Handbook of Reading Research,

Volume V

In a time of pressures, challenges, and threats to public education, teacher preparation, and fund-
ing for educational research, the fifth volume of the Handbook of Reading Research takes a hard
look at why we undertake reading research, how school structures, contexts, and policies shape
students’ learning, and, most importantly, how we can realize greater impact from the research
conducted. A comprehensive volume, with a “gaps and game changers” frame, this handbook
not only synthesizes current reading research literature, but also informs promising directions for
research, pushing readers to address problems and challenges in research design or method.
Bringing the field authoritatively and comprehensively up-to-date since the publication of the
Handbook of Reading Research, Volume IV, this volume presents multiple perspectives that will
facilitate new research development, tackling topics including:

• Diverse student populations and sociocultural perspectives on reading development

• Digital innovation, literacies, and platforms
• Conceptions of teachers, reading, readers, and texts, and the role of affect, cognition, and
social-emotional learning in the reading process
• New methods for researching reading instruction, with attention to equity, inclusion, and
education policies
• Language development and reading comprehension
• Instructional practices to promote reading development and comprehension for diverse
groups of readers

Each volume of this handbook has come to define the field for the period of time it covers, and
this volume is no exception, providing a definitive compilation of current reading research. This
is a must-have resource for all students, teachers, reading specialists, and researchers focused on
and interested in reading and literacy research, and improving both instruction and programs to
cultivate strong readers and teachers.

Elizabeth Birr Moje is Dean of the School of Education, George Herbert Mead Collegiate Pro-
fessor of Education, an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, and a Faculty Associate in the Institute for
Social Research and Latina/o Studies at the University of Michigan, USA.
Peter P. Afflerbach is Professor of Reading in the Department of Teaching and Learning,
Policy and Leadership at the University of Maryland, USA.

Patricia Enciso is Professor of Literacy, Literature, and Equity Studies in the Department of
Teaching and Learning at the College of Education and Human Ecology, and Faculty Associate
in Latinx Studies at The Ohio State University, USA.

Nonie K. Lesaux is Juliana W. and William Foss Thompson Professor of Education and Society
at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, USA.
 Handbook of Reading
Research, Volume V

Edited by Elizabeth Birr Moje, Peter P. Afflerbach,

Patricia Enciso, and Nonie K. Lesaux

MICHELLE KWOK, EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

First published 2020
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Taylor & Francis
The right of Elizabeth Birr Moje, Peter P. Afflerbach, Patricia Enciso, and Nonie
K. Lesaux to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested

ISBN: 978-1-138-93736-9 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-93737-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-67630-2 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo
by Swales & Willis, Exeter, Devon, UK
 Contents

Preface ix

PART I
Game Changers in Reading Research: Setting the Stage 1

1 Game Changers in Reading Research 3

Elizabeth Birr Moje, Peter P. Afflerbach, Patricia Enciso, and Nonie K. Lesaux

PART II
How Increasingly Diversified Populations Change the Game for
Readers, Teachers, Leaders, and Reading Researchers 15

2 Demographic Realities and Methodological Flexibility in Literacy Teaching

and Research 17
C. Patrick Proctor and Chris K. Chang-Bacon

3 Social and Cultural Diversity as Lens for Understanding Student Learning

and the Development of Reading Comprehension 37
Carol D. Lee

4 A Sociocultural Perspective on Readers, Reading, Reading Instruction and

Assessment, Reading Policy, and Reading Research 57
Peter Smagorinsky, Mary Guay, Tisha Lewis Ellison, and Arlette Ingram Willis

PART III
How Do Expanding Forms of Texts and Everyday Communication
Change the Game for Readers, Teachers, Leaders, and Reading
Researchers? 77

5 Reading Multiple and Non-Traditional Texts: New Opportunities and New

Challenges 79
Ivar Bråten, Jason L. G. Braasch, and Ladislao Salmerón

v
Contents

6 Who Reads What, in Which Formats, and Why? 99

Margaret Mackey

7 Digital Reading: A Research Assessment 116

Naomi S. Baron

8 Multimodal Critical Inquiry: Nurturing Decolonial Imaginaries 137

Gerald Campano, T. Philip Nichols, and Grace D. Player

PART IV
How Do Expanding Conceptualizations of Readers Change the
Game for Teachers, Leaders, and Reading Researchers? 153

9 The Language for School Literacy: Widening the Lens on Language and
Reading Relations 155
Paola Uccelli, Emily Phillips Galloway, and Wenjuan Qin

10 Readers’ Individual Differences in Affect and Cognition 180

Emily Fox

11 Continuities between Early Language Development and Reading

Comprehension 197
Kiren S. Khan and Laura M. Justice

12 What Do We Know Today about the Complexity Of Vocabulary Gaps and

What Do We Not Know? 216
Jeannette Mancilla-Martinez and Janna B. McClain

13 The Role of Knowledge in Understanding and Learning from Text 237

Gina N. Cervetti and Tanya S. Wright

14 Defining Deep Reading Comprehension for Diverse Readers 261

Laura K. Allen and Danielle S. McNamara

PART V
How Do Expanding Conceptions of Teacher, Reader, and Text
Interaction Change the Game for Reading Researchers, Teachers,
Leaders, and Policy Makers? 277

15 The Joint Development of Literacy and Self-Regulation in Early Childhood:

Implications for Research and Practice 279
Emily C. Hanno, Stephanie M. Jones, and Dana C. McCoy

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 Contents

16 Literacy Instruction and Individual Differences in Students’ Cognitive

Development 307
Jin Kyoung Hwang and Carol McDonald Connor

17 Social and Cultural Differences in Reading Development: Instructional

Processes, Learning Gains, and Challenges 328
Allison Skerrett

18 Learning Academic Language, Comprehending Text 345

Dianna Townsend, Ana Taboada Barber, and Hannah Carter

19 High Quality Language Environments Promote Reading Development in

Young Children and Older Learners 365
Perla B. Gámez

20 Expanding Teaching and Learning with Disciplinary Texts: The Case of

Reading and Science 384
Cynthia Greenleaf and Kathleen Hinchman

21 Literacy Instruction and Digital Innovation: Trends and Affordances for

Digital Equity in Classrooms 406
Silvia Noguerón-Liu and Jayne C. Lammers

22 Restorying Critical Literacies 424

Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, Jane Bean-Folkes, and James Joshua Coleman

23 More Connected and More Divided than Ever: Toward a Cosmopolitan

Ethics of Digital Literacies 436
David B. Sabey and Kevin M. Leander

PART VI
How Do Research Methods Change the Game for Reading
Researchers and Policy Makers 453

24 The Use of Video Data in Reading Research 455

Brian Rowan, Bridget Maher, and Mark White

25 Examining the Process of Reading in Media Text Environments: A

Methodological Perspective 464
Byeong-Young Cho

26 How Can Neuroscience Bridge Gaps in Reading Research? 487

Kimberly G. Noble and Katrina R. Simon

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Contents

27 Qualitative Case Study Methodology Driven by Sociocultural Perspectives 492

Carmen M. Martínez-Roldán

PART VII
Minding the Gaps: Translating Reading Research as the Game is
Changing 499

28 Concluding Thoughts from the Editors 501

Contributor Biographies 506

Index 512

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 Preface

We begin Volume V of the Handbook of Reading Research by raising questions that ground this
research in the demands of the past, present, and future. As in previous volumes, some of these
questions are fundamental and perennial: How do we define “reading”? What is the current state
of reading research, and what are the possibilities moving forward? What are the challenges of
studying reading development and learning in the United States and around the world? What
research methods might help us more fully attend to the challenges of reading development and
learning? In this volume, we explore these questions as well as others that reflect the unique and
rapidly evolving demands of the current era, one filled with both gaps and possibilities. Although
the word “gaps” may call up the oft-used language of achievement or opportunity, our use of
the word is meant to convey the disconnect we see between research production and research
applications. In this time of increasing access to rapidly changing texts, tools, and technologies;
new forms of social engagement and connection; evolving workplace and societal demands with
respect to the literacy skills of the individual; and growing linguistic and ethno-racial diversity,
researchers are presented with new opportunities and new responsibilities to conduct research
that builds understanding across groups and breaks down unproductive disciplinary, methodo-
logical, and discursive differences. We therefore situate our review of the latest advances in read-
ing research in the phenomena that are changing the playing field of reading, learning to read,
and teaching others to read.

Minding the Gaps

As the editors of this volume, we have chosen to explore several areas of opportunity and discon-
nect in reading research. Ultimately, understanding – and narrowing or closing – these gaps will
help us match the science of reading, learning to read, and teaching reading to the diversity of
today’s classrooms, the complexities of a new digital age, and the changing demands of 21st-
century workforce and community participation. In this volume, we note four gaps that persist
in reading research, each of which is tightly related to and implicated by or in the other three.
These gaps are:

• Translational research gap: This focuses on the gap between the research conducted in labora-
tories or other controlled settings and research conducted in practice. The focus here is on
both the gap between basic and applied research, and the gap that occurs as researchers trans-
late – or fail to translate – both basic and applied research into discourse and knowledge that

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is meaningful and useful in contexts of teaching and learning. This translational gap has enor-
mous implications for the implementation gap because it is often the case that many critical
dimensions of research findings are lost in translation from controlled settings to actual con-
ditions of teaching and learning.
• Implementation gap: This gap exists between what we know about how reading develops and
what we know about how to teach people to read – and what actually occurs in classrooms
across this increasingly diverse nation, especially under conditions of poor resources, low-
quality curricula, little sustained teacher education and professional development, and high
accountability demands on teachers. In other words, how do practitioners actually do the
things that we know from research could make a difference in people’s reading and learning
lives? Why do the findings of research so rarely find their way into practice in any sustained
or scaled way? Why does the gap between what we know and what we do rarely seem to
close?
• Relevance gap: This gap refers to the disconnect between high-quality research and what prac-
titioners really want or need to know to do their instructional work. It may be that the
answer to the questions posed regarding the implementation gap lies in the relevance gap,
which could be a matter of researchers not addressing the most pressing questions that edu-
cation practitioners have. How, as researchers, do we close this gap without giving up the
integrity of questions we care about and believe are important? When should researchers
follow the questions of practitioners and when should researchers’ questions drive the field?
What do we need to know about how to prepare readers to productively and critically
engage with and within various communicative practices, particularly as those practices con-
tinue to quickly evolve?
• Bridging gap: Finally, the chapters address the gap in or lack of communication between and
among complementary research fields, each of which could contribute to closing other gaps.
How do we begin to look across various methods, epistemologies, and questions with the
goal of advancing our knowledge? How do we ensure that we draw from multiple perspec-
tives and methods without compromising the quality and integrity with respect to theories,
methods, and perspectives?

To explore these gaps, we begin the volume by framing the “game changers” that demand
a new approach to reading research. We then offer 23 expert reviews of both basic and applied
research findings in areas with a strong existing research base. Building from our framework
focused on gaps, these reviews offer significant substantive or methodological advances and are
organized by their focus on addressing gaps related to readers’ identities and experiences; reading
instructional practices, texts, and contexts; and reading research methodologies. These chapters
offer not only syntheses but also implications for future research. Importantly, the authors them-
selves also bring diverse perspectives, methods, backgrounds, and experiences in the field,
broadly-defined.
Following the 23 research reviews, we offer four snapshots of new research methods. Rather
than provide a complete instruction manual for how to engage in a certain method, authors were
asked to present a compelling portrait of what the particular method could offer to reading
research. These design and methods essays are meant to inspire game-changing research to help
reading scholars contribute to closing gaps.
We conclude the volume with our thoughts about the obstacles that stand in our way as we
seek to close gaps, and we ponder what gap-closing work could do in the face of the game-
changing conditions of the past decade and the next. In a departure from past volumes of the
handbook, the conclusion starts by considering a major obstacle in gap closing: the way media
present the problems of reading and education. We raise questions about how future research

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might close gaps in today’s challenging contexts, especially in the face of media influences on the
value of evidence and knowledge production. This new generation of research has implications
for the development of literacy programs, teaching practice, teacher education, systems of instruc-
tion in and out of school, conditions of schooling, and education policies.
It should be noted that the volume is organized around the field’s dominant theory that com-
prehension and meaning making occur at the intersection of a reader, a text, and an activity, all
situated in particular and multiple contexts, with parts focusing on those four dimensions (readers,
texts, instructional activity, and contexts) of the interactive model of reading. However, because
reading is about the intersection of those dimensions, in many cases a chapter dedicated to under-
standing readers might also implicate how texts works, or a chapter focused on instruction will,
of necessity, attend to who readers are. Indeed, the blurring of the dimensions – although chal-
lenging for editors trying to organize the handbook parts – is a testament to the fact that the
science of reading is never simple. Reading itself is a complex process, learning to read is more
complex, and teaching people to read may be the most complex process of all.

Part I: Game Changers in Reading Research: Setting the Stage

In this introductory chapter, we – the editors – set the stage for the handbook by describing
what we consider to be key game changers of the current era that shape the conduct of research,
its transformative potential, and our abilities as researchers to close the gaps we have described.
Some of these game changers were present, or were beginning to develop, when the last volume
of the handbook was published, but, by and large, the changes we have outlined in Chapter 1
are new or are having a new impact. Some game changers will be unpacked even further in
several chapters, and so we nod to them, but do not fully delineate them. Others that are less
central to reading research, but that nevertheless have an impact on the work we do, receive
more attention in this initial chapter.

Part II: How Increasingly Diversified Populations Change the Game

for Readers, Teachers, Leaders, and Reading Researchers
Part II introduces the volume through a demographic lens, as Proctor and Chang-Bacon examine the
characteristics of the student population and the teaching force before looking to current research
and educational approaches that recognize the racial, ethnic, and linguistic breadth that character-
izes children and youth in schools today. Pointing to the gap between increasingly culturally diverse
student populations and the continuing static demography of the teaching population, Proctor and
Chang-Bacon argue that literacy research and education must embrace a broad range of methods
that will shape learning, education policies, and lifelong opportunities for future generations.
Lee’s chapter moves us from a demographic lens to an incisive analysis of the complex cultur-
ally shaped “problem space” that attends classroom interactions, text selections, curricular reforms,
and assessments of reading comprehension. Like Proctor and Chang-Bacon, Lee recognizes the
negative consequences for youth whose reading competence is assessed under assumptions of
knowledge, experiences, and timelines that may not be universal. Lee argues for research methods
informed by cross-disciplinary scholarship that recognize youth capacity – and motivation – to
recruit and generate knowledge from multiple, diverse pathways as they produce and interpret
texts in school and across the lifespan. Lee’s interrogation of the limitations of existing assessments
of comprehension, standards, and conceptions of text complexity suggests implications for the
design of culturally-informed and supportive learning environments.
Finally, Smagorinsky, Guay, Lewis Ellison, and Willis examine reading and reading research
through a sociocultural lens. Focusing primarily on African American students’ historical

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achievement gap in reading as determined by school testing, the authors explore the ways in
which reading is subject to social and cultural mediation in practice, policy, and research, all of
which contribute to our understanding of the state of reading development in the U.S. and its
schools. The authors question a common assumption that views reading as an isolated act
between reader and text – a view that minimizes readers’ unique backgrounds and experiences
while defining “normalcy” in relation to the dominant culture. Ultimately, their review argues
for the inclusion of more diverse perspectives across all facets of reading development assessment,
practice, policy, and research.

Part III: How Do Expanding Forms of Texts and Everyday

Communication Change the Game for Readers, Teachers, Leaders,
and Reading Researchers?
Over the past decade, digital platforms have contributed to a surge in the availability of various
types of texts for readers of all ages, with specific purposes and practices that extend well beyond
the “one reader-one text” models that have long defined reading research. In a comprehensive
review of models for multi-text reading across print and digital texts, Bråten, Braasch, and Sal-
merón outline the range of reader intentions and “epistemic thinking” with multiple texts,
within and outside of classroom settings. While emphasizing the value of well-developed and
useful starting points in existing research, they point to the astounding gap between current the-
oretical frameworks for understanding teacher-directed text analyses and readers’ self-directed,
online critical reading across texts and platforms.
This gap in our understanding of readers’ digital experiences becomes especially apparent in
Mackey’s review of online events during the summer of 2016, a pivotal time in the shifting land-
scape of reading and reading research due to the proliferation of non-traditional texts and mobile
devices, the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web, and the consequential role that social
media played during the U.S. presidential election and the U.K. Brexit vote. Mackey confirms
the trend toward an increasing range of digital texts and the related difficulty of accessing reliable
data about readers’ usage, digital format, and content. Ultimately, her analysis contributes to our
understanding of how readers select and interact with text in the digital age and highlights the
importance of monitoring how critical, social, and deep reading play out across a range of text
types and reading conditions.
Similarly, Baron’s review of international research on digital reading points to gaps in our
understanding of the potential differences between how people read on digital screens versus
print – in other words, exploring the question of whether the container matters. Baron synthe-
sizes existing research on learners’ interactions with digital text and, like Mackey, she highlights
the complexity and importance of obtaining reliable or focused demographic, cognitive, percep-
tual, and usage data. Baron concludes by suggesting future research questions focused on building
a deeper, more meaningful understanding of digital reading with implications for pedagogical
practice.
Finally, in the last chapter of this part, Campano, Nichols, and Player continue with questions
about digital access and reader agency through the lens of multimodalities and colonization in
literacy research. They argue that rather than explore diverse modes in ways that can reproduce
hierarchies of competence and exclusion through a “confrontation between different literate tra-
ditions” (Rasmussen, 2012, p. 3), researchers should, instead, recognize the power of considering
multimodalities through a postcolonial lens, whether in digital or face-to-face composing and
reading. Through multimodal literacies, across print and digital platforms, a “multiplicity of iden-
tities (even within the self), languages, literacies, and meaning-making practices” (p. 106) are
mobilized and reclaimed. This analysis has implications for practice and future research.

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Part IV: How Do Expanding Conceptualizations of Readers Change

the Game for Teachers, Leaders, and Reading Researchers?
In recent years, reading research has faced many opportunities – and responsibilities – to better
match and reflect the growing diversity (cultural, linguistic, and economic) among learners in the
U.S., and to consider how these dimensions of diversity necessarily influence the conceptualiza-
tion of reading and inform effective models of instruction. At the same time, there has been
a well-warranted press to ensure that we are taking a sufficiently comprehensive view of the
reader, focusing on the role of cognitive and non-cognitive factors in text comprehension, or by
examining the pathway between language acquisition and reading comprehension, across different
developmental stages, for example. In turn, this set of chapters is a reminder that a more expan-
sive view of the reader should inform a next generation of theories, research, and instructional
approaches, to ensure a 21st century knowledge base.
In their introductory chapter to this part, Uccelli, Phillips Galloway, and Qi examine the find-
ings from studies conducted on adolescents’ academic language – studies using both qualitative
and quantitative methods. Uccelli and colleagues outline four research developments that have
helped to transform the field’s understanding of academic language, all of which point to a need
for a more inclusive definition of this notion of school-relevant language. To this end, Uccelli
and colleagues offer a new term, Language for School Literacy, defined as “the repertoire of dis-
course practices and academic language skills that learners gradually internalize as they flexibly
enact the socio-cultural norms of reading, writing, and learning at school” (p. 156). At a time
when the school-age population continues to diversify on many dimensions, and the press for
developing students’ academic language continues to increase, this more inclusive and integrated
conceptualization of academic language offers an important contribution, and brings with it
implications for future research and classroom practice.
Expanding the discussion of learner diversity, Fox explores the relationship between readers’
affect-related and cognitively-based individual differences. Highlighting the role that readers’ feel-
ings and beliefs play in their interaction with and comprehension of texts, Fox argues that under-
standing this affective diversity is key to understanding why and how people read, as well as their
reading-related outcomes. Fox concludes with suggestions aimed at closing the gaps between
affect and cognition within the theoretical frameworks used to explore reading, and in the con-
text of instructional practice.
Next, Khan and Justice address the divides in research, theory, and practice related to chil-
dren’s early language acquisition and later reading outcomes. This chapter seeks to bridge the gap
between these bodies of work by highlighting connections between early language acquisition
and future reading outcomes and by proposing a developmental model of reading comprehension
designed to connect early and middle childhood. Khan and Justice also highlight classroom prac-
tices that have the most potential to foster the language-related skills that are key to later reading
success, suggesting an interconnected view of language and reading development that has the
potential to support instructional continuity across grade levels and, ultimately, “provide a more
coherent learning pathway for children” (p. 206).
Building on this discussion of early language and reading development, Mancilla-Martinez and
McClain attend to the gaps as they relate to our understanding of children’s vocabulary learning.
In this chapter, they synthesize the research related to the complex factors that influence how
children from diverse backgrounds acquire vocabulary, paying special attention to the gaps
between what we know and do not know when it comes to children’s language environments,
language acquisition processes, and their opportunities to hear and use increasingly sophisticated
and diverse vocabulary at school and at home. Mancilla-Martinez and McClain close by

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discussing promising practice-based approaches that support children’s vocabulary development

and by suggesting areas for future research.
Like vocabulary, prior knowledge plays an important role in helping children understand and
comprehend texts. In their chapter, Cervetti and Wright explore and synthesize the research
related to different types of topic, domain, general, and cultural knowledge, drawing connections
between these forms of knowledge and children’s language and reading development. Though
a great deal of research has been conducted on the topic of knowledge and its relation to chil-
dren’s reading skills, much of this research has resulted in a largely singular instructional focus
and approach – one aimed at activating children’s prior knowledge to support their interaction
with and comprehension of various texts. Cervetti and Wright argue that opportunities remain to
further explore how supporting children to explicitly build and integrate knowledge shapes their
language and reading skills. Ultimately, bridging the gap between our understanding of know-
ledge activation, knowledge building, and knowledge integration has implications for designing
and enhancing discipline-specific and conceptually-rich instructional practice.
Allen and McNamara close this part with an examination of the role of higher-order thinking
and metacognition among diverse groups of learners. In their literature review, they explore dis-
tinctions between surface and deep comprehension with a focus on adolescent and adult readers,
younger developing readers, second language learners, and adult literacy learners. They identify
gaps between theoretical understandings of the role of higher-order thinking and metacognitive
strategies, which research has shown to support children’s reading comprehension, and applica-
tions of these theories in practice. Too often, they argue, educational practice prioritizes a linear
conception of literacy skill development that introduces higher-order and metacognitive strategies
only after readers have mastered basic decoding skills. Allen and McNamara conclude by offering
suggestions for bridging these translation and implementation gaps.

Part V: How Do Expanding Conceptions of Teacher, Reader, and Text

Interaction Change the Game for Reading Researchers, Teachers,
Leaders, and Policy Makers?
Building on previous parts, Part V explores expanding conceptions of reading, readers, and texts
in the contexts of learning and teaching people to read. Because the chapters in this part are
situated within the contexts of teaching and learning, the authors have necessarily paid particular
attention to the implementation gap – the gap between what is known about reading instruction
and instructional responses in practice.
This part begins with chapters that focus on expanded conceptions of individual readers.
Hanno, Jones, and McCoy move past assumptions that the relationship between self-regulation
and reading is unidirectional, moving from self-regulation to reading, and review current litera-
ture to offer a conceptual model of the bidirectional relationship between self-regulation and
reading through early literacy development, which has significant implications for practice. The
authors review six intervention studies that encapsulate the bi-directional relationship between
literacy development and self-regulation, and close by offering implications for instructional prac-
tice and research.
In the next chapter, Hwang and Connor continue to review studies on individual readers,
expanding conceptions of the differences and influences that contribute to an individual’s cogni-
tive development in relation to reading. Also moving beyond a one-way directional view of
reading proficiency, Hwang and Connor offer the Lattice Model as a way to portray reading
development as a complex web of cognitive, linguistic, and comprehension processes that are
influenced by an individuals’ learning experiences in the home, school, and community. The

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Lattice Model supports the notion of a reciprocal effect of reading comprehension on cognitive
development.
Next, Skerrett examines the social and cultural differences in reading development and instruc-
tion. Following a review of the foundations of sociocultural perspectives on literacy, Skerrett dis-
cusses studies on aspects of reading instruction that have largely been informed by sociocultural
perspectives, including those that explore reading identity, choice texts, shared texts, instruction
across contexts, and integrating sociocultural and cognitive factors in reading instruction. In so
doing, Skerrett attends to the individual reader as situated across multiple contexts, and thus pro-
vides an expanded conception of the influences of reading instruction.
Moving from readers to texts, Townsend, Barber, and Carter attend to what has long been
a contested term: academic language. Informed by work in the area of Systemic Functional Lin-
guistics (SFL), the authors define academic language and academic literacy as two, often overlapping,
categories of instructional targets. They review intervention studies intended to improve aca-
demic language at the elementary and secondary levels and contrast this body of research with
intervention studies aimed at improving academic literacy skills. In so doing, they clarify the dis-
tinction between these two overlapping, but distinct, domains, and discuss implications for future
studies on the relationship between academic literacy, vocabulary, and reading comprehension.
The authors raise questions about how to attend to ideological and raciolinguistical issues of what
counts as academic language and literacy while drawing on a “neutral” framework, such as SFL,
and call for instruction that makes space for critical conversations that explore the functions of
academic language.
Gamez continues with a chapter that considers what it might look like for classrooms to make
space for critical conversations, not just with an eye toward the functions of language, but also
toward the ways in which classroom discussions influence reading comprehension, overall.
Gamez expands notions of what makes for high-quality language experiences in school and at
home, moving from a focus solely on the quantity of teacher or caregiver words to one that
considers the syntactical complexity and vocabulary diversity of dialogue. She concludes by sug-
gesting practical applications to increase high quality conversations in classrooms, including inten-
tional read-aloud opportunities for younger readers and, for adolescent readers, text-based
classroom discussion amongst peers.
Moving from primarily spoken language to language in written texts, Greenleaf and Hinchman
delve into the research-based practices that support students to engage with disciplinary texts.
Focusing on the domain of science, the authors take a “social practices” view of disciplinary liter-
acy, exploring the role of texts in disciplinary inquiry and knowledge building, and the character-
istics of such texts. Their review of the research reveals implementation gaps, particularly around
how students learn to read specialized texts from a developmental perspective in contrast to
a social practices view. When it comes to teaching with disciplinary texts, gaps exist between
what is known about how to support teachers to use disciplinary texts in their classrooms and
what is known about teachers’ understanding of the epistemologies and practices of their discip-
line. The authors call for more research on literacy instruction that simultaneously develops
requisite skills, strategies, and dispositions for discipline-specific reading and reasoning; builds
knowledge about subjects of study; and meaningfully engages with the lives and languages stu-
dents bring to the classroom.
Also expanding our conception of texts in instruction, Nogueron-Liu and Lammers’s chapter
reviews studies about the features and affordances of digital tools, and their implications for class-
room-based practices. Literacy practices within classrooms can be understood as activities medi-
ated by a wide range of meaning-making tools – including multiple languages, media, texts on
various platforms (e.g., print books, CD-ROMs, websites), and devices to access content. The
authors argue that by framing new technologies as mediational tools, researchers can better

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understand the history embedded in digital platforms and software, and the ways in which they
are constructed, adopted, and changed. The authors review studies that reveal how new forms
and practices for reading texts can be shaped by the features of available digital tools, which are
in turn driven by different equity-based goals. Teachers then select digital tools based on their
needs to meet curriculum standards, as well as their efforts to teach and introduce new literacy
dispositions.
Next, Thomas, Bean-Folkes, and Coleman review the history of critical literacy from its
beginnings in the early 20th century, “for the place where a story begins influences the meaning
that can be derived from that story” (p. 432). In restoring the traditions of critical literacy, the
authors provide implications for youth who use participatory media sites to become civically
involved, to construct and understand themselves in the context of the narratives that make up
their world, and to choose to read texts that reflect themselves. The authors review studies of
teaching practices that question and disrupt the status quo and discuss the hurdles that educators
and researchers may face in bridging the definition, relevance, implementation, and translation
gaps.
Finally, Sabey and Leander consider the relationships amongst ethics, digital literacies, and edu-
cation within the global dynamics of this era. They begin by framing digital literacies as social
practices that produce localizing and globalizing movements and contribute to the homogeniza-
tion and heterogenization of the political, social, and cultural forces within any cultural realm of
interpretation or “figured world” (p. 437). Within these tensions, the authors consider how liter-
acy scholarship can engage more directly with the development of ethical digital social practices,
to which they turn to the theory of cosmopolitanism. They review literature on the applications
of cosmopolitanism to present a framework on how “unsettling encounters,” “critical reflec-
tions,” and “hospitable dialogues” all play roles in cosmopolitan interactions, with a goal towards
more ethical digital literacy education (p. 439 ff).

Part VI: How Do Research Methods Change the Game for Reading
Researchers and Policy Makers
As noted at the beginning of this preface, the handbook does not only review research; it also
aims to frame future research agendas. To this end, this set of chapters focuses on research
methods that offer significant advances to bridging gaps amongst reading research methodologies;
reading instructional practices, texts, and contexts; and readers’ identities and experiences. Each
chapter in this part is not intended to be an exhaustive review of the particular method, nor is it
intended to teach readers how to enact the method, but rather to make readers aware of the
assumptions that undergird the approach, the goals of using the approach, and the possibilities for
using the approach to address, if not close, the gaps that frame this volume.
First, Rowan, Maher, and White examine the use of video data in reading research. The
authors describe trends and opportunities related to video data collection, storage, labeling, and
analysis in the context of qualitative and quantitative studies. Rowan and colleagues highlight the
promise of video data as a potentially powerful tool for addressing or closing gaps in reading
research, particularly in terms of bridging new and traditional research methods, narrowing the
gap between basic and applied research, and addressing issues of classroom implementation. They
close by describing their own research, which incorporates video data and suggests implications
for future scholarship.
Next, Cho explores methods for studying reading across various forms of media, including
through the use of concurrent verbal protocols, cued verbal reports, task-based discourses, ethno-
graphic interviews, eye movement measures, and log files. In an increasingly complex digital age,
Cho argues that researchers can and should use diverse research methods and measures to better

xvi
 Preface

understand readers’ cognitive engagement with a variety of media and text types. Ultimately, his
review provides a reminder that “theory and methodology are symbiotic” and that a consistently
evolving conception of research methods will be key to bridging understanding and implementa-
tion gaps given the multifaceted, complex, and complicated nature of reading in different media
text environments.
Seeking to bridge gaps within and between disciplines, Noble and Simon explore methods for
studying the neurobiological basis of reading. The authors acknowledge the high costs associated
with neuroscientific methods such as brain imaging, but they argue that there is, in fact, substan-
tial value inherent in exploring reading by getting under the hood through this relatively new
approach. Noble and Simon outline three central and promising areas of neuroscientific reading
research ripe for further review, including the use of neuroscience to elucidate differences in the
brain that may not be detectable through behavioral approaches alone, the use of neuroscience to
predict reading impairments that may not otherwise be observable in very young children, and
the use of neuroscience to generate evidence that is particularly compelling for decisionmakers
and stakeholders across the fields of research, policy, and practice.
Finally, Martínez-Roldán illustrates the use of multiple methods for exploring how community
and linguistic diversity mediate reading. These methods include some that are familiar –
a traditional qualitative case study method, for example – as well as some that may be considered
novel, such as a combination of a sociocultural approach influenced by Vygotsky’s concept of
mediation and by Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). Martínez-Roldán describes how
such an approach, which is characterized by a focus on both the use of cultural tools in learning
and a conception of learning as an “activity system,” can be used both to address translation and
implementation gaps related to bilingual children’s language and reading development and, ultim-
ately to “generate social change and combat inequalitites” (p. 492). The chapter closes with
a discussion of the author’s use of this generative research approach to bridge gaps between
researchers, teachers, and teacher candidates who seek to understand and respond to emergent
bilingual learners’ unique strengths and needs.

xvii
 Part I
Game Changers in Reading
Research
Setting the Stage
 1
Game Changers in Reading
Research
Elizabeth Birr Moje, Peter P. Afflerbach,
Patricia Enciso, and Nonie K. Lesaux

To frame Volume V of the Handbook of Reading Research, we situate the examination of reading
research in today’s contexts of reading, learning to read, teaching reading, and using what we read
in the world. In thinking about how reading is studied and practiced, however, we focus on
uncovering some of the social, economic, and political conditions of research, teaching, and learning
contexts—conditions that shape how reading occurs; develops; and is learned, taught, and studied.
These contextual conditions also contribute to widening, mediating, and/or shrinking the gaps high-
lighted across the volume. Specifically, we interrogate the factors that change the game, in ways that
may be positive or negative, for students, teachers, leaders, and researchers.
Whether researchers are concerned with examining the relationships between knowledge and
comprehension processes, documenting the social and cultural practices that shape meaning
making, or analyzing the impact of digital technologies on reading, they invoke interrelated sys-
tems with different levels and loci of influence, from macro (state and societal systems), to meso
(school and education policies and systems), to micro (classrooms, informal learning spaces,
homes, and families). The graphic in Figure 1.1 represents just some of the conditions that are
changing the game for teachers, school leaders, families, policy makers, and reading researchers.
Beyond state and national systems, researchers also recognize the influence of global inequalities,
economies, and migrations requiring new approaches to educational practice and research that
value diverse ways of knowing, being, and doing.
Many demands press on and push out of these systems, posing challenges both to teaching
reading and to the conduct of reading research within the real conditions of schooling. These
game-changing demands necessitate that we work as a field to close the gaps. Intersecting condi-
tions across interlocking systems make intervening in any one condition—or outcome of
a condition—in any given space incredibly difficult for teachers, leaders, policy makers, and
researchers, especially if these players are not attempting to reach across the gaps. This volume
highlights gaps in reading education and research that have widened and, we argue, must be
addressed by our field. In particular, educators and researchers are increasingly aware of the
responsibility to understand readers more fully—as social, emotional, cognitive, and cultural
beings whose quality of life depends, in part, on supportive and informed learning environments.
Taking up this responsibility, we identify the game-changing conditions that have shaped con-
temporary contexts for reading research and have influenced the organization of this volume and
the research reviews that follow.

3
Elizabeth Birr Moje et al.

Classroom systems
• increased access to multiple texts
• new literacy practices
• more, and more robust, curricular demands
• increased testing
• greater inclusion across the reading skill spectrum
• growth in linguistic, cultural, racial/ethnic diversity

School and education policies and systems

• diminishing school resources
• decreasing school oversight
• lower teacher pay and benefits
• advances in assessment
• improved access to data
• increased accountability demands
• reduced teacher preparation requirements
• increased demand for teaching particular reading
skills

State, national, and societal policies and systems

• new and growing knowledge economy
• diminished reliance on evidence
• new forms of text and communication media
• growing income inequality
• diminished commitment to education for all
• increased and unbridled segregation
• growth in access to information
• reduced privacy

Figure 1.1 Conditions of education contexts that shape reading research and practice

Describing the Game Changers

Some of the conditions or game changers we outline below are familiar to those who have fol-
lowed 21st-century literacies work in which education is shaped by an increasingly global, infor-
mation-oriented “fast times” economy (c.f. Gee, 2000). Increasing availability of information—
both filtered and unfiltered, edited and unedited, accurate and questionable—for example, is
a game changer in terms of our thinking about what and how students need to learn, and espe-
cially about how they learn to read. Availability of information has also intensified in the sense
that information is delivered constantly and in multiple forms (image, word, sound). Sometimes
one bit of information delivered in a particular medium conflicts with other bits, delivered in
different media, requiring readers to make sense of these various forms simultaneously, and at
a speed not required in reading print on paper. The speed of access to that information has also
changed how we think about literacy, and reading, in particular. Children and youth, some
argue, do not only need to learn to read for meaning but also need to learn how to seek, sort,
and evaluate the information they read because so much information is produced so quickly, and
often with little verification or editing.
At the national level, other demands were ushered in with the education reforms of the Clin-
ton, Bush, and Obama administrations. The disaggregating of test data promoted by every presi-
dential administration since the Clinton administration revealed the ways that many children
were, actually, being left behind. Disaggregation of data also illuminated the fact that who got
left behind depended a great deal on race, socioeconomic status, and language skill (see Proctor

4
 Game Changers in Reading Research

and Chang-Bacon, Chapter 2, this volume, for specific analysis of these demographic challenges
to learning literacy and to academic and economic success writ large). Moreover, many
U.S. policy makers argued that no child was learning at the levels necessary to ensure U.S. success
in a global market; similar trends in global policy contexts—especially in Western developed
countries—can also be seen as more and more countries sought increased learning outcomes for
their children and youth (World Bank, 2019).
Coupled with decreasing economic prominence and increasing trade imbalances, the United
States responded similarly in the late 1990s and early 2000s as it did in the Sputnik era of the
1950s, casting the education system as one in crisis, and demanding new standards and new
accountability. The fear of being left behind globally inspired discourses of competition (“race to
the top”) as an antidote to the pending “crisis.” Competition discourses worldwide revolve
around what are variously referred to as “market-based education reforms” that purport to make
the work of educating children more competitive, thus allowing the market (i.e., parents, and in
some cases, youth) to decide on education practices by choosing the best options for their chil-
dren or themselves (Plank & Sykes, 2003). The notion of choice is meant to give people options
on a variety of dimensions, from quality of offerings and pedagogy; to the perspectives or values
espoused in a given school setting; to the size, location, safety, schedule, and other dimensions of
school operation. The fact that opportunities to choose are mediated by social, economic, and
political realities of people’s lives (Hanushek, Kain, Rivkin, & Branch, 2007) is often overlooked
in the discourses of choice and competition, creating game-changing conditions in a range of
school contexts (Bifulco & Ladd, 2006; Saporito, 2014). These market-based reforms are often
associated with public charters, voucher movements, and alternative routes to teacher
certification.
In addition to thinking about these demands, we approached this handbook focused on the
ways in which a new global economy produces material effects on education practice, policy,
and research. A dominant theme throughout the handbook, therefore, is the question of how
reading researchers need to account for these effects in their work. What some might think of as
distal influences on reading, learning to read, teaching reading, and conducting reading research,
we actually posit as game changers—ones that demand reading researchers do a better job of clos-
ing gaps. In what follows, we describe several of these game changers, noting that some chapters
in this volume take these game changers on in very specific ways. For those game changers not
addressed in the handbook as independent chapters, we draw attention to the conditions they
produce and the questions these changes should raise for reading researchers.

A Changing Ethnic, Racial, and Socioeconomic Landscape

Increasing migration across national and local boundaries has dramatically shaped the composition
of not only U.S. classrooms, but also classrooms around the world. As Proctor and Chang-Bacon
(this volume, Chapter 2) describe, the U.S. student population is increasingly diverse, even in
locations outside major cities. What has not changed radically, however, is the teaching work-
force, which remains largely homogeneous. The contrast between the racial, cultural, and linguis-
tic backgrounds of predominantly monolingual, white, female teachers and their plurilingual,
racialized, religiously and culturally diverse student populations is a game changer, especially
when considering that reading instruction and research can be skewed toward assumptions of
universal childhoods (Bloch, Kennedy, Lightfoot, & Weyenberg 2006; Dumas & Nelson, 2016)
and equitably resourced learning environments (Cook-Harvey, Darling-Hammond, Lam, Mercer,
& Roc, 2016).
In their chapter, Proctor and Chang-Bacon explicitly address the demands and implications of
forging research and educational change within the context of widening demographic and

5
Elizabeth Birr Moje et al.

economic differences in school and community contexts. Recognizing demographic changes as

well as long histories of racialization, Lee (this volume, Chapter 3) and other authors outline pre-
cisely how researchers and educators might realize new relations of trust and engagement with
youth who desire and deserve more robust learning environments. The gap among theory,
research, and teaching, however, remains and demands cross-system investment in a vision of
equity and change.

Workforce and Changes in the U.S. and Global Economy

A global economy has changed the way people in any country think about educating children,
youth, and adults for the world of work and for active community participation. Although often
cast as the effects of a more technological, information-based economy, the reality is that the
diminished U.S. manufacturing and labor portfolio has simply reduced options for our students.
It is worth noting that service jobs actually still exist in large numbers in our society, but that
wages for those jobs have not kept pace with inflation (Bailey & Belfield, 2019; Krugman, 1997,
2017), suggesting that the demand for “knowledge workers” might be overstated.
Despite these economic analyses that call attention to wage rather than knowledge disparities,
it remains the case that attention to literacy—and reading in particular—is a crucial need in
a society whose “game” has changed in these ways. Given that the U.S. economy is no longer
based on manufacturing, learning to read is a necessary ingredient of full participation in a society
that depends on and demands literacy. “Learning to read” signifies more than the ability to call
out words or to answer multiple choice questions on a test. It involves reading widely and
deeply for meaning, and using what one reads to do real work in the real world, and sifting
through the welter of information that comes to individuals in an information economy. It also
refers to developing the skills and competencies that allow a reader to question and challenge
received knowledge in a given text, or taken-for-granted assumptions about how the world
works, that shape disciplines and other domains of practice. In sum, 8th or 10th grade basic liter-
acy skills are insufficient for life; it is more difficult than ever before to be successful in a society
in which the great majority of high-paying jobs require at least a college education and, typically,
advanced degrees, which has implications for reading research and educational practice.

New Forms of Text and New Communication Practices

In this knowledge economy, for better and for worse, youth and adults communicate identity,
knowledge, and aspiration across digital platforms offering boundless exposure to and inter-
action with texts, images, and sounds. Although communication is the primary driver for digi-
tal connectivity, youth and teachers are also reading and interpreting a continuously changing
flow of new textual forms. This scenario produces both generative change in the conceptual-
ization of text and challenging gaps in identifying when, what, and how reading is happening.
Bråten, Braasch, and Salmerón (this volume, Chapter 5), Mackey, (this volume, Chapter 6),
and Baron (this volume, Chapter 7), all frame and address the question of “what is a text” in
terms of the container. Does it matter if the text is read online or in hard copy? As
a fundamental focus for basic reading research this question of text form is a game changer:
Where, when and how does reading happen if the text is not sourced and vetted? What happens
when readers are searching for information and constructing meaning across platforms with mul-
tiple online and offline texts? What is happening to readers, by readers, and with readers as they
read and create texts for new purposes?

6
 Game Changers in Reading Research

Some of the greatest implementation gaps between research and schools appear to lie in
teachers’ and school leaders’ assumptions about what new text forms do and do not do, and in
how to use different media to enhance learning, rather than to distract from it. Many researchers
are creating, evaluating, and/or implementing digital platforms to support comprehension (c.f.
Allen & McNamara, this volume, Chapter 14), community reading with youth (Noguéron-Liu
and Lammers, this volume, Chapter 21) and disciplinary literacy in science education (Greenleaf
and Hinchman, this volume, Chapter 20). Importantly, many researchers address the problem of
“the text” across different domains of reading and literacy education. As their research suggests,
reading researchers will continue to need rigorous, open-minded, and systematic cross-domain
research on texts and the power of texts in all their forms in a new decade.

Testing
Within education systems, and throughout society, testing exerts both obvious and nuanced
influence on reading theory, practice, and research. Tests have an impact on how students,
teachers, parents, administrators, legislators, and the general public conceptualize growth in liter-
acy, the appropriateness of curriculum and instruction, suitable assessment, and learning out-
comes. It is difficult to overstate the influence of testing on how reading curriculum, instruction,
and student learning occur in the everyday. In some respects, 21st-century schooling has been
marked by an ever-escalating race to teach and learn at an ever faster, development-defying pace,
so that youth will eventually be competitive in a fast-paced global economy. Testing mediates
the discourse between reading research and reading practice, and therefore is responsible for con-
nections and gaps in how the two communicate. For decades, testing has been—and likely will
continue to be—a game changer.
Reading assessment, as part of the overall testing context, has been addressed in multiple chap-
ters as a game changer for researchers who have developed innovative approaches to contextual-
izing and illuminating students’ knowledge, language skills, and motivations to read (see Fox,
Chapter 10; Khan and Justice, Chapter 11; Mancilla-Martinez and McClain, Chapter 12; Cervetti
and Wright, Chapter 13). Although there is promise in the reading assessment space, the larger
testing movement has, in many cases and contexts, simultaneously reframed children’s reading
development timelines and teachers’ focus on the relationship between learning to read and
measurable outcomes. This kind of thinking is part of the market-based reform ethic, which pro-
duces strategies that promote competition, such as pay for performance or value-added models
applied to assessment. These models examine what the teacher has done to make a difference in
child learning, but do not account for all the challenging conditions that the child might experi-
ence in life or in school classrooms.
This story is not new. As early as 1987, Alexander, James, and Glaser described the phenom-
enon of habitual testing constraining the broad conceptualization and appreciation of academic
subjects and student development when conducting a review of results of the National Assess-
ment of Educational Progress (NAEP):

unfortunately, we are apt to measure what we can, and eventually come to value what is
measured over what is left unmeasured. The shift is subtle and occurs gradually.
(p. 23)

As a result, particular aspects of students’ reading development—those most frequently measured

by consequential tests—become the markers of progress as well as the foci of reading research
design and rationale. Testing figures in how society regards schools, teachers, and students and
how it conceptualizes achievement, accountability, and quality. As test scores receive most

7
Elizabeth Birr Moje et al.

attention, an expected result is that positive influences on students’ reading test scores will receive
attention, and many other influences will be ignored. Testing and test scores are interwoven into
the microsystems of daily classroom life, and into economic and political macrosystems of our
society. Thus, testing has changed the game for teachers, leaders, and reading researchers by
exerting a profound influence on both reading research and reading instruction practice at all
grades (but especially at the primary grades).

Increasing Demands for Student Learning

Prompted by less-than-desirable results produced in the No Child Left Behind—and correspond-
ing testing regime—of the 1990s, together with the warnings about the turn to a knowledge
economy during the same era, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the
National Governors Association (NGA) worked to produce more robust learning opportunities
for students, on the assumption that the poor test performance was a result of inadequate curricu-
lum and/or instruction. The approach was to try to unify U.S. education through the establish-
ment of common learning standards, resulting in the Common Core State Standards for English
Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects (as well as
Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, rendered in a separate document). As described
by the framers in the final document,

the Standards are meant to be, (1) research and evidence based, (2) aligned with college and
work expectations, (3) rigorous, and (4) internationally benchmarked. A particular standard
was included in the document only when the best available evidence indicated that its
mastery was essential for college and career readiness in a 21st-century, globally competitive
society.
(CCSSO & NGACBP, 2010, p. 3)

The document is also intended to be “a living work, as new and better evidence emerges, the
Standards will be revised accordingly” (2010, p. 3), although to our knowledge, no revision of
the Standards has been offered in the past nine years since their launch, despite significant
advancements in literacy research and notable critiques of gaps in the standards (many of which
are presented in this volume).
More noteworthy, the standards were just that: end goals, standards for learning, rather than
curricula or professional practice guides. Teachers and school leaders were expected to achieve
these standards without corresponding attention to professional development, the creation or cur-
ating of viable text resources, or the development of curricular materials. To be sure, numerous
groups—including reading researchers and commercial publishers—have crafted materials, profes-
sional development opportunities, and text resources purported to be aligned with the CCSS, but
no official documents or strategies were developed to accompany the standards. As the launch
date makes clear, the standards have been in place for nine years, but the results of national test-
ing regimes such as the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP, 2019) show a [non-
significant] decrease in scores since 2009 (with a modest increase in scores at both 4th and 8th
grade from 1992, well before the new standards were launched). Only one state, Mississippi,
made statistically significant gains in reading, although their gains bring them only equal to the
average score of 4th-grade students in the United States, which remains well below proficient
according to NAEP metrics.
In this volume, with a lens towards forward progress and momentum, researchers look to
pedagogies that support and extend students’ knowledge and language development (Cervetti
and Wright, Chapter 13) and toward assessments and related activities that address unique

8
 Game Changers in Reading Research

configurations of students’ knowledge and language capacity relative to narrative forms and
complexities (Allen and McNamara, Chapter 14). They also view students’ and teachers’
knowledge in a dynamic, flexible relationship with their linguistic repertoires and the aca-
demic discipline they are studying (Townsend, Chapter 18 and Uccelli, Chapter 9). Reading
researchers are addressing the demand for increased student learning, for a highly diverse
population, including and especially multilingual learners. Going forward, the challenge will
be translating and implementing research findings across larger landscapes of classrooms and
communities. Although standards will be with us for some time, the core of reading education
will have to continue to focus on the interrelated practices of language in use, knowledge
production, and conceptual understanding across varied narrative forms and within specific
disciplinary domains.

