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Identification with fictional characters refers to the psychological process involving a sense of emotional and cognitive connection with fictional personas, leading to a heightened sense of empathy and personal investment in the character's narrative arc. This study aims to conceptualize the impact of identification with fictional characters on empathetic engagement, cognitive engagement, and social navigation. The research utilized the Empathy and Identification with Characters Scale to screen participants for semi-structured interviews. Six female participants aged 18-21 were selected for the study. Using grounded theory, several key findings emerged. Engagement with fictional characters facilitated profound self-discovery and personal development, with participants integrating character traits into their identities. Emotional connections with characters enhance the capacity for empathy and emotional understanding in real-life interactions. Character-driven narratives served as mirrors for self-reflection, inspiring acceptance and growth by addressing personal insecurities. Interpreting fictional narratives expanded cognitive engagement, encouraging perspective-taking and exploration of diverse human behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use the sociocognitive approach of critical discourse studies to examine the media's discourse on homelessness in Portland, Oregon in the United States. Using the discourse-cognition-society triangle of critical discourse studies we find that the discursive and semiotic structures largely advance an us-versus-them discourse and personal choice. These discourses build upon cognitive structures that include reference to the ideologies of hard work and personal responsibility, which are fundamental ideologies in the United States. The need for collective action is recognized but is muted. These discourses and cognitions interact with and inform social and political efforts by advancing solutions which rely upon non-profits rather than government intervention, for government intervention is portrayed as inefficient. This belief in the limited role of government is a primary ideology in the United States. Contributions of this study include demonstrating how the central ideologies of a nation influence local understandings of homelessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vocabulary learning is an essential component of early literacy instruction. However, choosing appropriate words for instruction can be a challenge, with many resources encouraging the instruction of words that are either too easy or too obscure. This article, based on a systematic review of vocabulary interventions, presents research‐based principles for choosing words to teach. The principles include teaching a variety of words rather than relying too heavily on concrete nouns, choosing "just right" words that are neither too easy nor too hard, teaching words that are useful for accessing complex text and communicating with others, and teaching words that consider the context and the needs of learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online learning environments afford opportunities for participation and equally offer a new perspective on engaging vicariously. Drawing on the concept of vicarious learning and taking account of the roles of input and interaction for language development, this paper reports on an enquiry into students' retrospective use of recorded group tutorials. It is the first to investigate in what ways indirect participation in interactive online sessions may mediate second language learning. The study harnessed user data (N = 964) and explored learner perception through semi-structured interviews (n = 13) to increase our understanding of who uses tutorial recordings and to what perceived linguistic and motivational benefit. The article argues that recorded group tutorials may support language learning by encouraging deep engagement with interactional input. This is relevant to educational practice in online and blended contexts, as well as to our understanding of language learning as a cognitive and social activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study examines how the beliefs that adolescent readers hold about knowledge and knowing are activated during online reading. The research questions center on the pattern of these readers’ epistemic processes through which more or less productive learning occurs. High school students performed a critical online reading task on a controversial topic; 10 more successful readers and 10 less successful readers were then selected based on their topic knowledge gain and the quality of the questions that they constructed in response to their online reading. The epistemic processes of these two groups’ 20 readers were inferred from their concurrent verbal reports. Verbal reports were coded and classified qualitatively until concrete types of epistemic processing were recognized; the coded data were then quantified for statistical group comparisons to identify and interpret emerging patterns. The results indicated that more successful online readers tended to engage in higher order epistemic processes when judging information sources, monitoring their knowing processes, and regulating their alternative knowledge‐seeking actions, whereas the epistemic actions of their less successful counterparts were more often disconnected and tended to function at a surface level. Cross‐categorical associations were found among epistemic judgment, monitoring, and regulation, suggesting that epistemic processes operate interactively. Implications of the study's results are discussed in relation to literacy research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In the past, several assessment reports on writing repeatedly showed that elementary school students do not develop the essential writing skills to be successful in school. In this respect, prior research has pointed to the fact that cognitive and motivational challenges are at the root of the rather basic level of elementary students' writing performance. Additionally, previous research has revealed gender and achievement‐level differences in elementary students' writing. In view of providing effective writing instruction for all students to overcome writing difficulties, the present study provides more in‐depth insight into (a) how cognitive and motivational challenges mediate and correlate with students' writing performance and (b) whether and how these relations vary for boys and girls and for writers of different achievement levels. In the present study, 1,577 fifth‐ and sixth‐grade students completed questionnaires regarding their writing self‐efficacy, writing motivation, and writing strategies. In addition, half of the students completed two writing tests, respectively focusing on the informational or narrative text genre. Based on multiple group structural equation modeling (MG‐SEM), we put forward two models: a MG‐SEM model for boys and girls and a MG‐SEM model for low, average, and high achievers. The results underline the importance of studying writing models for different groups of students in order to gain more refined insight into the complex interplay between motivational and cognitive challenges related to students' writing performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study drew on observations of 40 secondary English language arts, history, and science lessons to describe variation in opportunities for students to engage in argumentation and possible implications for student engagement and learning. The authors focused their analysis on two broad dimensions of argumentation tasks: (1) Instructional focus categorized tasks as learning to argue, arguing to learn, or interactive argumentation focused on evaluating different possible meanings and interpretations of text. (2) Inquiry space described the degree to which the question, possible claims, and knowledge and skills needed to accomplish an argumentation task were predetermined. Findings point to task characteristics as a potentially powerful influence on instruction and resultant student engagement. Although most of the argumentation tasks focused on arguing to learn, the authors found that both arguing-to-learn and learning-to-argue tasks were frequently based on predetermined questions, answers, and content. In contrast, interactive argumentation was generally shaped by student questions and interpretations. Using contrasting illustrations from observed lessons, the authors theorize about the role of inquiry space in argumentation teaching and learning. Given that students' interactive argumentation often revealed important argumentative reasoning, the authors argue for recognizing these activities as argumentation and exploring their potential in the development of argumentation literacy skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the hypothesis that assisted writing during reading improves reading comprehension. The hypothesis was derived from sociocognitive and constructivist theory and research and implemented in the form of a curricular intervention called Writing Intensive Reading Comprehension after its main feature of bringing together reading comprehension and writing. The study used instruction with interactive thinksheets to provide sustained, focused, and assisted writing experiences to help students in low-performing urban schools construct understandings of their reading. The study used a cluster randomized trial design. Results support the hypothesis that bringing together reading and writing through instruction using thinksheets produces levels of reading comprehension superior to traditional instruction. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses of pretest and posttest data from 1,062 fourth- and fifth-grade students in 50 classrooms and 10 schools (four 2-year experimental, three 1-year experimental, and three control schools) also revealed greater effects for special education and low-income students in the experimental group. The study also revealed uneven improvement among experimental classrooms with regard to students' grade level, length of exposure to the intervention, and teachers' fidelity of implementation. The results imply that the upper grade students with the longer treatment and higher fidelity of implementation benefited more from the intervention. The study extends theory and research on reading-writing connections and suggests additional research and practical applications using assisted writing to improve reading comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has identified various factors that contribute to readers' comprehension of expository texts, including strategy expertise, language proficiency, prior knowledge, and more recently, readers' beliefs about knowledge. This study addresses the need to understand the relative contributions of these predictors to readers' comprehension of multiple texts and the processes used by readers to make sense of texts. Eighty-three students (grades 5-7) participated in this mixed-methods study. The sample consisted of monolingual students and emergent and proficient bilingual students who completed measures of expository comprehension, strategic knowledge and awareness, English-language proficiency, prior content knowledge, and epistemic beliefs. Ten bilingual students from this sample also completed a think-aloud protocol to allow for close examination of their meaning-making processes. In a multiple regression analysis, English-language proficiency was the strongest predictor of comprehension, followed by content knowledge. Strategy knowledge and awareness and epistemic beliefs were not related to multiple-text comprehension in the model. The relationship between English-language proficiency and comprehension was stronger for bilingual students than for monolingual students. Students in the think-aloud sample demonstrated emergent knowledge of processes of disciplinary reading of multiple texts, including metacognitive monitoring, theorizing authorial identity, and intertextual integration, while also displaying a tendency to defer to institutionalized authority when evaluating credibility of the texts. The findings provide directions for future research on the way young adolescents comprehend and learn from expository texts in the discipline of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic writing can be laborious for Chinese L2 undergraduates, not to mention that assessing their work is challenging and complex. While the linguistic features of Chinese undergraduate writing have been reidentified to be different in recent studies, experimental research on move analysis through the lens of contrastive rhetoric offers insights of Chinese students' approaches to fulfilling the rhetorical requirements in writing. From the sociocognitive perspective, this study investigated Chinese students' essays across genres and languages, focusing on moves/steps in introductions and their relation to essay quality. 