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The current study examines a multidimensional set of outcome variables to understand whether different pre-reading scaffolds influence students' text comprehension, diagram analysis, text integration, and interest; and investigates these constructs cross-sectionally to identify any progression as students move across grades. One-hundred fifty-six 3rd through 6th grade students enrolled in a public laboratory school were randomly assigned to one of three pre-reading conditions intended to activate or build students' topic knowledge. Students completed a series of before, during, and after reading activities while engaging with grade appropriate texts about the topics of ecosystems and living things. Results indicate that there were no significant differences between the three pre-reading conditions on any of the four constructs of interest. Students across grade levels performed well on multiple-choice comprehension questions, but not as well on diagram analysis questions or an open-ended integration task. Implications and future directions are discussed.

The purpose of the current mixed-methods study was to investigate the effectiveness of a traditional and novel knowledge activation technique for supporting fifth and sixth graders' comprehension of exposition covering unfamiliar content. For the quantitative portion, 149 rural middle-school students were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: knowledge mobilization (traditional), relational reasoning (novel), or text annotation (control). Readings used during training and for posttraining assessment were chapters from a textbook on ancient Greece and Rome. The posttraining comprehension assessment included multiple-choice locate/recall questions and short-answer integrate/interpret and critique/evaluate questions. The results of structural equation modeling demonstrated the comprehension outcomes for students in the relational reasoning activation condition were significantly higher than for students in either the mobilization ([beta] = 0.41) or control conditions ([beta] = 0.25). Two weeks after training, semistructured interviews were then conducted with 4 high- and 4 low-performing students from the mobilization and relational reasoning training groups. The purpose was to explore students' memory and use of the two activation techniques. Overall, the responses of high-performing students in both training conditions were richer than those for the low-performing students. Also, students in the relational reasoning condition displayed greater facility in the use of that technique than those in the mobilization condition. The contributions of this training study to the research and instruction on the effects of knowledge activation on students' comprehension are delineated and suggestions for subsequent research are forwarded.

Oral reading assessments provide teachers with valuable information about children's reading abilities, which can then inform instruction. However, the structure of some oral reading assessments (e.g., running records) have been critiqued, especially when they are used to provide students with a prescribed "reading level". The purpose of the current study was to support in-service teachers (ISTs) and pre-service teachers (PSTs) in implementing a highly supportive oral reading assessment, the Listening to Reading–Watching While Writing Protocol (LTR—WWWP), which guides teachers towards specific instructional targets for individual children instead of a score or level. We were curious about the ISTs' and PSTs' perceptions of the protocol, including its affordances and limitations. Data sources were the ISTs' feedback responses and the researcher fieldnotes after five professional learning sessions, as well as the PSTs' survey responses after learning about the protocol during literacy method courses. Results revealed that both the ISTs and PSTs found the protocol to be useful, and they appreciated the concrete information it provides regarding multiple components of literacy (e.g., decoding, comprehension monitoring). However, they also noted logistical concerns regarding assessment implementation and selecting authentic texts. Results also revealed misconceptions about the assessment, which subsequently informed revisions of the LTR—WWWP and the related professional learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge plays an inarguably critical role in reading comprehension. When considering the science of reading, it is important to engage with varying theoretical frameworks and empirical research that inform our collective understanding regarding the intersection of knowledge and literacy in K-12 classrooms. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to consider sociocultural and cognitivist perspectives on the role that knowledge plays throughout the reading process and to examine whose knowledge matters. Then, the authors address three tensions related to the role of knowledge in K-12 literacy instruction and offer research-based perspectives on how educators, researchers, school leaders, parents, and community leaders can rethink knowledge to support students in learning from texts. First, the authors reframe the knowledge gap and suggest ways that teachers can privilege students' knowledge as assets during literacy instruction. Second, the authors address the importance of supporting students in activating, integrating, and revising their knowledge during text processing and suggest evidence-based instructional techniques that support students' learning from texts. Finally, the authors contend that content knowledge is not the only type of knowledge that matters in reading and suggest how teachers can support readers in using other types of knowledge that are crucial to comprehension.

The purpose of the current study was to: (a) examine the frequency of prior knowledge (PK) activation in elementary classrooms while students were engaged with text, (b) investigate the relevance of students' responses to teacher prompts, (c) explore the nature of teachers' and students' prior knowledge activation utterances, and (d) investigate whether there were discernible routines in the interactions between teachers and students when activating PK. Participants were 6 teachers and 99 students from a private elementary school in the mid-Atlantic. An analysis of classroom discourse suggested that teachers infrequently prompted students to activate their prior knowledge during reading. Yet, when teachers did prompt PK, they asked about a prior lesson most often, or about a specific text, students' world knowledge, or their personal experiences. Students then responded to their teachers according to the prompted referential frame. Additionally, four routines of classroom discourse were identified in the data including "nonresponsive," "question-answer," "simple feedback," and "interaction" routines, with less elaborate routines being most common and primarily occurring at the beginning of lessons.

