Description:

Co-Principal Investigator(s): Beck, Isabel

Purpose:In this project, the researchers proposed to develop standardized lessons using common texts and two major approaches to comprehension instruction. The researchers would then implement the approaches and pilot test their promise for improving education outcomes. In the early 2000s, research suggested that the field needed a deeper understanding of the kind of instructional practices that affect students' comprehension. Two approaches emerged: a strategies approach, in which students are explicitly taught how to apply specific strategies to the reading process, and a content approach, in which focuses on keeping students' attention directed toward the content of what they are reading and working through the text to build a representation of the ideas the text presents. Using these two instructional approaches, the researchers aimed to develop instruction.

Structured Abstract

THE FOLLOWING CONTENT DESCRIBES THE PROJECT AT THE TIME OF FUNDING

Sample: The research will involve classrooms of fifth grade students from high-poverty, low-achieving school districts. Minorities, chiefly African Americans, make up 40 percent or more of the districts' populations.

Intervention:The proposed work is a series of design studies over 3 years in which we iteratively develop, implement, evaluate, and revise standardized instruction for strategies and content approaches to comprehension instruction.

Often design studies are very exploratory and are used to initially create instructional practices that conform to a theoretical conception or principle. However, there have already been instructional practices developed around strategies and content approaches. But because of the variety of instantiations and the often limited information about procedures included in reports of the research, many questions remain about implications for effective practice. Thus, the next step is to bound and standardize the instructional possibilities so the approaches can be reliably compared.

Research Design and Methods: The research method will be primarily quasi-experimental, as we will use intact classrooms to compare instructional conditions. Because of this design, background data will be collected to reveal comparability of the groups and to allow for statistical control of existing differences. In the final phase of the project, we will attempt to make the quasi-experiments better match the results obtainable from experimental design by working closely with the participating schools to obtain random assignment of students to classes.

Key Measures: Measures will focus on comprehension of texts used in classroom lessons, analysis of classroom discourse, and pretesting and post-testing of the ability to monitor comprehension and transfer of enhanced comprehension to new texts.

Products and Publications

ERIC Citations: Find available citations in ERIC for this award here.

Select Publications:

Book chapters

McKeown, M.G., and Beck, I.L. (2009). The Role of Metacognition in Understanding and Supporting Reading Comprehension. In D.J. Hacker, J. Dunlosky, and A.C. Graesser (Eds.), Handbook of Metacognition in Education (pp. 7–25). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Journal articles

McKeown, M.G., Beck, I.L., and Blake, R.G.K. (2009). Rethinking Reading Comprehension Instruction: A Comparison of Instruction for Strategies and Content Approaches. Reading Research Quarterly, 44(3): 218–253. doi:10.1598/RRQ.44.3.1