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Reading motivation is a fundamental basis for reading behavior and performance. For learners, interest is an exceedingly important component of reading motivation. Prior research has shown that students' text‐based interest varies significantly between texts. However, it is still unclear why one text elicits greater interest over another. Therefore, in this study, we investigated whether different text characteristics, such as text genre, topic, and protagonists' gender, are systematically related to students' text‐based interest. Furthermore, we examined differences between girls and boys. We used data from a sample of 504 fourth‐grade elementary school students to answer these questions. Eight texts were manipulated experimentally with respect to text genre, topic, and protagonists' gender. Students were assigned randomly to read one of the eight texts. Structural equation models showed that students' text‐based interest was related to text genre, topic, and students' gender. Moreover, students' gender interacted significantly with text topic and protagonists' gender, with boys less interested in texts with a more female‐typed text topic and in texts with female protagonists. The findings imply that text characteristics might help educators select reading material to encourage students' text‐based interest. The results are discussed in terms of research and educational practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informational reading instruction plays an important role in early literacy but has traditionally received less emphasis than literary text in elementary classrooms. This mixed‐methods study illuminates trends from observed reading instruction of 77 first‐year elementary teachers, drawing on data from 761 lesson segments scored with the Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observations, a validated observation protocol. In descriptive analyses, we report on the prevalence of informational lessons across grade levels. Then, we integrate quantitative and qualitative data to describe the quality of informational reading instruction among first‐year teachers. Findings suggest a higher percentage of informational reading lesson segments in early elementary than has been shared in previous studies: 27% of observed reading instruction in grade 1 and 41% of observed reading instruction in grade 2. Quality of informational reading lesson segments varied within and among elements of instruction, with the majority of segments rated as low scoring for strategy use. We use qualitative case sampling to illustrate the characteristics of informational reading instruction across a range of score points. Analysis of lesson segments reveals a range of practices in text‐based instruction, strategy instruction, and representations of content, with the highest quality instruction showing a combination of all three. This study contributes to our understanding of the current landscape of informational reading instruction among first‐year teachers, identifies specific instructional practices that could be the focus of improvement efforts, and weighs in on the debate about strategy instruction versus content instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Socioemotional constructs have been receiving increased attention as contributors to individuals' literacy development. However, in comparison with positive socioemotional constructs, negative socioemotional constructs have been understudied with respect to their role in reading achievement in both emergent bilinguals (EBs) and English monolinguals (EMs). In the present study, we addressed this gap by examining reading anxiety in 339 EBs, who primarily spoke Spanish as their first language, and 178 EMs in grades 3–5, using a latent variable approach. We used structural equation modeling to form latent variables for reading anxiety, reading engagement, and reading achievement; compare latent variable means for EBs and EMs; and examine relations among the three focal constructs across the two language groups. The EBs and EMs showed similar levels of reading engagement, whereas the EBs showed a trend toward greater reading anxiety and statistically significantly lower reading achievement. Further, for both EBs and EMs, reading anxiety related negatively to reading achievement, both directly and indirectly through reading engagement, controlling for grade level. However, both the direct and indirect effects were greater for EBs than EMs. We interpret these results in the context of theoretical views of potential mechanisms linking reading anxiety and achievement, giving attention especially to the multidimensional nature of reading engagement. Based on the current findings and those of other research, we conclude by contending that reading anxiety merits increased scrutiny by researchers and educators endeavoring to understand and strengthen students' reading achievement and socioemotional development during the elementary school years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning from expository texts demands the processing of metatextual cues (rhetorical devices) and the activating of reading strategies. The main objective of this study was to examine whether profiting from written metatextual cues to launch reading strategies needs higher level of rhetorical competence than profiting from oral cues. Specifically, this study addresses two questions: (1) Is there a gap between the sensitivity to oral versus written metatextual cues depending on the student's reading skill level? (2) Do the reader's rhetorical competence, general reading comprehension, and decoding levels interact with the processing of each type of metatextual cue? Three hundred sixty‐seven students (11–13 years old) summarized an expository text after reading it under one of the following four conditions: with written cues, with oral cues, with both cues combined, or with no cues. The less skilled readers who received oral or combined cues provided better summaries (they selected and organized the main ideas better) than the less skilled readers who received written cues or no cues. However, the performance of the more skilled readers was equal under the conditions with written cues, oral cues, and combined cues; these three groups outperformed the readers from the no‐cues condition group. A multicategorical moderator analysis showed that following written cues demanded higher levels of general comprehension and rhetorical competence than following oral and combined cues. These data confirm that rhetorical competence is a specific capability for processing, especially