Children Experiencing Stress(ors); Teachers Experiencing Burn-Out

One game changer that is not examined in its own chapter in this volume is the increasing
level of student anxiety and trauma witnessed in the latter half of the decade between publica-
tion of HRR4 (2010) and this volume (2020). School districts around the United States are
experiencing unprecedented levels of trauma, stress, and anxiety, especially in neighborhoods
where youth are regularly policed, where drugs and guns are endangering lives, and where
economic growth is a dire issue (Fine et al., 2003; Morsy & Rothstein, 2019). The trauma of
experiencing hunger and housing insecurity, daily exposure to violence, and toxic living con-
ditions is felt by students and teachers in many communities across all regions of the U.S. and
world (Dutro, 2019; World Health Organization, 2017). Both youth living in under-
resourced and well-resourced communities also experience stressors associated with bullying,
high-stakes testing, toxic political discourses, and sexual harassment, often promulgated
through social media (Nutt, 2018; Shalaby, 2017).
The increase in documented stress and anxiety is precipitous and unprecedented, as evidenced
by the highest U.S. suicide rate in 28 years, at 13%, an increase of 24% between 1999 and 2014
(Curtin, Warner, & Hedegaard, 2016). In addition, teachers in challenging school environments
name the trauma their students experience as the greatest job challenge they face, producing
what is being labeled as “secondary trauma” (Walker, 2019). Even a cursory search in the popular
press paints a frightening picture of this game changing condition of schooling, especially when
one attends to the fact that schools and schooling-related processes themselves can cause trauma
(Gaffney, 2019). As Lee (this volume, Chapter 3) points out, it is difficult to learn to read—or
learn anything—when experiencing threat. Indeed, threats to any student’s well-being, especially
among indigenous youth, youth of color, and youth who identify as LGBTQ, means that the
conditions of schooling that increasingly define human value in terms of test results and compli-
ance are barely tolerable for youth or teachers.
In their review of research on protective factors in early childhood literacy and development,
Hanno, Jones, and McCoy (this volume, Chapter 15) highlight the significance of “burnout cas-
cade” and the ways both children and adults experience heightened stress and fractured relation-
ships when teachers feel inadequate and unable to cope with children’s needs. They argue, as do
other researchers, that knowledge about and attention to one’s own and others’ cultural histories
(Thomas, Bean-Folkes, and Coleman, this volume, Chapter 22), capacity to listen (Sabey and
Leander, this volume, Chapter 23), and perception of students as competent and multifaceted
(Lee, Chapter 3; Campano, Nichols, and Player, this volume, Chapter 8) can create more
humanizing and expansive opportunities for learning. How, then, can these concerns become vis-
ible, prioritized features of research in reading education? If schooling and classroom conditions,
interactions, and instruction are actually increasing stress, then what needs to change?

9
Elizabeth Birr Moje et al.

Declines in the Teacher Workforce and in Teacher Preparation

In relation to the stress experienced by teachers, a game changer not featured as its own topic in
this volume is the decline in the number of well-prepared teachers in the U.S. That is, we have
a teaching workforce and teacher preparation landscape that is shifting alongside many other con-
ditions that relate to educating today’s students to high levels of literacy. Specifically, the United
States has witnessed increasing shortages in the overall teacher labor market since the 2008 reces-
sion when teacher salaries stagnated and many traditional teacher benefits (e.g., pension plans)
were reduced or cut altogether. Furthermore, as noted in a 2019 Economic Policy Institute
report, “The current national estimates of the teacher shortage likely understate the magnitude of
the problem because the estimates consider the new qualified teachers needed to meet new
demand” (Garcia & Weiss, 2019, p. 4). Exacerbating the numerical shortage is the lack of quali-
fied teachers (Garcia & Weiss, 2019; Sutcher, Darling-Hammond, & Carver-Thomas, 2016).
Specifically, according to the Center for American Progress (Partelow, 2019), enrollment in
teacher preparation programs has declined by one-third since 2010, suggesting that there is
a shortage of prepared teachers (Sutcher et al., 2016). The decline in teachers prepared in
accredited programs is coupled with a small increase in individuals prepared in alternative certifi-
cation programs; however, these programs are not required to report on outcomes (or any other
data) under the Higher Education act, thus making it impossible to track completion numbers,
quality of preparation, or years of service with any certainty (Partelow, 2019).
The declines tracked in teacher preparation programs vary significantly, with Oklahoma
experiencing the highest decline at 80% and Massachusetts the lowest, at 15%. Michigan, which
has seen a 67% decline in enrollment also had a largest decline in completers of U.S.-based
teacher preparation programs, at 54%, although Oklahoma was not far behind. Coupling declin-
ing enrollments with drops in completion results in classrooms populated by teachers who are
not accredited by teacher education programs. In Michigan, the shortage is so dire—especially in
mathematics, sciences, world languages, and special education—that the substitute teacher pool
has been depleted. Requirements for long-term (extended) substitute teachers—people who can
teach an entire year in the same school—have been reduced to 60 credit hours in any subjects
(i.e., not necessarily in a program of study). Some public charter schools in Detroit, Michigan,
for example, employ extended substitute teachers as 100% of their teaching force (Wilkinson &
French, 2019), which means that all day, every day, and all year long, children are being taught
to be “college and career ready” by people who have not themselves graduated from college.
Research sheds light on the reasons for the declines; although providing details of the specific
findings is beyond the scope of this chapter, the Economic Policy Institute report implicated
working conditions—including many outlined above—together with lack of preparation (espe-
cially related to being asked to teach outside of one’s expertise) and salaries as the most reported
and/or observed explanations for teachers choosing not to enter, and choosing to leave, the pro-
fession (Garcia & Weiss, 2019).
Finally, whether a product of a diminishing workforce or a result of market-based reforms,
changes in teacher certification and professional education standards are evident nationwide.
According to data from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Teacher and Principal
Survey in 2015–2016, 8.8% of teachers do not have a standard state certificate or a professional
certificate; 17.1% took a route to certification not associated with a higher education institution
(USDOE, 2017).
These statistics, taken together with the fact that in the 2015–2016 academic year, 22.4% of
teachers had been teaching for five or fewer years, and 9.4% had been teaching less than two
years (USDOE, 2017), shed light on major issues in developing reading skills and competencies
to a high degree among all students. Ultimately, it is clear that the nation’s children, especially

10
 Game Changers in Reading Research

those in the most economically challenged areas of the country, where teacher shortages are at
higher levels (Garcia & Weiss, 2019), are not being taught by the most prepared teachers, espe-
cially when it comes to both primary grades reading instruction and disciplinary literacy instruc-
tion (see Greenleaf and Hinchman, Chapter 21, on the importance and challenge of sophisticated
disciplinary literacy teaching).
Given the gap between what we know about how the act of reading occurs and what we
know about how to teach the process of reading to large and diverse groups of children simultan-
eously, these statistics highlight a major game changer in reading instruction and reading research.
Teaching reading is a complex practice that requires sophisticated knowledge of language and
linguistics, of reading processes and practices, of child development, and of the specialized learn-
ing needs of children from all backgrounds. Layer those knowledge demands at the level of the
teacher with the need to understand the cultural and linguistic practices among an increasingly
diverse population of children, while also meeting new standards that will be routinely tested
under ever-changing testing regimes, and it should be clear that the game has changed signifi-
cantly for teachers, school leaders, and reading researchers. It is especially ironic—or tragic—that
this game-changing shortage of well-prepared teachers, irrespective of their training pathway,
comes at a time when classrooms are more diverse, texts are more fluid and people’s reach
through text and text media is more global, the economy has changed and with it what learners
need, accountability demands are on the rise, and learners are experiencing higher rates of stress
and trauma.

What Is Reading Research in These Game-Changing Times?

As we described, the world is changing; societies are changing. Correspondingly, the work of
educating the population is changing. These changes result from the complex dynamics of local
and distant politics, economics, and preferences for particular reading research and practice. Pol-
icymakers and parents demand higher standards for student learning, with outcomes measured on
increasingly high-stakes tests. Meanwhile underpaid, and in many cases underprepared, teachers
are navigating the challenges posed by student needs and profiles even as they are learning to use
new and multiple text media and technological tools that change dramatically from day to day
and that provide access to increasingly unfiltered and unedited information. Game changing,
indeed.
These changes therefore have implications for reading research. Changing contexts and
demands within the complex systems of reading education, reading teacher education, and
research on literacy learning and teaching require that we take a hard, informed look at what
reading research is, why we do it, and how we know what we know (i.e., What counts as evi-
dence? What doesn’t count?). Finally, reading researchers need to ascertain how knowledge and
knowledge production matter for children and youth, their teachers, school leaders, and those
who influence reading policies in schools and school systems. The focus here is on the new
demands and whether our “old” purposes, assumptions, methods, and designs are up to the task
of producing research that addresses the contexts and conditions of change. This motivation
requires that we ask questions, such as:

• Who are the students we teach, and in what ways are they different or similar as students in
relation to prior generations?
• Who comprises the teaching workforce in the U.S. and around the world?
• What are the implications of these differences in student and teaching populations for their
teaching and learning—the everyday collaboration in the classroom? What do those implica-
tions mean for literacy teacher education and for literacy research?

11
Elizabeth Birr Moje et al.

• What do we know about individual student readers’ development? How is development

understood in contexts of migration, war and civil/or unrest, and economic inequality?
• What do we know about reading as a cultural and social practice, again in the contexts of
migration, war and/or civil unrest, and economic inequality?
• What does the lack of high-quality teacher preparation mean for the implications of the two
prior questions? How do teachers who may know little about individual development and
about cultural and social practices engage with and support today’s diverse groups of
learners?
• What do we know about the changing nature of texts, how they influence reader behaviors
individually and socially, and how they are used in varying contexts?
• What do we know about instruction that considers students’ individual reading development,
social and cultural practices, and the demands of new texts and new ways of communicating?
How can we translate these ideas into practice in ways that help teachers and school leaders
with the game changers they face?
• Finally, how do we know these things? What are the most sophisticated designs and methods
for researching reading? What are the most appropriate avenues of inquiry? How can we
work across fields, disciplines, and epistemologies, to bridge gaps in the knowledge of read-
ing researchers and to design even more sophisticated research designs than we have had in
the past?

Each of the “what do we know” questions begs a corresponding, “what do we do with what we
know” question. This handbook is published in the midst of challenging times for society, both
domestic and global, and there are no easy solutions for closing the gaps made salient by these
game changers. The chapters that follow take up these questions and offer the beginnings of mul-
tiple research paths forward. We invite readers to take up these questions throughout the hand-
book and to consider how the next decade of researchers can respond.

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 Part II
How Increasingly Diversified
Populations Change the Game
for Readers, Teachers, Leaders,
and Reading Researchers
 2
Demographic Realities and
Methodological Flexibility in
Literacy Teaching and Research
C. Patrick Proctor and Chris K. Chang-Bacon

The ability to comprehend text and interrogate its credibility has become increasingly critical in
an era of information saturation. As a result, literacy, now more than ever, is the foundation
upon which content knowledge and informed civic participation are built, which places a special
emphasis on quality literacy instruction for children and youth. The unique racial, ethnic, and
linguistic pluralities in the United States interact with this reality, demanding that we as educators
and researchers become more linguistically and methodologically flexible as we tackle thorny
issues of generalizable literacy research and the means by which that research is translated into
practice across tremendous variability in the instructional contexts in which children and youth
are learning.
Our goal in this chapter is to present a vision of literacy education and literacy research for
the current era. We argue that, when it comes to literacy, both education and research are
inescapably impacted by racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity. This requires that we, as educators
and as researchers, be methodologically flexible in the means by which we structure literacy
teacher education and literacy research. In other words, the dramatically heterogeneous set of
demographic circumstances and variable policy landscapes that define national and international
contexts have a profound impact on how we prepare teachers for literacy instruction, and for
how we tackle the empirical questions and findings that guide literacy research. We see these as
related issues, and thus envision educators and researchers engaged in mutual and ongoing explor-
ation of questions about how languages and literacies vary across instructional and demographic
contexts, with implications for a broader and more comprehensive understanding of literacy and
its development vis-à-vis instructional practice.
In the first section of this chapter, we describe a demographic lens of race, ethnicity, and lan-
guage through which literacy education and research are refracted. This section includes attention
to student and teacher demographics, the mismatch between them, and the policies that have
historically affected the means by which teachers are trained and researchers are constrained. In
the second section, we turn specifically to literacy teacher education, defined broadly as teacher
preparation (pre-service) and professional development (in-service). We locate literacy within
these domains of teacher education, describing their characteristics, how literacy is framed within
them, and specifically how the demographic lens creates a need for methodological flexibility in
relation to how teachers are prepared to deliver literacy instruction. In the third and final section,
we turn to literacy research and explore how demographic realities are, or are not, reflected in

17
C. Patrick Proctor and Chris K. Chang-Bacon

this arena. We argue that attention to demographic range (among both participants and literacy
researchers themselves) is critical for informing our understandings of research findings and their
relation to practice. We finally argue that methodological flexibility is critical to informing good
literacy practice.
We note that, in our focus on demography, we do not directly engage issues of sexuality,
disability, neurodiversity, and other critical dimensions of identity and culture that can impact
literacy teaching and learning. We focus specifically on race, ethnicity, and language because we
view these as core to many national contexts in which children and youth develop literacy, in
part through schooling. Additionally in this chapter, we focus specifically on the U.S. context
where race, ethnicity, and language are core to the country’s founding, and thus relevant to both
its failings and its potentialities with respect to literacy and schooling.
Ultimately, then, our challenge to the reader is simple: to apply this demographic lens to con-
temporary understandings of literacy, and to reflect on whether and how methodological flexibil-
ity allows us to better focus on these critical demographics in literacy work. It is our hope to set
this challenge specifically for this Handbook of Reading Research, and more generally for literacy
educators and researchers working in today’s exhilarating and fraught contexts.

The Demographic Lens: Students, Teachers, and Policy

Any profession must respond to the demographic realities of its time. In education, this response
involves alignment between student populations, teacher practice, and educational policy. Liter-
acy itself is likewise affected by a complex interplay across these categories. Literacy standards
inform student outcomes (and vice versa), while teachers are expected to respond to policy
changes and meet standardized performance benchmarks in the face of varied levels of student
need and language background. Paradoxically, education has been critiqued as “conservative”
(Lortie, 1975), slow to respond to change as a profession. Below we use the demographic lens to
highlight a paradox characterized by heterogeneity in the U.S. student population, alongside
a “conservatism” in teacher demographics, contextualized in a shifting landscape of literacy stand-
ards and educational policy.

Student Populations
Demographically, 2014 was the first year in U.S. history in which White, English-speaking stu-
dents comprised less than half of the public school enrolled population (NCES, 2017a). This shift
is primarily driven by an increase in the enrollment of Latinx students, which rose from
9.0 million to 12.5 million between 2003–2013 (19% to 25% of total enrollment) and is pro-
jected to increase to 14.7 million in 2025 (29%; NCES, 2017b). Approximately one in five stu-
dents is growing up speaking a language other than English at home (Ryan, 2013). These
bilingual children and youth constitute the fastest growing population in U.S. schools (Shin,
2013), where English dominates as the language of instruction. While the majority of English
learners were born in the U.S. (Batalova, Fix, & Murray, 2005), immigration contributes to an
evolving linguistic landscape, with a record 42.2 million immigrants living in the U.S. as of 2014
(13.2% of the nation’s population). This figure is projected to increase to 20% by 2060 (Colby &
Ortman, 2015). In such a context, the availability of technology and the increasingly fluid nature
of global migration has led to increasing numbers of transnational youth who maintain significant
ties to two or more countries (Oliveira, 2017; Skerrett, 2015).
While not a perfect correlation, there is no denying the associations between race, language
status, and poverty in the U.S. Kochhar and Fry (2014) note that, between 2007 and 2013,
median disparities in wealth ratios increased from 10 to 12.9 and 8.2 to 10.3 between Black and

18
 Demographic and Methodological Flexibility

Latinx household net worth and White household net worth, respectively. In real dollars, this
means that the 2013 median household net worth for White families was $81,400 but just
$11,000 and $13,700 for Black and Latinx families, respectively. Recent reports also indicate that
low-income students are now a majority in U.S. public schools (Southern Education Foundation,
2015), with students of color being more likely than their White peers to attend high-poverty
schools (National Equity Atlas, 2016). Economic instability and the adverse childhood experi-
ences associated with poverty are stable predictors of literacy outcomes for children and youth in
the U.S. Indeed, Phillips (2016) notes that poverty can affect early neurobiological development
with implications for working memory, attentional control, error processing, impulse control,
and self-regulation, all of which are known predictors of reading outcomes, and also impact the
likelihood of students being drawn into school disciplinary systems from an early age.
In addition, the push in recent decades for inclusion and mainstreaming of students with spe-
cial needs intersects with the broadening demographic realities of U.S. classrooms. Mixed evi-
dence indicates that students of color and English learners are both overrepresented in some
disability categories (e.g., intellectual disabilities, general learning disabilities; Artiles, Klingner,
Sullivan, & Fierros, 2010; Sullivan, 2011), but also underrepresented, for example, in being diag-
nosed with autism spectrum disorders (Jo et al., 2015; Mandell et al., 2009; Zuckerman et al.,
2013, 2014). Both sets of findings point to systems for identifying students with special needs that
have not kept pace with demographic and linguistic variability in U.S. schools.

Teacher Demographics
Unlike the rapidly evolving student population in U.S. schools, inertia grips the teacher demo-
graphic and sets up a demographic paradox. While students of color now comprise more than
half the public school population, teachers of color are just 18% of the teacher workforce (U.S.
Department of Education, 2016). And even though every state in the U.S. has a low ratio of
teachers-of-color to students-of-color, this difference is most pronounced in the most diverse
states, notably California and Nevada, states in the Southwest and Mid Atlantic (Boser, 2014),
and in large urban centers.
The implications of this demographic paradox for literacy achievement have been thrown into
sharp relief in recent years. Research has long demonstrated that U.S. schools privilege literacy
practices that reflect White middle class language norms, while literacy practices that decenter
those norms are often unrecognized or actively delegitimized (Delpit & Dowdy, 2008; Heath,
1982; Michaels, 1981). Delegitimization of non-White norms and expectations has been linked
to the potential for imbalance in student disciplinary practices, especially suspensions and expul-
sions, which have been shown to affect Black and Latinx students at alarmingly disproportionate
rates (see Gregory, Skiba, & Noguera, 2010 for a review). This trend is stable across the Pre-
K-12 spectrum. Gilliam, Maupin, Reyes, Accavitti, and Shic (2016) found evidence of implicit
bias against Black children in varied disciplinary contexts, while Okonofua and Eberhardt (2015),
working with K-12 teachers, showed that student race exerted both a direct and an indirect
effect on how teachers felt about when and how to discipline White versus Black students. In
terms of consequences, students of color have been shown to be disproportionately removed
from class relative to their White peers for comparable disciplinary infractions (Fenning & Rose,
2007; Wald & Losen, 2003).
Arcia (2006) showed how such actions have clear implications for literacy outcomes. In
a three-year longitudinal study (2001–2004) Arcia compared students who had been suspended at
least once during that period (n = 49,327) to matched students who had received no suspensions
during that time (n = 42,809). Analyses of state reading achievement data showed that non-
suspended students’ reading performance was significantly higher than for suspended students,

19
C. Patrick Proctor and Chris K. Chang-Bacon

and that number of days suspended (i.e., 1–10; 11–20; or ≥ 21) was inversely associated with
reading outcomes. Yet when children of color are rated by teachers of color, they are considered
to be less disruptive (Dee, 2005; Downey & Pribesh, 2004; Wright, 2015) and to have better
work habits (Farkas, Grobe, Sheehan, & Shuan, 1990) relative to ratings provided by White
teachers.
Linguistic differences further complicate the demographic paradox. The majority of
U.S. teachers are monolingual English-speakers (Howard, 2016), and the majority of schooling
takes place exclusively in English. Thus, multilingual students are expected to accommodate the
monolingualism of the teachers and texts they encounter in schools. This raises barriers to parent
and family involvement (Cherng, 2016; Toldson & Lemmons, 2013), literacy instruction that
engages students’ full range of language abilities (Durán, 2017; Escamilla, 2009; García & Kleif-
gen, 2010), and assessment of students within and across languages (Proctor, Silverman, & Har-
ring, 2017; Soltero-González, Escamilla, & Hopewell, 2012). Linguistic research also
demonstrates the legitimacy and inevitability of dialect variation (Adger, Wolfram, & Christian,
2007; Lippi-Green, 2012; Rickford, 1999) alongside findings that suggest such variation remains
stigmatized in educational settings (Bacon, 2017; Smith, 2016), particularly when used by students
of color (Baker-Bell, 2013; Flores & Rosa, 2015). Teachers unfamiliar with their students’ lin-
guistic aptitudes may misinterpret dialectal differences as decoding errors (Wheeler, Cartwright,
& Swords, 2012), as a lack of grammatical awareness (Dyson & Smitherman, 2009), or may dis-
miss students’ language use altogether as “broken” English (DeBose, 2007).

Shifting Policy Landscapes

The demographic paradox between teacher and student populations intersects with shifting edu-
cational policies and literacy standards. Without doubt, the need for a highly literate population
has resulted in unprecedented attention to education reform and teacher quality issues among
policymakers (Cochran-Smith & Villegas, 2016). Since the Clinton-era Goals 2000: Educate Amer-
ica Act of 1994, we have seen a persistent focus on standards-and-outcomes based education
reform, predicated on particular beliefs about what students need to know for a literacy-heavy
economy, and, just as importantly, on being able to measure that knowledge. Following the
Clinton Administration, George W. Bush launched the No Child Left Behind Act, which built on
Goals 2000 in part by establishing penalties for schools that underperformed on standards-aligned
literacy assessments. Under Barack Obama’s Race to the Top initiative and the Every Student Suc-
ceeds Act, assessment paradigms remained in place, along with the requirement that high-stakes
tests be attached to academically challenging literacy standards aligned with college entrance
requirements and the state’s career and technical education standards (ASCD, 2016).
More recently, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the Next Generation Science
Standards (NGSS) provide, for states that have adopted them, a set of linguistically complex
standards that are founded on the types of language and literacy skills deemed relevant for 21st
century knowledge economies. Holding aside concerns about banking models of education
(Freire, 1970), the CCSS have been the subject of focus among literacy educators and researchers
specifically for their linguistic dimensions. Similar literacy expectations emerge in the NGSS, spe-
cifically around discipline-specific ways in which scientists speak, write, and reason (Lehrer &
Schauble, 2006; McNeill, Lowenhaupt, & Katsch-Singer, in press), and in the service of con-
structing and critiquing scientific knowledge (Pruitt, 2014).
Some have suggested that these standards lack sufficient supports and direction for a systematic
implementation by districts, schools, and teachers (e.g., Calderón, Slavin, & Sánchez, 2011). On
the other hand, López (2016) notes that it is “the focus on the explicit use of language as the
medium of content acquisition that is lauded by scholars who have dedicated their careers to

20
 Demographic and Methodological Flexibility

promoting equitable education …” (p. 8). This includes the Understanding Language group
(http://ell.stanford.edu/) who have argued that the insertion of language into content learning is
critical, and provides meaningful opportunities to leverage the standards in service of threaded
literacy instruction (e.g., Bunch, Kibler, & Pimentel, 2012). Rymes, Flores, and Pomerantz
(2016) further suggested that these new standards “articulate the need for students to apply lan-
guage knowledge purposefully, yet flexibly, to accomplish specific tasks in particular contexts” (p.
258). Here, then, we see the direct injection of language and linguistic possibilities into language
arts and science standards, which can be viewed through the demographic lens as a start point for
teachers and students to make instructional sense of them.

Summary
In this section, we established a demographic lens by highlighting key characteristics, incongru-
ities, and challenges across students, teachers, and educational policy. From a teaching perspective,
the reality of the demographic paradox is fraught, with implications for cultural, racial, and lin-
guistic mismatches that can affect learning outcomes for students, particularly in the midst of lin-
guistically intricate language, literacy, and content standards. In this time in history, students
come from broad experiential and linguistic starting points, but are held to common sets of lin-
guistic standards that are typically only in English, and implemented by teachers whose back-
grounds are often more aligned with the standards than with the students. The need for broader
representation and increased linguistic awareness among teachers is a clear implication of the
demographic paradox. Second is the need to assess the monolingualism of our standards and the
research that informs these standards to consider how broad linguistic variability interacts with
large-scale implementation of linguistically complex expectations. We explore these factors below
as they relate to teacher education and literacy research.

Teacher Education
Good literacy instruction requires good teachers who are knowledgeable about how language
and literacy develop, and the most effective ways to teach to that development. Across demo-
graphic and policy contexts, Sleeter (2014) reminds us that “[t]eachers do not just teach reading,
or fifth graders, or social justice, or English learners, or standards; they do all of these things sim-
ultaneously” (p. 151). As it stands, we have two primary approaches for promoting quality liter-
acy instruction in schools: teacher preparation and professional development (PD), both of which
are forms of teacher education. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to provide
a comprehensive review of teacher preparation and PD, we highlight these two domains as crit-
ical vehicles for aligning teachers’ literacy instruction viewed through the demographic lens. In
this section, we frame literacy practices in the context of teacher education and then focus on
how demographic shifts intersect with both teacher preparation and professional development.
Based on these factors, we conclude by offering five critical competencies for literacy teacher
education to better reflect the demographic realities of today’s schools and classrooms.

Literacy in Teacher Education

There is no question that literacy research has made substantial strides since the National Reading
Panel (NRP, 2000) identified reading comprehension, phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency,
and vocabulary (the “big 5”) as key targets of literacy instruction. For example, the quantitative
role of language in both reading and writing has undergone substantive investigation with broadly

21
C. Patrick Proctor and Chris K. Chang-Bacon

representative grade levels and demographic groups. Selected findings suggest that a limited focus
on vocabulary is insufficient for understanding and impacting literacy outcomes, and more
instructional attention to malleable linguistic factors is merited in literacy instruction, for example,
morphology (Bowers, Kirby, & Deacon, 2010; Carlisle, 2010; Goodwin & Ahn, 2013; Kieffer &
Lesaux, 2012; Kieffer, Petscher, Proctor, & Silverman, 2016), syntax (Foorman, Koon, Petscher,
Mitchell, & Truckenmiller, 2015; Geva & Farnia, 2012; Proctor, Silverman, Harring, & Monte-
cillo, 2012), and teacher language use (Gámez & Lesaux, 2015; Silverman, Proctor, Harring,
Doyle, Mitchell, & Meyer, 2014). Likewise, qualitative research has continued to highlight the
affordances of understanding literacy as situated and contextualized practice (Barton, 2007).
Ethnographic and case-study research demonstrate the importance of considering context (Azano,
2015; Baird, Kibler, & Palacios, 2015; Rogers & Street, 2012; Scales et al., 2017) and identity
(Hall, 2016; Hall, Johnson, Juzwik, Wortham, & Mosley, 2010; Muhammad, 2012; Wagner,
2016). Furthermore, research on multimodal composition has cautioned against “textual bias” in
literacy instruction (Horner, 2013), which may fail to cover the range of literacy practices stu-
dents engage with on a daily basis across digital, visual, and sound-based mediums (Bartels, 2017;
Dalton, 2012; Stornaiuolo, Higgs, & Hull, 2013; Wargo, 2017). In the aggregate, these advances
in literacy research have provided increasingly nuanced suggestions for advancing school-based
literacy outcomes while expanding definitions of literacy overall, with implications for the know-
ledge base of teachers.
To this day, however, coverage of the “big 5” can serve as a limited bar by which teacher
education is evaluated. For example, the National Council for Teacher Quality (NCTQ) released
its highly-contested 2014 Teacher Prep Review in which standards for early reading, English learn-
ers, and struggling readers were almost entirely based on the NRP report (Greenberg, Walsh, &
McKee, 2015). By contrast, the International Literacy Association (2010) Standards for Reading
Professionals articulates a more contemporary focus on dimensions of reading research, including
major theories of reading and writing, motivation and engagement, first language, second lan-
guage, and bilingual reading development, and disciplinary literacy. Such discrepancies are indica-
tive of broad variability in teacher education.
Beyond professional organizations, a range of suggestions have been made for how to frame,
and teach, literacy development in teacher education. Fillmore and Snow (2002) argued for an
emphasis on equipping teachers with foundational knowledge of educational linguistics. Lucas
and Villegas (2013) advocated a focus on second language acquisition principles in their frame-
work for linguistically responsive teaching. Valdés, Capitelli, and Alvarez (2011) contended that
grounding teacher preparation in sociolinguistic knowledge positions all students as possessing
legitimate literacy competencies. Alim (2005, 2010) and Fairclough (1999) pushed for teachers to
explore the relationships between power, ideology, and language use in society. Finally, Bunch
(2013) and Galguera (2011) argued for pedagogical language knowledge, or “knowledge directly
related to disciplinary teaching and learning situated in the particular (and multiple) contexts in
which teaching and learning take place” (Bunch, 2013, p. 307).
As these varied approaches suggest, teacher preparation and PD will differ with respect to
how literacy is addressed. At the teacher preparation level, students require a broad understanding
of literacy development, instructional approaches, and learning environments. Professional devel-
opment models can assume some foundational knowledge, but must respond to expressed needs
in a given setting (e.g., Raphael, Au, & Goldman, 2009).

Demographics and Literacy in Teacher Education

While teacher preparation programs have been targeted for failing to attend to the racial (Ball &
Tyson, 2011; Castro, 2010; Milner, 2010; Silverman, 2010), linguistic (Endo, 2015; Lucas &

22
 Demographic and Methodological Flexibility

Villegas, 2013; Schleppegrell, 2007a, 2007b), and socioeconomic (DeCastro-Ambrosetti & Cho,
2005; White, Mistry, & Chow, 2013) variability of contemporary classrooms, programs that
develop teacher candidates’ understandings around the complexities of language, race, and iden-
tity have shown some promise (Godley, Reaser, & Moore; 2015; Jupp & Lensmire, 2016). Fur-
thermore, community-based field placements have been shown to help some teacher candidates
complexify their understanding of literacy practices and development, and to strengthen teacher-
family relationships within communities (Bain & Moje, 2012; Brayko, 2013). While important
advances, these approaches have also been criticized for their singular focus on helping the trad-
itional White teacher candidate engage with multilingual and multiracial students (Willis, 2003)
while sidelining teacher candidates of color (Brown, 2014).
Professional development approaches have also been criticized for overlooking demographic
realities (Bolgatz, 2005; Coles-Ritchie & Smith, 2016). Teachers have described professional
development for “diversity” as ineffective, unnecessary, or an imposition (Gay, 2005; Wiseman &
Fox, 2010). Many see such conversations as separate from, or even at the expense of, academic
instruction (Pollock, Bocala, Deckman, & Dickstein-Staub, 2016). Teachers report coming away
from such sessions maintaining the belief that they must simply renounce individual prejudices,
rather than interrogate systems of structural inequality and how such systems might play out
instructionally (Cross, 2010; Vaught & Castagno, 2008).
In the meantime, teachers continue to report feeling unprepared to implement culturally and
linguistically responsive literacy pedagogies (Gándara & Santibañez, 2016; Samson & Collins,
2012). For example, nationally, less than 30% of teachers of English learners (ELs) report having
opportunities for PD targeting race, ethnicity, and language (Ballantyne, Sanderman, & Levy,
2008). While this figure climbs to 38% in urban areas, two thirds of this PD consists of fewer
than eight hours over the course of the school year (Rotermund, DeRoche, & Ottem, 2017).
Another survey of special education teachers found that teachers of ELs received a median of
only three hours of EL-based professional training over a five-year period (Zehler et al., 2003).
This general trend holds in states with large EL populations. In California, for example, Gándara,
Maxwell-Jolly, and Driscoll (2005) found that approximately half of teachers whose classrooms
consisted of at least 50% of EL students received no professional development or only one session
on EL instruction over five years.
When teachers in preservice or PD contexts do receive language-specific professional develop-
ment, it most often tracks back to a methods focus (e.g., Bartolomé, 1994) in which instructional
approaches for scaffolding and differentiation of instruction are privileged.1 Far less common are
efforts to restructure school- or district-level systems to better support linguistically diverse popula-
tions. Expedient acquisition of academic English for the purpose of performance on standardized liter-
acy assessments thus becomes the primary emphasis, often at the expense of interrogating the social,
cognitive, and linguistic complexities students navigate and how those interact with instruction.

Summary
Teacher preparation faces a dual front in training teachers for literacy instruction. The first is that
preparation programs must work with current students to confront and resolve the tensions that
arise as a function of the demographic paradox. The second is that teacher preparation programs
need to diversify the pool of students who are coming into teaching. Haddix (2017) further con-
tends that while teacher diversification is necessary, it too is insufficient, and teacher education
must be restructured to support the preparation of a more racially and linguistically diverse
teacher core.
Professional development research also finds that teachers often feel unprepared for
working with multilingual and multiracial populations and indicate dissatisfaction with the

23
C. Patrick Proctor and Chris K. Chang-Bacon

content of PD that addresses literacy, demography, and policy. One potential reason for
dissatisfaction is that there appear to be more frameworks and macro theories than there are
actionable approaches that address the implementation of transformative literacy practices. In
light of this, we recommend a set of five core literacy competencies that should be
threaded into coursework and professional development for literacy teacher education.

1. Foundational and contemporary literacy research. There have been volumes written establishing
a scientific foundation for reading development among children and adolescents. Notable
among these are Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Snow, Burns, & Griffin,
1998) and the National Reading Panel Report (NRP, 2000). As we noted above, however,
literacy researchers continue to make strides in understanding what are malleable dimensions
of literacy instruction, coupled with how instruction might be tailored to address variation in
language, race, culture, and other critical contextual factors. These constantly evolving
research foundations should be tracked and updated so that pre- and in-service teachers are
provided with state-of-the-art literacy knowledge for effective instruction.
2. First, second, and simultaneous language development. Demographic trends in the U.S. show that
multilingualism is typical and thus knowledge of language acquisition and its implications for
instruction is critical (Takanishi & Le Menestrel, 2017). By language, we do not mean English
language, but rather monolingual, bi- and multi-lingual, and dialectal languages that character-
ize the linguistic realities of the U.S. student population. Working with teachers in pre- and
in-service settings requires an interrogation of what are the languages spoken in the schools
and classrooms where teachers are working and how those languages are understood and lever-
aged in the service of meeting standards and acquiring literacy and content knowledge.
3. Language development and disability. Intersecting with the second recommendation, late diag-
noses and underrepresentation in special educational services (Samson & Lesaux, 2009)
alongside overrepresentation and misinterpretation of data (Klingner & Eppollito, 2014)
reflect the range of challenges that arise with demographic shifts and their intersections with
literacy, language, and cognition. To date, the convergences between these issues are limited,
and oftentimes confusing. Increased attention to issues of language and disability are critical
for developing awareness of these complexities and are key to working with multilingual and
multiracial populations.
4. Functional roles of language. It is becoming increasingly clear that understanding how language
functions across disciplinary contexts and modalities is important for literacy instruction. As
Brisk and Kaveh (2019) argue, “[c]ontent area teachers must develop an identity as language
teachers in charge of building students’ linguistic resources to be able to function expressing
and comprehending knowledge in the discipline” (p. 9).
5. Socio- and Racio-linguistics. A focus on the social and linguistic contexts of teaching and learn-
ing environments undergirds how we understand language and literacy in teaching contexts.
Emerging scholarship articulates a raciolingistic perspective, arguing that language and race are
systemically interconnected in ways that highlight how language functions to privilege some
and marginalize others in schools and society (Alim, Rickford, & Ball, 2016; Flores & Rosa,
2015). Working with pre- and in-service teachers to interrogate these systems should under-
gird efforts that target each of the previous recommendations.

These core competencies should be considered in light of recent research on the characteristics
of effective professional development (e.g., Birman, Desimone, Porter, & Garet, 2000; Darling-
Hammond & Richardson, 2009; Desimone, Porter, Garet, Yoon, & Birman, 2002; Salinas,
Dwyer, Paratore, & O’Brien, 2012). This research broadly suggests that effective PD is: 1) sus-
tained in its duration to allow for deeper subject-area focus, more opportunities for active

24
 Demographic and Methodological Flexibility

learning, and more coherence with teachers’ experiences; 2) collective in its approach to participa-
tion among teachers from the same department, grade, or subject area who work together in
service of a shared professional culture; 3) active in promoting learning via professional learning
activities including classroom observations, common planning, and reviewing student work;
and 4) coherent, with clear links to school and system policies, standards and assessments, and
other PD. With these characteristics in mind, we see promise in embedding the five core literacy
competencies into impactful PD and teacher education more broadly. Expanding the scope of
literacy teacher education should be accompanied by a similar broadening of methods used in
literacy research to inform teacher education and practice.

Literacy Research
As with the teaching profession, literacy research must respond to demographic and policy
changes. First, sampling procedures must be designed to maximize the likelihood that findings are
generalizable to the populations that characterize U.S. schools. Second, literacy research must be
operationalized to eventually inform classroom practice (Snow, 2015). No single study or method
can accomplish these tasks entirely. Below, we argue for broadening the scope of literacy
research, both in terms of populations and methodological approaches.

Demographic Trends in Literacy Research

If demographic realities interact with how we think about literacy teacher education, then they
also ought to be reflected in literacy research itself. We begin by acknowledging that the same
inertia that grips the demographics of the teaching profession also manifests among literacy
researchers and the broader gatekeepers to literacy research and publication. Indeed, Rogers
(2017) noted that scholars of color rarely serve as editors of literacy journals. In a telling review,
she found that, since their inceptions (in 1952 and 1969, respectively), the two journals associated
with the Literacy Research Association, Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice and Journal
of Literacy Research, had a combined total of 165 White editors and only 14 editors of color. This,
alongside the cumulative effect of repeated citations of certain scholars versus others, in multiple
journals over time, begets a literacy research paradigm that amounts to “research policing”
(Brooks, 2017) and excludes the variety of perspectives and approaches that are necessary to
advance literacy research in needed ways.
In terms of sampled populations, the degree to which demographic realities inform literacy
research is more challenging to evaluate given the sheer quantity of literacy research that is pro-
duced annually. Indeed, in our research for this chapter, we were unable to locate any published
analyses that characterized the range of sample diversity represented in literacy research with
respect to race, ethnicity, or language background. In an attempt to get an initial sense of where
literacy research might be and where it is going with respect to this question, we conducted our
own constrained retrospective and prospective analyses.
Retrospectively, we reviewed two major publication outlets noted for high quality literacy
research: Reading Research Quarterly and Scientific Studies of Reading. We reviewed empirical studies
published from both journals from 1996–1997, 2006–2007, and 2016–2017. We assessed the
diversity of the research samples in these journals by noting the reported demographics with
respect to race and language. Prospectively, we reviewed recently funded literacy-focused grants
by the National Center for Educational Research through the Institute of Education Sciences. In
so doing, we sought to get a general sense of the demographic characteristics of funded literacy
research and the priorities of federal funding to date. Findings from these studies are likely to be

25
C. Patrick Proctor and Chris K. Chang-Bacon

published in literacy research journals and might be considered one barometer of sample variabil-
ity to come in the future.
Table 2.1 shows that the retrospective analysis yielded 14 studies from each decade, resulting
in 42 overall. Generally, racial and ethnic diversity were better represented than language diver-
sity. Across all three time points, approximately half of the studies (48%) were conducted among
predominantly (85%–100%) White populations, or did not report racial demographics. This per-
centage varied, from 50% in 1996–1997, to 36% in 2006–2007, and 58% in 2016–2017. Notably,
the 2016–2017 studies tended to dedicate more space to discussions of overall demographic char-
acteristics than the 1996–1997 studies. Linguistically, fully 74% of the studies were conducted
among predominantly monolingual populations, or did not report linguistic characteristics of the
samples. These percentages were consistent across decades, with the only notable difference being
that the 2016–2017 studies were more likely to explicitly report that research was conducted
among English-speaking populations.
Prospectively, the outlook for language representation in literacy research remains similarly
limited. Just three of the 57 projects funded in 2016 by NCER fell under the category “English
Learners,” and four additional projects were explicitly designed to focus on Spanish-speaking
children or dual language programs. Together, these comprised just 12% of funded projects.

Table 2.1 Overview of empirical studies reviewed for reporting of ethnolinguistic diversity, by race (primarily
White) and language (primarily monolingual)
Primarily Did not report Combined Primarily Mono- Did not report lan- Combined
White (PW) race (DNRR) PW + DNRR lingual (PM) guage (DNRL) PM + DNRL

2016 RRQ 2 2 4 3 2 5
(7 studies)
2016 SSR 2 2 4 3 2 5
(7 studies)
2016 Total 4 (29%) 4 (29%) 8 (58%) 6 (43%) 4 (29%) 10 (72%)
(14 studies)
2006 RRQ 1 0 1 0* 5 5
(7 studies)
2006 SSR 2 2 4 1 4 5
(7 studies)
2006 Total 3 (21%) 2 (14%) 5 (36%) 1 (7%) 9 (64%) 10 (71%)
(14 studies)
1996 RRQ 0 2 2 0* 5 5
(7 studies)
1997 SSR 1 4 5 0* 6 6
(7 studies)
1996/7 1 (7%) 6 (43%) 7 (50%) 0* (0%) 11 (79%) 11 (79%)
Total
(14 studies)
OVERALL 8 (19%) 12 (29%) 20 (48%) 7 (16%) 24 (57%) 31(74%)
TOTAL
(42 studies)

26
 Demographic and Methodological Flexibility

NCER also holds periodic “Technical Working Groups” (TWGs) in which researchers and
other stakeholders convene to discuss the state of research, or gaps in research, on particular
topics. While none of the seven TWGs between 2012–2015 convened specifically around the
topic of linguistic diversity, the need for further research on English learning was discussed in
five of the seven TWGs (NCER, 2016).
These brief analyses of sample composition and research foci suggest that racial and ethnic
diversity are well-represented relative to linguistic diversity, which continues to lag. The review
suggests that students designated as ELLs are at times excluded from broader analyses or the focus
of research on special populations of language learners who are separate from the broader student
population. While these approaches are methodologically valid, and have yielded important liter-
acy insights, they also mask the demographic realities of today’s multilingual and multiracial
classrooms.
In this context, one takeaway from these findings is to consider the relative value and meaning
of two broadly-used categories: English learner (EL) and Individualized Education Plan (IEP).
Practically, carrying such labels results in the provision of individualized linguistic, cognitive, or
behavioral supports in schools. Analytically, these labels can sometimes create unnecessary or
unhelpful confounds. For example, EL designations are primarily determined via English language
assessments. If, for example, the researcher is trying to learn about how language functions to
predict reading comprehension, an EL analytic category may serve to explain away variation in
the outcome that could be better understood with greater nuance using more precise measure-
ment approaches.

Methodological Trends
Literacy researchers are frequently concerned with uncovering findings that have direct
applicability to instructional practice. Given the inherent messiness of teaching and schools,
these questions of diversity in literacy research should apply not only to demographics, but
also to methodologies. Different approaches to conducting research are crucial if we want to
know what processes are involved in a given outcome (e.g., vocabulary knowledge predicts
reading comprehension), and how to teach to the development of those processes (e.g.,
approaches to vocabulary instruction that best promote its growth, which in turn boosts read-
ing comprehension). In short, we want to know what works, why, and how. However, the
translation of literacy research to practice has historically privileged a narrow range of research
methodologies (primarily correlational designs) that identify those literacy skills that should be
taught, alongside a similarly narrow view of the type of research that specifies how those
skills are translated for practitioners (primarily randomized-control and quasi-experimental
designs).
Pressley (2000) articulated this concern in his critique of the National Reading Panel
(2000) approach to identifying phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, and com-
prehension as the “big 5” literacy skills on which practitioners ought to focus. He argued
that it was “puzzling that scientists as good as the ones on the Panel could have convinced
themselves to take these conceptually and methodologically narrow approaches” (p. 169).
Thus, in the early 21st century, there was concern among literacy researchers about privil-
eging correlational and experimental designs to identify the literacy skills that children should
be taught.2
Almost two decades later, it feels as if not much has changed. In the present policy era, the
What Works Clearinghouse (WWC; http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/Wwc/) has emerged as an arbiter
for translating instructional research to practitioners. The WWC has as its primary goal “to pro-
vide educators with the information they need to make evidence-based decisions,” through the

27
C. Patrick Proctor and Chris K. Chang-Bacon

use of “high quality” research. In this context, experimental designs, notably the randomized-
control trial (RCT), reflect the gold standard. Riehl (2006) notes that the progression from cor-
relational research to the RCT invokes a medical model to which the educational community is
expected to aspire, and a model to which the literacy research community has been especially
subjected.
The need for methodologically sound studies to guide the translation from literacy
research to practice is clear. However, there is serious concern as to whether, by them-
selves, experimental designs are the most effective means of guiding that translation. Gins-
burg and Smith (2016) provide a comprehensive overview of why RCTs in the social
sciences are particularly challenging and vulnerable to a host of validity threats, both internal
and external. Threats to external validity are clear in that most RCTs in the education field
are conducted at a single time point and are typically not replicated elsewhere (see also
Pressley, 2000). Thus, we cannot know if results of a given curricular intervention would
generalize to different settings with a new set of teachers and learners. As the authors put
it, “no one argues that the results of a single RCT will necessarily generalize to different
populations at different times and places” (p. 5). In addressing internal validity issues, Gins-
burg and Smith (2016) highlight fully 12 potential threats to RCT implementation by
examining 27 WWC-approved studies in mathematics from grades 1–12. While too long to
enumerate here, the analysis makes clear that the unmapped social factors that impinge on
the conduct of RCTs in educational research can serve to undermine the credibility of
many reported findings.
The Institute of Education Sciences Practice Guides (http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Publication#/
ContentTypeId:3) represent a relatively recent attempt to aggregate experimental and quasi-
experimental studies on a given topic (e.g., reading comprehension instruction, English learners, writ-
ing, struggling readers). To date, Practice Guide findings are somewhat broadly disseminated to
teachers and teacher educators through the Regional Educational Laboratories (http://ies.ed.gov/
ncee/edlabs/) system, which arranges for broad-exposure PD for teachers in targeted districts, and
through other national clearinghouse outlets. The question that arises from such dissemination is one
of relevance. Gaps open before the practitioner who may struggle with texts, strategies, words, or
approaches used in approved experimental studies that were tested in less-than-generalizable school-
ing conditions (Gitlin & Margonis, 1995).
As a result, there is a clear need to integrate diverse methodological approaches in literacy
research so that we are not just asking what works, but also asking why and how. Indeed,
Riehl (2006) notes that medical research, while often deferential to the authority of the
RCT, is also characterized by a strong case-study focus that provides context to experimental
findings. In educational research broadly, and literacy research specifically, we lack
a coherent set of guidelines for determining whether methodologies other than experimental
and quasi-experimental designs meet rigorous empirical standards. However, such models do
exist in medical research. Collingridge and Gantt (2008) outline standards for rigor in three
qualitative research domains: ethnography, existential phenomenology, and grounded theory,
along with associated theoretical frameworks for data collection. In education, the federal
Department of Education showed the will and ability to articulate rigor beyond the RCT
when Kratochwill et al. (2010) detailed procedures for effective single-subject designs in edu-
cational research. However, beyond these attempts, methodological range is not particularly
well-represented when research findings are communicated with literacy practitioners. We
contend that it is attention to exactly this kind of methodological detail and range that is
needed to broaden our understanding of the why and how of effective literacy instruction in
today’s districts, schools, and classrooms (McHugh, Park, Zong, & Yang, 2018).

28
 Demographic and Methodological Flexibility

A Practical Example
To illustrate what might be possible with a more diverse methodological framework guiding the
research-to-practice paradigm, we offer the following description of two literacy studies with
very different methodologies, that can serve to supplement one another. One study (August,
Branum-Martin, Cardenas-Hagan, & Francis, 2009) is a WWC-approved study that reported on
the evaluation of a language-based science curriculum in a single large district in the Rio Grande
Valley of Texas. A total of 40 classrooms of students, with ten teachers in five middle schools
(890 total students, 98% Latinx, 562 ELs) participated. Each teacher had four classes, and those
classes were randomly assigned to treatment or control. The treatment condition received
a science instructional approach that targeted vocabulary development, oral explanations, and
small group work to promote talk and language development via content instruction. The
researchers used multi-level ANCOVAs to assess treatment effects on vocabulary and science
content knowledge outcomes at post-intervention. A Likert-based fidelity measure was used to
rate instructional quality for science instruction for the treatment and control groups. Results
showed treatment effects on district-aligned, researcher-developed measures of science and
vocabulary. These findings were used in a recent IES Practice Guide (Baker et al., 2014) to rec-
ommend: a) direct instruction of academic vocabulary; b) using media to promote language com-
prehension; and c) using small group work to discuss and write about content. However, there is
no explanatory mechanism provided in the study that contextualizes the nature of the instruction
or the small group interactions that took place.
The second study (Farnsworth, 2012) used a participant-observational multi-case methodology
to qualitatively assess how kindergarten-aged English learners “participate in knowledge construc-
tion in peer groups while developing language” (p. 253). Farnsworth (2012) situated her study in
the anti-bilingual context of an Arizona kindergarten classroom in a school where bilingual envir-
onmental print had recently been ordered removed as the result of a recent state program audit.
Data sources included classroom observations, video recording, student and teacher interviews,
and classroom artifacts. Discourse analysis of small group (n = 4) discussions of focal students
comprising a small mathematics group were used to make sense of how students worked to con-
struct arguments. The study examined the types of language children used in their small group
discussions, particularly the means by which sophisticated argumentation skills were developed
via conversations that might otherwise have been considered off-topic or non-academic. Findings
articulated how students in small groups: a) learn to position themselves in these discussions; b)
develop voices of authority; and c) use varied linguistic forms to develop arguments and argu-
mentation skills. A broader methodological perspective to inform instructional recommendations
might contextualize the findings of the August et al. (2009) RCT with Farnsworth’s (2012)
multi-case study to unpack the Practice Guide recommendation to use small group work to dis-
cuss academic content. While the August et al. study used small groups in its instructional model
and found effects on a content-based assessment, Farnsworth’s study gave us a glimpse into the
nature of small group discussions in a specific educational context. Other studies that use qualita-
tive or mixed approaches to further unpack the broad recommendations associated with August
et al.’s study would invariably provide greater ecological validity to the recommendations, and
would also illuminate other important instructional details that RCTs fail to unearth, and that are
germane to differing contexts in which instruction takes place.

