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The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Reading aims to measure reading comprehension for students in the United States and to monitor progress in our education system. NAEP Reading is developed based on an assessment framework document that is periodically revised to reflect the latest understandings about reading comprehension and its assessment. A key goal of the Visioning Panel (VP) and the Development Panel (DP) charged with updating the NAEP Reading Assessment Framework for 2026 was to lay the foundation for an assessment that made progress toward greater fairness, equity, and validity. In this essay, we discuss how the Framework development process unfolded and its results. We document the unusual ways the National Assessment Governing Board ("the Board") shaped the development process. We provide evidence that a small group of Board members aimed to preserve the status quo in reading assessment by downplaying reliance on expertise and authoritative sources of research on reading, learning, and assessment and by removing attention to equity in NAEP Reading. We also discuss both successful (i.e., approved by the Board) and unsuccessful (i.e., rejected by the Board) recommendations for changes to the 2026 Framework that initially were proposed by the DP. We end by considering how, despite the efforts of the small group of Board members, we as a literacy field can improve the nature and impact of our large-scale reading assessments, and NAEP in particular.

Systemic oppression includes inequitable education that historically does not fully prepare students for comprehensive participation in society. The tools of science education, however, uniquely enable students to explore social inequities as well as the natural world. Thus, a role of education can be to embed social justice in science curricula. Presented here are three case studies that investigate pedagogical methods used by experienced teachers to integrate social justice into upper level high-school biology curricula. Two separate semi-constructed interviews were conducted with participants, along with an analysis of their pedagogical materials. Two main themes are identified and explored: (1) delivery methods (pedagogy) and (2) biological science content. Storytelling and culturally responsive pedagogy were reported to be highly effective in engaging students; using these vehicles for delivery, social justice content can be seamlessly introduced alongside organic evolution. This embedded exploratory multiple-case study serves as an example of how science education can become a tool for student empowerment.

Online inquiry, or using the Internet to generate questions and then search for, analyse, and synthesise information about these questions, is an essential part of digital literacy. However, processes involved in online inquiry are substantially complex. Prior research suggests that digital platforms can scaffold online inquiry processes. Moreover, the value of scaffolding dialogue in collaborative activities has been shown to enhance critical thinking, an important part of online inquiry. This study investigates whether the use of digital platforms designed to scaffold online inquiry can support productive dialogue when used collaboratively. Data from four pairs of high school students was collected as they worked together using both the digital platform and multiple online sources outside the platform to complete an online inquiry task. Each pair's interactions were analysed to investigate whether features of the digital platform prompted productive dialogue. In line with research suggesting the use of academic language influences content understanding, each pair's use of certain academic terms related to the task and digital platform's interface were also statistically examined. Results suggested that most productive dialogue occurred when using the digital platform. Additionally, two of the four academic terms investigated occurred more often in talk while interacting with the digital platform, compared to talk when on another website. A comparison of timelines associated with these terms offered examples of how initially they were said exclusively while on the tool, and then progressed towards independent use.

Students face several challenges when asked to locate relevant and credible information from the internet. This article introduces three principles for designing online inquiry lessons and documents what we learned from five language arts teachers from Finland who implemented and provided feedback on a learning unit framed in those design principles. Teachers implemented a researcher-designed online inquiry unit in nine upper secondary school classrooms. The unit included four 75-minute lessons sequenced to support the location, evaluation, and synthesis of information students encountered in an online inquiry task. Teachers' diaries revealed their impressions of the unit, problems encountered, and exceptions made to the designed plan. Follow-up interviews revealed additional insights about appropriate time allocation, clear instruction, and areas where students benefit from explicit guidance in strategy use. Findings suggest a researcher-teacher collaboration can be a fruitful endeavor to assist in advancing the design of productive online inquiry activities.