264 essays by L2 novice writers were statistically analyzed. Results reveal that most participants' writings gradually adopted elements of English academic writing, but they hybridly structured essays across genres and languages. Only 25.7% of the essays contained the three primary moves necessary for introductions and received the highest scores. Irrespective of language or genre, 80.3% stated essay's purpose in introductions, but 19.7% did not. More than one-third of the participants began narrative essays with extensive descriptions of topic background, a feature of Chinese writing; such an opening strategy led to the essays not academically valued, especially when thesis and gap were not identified. The research findings hold implications for academic writing teaching and assessment. • Chinese novice writers hybridly composed essays across genres and languages. • Chinese novice writers began essays with extensive background descriptions. • Chinese novice writers' opening strategy showed a feature of Chinese writing. • Chinese learners' writings are adopting more English style elements. • Most Chinese novice writers could not make the three major moves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peer review is a reciprocal process in which writers both give and receive feedback. Both activities may contribute to student learning; however, few studies have examined the effects of giving feedback separately. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of giving feedback on the quality of the reviewers' own persuasive writing. Fourth- and fifth-grade students ( n = 145) received training in evaluation using genre-specific criteria. They were then randomly assigned to three groups: reviewer, reader control, and time control. The reviewers read persuasive essays, rated them, and gave written suggestions. To control for the effect of reading the essays, the reader control group read the same essays but did not evaluate them; finally, the time control group read narratives to control for time and effort. On the immediate posttests, to assess effects on revision, all students revised two essays written at pretest. To assess transfer and delayed transfer, students wrote and revised essays on new topics. On the immediate posttests, students in the reviewer group included more elements to address the opposing position and end with a message to the reader. In addition, reviewers produced better quality final essays than both control groups did on one immediate posttest and the transfer posttest, and better essays than the reader control group did on the delayed transfer. Implications for research and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a new century begins for The Modern Language Journal, we argue that highly effective pedagogy requires viewing language and language learning as both cognitive and social phenomena, and that teachers who seek to truly understand the nature of their responsibilities do not have the luxury of choosing one perspective over the other. We first identify what we consider to be theory-neutral nonnegotiable boundaries within which pedagogical decision making takes place, including (a) participants' background knowledge, (b) the nature of the object of instruction, (c) the nature of human cognition and social interaction, and (d) available time. Then we discuss learning goals, learning means, and instructional support as the negotiable elements that teachers may manipulate through their instructional decisions. At the heart of the article, we describe in greater detail cognitive versus social perspectives on the dynamic relationship between teaching and learning, and we identify ways in which they diverge and converge in characterizing linguistic development. We then synthesize these perspectives in a holistic, sociocognitive view of pedagogy, which we define as 'a meeting of minds within social worlds.' We conclude by outlining current pedagogical proposals that exemplify sociocognitive pedagogy by engaging learners in iterative cycles of modeling, guidance, and handover to independent language use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I focus on three areas of reading assessment that I believe to be crucial for students' reading development: developing comprehensive formative assessments, assessing the wide array of factors that contribute to students' reading development, and fostering student independence by helping students learn to use reading assessment on their own. I also describe the consistent and negative effects of high-stakes testing on related reading assessment efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.S. adolescents' prior technology experiences and exposure to digital genres vary, but they will often write digital texts as they enter college and adulthood. We explored middle school students' digital writing instructional experience in the context of a university-based summer digital writing camp. The sixth- through eighth-grade adolescents fell into three profile groups: digital passengers, digital navigators, and digital drivers. Each group displayed distinct patterns of prior technology experiences and exposure to digital genres, digital writing processes, and instructional needs. Their digital writing instructional experience suggests that prior technology experiences and exposure to digital genres influence the ways adolescents envision and enact digital writing. In the middle school classroom, teachers may need to address a range of instructional needs during digital writing instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to teach writing effectively, teachers need assessment tools that work for diagnostic purposes-tools that can help them identify students' specific strengths and challenges with writing, as well as generate new ideas for instruction. This study explored what 5 high school teachers (3 ELA and 2 ESL) learned about their students' strengths and challenges as writers from the students' performance on a think-aloud-protocol ( TAP) Assessment, how this information differed from what they knew about the students as writers based only on their previous writing in class, and what ideas this new TAP-generated information gave them for instruction. We found that the TAP Assessment was especially useful in generating new information related to audience awareness, interpretation of the task, and self-evaluation. Teachers also offered creative suggestions for adapting the TAP Assessment for further use in their classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding, reading, and writing using academic language has increasingly become a focus in our schools. One of the salient features of academic vocabulary is morphological complexity. Many words are considered derivationally morphologically complex, meaning they have roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Affixes can be challenging for students as they