Project Activities
PACT is a fully-developed reading intervention that uses social studies content to engage students and to teach them to build coherent representations of the ideas in texts. Lessons include teaching background information on a topic, essential vocabulary related to the unit's topic, and team-based learning, which encourages students to have text-based discussions with peers and to justify and defend their ideas with evidence from the text. In this study, schools will be randomly assigned to implement either PACT or typical social studies instructional practices in their 8th grade social studies classrooms. Students will be assessed on reading and social studies outcomes before and after receiving the assigned intervention.
Structured Abstract
Setting
This project will take place in rural, urban, and suburban districts in eight states: California, Colorado, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Tennessee, and Texas.
Sample
Approximately 27,000 eighth grade students and their 180 middle school teachers will participate in this study.
Intervention
PACT is a fully-developed text and discourse-based reading intervention that focuses on teaching social studies content and using the content to improve reading comprehension. Lessons include essential vocabulary, background knowledge, and content instruction. Team-based learning activities group three-to-four students together to discuss the content and use the text to support and justify their arguments in discourse with their peers. The intervention materials include semi-scripted lesson plans for each day of instruction, supporting visuals and multimedia components such as videos, poster-sized game boards for knowledge application activities, and student spiral bound books related to text passages. Implementation is supported by a 2-day professional development session for teachers.
Research design and methods
This project team will implement a multi-site cluster randomized trial carried out in three cohorts. All public middle schools in all of the abovementioned states will be stratified according to school demographic factors (e.g., school-wide SES, locale, prevalence of English Learners, etc.), and then matched pairs of schools will be randomly assigned to the treatment or the control groups. Approximately 20 schools per year will participate for a total of 60 schools across the three cohorts. Researchers will administer measures to students before the implementation of the assigned intervention, after the intervention, and 8 weeks after the intervention has ended.
Control condition
Students receive standard classroom practices in place at the school.
Key measures
Student outcome measures include measures for social studies content learning, reading in social studies, and general reading comprehension. Specifically, measures include the researcher-designed Assessment of Social Studies Knowledge and Comprehension (ASK), which includes a Content Reading Comprehension subtest, and the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test—4th Edition.
Data analytic strategy
Researchers will use multilevel multi-group structural equation models, with students nested in classes and classes nested in schools, to analyze the main impact questions. The research team will include individual pretest scores and school-level mean pretest scores in the models.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Products and publications
Products: The products of this project include evidence of the efficacy of the PACT intervention and peer reviewed publications.
Supplemental information
Co-Principal Investigators: Sharon Vaughn; Elizabeth Swanson; Jeanne Wanzek (Vanderbilt University)
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