written metatextual cues, and for overcoming the gap between the sensitivity to oral versus written cues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation for reading is important to comprehension and has been studied extensively in offline reading contexts. However, little is known about the role of motivation in online reading, a new and increasingly important context for reading, largely because of a lack of valid and reliable instruments to estimate a student's motivation for online reading. The authors report on the development of the Motivations for Online Reading Questionnaire (MORQ) among 1,798 seventh‐grade students in two states. Results from confirmatory factor analysis revealed a three‐factor solution for the MORQ: curiosity/value, self‐efficacy, and self‐improvement beliefs. Additionally, measurement invariance across female and male students was established. Predictive validity of the MORQ was supported by the positive and significant contribution of the MORQ to the Online Research and Comprehension Assessment, an established measure of online reading comprehension. Results help establish the MORQ as a well‐validated instrument for measuring online reading motivation. Results are discussed in relation to theory, research, and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors conducted a small‐scale randomized control trial (n = 31 teachers) of Online Content‐Focused Coaching, an intervention consisting of an online workshop followed by multiple cycles of remote video‐based coaching, to support dialogic text discussions. Findings demonstrate the efficacy of Online Content‐Focused Coaching in three different ways. First, the authors' analyses, after accounting for differential attrition among groups, demonstrate an existence proof for effects of the intervention on both classroom text discussion quality and student achievement. Second, the authors examined and demonstrated an association between the magnitude of changes in discussion quality and the magnitude of achievement gains. Finally, the authors propose and examine evidence to support a theory for how teachers develop adaptive expertise for facilitating dialogic text discussions. Results show that teachers' use of transitional and some aspirational discussion moves grew from baseline to the end of the workshop, with limited growth in the quality of students' contributions. Over the coaching phase of the intervention, teachers' facilitation moves grew substantively, and so did students' strong contributions. The authors interpret the results to suggest that the workshop was critical for developing teachers' knowledge of the features of dialogism and that coach‐guided reflection was essential for developing teachers' expertise at using facilitation moves to elicit student thinking. Findings contribute to a validity argument for the efficacy of Online Content‐Focused Coaching. More importantly, investigating and describing the process of teaching change is the study's main theoretical contribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The simple view of reading is commonly presented to educators in professional development about the science of reading. The simple view is a useful tool for conveying the undeniable importance—in fact, the necessity—of both decoding and linguistic comprehension for reading. Research in the 35 years since the theory was proposed has revealed additional understandings about reading. In this article, we synthesize research documenting three of these advances: (1) Reading difficulties have a number of causes, not all of which fall under decoding and/or listening comprehension as posited in the simple view; (2) rather than influencing reading solely independently, as conceived in the simple view, decoding and listening comprehension (or in terms more commonly used in reference to the simple view today, word recognition and language comprehension) overlap in important ways; and (3) there are many contributors to reading not named in the simple view, such as active, self‐regulatory processes, that play a substantial role in reading. We point to research showing that instruction aligned with these advances can improve students' reading. We present a theory, which we call the active view of reading, that is an expansion of the simple view and can be used to convey these important advances to current and future educators. We discuss the need to lift up updated theories and models to guide practitioners' work in supporting students' reading development in classrooms and interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our purpose in this study was to more deeply understand the ways in which text‐based, sociohistorically situated narratives can be optimally used for promoting reading comprehension. In particular, we sought to understand the experiences and perspectives of young readers from diverse backgrounds (N = 24) as they engaged with science discovery narratives (i.e., stories by or about scientists engaged in the process of discovery), which have been shown to have advantages over traditional expository texts (i.e., those that present information without attending to the discovery process) in fostering comprehension of targeted conceptual information. Interviews were conducted and analyzed using a sociocognitive framework that positioned participants as reviewers of text quality. Findings suggest that the personal and sociohistorical elements of science discovery narratives were effective in engaging readers' interest and helped highlight the culturally situated nature of knowledge and the nature and processes of scientific inquiry. We conclude by arguing that in the development and instructional use of texts, educators would do well to consider the ways in which foregrounding sociohistorical considerations can foster engagement and, hence, greater comprehension in readers from diverse backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher preparation institutions have been critiqued for insufficient emphasis on the science of reading. The authors argue that although improving early reading success and teacher preparation are both critical issues, today's "science of reading" discourse does not fully capture the complexity of teaching students to read. First, the authors describe the lattice model of reading development, which holds that a collection of text‐based, linguistic, and regulatory processes require interleaved, individualized focus in reading instruction; this is a tall order for early/elementary teachers to deliver. Second, the authors discuss evidence from the broader science of learning that preservice elementary‐grade