In this commentary, the author explores the tension between almost 30 years of work that has embraced increasingly complex conceptions of digital reading and recent studies that risk oversimplifying digital reading as a singular entity analogous with reading text on a screen. The author begins by tracing a line of theoretical and empirical work that both informs and complicates our understanding of digital literacy and, more specifically, digital reading. Then, a heuristic is proposed to systematically organize, label, and define a multifaceted set of increasingly complex terms, concepts, and practices that characterize the spectrum of digital reading experiences. Research that informs this heuristic is used to illustrate how more precision in defining digital reading can promote greater clarity across research methods and advance a more systematic study of promising digital reading practices. Finally, the author discusses implications for assessment, research, practice, and policy.

Multiple-source inquiry that involves collaboration and deliberation is a complex construct; accordingly, valid measurement of these related competencies should require students to demonstrate their collaborative inquiry and social deliberation skills as part of an integrated performance. In this article, we report findings from the first phase of an assessment project designed to develop and evaluate the use of a virtual world platform that simultaneously captures collaboration, online inquiry, and social deliberation in the context of a single scenario-based task. Mixed methods were employed to evaluate preliminary evidence of students' (ages 14-16) competencies in both face-to-face (n = 5 dyads) and remote (n = 6 dyads) contexts. Results indicated the scenario-based virtual assessment platform successfully captured varying levels of cognitive and social performance (using both product and process data) on several dimensions of collaborative online inquiry and social deliberation. Illustrative examples of dyads demonstrating stronger or weaker collaborative processes and high-level themes that emerged are presented. Implications for classroom settings and large-scale assessment environments are discussed.

The authors introduce readers to three design features of the University of Rhode Island's Summer Institute in Digital Literacy, a 42-hour, weeklong professional learning experience in digital literacy for educators, librarians, college faculty, and other adult learners. The program is explicitly designed to promote reflection on one's motivations for advancing digital literacy, deepen appreciation for collaborative inquiry, and focus on how educators and learners (not machines) personalize learning. Evidence of how these themes are developed through practice illustrates the design philosophy that is embedded in the program. Digital media platforms, texts, and technologies enable pedagogical practices that put learners and teachers at the center of an increasingly networked social world, but these approaches also require respect for diverse perspectives, deliberative dialogue, and collaborative inquiry to bring them into the mainstream educational practice of schools, libraries, universities, and communities.

Identifying the factor structure of online reading to learn is important for the development of theory, assessment, and instruction. Traditional comprehension models have been developed from, and for, offline reading. This study used online reading to determine an optimal factor structure for modeling online research and comprehension among 426 sixth graders (ages 12 and 13). Confirmatory factor analysis was employed to evaluate an assessment of online research and comprehension based on a widely referenced theoretical model. Student performance reflected the theoretical constructs of the model, but several additional constructs appeared, resulting in a six-factor model: (a) locating information with a search engine, (b) questioning credibility of information, (c) confirming credibility of information, (d) identifying main ideas from a single online resource, (e) synthesizing information across multiple online resources, and (f) communicating a justified, source-based position. The findings are discussed in terms of theory, assessment, and instruction.

This piece introduces a framework for how to envision Personal Digital Inquiry (PDI) in K-8 classrooms. To conceptualize what teaching and learning might look like in these classrooms, important practices are situated along a two-dimensional continuum of digital inquiry that varies in terms of levels of support and purposes of technology use. We then offer several examples of what teaching and learning within a PDI framework can look like; visions that move from teacher directed to student directed inquiry, always informed by purposeful choices about the role that technology plays along the way.

This paper reports on two studies designed to examine pre-service teachers' self-efficacy beliefs. Study I investigated the measurement properties of a self-efficacy beliefs questionnaire comprising scales for computer self-efficacy, teacher self-efficacy, and self-efficacy towards technology integration. In Study I, 200 pre-service teachers completed the self-efficacy questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analyses resulted in a modified measurement model consisting of the three hypothesized self-efficacy scales. Study II reports on an intervention to clarify the effects of digital video composition experiences on these same three self-efficacy variables. Participants were 22 pre-service teachers and 16 adult education students enrolled in a Finnish univeristy education course. Data comprised pre- and post-measures of self-efficacy with the instrument validated in Study I. The results showed, in particular, a significant increase in pre-service teachers' beliefs in all three aspects of self-efficacy. Provision of hands-on engagement with technologies appears to be an effective way to enhance pre-service teachers' confidence in using technology in their teaching.