Conclusion
We began this chapter noting that in an era of information ubiquity, from both digital and print
sources, literacy skills are more critical than ever. Language and literacy are the primary drivers of

29
C. Patrick Proctor and Chris K. Chang-Bacon

human communication, and viewed through a demographic lens, the sheer range of linguistic,
ethnic, and race-specific factors that are likely to affect how literacy is taught and how it develops
is awe-inspiring. We have argued that teachers, teacher educators, and literacy researchers must
use this demographic lens to be mindful about what we are learning about literacy and its devel-
opment, and how we provide literacy instruction for children and youth in this moment in his-
tory. We have further argued that what counts as quality research has been constrained in recent
years due to the impact of policy expectations that limit translatable research to causal and correl-
ational designs. Broader conversations across literacy studies that employ a spectrum of methods
to answer diverse research questions will invariably spur more nuanced empirical insights and
deeper instructional recommendations for today’s distributed and multifaceted literacy contexts.
Ultimately, then, literacy education and research must evolve to meet the representational
demands of our times. We hope this chapter sets that stage for this Handbook of Reading Research
and for us as literacy educators and scholars who continue to learn, teach, and grow.

Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank María Carlo, Marilyn Cochran-Smith, and Jeanne Paratore for
their helpful insights and comments on early drafts of this chapter.

Notes
1 See, for example, the impressive efforts by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary
Education in their Rethinking Equity and Teaching for English Language Learners (RETELL) initiative
to train all in-service teachers, in a relatively short period of time, for endorsement to work with EL stu-
dents in mainstream settings. http://www.doe.mass.edu/retell/
2 See Gee (1999), Snow (2000), and Gee (2000) for a thorough, and occasionally acerbic, debate on this
topic.

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 3
Social and Cultural Diversity as Lens
for Understanding Student Learning
and the Development of Reading
Comprehension
Carol D. Lee

In order to address the question of social and cultural differences as factors in understanding compe-
tencies in reading comprehension, it is useful to start with a discussion of what is entailed in reading
comprehension. The attention to issues of social and cultural differences, in regard to reading com-
prehension, typically grows out of concerns about the persistent achievement gaps in reading as meas-
ured by standardized assessments (National Center for Education Statistics, 2013), typically those used
for the accountability of students, schools, districts, and states. Among the challenges of these, as our
primary indicators of gaps in reading comprehension achievement, are the constraints of what such
assessments typically measure (Lee, 2014; Lee & Goldman, 2015). They are timed. They typically do
not account for the role of prior knowledge along multiple dimensions. The responses are typically
multiple choice with particular forced logic to response options. They have limited genres and often
do not measure comprehension across academic disciplines, and when they do include texts from
different disciplines, the number of texts per discipline is limited. Some evidence that these are issues
of concern to the field include efforts by the Educational Testing Service to develop new compre-
hension measures – the GISA – that attempts to capture some indicators of relevant prior knowledge,
to situate the task of comprehension as more social and attached to meaningful goals rather than as
decontextualized tasks, and to develop separate assessments in three disciplines – science, history, and
literature (Kim et al., 2016). In addition, PARCC and Smarter Balance, the new assessments expli-
citly aligned to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts introduce new directions
(Herman & Linn, 2013): asking students to provide evidence from texts to support answers; organiz-
ing conceptually related text sets by disciplinary areas (e.g. narrative texts; social science texts; science
texts) and asking students to synthesize across texts; and asking students to construct written argu-
ments based on text sets. These assessments, although timed and largely multiple choice, are more
authentic and require more critical, discipline focused comprehension. However, cross state data
from the 2014–15 and 2015–16 administration of the PARCC ELA assessment document highlight
the persistent disparities in outcomes associated with race, ethnicity and class (http://parcconline.org/
images/Consortium_and_State_Tables_FINAL_3_7_16.pdf). As with other initiatives, increasing the
complexity of the reading assessments does not shift the persistent disparities.

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Carol D. Lee

Current research articulates reading comprehension as entailing the reader, the task, the text,
and the context (Valencia, Wixson, & Pearson, 2014). This conception suggests that displays of
competence must be understood as outgrowths of relationships across these four factors. There is
fairly straightforward evidence that the relationships across these factors are dynamic and context-
ual (Kintsch, 1998; McNamara, Kintsch, Songer, & Kintsch, 1996; Spiro, 1980; van den Broek,
Lorch, Linderholm, & Gustafson, 2001). For example, we know expert readers (like ourselves)
who are befuddled when reading legal or medical documents, but are quite expert readers in our
disciplines. Wineburg and Grossman (1998) conducted professional development with high
school literature and history teachers, asking each group to read texts in the other groups’ discip-
line, this resulted in each group not being deeply comfortable with reading another discipline.
Teachers from the two disciplines saw their tasks quite differently, with one group focusing
largely on literal summaries while the other focused on discipline specific interpretive problems.
There are many studies documenting the reading habits of adolescents outside of school in areas
they find interesting, when those same adolescents struggle with reading in school (Fisher, 2003;
Moje, 2000; Moje & Tysvaer, 2010). These cases exemplify ways in which competence in read-
ing comprehension can vary based on what the reader brings (interests, goals, specific skills),
what is the task, what sort of complexities does the text pose, and about the context of reading
that may influence goals, effort, and ability.
In addition to the dynamic relations among these four factors, there are also important
issues with regard to the skills entailed in comprehension. Baseline skills include decoding
(Juel, 1991; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998), an array of knowledge with regard to vocabulary
(e.g. roots, affixes, structural transformations – translating from noun form to verb form,
etc. – synonyms, antonyms, using context clues to differentiate among different meanings of
the same word) (August, Carlo, Dressler, & Snow, 2005; Hiebert & Kamil, 2005; Nagy, Dia-
kidoy, & Anderson, 1993; Stahl & Nagy, 2005), deconstructing syntax (Brewer, 1977;
Richek, 1976), and detecting basic text structures (e.g. expository – chronology, cause/effect,
problem/solution; narrative) (Graesser, McNamara, & Louwerse, 2003; Meyer, Brandt, &
Bluth, 1980; van Dijk, 1972). It is well established that these foundational skills are an import-
ant prerequisite for basic comprehension. At the same time, there is a substantive body of
research documenting the way that when some of these foundational skills are lacking, there
are other competencies that can accommodate and facilitate comprehension (Bransford &
Johnson, 1972; Stahl & Miller, 1989). This proposition was central to the argument with
regard to whole language instruction (e.g. children can use the comprehension of pictures in
a children’s book to facilitate comprehension even when they cannot pronounce or recognize
all the words on the page) (Stahl & Miller, 1989).
Thus reading comprehension entails dynamic meaning-making processes. A reader cannot pre-
dict in advance the problems any given text will present and must have a flexible toolkit of
meaning-making resources and must have a schema-tool kit for noticing what features (language
and structure) of texts may potentially signal particular kinds of comprehension and interpretive
problems. As students move through the grades, such comprehension and interpretive problems
become increasingly specific to disciplines and increasingly complex (e.g. texts that are longer,
more dense, uses of academic language, and structurally more complex) (Biancarosa & Snow,
2004; Lee & Spratley, 2009). The requisite skill set may shift from section to section within
a given text. Thus the toolkit must be both broad and flexible. The requisite toolkit must also be
adaptive to the task the reader is engaging with, whether it is a given text or a set of texts, with
some texts only requiring recall while others require comparisons, extrapolating and organizing
information to construct arguments, or critiquing (e.g. authorial intent and bias; using criteria
based on the epistemological tools the reader brings to inform interpretations). And the requisite
toolkit should be responsive to the contexts under which comprehension is taking place

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(individually, in social interactions with others, for achieving personal goals or for high stakes
accountability).
Thus to consider how social and cultural differences come into play in acts of comprehension
and how we as teachers and researchers can understand the variation and influences on social and
cultural differences makes the problem space of reading comprehension even more complex. In
order to tackle such complexity, we need grounding in core propositions undergirding human
learning and development initially in order to warrant our interpretations of such social and cul-
tural variation. Such warrants have been powerful influences on how, in both research and prac-
tice, we have interpreted social and cultural differences and assumptions the field has made about
what such differences contribute to the persistent disparities in assessments of reading comprehen-
sion associated with what we think of as race, ethnicity, and the experience of poverty (Lee,
2016a). Historically, researchers have argued that deficiencies in language capacities (Bereiter &
Engelmann, 1966; Hart & Risley, 1995), in mental functioning (Gould, 1981; Hernstein &
Murray, 1994; Jensen, 1969), and in the social organization of families and communities (E.
Jensen, 2009; Traub, 1999), have been the primary levers accounting for disparities in assessment
outcomes in reading. More current theorizing around what are called non-cognitive factors
(Becker & Luthar, 2002; Heckman, 2012; Heckman & Rubinstein, 2001), including executive
functioning, have emerged as new deficit warrants.

The Affordances of a Human Development Perspective

I want to make the case that social and cultural diversity are normative for the human species.
I start with this argument because it forms the basis for conceptualizing such diversity as an
opportunity to examine generativity in any domain, including understanding how and under
what circumstances humans comprehend and interrogate texts within and across contexts. With-
out such grounding it is much easier to conceptualize such diversity as a problem rather an
opportunity.
Humans survive as a species because our abilities to engage in symbolic reasoning provide us
with tools for navigating what are, inevitably, shifts in the material and biological world we
occupy (Quartz & Sejnowski, 2002). Such symbolic reasoning entails interpretive perceptions (of
the self, of others, of settings, of tasks) (Dweck, 1999; Eccles, O’Neil, & Wigfield, 2005) and
knowledge that evolves from our construction of schema (e.g. cognitive structures that identify
the salient features of a phenomenon that allow us to recognize a phenomenon and variations of
that phenomenon, with the flexibility of building new knowledge from existing knowledge as
well as constructing new schema) (Markus, 1977; Rumelhart, 1980). Our perceptions and know-
ledge are deeply intertwined with what some think of as a uniquely human symbolic technology:
language (Pinker, 1994; Streeter, 1976). And our perceptions and knowledge develop through
our relationships and interactions with other human beings (Bell, 2010; Bowlby, 1969). We
know that infants in utero learn to recognize the sounds of their mothers’ voices and significant
others in their environment; that new borns pay more attention to human faces than to objects;
that infants mirror the actions of their caregivers, following someones eye gaze (Meltzoff, 1988;
Meltzoff & Moore, 1977). Among the earliest tasks in human development that continues across
the life course, is to learn to read the internal states of others (Flavell & Miller, 1998; Kunda,
1999). Infants and young children are driven to explore, to learn to be independent in control-
ling their bodies, and to navigate through developmental trajectories across the life course, fulfill-
ing their ego-related demands and perceptions of need. It is these dispositions that drive human
behavior and such dispositions are filtered largely through the attribution of emotional salience –
do we feel safe, efficacious, and do a set of experiences meet our criteria for relevance (Maslow,
1943).

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Carol D. Lee

There is a wonderful film called Babies that documents the first year of life of four infants
from Mongolia, Namibia, Tokyo, and San Francisco. There are no adults talking in this film.
We only see and hear from the babies. This film clearly shows that each of these infants works to
accomplish the fundamental life tasks I have articulated, but in very different ways, with very
different kinds of social supports, and toward very different social goals. They are physiologically
pre-disposed to explore in order to accomplish these fundamental tasks (to stand, to grasp, to
walk, to use language, to get what they want, to establish relationships with others, to explore
their material and social worlds) through their participation in the practices of their diverse cul-
tural niches (Rogoff, 2003; Super & Harkness, 1986).
It is the dynamic interplay between physiological processes rooted in our biology and our par-
ticipation in cultural practices that creates the ecology of human development (Cole, 2007;
Fischer & Bidell, 1998; Wilson, 1998). It is important to understand these relationships in light
of current scientific findings, particularly in the field of epigenetics (Plotsky & Meaney, 1993;
Russo, Martienssen, & Riggs, 1996). Work in epigenetics shows how inherited genetic markers
that predispose a person toward a personality trait or a possible disease can be moderated or
turned off by cultural experiences in the world. In addition, emerging work around the impact
of toxic stress on physiological processes that can contribute to health outcomes (Adam et al.,
2015; Geronimus, 2013) as well as research on contexts, experiences, and belief systems that can
moderate the impacts of toxic stress (American Psychological Association Task Force on Resili-
ence and Strength in Black Children and Adolescents, 2008; Bowman, 1989; Miller & MacIn-
tosh, 1999; Spencer, 1987; Spencer et al., 2006), offer another layer of findings about the integral
interplay of the biologic and the cultural. These findings, I argue, are essential to counter the
historic dominant hegemonic discourses around human biology as deterministic and human biol-
ogy as sources of deficits.
I raise these core orienting propositions around the interplay of biology and culture because
the drivers around these relationships emerge from our evolution as a species, and thus we ignore
them at our peril (Lee, 2010). From these grounding propositions, I want to take up their impli-
cations for the design of learning environments that take diversity as a resource and then as spe-
cific implications for understanding and facilitating reading comprehension, within and across
settings.

Features of Robust Learning Environments

I extrapolate from these core propositions that robust learning environments are ones that address
the salience of perceptions, cognition, and emotions. These psycho-social constructs of necessity
are diverse and not unitary. Such environments are designed to support students in wrestling
with the following questions:

Perceptions
• Am I able to do this?
• Will effort matter?
• Is this task meaningful to me and worth my effort?
• What supports are available to help me wrestle with this task?
Cognitions
• What knowledge and strategies are available to me to wrestle with this task?
• What do I think is the task and as a consequence how do I think about resources avail-
able to me to wrestle with this task?

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 Diversity and Reading Comprehension

Emotions
• Do I feel safe in attempting to wrestle with this task?
• Do I feel that some set of my needs are being met as I wrestle with this task?
• How do I weigh the risks versus the opportunities entailed in doing this work?
• Are my positive emotions strong enough to deal with the negative feelings I have about
this?

These relationships among perceptions, cognition, and emotions as underlying mechanisms that
fuel human behavior, tell us that relationships matter, relationships between the learner and other
people, the learner and the task, and the learner and the setting matter (Ainsworth, Blehar,
Waters, & Wall, 1978; Fox & Hane, 2008; Goodenow, 1993). My point here is that thinking
only of the cognitive demands of a targeted task, in this case reading comprehension, is insuffi-
cient to motivate learners to be engaged and to persist in meaningful goal directed behavior,
especially in the face of challenges.
A third meaningful contribution to this argument is the role of ecological systems theory
(Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006), the idea that people learn within and across settings, and that
the influences on people’s development comes not only from the direct settings in which they
participate, the settings that those influencing the person participate, and the broader macro level
ideologies and institutional configurations in which development evolves (Weisner, 2002). This
also means that people bring with them knowledge, beliefs, and relationships as they move across
settings. This is a reason why it is important to consider the prior knowledge, belief systems,
language resources, and dispositions that learners construct from their participation in the multiple
cultural communities in which they participate. And the processes and challenges of development
differ on account of where in the life course, in this case, the learner is (Damon & Lerner, 2008;
Spencer, 2006; Swanson, Edwards, & Spencer, 2010; Zelazo, 2013). The task for the purpose of
this chapter is reading and comprehending texts, within particular settings such as schools and
across diverse settings outside of school.
These foundational questions can also be understood in light of the literature in human devel-
opment around resources for navigating risks and resilience (Masten, 2015; Spencer et al., 2006).
Conceptualizing these questions under the umbrella of understanding sources of risk and resili-
ence are essential for how we contextualize how we think about social and cultural diversity.
How we conceptualize this problem space is important because of both the historical metanarra-
tives around who faces risks and what are sources of resilience (Lee, 2009). In thinking about
social and cultural diversity, we must consider the historic and institutionalized sources of risk
which particular communities face (Churchill, 2004; Massey & Denton, 1993; Mills, 1997; Tate,
2008). These include the ways that racism, the structuring of poverty, and hegemonic ideologies
around ethnicity, immigrant status, gender, sexual and gender orientation, and special needs,
institutionalize opportunities and challenges. Spencer’s PVEST (Spencer, 2006) framework posits
that populations, particularly children and adolescents, disenfranchised by these hegemonic beliefs
and institutionalized stigmatizing practices must wrestle both with the normative challenges of life
course development (some of which I have described) along with the navigation and identity
challenges that emerge from the institutionalization of racism, poverty, and other destabilizing
ideologies. PVEST essentially argues that it is not simply the objective nature of risks that one
faces that determines outcomes, but rather the relationships between the resources that are stra-
tegically focused on the nature of the risks faced that influence outcomes for individuals and
populations. This means that in order to address the questions I identify in designing robust
learning environments, designers (researchers, teachers, policy makers) must anticipate both nor-
mative developmental challenges and tasks as well as those that arise out of hegemonic

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Carol D. Lee

institutionalized ideologies. Historically, one approach has been to argue that resources for resili-
ence need to be based on normative assumptions about a set of practices and belief systems asso-
ciated with the politically and ideologically dominant group (Graham, 1992); while other
approaches argue that sources of resilience need to be rooted in drawing on cultural practices and
belief systems carried across generations in a given cultural community that have sustained resili-
ence in the face of challenge, as well as learning to interrogate the political, structural, and eco-
nomic tools used to oppress particular communities (Gay, 1995; Gutiérrez, Morales, & Martinez,
2009; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Lomawaima, 2004; McCarty & Lee, 2014; Moll & Gonzales, 2004).
The former approach presumes a singular normative pathway for development. Latter approaches
presume a diverse set of pathways for development (Paris & Winn, 2013).
In order for robust learning environments to support students wrestling with core foundational
psycho-social states, such environments must seek to accomplish the following (Lee, 2007):

• Position the learner as competent.

• Anticipate sources of vulnerability.
• Examine and scaffold resources the learner brings.
• Make public the social good and utility.
• Make problem solving explicit and public.
• Provide supports as learners are engaged in complex problem solving.
• Provide expansive opportunities.
• Remain adaptive and dynamic.

Implications for the Design of Robust Environments to Support

Reading Comprehension
I have tried to lay two foundational warrants: (1) reading comprehension as entailing dynamic
systems of meaning making; and (2) human learning and development as rooted in diverse path-
ways, informed mutually by biological processes and participation in cultural practices that entail
dynamic relationships among perceptions, cognition, emotions, and relationships. I will now
address the implications for designing robust environments that support children and adolescents
in learning to read texts across academic disciplines in K-12 school settings.
I have argued that students are more likely to engage and persist when the processes for mean-
ing making with texts are made explicit and public, and when they have opportunities to explore
this kind of problem solving with supports that make them feel competent, and toward goals
they construe as relevant. I will address here making meaning making processes explicit and
relevant.

Comprehension Made Explicit

Historically, standards for comprehension have presumed substantive differences in goals by grade
level. On the contrary, comprehension processes are few, and remain relatively stable across
grade levels (e.g. monitoring comprehension, making and testing predictions, making connections
across stretches of text, attending to language and structure, summarizing). At one level, the
CCSS’s (National Governors Association, 2010) overarching standards reflect this parsimony,
although the standards continue to articulate relatively arbitrary differences in standards across
grade levels. Such core processes entail what Kintsch (1998) calls text based models (e.g. extrapo-
lating meaning directly from the text) and situation models (e.g. extrapolating from the text to
the world outside the text) that themselves are interactive. However, there are also micro level

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processes (beyond basic decoding) that can guide how we make meaning from texts. In many
respects, the big, stable processes I have identified represent outcomes of comprehension more
than micro level processes through which these outcomes are achieved. Examples of such micro-
level processes include:

• Vocabulary – using context clues, syntax, and knowledge of roots and affixes to infer meaning.
• Sentence comprehension – using the ability to deconstruct the elements of sentences of dif-
ferent structures to infer meaning.
• Text structure – detecting explicit and implicit indicators of logical relationships among ideas
in a text.
• Cohesion – detecting antecedents and linguistic markers of relationships.

All of these processes are embedded in a student’s knowledge about how a particular language
works. However, there is not sufficient attention to making such micro-level processes explicit in
our schools, nor are they typically reflected in commercial literacy curricula. For example, sen-
tence diagramming is not routinely taught, and the teaching of roots and affixes is not systematic.
Minimally these micro-level processes are relevant from middle school through high school.
Another important dimension of comprehension, important for making problem solving explicit,
involves the demands of reading in the content areas, which is especially important in middle school
and high school. In a recent IES funded study (Goldman et al., 2016), researchers in Project READI
identified categories of knowledge required to navigate critical reading and argumentation in the dis-
ciplines. READI examined the breadth of knowledge that novices need to learn to bring to bear in
the disciplines of literature, history, and science. These demands in the reading of history texts has
been well documented (Perfetti, Britt, & Georgi, 1995; Seixas, 1993; Wineburg, 1991, 2002; Wine-
burg & Wilson, 1988). Research on the comprehension of texts in science is emerging (Greenleaf,
Brown, Goldman, & Ko, 2013; Lemke, 1998; Pearson, Moje, & Greenleaf, 2010). Micro-level com-
prehension processes in literature still remain relatively situated in literary theory, with some efforts to
extrapolate to middle and high school literature classrooms (Appleman, 2000; Grossman, 2001; Lee,
2011; Lee, Goldman, Levine, & Magliano, 2016; Levine & Horton, 2013; Smith, 1989, 1991).
Extrapolating from extant studies in the disciplines, Project READI defined the following categories
of knowledge at work in disciplinary reasoning with texts: epistemology, key concepts, strategies,
types of texts, and language use. Making explicit epistemological orientations toward the task, under-
standing key concepts as schema for interrogating big ideas, deploying discipline specific strategies for
tackling texts, understanding the anticipated logic of different text genres within disciplines, and
understanding and using the academic language registers of the discipline represent fundamental
requisites for inducting novice readers into inquiries in the discipline.
Taking these three fundamental tasks of reading comprehension (engaging macro level com-
prehension processes, strategically deploying micro level comprehension processes, and drawing
across the multiple kinds of disciplinary knowledge required for content area reading) as necessary
tools for novice readers to develop, with increasingly complex texts and tasks across the grade
levels and subject matters, I will now address how social and cultural diversity in knowledge,
language, beliefs, and dispositions can present themselves as resources to support reading compre-
hension in the depth and breadth I have described.

Culturally and Socially Diverse Repertoires as Resources for a

Multi-Dimensional Framing of Reading Comprehension
First, it should be noted that reasoning through the symbolic functions of language are endemic
to the human species (Pinker, 1994, 2007). We all reason through and with language. Written

43
Carol D. Lee

texts have evolved from inscriptions in caves to engravings on stone to writings on papyrus. In
many ways the printing press democratized making meaning with and from written texts, and
digital medium has expanded this democratization exponentially. In addition, there are cognitive
and social similarities between the reading of written texts (which now include words, pictures,
and graphic displays) and the reading of multi-media (our sensemaking of fictional movies and
documentaries, of lyrics about human relationships and human and political conundrums, of art,
etc.) (Tan, 2013; The New London Group, 1996). Cognitive research has shown that humans
without instruction construct narrative schema (e.g. human behavior as goal directed, entailing
causal links among actions, with consequences) that are deployed in making sense of experience
in the world and that facilitate the long-term memory of events (Bruner, 1990; Trabasso & van
den Broek, 1985; Turner, 1996). Researchers in early story comprehension (Stein & Glenn,
1979) have documented how young children, even before they can read, encapsulate stories in
narrative schema. Thus research on the meaning making repertoires that, for our purposes, youth
from non-dominant communities develop outside of school, provide one lens for conceptualizing
and noticing culturally diverse resources to support reading comprehension.
In my own work in Cultural Modeling, I have documented how epistemologies around lan-
guage play and skill in interpreting figuration among speakers of African-American English can
be made explicit in order to scaffold epistemologies and skills in noticing and interpreting various
forms of figuration in literature (Lee, 1991, 1995, 2007, 2008). Such skills in everyday speech are
typically tacit, and thus examining what I call cultural data sets of signifying (a genre of ritual
insult) (Smitherman, 1977) among this linguistic community can make public and explicit strat-
egies that then have the potential to be generalizable beyond the oral context. In a similar vein,
adolescents across ethnic groups highly value rap lyrics (Alim, Ibrahim, & Pennycook, 2008) and
other popular music genres which require the identification and interpretation of such tropes as
irony, satire, symbolism, and unreliable narration, all relevant interpretive problems in literature,
but also in history. Research in Cultural Modeling has documented the positive transfer of such
skills to literature texts (Lee, 1995, 2007).
There is another body of growing research on translingualism, documenting the metalinguistic
skills that youth who are English Language Learners, with sufficient language competencies in
English and their first language (often Spanish in these studies) develop and critically deploy in
translating in both everyday and official capacities for their parents and families (Orellana, 2009;
Orellana & Eksner, 2006; Orellana & Reynolds, 2008; Orellana, Dorner, & Pulido, 2003;
Valdes, 2002). These metalinguistic repertoires include detecting and interpreting linguistic mark-
ers of points of view, of differential positioning, of the salience of particular registers in both lan-
guages, and the appropriateness of particular registers for particular contexts. Orellana has
developed instructional interventions in elementary classrooms which scaffold such repertoires for
reading comprehension and composition.
Another important body of research that has not been taken up in classrooms, but represents
important findings, is work around the role of culture in comprehension. Some of this early
work was carried out at the Center for the Study of Reading in the 1970’s by Richard Anderson
and colleagues (Reynolds, Taylor, Steffensen, Shirey, & Anderson, 1982; Steffensen, Joag-Dev, &
Anderson, 1979). Building on well-established documentation on the role of prior knowledge in
comprehension and how such prior knowledge is retained in long term memory through sche-
mata (Anderson, 2004; Anderson & Pearson, 1988; Bartlett, 1932; Rumelhart, 1980), these stud-
ies demonstrated how the interpretation of the same story can be different based on the cultural
knowledge the reader brings to bear. In one story about a wedding, readers from the U.S. and
India read the same story and recall very different details about the event, based on cultural dif-
ferences in what a wedding entails. On a more generic level, Bransford (1972) documented how
the depth of understanding of a text about baseball differed based on the level of expert

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knowledge of the reader. Thus it is quite possible that access to texts among culturally diverse
learners may be significantly related to the relevant schema they bring to the text. This has
important implications for text selection in schools and within disciplines. For example, while
Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath has a 5th grade readability level, it is not likely that upper middle
class 5th graders will have the same conceptual access to the themes and character development
as students whose families are undocumented immigrant/migrant workers. And if in the literature
classroom, we want to teach generative knowledge about text structures, interpretive problems,
and problems of point of view, for example, we do not need to limit ourselves to selecting only
texts from the European and Euro-American canon.
Epistemology is another important source of knowledge influencing how readers make sense
of texts. There is important research in the area of indigenous knowledge systems (Megan Bang
et al., 2014; Brayboy, 2005; Jones, Brayboy & Maughan, 2009; Semali & Kincheloe, 2002),
documenting how indigenous communities in the Americas and other parts of the world develop
across generations epistemological dispositions to conceptualize interdependent and equal relations
between humans and the natural world. For example, many indigenous communities see plants
and animals as relatives, and memorialize such relations in stories and proverbs (Bang, Medin, &
Altran, 2007; Ross, Medin, & Cox, 2007). Bang and colleagues (Dehghani et al., 2013) have
examined storybooks for young children about the natural world written by indigenous and non-
indigenous authors. They have found indigenous authors are more likely to foreground relation-
ships between humans and the natural world as embedded and to portray these relationships as
psychologically meaningful. These findings are consistent with research Bang and others (Bang &
Medin, 2010; Bang, Medin, Washinawatok, & Chapman, 2010; Bang, Warren, Rosebery, &
Medin, 2012) have conducted cross-culturally, examining conceptions of relations between
humans and the natural world, and in curriculum development in science interventions they have
developed to scaffold such indigenous epistemologies regarding the natural world to promote sci-
entific inquiry in schools. Although they have not yet directly examined how children from indi-
genous backgrounds who have been socialized in such epistemologies engage with science texts
written for young children by indigenous authors, the extant research would suggest these chil-
dren bring relevant schema to the comprehension and interpretation of such texts.
The point of these exemplars is that they provide illustrations of knowledge structures, epis-
temologies, and language repertoires that youth, in this case, from non-dominant communities
develop outside of formal schooling, that provide resources for making text comprehension,
including the comprehension and interpretation of discipline specific texts, public and explicit,
through scaffolding.
I have argued that research on human learning posits that the ability to feel efficacious pro-
motes engagement and motivation, dispositions we inherit from our evolution as a species,
including the physiological processes through which we impute salience to experience, including
emotional attributions, including the ways in which a learning environment makes explicit and
provides supports for problem solving. I have illustrated in this section meaningful relationships
between meaning making processes in everyday contexts, particularly around narratives – includ-
ing the ways we narrativize both the political and scientific world (stories of agents engaged in
goal directed behaviors, including events that are causally linked), and often narrativize through
figurative tropes, engaging processes required to tackle complex written texts.

Social Contexts and Diverse Interactional Styles as Resources for

Robust Literacy Learning Environments
Other important dimensions of robust learning environments have to do with how they make us
feel connected, how they impact the relationships we build and the relevance we impute to tasks

45
Carol D. Lee

we are expected to accomplish. Accomplishing these goals often include the social organization
of settings. Here research in informal settings outside of K-12 schooling offers examples of cultur-
ally diverse forms of social organization that have demonstrated the capacity to engage youth
from non-dominant groups in robust literacy learning, including the interrogation of complex
texts.
In Cultural Modeling classrooms, working with youth who are speakers of African-American
English (AAE), the invocation of African-American rhetorical strategies of language production
and interactions have repeatedly engaged students in complex literary reasoning (Lee, 2005b).
Such strategies include highly valenced prosody, multi-party overlapping talk, high use of gesture,
as well as AAE dialect. In our analyses of video recordings over many years, these strategies are
invoked by students when they are most engaged in the critical reasoning of challenging prob-
lems in the literature being studied. In Cultural Modeling classrooms, the design included not
only scaffolding linguistic repertoires, epistemological dispositions toward figuration, and tacit
knowledge of meaning making strategies relevant to literary texts, but equally important is the
selection and sequencing of texts that would invite identity wrestling around issues of race and
ethnicity and opportunities to interrogate how, through these texts, characters wrestled with the
persistent challenges of racism and poverty. In the most recent iteration, a four year longitudinal
intervention in Project READI funded by IES, we found that an affirmative sense of racial iden-
tity was correlated positively with literacy outcomes that included grades, close transfer compre-
hension assessments developed by the project, and far transfer assessments on EPAS, the ACT
sequence for 9th, 10th and 11th graders (Lee, 2016b). We found similar findings associated with
a measure of literary epistemology valuing multiple meanings and multiple readings, and the spe-
cific strategies and practices in the Cultural Modeling framework, including valuing the social
relevance of literature to one’s life (Yukhymenko-Lescroart et al., 2016).
The Migrant Student Leadership Institute at UCLA (Gutiérrez, 2014; Gutiérrez, 2008) spear-
headed and conceptualized by Kris Gutiérrez, is an example of what she calls social design experi-
ments (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016). The program worked with high school students whose
families were migrant workers, with the goal of engaging them in literacy practices that would
both help prepare them for college while simultaneously engaging them in interrogating the pol-
itical and economic forces with which they and their families had to navigate. This included
examinations of inter-generational practices and belief systems that have historically sustained
their communities. Manuel Espinoza (2009) who worked on the project, called it “educational
sanctuary.” The curriculum integrated science and the social sciences, for example, to examine
environmental racism affecting their lives. Students read such texts as the “Tuskegee Study of
Untreated Syphillis in the Negro Male,” the U.S. sponsored Guatemalan STD Study from the
1940’s, as well as C. Wright Mills’ The Sociological Imagination and Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the
Oppressed, among others, and wrote critical arguments around their analyses and engaged in
a hybrid cultural practice of critical autobiography called “testimonios.” From the 2001–2003
cohort, in comparison to a control group admitted to the program but who did not attend,
a statistically significant percentage of students enrolled in this program went on to be accepted
into the prestigious University of California system (Nunez, 2009). The design principles from
this intervention included scaffolding linguistic repertoires, structuring literacy supports that meet
relevant goals of students, building a network of adult and peer relationships that address youths’
need for safety and a sense of self-efficacy. For example, there is a video of the adult teacher/
mentors having students, together, lift another student off the ground and carry him up the stairs
in an area on campus. The avowed goal of this metaphoric activity was to embody the proposi-
tions that the students had to work together, collaboratively, to achieve challenging goals and to
demonstrate that they belonged on the UCLA campus. This program is an example of designing
literacy rich robust learning environments, in this case for youth from non-dominant

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communities, that addresses both the breadth of socio-emotional needs of youth at an important
life course transition as well as making the complex demands of critical reading of difficult texts
explicit, public, accessible, and relevant. The rich discussions, the testimonios, and the written
arguments provided insights to both students and their mentor/teachers of the internal reasoning
of individual students in processing texts, but also expansive opportunities for students to share
their thinking about texts with one another.
There are additional compelling exemplars of robust literacy learning environments designed
in out-of-school contexts that illustrate how cultural diversity serves as a resource for helping stu-
dents learn to engage with complex texts. These are literate rich settings where making public
how to tackle complex problems of text comprehension is scaffolded through recruiting cultural
repertoires (knowledge, beliefs, epistemologies, social networks), building supportive relationships
with peers and mentors, and co-constructing socially meaningful goals toward which the recruit-
ment of literacy practices serves important purposes are normative. There is an emerging body of
research on the literate practices in these settings and especially around the role of these settings
in engaging literacy as a tool for identity wrestling. Winn’s (Fisher, 2003, 2005) research has
documented mentor–mentee relationships in spoken word community based settings that engage
adolescents in critically examining poetry from the Black Arts Movement of the 1970’s, for
thinking about how these young people draw on such texts in creating their own politically
insightful poetic forms, as well as support for incarcerated adolescent girls to engage in critical
engagement with and the production of texts (Winn, 2010).
A growing focus in supporting what we might think of as critical literacies (e.g. the investiga-
tion of texts that examine the underpinnings and institutional configurations that create and sus-
tain persistent historical inequalities) has emerged as an important paradigm shift in literacy
research in and across settings, which is not limited to schooling. This shift is buttressed by the
idea that for non-dominant populations in particular, learning to examine, navigate, and resist
institutionalized forms of oppression are critical tasks across the life course, in addition to the nor-
mative tasks of development, a proposition reflected in Spencer’s (Spencer et al., 2006) PVEST
model for understanding how sources of risk and resilience unfold. This emerging body of work
conceptualizes literacy – reading texts and producing texts, including multi-modal texts – as gen-
erative tools for life course development, and not simply technical tools for workforce prepar-
ation. This work is unfolding in both out-of-school and school settings. Across these programs of
research, students are typically invited to examine texts of some complexity for the purpose of
gaining knowledge that can be used to engage in social action, often political action. This work
stretches the bounds of the kinds of texts that should be examined (e.g. street fiction, hip hop
texts, as well as, for example, texts rooted in critical race theory, feminist thought, etc., which is
often not the focus of more standard conceptions of appropriate text sets for adolescents). This
work also stretches the boundaries of languages, language registers, and language varieties that
serve as the medium of communication, revisiting the dialect and bilingual debates of the past
(August & Shanahan, 2006; Farr, 1991; Gándara, Moran, & Garcia, 2004; Lee, 2005a; Scott, Stra-
ker, & Katz, 2009). This body of research reveals that text-based processing and modes of repre-
senting comprehension are connected to both what we know about generic comprehension as
well as discipline specific comprehension; and often pushes the boundaries of what our field sees
as discipline specific modes of reasoning about texts. This emerging research includes Majors
(Majors, 2003, 2015) work connecting text based reasoning and argumentation in African-
American beauty salons with school based literacies; Lyiscott’s (Lyiscott, 2017; Van Orman &
Lyiscott, 2013) Cyphers for Justice, where adolescents, including incarcerated youth, and pre-
service teachers critique and produce social justice texts as springboards for political action; Mor-
rell (2004, Morrell & Duncan-Andrade, 2002) and Duncan-Andrade’s (Duncan-Andrade, 2004;
Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2005) work with hip hop literacies in high school literature

47
Carol D. Lee

classrooms; Kinloch’s (2007, 2010) research documenting how urban adolescents critically exam-
ine issues of gentrification and the privileging of particular language varieties; Paris’s (2010, 2011)
research in what he calls borderland communities (Anzaldúa, 1987), where youth are reading and
producing texts that examine their intersectional identities around race, ethnicity, class, and citi-
zenship statuses; San Pedro’s (2014, 2015) research with indigenous youth learning to navigate
the conflicting epistemologies behind Native American literature and settler colonial historical
narratives; and Alim’s (2009, Alim et al., 2008) cross cultural studies of hip-hop linguistic prac-
tices as pedagogical resources.
Collectively, this work builds on earlier research on the significance of cultural practices to
literacy learning (Ball, 1992; Ball & Farr, 2003; Delpit, 1995; Gay, 1995; Gutiérrez, Baquedano-
Lopez, & Tejeda, 1999; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Lee, 2007; Mahiri,
1998; McCarty, 2002; Valdes, 1996), but extends that work in numerous ways. It expands the
range of texts to be interrogated, adds new dimensions for the rationale behind text selection,
expands the goals of literacy beyond a technocratic emphasis. Like earlier work, it emphasizes the
role of emotional salience and relationships, of the importance of relevance, and engages in
design principles to develop and sustain a sense of self-efficacy among learners, all goals I have
argued are endemic to human development and functioning, and therefore essential targets for
learning. Both the older and the more current work open opportunities to examine the diverse
pathways through which meaning making from and with texts unfolds within and across commu-
nities of practice.

Conundrums of the Paradigm Shift

There are both theoretical and practice based conundrums that these investigations into diverse
literacy practices present. Theoretically, we need syntheses of findings from across these programs
of research to understand the diversity, but also the underlying processes that undergird such
diversity. I noted earlier that the film Babies documented the underlying tasks of development in
the first year of life that are common to the enterprise of growing from birth to one year of age,
as well as the diverse pathways and the diverse social goals that fuel such development. In
a similar vein, I have tried to outline both generic macro and micro level comprehension pro-
cesses entailed in reading comprehension, but in understanding such processes as entailing charac-
teristics of the person, the text and the task. With these examples of programs of research
designing for and documenting diverse pathways for interrogating texts within and across differ-
ent cultural communities, including the intersectionality across communities, we need to better
understand how these pathways link to what we think of as foundational processes. We may find
in such syntheses that the dynamic relationships entailed in comprehension are such that some of
our foundational propositions need to be re-visited.
At the level of practice, particularly in the contexts of formal schooling, teachers, designers of
curriculum, and assessment developers need to be more deeply grounded in the micro-analyses of
sources of complexity in the range of texts and genres that these critical pedagogical models
I have described invite students to examine. If the knowledge gleaned by students – no matter
the context of learning – is to be generative, it needs to be metacognitive, explicit, and under-
stood as probabilistic and not deterministic. There is also the challenge of helping students learn
to navigate diverse linguistic communities and their requirements for participation: moving from
another national language or English language dialect to academic registers required by the acad-
emy, particularly post-secondary; learning to communicate to multiple valued audiences – one’s
community, the larger public. There are daunting institutional challenges to the development of
such pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986) to be endemic to teaching and learning
(Snow, Griffin, & Burns, 2006): the policy and ideological constraints around the thinking of

48
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critical literacy as the work of schooling; the constraints of existing standards (including the
CCSS) and assessments; and the epistemological shifts required. At the same time, these islands of
critical literacy, in schools and non-school settings, offer hope for many kinds of transformations:
in how youth, particularly youth from non-dominant communities, view the generative functions
of text-based literacies; in how such youth come to use the tools of literacy to work toward
social and political transformations around issues of equity; and of how youth learn to become
themselves producers of new knowledge.

Closing
I have tried to situate discussions of how social and cultural differences in communities can be
understood to support literacy learning and development in a broader context of understanding
literacy learning as just one task of human development in literate societies. I agree wholeheart-
edly with calls for attention to the social world and cultural differences around promoting multi-
culturalism in our schools and society. At the same time, I want to frame our interrogations of
such diversity in human terms, in terms of the scientific investigation of what fuels human learn-
ing. It just so happens that the learning task in this volume is on reading comprehension, but we
could put forth the same warrants for features of learning environments that are robust if the task
were mathematical reasoning or scientific reasoning. It turns out that in reading comprehension
we have a universal task of the species, namely the use of and interrogation of language as
a resource for meaning making. Because of this, so much of what we do in comprehending texts
has parallels in other language based genres (oral storytelling, proverbs, narratives in television and
movies, in music lyrics, and in metaphors we live by (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). We all interro-
gate language all the time. Understanding the wide range of variation in how we use language is
in fact the stuff of reading comprehension.

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 4
A Sociocultural Perspective on
Readers, Reading, Reading
Instruction and Assessment,
Reading Policy, and Reading
Research
Peter Smagorinsky, Mary Guay,
Tisha Lewis Ellison, and Arlette Ingram Willis

This chapter positions readers in relation to their environments, and reading and reading research
as social acts. A person’s orientation to print texts – our concern here, rather than in relation to
texts produced through other semiotic systems – is rooted in enculturation that begins in homes
and communities, and is subject to interpretation in schools when students’ reading practices
depart from norms set by members of the dominant culture. A sociocultural perspective questions
an assumption common in policy and assessment that views reading as an isolated act between
reader and text that minimizes readers’ instantiation of meaning into texts (that is, their encoding
of meaning; Smagorinsky, 2001). This assumption tends to consider social factors to be irrelevant
(as critiqued by Berliner, 2014) and limits reading to its technical, testable, and decoding features
(Smagorinsky, 2009a). As this chapter goes to press, the SAT has announced the development of
an “adversity score” to adjust for environmental factors in an effort to address inequity, albeit in
ways that immediately invited critique (e.g., Williams, 2019). Reading research in turn is con-
ducted by people socialized to worldviews, research paradigms, and other ideological perspectives
that are a consequence of mediated human development (Cole, 1996; Vygotsky, 1987; Wertsch,
1985). This socialization has consequences for the sorts of research questions posed, research goals
articulated, research methods employed, interpretive assumptions and procedures, and other fac-
tors. Reading is thus subject to social mediation in its conception, practice, and investigation, all
of which contribute to how knowledge is constructed about the state of reading development in
the U.S. and its schools.
This chapter will illustrate sociocultural phenomena primarily through the lens of African
American students’ historical achievement gap in reading, as determined in school (Tatum,
2005). This gap has been attributed to genetic inferiority by highly-placed scholars (Herrnstein &
Murray, 1994) who reflect views that remain in circulation in the public consciousness (Byrd &
Hughey, 2015), in spite of evidence from cultural psychology (Cole, 1996) that foregrounds
socialization rather than genetics to account for human diversity. The construction of African

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American literacy thus provides a suitable case through which to consider the role of sociocul-
tural contexts in the reading development of people from nondominant cultures.
We begin by detailing how reading is a social, cultural, and historical phenomenon that goes
well beyond simple decoding of the text before a reader. This analysis suggests that not only is
reading a sociocultural phenomenon, reading research itself is socially constructed. Investigative
conclusions often follow from ideological assumptions that are manifested in the conduct of
research into reading instruction, development, and performance, both in and out of school. We
then situate reading instruction and assessment within the U.S. national policy context, which in
turn influences what should be valued in school. We conclude with the recommendation that an
understanding of the phenomenon of reading is best informed by multiple perspectives that do
not assume the normativity of dominant cultures or the definitive authority of standardized read-
ing tests in measuring reading facility. Rather, attention to cultural pluralism suggests that taking
account of varied angles on readers and reading will, and should, complicate the policy impera-
tive to impose standardization on people of diverse socialization.

Reading as a Social, Cultural, and Historical Phenomenon

Cole, John-Steiner, Scribner, and Souberman titled their collection of essential Vygotsky (1978)
essays Mind in Society, under the assumption that thinking is social in origin: People learn not
only words but also ways of thinking through their engagement with the people who surround
them, so as to address the problems presented by their environments (Tulviste, 1991). Literacy
practices are thus historical in that they represent new iterations of long-standing traditions; cul-
tural in that they are suited to the specific needs developed over time within a community of
practice; and social in that they are put into practice as part of engagement with others, both in
immediate interpersonal exchanges and more enduringly as artifacts produced for subsequent
attention (Witte, 1992).
The acts of producing or reading a text of any sort are historical, cultural, and social. A text is
a collection of signs amenable to interpretation. In print literacy, which is the primary consider-
ation in most of what is considered reading research, the meaning of these signs follows from
how the squiggles on a page are constructed, coded, decoded, and encoded. Consider the follow-
ing six versions of the same idea:

Thinking is social in origin.

Мышление имеет социальное происхождение.
思考是社会的起源。
การคิดเปนเรื่องของสังคมในที่มา.
.‫ﺍﻟﺘﻔﻜﻴﺮ ﺍﺟﺘﻤﺎﻋﻲ ﻓﻲ ﺍﻷﺻﻞ‬
थिन्किन्ग इस सोचिअल् इन ओरिगिन.