teachers likely need multiple, highly focused, classroom‐based opportunities for deliberate practice and feedback to be ready to teach reading. Yet, because most are trained as content generalists over just two or three years, such systematic practice in reading may not be available. Thus, it is not simply that new teachers are unaware of effective reading instructional techniques; the more fundamental issue is that these techniques are extremely complex to implement well and that teacher candidates likely need substantial scaffolding to use them. Finally, the authors explore one promising solution: embedding preservice training with focused, targeted interventions around reading instruction that have supported experienced teachers. As examples, the Assessment‐to Instruction and Story Talk programs offer teachers precise, practical guidance, bridging the research on reading and real‐world classroom practice. The authors conclude with design principles that help infuse "science of learning" principles into preservice reading education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science has greatly enhanced what we know about reading and writing. Drawing on this knowledge, researchers have proffered recommendations for how to teach these two literacy skills. Although such recommendations are aimed at closing the gap between research and practice, they often fail to take into account the reciprocal relation that exists between reading and writing. Writing and writing instruction improve students' reading and vice versa. Theory and evidence that support this reciprocal relation are presented, and implications for the scientific study of reading and writing, policy, and practice are offered, including the proposal that the sciences of reading and writing need to be better integrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to look anew at the concepts of reading, reading development, and reading research as they exist beyond the boundaries of the "science of reading" controversy. The context for this reconceptualization is reading in the digital age and the challenges that today's readers confront daily. Those challenges include information saturation, the proliferation of misleading and malicious online content, the struggle to use valid evidence to support claims, and the tendency to treat complex issues in an overly simplistic fashion. How these concerns pertain to the ongoing "science of reading" debate is also considered. The author concludes with an overview of three recommendations for addressing the challenges faced by readers in this digital age. If they are to be realized, these recommendations require the consolidated effort of reading researchers, reading educators, school leaders, parents, policymakers, and students themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this quasi‐experimental study, the authors examined the effects of an intervention designed to teach upper secondary school students to take source information, such as author expertise, into consideration when selecting, processing, and using textual resources to complete particular multiple‐document literacy tasks. The intervention centered on a contrasting cases approach framed by authentic curriculum‐based classroom activities and was implemented over six weeks by teachers who had participated in professional development seminars. The findings demonstrated that students who had participated in the sourcing intervention placed more value on source information when selecting texts, invested more time and effort in processing the texts they selected, and more frequently attributed textual ideas to their respective sources compared with students who had participated in typical classroom activities instead. These effects were observed on far transfer tasks in which students worked with multiple documents on different topics in different situational contexts for different purposes, and were sustained over a period of 5.5 weeks. The discussion highlights the uniqueness of the current intervention work and centers on the aspects of the sourcing intervention that likely promoted these broad, sustainable, and transferable sourcing skills in students. Attention is also directed to several possible lines of future research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this randomized trial study, the authors examined the efficacy of a practitioner partnership language intervention addressing oral language learning (expressive and receptive) in young language‐minority learners from multiple‐language groups in Norway. Resource teachers in 16 elementary schools implemented the intervention in the first and second grades, delivering a total of 64 thirty‐minute sessions over eight consecutive weeks. With a mean age of 6 years 3.34 months, 137 students were randomly allocated to an intervention group or a waiting‐list control group, with the latter group receiving the intervention after posttest 1. Five assessments of oral language skills were conducted before the intervention, immediately following it, and four months later. The intervention group showed significant improvements in various oral language skills compared with the waiting‐list control group. There were no significant differences between the groups at the four‐month follow‐up when the waiting‐list control group received the intervention. The program was successful in enhancing oral language skills in young language‐minority learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the authors examined the impact of a vocabulary intervention designed to support vocabulary depth, or the building of semantic networks, in preschool children (n = 30). The authors further investigated the effect of specific instructional strategies on growth in vocabulary depth. The intervention employed shared book reading and guided play methods to teach words in conceptually linked categories, such as taxonomic and thematic groups. Using a within‐subjects design, analyses indicated that the intervention had significant positive effects on children's depth of vocabulary knowledge. Children showed significantly greater growth in vocabulary depth for words taught in taxonomies as compared with words taught in themes. Three types of semantic information were learned more deeply for taxonomy words as compared with theme words: information about category membership, perceptual features, and object function. Results suggest that fostering deep vocabulary knowledge involves not only teaching single word entities but also introducing systems of conceptually related words to build semantic networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]