Hobbs and Coiro describe a new approach to the professional development of educators, librarians, and media professionals that emphasizes the value of collaborative, interdisciplinary relationships. The authors explore why creative collaboration using digital media texts, tools, and technologies is vital to support the professional development of educators. Creative collaboration experiences generate personally meaningful, transformative learning by promoting personal reflection in a social context. It is important to provide cognitive and emotional support for the risk-taking cycles of experimentation and trial-and-error process that is essential for learning to use digital tools. By using inquiry learning practices through collaborative and creative media production, adult learners thrive by taking on distinct and enmeshed roles that inevitably involve creative tension that stimulates and energizes innovation.

This article presents qualitative findings from a study that examined the types of criteria that middle school students use to evaluate the quality of online information and sources for a Web-based research assignment. Open-constructed responses from four critical evaluation items were compiled from diverse seventh graders in a representative, two-state, stratified random sample (n = 773). Content analysis revealed that many students used a range of unacceptable or superficial criteria to determine the author of a website and whether that author is an expert, to state the author's point of view, and to provide reasoned evidence about the overall reliability of a website. Criteria and evidence patterns that students used for each of the critical evaluation tasks are shared, as well as implications for instruction.

This piece is framed by questions we are often asked when we talk about online reading assessments and instruction with teachers. We begin with some of the lessons we have learned in our own experiences with designing measures of online reading comprehension. Then we share our thoughts about key design considerations as well as some of the biggest challenges of trying to capture online research and reading skills when online texts and authentic tasks are constantly changing. By sharing these perspectives, we hope to inspire new ways of tracking students' progress that can help teachers design powerful literacy instruction that integrates digital texts and new technologies.

The ability to ask questions is essential to learning, reasoning, and understanding. This column introduces a sequence of activities that incorporate the use of digital images and online texts into intentional opportunities for even the youngest learners to work with their teachers and classmates as they wonder, anticipate, explore, and think deeply about things that matter to them.

Digital information sources can form the basis of effective inquiry-based learning if teachers construct the information and exercises in ways that will promote collaboration, communication, and problem solving.

This study examined the social and cognitive interaction patterns of third, fourth, and fifth graders as they collaboratively read on the Internet and responded to an inquiry prompt. Data analysis revealed patterns of cognitive strategy use that intersected with social forms and functions of dialogue. Dyads that exhibited higher levels of cognitive strategy use and mutually collaborative social interactions were better able to accomplish the inquiry task. Pairs who read with little or no meaningful discussion were less successful. These contrasting cases show the range of interaction patterns that may occur during co-constructive inquiry-based online reading. Findings inform the design of instructional scaffolds to foster productive dialogue and strategic reading in online spaces.

This manuscript introduces a multidimensional framework for academic literacies to help instructors become more aware of different aspects of literacies and how they might be used to plan and orchestrate meaningful, multifaceted literacy experiences in their classes. More specifically, this broad framework for literacy and learning explicitly considers the overlapping role of argumentation, digital inquiry, collaboration, and innovation as they are applied to continuously evolving disciplinary literacy practices. The framework is applied to a course designed for pre-service teachers that integrated several aspects of academic literacies and offered some pedagogical guidelines to support their literacy development. A summary of the different domains of academic literacies and research-based pedagogical guidelines is provided to assist teachers in various disciplines and educational levels in applying the framework in their own instructional contexts.

Students' perceptions about the Internet's usefulness and potential to engage them in academic learning tasks have been found to influence their success in reading for information in online tasks. This article helps to understand the types of dispositions that adolescents may have toward reading on the Internet and how to characterize these dispositions in ways that inform teaching. First, the author answers four key questions and summarizes findings from one of three instruments recently developed to assess adolescents' attitudes and beliefs about reading on the Internet. Then, a brief set of guidelines is provided to help teachers foster positive dispositions about online reading comprehension in ways that address today's rigorous standards-based curricula. (Contains 1 figure.)