These squiggles represent textual codes in six different symbol systems originating in different cul-
tures: English, Russian, Chinese, Thai, Arabic, and Sanskrit. No one is born knowing how to read
any of them. Rather, enculturation to reading follows from the extant practices of the people who
surround the reader, with some nations and cultures accommodating multiple languages and textual
conventions simultaneously, such that there is no single home or first language (e.g., for the South
African context, with 11 official languages, see Makalela, 2016). The inscription of meaning is only
available to readers and writers familiar with the codes that structure texts and their component
parts, including not only the meaning of specific signs, but also the order in which they are read,
how the syntax is structured, how such factors as modes of argumentation are realized in textual

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structure and emphasis, and other factors. Knowing these linguistic features is a consequence of
socialization to historical cultural traditions for engaging with text.
The culture of school serves some students better than others, because some have far fewer
adaptations to make in order to fit. In general, White middle-class students in the U.S. tend to
fit well with the social and academic expectations of schools much better than students from
other social, cultural, and economic groups (Ogbu, 2003; Smagorinsky, 2017). Students from
other groups who have learned to think and act differently are often viewed as deficient because
they adhere to different norms. This deficit perspective is taken by Stotsky (1999), who rejects
multicultural approaches as diluted and academically unchallenging. She argues that the absence
of sufficient Greek and Latin word roots in multicultural texts confirms that “our” language is
lost when others are included.
For students from outside the dominant culture who are subjected to deficit judgments,
school can become a place where they feel rejected and where their cultural identities are
denied. These students tend to feel out of place with the process and expectations of public edu-
cation (Heath, 1983; Lee, 2007). Yet, they are often the ones required to make the greatest adap-
tations. Schools, meanwhile, remain relatively stable, accommodating their historical values and
not those that structure the lives of marginalized students (Portes & Smagorinsky, 2010). As
a result, school often perpetuates the inequities that, ideally, it is designed to help to alleviate.
Our discussion of “reading” thus begins with an account of how literacy, along with literacy
education, including reading, does not follow from a single approach to socialization to learning.
As Haddix and Sealy-Ruiz (2012) and others have argued, this cultural orientation to texts needs
to take into account how people learn to engage textually in their daily lives. Their research on
African American cultural speech genres and social languages suggests that school instruction
could do more to build on students’ experiential frameworks to advance their knowledge of
school subjects. If not, their emotional resistance to how school is conducted may alienate them
to the point of dropping out and finding their potential fulfilled elsewhere (Wong, Eccles, &
Sameroff, 2003).
The idea of building academic knowledge upon students’ worlds of experience is not new,
nor is it confined to students from minoritized heritages. It was central to Vygotsky’s (1987)
notion that robust concepts are only available through the interplay between academic (what he
called in translation “scientific” concepts) and everyday (in his parlance, “spontaneous”) concepts,
developed in the 1920s and 1930s. It is a commonly invoked form of pedagogy, regardless of
students’ racial socialization, to connect school learning to popular culture (Alvermann, 2011)
and other home-grown interests. The racial dimension suggests the need to admit a broader
range of home-and-community knowledge and practice that represents the whole school popula-
tion’s enculturation. Doing so would require schools to consider broader educational restructur-
ing that produces diversity in relation to students’ home socialization, rather than avenues to
assimilation to established educational practices (Gutiérrez, Rymes, & Larson, 1995).
In the policy world, the emotional engagement that students develop with school as an insti-
tution, and with particular people and places within school, is irrelevant. Yet students’ emotional
engagement with school is associated with their investment in its academic mission (Furlong
et al., 2003). The U.S., among many Western societies, has grounded its educational thinking in
European Enlightenment rationalism (McCagg, 1989). This perspective has produced the idea of
“cold cognition” (Roth, 2007): thinking unencumbered by emotion, an idea that has been
engrained in U.S. educational practice since the founding of public schools. Literary reading, for
example, has long been governed by the values of New Criticism, which takes a “scientific”
view of reading that emphasizes explication de texte, i.e., the detached analysis and decoding of the
technical aspects of literature (Applebee, 1993). New Criticism fell into a period of doubt and
disrepute among many literature teachers through the influence of “transactional” theories of

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reading, often traced to Rosenblatt (1996) and thus to Dewey (1902), that emphasize readers’
constructive roles in relation to texts, rather than solely focusing attention on authors’ inferred
intended meaning. New Criticism has been revived in the recent Common Core State Standards
(CCSS), in which a reader’s personal life, emotional engagement with characters, cultural orienta-
tion to society, and other factors that cannot be found in the text itself, should not be summoned
to inform the quest for meaning (see Shanahan, 2013, for advocacy of this perspective; Tampio,
2018, for a critique).
We thus proceed with the assumption that human cognition and intellectual development,
including learning how to read, are grounded in historical, cultural, and social mediation. Schools
tend to rely on the structures they have inherited to occupy the present and anticipate the future.
Schools in the U.S. have long been complicit in deculturalization, i.e., the use of schools to replace
family languages and cultures with those of the dominant group (Spring, 2016). From a cultural
perspective, reading instruction has embedded Christian didactics in McGuffy primers (Luke,
1997), character education reading lists (see Smagorinsky & Taxel, 2005), and other curricular
structures, texts, and practices. Curriculum and instruction have often elided or forbidden texts
and ideologies from other perspectives, including Arizona’s rejection of the Ethnic Studies Pro-
gram, whose critical perspective was deemed anti-American (Acosta, 2013), the suppression of
hip-hop culture in school (Baszile, 2009), and the muffling of other perspectives that do not fit
the values embedded in schools designed and run according to the values of the dominant White
population, particularly the upper and middle classes (see Bates, 2011, for the challenges facing
poor White students in school). The act of reading is thus not cultural only where the eyeballs
meet the page. It is embedded in a variety of broader social institutions and practices that shape
education, reading, ideology, and everything else that meets at the intersection provided by the
community school.

Socialization to Reading Begins at Home

Attention to children’s socialization to reading at home and in community life got its greatest
boost from Heath (1983), in one of the most influential studies of literacy in the field’s history.
Her Ways with Words, as of this writing, has been referenced roughly 15,500 times in published
scholarship. Three-and-a-half decades after its publication, this ten-year ethnographic study of
three rural communities in the Appalachian Piedmont has averaged about 420 references a year,
according to a search run via Harzing’s Publish or Perish software. Its insights have held up well
beyond its time and place of data collection, suggesting remarkable durability and significance in
helping to explain literacy as a function of far more than the decoding of texts, often considered
the basic definition of reading both historically (e.g., Gough, 1972) and in current policy (Cole-
man & Pimentel, 2012).
Sociocultural literacy theories argue that readers infuse print texts (and other textual forms)
with cultural meaning as they encode them in relation to their worldly experiences (Smagorinsky,
2001). Heath (1982, 1983) found that members of culturally distinctive communities approached
reading in ways that were markedly different, and that were grounded in broader cultural values.
Reading, as she found, involves more than cognitive textual processing. Rather, reading manifests
how cultures view the purpose and act of reading print in relation to the conduct of their lives
and the value systems that motivate their approach to living, and thus their ways with words.
Children from what Heath (1982) dubbed “Maintown,” which represented “mainstream
middle-class school-oriented culture” (p. 49), made the easiest transition to school. The reading
practices at home were similar to those required in school, including question-and-answer rou-
tines about the text and its contents and form. The other two focal communities experienced
home and school reading quite differently. White fundamentalist Christian families were oriented

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to the Holy Bible as the principal source of knowledge, one not to be questioned. These families
viewed the written word as containing immutable, doctrinaire truth. When their children
attended school, they struggled with textual ambiguity because their orientation and approach to
reading and writing came from a single sacred text that located all authority and agency in the
printed word and its authors. Culture shaped their understanding of how texts function, which
worked within their primary social centers of home and faith community, but not when school
required them to question a text’s contents.
The African American community Heath (1982, 1983) studied was not oriented to reading as
a valuable way to spend time. Their community life was organized around social interaction and
performative activity rather than around quiet, isolated reading. Solitary reading was interpreted
as anti-social and therefore was discouraged; children were told to get outside and play instead.
Reading in this community worked against the more important value of social engagement. By
extrapolation, the tendency of schools and many teachers to value quiet, individual work over
noisy, contentious interaction and collaboration works in favor of students raised according to
that priority (Rothstein-Fisch & Trumbull, 2008).
Heath (1982, 1983) studied one relatively small area in a remote part of the U.S., and so
readers should be cautious about generalizing to all African American families and communities,
or to all Christian families from the fundamentalist community she studied. Yet, many others
have confirmed her conclusion that school structures are often not hospitable to the ways of
knowing fostered in many African American households. For example, Noguera (2003), among
others, has found that this disjuncture between home socialization and school expectations has
produced pathologizing assumptions about Black youth that evaluate them in ways that are alien
to how they have learned to conduct themselves within the confines of their own communities.
The performance of African American students on school tasks and standardized tests has served
as a means by which they are assessed as exhibiting, as a demographic group, low literacy rates
(Howard, 2001). This is not to say that children and youth from other cultures and racial groups
are exempt from these challenges and consequences, only that African American students as
a group have experienced them consistently and systemically, as evidenced by their assignment to
low-track and remedial classrooms in disproportionate numbers (Yonezawa, Wells, & Serna,
2002).
In the wake of Heath’s (1982, 1983) intensive study, a number of African American scholars
have argued that one way of understanding the difficulty that minoritized students have in transi-
tioning to school is to conduct ethnographies in which a site is studied in depth for at least
a year (Athanases & Heath, 1995). These studies, according to their advocates, enable
a researcher to “[identify and give] voice to alternative world views” (Delpit, 1988, p. 282).
Researchers in this conception study, understand, interpret, and present the world from
a population’s emic perspective, rather than allowing them to be characterized by outsiders rely-
ing on assumptions, tools, standards, and expectations based on their own cultures of origin, and
using strictly numerical reductions of the literacy potential and performance of people at the site.
Sociocultural theories that accompany the ethnographic tradition have not, to date, been
embraced by federal reading stakeholders as a viable framework to examine reading improve-
ment, instruction, and intervention, nor has its reliance on non-numeric reductions of data, often
in narrative form. The use of experimental and quasi-experimental studies is positioned as more
valid and “scientific” than other methods of educational research, as a “gold standard,” reflecting
the history of hyperrationality that underpins much of educational research and policy (Manuel,
Goodwyn, & Zancanella, 2016). Denzin’s (2009) critique of the National Research Council’s
reluctance to include multiple forms of evidence in federal funding of research can be extended
to a history of such positioning in federal reforms of reading research. One consequence of this
exclusive value on a single research paradigm is that research like Heath’s (1982, 1983) is

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excluded from consideration, leaving her findings, and those from studies in her tradition, outside
the purview of educational policy, regardless of their influence on research and practice and stat-
ure in many areas of inquiry.
Sociocultural research that involves case studies, ethnographic accounts, narrative inquiry, and
other non-numeric data is designed to provide detail and nuance, rather than to produce broad
generalizations about performance or one-shot measures of achievement. It is concerned with
understanding the effects of activity, culture, language, and systems of knowing of everyday life
and experience that shape cognitive frameworks, worldviews, literacy practices, and other ways
of thinking. Experimental research’s minimization of variables to focus on outcomes leads to gen-
eralizations and recommendations for “best” and “high-leverage practices” that have been ques-
tioned from a sociocultural perspective more oriented to situated literacy learning (Philip et al.,
2018; Smagorinsky, 2009b, 2018). Yet the search for silver bullets has great policy appeal over
approaches that rely on messy, time-consuming, labor-intensive, small-sample ethnographic and
other qualitative methods that do not produce black-and-white conclusions for one and all to
follow. As a result, the privileged research base that was conducted within the experimental trad-
ition dictates policies driven by the assumption that students are all more or less the same, and
that only teachers’ instruction and students’ application matter. What Berliner (2014) calls exogen-
ous, or outside variables, thus play little role in policy, which is enamored of such factors as grit
(Duckworth, 2016) as the means by which poverty and discrimination can be overcome to pro-
duce better reading test scores, regardless of students’ socialization in homes and community life
(Dixson & Rousseau, 2005).
Kirkland’s (2014) comparison of research paradigms enacted in and out of school illustrates
how different research traditions function according to assumptions and practices that yield very
different findings. School assessments, according to Kirkland, are definitive and discriminatory
when they isolate students in one-off standardized tests of little interest to them, raising questions
about the assessments’ reliability and validity. African American students tend to do relatively
poorly on these measures, and test scores have official status in determining literacy rates and in
turn create the image of illiterate Black youth, an impression that in turn constructs whole views
of the African American population in the White public imaginary (Leonardo, 2009; Steele,
2011).
Kirkland (2014) finds, however, that assessing students outside school through more fine-
grained, long-term collections and analyses of verbal data produces a very different view of this
population. When in community settings and engaged in literacy practices of their choice, when
participating socially instead of working in isolation, and when studied in light of their own
interests and goals through nuanced means that include their own perspectives – the world views
that Delpit (1988) hopes to elicit from minoritized people – these same youth come across much
differently. They create a compelling range of texts in a variety of cultural settings (Hill, 2009)
that are creative, vital, and provide agency. They build on home-and-community-cultivated
identities and language practices to produce texts that depict and interpret their experiences and
surroundings. They have a medium through which to tell their own stories, which are otherwise
ignored in their school experiences (Rhym, 2018). They are anything but the dull and linguistic-
ally-challenged people pathologized in school, where test scores have insurmountable power in
determining their learning and literate identities and create the public and policy perspectives on
their human potential. These policies are often enacted with the help of researchers who assert
context-free claims about their assessment procedures and products (e.g., Pianta & Hamre, 2009;
Rowan & Correnti, 2009), those that carry the assumption of color-blindness (Richeson & Nuss-
baum, 2004) without considering factors such as poverty and enculturation that question their
validity (e.g., Berliner, 2014; Learned & Moje, 2015; Smagorinsky, 2009b; Willis, 2009).

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 A Sociocultural Perspective on Readers, and Contexts of Reading

These oppositional interpretations of one population from studies conducted in different sites
using different methods illustrate the problem of the social construction of data (Smagorinsky, 1995).
Both qualitative and quantitative research methods may be open-ended (see Tukey, 1977, for
exploratory data analysis in quantitative methods). Yet the acknowledgement of researchers’ con-
structive role in generating and analyzing data is more likely associated with qualitative methods
that avoid claims to providing a single authoritative portrait of a people or practices, which is
how numeric test data tend to be characterized. A sociocultural perspective on literacy research
and practice assumes that social science data are human constructions that embody a researcher’s
worldview and socialization, applied to the conduct of other human beings (McGregor & Mur-
nane, 2010). These filters can shape which questions are asked, which cultural framework they
emerge from, how they are investigated, how the data are reduced and analyzed, and from
whose perspective the interpretation of those analyses is constructed.
Rather than studying reading solely as a school-based practice, many researchers have posi-
tioned the home as a child’s first and most critical site of socialization to literacy practices. To
fight back against the sort of pathologization of African American people and families that con-
cern Noguera (2003) and others taking an emic perspective on this population, researchers have
spent time with African American families to document their literacy practices. These studies
have taken place in both impoverished and more affluent, professional homes. Cushman (1999),
for instance, studied itinerant families navigating the public housing system as a consequence of
economic instability. Her positionality demonstrates the difficulty that many university researchers
have when trying to understand the lives of people living on the margins of society. Her partici-
pants lived amidst rats and conditions that were often unsanitary and always unpredictable. Being
trusted and accepted as a university ethnographer – as investigators who “don’t study villages …
they study in villages” to use Geertz’s (1973, p. 22; emphasis in original) phrase – in such
a setting requires the development of a strong relationship, often built on commonality, that
takes time to develop.
Cushman’s own life circumstances provided her with an entrée to public housing residents
living on the margins of society, something that is unavailable to most researchers, who are over-
whelmingly White (National Center for Education Statistics, 2018) and rarely from impoverished
backgrounds, given that even getting an undergraduate degree is associated with family affluence
(Zinshteyn, 2016). The residents had a Black Cherokee heritage, and Cushman’s racial back-
ground included White Cherokee blood (see Cushman, 2013). She had also been homeless her-
self during her doctoral studies, providing rare intersubjectivity – broadly speaking, reaching
a shared understanding of the situation – with her participants and a means of forming
a relationship based on shared experience. This perspective and set of experiences gave her an
empathic view of the residents and the means by which they learned about and worked within
the bureaucratic tangle of the public housing system, requiring a knowledge of reading the word
and the world, as Freire (1985) phrased it, that structured their living conditions. Achieving inter-
subjectivity with research participants from backgrounds different from one’s own is a long-
acknowledged challenge for researchers (Rosenthal, 1966), and may help account for the White-
ness of many research populations studied by White investigators who have difficulty getting
access to people who may distrust their motives, given the history of pathologization in judging
one culture by the values of a dominant culture (Padilla, 2008).
This example might reinforce the idea that all African American or minoritized families are
living in abject poverty, which is true for some but not all members of this demographic, even as
those who occupy the middle class may experience similar types and degrees of discrimination
(Sellers, Bonham, Neighbors, & Amell, 2009). Other scholars have studied families with greater
literacy affordances, challenging deficit assumptions and documenting what is possible in families
living on the economic margins. Again, though, access to studying these populations outside

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school is critical; not all university researchers would be welcomed into African American homes
to study their literacy practices, given the distrust that might meet their requests for access
(Coker & Huang, 2010). African American families have often been subject to misrepresentations
and cultural-deficit viewpoints in research that overlooks their rich and complex literacy practices
(Milner, 2013). These stereotypes suggest that African American families are non-existent,
limited, and underachieving, in large part because literacy measures are based on their school
assessment, independent of how they engage in literacy practices in home and community set-
tings, even as family literacy scholars have critiqued these deficit views (Arzubiaga, Artiles, King,
& Harris-Murri, 2008; Auerbach, 1989; Compton-Lilly, Rogers, & Lewis, 2012; Gadsden,
2004).
Sub-Saharan Black African-descent people in the U.S. still bear the legacy of centuries of
indentured servitude, slavery, segregation, violence, exclusion, and discriminatory means that
continue through to the present day in the form of such practices of bank-loan redlining, political
gerrymandering, voter suppression, microaggressions, and other means of oppression (Lipsitz,
1998). In the 1800s, the fear of a liberated Black population empowered by literacy produced
prohibitions against their learning to read and write, traumatizing enslaved families (Leary, 2005),
whose reading and writing were forbidden to perpetuate a cycle of illiterate families (Mubenga,
2006). White allies were often subject to punishment if they contributed to their slaves’ literacy
(Williams, 2005). Formal education in former slave states following emancipation placed Black
children in schools that were badly under-resourced, and racially segregated “separate-but-equal”
schools were denied adequate funding and resources until the Brown v. Board of Education
1954 decision forced integration.
Yet legal integration ended neither segregation nor discrimination (Orfield, With Schley,
Glass, & Reardon, 1993). Centuries later, reports from the National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP) and National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) (National Assessment of
Educational Progress and National Center for Education Statistics, 2017) describe a chronic aca-
demic gap between African American children’s test scores in reading and math and those of
White peers (Bohrnstedt, Kitmitto, Ogut, Sherman, & Chan, 2015). The variable of race is in
turn complicated by factors such as the relation between race and poverty (Myers, Kim, & Man-
dala, 2004) and other extra-scholastic, intersectional factors that are often effaced in educational
policy (Berliner, 2014).
This lag has been attributed to a variety of deficiencies in both homes and schools, including
a lack of resources, unstable home lives, race itself, and ineffective teachers (Howard, 2013),
compounded by persistent systemic racism governing schools (Darling-Hammond, 1998; Lewis,
2009; Scott, Brown, Jean-Baptiste, & Barbarin, 2012). African Americans’ literacy rates, as meas-
ured by assessments conducted according to instruments developed to accompany the White-
infused curriculum and instruction of schools (Berchini, 2016), have been reported as unaccept-
ably low and in need of school remediation.
Parents’ interactions support and play a critical role in children’s literacy skills at home
(Compton-Lilly, 2007; Edwards, 2004; Heath, 2010; Lewis, 2013). Despite how African Ameri-
can parents have been labeled as “hard to reach” by schools (Davies, 1988), research in African
American homes, often by African American researchers whose access is predicated on partici-
pants’ trust of their motives, finds the parents often participating in some form of literacy-focused
practices with their children. Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, and Wilkinson (1985) view parental
engagement as fundamental to language socialization; in schools, however, some forms of social-
ization get preferential treatment and others are viewed as being in deficit to them. Parents’ role
and involvement play a pivotal role in the support of their children’s school success (Howard,
2015), in that parents can offer human (education), social (relationships), financial (access) (Yan,
1999), and cultural capital (skill) support (Bourdieu, 1986).

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As positioning theory (Harré & Van Langenhove, 1999) would assume, however, the social
practices produced by different forms of support become hierarchically constructed in the context
of school. The more similar a home’s practices are to those expected in school, the more familiar
and comfortable the school experience is to the student, and the greater the chances the student
will be evaluated as a success, as found by Heath (1983). Discrepant socialization can produce reli-
ance on different speech genres and literacy practices from those typically made available in school
(Majors, 2015). Simply providing support for literacy at home, then, may not prepare children and
youth for achievement as students in school. Nor, in turn, does school necessarily prepare students
for literacy learning and practice outside school (Considine, Horton, & Moorman, 2009).
Research centered on families, then, complicates assumptions about the socialization of readers
in home and community. African American parents, contrary to stereotype, are often actively
involved with their children’s school work (e.g., speaking with children about their school
experiences, providing access to books at home). When these practices support students’ gravita-
tion to school norms, this engagement produces positive outcomes in reading and math assess-
ments (Halle, Kurtz-Costes, & Mahoney, 1997). African American family socialization can
enhance school-based learning, complicating the idea that racialized cultures are separate and
incompatible. Longitudinal research conducted from pre-school to high school (Hoover-
Dempsey et al., 2005; Vondra, Dowell Hommerding, & Shaw, 1999) finds that inner-city Afri-
can American parents provided involvement, support, and motivation to promote academic
achievement and teacher-student relationships.
The question posed by many minoritized scholars, however, is how their people’s identities,
communicative practices, ways of knowing, speech genres, and other aspects of culture can be
responded to, supported, and sustained, not how they can be abandoned to assimilate to White
school norms and the testing apparatus that enforces them (e.g., Four Arrows, 2013; Gutiérrez,
2008; Paris & Alim, 2017). Parents’ involvement in reading African American children’s literature
with young children contributed to gains in children learning print, comprehension, and vocabu-
lary skills (McNair, 2013). For McNair, such “culturally sensitive reading material enhances infor-
mation processing in African American children” because “reading material depicts verbal and
visual content that is consistent with the sociocultural experiences of African American children,”
and parents’ involvement in their children’s literate lives promoted their literacy development and
provided teachers a foundation on which to build in school (p. 473; cf. Bell & Clark, 1998).
Yet the correspondence between these home literacy practices and those assessed in school is
often weak. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) have been critiqued for their implemen-
tation, inequalities, unoriginality, and cultural insensitivity, in particular for African American stu-
dents (Lewis Ellison, 2017). Many African American parents are not aware of the standards and
accompanying exams and do not understand the benefits, processes, or results, leaving them dis-
advantaged in discussing their children’s education with people in schools (Abdullah, 2013; Bell,
2012; Lewis Ellison, 2017; Milner, 2006; Osburn, Stegman, Suitt, & Ritter, 2004). These con-
cerns are important when considering children’s literacy development, academic achievement,
and cultural competence. When some parents know how to navigate parent-school relationships
better than others, their children are advantaged in school assessments (Hill & Taylor, 2004).
Standardized tests typically are developed in alignment with White, middle-class literacy practices
(Whiting & Ford, 2009). Bodovski (2010), for instance, studied the complex web of intersections
between race and social class that produce differential parenting strategies that have consequences for
educational outcomes among children, again relying on assimilative criteria rather than culturally-
sustaining measures that are attentive to how people of color define their own identities, communica-
tive practices, social processes, speech genres, and other aspects of social life (Paris & Alim, 2017).
This concerted cultivation (Lareau, 2003) produces distinctive differences in child-rearing according to
class, race, and gender distinctions, echoing Heath’s (1983) findings that cultural practices in home

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Peter Smagorinsky et al.

settings shape cognitive and social processes that may be out of synch with how learning is assessed in
schools during literacy lessons and on standardized tests (Troy, 2016). However, racial and ethnic
group identity and socialization play a critical role in student achievement (King, Akua, & Russell,
2014). The home-based cultural competencies that children bring to the classroom, families’ sociocul-
tural contexts of literacy development (cognitive, linguistic, behavioral, and interpersonal), and the
consequences of these textual conceptions and literacy practices in school contexts must be acknow-
ledged to reach fair conclusions about these students and their families (Scott et al., 2012).

The Policy Context as Sociocultural Structure

Federal policies serve as critical contexts in that they often shape instruction, giving credence to
the aphorism that “what you test is what you get” or, as Resnick and Resnick (1989) put it,
“You get what you assess” (p. 66). No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race To The Top
(RTTT), two federal mandates, imposed testing on U.S. schools to force what policymakers con-
sidered to be accountability measures (McGuinn, 2016). Although they are claimed by some to
be race-neutral (Santos, Cabrera, & Fosnacht, 2010), others find tests to involve a racial bias
(Morgan et al., 2010), suggesting that politics and race are incontrovertibly associated with how
students are perceived in relation to their education, and how racialized perspectives shape
assumptions and beliefs about the role of bias in assessment.
U.S. federal education reform policy has targeted educational inequalities among racial groups.
Histories of federal reform policies that address reading (Allington, 2006; Pressley, Duke, &
Boling, 2004; Shanahan, 2011), however, have tended to diminish the role of race, with a few
exceptions (Gutiérrez, 2001; Prendergast, 2002; Shannon, 1992; Willis, 1997; Willis & Harris,
1997). The social construct of race requires greater attention if reading is to be understood in
relation to the social contexts that shape the reading experience.
In the mid-20th century, politics, research, and education reform intersected to address conse-
quences of poverty in education. The passage of the Civil Rights Act 1964 and President John-
son’s “War on Poverty” set the stage for Johnson’s 1965 State of the Union address, in which he
committed aid to public schools serving low-income families. The Elementary and Secondary
Education Act was passed in 1965 and worked in concert with the Civil Rights Act to address
racial and social inequality, along with poverty (Frankenburg, 2018), providing Title I funding to
address educational inequality for poor children and children of color.
During this period, some reading researchers became interested in the intersection of reading and
readers’ socioeconomic status (Bond & Dykstra, 1964). These studies focused on how communities
were organized (urban, suburban, small town, and rural); what occupations they supported (industrial,
agrarian, etc.); community conditions (stable, transitional, volatile, etc.); and the demographic markers
that characterized community members (sex, age, race/ethnicity, preschool experience). The domin-
ant work, however, assumed the neutrality of social contexts and the availability of what Newman,
Griffin, and Cole (1989) call a problem isomorph: a test item that is interpreted in the same way by all
test-takers. This assumption provides the tests with the veneer of unassailable assessment authority
rather than, as argued by Newman et al., identifying the degree to which test-takers are consonant
with the means of measurement. This belief enabled researchers to eliminate poor people of color
from research samples, in turn allowing for research findings to be normed in accordance with other
sorts of students to provide the standards by which they are measured as readers, inevitably in deficit.

Nature, Nurture, and Reading

We have thus far focused on the social construction of race in reading research. Although African
American students are not any more neurologically prone to reading difficulties than any other

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population, those from low-income homes may be especially at-risk for reading difficulties,
although they may not be uniquely so relative to other racial groups (Washington, 2001). Shifrer,
Muller, and Callahan (2010) argue that rather than being biologically handicapped as readers, Afri-
can American children are more prone to be diagnosed as dyslexic than are children from other
demographic groups (cf. Hoyles & Hoyles, 2010), suggesting that neurology cannot explain all
facets of identification. These perspectives highlight a critical tension in reading research and
instruction grounded in the nature vs. nurture debate first identified by Galton (1869). Do difficul-
ties with reading or other academic or intelligence measure reside within individual people, giving
them a biological explanation with only such variables as orthographic system responsible for differ-
ences and not readers’ cultures (Paulesu et al., 2001)? Or are academic struggles with reading or
other learning disabilities (Dudley-Marling, 2019) social constructions whose assessments might
change if the environment itself were restructured, if the diagnostic tools were changed, and if the
people forming judgments were to take a different perspective (see Newman et al., 1989)? Or are
both nature and nurture (and, most critically here, the social construction of diagnosis) all in play
when identifying and assisting struggling readers and in their engagements with print text?
The “nature” part of the debate is now well-established. The condition known as dyslexia, in
spite of disagreements about what it is and how to identify it (Worthy, Lammert, Long, Salmerón, &
Godfrey, 2018), recurs in families and thus likely exhibits a genetic component, although the specific
genes that result in dyslexia have not been identified (Elliott & Grigorenko, 2014; Vellutino, Fletcher,
Snowling, & Scanlon, 2004). The hazards of identification are evident in the estimates of its presence
in the whole population, which range between 3%–20% of the population (Elliott & Grigorenko,
2014). This ambiguity muddies the waters of understanding precisely what is involved when children
struggle to read in school, and suggest that other factors may be at work in a diagnosis. These issues
are especially confounding when race enters the diagnostic picture. In a common sort of conclusion
from research, for instance, Morgan, Farkas, Tufis, and Sperling (2008) found that “children with
reading problems in first grade were significantly more likely to display poor task engagement, poor
self-control, externalizing behavior problems, and internalizing behavior problems in third grade. …
Academic underachievement and problem behaviors frequently co-occur” in school (p. 417). What
constitutes a “behavior problem,” however, is often a cultural judgment. Wallace, Goodkind, Wal-
lace, and Bachman (2008), among many others, report differential suspension rates for Black and
White students, suggesting that Black students’ behavior is prone to be interpreted as problematic by
a teaching force that is roughly 85% White (U.S. Department of Education, 2016). The history of
Black and White cultural differences often suggests that different sorts of socialization may lead to
a misinterpretation of each other’s intentions (Kochman, 1981). It is worth questioning, then, what it
means to be diagnosed as a struggling reader in the context of school, where it is common for White
adults to make cultural judgments (e.g., what counts as problematic behavior in relation to reading
struggles) about children of color, including their performance as readers and their scores on school-
administered test data that confirm their biases.
Christian and Bloome (2004) locate this interpretive problem in Bourdieu’s (1994) construct
of symbolic capital, i.e.,

the privileged social status and social position that a person may have within a particular situ-
ation. … In classrooms and in schools, learning to read is often who you are: how well
a child learns to read in comparison to other students provides a social position in a social
hierarchy of “becoming readers.” That social position is part of the child’s social identity.
(p. 367)

From this perspective, the biological makeup that is central to much discourse surrounding read-
ing disorders is not paramount. Rather, it is among the human features, both biological and

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Peter Smagorinsky et al.

social, that produce the person who is then open to interpretation. If reading does have
a neurological dimension (assumed by Ehri, 2002), and if social construction affects virtually all
interpretive human activity (assumed by Cole, 1996), then it’s likely that both are in play when
trying to understand why some people are diagnostically considered more able readers than
others. Nature provides the material, nurture produces the social consequences. These social con-
sequences might include the problem that people of color, no matter what their natural endow-
ment might provide, are often interpreted by White teachers, researchers, and policymakers
according to criteria established in middle-class White populations, against which they often
appear in deficit rather following a different order (Gillborn, 2005).

Discussion
This chapter has featured the construct of race, particularly that of African Americans, as an illus-
tration of the sociocultural dimensions of readers, reading, reading assessment and policy, reading
curriculum and instruction, and reading research. Race is not an absolute variable; it works at the
intersection with other demographic phenomena including gender, social class, able-bodiedness,
and other factors (Cole, 2009). Discussions of race are complicated by the abundance of mixed-
race families in a pluralistic world (see Parker, Horowitz, Morin, & Lopez, 2015), even as
mixed-race people must often declare a racial heritage to appease people from both within and
without their cultural groups (Hobbs, 2014). Yet race has emerged as a critical factor in reading
and other educational fields (Tatum, 2005) and is a key variable to address if socialization to
school affects educational outcomes. African American scholars have recently begun to assert the
need for emic perspectives on the experiences of African American people, rather than having
them judged according to norms established with the dominant culture by researchers from the
dominant culture (Emdin, 2016; Love, 2019). These challenges call for non-assimilative
approaches to educational reform that emphasize the diversity of the human experience and
accentuate the qualities and potentials of children and youth (and adults) whose cultural ways of
knowing serve them well at home and in community life, if not necessarily in established school
instruction and assessment derived from White middle-class norms (Gutiérrez, 2008).
The “Reading Wars” have been contested between proponents of phonics and whole lan-
guage instruction for beginning readers (Pearson, 2004). They also have a racial dimension, with
African American and White researchers often at odds with whether differential reading scores
emerge from dysfunctional individuals, families, and communities, or monolithic schools that
rhetorically celebrate diversity while retaining their fundamental structures, values, and practices.
Although such binaries can mask nuance, the divide between how African American students are
perceived appears to emerge in large part from the eyes of the beholder, themselves shaped by
socialization to assumptions and norms to which people like themselves adhere. A sociocultural
perspective enables an understanding of how people and their abilities and potentials are con-
structed from different cultural perspectives.
This review suggests that more perspectives should be included in judgments about various demo-
graphic groups’ literacy development, and that the insights available from each should be included in
reading policy and practice. Otherwise, minoritized groups will continue to be judged in deficit to
norms established with populations whose historical cultural means and ends lead them to practices
that may be poorly aligned with the deep structure of schools (Smagorinsky, 2020) – the institution-
alized curriculum and assessment, dress codes, codes of conduct, approved speech genres and social
languages, conventions for interaction, composition of administration and faculty, the physical
arrangement of schools, the hidden curriculum, and other structural factors that organize the educa-
tional process according to a specific value system – established without their consultation and with-
out attention to the diversity that is so critical to their mission statements and purported values.

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 Part III
How Do Expanding Forms of
Texts and Everyday
Communication Change the
Game for Readers, Teachers,
Leaders, and Reading
Researchers?
 5
Reading Multiple and
Non-Traditional Texts
New Opportunities and New Challenges
Ivar Bråten, Jason L. G. Braasch, and Ladislao Salmerón

Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to review theory and research on the reading of multiple and non-
traditional texts, discuss implications for educational research and practice, and suggest directions
for future theoretical and empirical work. Reading multiple texts involves trying to construct
meaning from multiple textual resources that present consistent, componential (i.e., information
across different texts is part of a larger whole not specified in any single text), or conflicting
information on the same situation, issue, or phenomenon (Bråten, Anmarkrud, Brandmo, &
Strømsø, 2014; Goldman, 2004). Such textual resources may be digital as well as printed. Com-
pared to printed texts, digital texts afford new opportunities in terms of accessibility, coverage,
and topicality, yet pose new challenges due to relaxed parameters for publishing and the conse-
quential need to differentiate useful and reliable texts from those that are not (Britt & Gabrys,
2000; Leu & Maykel, 2016; Lucassen, Muilwijk, Noordzij, & Schraagen, 2013). Still, well into
the 21st century, digital texts cannot be considered non-traditional in and of themselves. Accord-
ingly, we will reserve the term non-traditional texts for digital texts embedded in social activity.
More specifically, the reading of non-traditional texts is taken to involve forms of social inter-
action in digital contexts that have traditionally required face-to-face encounters, such as the
reading of instant messages, web forums, blogs, and online comments (Bråten, Stadtler, & Sal-
merón, 2018). Also, when reading such non-traditional texts, individuals typically engage with
multiple texts dealing with the same situation, issue, or phenomenon, for example, when reading
several answers to a question posted on a web forum or reading a number of online comments
to a particular newspaper article.
Our treatment of the reading of multiple and non-traditional texts thus spans reading con-
texts ranging from the reading of multiple traditional texts in print, as when a high school
class reads documents distributed by their teacher to complete a history assignment, to the
reading of multiple non-traditional texts online, as when a couple reads conflicting evaluations
of the same hotel on a travel forum website to decide on accommodation for their upcoming
weekend trip. In a middle position, as it were, is the reading of multiple traditional texts
online, as when undergraduate students read a set of published articles retrieved via the

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university library’s website on their laptops to prepare a class presentation on a particular

course-related issue. Of course, all these reading contexts are ubiquitous in the 21st century
information society (Bråten & Braasch, 2017; Goldman et al., 2011). It is therefore somewhat
paradoxical that much, if not most, of what researchers know about reading is based on indi-
viduals reading a single text (cf., McNamara & Magliano, 2009). Given this state of affairs, it
can be argued that increased attention to reading contexts involving multiple and non-
traditional texts is required to improve the ecological validity of the work that we, as a field,
produce. Accordingly, our discussion of emergent conceptualizations and empirical findings
regarding the reading of multiple and non-traditional texts in this chapter highlights the need
to better align the world of reading research with the world of real life reading, both in and
out of school.
The remainder of this chapter is divided into three main sections. In the first, we provide
a theoretical background by discussing relevant frameworks for understanding how the reading of
multiple and non-traditional texts is similar to and differs from the reading of single and trad-
itional texts. In the second, we review empirical work on the role of individual and contextual
factors in multiple text comprehension, the similarities and differences between reading printed
and digital texts, and the reading of non-traditional texts in digital contexts. Finally, in the third
main section, we summarize the outcome of our conceptual and empirical analysis, discuss impli-
cations for the conceptualization of the reading process and instructional practice, and note future
work that is needed in this area of research.

Theoretical Background
The past 20 years has seen an increased interest in theory development for the purposes of better
understanding the affordances and challenges of reading to understand multiple and non-
traditional texts. In this section, we present and discuss several prominent frameworks that have
resulted from these efforts. They include the Documents Model Framework (DMF), the Mul-
tiple-Document Task-based Relevance Assessment and Content Extraction (MD-TRACE)
model, the Disciplinary Literacy conceptual framework, the Semantics, Surface, and Source (3S)
model of credibility evaluation, and the New Literacies framework.

The Documents Model Framework

The DMF is arguably the most influential framework for describing how readers mentally repre-
sent multiple, and at times conflicting, messages in terms of the information sources conveying
them (Britt, Perfetti, Sandak, & Rouet, 1999; Britt & Rouet, 2012; Britt, Rouet, & Braasch,
2013; Perfetti, Rouet, & Britt, 1999; Rouet, 2006). The framework specifies that readers of mul-
tiple texts will ideally create two additional mental structures above and beyond those described
in models of single text comprehension (e.g., Kintsch, 1998; van den Broek, 2010). First, to opti-
mize their understandings of the situation or phenomenon described by texts, readers should con-
struct an integrated mental model, which is a mental representation of the global situation described
in multiple texts as relationships among the semantic content (Britt & Rouet, 2012). An inte-
grated mental model could entail ideas unique to single texts, ideas shared across multiple texts,
and ideas offered by multiple texts that contradict one another. The DMF additionally proposes
that readers should construct an intertext model, which is a mental representation that uses source
features (e.g., authors, publication venues, perspectives, and so forth) as organizational compo-
nents (Britt & Rouet, 2012). Intertext links are mentally represented as relationships between
information sources – referred to as document nodes – and their respective content assertions
(e.g., “Author A claims …”, “Author B claims …”). Intertext links also function as connections

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between the document nodes themselves (e.g., “Author A disagrees with Author B”). In this
way, the DMF describes how readers ideally comprehend multiple diverse texts, in terms of their
respective information sources.

The Multiple-Document Task-based Relevance Assessment and Content

Extraction Model
The MD-TRACE model specifies a general sequence of processes readers might cycle through
when interacting with complex texts (including multiple or non-traditional texts) to complete an
overarching reading task (Rouet & Britt, 2011). In Step 1, readers interpret task goals based on
provided instructions (e.g., write an essay on whether we should use products containing
GMOs). Readers might also plan a set of procedures they could engage in to satisfy their task
goals. The result is a “task model,” a mental representation of the task that presumably guides
inquiry into the topic (Rouet & Britt, 2011). In Step 2, readers assess information needs given
the current states of their task products (their essays) (Rouet & Britt, 2011). Step 3 reflects a set
of sub-processes including a) selecting a document, b) reading and comprehending the document,
and c) integrating current ideas with those from prior-read documents. In Step 4, task products
are created or updated. Finally, in Step 5, readers assess the sufficiency of their task products. As
such, at any point in time, readers can cycle back through earlier steps if they perceive their
products have not sufficiently addressed their task goals. For example, based on the current states
of their task products, readers might decide there are additional informational needs. As a result,
they may return to search engines to click on the titles of additional texts to evaluate whether
they might provide additional supports for their GMO essays. Thus, decisions to return to earlier
steps appear to be contingent on readers’ perceptions about the adequacy of their final products.
The MD-TRACE model also outlines internal resources that readers should bring to bear to
optimally navigate the described sequence (Rouet & Britt, 2011). These include general world
and specific domain knowledge, knowledge of which source characteristics are important to con-
sider within the discipline, and appropriate search, processing, evaluation, and integration strat-
egies. It additionally outlines external resources relevant to the processing sequence including task
specifications, texts, search devices or organizers, and any products generated along the way (e.g.,
notes taken during reading) (Rouet & Britt, 2011).

The Disciplinary Literacy Conceptual Framework

Goldman et al.’s (2016) framework describes the discipline-specific nature of what students need to
know about knowledge construction, representation, and communication. How multiple and non-
traditional texts are read and knowledge represented in the discipline of science, for example, requires
guidance from a different set of beliefs about the nature of knowledge (i.e., epistemic beliefs; Hofer &
Bendixen, 2012) than do processes specific to other disciplines (e.g., history). Goldman et al. (2016)
offered core constructs to improve the articulation of knowledge in three disciplines (science, history,
literature) that readers would ideally use to build multiple levels of textual representation previously
specified in models of single and multiple text comprehension. Thus, their framework can be viewed
as an extension of the DMF and MD-TRACE models that importantly highlights the ways that read-
ing and literacy practices are similar and differ across various disciplines.
For example, readers’ beliefs about knowledge in science might guide them towards reliable
practices for finding and selecting relevant texts on the topic of GMOs. These beliefs might also
direct their evaluations of textual information, including a primary text’s arguments and any
information that accompanies them (e.g., supporting and counter-arguments posted in
a comments section). More specifically, readers’ epistemic beliefs concerning science could lead

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them towards practices for evaluating whether available claims are valid or invalid, whether forms
of evidence are reasonable or unreasonable, whether authors’ credentials make them knowledge-
able, credible sources on the topic, and so forth. Ultimately these types of evaluation practices
help determine whether readers will or will not integrate currently processed information with
ideas from prior-read texts.
In contrast, the same students’ practices might look very different if tasked to write an essay
on a history topic (e.g., What preconditions gave rise to the Arab Spring?) because such a task
could be guided by a different set of beliefs about knowledge specific to that discipline. Readers’
epistemic beliefs concerning history could lead them towards an altogether different set of reliable
practices for evaluating whether available claims are valid or invalid, whether forms of evidence
are reasonable or unreasonable, whether claims and evidence have been corroborated across mul-
tiple sources, in what ways status as primary versus secondary documents helps readers differenti-
ate whether they should or should not trust the information, and so forth (VanSledright &
Maggioni, 2016). Thus, Goldman et al.’s (2016) framework emphasizes that there are distinctive
characteristics of learners’ epistemic thinking that guide all aspects of reading and representing
information within a discipline, from initiating a task model to final assessments of whether the
task product sufficiently addresses the overarching task goal.

The Semantics, Surface, and Source Model of Credibility Evaluation

The 3-S model of Lucassen and colleagues (2011, 2013) describes three strategies information
seekers can use when making credibility assessments about information they find online. As such,
this model focuses prominently on reading on the Internet and on reading of non-traditional
texts. Regarding a first strategy, individuals may consider the semantic features of information,
for example the accuracy of the information. Individuals verify available information against their
relevant domain knowledge and use the extent to which information is verified as an index of
credibility. Thus, with respect to establishing credibility via this strategy, domain expertise is the
primary lens by which readers can decide upon the factual accuracy of any information they
come across (Lucassen et al., 2013; Lucassen & Schraagen, 2011).
A second strategy involves a consideration of the “surface features” of online information,
including a website’s design or aesthetics, the length of an article, and the number of embedded
references, images, and links, to name but a few (e.g., “this information seems credible because it
is long, looks serious, and has a lot of links”). By comparison, those with lower domain expertise
tend to rely more heavily on surface features due to their inherent inability to disentangle what is
factually accurate (Lucassen et al., 2013).
According to a third strategy, information seekers can consider any relevant prior experience they
may have had with particular sources (e.g., “this information seems credible because it was published
by the BBC, which I consider to be a trustworthy source”). In using this strategy, individuals use
source features found on websites such as the logo in the corner or a link with “about us” informa-
tion as indices of credibility. Thus, whereas semantic and surface features involve the content of
a website and its layout, respectively, source features inform on the information provider, or who has
produced the information (Lucassen et al., 2013). Taken together, information users rely on these
three strategies in concert to help decide whether they will trust the texts they encounter.

The New Literacies Framework

On a surface level, the new literacies framework identifies a similar set of five component
practices as the MD-TRACE model. However, whereas the MD-TRACE stems from a more
traditional reading comprehension literature, the new literacies framework explicitly focuses

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on online reading comprehension and – in doing so – also highlights facets of problem-

solving and question-answering specific to non-traditional types of texts found in online
environments (Kinzer & Leu, 2017; Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, Castek, & Henry, 2013). In the first
step, readers identify important problems to solve or questions they would like to answer
(rather than interpreting pre-specified task instructions, as in MD-TRACE). For example,
a reader might set out to learn more about GMOs as a result of reading a scathing opinion
article a friend posted via social media. In a second step, the individual reads for the purpose
of locating information that might help in answering the question of interest. To find infor-
mation on the topic, for example, the reader will need to a) generate key words that return
useful websites, b) read a set of links returned from the search engine to infer which websites
might be useful, and c) to skim and scan information presented within the websites (Leu
et al., 2013). In a third step, the reader decides upon which information is reliable by critic-
ally evaluating the available information (based on accuracy, reliability, potential biases, and so
forth) (Leu et al., 2013). In a fourth step, the individual synthesizes information deemed
useful for answering the question into a coherent understanding of what was read. In a final
step, the reader communicates the constructed response to an intended audience. To return to
the example, the reader might leave a reply to the posting of the opinion article to share
what was learned about GMOs based on the recent inquiry. Thus, in describing these five
general practices, Leu and colleagues (2013) have also taken great strides in beginning to iden-
tify the new skills, strategies, dispositions, and social practices with which readers must be pro-
ficient to successfully conduct online inquiry.
As a caveat, many Internet reading experiences do not directly reflect the sequence of steps
outlined by the new literacies framework. For example, readers do not always have concrete
research questions in mind but may, rather, arrive at research questions in a more “bottom up”
fashion. Thus, readers may sometimes rapidly toggle amongst several component processes –
entering and revising search terms, skimming and scanning links and accessed texts – before
a preliminary research question of interest materializes. Furthermore, in evaluating and synthesiz-
ing information during reading, readers may realize that there is not enough (reliable) informa-
tion. This may guide them towards adapting the question to suit the available information, or in
choosing an altogether new query of interest. Thus, the new literacies framework richly describes
a logical sequence of steps readers might go through to solve a problem. However, authentic
reading experiences may follow different paths, different iterations amongst the steps, different
entry points into the processes, and so forth. As additional empirical data are collected regarding
readers’ engagement with these component processes, patterns may emerge that warrant a need
to revise the framework to account for more varied approaches towards reading in an informa-
tion age.

Summary
To summarize, the reviewed models extend our understandings of multiple and non-traditional
text reading. Taken together, they describe a set of processes, strategies, and skills that – when
optimally functioning – could result in effective, efficient comprehension. The models do, how-
ever, differ in terms of the grain sizes with which they operate. For example, although both the
DMF and MD-TRACE were developed from a rich history of research on single and traditional
text comprehension, the former is more fine-grained in its description of multiple text reading
processes compared to the latter. The DMF specifically describes how readers mentally represent
multiple texts in terms of the information sources conveying them. The MD-TRACE is much
broader in scope by offering a general sequence of processes that readers cycle through to com-
plete an overarching reading task (of which constructing and modifying a documents model is

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but one facet). The Disciplinary Literacy conceptual framework can be viewed as an extension of
these models that essentially highlights a) the ways reading and literacy practices are similar and
differ across various disciplines, and b) the epistemic thinking within each discipline that guides
multiple text processing and representation.
By comparison, the 3-S and new literacies frameworks explicitly focus on online reading
comprehension and – in doing so – highlight the kinds of processes, strategies, and skills that
are described as uniquely important when reading non-traditional texts in online environments
(for further discussion of such processes, strategies, and skills, see sections on the reading of
digital and non-traditional texts below). These models also differ in terms of grain size.
Whereas the 3-S is fine-grained in its specific description of three strategies that individuals
can use when making credibility assessments about online information, the new literacies
model is much broader in scope, offering a sequence of steps one could take when reading
online to solve a problem or answer a question (of which evaluating websites for credibility is
but one facet). Thus, the 3-S model might be considered a more constrained articulation of
a sub-process falling within the broader conceptualization of online reading represented by the
new literacies model.
Finally, we note that all reviewed models outline internal (i.e., individual) and external (i.e.,
contextual) resources relevant for successful multiple or non-traditional text comprehension.
Important internal resources include prior knowledge, thinking about knowledge and knowing,
and appropriate strategic processing. The models also agree that there are key external resources
that can facilitate optimal reading and comprehension of multiple and non-traditional texts. Such
resources include task specifications, textual materials, search devices or organizers, and products
generated along the way (e.g., self-generated text). In the next section, we review empirical evi-
dence regarding a number of these individual and contextual factors with a focus on multiple
text comprehension.

Empirical Work

The Role of Individual and Contextual Factors in Multiple Text

Comprehension
Construction of meaning from multiple texts represents a great challenge for readers regardless of
age. Theorists assume that how readers meet this challenge depends on individual as well as con-
textual factors. This assumption has considerable empirical backing. Moreover, emerging evi-
dence suggests that interactions among individual and contextual factors may affect multiple text
comprehension.