Relational reasoning [RR] is the ability to derive meaningful patterns within any information stream. Further, RR can be used as a knowledge activation technique before and during reading, guiding students to notice when their prior understandings are similar to, different from, or in conflict with the text at hand. The purpose of the current mixed methods study was to investigate why and how RR prompts were a successful knowledge activation technique for rural fifth- and sixth-grade students. Forty-four students responded to RR prompts before, during, and after reading an unfamiliar text on ancient Rome, and then answered comprehension questions. Students' responses were coded according to their conceptual appropriateness, accuracy, elaborateness, and sources of knowledge. Simple regression analyses indicated that the conceptual appropriateness and accuracy of students' responses significantly predicted students' comprehension performance. A thematic analysis was utilized to determine patterns among students who performed one standard deviation above or below the mean. Results from this study suggest that educators should reconsider what we mean by knowledge activation and the ways teachers guide students to make connections between texts and their background knowledge and experiences, focusing not only on how prior knowledge and experiences might align to the text topic, but also probing students to consider how the text might be different from or in conflict with what they already know.

Prior knowledge activation is a crucial component of reading comprehension. Previous studies have examined students' prompted (or solicited) purposeful knowledge activation, which occurs when the explicit goal is to activate knowledge, as well as ancillary knowledge activation, which is when students indirectly use their prior knowledge to fill in gaps in the text, form an opinion, or question the author. However, little is known regarding elementary students' unprompted (or unsolicited) purposeful and ancillary activation of prior knowledge while reading grade-level texts. The purpose of the current study was to (a) examine differences between third- and fifth-grade students on their use of purposeful and ancillary prior knowledge activation when reading grade-level social studies and science texts and (b) determine how students' prior knowledge activation relates to their reading outcomes and reader profiles. Participants were 25 third-grade and 27 fifth-grade students from an urban school system in the southeastern United States. Participants were asked to think aloud as they read grade-level texts. Utterances were transcribed and coded according to the type of knowledge activation. Although repeated measures ANOVA revealed no significant differences in purposeful or ancillary activation across texts or between grade levels, the way in which students utilized these two types of prior knowledge activation (i.e., purposeful and ancillary) differed as a function of their reader profile. To uncover these differences, we took a case study approach to further explicate the complex relations between prior knowledge activation, other reading behaviors, and reading outcomes.

The science of reading consists of a large, evolving, and impressive body of evidence about how humans learn to read and how reading should be taught. This body of evidence has accumulated via diverse epistemological perspectives and methods, yet points to undeniable consensus on many issues (e.g., the importance of explicit phonics instruction, the influence of prior knowledge on reading comprehension). Scholars in educational psychology have robust research programs in the area of reading and are well-positioned to contribute to expanding the science of reading beyond narrow conceptualizations that have been popularized in the media or certain policy efforts. In this paper, we introduce a set of contributions to the special issue that is designed to achieve such expansion by focusing on both the descriptive and explanatory aspects of theory, integrating minoritized perspectives, and contextualizing reading processes and outcomes. Additionally, we illustrate how such an expansion can be done specifically with regard to the role of prior knowledge and a conceptual integrative framework of reading that draws on dynamic systems theory. We conclude by highlighting the theoretical advances the special issue offers collectively and discussing directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although links between knowledge and reading comprehension have been widely documented for decades, recent translational science publications (e.g., teacher journals, books, and podcasts) have increasingly referred to studies using baseball (a sport popular in the USA) as a proxy for knowledge to explain those links, especially within science of reading conversations. We conducted a systematic review of studies using baseball as a proxy for knowledge necessary for reading comprehension. After a comprehensive literature search, we found 19 “baseball studies” dating from 1978 to 2018, and we note that 13 of the studies used the same two measures of baseball knowledge. When analyzing the measures of baseball knowledge, we find that their measures of knowledge focused heavily on vocabulary and baseball trivia, and we found that the most common baseball comprehension text was deceptively complex. Finally, we analyzed recent research citations of baseball studies and found that even the oldest baseball studies are commonly cited in high‐impact journals even in the last 5 years. Ultimately, we interrogate the role of baseball knowledge studies in the body of research on knowledge and comprehension. We also call for reliance on non‐baseball studies to create a knowledge–comprehension translational science likely to positively impact systematic curricular improvement, move the science of reading conversation forward, and improve all students' reading comprehension at scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scaffolding has been shown to facilitate students' text comprehension and task performance. Yet less is known about the necessity of scaffolding for competent students reading unfamiliar content. To explore that question, we investigated the effects of two knowledge scaffolding techniques (i.e., mobilization and concept mapping) versus control on undergraduates' comprehension overall and by question type. The 118 undergraduates were randomly assigned to a condition and read a text about cellular biology. Results indicated a significant effect of scaffolding on students' comprehension after controlling for prior knowledge. Follow-up analyses for overall comprehension demonstrated that the concept mapping group outperformed the mobilization and control groups, and the mobilization group outperformed the control group. These results suggest that competent readers benefit from scaffolding when reading unfamiliar content.

