private institutions. These teacher educators will use the modules with their students (approximately 250 students annually in each of 3 years).

Intervention: The researchers will develop, assess, and refine five Reading Comprehension Instruction Modules for use by teacher educators in the preparation of teachers who work with students in grades 4 through 8. These modules will address five topics: reading comprehension processes and impediments to reading comprehension, text analysis, planning and enacting robust reading comprehension instruction with a particular focus on the use of discussion to support text comprehension, assessing comprehension, and comprehension instruction with on-line text. The modules will be developed, implemented, evaluated, and refined in three phases. In Phase 1, prototype modules will be developed and demonstrated for the teacher-educators in a summer workshop. In Phases 2 and 3, the teacher-educators will implement the modules with their students during the year, collect implementation and student assessment data, and during second and third summer workshops, respectively, provide feedback on the modules to inform another revision-implementation cycle.

Research Design and Methods: In their development work, the researchers will use a design that combines experimental and descriptive research. The experimental research is designed to investigate the effects of implementing the Reading Comprehension Instruction Modules and their successive iterations on the pedagogical content knowledge for reading comprehension instruction of teacher-educators, as well as the teachers these educators prepare.

Key Measures: Key measures in this project include two assessments designed to measure teachers' pedagogical content knowledge specific to reading comprehension instruction in the context of discussion: the Comprehension and Learning from Text Survey (CoLTS) and the Video Viewing Task. The research team will also assess student learning data collected from module-specific knowledge measures and performance-based assessments. Videotapes of lessons, teaching logs, student assessments, and teacher-educator and student surveys will also be employed.

Data Analytic Strategy: Pre-test and post-test data from the CoLTS and the Video Viewing Task, as well as module-specific knowledge measures and performance assessments, will be analyzed to investigate learning related to reading comprehension instruction. Descriptive research, conducted with videotapes of class sessions and teaching log data, will be used to explore the relationship between fidelity of implementation and learning outcomes. A simple two-tailed t-test will be conducted to determine whether gain scores are significant. Fidelity of implementation will be determined by compiling data from the teaching logs and assigning scores that reflect the time allocated to the modules and the comprehensiveness with which the modules were implemented. The researchers will conduct a regression analysis designed to examine the influences of the treatment controlling for: teacher educator knowledge, teacher educator years of experience, student status (in-service or pre-service), and fidelity of implementation.

Products and Publications

Journal article, monograph, or newsletter

Kucan, L., and Palincsar, A.S. (2011). Text–Based Discussion: The Case of Reading. Teacher's College Record, 113(12): 2989–2922.

Kucan, L., Hapgood, S., and Palincsar, A.S. (2011). Teachers' Specialized Knowledge for Supporting Student Comprehension in Text–Based Discussions. Elementary School Journal, 112(1): 61–82.

Kucan, L., Palincsar, A.S., Khasnabis, D., and Chang, C. (2009). The Video Viewing Task: A Source of Information for Assessing and Addressing Teacher Understanding of Text–Based Discussion. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(3): 415–423.

** This project was submitted to and funded under Teacher Quality: Reading and Writing in FY 2008.