Individual Factors in Multiple Text Comprehension

Since Wineburg’s (1991) landmark study in the area of multiple text reading, a number of studies
have provided evidence that what readers already know about the topic discussed across texts
impacts their multiple text comprehension. Thus, while research in the 1990s (Rouet, Britt,
Mason, & Perfetti, 1996; Stahl, Hynd, Britton, McNish, & Bosquet, 1996; Wineburg, 1991)
indicated that students with limited prior knowledge may have difficulties integrating information
across multiple historical texts, more recent research (Bråten, Anmarkrud et al., 2014; Bråten &
Strømsø, 2010a, 2010b; Bråten, Strømsø, & Britt, 2009; Gil, Bråten, Vidal-Abarca, & Strømsø,
2010a; Strømsø & Bråten, 2009; Strømsø, Bråten, & Britt, 2010) has shown that students’ prior
knowledge is a predictor of their comprehension when reading multiple texts on a scientific
issue. Presumably, prior knowledge contributes to comprehension because it facilitates bridging

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inferences that create interconnection and coherence in complex, divergent text materials. Com-
pared to the reading of single texts, multiple text reading may represent an added complexity in
this regard because it requires the building of links and coherence not only within but also across
texts (Britt & Rouet, 2012; Goldman, 2004).
In addition to individual differences with respect to prior knowledge about the topic or domain,
individual differences with respect to readers’ beliefs about that topic or domain knowledge, that is
their epistemic beliefs, seem to matter in terms of multiple text comprehension (for reviews, see
Bråten, Britt, Strømsø, & Rouet, 2011; Bråten, Strømsø, & Ferguson, 2016). There is thus
a growing research base indicating that beliefs concerning the certainty, simplicity, and source of
knowledge, as well as regarding the justification of knowledge claims, are related to a readers ability
to construct integrated understandings from the reading of multiple texts (Barzilai & Ka’adan, 2017;
Barzilai & Zohar, 2012; Bråten, Ferguson, Strømsø, & Anmarkrud, 2013, 2014; Bråten & Strømsø,
2010b; Bråten, Strømsø, & Samuelstuen, 2008; Kammerer, Bråten, Gerjets, & Strømsø, 2013;
Mason, Ariasi, & Boldrin, 2011; Mason, Boldrin, & Ariasi, 2010; Pieschl, Stahl, & Bromme, 2008;
Strømsø & Bråten, 2009; Strømsø, Bråten, & Samuelstuen, 2008). In general, this body of research
has shown that viewing knowledge as tentative rather than certain, complex rather than simple,
originating in expert authors rather than the reader, and justified by rules of inquiry and cross-
checking of knowledge sources rather than own opinion and experience predict students’ abilities
to synthesize information from expository texts expressing diverse and even contradictory view-
points on a particular topic. Basically, adaptive epistemic beliefs in the context of multiple text
reading seem well aligned with the open, ill-structured problem that trying to construct meaning
from multiple, often conflicting, texts represents.
Arguably, prior knowledge and adaptive epistemic beliefs may have limited value to readers if they
cannot motivate themselves to apply those resources in the service of multiple text comprehension.
Accordingly, there is evidence to suggest that individual differences in motivation play a role in the
context of multiple text reading (Bråten, Ferguson, Anmarkrud, & Strømsø, 2013: Strømsø & Bråten,
2009; Strømsø et al., 2010). For example, Strømsø and Bråten (2009) found that topic interest, specific-
ally students’ self-reported individual interest and engagement in issues and activities concerning the
topic of climate change, uniquely explained variance in multiple text comprehension when entered
into a regression equation together with measures of prior knowledge and epistemic beliefs concerning
the same topic. Moreover, Bråten, Ferguson, Anmarkrud, and Strømsø (2013) demonstrated that
readers’ beliefs in their capabilities to understand what they read in science, that is their science reading
self-efficacy, was a unique positive predictor of multiple text comprehension when several other rele-
vant individual difference variables were controlled. Because readers must persist in reading several texts
on the same topic and engage in building coherence across those texts, it may generally require more
energy and engagement to learn from and comprehend multiple texts than to work with one coherent
text on the same topic (Bråten, Ferguson, Anmarkrud, & Strømsø, 2013). The role of reading motiv-
ation therefore may be more pronounced in multiple text contexts than in single text contexts.
Compared to the individual difference variables discussed above, strategic processing may be
conceived as a more proximal contributor to multiple text comprehension, that is, as
a contributor through which those other individual difference variables work (Bråten, Anmarkrud
et al., 2014). Again, this area of research owes much to Wineburg (1991), who found that histor-
ians heavily relied on a strategic approach including “corroboration” and “sourcing” when trying
to comprehend multiple texts on a historical event. While corroboration involved comparing
across texts and examining potential discrepancies among them, sourcing involved noting and
using information about the source of a text (e.g., its author or text genre). Whereas the histor-
ians used these strategies to piece together a coherent interpretation of the event described across
texts, high school students participating in Wineburg’s study seldom used corroboration and sour-
cing when reading the same texts.

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Building on Wineburg’s (1991) seminal work, many researchers have provided evidence for
a link between deeper-level intertextual processing during reading and multiple text comprehen-
sion, using methodologies ranging from verbal protocols (Anmarkrud, Bråten, & Strømsø, 2014;
Goldman, Braasch, Wiley, Graesser, & Brodowinska, 2012; Strømsø, Bråten, & Samuelstuen,
2003; Wolfe & Goldman, 2005) to note taking (Britt & Sommer, 2004; Hagen, Braasch, &
Bråten, 2014; Kobayashi, 2009a, 2009b), reading patterns (i.e., linear vs. nonlinear reading;
Bråten, Ferguson, Anmarkrud, & Strømsø, 2013; Salmerón, Gil, Bråten, & Strømsø, 2010), and
task-specific self-reported multiple text comprehension strategies (Bråten, Anmarkrud et al., 2014;
Bråten & Strømsø, 2011). The sourcing strategy initially described by Wineburg has been given
particular attention by researchers in the last decade. Thus, quite a few correlational studies have
demonstrated that the extent to which students consider trustworthiness based on source features
may predict their learning and comprehension when reading about controversial issues in mul-
tiple texts (Anmarkrud et al., 2014; Barzilai & Eseth-Alkalai, 2015; Barzilai, Tzadok, & Eshet-
Alkalai, 2015; Bråten et al., 2009; Goldman et al., 2012; List, Alexander, & Stephens, 2017;
Strømsø et al., 2010; Wiley et al., 2009). In addition, recent intervention work has strengthened
the idea that students’ consideration of source feature information during reading promotes com-
prehension of multiple texts (Barzilai & Ka’adan, 2017; Braasch, Bråten, Strømsø, Anmarkrud, &
Ferguson, 2013; Mason, Junyent, & Tornatora, 2014; Wiley et al., 2009).
Several studies indicate that readers’ strategic processing mediates the effects of prior know-
ledge, epistemic beliefs, and motivation on multiple text comprehension (Barzilai & Eseth-
Alkalai, 2015; Barzilai et al., 2015; Bråten, Anmarkrud et al., 2014; Kobayashi, 2009b). For
example, Bråten, Anmarkrud et al. (2014), in a path analytic study, found that readers’ knowledge
about the topic of the texts, beliefs about the justification of knowledge claims, and reading
motivation indirectly affected their multiple text comprehension through their use of deeper-
level intertextual strategies. Of note is that such strategies involve intentional attempts to control
and modify meaning construction during multiple text reading (cf., Afflerbach, Pearson, & Paris,
2008). Presumably, when there is a high amount of content overlap between texts, automatic,
bottom-up resonance (i.e., associative) processes (O’Brien & Myers, 1999) may drive intertextual
integration during reading (Beker, Jolles, Lorch, & van den Brock, 2016); otherwise, top-down
strategic processing may be necessary (Kurby, Britt, & Magliano, 2005).

Contextual Factors in Multiple Text Comprehension

Readers’ processing and comprehension of multiple texts have been shown to be influenced by the
reading task (for review, see Bråten, Gil, & Strømsø, 2011). Most empirical work on this issue con-
cerns the effects of “general purpose instructions” (McCrudden & Schraw, 2007) to construct argu-
ments based on textual content versus other general purpose instructions, most notably to
summarize information across texts (Bråten & Strømsø, 2010a; Gil et al., 2010a; Gil, Bråten, Vidal-
Abarca, & Strømsø, 2010b; Hagen et al., 2014; Le Bigot & Rouet, 2007; Naumann, Wechsung, &
Krems, 2009; Stadtler, Scharrer, Skodzik, & Bromme, 2014; Wiley et al., 2009; Wiley & Voss,
1999). In general, this body of research indicates that argument tasks can lead to more elaborative
processing and a deeper understanding than summary tasks. As discussed below, such positive
effects of argument tasks may be moderated by individual difference variables, however.
In addition to the reading task, several aspects of the nature of the textual materials seem to
influence multiple text processing and comprehension. These include the type of texts that
readers encounter, such as primary versus secondary source texts (Rouet et al., 1996), informa-
tional versus policy-related texts (i.e., explanatory texts with and without recommendations for
personal and public policy changes; Blaum, Griffin, Wiley, & Britt, 2017), and popular and social
media texts versus textbooks or scholarly essays (Bråten, Braasch, Strømsø, & Ferguson, 2015;

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List et al., 2017). In particular, research has focused on the role of conflicting information across
sources in promoting strategic multiple text processing and comprehension, with a number of
studies (Braasch, Rouet, Vibert, & Britt, 2012; Ferguson, Bråten, Strømsø, & Anmarkrud, 2013;
Kammerer & Gerjets, 2014; Kammerer, Kalbfell, & Gerjets, 2016; Rouet, Le Bigot, de Pereyra,
& Britt, 2016; Salmerón, Macedo-Rouet, & Rouet, 2016; Saux et al., 2017; Strømsø, Bråten,
Britt, & Ferguson, 2013) indicating that the presence of conflicts may increase not only adaptive
text processing, especially sourcing, but also the integration of information across texts (for
review, see Braasch & Bråten, 2017).

Interacting Factors in Multiple Text Comprehension

Importantly, individual and contextual factors seem to affect multiple text processing and compre-
hension interactively as well as independently. For example, research has indicated that argument
tasks, such as instructions to read for the purpose of constructing arguments, may not be equally
beneficial for all readers of multiple texts. Rather, their effects may be moderated by readers’ prior
knowledge about the topic of the texts (Gil et al., 2010a, 2010b) as well as their epistemic beliefs
concerning the certainty of knowledge (Bråten, Gil et al., 2011; Bråten & Strømsø, 2010a; Gil
et al., 2010b). In brief, readers lacking prior knowledge or believing that knowledge about the
topic is certain rather than tentative and evolving, may have a hard time trying to construct argu-
ments from multiple texts and actually be better off when given the simpler task of summarizing
information presented in a set of texts. In the same vein, research by Kobayashi (2009a) and Hagen
et al. (2014) suggests that elaborative intertextual processing plays a more pronounced role when
readers are tasked to identify or construct arguments than when they are given other reading tasks,
such as producing a summary.
In addition to such interactions between reading task instructions and individual factors, a few
multiple text studies have indicated interactions between the nature of the reading materials and
individual factors (Barzilai & Eseth-Alkalai, 2015; Trevors, Feyzi-Behnagh, Azevedo, & Bouchet,
2016), between different individual factors (Ferguson & Bråten, 2013), and between different
contextual factors (Stadtler et al., 2014). As an example of interactions between the nature of the
reading materials and individual differences, Barzilai and Eseth-Alkalai (2015) found that present-
ing conflicting information across texts promoted sourcing only among readers believing in
uncertain knowledge and the need to justify knowledge claims through critical thinking and evi-
dence. In turn, readers’ sourcing activities predicted their integration of information from mul-
tiple texts in written arguments.
Moreover, there is also some evidence to suggest that different individual difference variables
may interactively affect multiple text comprehension. For example, Ferguson and Bråten (2013)
used cluster analysis to investigate interactions between students’ prior knowledge about the topic
of the texts and their epistemic beliefs when reading multiple conflicting texts on a socio-
scientific topic. These authors found that students who had high prior knowledge and, at the
same time, believed that knowledge claims should be justified by checking multiple external
sources for consistency rather than relying on their own personal opinions were particularly well
positioned to construct integrated understandings from the texts.
Finally, different contextual factors may interact to affect multiple text comprehension. Stadtler
et al. (2014) compared the effects of argument and summary reading tasks, using reading materials
that either signaled the existence of conflicting claims across texts through rhetorical means (e.g.,
by starting a text with the following phrase: “Contrary to what some health professionals
argue, …”) or not. In that study, beneficial effects of an argument task on readers’ sourcing were
observed only among participants presented with reading materials in which intertextual conflicts
were explicitly signaled.

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Reading Printed versus Digital Texts

Four decades ago, research on the similarities and differences between reading printed and digital
texts was initiated with a focus on ergonomic aspects, such as the colors of the text and back-
ground and the size of the screen (for a review, see Dillon, 1992). This research raised strong
concerns about potential drawbacks of digital reading as compared to print reading, for example,
about digital texts being slower to read. For several reasons, it is difficult to extrapolate from the
early findings to the current situation. First, the rise of the Internet and the proliferation of
mobile devices in the late 1990s have profoundly affected the availability and interconnectedness
of digital texts. Second, current readers are not unfamiliar with digital texts, as was the case when
the early comparison studies were conducted (Dillon, 1992). Finally, the improved quality of
digital screens has brought the visual experience of reading digital and printed texts much closer
(Benedetto, Drai-Zerbib, Pedrotti, Tissier, & Baccino, 2013).
From a psychological perspective, comparisons of how readers process printed and digital texts
have addressed three main issues in the last decades. These concern preference, comprehension,
and self-regulation of reading. Regarding preference, the extent to which readers prefer digital
rather than printed texts has been found to depend on their age. Thus, when interviewed in
small scale studies, middle and high school students born around 2000 (so-called “millenials”)
have expressed a clear preference for reading using digital media, such as e-books or tablets, as
opposed to reading printed books (Jones & Brown, 2011; Moje, Overby, Tysvaer, & Morris,
2008; Tveit & Mangen, 2014). When asked to explain their experiences with different media,
students from the 3rd to 10th grade seem to associate digital reading with more positive and less
negative affect (e.g., more fun, less tiring), and perceive that it improves their cognitive process-
ing (e.g., increased attention, better memory; Tveit & Mangen, 2014). This perception of
improved cognitive processing is not necessarily associated with better performance, however (see
below). Presumably due to their preference for digital media, digital reading may also increase
reading engagement for young students, particularly for struggling readers (Fletcher & Nicholas,
2016; Maynard, 2010). A note of caution is needed when interpreting such findings, however,
because there may be a novelty effect underlying young students’ preference for digital devices
(cf., Clark, 1983). Interestingly, a large scale study with young British students that focused on
their actual reading experiences found that those who read only digital texts reportedly enjoyed
reading much less than those who read only printed or both types of texts (Picton, 2014).
That reader preference may depend on age is evidenced by the fact that older, undergraduate
readers (born in the mid-1990s) have been shown to display an opposite pattern compared to
younger readers, with adult readers strongly preferring printed rather than digital texts (Rowlands,
Nicholas, Jamali, & Huntington, 2007). Moreover, this preference for printed texts among adult
readers seems to be consistent across countries, ranging from the U.S. to Germany and Japan
(Baron, 2015; Kurata, Ishita, Miyata, & Minami, 2017), across levels of experience with digital
reading, ranging from “digital immigrants” to “digital natives” (Kretzschmar et al., 2013; Kurata
et al., 2017), and across reading purposes, ranging from study-related reading to reading for pleas-
ure (Baron, 2015; Kurata et al., 2017). In fact, even people who spend more time reading on
screen than on paper have been shown to clearly prefer reading printed texts (Kurata et al.,
2017). At this point, we can only speculate about the reasons that adults prefer reading printed
texts. However, small scale studies have suggested that adult readers perceive that print reading
facilitates concentration, memory, and comprehension, compared to digital reading (Baron,
2015). With respect to the reading of narratives, in particular, it has been argued that print read-
ing facilitates readers’ immersion in fictional worlds (i.e., phenomenological immersion) to
a greater extent than does digital reading (Mangen, 2008). It is thus possible that more experience
with reading both printed and digital texts may have led adult readers to prefer the former.

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Regarding the issue of whether print reading actually improves comprehension compared
to digital reading, results are mixed, however. Thus, while some research comparing print and
digital reading has not found any difference in terms of comprehension performance (Holzin-
ger et al., 2011; Kretzschmar et al., 2013: Margolin, Driscoll, Toland, & Kegler, 2013; Singer
& Alexander, 2017), other studies have indicated that digital reading may have negative effects
on comprehension (Ackerman & Goldsmith, 2011; Mangen, Walgermo, & Brønnick, 2013).
Attempts to clarify this issue have investigated variables that might moderate the relationship
between students’ reading and their comprehension performance. In particular, it has been
suggested that reading digital compared to printed texts may affect the way readers perceive
their current understanding of the texts as well as their subsequent regulation of study time
(Ackerman & Goldsmith, 2011; Ackerman & Lauterman, 2012; Lauterman & Ackerman,
2014), with digital reading possibly generating a false feeling of knowing, which, in turn,
could have detrimental effects on comprehension. Accordingly, in a series of studies compar-
ing undergraduates’ reading of identical printed or digital texts, Ackerman and colleagues
(Ackerman & Goldsmith, 2011, Exp. 1; Lauterman & Ackerman, 2014) found that when
reading digital texts, students tended to overestimate their understanding. As a likely result of
this overestimation, students also spent less time reading and achieved poorer comprehension
when reading digital texts (Ackerman & Goldsmith, 2011, Exp. 2). Such difficulties monitor-
ing and regulating their digital reading have been found to be particularly pronounced among
students preferring to read on paper (Lauterman & Ackerman, 2014), which suggests that
motivational aspects linked to media preferences can influence students’ self-regulation during
reading. Of note is, however, that Singer and Alexander (2017) failed to replicate the findings
reported by Ackerman and colleagues in a follow-up study.
Finally, the reading of hypertext has received particular attention from researchers interested
in digital reading. Hypertext denotes a digital document that includes links to related documents,
creating a network of information. Hypertext therefore requires that readers choose which links
to navigate and which to ignore during reading, which allows them to adjust the reading experi-
ence to their needs and potentially improve comprehension, to a greater extent than when read-
ing non-navigable documents (Fesel, Segers, Clariana, & Verhoeven, 2015). For successful
comprehension to occur, however, readers need to navigate between conceptually related units
of information and simultaneously pay attention to those units in order to integrate them (van
den Broek & Kendeou, 2015). In contrast, if readers navigate documents in an incoherent
sequence (Salmerón, Cañas, Kintsch, & Fajardo, 2005) or overuse a quick scanning of the docu-
ments (Salmerón, Naumann, García, & Fajardo, 2017), comprehension difficulties may occur. To
prevent such difficulties, hypertexts typically include overviews, that is, navigable graphical repre-
sentations that display the structure of the hypertext. Such overviews can scaffold comprehension
by facilitating readers’ organization of their mental hypertext representations (Amadieu & Sal-
merón, 2014), especially if readers pay close attention to overviews at the beginning of reading
sessions (Salmerón, Baccino, Cañas, Madrid, & Fajardo, 2009; Salmerón & García, 2011).

Reading Non-traditional Texts in Digital Contexts

Much reading on the Internet takes the form of social activity that mimics face-to-face inter-
action. In Web 2.0, authors tend to adopt a style closer to oral than written language
(Warschauer & Grimes, 2007). Readers, for their part, are expected to participate in “dialogues”
by sharing (at least some of) what they read or comment on the writings of others. These features
of non-traditional texts may have consequences for digital reading that we address in the follow-
ing sub-sections.

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Language in Non-traditional Texts

Web blogs and forums are major digital spaces for social interactions in Web 2.0. In such spaces,
people typically share information and provide comments. In the context of schooling, blogs and
forums might be seen as empowering students in the sense of giving them independent access to
academic content. Popular examples are scientific blogs, which often present complex scientific
content from the school curriculum in simplified ways. Even when such blogs contain high-
quality content, they may come with certain costs, however. This is because blogs tend to use
less academic language, with most sentences starting with pronouns, verbs referring to actions
rather than relations, and long sentences sequencing rather than embedding information (Snow,
2010). In this way, extensive blog use may limit students’ exposure to helpful models of academic
language, which is essential to comprehending academic texts and the phenomena under study
(Snow, 2010).
The same concern applies to web forums, where any user can post questions and receive
answers and recommendations from other users. Such forums are used for a variety of purposes,
asking for advice on class assignments as well as personal problems (Shah & Kitzie, 2012). How-
ever, an additional concern about web forums is that comments vary greatly in terms of authors’
competence and the quality of the information they provide. On the positive side, recent
research has indicated that students, from early elementary school onward, are rather unwilling to
accept information provided by non-expert authors in web forums, at least when expert sources
also participate in the discussions (Salmerón et al., 2016; Winter & Krämer, 2012). More prob-
lematic, however, is the argumentative style of many forum comments. Academic texts typically
present reasons and evidence to support claims and dismiss purely personal views as unreliable. In
contrast, authors in web forums often provide personal anecdotal experiences in support of their
claims (Betsch, Ulshöfer, Renkewitz, & Betsch, 2011; Warschauer & Grimes, 2007). This argu-
mentative style seems particularly appealing to younger students. For example, Salmerón et al.
(2016) found that 5th- and 6th-graders were more likely to recommend expert messages referring
to personal experiences than expert messages referring to other information resources (e.g.,
a hospital web page) in support of author claims. The same study showed that even 8th- and
9th-graders recommended messages referring to personal experiences to the same extent as mes-
sages referring to other information sources. In sum, despite the new opportunities they repre-
sent, encouraging the use of blogs and forums in order to increase students’ engagement with
curricular content may require that teachers provide additional instruction targeting academic
vocabulary and the rhetoric of academic language and argumentation (Snow, 2010).

Social Interaction in Reading Non-traditional Texts

Somewhat ironically, engaging in different forms of social interaction during reading may some-
times result in communication problems. We discuss such effects in relation to two typical online
social contexts: micro-blogging (e.g., Twitter) and news comments. On micro-blogging sites,
users share brief comments, which can be grouped by topic by means of hashtags. Readers
decide whether or not they will repost a comment to share it with their connections. One might
argue that such decision-making regarding reposting is likely to engage readers in deeper process-
ing of messages, which, in turn, will boost comprehension. Alternatively, this decision-making
process might come with a cognitive cost that is detrimental to comprehension. Recently, Jiang,
Hou, and Wang (2016) tried to clarify this issue by having two groups of undergraduate students
read a series of messages dealing with controversial topics on a micro-blogging site. In one
group, participants could repost any messages they wanted, whereas in the other group, partici-
pants just read the messages with no social actions allowed. Results showed that participants in

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the “reposting group” reported a higher cognitive load during reading and obtained lower scores
on a comprehension test, particularly with respect to the messages they actually reposted. Spar-
row, Liu, and Wegner (2011) found that users who expected to have future access to information
(e.g., because they thought the information was stored in a computer) had poorer recall for that
information than for information that could not be stored. One possibility is that the social act of
sharing induces a perception of “storage” because readers expect connected users to respond to
the shared information, with this resulting in a more shallow encoding of the information.
Another social context relevant to the reading of non-traditional texts involves online news. In
this scenario, readers can comment on particular pieces of news and potentially use such comments
to expand the information provided in the news in order to form an educated opinion on the issues
in question. In a large scale study, including a sample representative of the U.S. population, Ander-
son, Brossard, Scheufele, Xenos, and Ladwig (2014) presented participants with an online news-
paper article on the pros and cons of nanotechnology, which was followed by either civil (polite)
or uncivil (insulting) comments. In Western media, uncivil online comments are quite frequent
(Coe, Kenski, & Rains, 2014). Anderson et al. (2014) found that uncivil comments led to more
polarized attitudes among participants. Thus, in a non-traditional reading scenario involving intense
social discussion, readers may disregard balanced views presented in original articles and instead
move closer towards extreme views voiced by uncivil agents in online comments.

Conclusions, Implications, and Future Directions

The theoretical and empirical work discussed in this chapter highlights the relevance and importance
of focusing on multiple and non-traditional texts within reading research. Thus, our discussion of
several viable theoretical frameworks as well as related empirical evidence, indicates that multiple and
non-traditional texts, while offering many new opportunities in terms of engagement, integrated
understanding, and social interaction, also pose a range of new challenges compared to the reading of
single traditional texts. Current conceptualizations address the increased complexity involved in deal-
ing with such texts, most notably with respect to searching for information, attending to sources,
evaluating the relevance and credibility of information, and integrating information across texts.
Accordingly, empirical work confirms that effective and efficient processing and comprehension of
multiple and non-traditional texts demand much of readers regardless of age, with this burgeoning
research base indicating that a range of individual and contextual factors, as well as their interaction,
affect how well readers are able to reap the potential benefits of the new literacy landscape.
Despite the remarkable progress that has been made in this area of reading research in this
century, however, there is much to be explicated and investigated regarding the reading of mul-
tiple and non-traditional texts. In terms of theory, there is a clear need to expand well-
established conceptualizations of the reading process and reading comprehension, rooted in the
single-text paradigm (McNamara & Magliano, 2009), to encompass the reading of multiple and
non-traditional texts. Thus, although several frameworks relevant to the reading of multiple and
non-traditional texts already exist (Britt et al., 2013; Goldman et al., 2016; Leu et al., 2013;
Lucassen et al., 2013; Rouet & Britt, 2011), those frameworks may only deal with some aspects
of these forms of reading or lack the explanatory power and specificity necessary to derive spe-
cific, testable hypotheses from them. Attempts to forge a more coherent theory from the promis-
ing, albeit somewhat rudimentary, frameworks that currently exist, is thus an important agenda
for future reading research. Of note is that such a theory also needs to build on and incorporate
basic insights gained from research on single-text reading. Moreover, further theoretical clarifica-
tion and refinement need to proceed in parallel with empirical work aiming to confirm (or dis-
confirm) specific relationships and effects initially postulated. Presumably, intervention work will
be an important element of these efforts.

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In addition to its implications for (re-)conceptualizing reading within reading research, a shift
of emphasis towards multiple and non-traditional texts also has instructional implications. While
school-based intervention work targeting multiple-text processing and comprehension has pro-
duced promising results (for review, see Bråten & Braasch, 2017; Bråten et al., 2018), there is
a need for much more experimental work that meets “best evidence” criteria (Slavin, 1986) and,
thus, allows for causal inferences. And while many students use a lot of time engaging with non-
traditional texts in digital contexts outside school (Naumann, 2015), challenges involved in the
processing and interpretation of such texts are not systematically addressed within reading instruc-
tion in school, if attended to at all. This gap between reading instruction in school and students’
reading out of school may have serious consequences because students are not really trained to
become competent readers in the online social contexts where they do much, if not most, of
their reading, with research-based knowledge of whether or how students transfer what they
learn in schooled reading contexts to unschooled contexts essentially lacking. Recent research has
suggested, however, that time spent on online reading involving social interactions may be nega-
tively related to students’ print reading skills (Duncan, McGeown, Griffiths, Stothard, & Dobai,
2015; Naumann, 2015).
Take, for example, the crucial 21st century literacy skills of sourcing and critical evaluation of
knowledge claims by considering the reasons and evidence presented in support of those claims
(Alexander & the Disciplined Reading and Learning Laboratory, 2012; Bråten & Braasch, 2017).
To the extent that such competencies are taught in school, for example, within disciplinary liter-
acy practices in history and science (Britt, Richter, & Rouet, 2014; Goldman et al., 2016), it is
an open question whether this will have any consequences for how students engage and cope
with multiple and non-traditional texts out of school. The risk is, therefore, that students,
unaffected by the school’s efforts to teach them such critical reading skills, will disregard essential
features of source credibility (i.e., expertise and trustworthiness) and rely on claims justified by
personal opinions and experiences rather than reasons and evidence when reading in online social
contexts out of school. Moreover, such “uncritical habits of mind” may continue into adult life,
potentially influencing not only individual attitude formation, knowledge generation, and action
tendencies, but also democratic discourse at the level of society. The most pertinent issue, then,
is how the school’s reading instruction can be brought to life in the sense of addressing and tar-
geting students’ real life reading of multiple and non-traditional texts in ways that matter for their
development as critical readers and learners both in and out of school. Importantly, this seems to
require that students’ reading of non-traditional texts in digital contexts, hitherto representing an
essentially out-of-school activity, is no longer proceeding parallel to and largely unaffected by
instructional efforts to promote reading skills but, rather, given due attention within the school’s
reading instruction. It goes without saying that designing and evaluating the effects of instruc-
tional efforts to address this issue are a formidable challenge to future reading researchers.
In addition to the broad implications for theory and instruction discussed above, and the calls
for further theoretical and empirical work accompanying those implications, several more specific
issues are in need of future research. These include (but are not limited to) interactions among
individual and contextual factors in the processing and comprehension of not only multiple but
also non-traditional texts, effects of print versus digital reading on self-regulation and comprehen-
sion, and effects of the social process of sharing textual information on depth of processing and
comprehension performance. The exponential increase in the availability and accessibility of mul-
tiple and non-traditional texts on almost any topic has changed the landscape of reading in the
last decades. Hopefully, this chapter will contribute to bringing the reading of multiple and non-
traditional texts to the forefront of reading research as well.

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 6
Who Reads What, in Which
Formats, and Why?
Margaret Mackey

Who is reading what seems like a straightforward question. Answers, however, are surprisingly
difficult to pin down, being short-term in nature, frequently provisional in their warrant, and
very often contradictory.
The bound paper book is not dead yet, as we will see; the contemporary picture is complex.
The codex culture was relatively easy to enumerate. Bestseller lists have their limitations (they
silently elide the true bestsellers, the Bibles, cookbooks, and dictionaries, for example), but they
offer something like a specific tally, with numbers attached. Circulation figures for newspapers
and magazines are reassuringly concrete. But that era has vanished.
This chapter begins with the watershed summer of 2016 and uses the developments of that
season to set up categories for discussing a complex and fast-moving scenario. In Part I,
“What is going on?”, a brief outline of that summer’s developments under five headings is
expanded into a broader exploration of each of these topics. Part II, “Why it matters,” dis-
cusses the importance of choice and its implications for achievement. Part III, “How we
assess it,” looks at the difficulties of assembling and assessing evidence in the volatile condi-
tions of contemporary literacy choices. Finally, Part IV, “How we read what we read in the
21st century,” investigates the implications of our new cultural arrangements for forms of
social, deep, and critical reading.

Part I: What Is Going On? Five Snapshots of a Complicated World

A brief overview of a single season, summer 2016, provides a small case study of the complexities
of what people read, on what platforms, and for what purposes. It was a lively season that raised
many questions about possible directions for a reading culture. I first present the highlights of
that summer and then discuss subsequent trends and movements in more detail.

• The summer of 2016 was dominated by two texts, neither of them a conventional novel:
the augmented reality (AR) app game, Pokémon GO, and the script of a stage play, Harry
Potter and the Cursed Child (Rowling, Tiffany, & Thorne, 2016). Each of these titles, of
course, is part of a much larger textual universe; and they represent a striking component of
contemporary life: reading is frequently entwined with a host of related texts, and written
texts form just one element of a franchise of related titles crossing media boundaries.

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• The summer of 2016 represented a turning point (at least for the moment) in how we assess
the impact of e-books and e-reading. A steady rise in the percentage of readers using elec-
tronic platforms was turned back in 2016; though e-reading remains important, it is no
longer advancing so steadily.
• The billionth iPhone was sold in the summer of 2016. Smartphones and tablet computers
represent a breakthrough in portability, being as mobile and easy to carry as a book, a fact
with many disruptive consequences that are still being assessed.
• The summer of 2016 marked the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web, which caused
its own kind of reading revolution – particularly, but not exclusively, with regard to infor-
mation seeking behaviours.
• The exploitation of algorithms on social media was already a concern in 2016. This last
topic, of course, has only increased in significance since we now have reason to question the
impact of the “harvesting” of social media data on at least two major events of 2016: the
Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, and the Presidential election in the United States.

All these glimpses of a cultural scene in flux offer only snapshots of a fast-moving scenario.
Looking back today, however, it seems clear that each of these five pointers represents a significant
shift in reading behaviours. What can we learn from an expanded view of each topic?

• Franchises play an important role in recruiting reader interest and participation.

Two blockbusters, in different formats, dominated media news of summer 2016. Pokémon GO
was an Augmented Reality app game, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was a print book of
a playscript, featuring a new Harry Potter story by J. K. Rowling. The Harry Potter playscript
sold two million copies in North America within two days of its launch (www.hollywoodrepor
ter.com/news/harry-potter-cursed-child-script-916817). The distribution of Pokémon GO reached
100 million downloads worldwide in a matter of weeks (http://expandedramblings.com/index.
php/pokemon-go-statistics/). Ypulse, a youth marketing research group, found that American
13–33-year-olds, in August 2016, cited Pokémon Go as their favourite app, beating out (in order)
Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Facebook
Messenger, to rule the Top Ten (www.ypulse.com/post/view/millennials-teens-15-favorite-apps-
right-now).
A year after its release, in June 2017, Pokémon Go was still attracting 60 million monthly users
(compared to 100 million at its peak, the previous August). Total revenues stood at $1.2 billion,
with 752 million downloads (Minotti, 2017, n.p.) Similarly, the Harry Potter franchise remained
dominant. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was the runaway number one title of 2016, selling
4.1 million copies; for comparison, The Girl on the Train, the number two title for that year
according to Fortune, sold 836,000 copies (http://fortune.com/2017/06/26/harry-potter-20th-
anniversary/). In 2018, the Pottermore website reported sales of half a billion copies of Harry
Potter (the seven books of the series and the three companion volumes), cumulating from the
publication of the first book in 1997. Audiobook versions add to the numbers: the Pottermore
news team said on February 1, 2018, that “more than 4 billion Harry Potter minutes” have been
consumed in audiobook form since 2016. The books have been translated into more than 80
languages. Overall, and on average, “this means one in fifteen people in the world owns a Harry
Potter book” (https://www.pottermore.com/news/500-million-harry-potter-books-have-now-
been-sold-worldwide, 2018).
It is difficult to think of two larger text universes than Pokémon and Harry Potter. They represent
many different kinds of reading experiences – the taxonomic precision of the Pokémon collector’s
guidebook or the rules for the games is a sharp contrast to the multi-volume expansiveness of Rowling’s

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narrative fiction, which was reshaped further for movies and videogames. Entering these worlds
through words is only one part of the experience, and readers who engage with them do not feel that
this reading is a stand-alone encounter. Reading as only one fraction of a broader story experience is
now a commonplace occurrence of our culture.

• Any account of book reading habits and access now must include information about format
as well as content – and venue also matters.

In the early part of the decade, e-reading increased from 17% of American adults reporting they
had read an e-book in 2011 all the way up to 28% in 2016, according to findings from the Pew
Research Center (Perrin, 2016). But 2016 seems to represent the peak for e-reading, at least for
the moment. A January 2018 survey found a dip to 26%. Meanwhile, the slippage of those
reporting reading a paper book (from 71% in 2011 to as low as 63% in 2015) began to level out
in 2016, and by 2018 had climbed back to 67%. But these two categories do not exhaust the
possibilities; an increasing number of American adults listen to audiobooks. The percentage rises
from 11% in 2011 to 18% in 2018 – nearly one in five (Perrin, 2018). Altogether 74% of Ameri-
cans have read a book in any format over the past twelve months prior to January 2018 (Perrin,
2018).
Access to reading material is not a politically neutral issue. The publishing industry in English-
speaking countries is still very white, both in terms of personnel and also in terms of product. “We
Need Diverse Books” is a campaign that aims to broaden the range and appeal of what is made available
to young people (https://diversebooks.org); one point that seems very clear is that readers cannot
acquire what does not exist. At a different level of access, the threat to public libraries in the United
Kingdom, for example, where many libraries are shutting to save taxpayer’s money, or being turned
over to volunteers for the same reason, has raised widespread alarm that is not just confined to that
country. For a quick overview of the situation, a newspaper article by the chair of The Library Cam-
paign sums up some of the chaos that currently swamps library planning in the U.K. (Swaffield, 2017).
School libraries are also part of an ongoing political argument. Again in the U.K., a new three-year
campaign hopes to make the provision of a school library a statutory requirement (Allen-Kinross,
2018); but this dispute is not just a British one. The issue of bookstores in many different countries is
also a complicated one, featuring an uneven playing field on which independent bookstores, big box
corporate chains, and the online behemoth of Amazon, all compete for the attention of book buyers;
Nobel (2017) offers a brief history of some of this battle in the United States.

• Smartphones and tablet computers represent a disruptive force.

The textual world of the digital, with all its interactive and multimodal potential, is now as
mobile and portable as a book. In July 2016, Apple announced the sale of its billionth iPhone,
since the initial launch of 2007 (www.statista.com/chart/5390/cumulative-iphone-sales/). The
iPad was also astonishingly successful, selling 308 million between its launch in April 2010 and
March 2016 (http://ipod.about.com/od/ipadmodelsandterms/f/ipad-sales-to-date.htm). The sales
numbers for Apple’s competitors must also be factored in, and the overall totals mark a key
change in reading access.
Mobile phones are increasingly ubiquitous, and not just in the developed West. Two-thirds of
the 7.6 billion people in the world now have a mobile phone, and more than half of the handsets
in use today are smartphones (Kemp, 2018, n.p.). Young people are particularly apt to use them
on an ongoing basis, as eMarketer reported in late 2017:

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According to the survey, which polled 2,000 US internet users ages 18 to 75, most people
check their device approximately 47 times per day. And younger users? Well, they tend to
check it with a significantly higher frequency – roughly 86 times a day. That’s an increase
from the 82 times per day reported in 2016.
(https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Obsessed-Much-Mobile-Addiction-Real/101November 16,
6759, 2017)

The rise of smartphones enables a variety of textual activities. Ypulse surveyed 1000 13–33-year-
old Americans, 80% of whom owned a smartphone, and reported in 2016 that their daily activ-
ities include messaging first and foremost, followed by social networking (www.ypulse.com/post/
view/what-millennials-teens-are-doing-on-their-smartphones-every-single-day1).
These young people are reading across a variety of modalities as part of their regular daily
activities, and frequently encountering what this report calls “snackable content” (n.p.).
But even as access to the Internet expands exponentially, not all reading comes in “snack”
size. Book reading continues to be important, though to different degrees in different countries,
and mobile phones are the portal to long-form reading in many places. A UNESCO report com-
ments on this trend:

Why mobile phones? Because people have them. … Collectively, mobile devices are the
most ubiquitous information and communication technology (ICT) in history. More to the
point, they are plentiful in places where books are scarce.
(UNESCO, 2014, 16)

The UNESCO report, of course, is considering the advantages of mobile reading in situations
where access to paper reading is very limited. Merga and Roni (2017) point out that we need to
know much more about the advantages and drawbacks of e-reading in comparison to paper read-
ing, and suggest that the virtues of the electronic space are not quite so clear-cut in circumstances
where more choice is possible. Their survey of nearly a thousand young Australians (in Year 4
and Year 6) indicates that “access to eReading devices does not appear to increase reading fre-
quency and in the case of mobile phone access, may in fact be associated with infrequency”
(195). They suggest that schools and libraries should establish a clearer understanding of child
preferences before making substantial conversions away from paper and towards digital books.

• The World Wide Web turned 25 in the summer of 2016.

A report in early 2018 reveals that more than 4 billion people around the world are using the
Internet:

Well over half of the world’s population is now online, with the latest data showing that
nearly a quarter of a billion new users came online for the first time in 2017. Africa has seen
the fastest growth rates, with the number of internet users across the continent increasing by
more than 20% year-on-year.
(Kemp, 2018, n.p.)

These rapid increases in access are not neutral, however; in mid-2018, Sambuli reported that the
African digital divide is gender-based: “Just 22% of Africa’s citizens are online and the continent
has the widest gender gap in connectivity” (n.p.).
How people make use of their online access is perhaps a more complex question. In Septem-
ber 2016, Google introduced Penguin 4.0, a new version of its algorithm for filtering search

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results (https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/09/penguin-is-now-part-of-our-core.html). That

year, a British survey by Ofcom (2016), of adults’ media use and attitudes, established that 62%
of users thought that a Google search would return some reliable websites and some that were
not trustworthy. 18% (nearly one in five) thought that if the search engine returned a result, the
listed websites would offer accurate and unbiased information. Respondents were shown
a screenshot of results of a Google search for “walking boots.” The first three results were
“distinguished by an orange box with the word ‘Ad’ written on it” (150). They were prompted
to comment on whether these first three results were advertisements/sponsored links, or were
the best/most relevant results, or were the most popular results. 60% correctly identified the
entries as advertisements; 23% thought they represented the best or most relevant results, and
20% considered them to be the most popular. Clearly there is room for improved information
literacy in such a scenario.
But children do not turn first to Google, according to David Kleeman, who is quoted in
Howard’s (2016) analysis of children’s media preferences:

today’s children use YouTube as Google because when they’re curious about something,
they don’t want text: they want images, sound, and/or video … YouTube is one of the
most influential factors on children, second only to their friends.
(2016, n.p.)

Readily available access to information that does not require reading marks a significant point of
change in children’s textual experience.

• The exploitation of algorithms on social media was already a concern in 2016.

Herrman (2016) and Tynan (2016) separately describe organizations explicitly designing political
content in order to exploit Facebook’s algorithms for news story promotion. Herrman describes
the impact of this material as “gigantic,” with cumulative audiences of tens of millions of people.
He calls these specialist sites “perhaps, the purest expression of Facebook’s design and of the
incentives coded into its algorithm – a system that has already reshaped the web and has now
inherited, for better or for worse, a great deal of America’s political discourse” (n.p.).
These 2016 commentaries were prescient of scandal to come. The 2018 public perspective on
Facebook’s algorithms is more broadly distrustful, and it remains to be seen if the company can
recover from revelations that the data of 87 million Facebook users were improperly “harvested”
and exploited by the British consulting company Cambridge Analytica, with effects on assorted
elections that are yet to be fully determined.

Part II: Why It Matters: The Role of Reading Choice

What people choose to read is a vitally important element of the reading experience. Choice of
reading materials links to reading pleasure, and studies from many countries attest that reading
pleasure correlates with reading achievement (Cullinan, 2000; Education Standards Research
Team, 2012; Meiers, 2004; Sullivan & Brown, 2015).
Perhaps the most substantial international figures on both young people’s achievements and
their attitudes to reading come from PISA, the Programme for International Student Assessment,
organized by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). PISA
conducts large-scale international assessments of 15-year-olds around the globe and issues many
influential comparative tables. The most recent 2015 results (OECD, 2016) show the largest
number of countries holding steady, rather than marking improvement:

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Of the 64 countries and economies with comparable data in reading performance, 20 show
a positive trend in mean reading performance across the most recent PISA assessments, 31
show a stable trend, and the remaining 13 countries and economies show a deteriorating
trend in average student performance.
(OECD, 2016, 152)

Much national commentary focuses obsessively and unhelpfully on the “league table” elements of
the PISA results, but by themselves they represent only a single snapshot. PISA investigates
achievement in mathematics and science as well, and rotates a deeper look between these three
subject areas. Reading was last explored in depth in 2009 (it is due for another special investiga-
tion in 2018); and these broader findings offer subtler insight into the state of reading than the
comparative and competitive statistics. About two-thirds of the students reporting in 2009 say
that they read for pleasure on a daily basis, but that number is unevenly distributed. “On average
across OECD countries, 72% of socio-economically advantaged students… reported that they
read daily for enjoyment while only 56% of disadvantaged students reported doing the same”
(OECD, 2011, 2). PISA also reports that reading daily for enjoyment, had a stronger correlation
with reading achievement than the amount of time students spend reading. The trend between
2000 and 2009, however, was downwards, especially among boys; PISA reported that the per-
centage of students reading daily for enjoyment dropped, on average, from 69% to 64%.
Twenty-two countries saw the number drop, but ten reported an increase (OECD, 2011, 2–3).
Domestic access to books also connects to academic achievement; M. D. R. Evans and collab-
orators investigated the connection between book ownership at home and education, first in 27
countries (2010), and later in 42 countries (2014). Ownership of even a modest number of books
at home correlates with more years of schooling, even after taking account of other contributing
factors.
But an understanding of what people are reading is no longer simply a case of tallying deci-
sions about book selection and ownership. The issue of who is reading what, has probably never
included more diverse materials. Much academic research to date has considered the impact of
books on reading success. We know less about the implications of access to other forms of text,
though a suggestive study in India discovered that “time spent on the computer and internet was
consistently and positively associated with academic achievement, while television viewing,
regardless of content viewed, was negatively associated” (Malhi, Bharti, & Sidhu, 2016, 73). An
OECD report on the PISA findings of 2015 said, “Between 2012 and 2015, the time that 15-
year-olds reported spending on the Internet increased from 21 to 29 hours per week, on average
across OECD countries” (2018, 2). But too much time on the Internet correlates with poorer
achievement in science. Moderate Internet usage correlates with higher achievement (2018, 4–5).
We simply do not yet know if and/or how the advantage of access to books translates to access
to interactive screens.
UNESCO is confident that mobile screen reading represents a breakthrough in the pur-
suit of global literacy:

Among other conclusions, UNESCO has learned that people read more when they read on
mobile devices, that they enjoy reading more, and that people commonly read books and
stories to children from mobile devices. The study shows that mobile reading represents
a promising, if still underutilized, pathway to text. It is not hyperbole to suggest that if every
person on the planet understood that his or her mobile phone could be transformed – easily
and cheaply – into a library brimming with books, access to text would cease to be such
a daunting hurdle to literacy.
(UNESCO, 2014, 17)

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Reading on a mobile phone may link more easily to other media forms such as sound and
moving images. Of course, reading has never been purely verbal. Design and layout have always
contributed to meaning, and context has always framed interpretation. Today, however, words
on a page or screen may be part of a much more multimodal array:

The increasingly multimodal ecosystem through which we filter news, social networks, and both
visual and textual entertainment makes reading a much slipperier term than ever before. … What
is a text, and how do you read it? are two questions that are increasingly in flux today.
(Garcia, 2016, 95)

Some people’s reading is closely implicated with other activities. Much videogame-playing, for
example, calls for a great deal of conventional reading and writing (Steinkuehler, 2007). Gamers
also produce reading material for each other; for example, the knowledge production by players
for players in relation to a massive online game such as World of Warcraft is remarkable. In early
2018, the WOWWiki boasted 298,252 pages of content much of it created by players (http://
wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:Main); and a breakaway site, WOWpedia, is also enormous,
though no figures were readily available (https://wow.gamepedia.com/Portal:Main). For younger
readers, Minecraft offers a similar gateway to numerous reading activities (Italie, 2014; Maughan,
2015; Revoir, 2016). Game-related reading (and writing) may occur within the diegetic story
world or in a larger zone of strategic decision-making. In related ways, fan collectives turn an
original reading experience into a panoply of further reading, writing, and responding.
With such a range of options, young people are almost certainly learning to take multimodal-
ity very much for granted as part of their reading lives. There is much we need to learn about
how families select the materials they load onto their screens. A child who regularly visits
a library full of paper books will choose from a huge array of possibilities; in contrast, even to
find out that a particular electronic text exists may involve complex browsing and searching skills
(Vaala, Ly, & Levine, 2015). The alternative may be simply to download an uncritical sample of
whatever turns up at the top of the charts in the app store.
But choice remains important. Ming Ming Chiu and Catherine McBride-Chang (2006) demon-
strate the powerful impact of that autonomous power to select. They conducted an analysis of stu-
dents in 43 countries, basing their work on the 2002 instantiation of the PISA findings (338). Their
massive data set came from a pool of 193,841 15-year-old students. Their main points are as follows:

In every country, girls outscored boys in reading. The explanatory model further showed that
gender, log GDP per capita [a statistical refinement of growth measurement], family SES [socio-
economic status], schoolmates’ SES, number of books at home, and reading enjoyment were all
significantly associated with reading score. Only reading enjoyment mediated the gender effect.
(2006, 343, emphasis added)

Reading enjoyment relates directly to what is being read, and is clearly a potent factor, across very large
numbers of teens in a wide range of countries. Other age ranges also benefit from the ability to choose;
adults often take it for granted, but the role of autonomous selection in reading pleasure is significant on
many levels. To understand how contemporary reading is developing, therefore, it is important to
establish ways of finding valid and timely information about what people are choosing to read.

Part III: How We Assess It: Defining Evidence in a Period of Change

This brief account has offered a glimpse of the complexity of our contemporary reading world.
Within the parentheses of the citations listed above lies another complex world of researchers

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from a huge variety of institutional backgrounds, motivated by different goals, and drawing on an
assortment of methodologies that may privilege currency in the cause of seizing a marketing
opportunity, or focus on mining the big data of international assessment exercises, or draw on
findings as a springboard for social action. A major challenge of working with such a multiplicity
of sources is that just keeping up is a strenuous exercise. Finding ways to evaluate the trust-
worthiness of evidence from so many different informants is an equally enormous job.
There are, of course, many schools of thought on how to assess evidence, particularly in
a field such as reading, where basing practice on evidence is held in great esteem. There is no
room in this chapter to explore the many arguments in this arena. Instead, I turn to a small and
simplified convenience sample, in order to address some of the issues in concrete, rather than
abstract terms. My sample of two comprises, firstly, a long-term survey of reading behaviours,
conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts in the United States, and, secondly, a very
short-term and ephemeral global survey of app readership, conducted by a market research group
called App Annie.
The International Literacy Association (now ILA; previously the International Reading Associ-
ation – IRA) has produced a checklist listing five qualities that accrue to make evidence trust-
worthy; it must be objective, valid, reliable, systematic, and refereed. For the purposes of this
chapter, I will focus on validity and reliability, because they raise the most interesting challenges
for the kinds of research represented in this chapter. The IRA definition of “valid” is that the
data “adequately represent the tasks that children need to accomplish to be successful readers”
(International Reading Association, 2002, n.p.); the Association for Qualitative Research suggests
that “validity … refers to how well a scientific test or piece of research actually measures what it
sets out to, or how well it reflects the reality it claims to represent” (www.aqr.org.uk/glossary/
validity). The IRA says that evidence is “reliable” if “data will remain essentially unchanged if
collected on a different day or by a different person” (2002, n.p.); similarly, the Association for
Qualitative Research defines reliability as the “repeatability of a particular set of research findings;
that is, how accurately they would be replicated in a second identical piece of research” (www.
aqr.org.uk/glossary/reliability). But such desirable elements may be challenging to establish as
these two case studies demonstrate; and their value is waning in the face of contemporary
complexity.