Despite evidence to the contrary, many people believe in learning styles (LS)–the idea that students learn best in their preferred modality, such as visual, auditory, or kinesthetic. However, the impact of this belief on instructional decisions remains unclear. Therefore, this study investigated how belief in the neuromyth impacts instructional choices and why educators choose an LS lesson plan or an alternative. We found that educators’ beliefs about LS indeed predicted their instructional choice, but that other factors influenced their decisions as well. Three themes encapsulate educators’ justifications for their lesson plan choices: beliefs about LS, practical considerations, and student learning and motivation. These findings suggest that for many educators, implementing an LS lesson provides an opportunity to integrate diverse teaching strategies that address multiple educational priorities. Although many prior studies have replicated the prevalence of the myth, this is one of the first to explore the reasons that LS is attractive to educators. Attempts to dispel the LS neuromyth could leverage the reasons educators find LS appealing to provide alternative research-backed approaches to meet their goals. Future research should examine the extent to which beliefs in the LS neuromyth are translated into instructional practices within classroom lessons and explore potential differences across grade levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This systematic literature review examined the research on prior knowledge and its activation to ascertain how these terms are defined, what specific techniques have been empirically investigated, and the conditions under which prior knowledge activation facilitated students' comprehension. Fifty-four articles met the inclusion criteria and revealed that the terms prior knowledge and prior knowledge activation were often vaguely defined. Further, 30 unique techniques for activating readers' prior knowledge representing eight different categories were identified. Those categories were open-ended prompts, procedural or strategic supports during reading, visual representations, analogical reasoning, text alteration, augmented activation, extratextual activities, and spontaneous activation. Techniques meant to facilitate knowledge activation prior to reading were most common, although the prompting of students' existing knowledge was beneficial during and after reading as well. Variability in the effectiveness of activation techniques was related, in part, to the amount, accuracy, and specificity of students' knowledge. Based on the key findings identified in this review, recommendations for future inquiry are forwarded, including suggested definitions of prior knowledge and prior knowledge activation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the relational reasoning capabilities of older adolescents and young adults when the focal assessment was a verbal and more schooled measure than 1 that was figural and more novel in its configuration. To achieve this end, the verbal test of relational reasoning (vTORR) was constructed to parallel the test of relational reasoning (TORR), which has been shown to be a psychometrically sound measure of the ability to discern analogical, anomalous, antinomous, and antithetical patterns within figural problem sets. Two-hundred undergraduate students completed the vTORR, TORR, and a vocabulary cloze test. The psychometric properties of the vTORR were first examined to ensure that data were reliable and valid. Then, the convergence between the vTORR and TORR was tested, along with the degree to which performance on the vTORR could be explained by linguistic ability, as measured by the vocabulary cloze test. Outcomes of correlational and confirmatory factor analyses indicated that there was a significant moderate association between the ability to reason relationally in word (i.e., vTORR) and in figure (i.e., TORR) and that linguistic ability contributed only a limited amount to performance on the vTORR. Of 3 theoretical models tested, a 4-factor model was found to best fit the vTORR data, indicating that the 4 specific forms of relational reasoning reflected in this measure were directly related to overall performance.

Despite the importance of prior knowledge to learning, few studies have systematically addressed the extent to which or ways in which instructional resources support teachers in the activation of students' prior knowledge, or the extent to which teachers prompt students' prior knowledge activation in practice. In study one, a content analysis was applied to the language in four instructional resources to come to an understanding of the ways in which resources guide teachers to activate students' prior knowledge. In study two, we went beyond teacher resources to examine prior knowledge activation in four (two male, two female) public elementary teachers' reading classrooms. A two-step procedure was followed to analyze teachers' utterances, first discriminating language intended to activate students' prior knowledge (n = 27) from other utterances (n = 1,770), and then examining the 27 knowledge activation utterances and scoring them according to the frame of reference. The results suggest that instances of prior knowledge activation were rare during reading lessons, both with recommended statements and demonstrated actions. Additionally, the analysis found that instructional resources focused predominantly on world knowledge and personal experience, whereas the practitioners focused on knowledge from previously taught lessons.