This study examines peer collaboration among four pairs of seventh graders who read online to determine what caused the downfall of the Mayan civilization. More and less productive collaborative interactions are presented through snippets of dialogue in which pairs negotiated complex texts. Few examples of how teachers can skillfully facilitate collaborative interactions currently exist, despite the call for these skills in the Common Core State Standards. Teaching ideas that support collaborative online reading are featured. (Contains 1 table and 3 figures.)

Research in four areas has the potential to dramatically improve how practitioners address the challenges of integrating digital texts and tasks into their literacy curriculum. Advances in defining and measuring key components of online reading comprehension are rapidly emerging. In addition, instructional models, such as Internet reciprocal teaching (IRT), can lead to the acquisition of online reading comprehension, but teachers need access to sustained professional development that is aligned with their own learning goals.

This study investigated the extent to which new reading comprehension proficiencies may be required when adolescents read for information on the Internet. Seventh graders (N = 109) selected from a stratified random sample of diverse middle school students completed a survey of topic-specific prior knowledge and parallel scenario-based measures of online reading comprehension. Standardized reading comprehension scores were also collected. Results indicated performance on one measure of online reading comprehension accounted for a significant amount of unique variance in performance on a second measure of online reading comprehension after controlling for standardized test scores of offline reading comprehension and topic-specific prior knowledge. Furthermore, there was an interaction between prior knowledge and online reading comprehension, such that higher levels of online reading comprehension skills may help compensate for lower levels of topic-specific prior knowledge when adolescents are asked to locate, critically evaluate, synthesize, and communicate information using the Internet. The author discusses a series of alternative interpretations of the data as well as their implications for literacy theory and research. (Contains 2 figures and 2 tables.)

Online resources can deepen student learning--if teachers design the right tasks and learner supports. In this article, the authors look at instructional websites teachers will want to use with their students. They focus on three types of web-based learning environments--(1) informational reading systems; (2) interactive learning systems; and (3) instructional learning systems--framing their thinking about effective lesson design in terms of two crucial questions: What do you want your students to understand and be able to do? and How can web-based learning environments support your learning goals?

This article highlights four cognitive processes key to online reading comprehension and how one might begin to transform existing think-aloud strategy models to encompass the challenges of reading for information on the Internet. Informed by principles of cognitive apprenticeship and an emerging taxonomy of online reading comprehension strategies, I introduce think-aloud instructional models for explicitly teaching students how expert readers approach, interact with, monitor their understanding of, and respond to online information texts. Over time, think-aloud strategy lessons in online reading environments help students recognize, label, and define a range of more and less familiar online cueing systems and related reading purposes. In turn, students can begin to actively consider additional strategies for effectively comprehending and using the range of informational texts they encounter on the Internet. (Contains 2 tables.)

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the nature of reading comprehension processes while reading on the Internet. Eleven sixth-grade students with the highest combination of standardized reading scores, reading report card grades, and Internet reading experiences were selected from a population of 150 sixth graders in three different middle schools in the central and northeastern United States. These 11 skilled readers met individually with a researcher and completed two separate tasks that involved reading within multilayered websites or using the Yahooligans! search engine. Students answered specific questions about their strategy use in a follow-up interview after each reading session. Qualitative analysis evolved through four distinct phases, each of which involved reviewing data from think-aloud protocols, field observations, and semistructured interviews to provide insights on the nature of online reading comprehension. Findings suggested that successful Internet reading experiences appeared to simultaneously require both similar and more complex applications of (1) prior knowledge sources, (2) inferential reasoning strategies, and (3) self-regulated reading processes. The authors suggest that reading Internet text prompts a process of self-directed text construction that may explain the additional complexities of online reading comprehension. Implications for literacy theory and future research are discussed. (Contains 5 tables and 4 figures.)

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