Case #1: The Missing Readers in the NEA Surveys

How researchers define appropriate parameters for their research questions serves to frame the
answers in constitutive and sometimes reductive ways. A classic example of how research limita-
tions may define issues of “who is reading what” lies in reports from the American organization,
the National Endowment for the Arts – NEA (2004, 2007, 2009, 2013, 2016). Employing
a survey of public participation in the arts, conducted by the United States Census Bureau at
periodic intervals, the NEA reports on a sample size of many thousands of individuals aged 18
and over. Each time, the survey asks respondents if, during the previous 12 months, they have
read any novels, short stories, plays, or poetry in their leisure time (not for work or school). This
question throws into relief the vagueness of the Pew survey (http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/
Digest/Pew-Unveils-Latest-Survey-Results-on-Americans-Reading-Habits-123778.asp), which
simply tallies “books.” Such a very restrictive definition of literary reading, however, is highly
fiction-oriented and excludes philosophy, history, biography, science writing, political analysis,
essays, and other forms of nonfiction that may possess highly literary qualities, and that certainly
represent categories of serious leisure reading; sports and hobbies are similarly barred from consid-
eration, though they may elicit very dedicated reading activities. The NEA’s characterization of
“literary reading” allows for “any print format, including the Internet” (2004, n.p.), but it does

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not consider new forms of writing that might capitalize on the interactive affordances of online
reading. The Internet counts only when it serves as a delivery mechanism for novels, short stor-
ies, plays, and poems.
The NEA report proves to be as slippery as most other research on what people read. The 2004
report warns that literary reading is declining drastically. The 2009 sequel describes “a decisive and
unambiguous increase among virtually every group measured in this comprehensive national survey”
(2009, n.p.). By 2013, the NEA is pessimistic again. Based on a survey of 35,735 American adults, they
report only 47% reading at least one work of literature, as they define it. A short-form Basic Survey in
2016, reports a further drop to 43%, the lowest number in their entire reporting cycle (Ingraham, 2016).
The NEA findings and conclusions stirred substantial public and political debate in the United
States, and it may be helpful to evaluate their work in terms of the evidence they offer. These
reports would pass on four of the five criteria listed by the IRA, but it can be argued that the
validity is limited because of the question mark over whether the data “adequately represent the
tasks” of “successful readers.”
What are possible consequences of the NEA’s skew towards fictional categories? High on the
list of potential implications are questions concerning gender. The 2013 report does not discuss
whether that bias in favour of fictional materials might affect the numbers of male readers of “lit-
erature” (37%, compared to 56.1% of women), but it is a reasonable question to ask, given that
the preference of boys and men for nonfiction is a well-known phenomenon, as I now clarify in
a short but important digression. Available studies tend to draw on binary definitions of gender,
but a more open set of categories would probably not substantially alter the significance of the
pronounced differences that are manifest in many studies, though details might be more nuanced.
Research suggests that the male preference for reading nonfiction crosses all ages. For
example, Sullivan (2009) says that:

boys often see nonfiction not as a vehicle for finding specific information but as a way to
better understand the world around them, a way of acquiring the understanding of the
world around them that they so desire and believe will help them to succeed. In short, they
read nonfiction the way we expect children to read fiction.
(9)

Smith and Wilhelm (2002, 2006) confirm these proclivities among older adolescent boys, and
Summers’ small study found the number of men preferring nonfiction to be almost double the
number of women (2013, 247). Given the PISA-based findings (Chiu & McBride-Chang, 2006)
that reading enjoyment ameliorates gender effects, the NEA questionnaire’s slant towards fiction
takes on further significance.
And yet the NEA treats its fiction bias as something neutral. It is a salutary reminder that even
when research methodology is exemplary, longitudinal information is scrupulously acquired, and
samples are very large, the assumptions of the framing questions can limit the results. The facts
presented by the NEA are “objective” within their limitations, but they are so selective that they
mislead as much as they inform.
The decision to omit those who are reading for work or school also skews the results. Stebbins, in
a study of the “committed reader” (2012), discusses the significance of reading for utility, for pleasure,
and for fulfillment. This range of motivations may account for some of the gap – in surveys reported in
the same month, September 2016 – between the NEA findings of 43% reading a work of literature and
the Pew tally of 73% of Americans reading a book in the previous year. A committed reader need not
be a literary reader. Stebbins draws on insights from two disciplinary fields: library and information stud-
ies and serious leisure studies. Perhaps this background accounts for his agnosticism about content, in
contrast to the NEA’s strong focus on literariness.

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The power of saying what gets to “count” as valid reading is a significant but often invisible
force in discussions about reading at all levels, and is a factor in the fields of literary studies and
education in particular. The idea that truly literate and cultured people invariably read fiction is
well entrenched, in classrooms as well as in national organizations – though this emphasis is now
challenged by the Common Core Curriculum in the United States. A fiction bias excludes many
potential readers. A classroom emphasis on fiction also fosters the possibility that students are
taught significantly less about the deep and/or critical reading of nonfiction than they need to
know in order to function as contemporary citizens (Topping, Samuels, & Paul, 2008; White,
2011).

Case #2: App Annie and the Strengths and Perils of Short-Termism
As the NEA categories remind us, there is a cultural tendency to regard literature as relatively
timeless. With much contemporary reading material, however, the issue of replicability of
research becomes significant because of temporal limitations. The IRA definition of reliability is
that data will remain unchanged if collected on a different day. In our contemporary world of
shifting platforms and formats, that concept of reliability is more and more unrealistic, as my next
example shows.
Patterns of contemporary reading behaviour are the subject of many different research
approaches, and the motivations for such research are as varied as the methodologies. To be cur-
rent in this territory is to trade in the ephemeral, and many active researchers in this area have
short-term commercial aims in mind. For example, a business organization called App Annie sur-
veys apps downloaded in April 2016 by active iPhone users and produces a top-ten list that fea-
tures three different #1 titles in three different countries: the United States (Facebook), Japan
(LINE), and the United Kingdom (WhatsApp Messenger) (App Annie, 2016). The same survey
measures the top ten apps by growth in usage penetration between April 2015 and April 2016;
again the #1 title is different in each of these countries, and also different from the three titles
featuring in the first table (in the U.S., Facebook Messenger; in Japan, Yahoo! Japan Weather;
and in the U.K., TripAdvisor).
With the timelines for app readership so short, information about usage that is up-to-date is
also temporary. Any study that presents such data via peer review is likely to be obsolete before
it even gets to press. Yet, any account of what people read that deals only with “permanent”
content that can be relied on to stay constant throughout the publication time lag of refereed
research simply does not offer a true picture of our contemporary situation, just as overly conser-
vative definitions of literary reading restrict the broad utility of the NEA surveys.
In the current policy climate, particularly in the U.S. and the U.K., the “replicability” of
research findings is important for legislators ruling on curriculum decisions. The App Annie find-
ings indicate that many “what” questions are unlikely to be replicated even month to month. It
is frequently the case that the most detailed information about shifting public reading behaviors
comes from commercially motivated researchers, whose work is never refereed past the point of
assessing its utility to the sponsor. With so many forms and products of current reporting to
assess, it is arguable that we need some temporary and provisional standards for assessing reliability
in the short-term, while we attempt to discern the larger patterns at work. For example, in the
early 2010s it did seem as if e-reading was making unstoppable inroads into paper reading, but
that trend has stalled; it is useful to observe this pattern, but an unavoidable and very basic con-
clusion is that we do not know how it will all work out.
One solution to this ongoing problem of large amounts of short-term data of differing prov-
enance would be for like-minded researchers to establish an online clearinghouse for information
about what people are currently reading, in paper, online, and app form. Background information

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about the bona fides of the different commercial organizations supplying short-term data could
also be incorporated. For reasons of space in this chapter, my IRA checklist of research evalu-
ation tools is a simplistic one, but a more complex grid of quality checks would be relatively
straightforward to establish. Such efforts would be more economical and more productive if con-
ducted on a collaborative scale.
Such a clearinghouse could also provide context for the many surveys produced by research
organizations such as Pew and the National Endowment for the Arts in the United States, Ofcom
and the National Literacy Trust in the United Kingdom, MediaSmarts in Canada, and many other
organizations, some of which are cited in this chapter. A trusted source for keeping up to date with
contemporary reading shifts and mutations would be a huge help as researchers, educators, librarians,
and others, struggle to attain some perspective on the fast-moving contemporary scene.

Part IV: How We Read What We Read in the 21st Century: Situated
and Dedicated Contexts
A brief consideration of how we read today may aid our assessment of what we read. The con-
cepts of “situated” reading and “dedicated” reading offer a useful distinction. These categories are
not discrete and readers regularly move back and forth between them.
Situated reading is woven into daily life in fleeting and fragmented ways. In the middle of
a conversation, someone will quickly google a relevant fact. As part of a social get-together,
someone will message a photo to their friends. The live action of our daily affairs is frequently
punctuated with brief mediated interludes. Digital technologies introduce portable interactivity in
ways that inflect much daily living.
The impact of smartphones on what and how people read is difficult to overestimate. A 2015
Pew report says that 24% of American teens are online “almost constantly,” and 92% go online
daily. Nearly three-quarters of American teens “have or have access to a smartphone.” Only 12%
of teens aged 13 to 17 have no phone of any type. Pew reports that “African-American teens are
the most likely of any group of teens to have a smartphone, with 85% having access to one,
compared with 71% of both white and Hispanic teens” (Lenhart, 2015, n.p.). Young people who
inherit parental phones are now more likely, by the year, to acquire a second-hand smartphone.
The World Bank (2016) provides international figures that indicate that cellphone use is not con-
fined to the affluent West, but is globally distributed in surprising ways. Results are measured in
terms of active mobile cellular subscriptions per 100 people. The highest number recorded (323 per
100 people) comes from Macao SAR, in China, and Hong Kong checks in at 234. A prosperous
country like Canada (a latecomer to widespread cellphone use) records a score of only 81, while
Vietnam, a country often perceived as developing, registers 147. The United States number is 110
and the United Kingdom is 124 (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.CEL.SETS.P2).
The extreme mobility and flexibility of smartphones feeds into a culture of situated reading.
But such fragmentation of reading time is not neutral. No sliver of time is too small to be mon-
etized. Google defines the “micro-moment” as “anytime you turn to an Internet-enabled device
to find something, learn something, watch something or purchase something” (Selligent, n.d., n.
p.). A real-life moment becomes open to commercial enhancement once it is mediated, for how-
ever brief a period.

These spontaneous task-driven engagements … represent critical opportunities for brands and
marketers alike. It is in these small, fragmented, and reflexive moments that impressions are
formed and choices made. Understanding how to measure, manoeuver, and master the micro-
moment is mission critical for any brand or business looking to win customers in the digital age.
(Selligent, n.d., n.p.)

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Situated literacy, with its almost seamless movement in and out of textual engagement, may thus
be framed by its marketing potential; consequently, it presents an associated need for more critical
perspectives about these transitory encounters. The ability to move in and out of contact with
other people also represents a shift in the social framing of much reading.
In contrast, dedicated reading is more familiar. It involves a deliberate choice to engage with
text in a more extended way. The event can feature a novel, or it may involve a complex infor-
mation text. Alternatively, dedicated encounters may be multimodal – instead or as well – entail-
ing a decision to binge-watch an entire television series on Netflix, or to commit to a protracted
computer game and all its associated texts. It may involve a transmedia experience, in which
a complete text is distributed across a number of platforms (Jenkins, 2007), or call for extensive
movement between fictional and informational sources. Sometimes what starts out as a small
example of situated literacy morphs to the status of an event, as one link leads to another, or
a Twitter exchange takes on a life of its own. Sometimes a dedicated encounter is punctuated by
situated exchanges of comment and/or critique.
One example of a gap between in-school and out-of-school literacies is summed up by the
fact that many educational discourses privilege dedicated literacy. The distinction between the
two kinds of engagement is at the heart of the ongoing dispute between two perceptions voiced
by the lay public: “Kids today aren’t reading” versus “Kids today read and write more than they
ever did.” Young people’s situated reading is obviously more extensive than it was even a decade
ago. But most of the public discussion invoking a cultural crisis in reading is focused on
a perceived decline in dedicated reading. I hope this chapter has shown that the overall situation is
more complicated than either extreme of the popular argument.

Filling Gaps and Meeting Challenges

A radical instability in the cultural landscape of texts and formats has been normalized to the
point of invisibility for many people. We download upgrades, we add a new platform or app, we
pay less attention to an old one, we make incremental changes, and after a while, we forget that
it wasn’t always like this – whatever “this” looks like at that moment.
In short, there is little point here in discussing the daily details of participation in particular
forms of social media. Keith Oatley suggests a broader perspective may be more useful: “rather
than thinking about implementation in paper and print as compared with electronic words on
a computer screen, we should think of psychological functions” (2013, 179). To some degree,
the comparison between situated and dedicated reading is a question of psychological function.
Three further sub-headings may help refine our attention to major gaps in and challenges to our
current understanding of contemporary reading choices.

Social Reading
The portability of reading and writing facilities now permits both activities to be slid into daily
life in very small doses as part of ongoing social exchange, the epitome of situated reading. Many
of the exchanges that develop through texting or Twitter or Snapchat may be described as low-
level in terms of actual content, though their social value is high.
It is easy to see such situated reading as social. But dedicated reading also rides on a social
network of writers, publishers, booksellers, and other readers (Nelles, 2013, 42). Digitization
explicitly opens the way for “readers to participate in the debate themselves” in rather more
direct ways (Hammond, 2016, 13). Digital reading may be less private, as we may see from, for
example, Goodreads discussion forums, the Kindle’s group-underlining feature, Genius.com’s
interface for crowd-sourced annotations of any text, SocialBook’s platform for threaded

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conversations in the “margins” of digital books (see Hammond, 2016, 80). Social reading skews
in favor of the public, but the whole concept of readers’ rights to privacy is suddenly the focus
of urgent discussion after the March 2018 revelation of the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica
misuse of reader data.
Reader exchanges on the platforms listed above may indeed deepen and enrich one’s individ-
ual thoughtful reading – or they may perhaps substitute for it, with people reading social com-
mentary with more attention than they devote to the initiating text. In this case, as in so many
others represented in this chapter, knowing more about what people are reading does not neces-
sarily illuminate how their reception processes work. A sophisticated understanding of the role of
social exchanges in today’s reading contexts would enormously improve our ability to draw on
new social tools.

Deep Reading
A singular, extended intimacy with invented characters and settings, or with prolonged analysis
of a serious nonfiction topic, represents the far end of a reading spectrum. The paper book, of
course, survives. It is easy to associate dedicated reading with paper, but much sustained elec-
tronic reading is also a feature of our current culture, whether on single-use e-readers, or on
phones, or tablets. We need to understand more about if and/or how the simple fact of digitiza-
tion affects the solitary, private experience of what Wolf and Barzillai call deep reading – “the
array of sophisticated processes that propel comprehension and that include inferential and
deductive reasoning, analogical skills, critical analysis, reflection, and insight” (2009, 32). We are
a long way from establishing a robust answer to that question. It is possible that the NEA’s cat-
egory of “literature” is intended to serve as a proxy for this kind of deep reading.
We may also question whether deep reading needs be confined to print alone. New publish-
ing options expand what was once a print space to include adaptations and reworkings in assorted
media, background materials, fan contributions, and much, much more. Audiobooks may offer
another form of deep experience.
Wolf, a scholar of the neuroscience of reading, expresses concern that, in response to the
prevalence of situated reading in contemporary society, the great plasticity of our minds may lead
us away from the contemplative achievements of deep reading towards a more fragmentary cog-
nitive arrangement (Rosenwald, 2014; Wolf & Barzillai, 2009; Wolf & Gottwald, 2016). Wolf
and her various colleagues have not addressed the issue of listening to a book, nor commented
on whether a reading that crosses many media boundaries should be classified as deep or shallow.
There are also many questions about whether it is possible to conduct a deep reading experience
across a range of related websites. To establish a satisfactory account of the parameters of success-
ful deep reading in current times would be to plug a crucial gap in our understanding.

Critical Reading
The fate of critical reading in a world of situated textual encounters is also not clear. Alan Luke
says, “Critical literacy has an explicit aim of the critique and transformation of dominant ideolo-
gies, cultures and economies, institutions, and political systems” (2014, 22).
It seems likely that our collective failure to take situated reading seriously leads to important
gaps, both in our larger understanding and in our specific capacity to consider the need for crit-
ical literacy in this arena. Much situated information comes with the stamp of personal insider
authority. Are people less likely to critique (say) a political observation masquerading as factual if
it comes (say) from a Facebook friend? To what extent do contemporary readers overvalue the
“eyewitness” vividness of personal insights, and underestimate the need to fact-check the data we

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glean from our friends and acquaintances on social media? Marketers have established that
a personal recommendation is the surest way to make a sale to a potential customer, and have
established market relations with private individuals posting online. The need for critical scrutiny
of what our friends are telling us is counter-intuitive to many readers. We need a multifaceted
awareness of the shape and potential of a contemporary critical literacy.
At its self-taught and instinctual extreme, some information-gathering behavior today may be
described as “feral” rather than sceptical or critical (Mackey, 2008, 5). “Snackable content” is
easily swallowed whole. It is important to develop a critical stance towards our information-
seeking “micro-moments” and how they may be shaped by marketing imperatives, and to reflect
on the warrant of the “facts” presented on social media. Sophisticated media literacy demands
attention to small moments of textual exchange as well as to larger questions.

Conclusions
Answers to the question of what people are reading (on what format) and why (and how), can
only be expressed provisionally as we move through an enormous change in technological and
cultural affordances, frequently framed by commercial motivations. Readers, in both situated and
dedicated contexts, are dealing with new challenges in the social and critical frameworks they
move through; and the shape of deep reading needs to be clarified in productive ways to take
account of new text forms and networks. Information about reading choices comes and goes at
a dizzying rate; establishing a central clearinghouse where data can be readily found and intelli-
gently evaluated would make a big difference to our ability to be as nimble as we need to be.
Markers to watch in the short-term future, as seen from mid-2018, include the large-scale
findings about international reading attitudes that may be uncovered by PISA’s 2018 special sur-
veys, the ripples from the Facebook scandal, the impact of the Common Core on attitudes
towards nonfiction, and the rise or subsidence of e-reading. No doubt many new issues will also
arise. As we take account of them, we must continue to monitor how critical, social, and deep
reading play out in both situated and dedicated reading conditions, in the ever-shifting textual
universes of the 21st century.

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 7
Digital Reading
A Research Assessment
Naomi S. Baron

I. Introduction
Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame has a famous scene in which the medieval
church is pitted against the Gutenberg revolution. Historian Elizabeth Eisenstein describes the
moment:

the archdeacon first points to the great cathedral and then stretches out his right hand
toward a fifteenth-century printed book and announces “Ceci tuera cela;” This (the printed
book) will kill that (the cathedral which had served for centuries as an encyclopedia in
stone).
(Eisenstein, 1997, 1055)

Over the centuries, warnings of one communication medium killing off another have been
common: Telephones would replace the written word, radio would replace newspapers, televi-
sion would replace both radio and newsprint, and now the internet will replace the printed
book.
History has, however, continued to prove that co-evolution (Roger Fidler’s term – 1997), not
replacement of media, generally occurs. This idea goes back at least a century, when Wolfgang
Riepl, editor of Nuremberg’s largest newspaper, argued in 1913 that instead of one medium
replacing another, the older was likely to continue, though perhaps focused on niche uses (see
De Waal & Schoenbach, 2010, 479). In assessing the relationship (and potential competition)
between alternative media, we should keep in mind that when a new medium is introduced, its
novelty may attract users who subsequently revert in whole or part to earlier media choices (De
Waal & Schoenbach, 2010, 480).
The rise of digital media, including communication conveyed via the internet, introduced
a new set of options for how people read. Many early adopters predicted the demise of print (be
that printed newspapers or hardcopy books). However, reading opportunities – and preferences –
have not borne out this forecast. Instead, the relationship between print and digital has become
at once more complex and nuanced.
Central to the discussion is the difference between content and container: If the words are the
same in both media, is it irrelevant whether the text appears in newsprint or on your mobile
phone? The debate continues to generate arguments on both sides (see Baron, 2015, 15–18).

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Although billions of people are now reading onscreen (if we include smartphones), researchers
know relatively little about the pros and cons of reading in print versus digitally. In other words,
does the container matter? This chapter tackles the question.
I begin with a brief overview of growth in the digital reading landscape, tracing the early days
of electronic reading, following the rise and leveling off of eBook consumption, considering who
is reading eBooks, and looking at the emergence of online social media. I then identify variables
to consider in examining digital reading: medium, content, function, convenience, and cost. The
next section reviews research as of mid-2017. The discussion is grouped with regard to four
measures: demographic, cognitive, perceptual, and usage, with an additional section on digital
reading and children. The chapter concludes by identifying meaningful research questions we
need to address and suggesting issues relevant for translating research into practice.

II. Growth of the Digital Reading Landscape

The notion of “digital reading” is itself an evolving concept, reflecting changes in hardware and
software technologies, commercialization of digital access, and emergence of new internet
functions.

Evolution of Digital Reading

Technically, digital reading began with the first monitors connected to computers. However,
reading what we commonly think of as “texts” dates to 1971, when Michael Hart launched
a digital project called Project Gutenberg at the University of Illinois. Participants in the initiative
typed in thousands of books that were out of copyright, making them freely available to anyone
with access to ARPANET (progenitor of the internet).
With Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of the World Wide Web in 1991, internet users had
a convenient way of accessing information, including extended text. The internet became an
increasingly public tool for reading and writing online. Libraries began digitizing their collections,
and in 2002, Google undertook the project that came to be known as Google Books. News-
papers and periodicals started creating digital complements to – or substitutes for – print publica-
tions. Meanwhile, universities, colleges, and some in lower education introduced the use of
computer-based “learning management systems” (such as Blackboard or Canvas) on which facul-
ties posted online reading assignments.
Commercially, three major developments spurred digital reading among the general public.
The first was Amazon’s launch of the Kindle eReader in late 2007. The second was Apple’s
release of the iPad in 2010. And the third, which has been more of an evolution, was the devel-
opment and proliferation of smartphones – that is, mobile phones that have internet access,
among other features. Over time, as ownership levels and the technological sophistication of
smartphones continued to grow, much digital reading that earlier took place on desktop or
laptop computers, and then on eReaders or tablets, now occurs on smartphones.

Growth – and Decline – of eBook Sales

Amazon’s Kindle was a game-changer in marketing books to the general public. Using aggressive
pricing strategies, Amazon sold eBooks for significantly less than print counterparts, creating
a strong eBook market. In the US, eBook sales grew over 4,000 percent between 2008 and 2012
(Milliot, 2013). At the same time, print sales were falling (Print units fell, 2013).
By the mid-2010s, the balance between digital and print book sales had shifted. After several
years in which growth rates for both print and digital were roughly on par in the US (averaging

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1 to 4 percent growth rates), print growth rate generally surpassed digital. The Association of
American Publishers, which collects data on just over 1,200 publishers, reported that for
calendar year 2016, overall revenue was flat. But differences surfaced in the book medium.
Compared with trade book sales in 2015, adult paperback revenue was up 5.3 percent, adult
hardback was down 3.7 percent, and eBook revenue was down 13.9 percent. (Meanwhile, adult
audio sales were up 24.9 percent.) For children’s trade books, paperback revenue was up 0.9 per-
cent, hardback up 10.7 percent, board book up 7.7 percent, and eBook down 32.6 percent
(AAP StatShot, 2017). Sales in the UK, as reported by The Publishers Association, revealed simi-
lar trends. Again for 2016, UK consumer eBook sales were down 17 percent, whereas print
books were up 8 percent. Audio downloads were up 28 percent year-on-year (Cocozza, 2017).
In interpreting these statistics, it is important to keep several considerations in mind. The first
is that runaway best sellers predominantly purchased in print or in digital can significantly skew
sales numbers from year to year. The second is that national publishers’ associations don’t report
on all books that have been published, generally excluding self-published books – which are
heavily digital-only (Data Guy, 2017). Third, there is a difference between revenues and units
sold, which is important in that digital books are largely less expensive than print counterparts.
And fourth, given fluctuations in pricing agreements between publishers and digital distributors
such as Amazon, it has been argued that recent declines in eBook sales reflect rising eBook prices
and discounting on print, not readers’ preference for print (Alter, 2015).

Who Reads eBooks?

In thinking about digital reading, it is critical to recognize the variety among readers and their
motivations for reading, as well as for reading in a particular medium. Age can make
a difference, but so can gender, ethnicity, education level, cultural context, and whether one is
reading because one has to (for school, for work) or is reading for entertainment or personal
edification.
A simple illustration of the importance of such variables is eBook penetration in the United
States versus Germany. For 2016, the US publishing industry’s market share of eBooks was
roughly 20 percent of revenues, again, using figures compiled by the Association of American
Publishers (AAP StatShot Data, no date). For Germany – home of the more than 500-year-old
Frankfurt Book Fair, not to mention of Johannes Gutenberg and Martin Luther – that proportion
was only 4.6 percent (Anderson, 2017).
As we will see in the next section, other factors come into play as well, including cost and
convenience. We also need to factor in aggressive marketing by publishers and encouragement
by educators for eBook adoption.
When it comes to personal reading, data suggest that adult readers prefer some genres as
eBooks over others. Fiction (especially romance, science fiction, and thrillers) sells well in digital
(MobileRead, n.d.). Art, gardening, cooking, and travel books continue to attract print buyers.

The Case of Social Media

Discussions of digital reading tend to focus on long-form text, especially books. However, online
social media platforms offer multiple additional opportunities for generating and reading digital
text.
Narrowly defined, social media are interactive online platforms that paradigmatically use brief
messaging. The list of platforms ranges from email, IM (instant messaging), and texting, to Face-
book (and its myriad competitors) and Twitter. With the exception of texting, most of this com-
munication (at least in the US) initially took place on computers, though it has significantly

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moved to mobile phones. Regardless of platform, though, the amount of text is generally suffi-
ciently short that when we talk about “digital reading,” we aren’t referring to decoding these
sorts of messages.
Broadly defined, online social media also include potentially longer texts. Today’s social web
encompasses blogs, commentary on online news stories, reviews on social reading sites such as
Goodreads, and shared highlighting or annotations on eBooks. The social web is also a place for
referring readers to other online textual sources, including news articles, reports, or even books.
But the social web is not just a place for reading. Given current technology, it also encom-
passes audio and video material, often interwoven with text. Therefore, when talking about
“reading online,” we need to be mindful whether we are only referring to words or to comple-
mentary media as well. What is more, there is a growing trend on social media to augment – or
even replace – short textual messages such as status updates with visual elements (McHugh,
2017).

III. Defining the Variables

In thinking about what it means to read on a digital screen, it is important to keep in mind
variables that may impact research findings. Studies to date tend to take into account only
a handful of such variables, making it difficult to generalize about “digital reading.”
Here are the major variables relevant to understanding how we read in an age of platform
options.

Medium
The obvious initial distinction is between reading in print versus reading on a digital screen.
While there are different types of print platforms (e.g., hardback versus paper, book versus news-
paper versus magazine), there is also variation in digital screens.
The relevant difference here between types of digital screens is size: desktops versus laptops
versus eReaders versus tablets versus mobile phones – all of which come in a variety of sizes.
While some of the existing research distinguishes between digital platforms (and derivatively
screen size), much does not. As digital reading increasingly moves to mobile phones, screen
size – and the amount and manner in which we read on them – becomes especially relevant.

Content
The content of printed text influences how we approach the reading process (e.g., skimming,
concentrated study, rereading). The same should be true of reading digitally. Among the dimen-
sions to consider are:

• Genre: Relevant categories include:

○ Fiction (e.g., light versus serious, romance or science fiction versus historical fiction)
○ Non-fiction (e.g., history, news/analysis, philosophy, cooking, biography)
○ Poetry
○ Interpersonal correspondence
○ Reports or memoranda
○ Web pages
○ Consumer reviews

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• Format: Is the work a book? An article? A newspaper? A magazine? A blog?

• Length: Is the work short, medium, or long – relative to genre?
• One-way or interactive: Is the text designed to be read linearly or interactively?
• Are there hyperlinks?
• Are responses to postings possible?

Function
Our reasons for reading can shape how we read and what we derive from the experience.
To oversimplify, among the reasons for reading are:

• Learning/memory (that is, for education and/or personal enrichment)

• Work
• Entertainment
• Social connection (including networking, social reading)

The social connection motivation merits special comment. In the world of online social network-
ing, social connection typically refers to sharing online something relating to reading (such as
a news story, a book review, or a quotation). However, we should remember that in the physical
world, people have long shared their reading experiences in personal conversations or organized
book clubs. In addition, brick and mortar bookstores provide places for social connectivity
among readers who may be strangers but share a common love of books (Sax, 2016, 128).

Convenience
Choice of reading platform is often shaped by convenience. While notions of what constitutes “con-
venience” show individual variation, there is no dispute that eBooks are simpler to transport and
take up less space than print counterparts. Similarly, when asked what distinguishes online news
from its print counterpart, users commonly mention accessibility and convenience (Chyi, 2013, 78).

Cost
As with convenience, cost is a major factor influencing readers’ decisions whether to access (and
acquire) digital versus print materials. I have already noted the possible negative effect of a rise in
eBook prices on digital sales.

IV. Research to Date

Research comparing how people read on digital screens versus in print dates back several dec-
ades (see Dillon, 1992 for an early review). Among the findings Dillon summarized were
reduced speed and accuracy when proofreading onscreen (Wright & Lickorish, 1983), as well
as a slower rate of skimming stories when reading digitally (Muter & Maurutto, 1991).
A subsequent review by Noyes and Garland (2008) noted a research shift to more cognitively
sophisticated measures, including cognitive workload and memory. Noyes and Garland stressed
the importance of determining platform equivalence if digital screens are to be used for edu-
cational testing purposes.
Much has changed over time, including both quality of digital screens and amount of user
experience reading onscreen. Consequently, early findings are best seen as points of historical ref-
erence rather than indicators of contemporary reading patterns.

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The present overview focuses on studies conducted from 2010 onward. The main review,
summarizing research with adults, is organized with respect to four types of measures: demo-
graphic, cognitive, perceptual, and usage. I then turn to research with children.

Demographic Measures
Demographic parameters potentially include age, gender, education, ethnicity, and other cultural
factors. However, age and gender have received the most research attention. Studies looking at
age and/or gender largely focus on preference for reading medium.
First consider book reading. In their 2016 study of US adults, the Pew Research Center
(Perrin, 2016) reported that adults of all ages and both genders were more likely to have read
a print book than a digital one in the previous year. At the same time, age revealed differences in
the likelihood of having engaged in book-reading the previous year. (Participants were asked
how many books they had read “either all or part of the way through.”) While 72 percent of
18–29 year-olds said they had read a print book and 35 percent a digital book, the numbers
among readers 65 and older dropped to 61 percent for print and 19 percent for digital.
Gender differences were also noted in the Pew report. For print books, 61 percent of males
indicated they had read a book over the previous year, compared with 70 percent of females. For
digital books, the percentages were more similar: 27 percent of males and 29 percent of females.
Combining print and digital reading, men reported reading an average (mean) of nine books
a year, compared with 15 for women. (Median scores were three for men and five for women.)
Now consider patterns of reading news. Using data from 2010, Chyi and Lee (2012) found an
age gradation in preference for reading newspapers in print rather than on the web, assuming the
same content and price for both formats. While 54.5 percent of survey participants aged 18–34
favored print, preference rose to 72.1 percent for 35–54 year-olds and to 82.4 percent for 55+
years. A 2016 Pew Research Center study of news-reading habits (Mitchell et al., 2016, July 7)
reported that among 18–29 year-olds, 50 percent said they often got news online, compared
with only 5 percent reading print newspapers. By contrast, among participants 65 years and
older, 20 percent often went online for news, while 48 percent often read print. When getting
news online, younger users (18–29 year-olds) were nearly five times as likely to access online
news from social networking sites than were those 65 years and older. Regarding gender, the
same 2016 study reported that while 51 percent of males sought news online, only 37 percent of
women did.

Cognitive Measures
Of central interest in comparing reading onscreen versus in print is cognitive consequences.
Results from studies to date must be seen as preliminary, given a lack of consistency in testing
parameters, including comprehension or memory metrics, sample selection, type of digital screen
used, and differing levels of experience that study participants had with digital reading.
A personal anecdote illustrates the challenges of assessing how readers cognitively approach
digital versus print reading under formal testing conditions. In a study designed to compare
multitasking when reading onscreen versus in print, I asked university undergraduates to read
two lengthy passages, one on a computer screen and the other in a printout. A computer with
internet access was in the room for both tasks, and various distractors (e.g., magazines, toys, pic-
tures on the walls) were placed within easy access, as were the participants’ mobile phones. Cam-
eras recorded the sessions, enabling us to compare levels of multitasking under the two
conditions.

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The results: No differences. In fact, there was essentially no multitasking. Instead, like good
students, they followed instructions to do the reading. (There was no follow-on comprehension
test.) Only once they had finished the assigned reading task did the students engage with the
distractors.
Considering studies using comprehension tests, there are further challenges. We know there
are many ways in which people read. We might approach a text casually (think of reading
a thriller to pass the time on a long plane ride) or with focused concentration (so-called deep
reading – Wolf & Barzillai, 2009). We might read a text once or go back and reread it. We
might read without annotating or making notes as we go, or we might fill the margins. And we
might do nothing else while reading or might multitask. Such multitasking could occur online
when reading digitally or with our mobile phones at hand when reading in print.
The cognitive studies I am about to review largely followed the same design: Ask participants
to read a passage, then test for comprehension directly afterwards or perhaps add a memory com-
ponent after an interval of time. The basic design is akin to standardized testing students com-
monly undergo when applying for college. Results from this type of assessment tell us little about
the larger consequences of reading that many parents and educators seek to foster, including abil-
ity to grapple with complexity, connection of the current reading with something you read or
experienced previously, or the emotional impact a written work may have upon you, regardless
of your ability to remember detail.
With these caveats, I turn to the current body of research.
The majority of studies have indicated no significant differences in the way participants com-
prehended or remembered digital versus print texts. Such research has been done in a variety of
countries, including Israel (Ackerman & Goldsmith, 2011), Germany (Kretzschmar et al., 2013),
Austria (Holzinger et al., 2011), France (Porion, Aparicio, Megalakaki, Robert, & Baccino,
2016), and the US (Daniel & Woody, 2013; Green, Perera, Dance, & Myers, 2010; Margolin,
Driscoll, Toland, & Kegler, 2013; Rockinson-Szapkiw, Courduff, Carter, & Bennett, 2013;
Schugar, Schugar, & Penny, 2011). In a related vein, Norman and Furnes (2016) reported no
difference in metacognitive activity that occurs when readers use print versus digital texts.
Regarding proofreading, Köpper, Mayr, and Buchner (2016) concluded that speed and accuracy
were now on par in the two media, likely reflecting both improvement in digital screen technol-
ogy and user familiarity with working onscreen.
Interestingly, if testing conditions were altered or additional questions were asked, differ-
ences sometimes arose. When Ackerman and Goldsmith (2011) allowed participants to choose
how much time to spend on the digital versus print readings, participants devoted less time to
reading onscreen, and their screen reading comprehension was lower. Similarly, Ackerman
and Lauterman (2012) reported that when participants were put under time pressure during
the two reading tasks, learning effectiveness declined in the onscreen condition. Furthermore,
Daniel and Woody (2013) found that while comprehension levels were largely the same when
reading an electronic textbook and a print counterpart, students took more time doing the
digital reading, especially when they worked at home rather than in a laboratory. The authors
surmised the extended time resulted from multitasking while working electronically, which
has been widely documented to slow down task completion (e.g., Bowman, Levine, Waite, &
Gendron, 2010; Subrahmanyam et al., 2013). Schugar et al. (2011) found that students
reported diminished use of study strategies (such as highlighting, note-taking, or bookmarking)
when reading texts digitally compared with reading in print. Moreover, the negative effects of
multitasking on academic work are well-documented (e.g., Carrier, Rosen, Cheever, & Lim,
2015; Junco & Cotton, 2012).
Anne Mangen and her colleagues in Norway have argued that platform-based differences
exist. In a study of high school students, Mangen, Walgermo, and Brønnick (2013) reported

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higher comprehension scores in the print condition. Exploring other cognitive parameters,
Mangen and Kuiken (2014) compared participant responses when reading narrative nonfiction in
a print booklet versus on an iPad. Readers noted higher levels of narrative coherence and feeling
they could “lose” themselves in the story (so-called “transportation”) in the print condition.
A further pilot study (Mangen, Robinet, Olivier, & Velay, 2014; see Flood, 2014 for discussion)
asked participants to read a mystery story in print or on a Kindle. Those reading in print were
more successful in arranging story elements in chronological order.
Kaufman and Flanagan (2016) have also probed the cognitive question, this time by compar-
ing how successfully participants respond to different sorts of questions when reading a short
story in print versus on a digital platform. When reading print, participants did better on abstract
questions, which required inferential reasoning. When reading digitally, they did better in
answering concrete questions.
Other cognitively-oriented research has looked at memory for news stories. Santana, Living-
stone, and Cho (2013) reported that study participants remembered more when they read news
in print than online. An earlier study by D’Haenens, Jankowski, and Heuvelman (2004) had
reported no difference. Going forward, it will be important to ascertain whether such discrepan-
cies in reports for reading news reflect differences in the participant pool (here, US versus the
Netherlands) or development in digital reading patterns over time (the D’Haenens et al. data
were collected in 2000).

Perceptual Measures
Although researchers commonly chart tangible metrics such as reading comprehension, users
themselves can provide a trove of information through self-reports on reading preferences and
rationales behind them. I therefore present findings from two research initiatives focused on user
perceptions, gathered through self-reporting.
The first initiative was a project known as COST Action FP1104: New Possibilities for Print
Media and Packaging – Combining Print with Digital (COST Action FP1104, n.d.), sponsored
by the European Union. Researchers from Europe and Asia used essays, surveys, and interviews
to inquire of university students how their experiences in reading and writing differed when
working digitally versus with paper. Here I consider only results relating to reading. Published
studies deriving from this research initiative (Farinosi, Lim, & Roll, 2016; Fortunati & Vincent,
2014; Taipale, 2014, 2015; Vincent, 2016) report on participants in Italy, Germany, the UK, and
Finland. Findings were generally consistent across countries.
In responses regarding the benefits of reading in print, participants noted it was simpler to
underline and make marginal notes, it was less tiring on the eyes, it was preferable for longer and
more complex texts, and it was an easier medium on which to concentrate. Drawbacks of print
included lack of a search function and environmental concerns about using paper. Regarding the
benefits of reading onscreen, students commented on ease of searching text, availability of hyper-
links, text resizability, and the convenience of storing many books in one place. As for drawbacks
of reading on digital media, participants mentioned eyestrain, difficulty of keeping track of
a location in a digital document, and challenges with distraction.
Summarizing observations of students in Germany, Italy, and the UK, Farinosi et al. (2016)
wrote: “Students in all three samples feel that reading on screen creates a disconnection with the
content and paper seems to allow readers to immerse themselves in the content better[,] which
improves learning” (p. 418). This theme of immersion echoes observations by Mangen and
Kuiken (2014), while also paralleling findings from my own research.
The second initiative was a cross-national study of print versus digital reading patterns and prefer-
ences that my colleagues and I undertook (Baron, Calixte, & Havewala, 2017). We surveyed 429

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university students in the US, Japan, Germany, Slovakia, and India. Data were collected between
Spring 2013 and Spring 2015. A major goal of the study was to identify and quantify student prefer-
ences for reading in one medium versus the other. Using both multiple choice and frequency ques-
tions, we queried participants about a number of variables potentially driving preference, including
text length, whether the reading was for academic work or pleasure, and cost.
Additionally, we posed four open-ended questions regarding the one thing participants liked
most and liked least about reading in print or onscreen. In the US and India, all data were col-
lected in English. In Japan, Germany, and Slovakia, the survey was translated into Japanese,
German, and Slovak, respectively, with fluent bilinguals then translating the open-ended
responses into English.
For purposes of the present review, the most relevant multiple choice or frequency ques-
tions involved text length, rereading, multitasking, concentration, and cost:

• Regarding text length, participants were asked which reading platform they preferred (print
or digital) when the text was short and when it was long. While results for reading short
text were mixed, there was clear preference for reading long texts in print: 86.4 percent
favored print for long-text schoolwork and 77.6 percent voiced the same preference when
reading for pleasure.
• Regarding rereading, students were asked if they were more likely to reread a book if it
were in print or on a digital device. Six out of ten indicated they were more likely to reread
in print, both for schoolwork and for pleasure, with around one-quarter reporting they were
equally likely to reread in either medium.
• Regarding multitasking, 66.5 percent reported multitasking “very often” or “sometimes”
when reading digitally, compared with 41.2 percent when reading in hardcopy.
• Regarding concentration, participants were asked on which reading platform (print, com-
puter, tablet, eReader, or mobile phone) they found it easiest to concentrate. The result:
91.8 percent said print.
• Regarding cost, subjects were asked if they would prefer to read in print or onscreen if the
cost were the same. For academic reading, 86.9 percent chose print, while for pleasure read-
ing, 80.9 percent indicated print.

For the study’s four open-ended questions, a total of 1,503 responses were collected and coded,
using a fine-grained scheme (with 53 different categories) developed by the authors. Specific cat-
egories were then grouped into layers of more general categories. The most general levels
included emotional/aesthetic, physical, cognitive, access to material, convenience, and resources.
Among the major findings:

• Hardcopy – like most: The largest number of “like most” comments about reading in print
involved something physical (61.7 percent). Responses included reference to the ability to
make annotations, to the book’s physicality (such as being able to hold it or turn its pages),
and to the fact reading print did not cause eyestrain. A smaller number of comments men-
tioned ease of concentration or feeling that print aided memory.
• Hardcopy – like least: The largest category of complaints about reading in print (43.5 percent)
concerned lack of convenience, including issues of portability, storage, or organization.
While responses regarding cognitive issues were sparse, those that did appear were telling,
including “It becomes boring sometimes” or “it takes time to sit down and focus on the
material.”
• Digital – like most: The most common reason for liking digital reading (31.6 percent)
related to the screen’s physical characteristics. These attributes included lighting on the

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screen, word search functions, and access to the internet. Not far behind were convenience
(25.1 percent) and access to material (16.0 percent). About a dozen participants commented
they liked the ability to multitask.
• Digital – like least: The bulk of complaints about reading digitally (64.6 percent) involved
physical attributes of the medium. Among these, the primary concern was visual issues such
as eyestrain. The next largest category of concerns (21.3 percent) was cognitive. Comments
mentioned distraction or lack of concentration.

The study also invited additional comments, of which we received 125. While many mirrored
responses already reported, a number shed more light on university students’ perceptions of the
two reading platforms. Several revealed conflicts when deciding whether to read in print or digi-
tally. One participant noted, “I like that digital screens save paper but it is hard to concentrate
when reading on them.” Another remarked, “Reading in digital is faster, but bad for the eyes.”
In an earlier pilot study, yet another wrote, “While I prefer reading things in hardcopy, I can’t
bring myself to print out online material simply for the environmental considerations. However,
I highly, highly prefer things in hardcopy – just to clarify.”
Speed of reading digitally could negatively impact learning. (Recall Ackerman and Goldsmith’s
findings reported above.) One of our participants wrote that “It takes more time to read the
same number of pages in print comparing to digital,” while a student from an earlier pilot study
complained that what she liked least about reading in print was that “It takes me longer because
I read more carefully.”
Findings from both COST Action FP1104 studies and Baron et al. (2017) address reader per-
ceptions, not measurable outcomes. Neither body of research establishes whether, for example,
participants actually learned more from reading in print, or whether in their own practices they
chose digital over print for reasons of cost-savings or convenience. However, results from these
projects mesh with those of other research initiatives.
On the issue of preference, multiple studies found that despite equivalent performance on
cognitive, memory, or proofreading tasks, participants reported preferring print (Ackerman &
Goldsmith, 2011; Green et al., 2010; Holzinger et al., 2011; Köpper et al., 2016; Kretzschmar
et al., 2013). In other studies, participants indicated feeling that they focused more, learned more,
or performed better with hardcopy (Ji, Michaels, & Waterman, 2014; Mizrachi, 2015). Mizrachi
also reported that undergraduates (in the US) were far more likely to say they reviewed course
readings that are in print. In a UK study, Ríos Amaya and Secker (2016) found that 70 percent
of their university participants preferred to have all of their course materials in print, 80 percent
indicated they focused better when reading print, and 71 percent felt they remembered more
course information when they read in print.
While not directly related to comparisons of reading in print versus onscreen, other research
on what people remember – or think they know – when reading online is relevant to the ques-
tion of how we learn in a world of digital media. In 2011, Sparrow et al. reported on the effects
on memory of doing online searches. Participants were more likely to remember their search
path than the information itself. More recently, several scholars (including Sparrow) have asked
whether doing online searching colors our perceptions of what we know. One concern is that
we stop making an effort to remember things ourselves since the internet (or our digital devices,
more broadly) “remembers” them for us (Sparrow & Chapman, 2013; Ward, 2013). Another is
that using the internet leads us to have inflated beliefs about topics we have not even researched
online (Fischer, Goddu, & Keil, 2015).
Regarding the issue of eyestrain when reading onscreen, several experimental studies have
documented greater strain when reading onscreen. Among these are Chu, Rosenfield, Portello,
Benzoni, and Collier (2011) and Köpper et al. (2016).

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The role of cost as a basis for choosing between a print or digital text has been widely
reported elsewhere. Student Monitor LLC (2014) found that among students in four-year Ameri-
can colleges, cost was the main reason for buying an eTextbook rather than a print copy. Similar
results have been reported by Ji et al. (2014) and Rockinson-Szapkiw et al. (2013). When stu-
dents were asked about preferences if cost were the same, Student Monitor LLC (2013) found
the majority chose print. Similarly, for newspapers, Chyi and Lee (2012) reported on a 2010
national survey of internet users in the US in which 70 percent indicated preference for the print
rather than online edition, if content and price were the same.
Beyond cognitive, visual, and fiscal issues, a host of other factors shape readers’ perceptions
regarding the superiority of print versus screens. Mangen (e.g., Mangen & Velay, 2010) has writ-
ten extensively on the importance of physical touch (haptics) in the way readers interact with
books, suggesting the benefits are cognitive as well as aesthetic. Linked to the issue of physical
touch is the fact that print books retain an individuality of cover, size, design, and physical feel
(e.g., because of paper selection), while electronic counterparts are still largely homogeneous. In
my own research, a surprising number of students commented that what they liked most about
reading print was the smell of books.
David Sax (2016) suggests that more generally, society is experiencing a “revenge of analog,”
whereby growing numbers of people are rejecting digital activity (such as iTunes, word process-
ing, or online magazines) in favor of analog counterparts (here, vinyl records, bound notebooks,
and print periodicals). In some instances, preference for physical tools reflects an “aspirational”
desire to be perceived by others in particular ways. Regarding magazines, Sax cites Tom Stan-
dage, deputy editor of The Economist, who finds that younger readers are often choosing the print
rather than digital edition:

We assume younger people want The Economist as a social signifier. … You cannot show
others you’re reading it with the digital edition. You can’t leave your iPad lying around to
show others how smart you are.
(Sax, 2016, 110)

Another intangible but potentially relevant factor in choosing between digital and print reading is
what Standage calls the “finishability” of hardcopy. With a print magazine, you can read through
from cover to cover. By contrast, as Sax puts it, “A news website … can never be finished”
(Sax, 2016, 110). Sax notes a survey the New York Times conducted in 2014 of print subscribers,
who commented favorably on the “contained reading experience” of the printed newspaper
(Sax, 2016, 114).
Reader perceptions of advantages and disadvantages of print versus digital reading platforms
naturally help shape their usage of these media. I therefore next turn to research on usage
measures.

Usage Measures
How much reading are people actually doing in hardcopy and onscreen? Begin with books.
Both Gallop and the Pew Research Center survey people in the US on how many books
they read. In January 2017, Gallop reported 48 percent of their sample indicated having read
between one and ten books (either all or part of the way through) the previous year, and 35 per-
cent had read 11 or more. These findings roughly match Gallop results from a similar survey in
2002. When the recent survey asked about reading platform, 73 percent of those who had read
at least one book indicated they primarily read print, while 19 percent said digital. Another 6 per-
cent said they most often listened to audio books (Swift & Ander, 2017).