attempt to uncover the meanings of new words. This article reviews the characteristics and challenges with derivational suffixes to increase teachers' understanding, and offers several strategies to engage students in their understanding of suffixes. These strategies are not meant to be isolated lessons but rather ways to incorporate language awareness across content and throughout the school year [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon an explanation of the proleptic, an understanding of time as being socially constructed within specific contexts, to interpret a series of dramatic sequences enacted in ethnodramatic pedagogy. The authors present two major arguments: (1) teachers can help students analyze the processes that influence and shape their identities by adopting a proleptic framework; (2) ethnodrama, a dramatic and dialogic approach to interpreting texts, creates an opportunity for students to evaluate the social forces that shape identity construction as they situate and reflect on texts within multiple contexts. The authors delineate the ways in which teachers can use ethnodrama to help students revise their understandings of the personal and cultural implications of texts by situating these understandings in different configurations of place, space, and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the extent to which a dictionary embedded in an e-book with static or dynamic visuals with and without printed focal words affects word learning. A pretest-posttest design was used to measure gains of expressive words' meaning and their spelling. The participants included 250 Hebrew-speaking second graders from low-socioeconomic status families who were randomly assigned to five equal groups. Four groups read the e-book with a dictionary with (1) static visuals (SVs) without the printed focal words, (2) dynamic visuals (DVs) without the printed focal words, (3) SVs with the printed focal words, or (4) DVs with the printed focal words. The fifth group read the e-book without a dictionary (control). The results show that word explanations and word use progressed the most after reading the e-book with DVs and printed focal words. Less progress was observed when reading with SVs with printed focal words and DVs without printed focal words. Even less progress was observed when reading with SVs without printed focal words. The lowest support was in the control group, who read the e-book without a dictionary. Word spelling progressed significantly in all groups. This study contributes to our knowledge on the potential benefits of multimedia for supporting the language and literacy of preschoolers. More specifically, it shows the contribution of a dynamic dictionary together with printed focal words for expressive word learning, along with the benefit of highlighted text in an e-book for supporting word spelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of the Common Core State Standards, college and career readiness, is dependent of teaching for transfer - the ability to apply the knowledge, skills and disposition learned in one context to another or future context. In this article we discuss the types of transfer, automatic application or deliberate conscious application. We then discuss what teachers can do to insure that students will transfer what they learn to new and future contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As teachers organize classroom schedules to meet curricular demands and time constraints, they strive to seek ways to motivate and sustain student engagement in quality vocabulary instruction, enjoyable learning experiences, and interesting informational books. This article addresses these concerns and describes a vocabulary acquisition strategy called the Generative Vocabulary Matrix (GVM). The GVM is an interactive concept organizer that scaffolds student engagement in meaning-making discourse to develop background knowledge. Teacher teams applied research on motivation and literacy to design a disciplinary science unit using a GVM as a tool for supporting conceptual understanding within a Learning Workshop context. Because learning activities resembled the language and practices that experts actually use in their field, including drawing from a richly structured schema, the GVM supports a disciplinary literacy approach for young learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains how to create and use a daybook in the literacy classroom. Readers learn what a daybook is, how the daybook in one fourth and fifth grade classroom is structured, and how students in this classroom use that daybook during reading instruction to engage, record important information, and discuss a text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proponents of the iatrogenic model of the etiology of dissociative identity disorder (DID) have expressed concern that treatment focused on direct engagement and interaction with dissociated self-states harms DID patients. However, empirical data have shown that this type of DID treatment is beneficial. Analyzing data from the prospective Treatment of Patients With Dissociative Disorders (TOP DD) Study, we test empirically whether DID treatment is associated with clinically adverse manifestations of dissociated self-states: acting so differently that one feels like different people, hearing voices, and dissociative amnesia. We show that, over the course of the study, there were significant decreases in feeling like different people and hearing voices. These results indicate that this form of DID treatment does not lead to symptomatic worsening in these dimensions, as predicted by the iatrogenic model. Indeed, treatment provided by TOP DD therapists reduced, rather than increased, the extent to which patients experienced manifestations of pathological dissociation. Because severe symptomatology and impairment are associated with DID, iatrogenic harm may come from depriving DID patients of treatment that targets DID symptomatology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how middle school students use morphemes, or units of meaning within a word, to conclude the meaning of an unknown word and what teaching methods can be used to promote this. The authors note that many students use morphological knowledge, or awareness of a root word's meaning, along with morphological awareness, or the ability to relate a morpheme to a word's meaning, to improve their vocabulary, spelling, and reading comprehension. Particular attention is given to how this learning strategy is used by English language learners (ELs) as well as on a study of effective teaching methods for U.S. middle school students.