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The Pew Research Center frames its surveys somewhat differently, as well as conducting stud-
ies more frequently. (Like Gallop, Pew defines “reading a book” as meaning either all or part of
the way through.) When US adults were asked in Spring 2016 if they had read a book in any
format in the previous 12 months, 73 percent said yes. Of these, 65 percent specified they had
read a print book, 28 percent reported having read an eBook, and 14 said they had listened to an
audio book (Page & Rainie, 2016).
Regarding overall reading, the Pew survey reported an average (mean) of 12 books per year,
with a median of four books. Compared with early surveys, digital reading had increased by
11 percent between 2011 and 2014 (moving from 17 percent to 28 percent), with no growth
between 2014 and 2016. Pew also inquired about commitment to single or multiple reading plat-
forms. While 38 percent reported they only read print and 6 percent responded they only read
digitally, 28 percent said they read both formats. (Another 26 percent had read no books during
the previous 12 months.) Interestingly, young adults were not more likely than older adults to
only read digitally.
The major change in reading habits Pew reported was in the type of device used for digital
reading. Between 2011 and 2016, those who read an eBook on a tablet rose from 4 percent to
15 percent, and those reading on a mobile phone grew from 5 percent to 13 percent. Reading
on a desktop or laptop grew less dramatically (from 7 percent to 11 percent), and reading on
a dedicated eReader remained largely stable (from 7 percent to 8 percent).
For book reading on a mobile phone, age was an important variable. The younger the readers,
the more likely they were to have read a book on a mobile phone: 18–29 year-olds: 22 percent;
30–49 year-olds: 18 percent; 50–64 year-olds: 9 percent; 65+: 4 percent.
While studies such as these are valuable indicators of reading trends, they are limited in many
ways. As the authors of the Gallop report note, “it is unclear if Americans are reading books only
partially, reading shorter books or reading lower-quality books than they used to” (Swift &
Ander, 2017). However, we can conclude that as of late 2016, the majority of Americans were
undertaking to read at least one book a year, and most book reading was done in print.
Now consider newspapers. Digital use of newspapers is growing, but the story is nuanced,
regarding time spent reading, digital hardware used, and age of reader. Citing data of the News-
paper Association of America from late 2012, Chyi (2013, p. 66) reported that in the US, online
news site visits averaged 4.4 minutes each, totaling 39 minutes per month.
A more recent study by the Pew Research Center (Mitchell et al., 2016, July 7) of US
adults 18 years and older offered both an update and more detail. Overall, only 20 percent of
those surveyed often got their news from print, down from 27 percent in 2013. Age, how-
ever, made a difference. In this 2016 sample, only 5 percent of 18–29 year-olds indicated
often getting news from print, compared with 48 percent of those age 65 and older. By con-
trast, 50 percent of 18–29 year-olds often turned to online news, compared with only 20 per-
cent of those 65+.
The device favored for accessing digital news has shifted in recent years. According to Mitch-
ell et al., in 2013, 54 percent reported ever getting news on a mobile device (generally a mobile
phone or tablet); in 2016, that number rose to 72 percent. Moreover, for those accessing news
digitally, age correlated with the digital device used. Among 18–29 year-olds, seven out of ten
said they either preferred or solely used a mobile device for accessing digital news. The compar-
able number for those 65+ was 16 percent.
“Non-mobile” digital devices are desktops or laptops. A related Pew Research Center analysis
(Lu & Holcomb, 2016) noted that although Americans are more often turning to mobile devices
to access news, when they use desktop computers, they spend more time per digitally-native
news site visit.

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To summarize: Younger adults are the heaviest readers of mobile news, but overall, when
reading on a stationary desktop, readers log more time. These findings raise the question of how
much time people spend when reading on mobile devices.
Another Pew Research Center analysis (Mitchell et al., 2016, May 5) sheds light on this issue.
The research examined how much time users devoted to reading short-form news pieces (defined
as 101–999 words) versus long-form news (1,000 words or more) on mobile phones. Readers
averaged 57 seconds on short-form and 123 seconds on long-form stories. Interestingly, readers
spent more time reading long-form stories accessed from an internal link (average: 148 seconds)
than reading stories reaching them through social media (111 seconds). Moreover, while Face-
book was the biggest social media driver of news stories, readers accessing long-form pieces via
Facebook only averaged 107 seconds with the content.
Research by Chyi and Tenenboim (2017), examined American news access through
a different lens, namely the degree to which readers use both print and digital. Comparing US
readership of 51 metropolitan daily newspapers, they concluded that in 2015, the print edition
reached almost three times as many local adults as the online edition, and that between 2007 and
2015, online readership of local newspapers showed very little growth. However, online readers
tended to be hybrid readers, more than twice as likely as the general public to be reading the
print version.
Regarding age, Chyi and Tenenboim confirmed the familiar finding that older adults (here,
55+) were more likely to read the news in print than younger adults. However, those most
likely to read digitally were 35–44 year-olds, not the youngest cohort. Among the youngest
group (18–24 year-olds), 7.8 percent indicated reading local newspapers digitally, while 19.9 per-
cent did so in print.
Comparative studies of print versus digital news reading have also been done in the UK, cen-
tering on UK national newspapers. Thurman (2014) reported that for 2011, domestic readers
spent 96.7 percent of such reading time with print. More recently, Thurman (2017) found that
the average percent time spent with print news (again, by individual readers within the UK) was
now 88.5, with 7.5 percent on mobile devices and 4 percent on PCs. That translated into about
40 minutes of reading in print per day, compared with less than 30 seconds reading news online.
Why does print retain an appeal to news readers? Chyi (2013) suggests a variety of reasons,
including print causing less eyestrain and being more relaxing to read, along with the perception
that if online news is free, it must not be as good (pp. 78–79). Thurman (2017) mentions the
superior resolution of paper, its contrast ratio in ambient light, its tangibility, and its recognizable
“design grammar” (see Schafer, 2016).

Children
Much of the research comparing print versus digital reading has considered adult readers. How-
ever, a growing number of experimental and survey initiatives offer an expanding window onto
reading issues for children, including those not yet old enough to read by themselves. (Besides
the references below, see Kucirkova and Rvachew (2017) for their special issue on “Reading in
the 21st Century,” in the International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction.)
Results from research on children up to age 5 or 6 remind us how multifaceted and nuanced
a meaningful comparison of print versus digital needs to be. A number of studies have reported
diminished performance with electronic books. For example, Chiong, Ree, Takeuchi, and Erick-
son (2012) looked at pairs of parents and children aged 3–6 reading stories together via a print
book, a “basic” eBook, and an eBook with “enhanced” multimedia features. Children remem-
bered fewer details of stories they encountered on the enhanced eBooks than when co-reading in
print or with a basic eBook, suggesting the enhancements detracted from the book’s storyline

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content. In a similar study of parents co-reading with 3 and 5 year-olds, Parish-Morris, Mahajan,
Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, and Collins (2013) found use of eBooks correlated both with lower story
comprehension and more parent-child behavioral dialogue (e.g., “Stop pressing the buttons”),
rather than with conversation focused on story content. Also looking at preschoolers, Richter
and Courage (2017) reported that children made more story-related comments when reading
print, but more comments about the eBook (or the electronic device) itself when reading
digitally.
At the same time, studies also point to benefits of digital books. Multiple researchers have
noted that young children (ranging from infants to preschoolers) find eBooks more engaging
than print, making the children more attentive (Richter & Courage, 2017; Strouse & Ganea,
2017). Schugar et al. (2013) comment on higher engagement with eBooks among children in
grades K-6. As Strouse and Ganea note, it seems likely that attention and engagement in young
children may well lead to developmental gains, including in language.
In their metastudy of the pros and cons of technology-enhanced storybooks, Takacs, Swart,
and Bus (2015) remind us that not all technological features affect readers (and reading) the same
way. For example, the research suggests that animations and sound effects may aid in both
vocabulary development and story comprehension, while such features as built-in games or
opportunities to click on a “hotspot” leading to another activity appear to detract from learning.
Regarding older children, Heather Schugar and Jordan Schugar concluded that the middle-
school children they studied comprehended more when reading print than when using eBooks
on an iPad (Paul, 2014). It appeared that interactive features of the digital platform proved to be
distractions from the textual content.
Complementing experimental research with children are Scholastic’s biannual surveys (Scho-
lastic, n.d.) on reading attitudes and practices of both children and their parents. Initially, studies
were restricted to the US, though now the UK, Australia, and India are included as well. I focus
here on key findings directly relating to print versus digital reading. Although the question bases
are very different, Scholastic’s approach of querying (rather than testing) users parallels the
approach I employed with university students in my own research (Baron et al., 2017).
The most striking finding in Scholastic’s US data is that while exposure to digital books in
homes and schools has increased, both children and parents continue to value print. In successive
surveys, children were asked whether they agreed with this statement: “I’ll always want to read
books printed on paper even though there are eBooks available.” Here are summed results (com-
bining “agree a lot” and “agree a little”) for 6 to 17 year-olds:

2010: 66% (note: only 9–17 year-olds were surveyed in 2010)

2012: 60%
2014: 65%
2016: 65%

A similar commitment was evidenced in the other countries Scholastic surveyed in 2016:

UK: 68%
Australia: 79%
India: 80%

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For children who had read an eBook in the previous year, Scholastic asked about reading
preferences. The US results were:

Prefer print Prefer digital No preference

2012: 43% 19% 38%

2014: 55% 11% 34%
2016: 45% 16% 38%

Here are results from the other countries (2016):

UK: 49% 22% 28%

Australia: 55% 13% 32%
India: 44% 35% 20%

Interestingly, while children in India expressed the strongest preference for digital reading
(35 percent), they were also the most likely (80 percent) to say they would always want to have
print available.

V. Research Directions and Translating Research into Practice

Digital reading is still in its relative infancy. We can say little definitively about reading on digital
versus print platforms, in part because our experience with digital reading continues to evolve, as
do the hardware and software tools with which we read onscreen.
Clearer at this point is the fact we need to identify what constitute meaningful research ques-
tions about reading in the two media. Equally importantly, we should be responsible for devising
strategies that translate what we discover into pedagogical practice. To begin with, though, we
must first consider our pedagogical goals.

Pedagogical Goals
For purposes of discussion, I will assume that among our pedagogical goals for readers are these:

• Ability to focus on a text with concentration and without distraction

• Ability to comprehend a text at both concrete and abstract levels
• Ability to remember the content of one’s reading beyond immediate recall
• Ability to integrate one’s reading into one’s broader cognitive and social experience

Identifying Meaningful Research Questions

Most of what we know to date about reading digitally versus in print reflects artificial measures of
learning, namely comparing immediate comprehension of passages read on the two platforms.
A smaller number of studies has been probing more cognitively interesting issues, such as the work of
Mangen and her colleagues on mental “transportation” and on readers’ ability to reconstruct a story

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line; similarly, the work of Kaufman and Flanagan on success in answering concrete versus abstract
questions. However, there are many more issues to be addressed. Such issues include:

1. Explanations for Readers’ Perceptions: Why do so many readers report that they prefer print, that
they concentrate best with it, and that they retain more from reading hardcopy? Is the
explanation simply one of having been socialized to read in print (but not digitally), or are
other factors at play?
2. Time Taken When Reading in Print versus Onscreen: What can we learn from readers’ comments
about the amount of time they take (or perceive themselves to take) when reading in print
versus digitally? Do they actually read print more slowly and/or more carefully? Why do
readers spend less time when consuming digital newspapers than print counterparts, and what
are the consequences?
3. Genre and Goal: What are the intellectual or emotional consequences, differentiating by genre
and level of textual complexity, of reading on paper versus digital platforms? When the goal
is deep reading, what are the pros and cons of using print versus digital text? To what degree
is the reading platform itself a determining factor as opposed to the mindset readers are likely
to bring when using each platform?
4. Screen Size: When reading digitally, how relevant is screen size? The question becomes espe-
cially relevant as mobile phones are becoming increasingly the digital reading platform of
choice for pleasure reading, academics, and even professional work.
5. Testing Equivalence: Do readers perform equally well on screen-administered tests as on paper
tests? Mangen and her colleagues (2013) argued not, and Noyes and Garland (2008) noted
the importance of determining the answer.
6. Research Testing Conditions: Psychologists have long known that study participants commonly
perform differently when tested in a laboratory versus under naturalistic conditions. While
laboratory results comparing reading on print versus digital platforms may be suggestive (as
are participant self-reports), we need to devise accurate measures of natural reading behavior.
7. The Physicality Question: In what ways does tangibility matter for pedagogy? Beyond reader
self-reports of valuing the physicality of print, how can we meaningfully study the extent to
which the physicality of print (versus the ephemeral nature of digital reading) might foster
integration of what one has read into one’s broader cognitive or social experience?
8. “Finishability”: If it is correct that print naturally entails a stronger potential for “finishability”
of a text, of what value is such potential for either learning or personal enjoyment?
9. Form Following Function: Since digital media offer a wealth of content and structural options that
print does not (including audio, video, and access to the internet, along with adaptive learning,
augmented reality, and virtual reality), how can we creatively make use of these opportunities
without compromising continuity, concentration, and comprehension when reading?

Translating Research into Practice

As use of digital reading materials continues to grow, particularly in education, researchers have
begun asking how we can tackle some of the challenges that reading onscreen has engendered.
Some translational issues we should address are these:

1. Learning to Read Digitally: Rather than assume readers will, untutored, know how to engage
in meaningful and focused digital reading, we likely need to provide training. (By way of
analogy, when word processing tools became readily available in the late 1980s and early
1990s, schools and colleges needed to train students how to use them effectively.) Work by

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Schugar et al. (2013), Turner and Hicks (2015), and Guernsey and Levine (2015) represents
a useful start.
2. Priming strategies: Can training enable readers to overcome possible cognitive disadvantages of
screen reading? We need to build on work (e.g., Kaufman & Flanagan, 2016) that suggests
priming for abstract understanding when reading digitally can improve subsequent
performance.
3. Mixed platforms: For the foreseeable future, it seems likely that both print and digital platforms
will co-evolve. Drawing upon research findings regarding the role that genre and reading
goals play in predicting the efficacy of reading onscreen or in print, we need to shape appro-
priate pedagogical balances and publicize our research findings so the general public can make
informed choices.
4. Variation in Reading Preferences: Research results offer statistical findings but sometimes do not
account for variation in personal preferences and/or abilities. Such variance may be shaped by
prior reading experience or personality, as well as by age, gender, ethnicity, education level,
or culture. Recommendations, whether in academic or work settings, or for personal reading,
should take individual variation into account.
5. Avoiding Distraction: The largest challenge when reading digitally remains our ability to con-
centrate and avoid distraction. Curiously, students seem more aware of the problem than do
educators, who increasingly determine students’ reading platforms. Informed collaboration
between teachers and learners will be needed if we are to meet this challenge.
6. The Cost Issue: We must be realistic about the role of cost in driving choice of reading plat-
form, particularly for students. While most digital books today are less expensive than their
print counterparts, such eBooks are commonly mirrors of the print edition, being created as
PDFs or EPUB3 files. To design digital works with enhanced functionality (such as adaptive
learning or multimodal interaction) drives up production cost, and therefore pricing.
The growth of Open Educational Resources (OERs) – available to all for free – is
increasingly helping address the high cost of textbooks, but such materials are overwhelm-
ingly digital. We therefore need to combine the pragmatic adoption of open materials
with meaningful training in how to use them to foster effective learning. We also must be
mindful that while many OERs are of high quality and have undergone review and edit-
ing before being posted online, others may be written by well-meaning authors but carry
less educational value (Cavanagh, 2016). Given the relative newness of the OER move-
ment, it may be many years before teachers’ confidence in OERs matches their confi-
dence in commercially-published materials.
7. Engagement versus Addiction: Digital reading, especially for children, is often described as more
engaging than its print counterpart. Yet we also know that digital addiction is a growing chal-
lenge for device users of all ages. We need to construct strategies for building on the engage-
ment potential of digital reading while recognizing that children – and adults – need breaks
from continual screen use.

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 8
Multimodal Critical Inquiry
Nurturing Decolonial Imaginaries
Gerald Campano, T. Philip Nichols, and Grace D. Player

We approach the invitation of this handbook chapter – to discuss multimodality in reading

research – with an acknowledgment that multimodal frameworks have a long history and numer-
ous intellectual lineages that precede their influence in literacy studies. By “put[ting] images, ges-
tures, music, movement, animation, and other representational modes on equal footing with
language” (Siegel, 2006, p. 65), multimodal lenses offer an avenue for re-reading “literacy”
beyond school-based notions of reading and writing, and underscore how individuals and collect-
ivities mobilize literacy practices within and across specific contexts and in relation to power
asymmetries. They also invite us to look forward, to consider how phenomena such as trans-
national migration, global neoliberal policies, and activist movements of resistance might be
aligned with, and inform, the next phase of multimodal literacy research.
One of the well-established contributions of multimodality to reading research is a more
expansive understanding of what constitutes a text (e.g. Gee, 2003; Harste, Woodward, & Burke,
1984; Kress, 2000; Rowe, 1988; Serafini, 2013; Siegel, 1995; Smagorinsky & Coppock, 1994).
This idea has provided educators theoretical and empirical justifications to go beyond traditional
books and support students in reading across semiotic modes (Alvermann, 2010; Hassett & Cur-
wood, 2010; Mills, 2010). Multimodality has also placed a renewed emphasis on collaborative
work and creation (e.g. Beach & O’Brien, 2015; Vasudevan, Schultz, & Bateman, 2010). What
has perhaps been less explored are the ways in which multimodal inquiry, decoupled from critical
and postcolonial perspectives, can reproduce the conventional hermeneutic it has claimed to
upend: the individual, rational subject transacting with an autonomous text; the Eurocentric, lib-
eral humanist subject. Indeed, multimodality can potentially re-inscribe schooling as usual – one
need only witness the co-opting of digital and media literacies within new standards, “college
readiness” discourses, and high-stakes accountability that serve to widen the achievement gap
rather than expand who counts as literate in school (e.g. Buckingham, 2010).
This chapter argues for the need to more explicitly co-articulate multimodality with postcolo-
nial theory. We first review the various scholarly lineages and debates that have shaped the litera-
ture on multimodality in literacy and reading education. The emerging literature on
multimodality, in particular those that are informed by materialist philosophical traditions (e.g.,
Deleuze, 1994) and concerned with ontology (e.g. Leander & Boldt, 2013; Lenters, 2016; Stor-
naiuolo, Smith, & Phillips, 2017), provides an opportunity to (re)imagine and enact alternative
pedagogical communities that value multiple and non-dominant ways on knowing. Much of the

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research on multimodality in education, however, has shied away from directly addressing issues
of race and legacies of colonialism in the lives and learning of youth. One promising area of
critical research is from scholars and educators who have been working at the intersection of crit-
ical literacy and participatory methods (e.g. Mirra, Garcia, & Morrell, 2015). This body of work,
although not always explicitly in conversation with multimodal scholarship, provides rich
examples of youth who are tapping into subaltern literate legacies, both to critique power and to
create new educational communities. We believe one generative avenue for further research in
multimodality is through an engagement with postcolonial theory. We offer examples from two
research studies (Campano, 2007; Campano, Ghiso, & Welch, 2016) to bring together multi-
modal literacy frameworks with the postcolonial theories of Édouard Glissant. This pairing invites
educators and literacy researchers to confront traumatic histories, tap into the agency of individual
and collective literate identities, and imagine insurgent intellectual communities.

Multimodality and Reading Research

In one sense, approaches to multimodality that engage postcolonial perspectives are not far afield
from previous research in reading and literacy studies that explicitly ties the concept both to the
proliferation of new technologies and to the recent spread of globalization and neoliberal policies
(e.g. Jewitt, 2008; New London Group, 1996; Siegel, 2012). This is not to say that multimodal-
ity is, itself, a new or recent phenomenon: researchers readily acknowledge that reading has
always involved processes of decoding not only words, but also images, spatial layouts, and even
tones as texts are read aloud (e.g. Johns, 1998; Palmeri, 2012). Indeed, as historians of literacy
have argued, some of our earliest alphabetic characters emerged first as pictorial representations
(Schmandt-Besserat & Erard, 2007), and it was not until the late Middle Ages that “silent read-
ing” displaced the conventional practice of orally reciting written text (Clanchy, 1979). What
scholars have signaled as unique, then, is not the existence of multimodality but rather the accel-
erated pace with which information technologies, transnational migration, and geo-political shifts
have tested the limits of our previous frameworks for categorizing, analyzing, and understanding
reading practices (Kress, 2010; Stornaiuolo et al., 2017).
Researchers have used different terms to characterize such cultural shifts. Kress (2003) deems
it “the new media age,” where the primary medium for reading has moved from printed text to
the digital screen. This pivot, he argues, has put visual images at the center of human communi-
cation – which demands that we recalibrate our understanding of how modes combine in differ-
ent contexts. Luke (2003), likewise, suggests that we are living in “new times,” which call for
“new literacy practices” for navigating a landscape for reading that does not fit nicely into for-
malized structures. Building on this idea, the New London Group (1996) articulates a notion of
“multiliteracies” to suggest that these new practices must not only attend to emerging arrange-
ments of modes, but also to the ways globalization has brought together a plurality of languages
and cultures that challenge any singular approach to studying or teaching reading. While these
approaches use different language to frame the central problems that multimodality addresses,
their unifying thread is the recognition that the multiple modes and participatory nature of new
technologies have made it difficult – if not impossible – to think of reading as a simple process of
decoding symbols on a page. Much like earlier proponents of literacy study who had advocated
for an expanded view of reading that took into account larger social contexts (e.g. Cole & Scrib-
ner, 1981; Heath, 1983), these technological and geopolitical developments elucidated the need
for research frames to be expanded further still – to include those social dimensions that help to
shape the interplay between multiple modes, media, and languages.
To do so, researchers of multimodal reading have drawn on different conceptual frameworks
to guide their inquiries. Jewitt (2008) delineates three parallel traditions in educational literature

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that examine how modes interact: New Literacy Studies, Multiliteracies, and Multimodality. The
first of these, New Literacy Studies (NLS), signals a body of scholarship that examines literacy
not as a discrete bundle of skills, but as a complex, culturally-situated practice (Barton, Hamilton,
& Ivanic, 2000; Gee, 1990; Street, 1995). “Multiliteracies” builds on the NLS tradition, arguing
that the changing role of global capitalism has shifted what it means to be literate – and therefore
demands new pedagogical approaches whereby literacy teaching and learning are understood as
matters of “design” (New London Group, 1996). Multimodality, likewise, has been couched as
a response to similar political phenomena. Siegel (2012), for example, views multimodality as
a counterpoint to the “hard times” associated with globalization, neoliberalism, and the imple-
mentation of rigid academic standards in public education and an intervention that can open up
curricular opportunities for meaning-making. As in the aforementioned traditions, scholars of
multimodality have argued that meaning can be made and interpreted using a plurality of com-
municative resources and combinations thereof – including, but not limited to, language, image,
gesture, body posture, sound, writing, music, and speech (Kress, 2010; Kress & van Leeuwen,
2001). Further, Hull and Nelson (2005) have stressed that the merging of different modes is not
simply a discrete additive process, but one that results in new, generative combinations of mean-
ing – or, put simply, that the whole of a multimodal artifact is more than the sum of its individ-
ual parts.
Given certain similarities across these terms, it is not surprising that they are, at times, used
interchangeably; however, some have argued that there are subtle tensions that exist between
them. Anderson (2013), for example, notes that the genealogies of New Literacy Studies and
Multiliteracies stem from anthropological traditions that foreground the study of literacy events
and practices as social exchanges. By contrast, Multimodality has roots in Systemic Functional
Linguistics, which helps explain why some of its proponents have not simply used the term to
denote descriptive studies of semiotic practice, but have developed elaborate frameworks or
“grammars” for organizing and analyzing multimodal artifacts (e.g. Jewitt, 2014; Kress & van
Leeuwen, 1996). According to Anderson, glossing over differences in such methodological
approaches

could lead to misinterpretations of the assumptions and priorities underlying a particular

research study, which can become problematic when the findings are uncritically adapted
from studies whose underlying premises are not commensurate with educators’ own beliefs
about learning and author.
(p. 296)

Tensions within and between these traditions are not limited to their respective intellectual
and academic lineages. Bazalgette and Buckingham (2013), for example, note that there is a
tendency for multimodal research to reinscribe and reify the very divides between print and
non-print texts that such perspectives are meant to dissolve. They argue that this is, in part, due
to an elision of differences between multimodal analysis (which involves a process of trying to
understand how distinct modes work together to achieve a particular social outcome) and multi-
modal texts (which, they suggest, is not a particularly useful category, since all texts are, in some
sense, constituted by multiple modes). Street (2013), likewise, develops this claim further,
positing that multimodal analysis must be careful not to grant too much autonomy to the individ-
ual modes themselves, as their meanings and functions cannot be disembedded from their situated
social uses. For instance, talk of the “affordances” of a given mode that does not acknowledge
the specific contexts in which the mode is put to use seems to assume certain limits and possibil-
ities in the mode itself, not as something interdependent with the contingencies of social use.
Recently, literacy researchers have tried to attend to these uncertainties by turning attention to

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those dimensions of use that have traditionally been harder to account for – materiality (Pahl &
Rowsell, 2010), embodiment (Ghiso, 2015), and affect (Lenters, 2016), for instance. Leander and
Boldt (2013) draw on “rhizomatic” assemblage theories of Gilles Deleuze (1994) to illustrate how
multimodality is an emergent phenomenon – where meaning is not only something that unfolds
through an interplay of aesthetic and linguistic modes, but also through the embodied experi-
ences and practices of those who interact with such texts.

Multimodality and Critical Inquiry

The recent resonance of Deleuze’s work in reading research on multimodality – with its emphasis
on creativity and difference – could provide an opportunity for educators to embrace alternative
forms of sociality and community in education. This is because, as May (2005) argues, Deleuze
embraces ontology and larger questions about how one might conduct one’s life beyond domin-
ant scripts and ossified categories of identity, such as, in the field of education, “struggling
readers”. By contrast, much of reading research and pedagogy with a critical orientation draws
on theorists who take a more detached and skeptical posture toward the world. For example, the
traditions of critical literacy (e.g., Lewison, Flint, & Van Sluys, 2002) and critical discourse ana-
lysis in education (Janks, 2010), developed during an intellectual zeitgeist aptly characterized as
a hermeneutics of suspicion (Ricoeur, 1970), are geared toward supporting students in question-
ing the idea of an essential nature to human life or existence. From this perspective, the great
books of the Western Canon, for example, do not reveal timeless truths, but are themselves the
products of particular historical and political forces. A high school English teacher may encourage
the class to adopt a “postcolonial” lens in their reading of a “classic” such as Heart of Darkness,
not only to expose its pretense to universality, but also to demonstrate how cultural “others” are
dehumanized and regulated to the background in the dominant narratives of human history
(Achebe, 1977). At an elementary level, a teacher may invite children to analyze Disney movies
in order to question the ways in which gender normativity is reproduced in popular culture, or
how representations of (dis)ability stand in for human vice or virtue. Thus, these critical “lenses”,
traditionally applied to canonical texts (Appleman, 2015), may also be employed to analyze multi-
modal texts as well (e.g., Baildon & Damico, 2009).

Challenging or Reproducing Reading-As-Usual?

These approaches have been invaluable in the field of literacy studies and reading, but they do
not – in and of themselves – transcend a conventional hermeneutics and narrow notions of what
it means to be educated. As the literary theorist Felski (2015) has argued recently, there are
“limits” to dominant critical approaches aimed at “demystifying” and “deconstructing” texts; for
example, they do not always point the way toward viable different futures. In primary and sec-
ondary schools, students may be invited to take a critical stance, but the literacy event itself may
still involve an individual reader analyzing an autonomous text in a manner that can be assessed
and evaluated quantitatively to justify sorting and ranking students according to normal-curve
ideologies, too often along lines of race, class, and language (Simon & Campano, 2013). This is
because, as the philosopher Linda Martin Alcoff (2006) reminds us, the notion of an individual
rational self that can transcend social context – the Western liberal humanist subject – is pretty
much hardwired into our educational institutions. A curriculum may use culturally relevant con-
tent, but students may nonetheless feel alienated because they are still experiencing schooling as
usual. Even educational approaches informed by Deleuze, such as “assemblage theory”, may just
become another abstract analytical lens for students to “apply” to the interpretation of texts or
for a researcher to analyze a classroom dynamic. Ironically, the renewed emphasis on

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embodiment, materiality, and affect in literacy studies, has not always translated into helping stu-
dents and teachers address the realities of racism and colonialism in schooling (Nichols & Cam-
pano, 2017).
We believe a multimodal orientation can provide a pathway for reclaiming indigenous and
subaltern literacies. Walter Mignolo’s scholarship (1995) unpacks writing as a site of colonial
struggle, whereby definitions of literacy cast solely in alphabetic terms served to inscribe a binary
between those deemed “literate”, and by implication “civilized”, and those considered “illiterate”
and thereby savages in need of “taming” and “salvation.” A multimodal approach makes visible
the multiple indigenous literate traditions of the Americas – from Mayan codices to Andean
quipus, among others – and also brings into the relief the power relations inherent in what gets
named as literacy (Saldívar, 2004). As an example, European colonizers often burned entire indi-
genous archives to instantiate a myth of “illiteracy” and fuel the colonial enterprise. As Rasmus-
sen (2012) notes, “broadening the definition of writing in the Americas beyond a particular
semiotic system – the alphabet – disrupts a whole complex of cultural meanings, as well as
dynamics of dominance” (p. 4). It frames the colonial encounter as a “confrontation between
different literate traditions” (Rasmussen, 2012, p. 3) or as colonial semiosis (Mignolo, 2000),
a bi-directional exchange that puts alphabetic and non-alphabetic texts in dialogue and “mutual
inter-animation” (Rasmussen, 2012, p. 10). These exchanges have relevance for understanding
the literate practices of today’s youth, whose multimodal textual productions potentially draw on
visual literacies and indigenous legacies of resistance (e.g. Cowan, 2004; Jiménez & Smith, 2008),
and whose school literacy trajectories may have too often been circumscribed by their acquies-
cence to, or deviation from, an idealized alphabetic literacy.

Subaltern Literacies and Insurgent Communities of Inquiry

Some of the most promising research in multimodal inquiry comes from scholars who are work-
ing at the intersection of critical literacy pedagogy and participatory/community-based research
(e.g. Mirra et al., 2015). Because their methodologies involve collaborative inquiry alongside
youth and families, they are concerned with nurturing more egalitarian communities, collectively
embodying humanizing and decolonial forms of sociality, ones that value interdependence and
are more conducive to students’ holistic flourishing (e.g. Ghiso, 2016). The language of this
scholarship, following Lorde (1984) and rich traditions of feminist critical thought that do not
separate emotions from cognition, is one of connection, love, healing, joy – multiple ways of
knowing and being – and asset orientations that honor youths’ brilliance rather than its deficits
(e.g., Alim & Haupt, 2017). Often theorizing from non-dominant activist, artistic, and intellectual
legacies, what may be characterized as organic critical literacies (Campano, Ghiso, Sánchez,
2013), this emerging scholarship also goes beyond critique to prefigure other possible worlds of
education. While it does not always invoke directly the academic conversations on multimodality
per se – although some scholars certainly do – what does appear to be a salient pattern is that it
documents how youth draw on and inter-animate a range of semiotic resources, including subal-
tern literacies, in culturally relevant (Ladson-Billings, 1995), sustaining (Paris & Alim, 2014), and
procreative ways.
San Pedro (2017), for example, examines the context of a Native American literature class to
inquire into the ways youth engaged in multimodal projects that sought to build on Native tradi-
tions and give students opportunities for expressing identities as “in-process.” He documented
how, through visual and verbal storytelling and humanizing dialogue, a new classroom culture
emerged that prioritized trust and mutual relationships. Ghiso (2016) draws explicitly on theories
of coloniality to analyze how young Latina/o children use photography as a form of multimodal
inquiry to recenter their immigrant neighborhood as a place of innovative knowledge

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production, cross-cultural and multilingual exchange, and interdependence. Wong and Peña
(2017)’s study of two classrooms utilizing performance arts, revealed that this medium fostered
inquiry into aspects of students’ cultures and enabled them to address contemporary topics that
impacted them daily. In this reimagined and interdependent school space, students built cultures
of sharing, storytelling, and listening, that served both to acknowledge shared traumas and to joy-
fully and collectively project images of the futures they desired and deserved. Enciso (2011)
showcases how storytelling as a culturally-inflected literacy practice, can build connections and
solidarity between immigrant and non-immigrant youth. In their ethnographic study of Hip Hop
culture in South Africa, Alim and Haupt (2017) found that Black South Africans both reclaimed
and retold their linguistic and cultural histories while validating and celebrating their Black/Indi-
genous discourses and forms of expression. In turn, they used these ways of expression to cast
a vision of a pluralistic future that centered people of color. Korina Jocson (2005) framed a study
of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People around the perspectives of feminist poets such as Adrienne
Rich, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Jordan herself. In this work, she explores the potential of the Poetry
for the People curriculum to harness student and teachers’ multiple literacies, voices, and cultural
resources, and to help students see the connection between poetry, identity, and political action.
Maisha Winn (2011, Fisher, 2009) has investigated multimodal literacy pedagogy that builds
on cultural practices of resistance, such as playwriting and spoken word poetry. Reading, writing,
and performing poetry gave students an opportunity to reclaim often silenced histories of Black
revolutionaries, share testimonials, participate in political action, and resist dominant narratives
that deficitized their literacies and knowledges. In her work with incarcerated girls and their
teaching artists, Winn (2011) observed the ways that the girls, who had been assigned deficit nar-
ratives based on their race, gender, and class – narratives further impacted by their incarcerated
statuses – used playwriting and performance built on traditions of political theater to describe
their worlds and engage in collective acts of resistance. Through these multimodal practices the
young women brought their stories and perspectives to light, reimagined their futures, fostered
a community and a sense of home with one another, and advocated for themselves. In both of
these studies, Winn demonstrates how multimodal pedagogies that connect students to traditions
of resistant arts can create opportunities for youth of color to enact change as they assert identities
as literate and knowledgeable.
A number of literacy scholars have used Black feminist traditions as theoretical grounding for
multimodal pedagogies that attend to students’ evolving identities and seek to reimagine school-
ing as more communitarian and decolonial. For example, Price-Dennis (2016) highlights how
Black girls use digital tools to explore their “multiple, political/critical, historical, intellectual, col-
laborative, and identity-laden literacies” (p. 337), and how these multimodal facilities might be
leveraged in the curriculum to mediate teachers’ relationships to students across boundaries of
race, gender, class, and ability. Price-Dennis builds on the work of Elaine Richardson (2007),
who studied the multimodal literacies of Black girls. Richardson argues for the importance of
using a racial and gendered analytical lens, and highlights how their literacies not only draw from
cultural histories, but are also a response to the ever-present racism and sexism of our contempor-
ary society.
Carmen Kynard (2010) adds to this literature by attending to the ways the 13 Black women
in her study appropriated modern tools to tap into historical legacies of resistance. Through
a digital listserv, the young women created what Kynard refers to as a “hush harbor”,
a communicative dynamic that was not audible to the broader class, and through which they
could use literacy to share counter stories and more freely engage in acts of individual and col-
lective self-definition. These spaces strove to prefigure decolonial worlds within the hegemonic
white space of the academy, allowing students to recreate and reimagine the academy from
within. Similarly, Haddix, McArthur, Muhammad, Price-Dennis, and Sealey-Ruiz (2016) created

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a “virtual kitchen table talk” – a multimodal conversation in the form of recorded Zoom videos
that transposed the gendered cultural epistemological practices of “kitchen table talk” to the con-
text of higher education. In both these examples, multimodality became a vehicle through which
to nurture what Harney and Moten (2013) characterize as an educational “undercommons,” an
alternative inquiry community informed by Black radical theory and liberation struggles operating
within and against predominantly white institutions, autonomous notions of literacy, and conven-
tional hermeneutics.
All these studies reflect how multimodal approaches, when fused with critical theories, might
give rise to insurgent communities of inquiry (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) that mobilize read-
ing and writing for social change. The aforementioned research examples attend to the histories
of systemic racism and colonial oppression that continue to shape schooling and tap into the
meaning-making traditions of non-dominant communities. As we look to the future of reading
and literacy studies, we anticipate scholarship that will draw both from cutting edge research on
multimodality and from a wider array of intellectual traditions that are concerned with issues of
power.

Multimodality and Decolonial Imaginaries

The convergence of multimodality and critical literacy provides a foundation for understanding
reading practices as a situated coming-together of identities, geographies, and semiotic resources.
Such a framing echoes the work of postcolonial scholars who have examined the ways language
and identity are bound up with “place” and “history.” To understand how these intersections
might expand our conceptions and uses of multimodal inquiry, one perspective we have found
especially instructive is that of Édouard Glissant. Much like scholars of multimodality have
looked at the ways texts are not monoliths, but rather, exist as a constellation of communicative
modes, and critical literacy scholars have recognized the ways that readers’ identities condition
their engagement with texts, Glissant also attends to the ways observable practices are animated
by rich and textured histories. In his theorizing of a “poetics of landscape,” Glissant (1989) sug-
gests that situated activities which appear to us as stable and knowable are, in fact, an assemblage
of identities, materials, and labor that, together, produce a perceived sense of stasis. In this way,
we see in Glissant a resource for examining multimodal reading, too, as a layered assemblage.
Glissant is perhaps best known for his conceptualization of creolization, borrowed from lin-
guistics, to characterize broader social phenomena, including how cultures and identities come in
contact with one another. Unlike créolité, which may refer to a new, reified identity made from
two formally separate identities, creolization draws attention to a universal, though largely unpre-
dictable, relational process, whereby identities do not become fixed and cultural transactions do
not have an end point. In literacy research, Lemrow (2016) draws on Glissant to understand the
critical literacy practices of youth in a “developmental” (i.e. remedial) reading class, many of
whom identified as multiracial. She argues that:

within the realm of education, and literacy education, in particular, créolization theory can
be a useful tool to explore how our literacy practices are informed and created within class-
rooms, with a special focus on those who best articulate a créolised reality: students who
draw their identities from the interstices of the more formerly rigid categories of race, ethni-
city, language, and gender.
(p. 4)

She documents, for example, students’ engagement with literature from ethnic studies that
“awake[ns] the opportunity to see across and within difference” (p. 7). Lemrow traces how one

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student, Jeremiah, drew on these openings to link his experiences of the Philippines with Junot
Diaz’s (2007) characterizations of the Dominican Republic in The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar
Wao, reminding us that geographically disparate spaces are linked by colonial histories and
reframing his particular lived reality as part of a global phenomenon.
As “creolization” demonstrates, Glissant’s work engages both poststructural and decolonial
thought, theorizing from the particular location of Caribbean ideas that have increasing world-
wide resonance during this current era of globalization, information technology, social network-
ing, mass migration, war, xenophobia, cultural and linguistic interaction, and conflict. In reading
research, a thinker such as Glissant can play an important role in helping to reconcile scholarship
that has embraced post-humanism to think about multimodality, new literacies, and technologies,
but has largely evaded issues of race and colonialism with the work of critical literacy scholars
concerned with more humanizing and liberatory pedagogies.
Glissant himself was an anti-essentialist but also a critical realist, who situates identity within
collective memory and trauma. He did not shy away from a direct confrontation with colonial-
ism, including the genocide of the middle passage, such as, for example, his formulation of the
rhizomatic identity. Glissant was in dialogue with Deleuze and Guattarri, and applies their meta-
phor of the rhizome – an image to characterize non-hierarchical thought that has multiple entry
points for interpretation – to identity, a term seemingly at odds with their philosophical project.
For Glissant, the rhizome becomes an apt way to critique the dominant views of identity as
adherence to a “single root, of racial or linguistic purity” (Hiepko, 2011, p. 256), often tied to
exclusionary origin myths of nationhood. Multifarious cultural influences, an entangled and ever-
expanding root system, shape a person’s identity through processes of creolization, as identities
are not static but rather perpetually in the act of becoming, formed, and reformed through our
contact and relations with others, “identity-as-relation” (Hiepko, 2011, p. 260). In the field of
reading, an identity-as-relation framing underscores that there is no one-to-one correspondence
between a student’s identity and some easily identifiable “primary discourse” (Gee, 1989) – thus
complicating, for example, assumptions about what books students may gravitate to or what
background knowledge students have for accessing particular textual content. Rather, through
Glissant’s formulation, what becomes salient are students’ multiple, ever-expanding literacies,
which borrow and remix from a range of discursive contexts.
Conceiving identity as dynamic does not imply, however, a type of unfettered self-invention,
unconstrained by history and the material word. Glissant’s (2010) figure for subjectification in the
opening pages of the Poetics of Relation, is the errant slave ship and the triple forms of abyss the
captives’ faced: that of the boat’s hull, the ocean bottom underneath it, and the foreign “new”
world to which the ship sailed, where survivors were sold into chattel slavery. This new world
was not discovered, but conquered through the genocide of its inhabitants and repopulated, in
part, by subsequent waves of settlers, many with their own colonial legacies. These historical
images and referents set a different stage than that of ethereal Deleuzian nomadic lines of flight,
at least as Deleuze has been taken up in literacy research. Glissant strikes a delicate balance of
acknowledging the productive forms of agency that arise out of history’s contact (and conflict)
zones without romanticizing suffering. It was within the abyss that new identities and alternative
modes of expression and resistance emerge. Glissant’s unsentimental historicizing of identity is
a reminder that language and literacy are never neutral, but always implicated in colonial legacies
and relations of power.
Our histories are thus entangled and we are implicated in one another’s fates, but differences
matter and matter differently. In fact, according to Glissant (2010), a central compulsion of the colo-
nial imaginary is to absorb differences by making them “transparent” or assimilable into dominant
Western paradigms, an imperial scholarly project which is inherently reductive, employed to pro-
mote hierarchies and justify racism and colonial power. For example, the long history of high stakes

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testing in the US masks how concepts such “reading comprehension” and literacy assessments are
tied to legacies of oppression (Willis, 2008), and sets Western notions of reading (e.g. the bedtime
story routine, [Heath, 1982]) as the interrogated norm for interactions with texts. This is why Glis-
sant privileges the “right to opacity” (2010, p. 190), a way of asserting one’s irreducible singularity,
that which is not fully transparent to others, even possibly to oneself. We can learn from others,
become transfigured by others, work in solidarity with others, without having to finally “know”
others, and speak essential truths about them which they do not wish to articulate for themselves.
Opacity is also necessary for “furtive” (Ramazani, 2001, p. 129) resistant communicative and
literacy practices, especially under conditions of oppression and power asymmetry (e.g. San
Pedro, 2015). Nurturing a decolonial imaginary would entail promoting genuine dialogue across
differences in order to imagine a collective future not premised on the need to homogenize and
control. It would also require a more poetic sensibility in our relations with others, one that is
genuinely open to the unexpected, creative alchemy of thought and expression when the robust
diversity of the world is embraced rather than standardized or excluded.

Youth Conveying Rhizomatic Identities through Multimodal Design

How might destabilizing linear associations between students’ “visible identities” (Alcoff, 2006)
and their presumed knowledge of and relationships with texts extend existing multimodal
research in new directions? How might a decolonial approach, coupled with multimodality, offer
a lens through which to understand how students read the word and the world (Freire, 1970)? In
this section, we probe these questions and possibilities through examples from two studies (Cam-
pano, 2007; Campano et al., 2016).

Dancing across Borders

Twenty years ago, before the concept of multimodality had taken widespread hold in literacy
research and policy, Gerald was a fifth grade teacher in California’s Central Valley, conducting
practitioner research into how the official reading curriculum might be more dialogically attuned
to the diverse immigrant narratives of his students (Campano, 2007). During that time, under the
guidance of Angelica, an undergraduate student teacher, Gerald’s students formed a performance
group they called “Dancing Across Borders” (DAB). The troupe organically embraced
a multimodal approach to literacy, composing and performing spoken-word poetry, choreograph-
ing musical routines, sharing essays, and scripting and producing plays, including one about the
braided history of Filipino and Mexican farmworkers in California’s Central Valley. When Gerald
was asked to facilitate a professional development at his school on “classroom management” –
a topic which usually takes a behavioral orientation in identifying and disciplining individuals to fit
a preconceived norm of academic participation – he enlisted the help of the Dancing Across Bor-
ders group. The youth wrote and staged a play titled “What the Teacher Didn’t Know”, which
spotlighted a series of common “management” scenarios in the classroom between students and
a fictionalized teacher, Mr. Sid (modeled after the Dickens character Mr. M’Choakumchild). After
each conflict, all the actors would freeze, and then the character reprimanded by Mr. Sid recited
a soliloquy – a device the class embraced from Shakespeare – about “What the Teacher Didn’t
Know.” For example, when the teacher reprimands a student, Susana, for speaking in Spanish and
proclaims that “This is the United States, so there will be no foreign languages!”, she replies:

What the teacher didn’t know is that I just came from Mexico five months ago, so some-
times I don’t know how to say things in English. He didn’t know my language is an import-
ant part of me. Speaking Spanish is something I feel proud of, but he is cruel for not

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encouraging me to maintain my traditions. Instead he put me down and made me feel like
a stranger. And also, my teacher didn’t know that people spoke Spanish here before English!
(Campano, 2007, p. 99)

The nationalistic English-only policy of the school does not take into account legacies of coloni-
alism and students’ embodied and affective relationships to language. The performance was both
humorous and poignant, as each soliloquy raised critical consciousness inequities related to class,
culture, gender, and language difference that often lurk beneath the surface of classroom dynam-
ics. In an act of empathy and generosity, the Dancing Across Borders troupe reserved the final
soliloquy for Mr. Sid himself who, a one-dimensional villain throughout most of the perform-
ance, became humanized as he recounted the challenges of being a teacher in a severely under-
resourced school district.
The writing of the DAB troupe exemplified many characteristics of traditional academic read-
ing and writing (e.g. use of evidence-based argumentation, academic language, point of view,
summarizing, inferring) as the children met, and often surpassed, the demands of conventional
English Language Arts standards. Their plays were also hybrid texts: shifting between English,
Spanish, and Illocano languages; literary, comic, and conversational registers – all dramatically
conveyed through gesture, movement, and voice. They reflected the literacy practices associated
with the students’ rhizomatic identities, which are often invisible in the official curriculum. It
was only after some time spent with Angelica and the students that Gerald realized their creative
labor was informed by El Teatro Campesino, an activist and artistic legacy that grew out of the
local intellectual soil of nearby migrant labor camps. Similar to El Teatro, the plays of DAB were
collectively produced living texts that were revised and improvised in the process of performance,
sometimes in response to audience feedback (Broyles-González, 1994), a poetics of relation.
Often there was no single author to their plays; all students would contribute to the collaborative
process of authoring in unique and, ideally, complementary ways. These furtive literacies pro-
tected the students by making their individual critiques “opaque” to institutional power. DAB
employed a collective creative process that transgressed the ideology of individual authorship that
underpins so much schooling and the high-stakes testing paradigm in the United States. Many
children who were positioned as struggling in the mandated, standardized literacy curriculum of
the school blossomed in DAB, which cultivated an ethos of interdependence rather than compe-
tition and the individuation of learners as conforming to or deviating from a norm.
The DAB troupe was engaged in multimodal critical literacy inquiry. In a Freirean (1970)
manner, they were reading their worlds, including their world of schooling. In “What the
Teacher Didn’t Know,” the students critiqued the education system and employed political the-
ater as a vehicle to educate educators. Their insights, in part, derived from inquiry into their
own subaltern experiences and identities. The students wanted their audiences to take seriously
their claims about schooling, particularly the ways in which it can dehumanize and perpetuate
inequity. DAB became a “community of epistemic resistance” (McHugh, 2017, p. 272;
Mohanty, 2003) to official institutional practices that too often deficitize and criminalize youth,
and that do not take into account systemic causes of inequality, such as poverty, racism, xeno-
phobia, and colonial legacies. In the process of critique, however, they were simultaneously pre-
figuring and enacting an alternative community, one that fosters cooperation and celebrates
human variance, including the multifarious literate and intercultural resources which fertilized
their creative and intellectual imaginations. Although the elementary students were courageously
addressing serious topics, there was a good deal of joy and bonding in the troupe, both in their
performance as well throughout the process of collaborative inquiry. As Audre Lorde (1984,
p. 56) reminds us: “The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual,
forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not

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shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.” Through multimodal inquiry
rooted in and repurposed from the decolonial artistic and activist traditions of migrant political
theater, the children were able to merge physical, emotional, psychic, and intellectual ways of
knowing to make the academic literacy curriculum their own.