We now have an evidence base that documents that we could teach every child by the end of first grade. However, most schools have almost none of the key aspects of instruction that have been available in the research to ensure we achieve this goal. In this paper I argue that this failure is not the result of inadequate funding but rather primarily results from an aged system of beliefs about the inevitability that some students will always fail to learn to read. That belief system along with a lack of familiarity with what researchers have demonstrated in the past decade perpetuate schooling where far too many children fail to thrive as readers. In the end, it is up to us, the adults in the school system, to alter our efforts such that every child becomes a reader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article covers a January 2012 conference on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), sets of U.S. education standards, and how they address language development and content area learning. Information is provided on presentations which explored how the CCSS incorporate lessons on reading, writing, and speaking language as well as mathematical and science practices that require language skills.

This study modeled the interrelationships of reading instruction, motivation, engagement, and achievement in two contexts, employing data from 1,159 seventh graders. In the traditional reading/language arts (R/ LA) context, all students participated in traditional R/ LA instruction. In the intervention R/ LA context, 854 students from the full sample received Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction ( CORI) while the remainder continued to receive traditional R/ LA. CORI emphasizes support for reading motivation, reading engagement, and cognitive strategies for reading informational text. Seven motivation constructs were included: four motivations that are usually positively associated with achievement (intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, valuing, and prosocial goals) and three motivations that are usually negatively associated with achievement (perceived difficulty, devaluing, and antisocial goals). Reading engagement was also represented by positive and negative constructs, namely dedication to and avoidance of reading. Gender, ethnicity, and income were statistically controlled in all analyses. In the traditional R/ LA context, a total network model prevailed, in which motivation was associated with achievement both directly and indirectly through engagement. In contrast, in the intervention R/ LA context, a dual-effects model prevailed, in which engagement and achievement were separate outcomes of instruction and motivation. The intervention R/ LA context analyses revealed that CORI was associated with positive changes in motivation, engagement, and achievement relative to traditional R/ LA instruction. The discussion explains why there were different relations in the two instructional contexts and demonstrates the importance of simultaneously examining both positive (affirming) and negative (undermining) forms of motivation and engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supplementing classroom reading with smartphones can develop better vocabulary knowledge, comprehension, technology skills, and writing. This article connects smartphones to reading complex, informational text and the Common Core State Standards ( CCSS). The author suggests that smartphones motivate, scaffold comprehension, and invite investigations that allow students to engage with authors, illustrators, and each other in ways that invite deep and thoughtful reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article summarizes conclusions reached regarding the independent reading perspectives and practices of eight elementary teachers, acknowledging the significant role teacher understandings and practices play on the literacy learning process and specifically on classroom independent reading. The commonalities in beliefs and practices regarding independent reading of these eight highly effective elementary teachers may lead to better insight for other teachers regarding the use of independent reading as a component of literacy learning. Included are practical outcomes of these findings, including independent reading events that incorporate teacher guidance, focus on student learning, and privilege student needs. Classroom implications of these findings might allow other teachers to more confidently embed independent reading in their literacy programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the importance of critical thinking as a component of literacy education, and examines its relevance to engagement in democracy and in digital media. Methods for teaching digital literacy to students are examined, and the suggestion to use digital media projects to engage students in social issues is presented. The importance of critical thinking ability for full participation in democracy is also emphasized, and the relationship between democratic engagement and digital ability is touched on.