The Collective Educational Futures Project

Our second example comes from a university-community research partnership, now entering its
eighth year, between the University of Pennsylvania and St. Thomas Aquinas (STA),
a multilingual, multi-ethnic Catholic Parish, school, and community center in South Philadelphia
(Campano et al., 2016). South Philadelphia itself has become a sort of archipelago, not unlike
Glissant’s actual Antilles, where different cultural and linguistic communities live alongside one
another and engage in everyday relations. There are longstanding African American and Italian
communities, Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees that arrived in the 1980’s and 1990’s, an
Indonesian population beginning in the late 1990’s, newcomers from Latin America within the
past ten years, and most recently, arrivals from Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
STA itself has masses in five different languages – Indonesian, Vietnamese, English, Spanish, and
Tagalog – and supports an active Concerned Black Catholic organization. While Christianity has
historically been an instrument of imperialism, St. Thomas Aquinas is composed of (post-)colonial
communities, with legacies of war and genocide, who now occupy formally exclusive church
space – such as a convent converted to a community center – in order to organize for their sur-
vival and rights. They also use the space and its resources to sustain cultural traditions, celebrate
community, and engage each other in often compassionate and joyful ways.
On an early summer afternoon, in the cool, fluorescent-lit basement of the church, the youth
of the Collective Educational Futures Project are busily sorting, flipping through, and snipping
apart the heaps of magazines, newspapers, old discount bin art books, print-outs of textiles, and
photographs of South Philadelphia. They are creating collage self-portraits after having viewed
and discussed the collage art of Kara Walker and Lorna Simpson, among others.
Mai sits quietly in a corner, deliberately cutting shapes from the mounds of colorful paper
before her. With care, her fingers deftly shift her cuttings ever so slightly, millimeter by milli-
meter, until a face, with shoulder length ombre hair and wispy bangs emerges (Figure 8.1).
The hair is made of delicate slivers of traditional Indonesian Batik textiles and photographs of
South Philadelphia, reflecting a creolized lived reality and the multiple roots of her ever-evolving
identity that transverse political borders and cultural boundaries. Mai explains that her hair carries
a lot of meaning for her and her family. When she cut it without telling her parents, her mother,
who saw her hair as a symbol of her Indonesian tradition, was upset because she felt it indicated
that Mai was cutting off her ties to her culture. Mai explains, though, as she runs her fingers
over the tendrils of Indonesian Batik and shimmering South Philadelphia lights, that she still
holds onto her Indonesian roots. She mentions, too, that she used a picture of the sky in colla-
ging the shape of her ear, symbolizing her openness to new relationships, experiences, and the
world. Her collage is one multimodal representation of her dynamic identity, her ongoing process
of becoming. This visual rendition shows both her singularity and her relationship to an ever
expanding root system of cultural influences in ways that complicate common dichotomies of
“old” and “new” cultures used to describe the experiences of transnational youth. For someone
who first encounters Mai’s artwork, it may seem – following Glissant – opaque, because the
complexity of Mai’s experiences defy reductive institutional categories, such as “model minority”
or “immigrant student”. As we learn from listening to Mai, it is in fact replete with interpretive
possibilities.

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Gerald Campano et al.

Figure 8.1 Mai’s collage self-portrait

It was multimodal inquiry that enabled Mai and her peers to draw from the range of multifari-
ous cultural influences that shape their identities, and inquire into where their experiences over-
lap and diverge, and what possible futures they may want to forge together (Gultom et al.,
2019). Through the arts, youth are exploring and communicating their own processes of becom-
ing, reading and interpreting their worlds, and negotiating their relationships to others. Through
film and critical media making (Thomas, 2017), youth, families, and community leaders are col-
laborating to learn about the ways local knowledge has been used to challenge educational bar-
riers and to collectively imagine the futures they desire and deserve.

Conclusion
Multimodality is ancient. As a key term in literacy education, it has gained prominence over the
past several decades, but may even be waning in recent years. While a multimodal approach has
the potential to expand reading and writing opportunities and who “counts” as literate, we have
argued that there is nothing inherently liberatory about employing diverse semiotic modes in the
literacy curriculum. Like any social practice, multimodality must be understood contextually. We
have also suggested that its salient features – an expansive notion of the text, the ineluctable twin-
ning of reading and creation, and collective meaning-making – are promising for inquiry into

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culturally sustaining as well as culturally procreative pedagogies, especially when informed by the-
orists of race and coloniality. Glissant reminds us that the multimodal worlds students inhabit –
worlds characterized by a multiplicity of identities (even within the self), languages, literacies, and
meaning-making practices, often in the same school or neighborhood block – is an outgrowth of
violent colonial and imperial legacies. But despite the unpredictability and uncertainty of cultural
interaction and conflict, there is also the potential, if educators put their fears aside, to help nur-
ture decolonial imaginaries, collective forms of resistance, and communities that embrace, return-
ing to Lorde, the “interdependence of (non-dominant) differences”. This hope may seem
utopian, especially as we are writing this handbook chapter in a political period marked by
a vicious resurgence of nativism and (re)legitimization of racism in the United States and across
the globe. The critical multimodal inquiries of The Dancing Across Borders troupe and the fam-
ilies and youth of Collective Educational Futures Project provide evidence, nonetheless, that
there are alternative worlds being imagined and enacted in the shell of the old. Like multimodal-
ity, these struggles are both longstanding and new.

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 Part IV
How Do Expanding
Conceptualizations of Readers
Change the Game for Teachers,
Leaders, and Reading
Researchers?
 9
The Language for School Literacy
Widening the Lens on Language and
Reading Relations

Paola Uccelli, Emily Phillips Galloway, and Wenjuan Qin

Introduction
For this edition of the Handbook of Reading Research, we were asked to write a chapter on the
topic of academic language and its relation to reading. This apparently simple request led us to
a non-trivial question: What are the limits of what we define as academic language proficiency? The chal-
lenge we faced in delimiting the scope of this chapter emerged, to a large extent, from the
vagueness that still surrounds the definition of academic language proficiency in research and
practice. On the one hand, academic language proficiency is conceptualized as a set of language
skills that support literacy and learning at school (e.g., understanding the meaning of the word
argument, comprehending sentences with multiple clauses). These skills are typically examined in
quantitative studies through a variety of language assessments informed by language development
theories and psychological models of reading comprehension. The majority of studies in this line
of research has assessed academic vocabulary as a sole index of academic language proficiency.
However, recent efforts have proposed and empirically tested more comprehensive operational
definitions that also include morpho-syntactic and discourse skills (Brisk & Zhang-Wu, 2017;
Nagy & Townsend, 2012; Schleppegrell, 2002). On the other hand, academic language profi-
ciency is understood as socially-situated discourse practices that respond to the cultural
expectations of school learning and entail enacting a particular academic identity (e.g., participat-
ing in debates following academic norms). One line of empirical studies guided by this view
investigates metalanguage, i.e., the language to talk about discourse practices, as a window into
students’ awareness and perceptions of academic discourse practices. Some recent studies qualita-
tively investigate how teaching academic metalanguage supports students’ awareness of the situ-
ational expectations and functions of academic discourse practices as a way to facilitate text
comprehension (e.g., Schleppegrell, 2013). Other studies investigate learners’ metalanguage to
reveal their agency and motivation for embracing, or resisting, discourse practices associated with
identities embedded in the larger institutional and socio-political contexts of school (Heller &
Morek, 2015; van Lier & Walqui, 2012). In reality, of course, becoming proficient in academic
language entails both internalizing skills and enacting situated practices. It is, in fact, through par-
ticipation in oral and written school-like discourse practices that learners expand their academic
language skills.

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The simultaneous consideration of these two broad conceptualizations suggests that learning
challenges for students include not only mastering a repertoire of language skills, but also under-
standing when and, most importantly, why to embrace the often hidden norms of school dis-
course practices, which may be perceived by some as incompatible with their out-of-school
practices and identities (e.g., requests to “explain X” may be satisfied by very different types of
responses at home and at school) (O’Connor, Michaels, & Chapin, 2015). In this chapter, we
introduce a new term, the Language for School Literacy (LSL). LSL proficiency (LSL-P) refers
to the repertoire of discourse practices and academic language skills that learners gradually intern-
alize as they flexibly enact the socio-cultural norms of reading, writing, and learning at school.
We argue in this chapter that researching opportunities to support LSL learning entails not only
identifying which skills to teach, but also investigating the potential role of language awareness in
supporting text comprehension, and understanding the conditions under which learners actively
choose to enact school-relevant discourse practices.
We adopt this framework to address gaps in the field of academic language research. Research
paradigms have focused on disciplinary language, as the context-specific language needed to oper-
ate in the content area classroom, or on cross-disciplinary language, often operationalized as gen-
eral vocabulary knowledge. Our LSL proposal is both broader and more specific than prior
conceptualizations: broader in the sense that LSL includes both disciplinary and cross-disciplinary
language, and more specific in that we focus on the language forms that that are most relevant
for academic discourse. Perhaps more importantly, our LSL proposal also aims to address the role
of learner agency and identity in school-relevant language development, an important consider-
ation in light of increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in school populations.
In this chapter, our review of quantitative and qualitative studies from the last 15 years is driven by
two goals. First, we synthesize how adolescents’ school-relevant language has been conceptualized and
examined in relation to reading comprehension. Second, we introduce our proposed definition of the
Language for School Literacy (LSL), with the goal of highlighting the need for an integrated conceptu-
alization as timely to advance research and practice. To delimit the boundaries of our review, we
included only studies that examined either the contribution of adolescents’ language skills to reading
comprehension; or analyzed metalanguage to understand students’ awareness or perceptions of aca-
demic discourse practices. The chapter is organized around four main questions: (1) Which new directions
are noticeable in the study of LSL in the last 15 years?; (2) How do we conceptualize LSL, as a more inclusive
construct, in order to advance research and practice?; (3) Which academic language skills support reading comprehen-
sion?; and (4) What does metalanguage research reveal about adolescents’ awareness and perceptions of academic
discourse practices? In response to the first question, we highlight four new directions that have moved
the field toward broader conceptualizations and innovative approaches. To address our second ques-
tion, we present our conceptualization of LSL within a brief discussion of our larger theoretical frame-
work. In answering our third question, we focused on the variety of instruments used to measure
language skills and synthesize the main quantitative findings on the contribution of language proficien-
cies to school reading comprehension. To answer our fourth question, we review evidence from
qualitative studies focused on students’ academic metalanguage (i.e., language to talk about school dis-
course practices) to reveal its potential to support reading comprehension, as well as insights from stu-
dents’ own reflective voices about their perceptions of LSL practices. Finally, we close the chapter
with a vision of a pedagogically relevant research approach, and suggestions for future research areas.

1. Which New Directions Are Noticeable in the Study of the

Language for School Literacy?
Our review of studies conducted in the last decade and a half reveals four major new directions
in the study of LSL in relation to reading comprehension.

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New Direction 1: From a Focus on Emerging Bilinguals to a Focus on

Studying Both Bilingual and Monolingual Learners
More than three decades ago, Jim Cummins raised awareness of the importance of academic lan-
guage for school achievement in emergent bilinguals, i.e., bilingual students with emerging profi-
ciency in the language of school (these students are called English language learners in the
U.S. educational system) (Cummins, 1979, 1980). Cummins drew a contrast between Basic Inter-
personal Communicative Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP).1 In the
last decade and a half, however, educational research has moved from conceptualizing academic
language proficiency as pedagogically relevant only for emergent bilinguals, to realizing how per-
tinent this construct is for a much larger population that also includes monolingual learners.
Accumulating evidence shows that the language of school texts poses a greater challenge than
decoding or fluency for large proportions of bilingual and monolingual adolescents, in particular,
but not exclusively, for students from economically underprivileged communities (August & Sha-
nahan, 2008; Mancilla-Martinez & Lesaux, 2011; Uccelli, Phillips Galloway, Barr, Meneses, &
Dobbs, 2015). These findings demonstrate that language development is far from complete by
adolescence and that new learning at school entails expanding conceptual knowledge alongside
language resources. In this area, research originally focused on emergent bilinguals has contrib-
uted to advance our current understanding of language and reading relations for all students, fore-
grounding that, in fact, all students are LSL learners. Now that the pedagogical implications of
LSL research are understood as relevant for all students, new opportunities emerge for more far-
reaching partnerships between researchers and practitioners in this field.

New Direction 2: From Measuring Language as Global Proficiency

to Measuring School-Relevant Language as Context-Specific Proficiency
One salient shift in the empirical research from the last 15 years has been the move from using
instruments that measure global language proficiencies to instruments intentionally designed to cap-
ture the specific language skills relevant for the context of school literacy and learning. This shift has been
informed by a longstanding research tradition focused on measuring general language skills with the
goal of testing psychological models of reading comprehension (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Perfetti &
Stafura, 2014). In these studies, target language skills are classified by formal linguistic levels (e.g.,
lexical, morpho-syntactic skills) (Geva & Farnia, 2012), but no special attention is given to selecting
forms that are particularly useful for school literacy. Recent studies from this line of research reveal
developmental relations between lexical, morphological and syntactic skills and reading comprehen-
sion in longitudinal samples followed from the early grades up to the middle school years (Farnia &
Geva, 2013). Despite these important insights, it is arguably in the more specific emerging field of
academic language proficiency, where the focus is squarely on identifying language resources useful
for school learning, that promising pedagogically-relevant research has bloomed in these last years.
For the first time, the field has produced operational definitions of academic language skill sets, as
well as considerable accumulating empirical evidence that supports the hypothesis that the language
of school texts poses unique challenges to comprehension (Uccelli et al., 2015). Especially substantial
progress has been achieved as the result of sustained and ambitious efforts to more directly link
emergent bilingual learners’ language skills to school achievement. In contrast to generalized English
proficiency tests that used to measure general grammatical rules or vocabulary, U.S. English profi-
ciency assessments today measure, in more precise and informative ways, the academic language
skills required by the different school content areas across grades (e.g., WIDA-ACCESS for ELLs,
ELPA21) (Deville, Chalhoub-Deville, Fox, & Fairbairn, 2011; Linquanti & Cook, 2013). Guided
by the most up-to-date school and career-readiness standards, initiatives such as WIDA, now offer

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sophisticated screening, monitoring, and summative assessments to measure and track bilingual Eng-
lish learners’ progress in mastering the language needed in specific content areas. This move to meas-
ure subsets of language skills identified according to their relevance for discipline- and grade-specific
reading and learning has begun to show the potential to revolutionize discipline-specific literacy
instruction in important ways for emerging bilingual students.

New Direction 3: From the Study of Discipline-Specific Language to the

Complementary Study of High-Utility Cross-Disciplinary Language Skill Sets
Another important new direction is the recent expansion from a focus on discipline-specific aca-
demic language (e.g., the language of science, the language of history) to also studying high-utility
academic language across content areas. Discipline-specific academic language refers to the spe-
cialized language forms and functions used for discussing key concepts and engaging in the reasoning
moves of specific disciplines. Cross-disciplinary academic language, in contrast, refers to the
array of linguistic features prevalent in texts across content areas that enable precise, concise, and
reflective communication (Bailey, 2007). One prolific research area has been the study of academic
vocabulary knowledge (August & Hakuta, 1997; August & Shanahan, 2006; Lesaux, Crosson, Kief-
fer, & Pierce, 2010). Interestingly, these studies consistently show that beyond the discipline-specific
words (e.g., electrons, biosphere, hypotenuse), to which teachers regularly pay attention, it is the gen-
eral-purpose academic words (e.g., structure, hypothesis, conclude) that are often unknown to students.
More recently, operational definitions of academic language proficiency have moved beyond
vocabulary knowledge to include a broader array of high-utility cross-disciplinary language skills
(Fang & Schleppegrell, 2010; Nagy & Townsend, 2012; Uccelli et al., 2015). Today, empirical stud-
ies investigate not only academic vocabulary, but also more inclusive arrays of school-relevant mor-
phological, syntactic, and discourse skills that are being made increasingly visible for research and
practice through innovative instruments within and across content areas.

New Direction 4: From an Exclusive Focus on Language Skills to a View of

Language Learning as Situated Discourse Practices
Another contribution in this field is the widening of the analytic lens beyond skills and know-
ledge, to study school-relevant language learning as the learning of socio-culturally situated dis-
course practices. LSL learning is not seen as a purely cognitive-linguistic task, but as social action;
more specifically, as an “expression of agency embodied and embedded” in an environment that
is itself part of larger social, historical, political, and economic structures (van Lier & Walqui,
2012, p. 47). In classroom settings and beyond, learners not only develop language skills but also
become increasingly aware of when, why, and with whom to use which language resources. Far
from trivial, students’ ability to reflect on the mapping of language forms to the communicative
expectations of school is hypothesized to support students’ text comprehension and production.
Moreover, aligned with research on language and identity (Shin, 2012), recent work illustrates
that as students expand the communicative contexts they navigate, different ways of using lan-
guage afford them the opportunities to enact a wider array of identities that they might embrace
or resist (Alim, Rickford, & Ball, 2016; Heller & Morek, 2015).

2. How Do We Conceptualize the Language for School Literacy?

The major shifts discussed above call for a more inclusive conceptualization of school-relevant
language learning to guide pedagogically relevant research in this field. Our proposed definition

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of LSL is situated within a larger sociocultural pragmatics-based theoretical framework that we

briefly discuss below.
We qualify our approach as pragmatics-based because we are informed by research that
reveals that (1) individuals’ language use varies across interactional contexts; (2) language
learning is driven by learners’ communicative needs and purposes for using language; and (3)
language proficiencies are, to a large extent, the result of a learner’s accumulated experiences
with oral and written language practices (Bruner, 1983; Ninio & Snow, 1996). Aligned with
this view, extensive research from functional linguistics shows that academic texts (written
or oral) recurrently display an array of co-occurring language features (e.g., nominalizations,
dense syntactic structures) that respond to situational expectations, i.e., the needs and norms
of a communicative situation, in this case academic communication. These particular lan-
guage features of texts predictably distinguish academic texts from colloquial ones (Berman,
Ragnarsdóttir, & Strömqvist, 2002; Halliday, Matthiessen, & Matthiessen, 2014; Schleppe-
grell, 2004). Thus, to access the meaning of these texts, readers need to master academic
language skills, i.e., language skills that correspond to the linguistic features of academic
texts.
We further qualify our approach as socio-cultural to highlight that, beyond the immedi-
ate interactional contexts, language learners are immersed in larger ecosystems (both at
school and outside of school), where they are socialized to participate in culturally shaped
language practices. Whereas, arguably, school texts across many societies may follow similar
institutionally shaped and functional ways of using language; communities and families vary
widely in their uses of language (Heath, 1983; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986). This socio-
cultural view shapes our understanding of LSL proficiency as only one aspect of an individ-
ual’s much larger repertoire of language resources. Extensive evidence demonstrates that
a speaker can be skilled in one context (e.g., conversational English), yet struggle to under-
stand or produce the language characteristic of other contexts (e.g., English school texts)
(Cazden, 2001; Heath, 2012). Emergent bilinguals, as well as large proportions of monolin-
gual adolescents, indeed often struggle with the language of school texts, despite their fluent
command of conversational English. It is important to add that this differential proficiency
is associated with the specific opportunities to learn afforded to speakers/readers and thus,
may occur in various directions. For instance, for some English-as-a-foreign-language learn-
ers, the English of academic texts is more accessible than more colloquial uses of English to
which they have been minimally exposed in their formal classes (Chang, 2012; Qin &
Uccelli, 2016). In sum, LSL proficiency, as language proficiency more generally, is the
result of individuals’ histories of language socialization and enculturation inside and outside
of school.
Guided by this sociocultural pragmatics-based theoretical framework, we propose the follow-
ing definition:

Language for School Literacy proficiency (LSL-P) refers to the socio-cultural academic discourse
practices and academic language skills that learners internalize gradually as they flexibly enact the
situational expectations of reading, writing, and learning at school.

As illustrated in Figure 9.1, in our proposed definition, discourse practices, situational expect-
ations and language skills are all interconnected and inseparable elements of becoming proficient
in LSL:

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Paola Uccelli et al.

SOCIO-CULTURALLY SITUATED ACADEMIC DISCOURSE PRACTICES

SITUATIONAL EXPECTATIONS
precise, concise, logically connected, stepwise, reflective communication
& discipline-specific expectations

TEXT LINGUISTIC FEATURES

LEARNERSÕ CORE ACADEMIC LANGUAGE SKILLS: understanding & producing

UNDERSTANDING precise vocabulary, including in particular, academic words
PRECISE MEANINGS that make thinking and reasoning visible
(hypothesis, generalization)
UNPACKING DENSE complex words and complex sentences
INFORMATION (nominalizations, embedded clauses)

CONNECTING connecting markers prevalent in academic texts

IDEAS LOGICALLY (consequently, on the one hand...on the other hand...)

TRACKING terms that refer to the same participants or themes

PARTICIPANTS (Water evaporates at 100 degrees Celsius.
AND THEMES This process...)

ORGANIZING analytic texts with conventional academic structure

ANALYTIC TEXTS (thesis, argument, counterargument, conclusion)

UNDERSTANDING markers of writersÕ viewpoints, in particular, epistemic

A WRITER'S markers which signal degree of certainty toward a claim
VIEWPOINT (certainly; it is unlikely that)

DISCIPLINE-SPECIFIC ACADEMIC LANGUAGE SKILLS

technical vocabulary and discourse moves characteristic of
each discipline (language of science; language of history)

LEARNERSÕ LANGUAGE AWARENESS & METALANGUAGE

about how situational expectations relate to academic discourse practices and skills

Figure 9.1 Interconnected discourse practices, situational expectations, text features and language skills
involved in becoming proficient in the Language for School Literacy
Figure adapted from Uccelli (2019), Learning the Language for School Literacy Research Insights and a Vision for a Cross-Linguistic
Research Program. In V. Grøver, P. Uccelli, M. Rowe, & E. Lieven (Eds.) Learning through Language: Towards an Educationally Informed
Theory of Language Learning (pp. 95–109). Copyright 2019 by Cambridge University Press. Reprinted with permission.

• Participation in socio-cultural academic discourse practices refers to the uses of oral and writ-
ten language for school learning that respond to the situational expectations of academic
institutions, which entail enacting academic identities. In other words, academic discourse

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practices are cultural manifestations valued by academic institutions embedded in larger

socio-political and historical structures; therefore, LSL involves learning cognitive-linguistic
skills that are part of cultural discourse practices associated with particular identities, which
learners may embrace or resist (Heller & Morek, 2015; van Lier & Walqui, 2012). For
instance, participating in an academic debate requires students to adopt an academic identity
in which they embrace not only how, but also why, using particular school-relevant dis-
course moves (e.g., evidence-based arguments) is relevant and functional.
• Awareness of situational expectations refers to the awareness of communicative norms that
drive the use of oral and written language for school learning. Analogous to the pragmatic
expectations of distant communication about complex ideas of the wider scientific commu-
nity, school oral presentations and written texts are expected to be precise, concise, logically
connected, and reflective, in addition to also conforming to discipline-specific expectations.
As Mary Schleppegrell’s work reveals, these situational expectations of school reading and
writing often constitute a hidden curriculum that implicitly guides assessments and instruc-
tion, yet it is typically not made explicit for students, in large part, because teachers them-
selves may not be aware of them (Schleppegrell, 2002).
• Academic language skills refer to lexical, morpho-syntactic, and discourse-level skills that
correspond to the linguistic features of academic texts and include both cross-disciplinary
and discipline-specific language skills. Recent research has revealed considerable individual
differences in students’ mastery of these skills (August, Branum-Martin, Cardenas-Hagan, &
Francis, 2009; Uccelli et al., 2015).

In addition, in order to internalize and embrace these academic discourse practices and aca-
demic language skills and to use them flexibly, learners need to gradually increase their language
awareness about how and why the language choices speakers/writers make differ across different
contexts. One of the most transparent ways in which this language awareness is made visible and
can be scaffolded is through metalanguage.
Recent research to better understand how to scaffold adolescents’ LSL can be grouped into
studies that have broadly addressed two main questions: Which academic language skills support read-
ing comprehension? What does metalanguage research reveal about adolescents’ awareness and perceptions of
academic discourse practices? In the next sections, we summarize the research findings so far gener-
ated to answer these questions.

3. Which Academic Language Skills Support Reading Comprehension?

In this section, we provide a review of quantitative studies that measure either general lan-
guage skills (e.g., lexical and morpho-syntactic skills) or, more targeted, academic language
skills in relation to reading comprehension. The brief review only includes research published
through 2016 and is designed to provide an illustration of the range of assessments used
across studies in this field, but it is not intended as an exhaustive literature review.2 It is
necessary to remind our readers that we only included studies that measured language skills
in relation to reading comprehension, excluding those that measure language skills in relation
to discipline-specific content knowledge. Table 9.1 offers an inventory of the instruments,
and the studies that have used them, grouped into those that measure: first, general language
skills (i.e., morpho-syntactic skills); then, academic vocabulary; and, finally, the most recent
studies that measure academic language skill sets beyond vocabulary. As we will discuss
below, the variety of instruments listed in Table 9.1 illustrates the considerable progress of
the field, but it also signals an emerging need for consensus on constructs and instruments, so
that the field moves towards producing more generalizable pedagogical implications.

161
Table 9.1 Instruments used to measure language skills in studies that tested the impact of a language-fo-
cused reading intervention or examined language and reading comprehension relations in upper
elementary/middle school students
Target populations Empirical studies
Instruments Skills measured INTERVENTION tested:
(instrument designers) (as described by researchers) Grade EL/EP Name of Intervention

GENERAL MORPHOSYNTACTIC SKILLS

Clinical Evaluation of Lan- knowledge of word mean- 1–10 EL, EP Cutting and Scarborough
guage Fundamentals ings and sentence (2006)
(CELF) processing Foorman et al. (2015)
(Semel, Wiig, and Secord, Geva and Farnia (2012)
1995)
Compound Structure Test morphological knowledge/ 2&4 EL, EP Nagy et al. (2003)
(Berninger and Nagy, awareness
1999)
Extract-the-Base task morphological knowledge/ 4–6 EL, EP Carlo et al. (2004) | INT:
(Carlisle, 2000; adapted by awareness; Vocabulary Improvement
Kieffer, 2009) morphological Project (VIP)
decomposition Lesaux, Kieffer, Faller &
Kelly (2010) | INT: Academic
Language Instruction for All
Students (ALIAS)
Kieffer and Lesaux (2012)
Kieffer et al. (2016)
Goodwin et al. (2013)
Lesaux et al. (2014) | INT:
ALIAS
Finiteness Elicitation Task morpho-syntax skills 4 EP Adlof and Catts (2015)
(Adlof & Catts, 2015)
Morphological Relatedness morphological knowledge/ 2–6 EL, EP Singson, Mahony & Mann
Test awareness; (2000)
(Carlisle, 1995) understanding morpho- Nagy et al. (2003)
logical relationship Goodwin (2016) | INT:
Word Detectives
Suffix Choice Test morphological awareness; 4–9 EL, EP Nagy et al. (2003)
(Tyler and Nagy, 1989) morphological derivation Nagy et al. (2006)
Kieffer and Lesaux (2012)
Kieffer (2014)
Kieffer et al. (2016)
Lesaux et al. (2014) | INT:
ALIAS
Goodwin (2016) | INT:
Word Detectives
Test for Reception of comprehension of complex 1–4 EP Oakhill et al. (2003)
Grammar (TROG) sentences
(Bishop, 2003)
The Connectives Task 5 EL, EP Crosson and Lesaux (2013)

(Continued )
Table 9.1 (Cont.)
Target populations Empirical studies
Instruments Skills measured INTERVENTION tested:
(instrument designers) (as described by researchers) Grade EL/EP Name of Intervention

(Droop and Verhoeven, understanding of

2003; adapted by Crosson, connectives
2010)
The Grammaticality Judg- morpho-syntax skills; 1–6 EL, EP Geva and Farnia (2012)
ment Tasks syntax skills Farnia and Geva (2013)
(Johnson & Newport, Adlof and Catts (2015)
1989)
The Oral Cloze Task syntactic awareness 6–7 EL Lipka and Siegel (2012)
(Siegel and Ryan, 1989)
ACADEMIC VOCABULARY: DISCIPLINE-SPECIFIC

Social Studies Vocabulary social studies vocabulary 7 EL, EP Vaughn et al. (2009) | INT:
Test (intervention-specific) Social Studies Intervention
(Vaughn et al., 2009)
Science Vocabulary science vocabulary (inter- 6 EL, EP August et al. (2009) | INT:
Assessment vention-specific) Quality English and Science
(August et al., 2009) Teaching (QuEST)
Science Vocabulary science vocabulary (inter- 4 EL, EP Cervetti et al. (2012) | INT:
Measure vention-specific) Integrated Language & Sci-
(Cervetti et al., 2012) ence Instruction
Vocabulary in the Content science vocabulary (inter- 4 EL Taboada and Rutherford
Area of Life Science vention-specific) (2011) | INT: Contextualized
(Taboada and Rutherford, Vocabulary Instruction (CVI)
2011) vs. Intensified Vocabulary
Instruction (IVI)
ACADEMIC VOCABULARY: CROSS-DISCIPLINARY

Academic Word Mastery academic vocabulary (inter- 6 EL, EP Lesaux et al. (2010) | INT:
(Lesaux et al., 2010) vention-specific) ALIAS
Lesaux, Kieffer, Faller, &
Kelly (2010) | INT: ALIAS
Lesaux et al. (2014) | INT:
ALIAS
Academic Word Meaning- academic vocabulary in 6 EL, EP Lesaux et al. (2010) | INT:
in-Context extended expository texts ALIAS
(Lesaux et al., 2010) (intervention-specific) Lesaux, Kieffer, Faller, &
Kelly (2010) | INT: ALIAS
Lesaux et al. (2014) | INT:
ALIAS
Vocabulary Breadth Test breadth and depth of aca- 5 EL, EP Proctor et al. (2011) | INT:
(VBT) & Vocabulary Depth demic vocabulary (interven- Improving Comprehension
Test (VDT) tion-specific) Online (ICON)
(Proctor et al., 2011)

(Continued )
Table 9.1 (Cont.)
Target populations Empirical studies
Instruments Skills measured INTERVENTION tested:
(instrument designers) (as described by researchers) Grade EL/EP Name of Intervention

Vocabulary Knowledge academic vocabulary (inter- 6–8 EL, EP Townsend & Collins (2009)
Scale – Measure of Aca- vention-specific) | INT: Language Workshop
demic Vocabulary (MAV) Townsend, Filippini, Collins,
(Read, 2000) & Biancarosa (2012)
Vocabulary Levels Test general & academic vocabu- 6–8 EL, EP Townsend & Collins (2009)
(VLT) lary (intervention-specific) | INT: Language Workshop
(Schmitt, Schmitt, and Townsend, Filippini, Collins,
Clapham, 2001) & Biancarosa (2012)
Word Association Test depth of academic vocabu- 5–6 EL, EP Carlo et al. (2004) | INT: VIP
(WAT) lary (intervention-specific) Lesaux & Kieffer (2010) |
(Schoonen and Verhallen, INT: ALIAS
2008; adapted by Lesaux Lesaux et al. (2014) | INT:
et al., 2010) ALIAS
Word Generation Aca- academic vocabulary (inter- 4–8 EL, EP Snow et al. (2009) | INT:
demic Vocabulary Instru- vention-specific) Word Generation (WG)
ment (WG-AV) (Snow Lawrence et al. (2015) |
et al., 2009) INT:WG
ACADEMIC SKILLSETS: DISCIPLINE SPECIFIC

Academic English Lan- knowledge of discipline- 4–6 EL, EP Bailey et al. (2007)
guage Proficiency Tasks specific language features to
(AELP) be able to comprehend texts
(Bailey et al., 2007) (not intervention-specific)
Assessing Comprehension discipline-specific academic 1–12 EL WIDA (2004) – large-scale
and Communication in language and social lan- English proficiency assess-
English State-to-State for guage needed for college ment framework: website
English Language Learners and career success
(ACCESS for ELLs) (WIDA,
2004)
English Language Profi- discipline-specific academic K-12 EL ELPA (2016) - large-scale
ciency Assessment for the language and social lan- English proficiency assess-
21st Century (ELPA21) guage practices that enable ment framework: website
(National Govenors Associ- students to produce, inter-
ation, 2010) pret, and effectively collab-
orate on content-related
grade-appropriate tasks
ACADEMIC SKILLSETS: CROSS-DISCIPLINARY

Core Academic Language high-utility academic lan- 4–8 EL, EP Uccelli et al. (2015)
Skills Instrument guage skills that support Uccelli, Phillips Galloway,
(CALS-I) reading comprehension et al.(2015)
(Uccelli et al., 2015) across content areas (not Phillips Galloway (2016)
intervention-specific) LaRusso et al. (2016)
Jones et al. (under review) |
INT: WG
 The Language for School Literacy

General Linguistic Skills

A long research tradition has investigated general lexical and morpho-syntactic skills as predictors
of reading comprehension. Most instruments used in these studies are repurposed from the field
of clinical or general language development (e.g., Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-
CELF). These instruments include skills that are representative of a specific, formal linguistic
level (e.g., knowledge of word meanings, morphological skills, sentence comprehension), but
without purposefully selecting forms for their relevance for school literacy.
At the morphological level, most instruments fall into versions of four types of tasks: a) Morpho-
logical Decomposition Task (e.g., complexity → complex) (Lesaux, Kieffer, Kelley, & Harris, 2014,
p. 1172); b) Morphological Derivation Task / Suffix Choice Test (e.g., complex → complexity); (c) Morpho-
logical Relatedness Test (e.g., deep → depth, deeper, deepest); and d) Compound Structure Test, (e.g.,
“Which is a better name for a bee that lives in the grass? A grass bee? Or a bee grass?”) (Nagy, Berninger,
Abbott, Vaughan, & Vermeulen, 2003, p. 733). A number of empirical studies have found evidence
for the unique and direct contribution of morphological skills to reading comprehension, controlling
for vocabulary and reading fluency (Kieffer, 2014; Kieffer & Lesaux, 2012; Lesaux et al., 2014; Lipka
& Siegel, 2012; Nagy, Berninger, & Abbott, 2006). However, other studies have either failed to find
this relation across all participating groups (Nagy et al., 2003), or revealed only indirect contributions
of morphological skills that were fully mediated by vocabulary. A recent morphological intervention
showed a moderate positive effect on vocabulary knowledge and morphological skills, particularly for
English learners; yet, researchers did not detect a meaningful effect of morphological instruction on
reading comprehension (Goodwin, 2016; Goodwin, Huggins, Carlo, August, & Calderon, 2013;
Kieffer, Petscher, Proctor, & Silverman, 2016; Neugebauer, Kieffer, & Howard, 2015).
At the syntactic level, across a variety of measures and studies, findings also show, overall, that
students’ syntactic skills are predictive of reading comprehension (Adlof & Catts, 2015; Cutting &
Scarborough, 2006; Oakhill, Cain, & Bryant, 2003). Brimo, Apel, and Fountain (2017) find that
syntax ability (i.e., the ability to understand or produce different grammatical structures within the
context of a sentence), and metalinguistic knowledge of syntax (i.e., the ability to manipulate and
reflect on the grammatical structures of language), both contribute to text comprehension. Syntac-
tic skills also predict rate of growth in reading comprehension from the upper-elementary to the
middle school years (Farnia & Geva, 2013). Nevertheless, similar to the findings with morpho-
logical skills, an association between syntactic skills and reading comprehension is not always
detectable across groups that vary by English proficiency or grade level. Geva and Farnia (2012)
found 5th-graders’ syntactic skills (measured by the CELF Formulated Sentences subtest) were predict-
ive of reading comprehension only for participants designated as English learners, but not for Eng-
lish proficient students. Moreover, this relation was significant in grade 5, but not in grade 2. It is
also the case that the relation between syntax and other language skills has been found to vary
across studies. Foorman and colleagues found that, in grade 5 to 10, syntactic skills (measured by
the CELF Recalling Sentence subtest and grammatical judgment task) and vocabulary knowledge form
a “general oral language factor” to predict reading comprehension; yet, only in grade 4, their
syntax-specific factor was predictive of reading comprehension beyond general oral language and
decoding (Foorman, Koon, Petscher, Mitchell, & Truckenmiller, 2015). Kieffer et al. (2016) found
that syntactic, morphological, and vocabulary skills comprise a general language comprehension
factor in grade 3–5 in their sample of monolingual and emergent bilingual students.
At the level of inter-sentential relations, knowledge of connectives that link ideas across
sentences (e.g., however, even though) has also been shown to support text understanding. Crosson
and Lesaux (2013) found that 5th-graders’ knowledge of connectives explained unique variance
in comprehension beyond that explained by breadth of vocabulary; yet, the relationship was
stronger for monolingual learners than emergent bilinguals.

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These studies reveal that general linguistic skills at the morphology, syntactic, and intra-
sentential levels contribute to reading comprehension; yet, significant relations between these
general linguistic skills and reading abilities are not always consistently found across grades or dif-
ferent socio-demographic groups. Given the various instruments used to measure morpho-
syntactic skills and the different populations tested, generalizing findings is problematic due to the
scarcity of direct replication studies. Besides the need for replication, the discrepancies across
studies also call for a line of research that examines not only general linguistic skills identified by
formal linguistic levels, but also one that focuses, through purposeful and systematic design, on
the particular skills relevant for the context of school literacy.

Beyond General Linguistic Skills: Academic Vocabulary Knowledge

A productive line of research has moved the field beyond the assessment of generalized linguistic
skills to the purposeful identification of academic vocabulary, or the content words that are particu-
larly relevant and useful in the context of school learning. The contribution of general vocabulary
knowledge to reading comprehension has been extensively investigated. Numerous studies docu-
ment considerable individual variability in readers’ vocabulary repertoires and find vocabulary
knowledge to be one of the most important predictors of reading comprehension (Biemiller &
Slonim, 2001; Graves & Fink, 2007; Kieffer & Lesaux, 2007; Stahl & Nagy, 2007). Within the
specific study of academic language, among the many potential lexical, syntactic, or discourse com-
ponents of academic language proficiency, academic vocabulary has also been the most salient and,
so far, the most widely studied (Nagy & Townsend, 2012). This body of research is meritorious
for making the vague concept of academic language more concrete beyond general vocabulary
knowledge. More specifically, this research has distinguished two basic categories of academic
vocabulary: discipline-specific and cross-discipline academic vocabulary. Discipline-specific aca-
demic vocabulary refers primarily to content words (i.e., nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) with
specialized technical meanings (e.g., antioxidant, rhombus, federalism) that are distinctive of
a discipline (e.g., science, math, social studies) (Nagy & Townsend, 2012). The discipline-specific
vocabulary instruments listed in Table 9.1 were designed by researchers to assess gains in vocabu-
lary words explicitly taught in interventions developed to improve reading comprehension and
situated in a specific content area (August et al., 2009; Cervetti, Barber, Dorph, Pearson, & Gold-
schmidt, 2012; Vaughn et al., 2009). Discipline-specific vocabulary assessments evaluate students’
knowledge of these words’ meanings within the context of disciplinary knowledge.3 Cross-
discipline academic vocabulary, also called all-purpose academic vocabulary, refers to high-
frequency academic words with a high dispersion index across content areas (Zeno, Ivens, Millard,
& Duvvuri, 1995). These are high utility words found frequently in texts across content areas
(Hiebert & Kamil, 2005; Snow, Lawrence, & White, 2009) (e.g., process, convert, structure). The
majority of these instruments use the Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000) to select academic
vocabulary words with the goal of assessing the effectiveness of a vocabulary-focused reading inter-
vention (e.g., Academic Word Mastery, Word Generation Academic Vocabulary Instrument, Word Association
Test) (Lesaux et al., 2014; Snow et al., 2009). Not surprisingly, these studies consistently find a
robust relation between academic vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension. These studies
have been particularly insightful in revealing that cross-discipline academic words are often unknown
to adolescents and, thus, pose ubiquitous challenges to accessing the language of school texts.
Inspired by extensive developmental findings on the robust relation between vocabulary and
reading comprehension, as well as by the lack of instruction focused on cross-disciplinary
words, a prolific line of vocabulary-focused reading interventions has marked this last decade.
Overall, these vocabulary interventions have been successful in leading to significant growth in
taught academic vocabulary; yet, for the most part, they have detected only unsatisfactorily

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modest gains—if any—in reading comprehension (Deshler, Palincsar, Biancarosa, & Nair, 2007;
Elleman, Lindo, Morphy, & Compton, 2009; Proctor et al., 2011).
By and large, interventions focused on a single facet of academic language—vocabulary or
morphology—have failed to meaningfully increase reading comprehension. In response,
researchers and educators called for more inclusive conceptualizations of academic language that
would lead to pedagogies guided by the need to scaffold interrelated lexical, grammatical, and
discourse skill sets, instead of isolated word meanings (National Research Council, 2010). After
all, using a rich academic vocabulary repertoire entails interconnecting these words with other
academic discourse resources in order to pack information concisely through subordination and
nominalization, or to signal conceptual relations or stance through precise markers.

Beyond Academic Vocabulary: Academic Language Skill Sets

Two recent productive lines of research provide more inclusive conceptualizations and instruments
to assess academic language: the first focuses on emerging bilinguals’ discipline-specific skills;
the second, on monolingual and bilingual learners’ cross-disciplinary academic language skills.
Within the field of emergent bilinguals, researchers have made important strides in designing
theoretically and psychometrically robust assessments that carefully attend to the disciplinary lan-
guage demands of grade-specific content areas. One innovative effort was led by Bailey and col-
leagues, based on their analyses of classroom interactions, educational standards, and textbooks.
Repurposing item formats typically used to test content, their Academic English Language Proficiency
(AELP) instrument was designed to test knowledge of content-area specific language features (vocabu-
lary, grammar, discourse functions characteristic of mathematics, science, or social studies texts) (Bailey,
Huang, Shin, Farnsworth, & Butler, 2007). Large-scale English proficiency assessments administered to
students identified as English learners (called emergent bilinguals in this chapter) also follow the same
design rationale. As noted above, WIDA-ACCESS and ELPA21 are some of the most innovative tests
available for emergent bilinguals. These assessments measure language proficiency in specific content
areas (i.e., the language of language arts, mathematics, science and social studies) across grades and
modalities (speaking, listening, reading and writing) (Deville et al., 2011; Linquanti & Cook, 2013).
Adopted by a majority of U.S. states in order to comply with the federal requirement of monitoring
U.S. emergent bilinguals’ English proficiency,4 these tests provide an unprecedented opportunity to
move towards common definitions of “English proficiency”, which will enable generalizations and
comparisons across states, and promise to be transformational for pedagogy (Boals et al., 2015).
A more recent line of research focuses on understanding academic language proficiency for bilin-
gual and monolingual students in Grades 4 to 8. Inspired by Bailey et al.’s (2007) assessment blueprint,
this line of research has proposed an operational construct of cross-disciplinary academic language
skills, the Core Academic Language Skills (CALS) and has designed a theoretically and psychometrically
robust assessment, the CALS Instrument (CALS-I). CALS refer to a constellation of high-utility lan-
guage skills called upon to understand the linguistic features prevalent in academic texts across content
areas, but which are typically infrequent in colloquial conversations (Uccelli et al., 2015). As displayed
in Figure 9.1, CALS consists of several domains of language skills that support reading, writing, and
speaking at school (Uccelli & Phillips Galloway, 2017).
CALS-I assesses students’ skills in each domain through different tasks, yet psychometric ana-
lyses have consistently revealed that a single factor model offers the best fit for CALS items, offer-
ing evidence of unidimensionality for the measured construct. Across studies, adolescents’
performance on the CALS-I has been found to be a robust predictor of reading comprehension
in grades 4 to 8, above and beyond the contribution of reading fluency, vocabulary knowledge,
and students’ socioeconomic status (Uccelli et al., 2015). Longitudinal studies have found strong,
reciprocal links between CALS and reading comprehension, with growth from grades 6 to 8 in

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CALS associated with growth in reading comprehension (Phillips Galloway, 2016). One finding
in these studies demanding additional investigation is the relation between students’ CALS and
family socioeconomic status. Controlling for reading fluency, regression analyses have shown that
the impact of SES on reading comprehension becomes non-significant once CALS and academic
vocabulary knowledge are entered in the model. Finally, prior CALS studies reveal considerable
individual variability within socio-economic groups, but overall significant associations with stu-
dents’ socio-economic status, such that students from low-income communities demonstrate
lower performance in CALS-I than their more privileged peers attending the same urban public
schools. Thus, instruments that tap a common, underlying school-relevant proficiency—like that
captured by CALS tasks—are promising in delineating more precisely the knowledge about lan-
guage to support all developing readers, and to design interventions for quality and equity in lan-
guage and literacy instruction (Uccelli & Phillips Galloway, 2017).
The contribution of CALS to reading comprehension is aligned with other studies, including
the work of Sánchez and colleagues (Sánchez, García, & Bustos, 2017), who found that for
skilled readers between 11–13 years old, knowledge of anaphors and organizational signals
uniquely contributed to reading comprehension while controlling for prior knowledge, working
memory, and decoding skills. For struggling readers, though, only knowledge of organizational
signals made a unique contribution (García, Bustos, & Sánchez, 2015; Sánchez et al., 2017).
The review from this section highlights the relevance and promise of having moved beyond
general linguistic skills in order to identify not only discipline-specific but also cross-disciplinary
skills, including vocabulary knowledge and other language skill sets. These studies suggest that
knowledge of this broader constellation of academic language skills displays substantive individual
differences, which are, in turn, associated with reading comprehension for both monolingual and
bilingual populations. Yet, how to translate the current knowledge into practice is of the utmost
importance, given the modest gains we have so far accomplished in moving the needle towards
better comprehension for adolescent readers. As a complement to this quantitative review of aca-
demic language skills, in the next section we move to another, perhaps equally important, yet
still understudied LSL component: metalanguage as a lever for, and a window into, students’
awareness of language and context. We strongly believe that if we are to increase the impact of
language research on pedagogical practices, we need to integrate quantitative and qualitative
lenses and tools that address a highly complex developmental phenomenon and especially, we
need to incorporate insights that come directly from students’ own voices. The qualitative studies
reviewed below offer an insightful starting point.

4. What Does Metalanguage Research Reveal about Adolescents’

Awareness and Perceptions of Academic Discourse Practices?
Teaching language skills, such as those assessed by the CALS-I, is an important, though incom-
plete, approach to expand adolescents’ LSL. Students also need to develop their language aware-
ness in order to evaluate and interpret the language used by writers when reading, and to deploy
LSL resources effectively and flexibly when writing or speaking. Indeed, deep text comprehen-
sion often hinges on a reader’s ability to critically engage the writer’s language (Graesser, 2007).
In classrooms, this process of looking at language to dig deeper is made most visible when stu-
dents and teachers use metalanguage, or language to talk about language (Schleppegrell, 2013). Stu-
dents’ metalanguage has been mostly examined via oral methods— discussions, interviews, and
focus groups—or open-ended written tasks. As we discuss below, in analyzing metalanguage, the
intertwinement of skills, practices, awareness, identity, and value judgments becomes salient and
essential for supporting text comprehension, and for considering how to integrate students’ per-
ceptions into the design of culturally relevant and empowering LSL pedagogy.

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What Role Does the Teaching of Metalanguage Play in Text Comprehension?

Several studies aim to cultivate academic metalanguage, or language to talk about school discourse
practices, often in second language learners, to support students’ understanding of how language
is used in text to communicate meaning (Schleppegrell, 2013). Primarily drawing from Systemic
Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Halliday et al., 2014), qualitative studies by and large examine if the
explicit teaching of technical metalanguage (terms such as nominalizations) and the process of dis-
cussing text using the taught terminology heightens students’ attention to, and awareness of,
a text’s language (Berry, 2004; Hammond, 2016). SFL-rooted instruction aims to help readers
recognize that meaning is constructed by writers through lexical and grammatical choices that
respond to the situational expectations—or communicative needs—of particular contexts (Hasan
& Perrett, 1994; Schleppegrell, 2013). Following a long tradition of research on the use of meta-
language in the context of English-as-a-Foreign-Language classrooms, research conducted primar-
ily in the U.S. and Australia demonstrates the utility of SFL metalanguage teaching in classrooms
with first and second language learners (Brisk & Zisselsberger, 2010; de Oliveira, 2008; French,
2010; Gebhard, Harman, & Seger, 2007; Schleppegrell, 2013; Simard & Jean, 2011). For
instance, in a qualitative study focused on emergent bilinguals and their English monolingual
peers in grades 2–5, Moore and Schleppegrell (2014) illustrate how the teaching of SFL metalan-
guage terminology through frequent dialogic discussions that foregrounded meaning making from
text aided students in seeing patterns in language that facilitated their learning from text. In add-
ition, students were able to use these discoveries to inform their understanding of text’s language
later in the unit (Klingelhofer & Schleppegrell, 2016). Furthermore, Schleppegrell and colleagues
have also demonstrated the value of these approaches to help students comprehend and critique
the complex texts in math, science, social studies, and English language arts (Fang & Schleppe-
grell, 2010; Moore & Schleppegrell, 2014). This message is echoed in Gebhard, Chen, and Brit-
ton (2014), who find that the teaching of metalanguage to 3rd graders in history and science
equips them with tools to write and understand disciplinary texts. Perhaps of greater relevance
for this chapter is Gebhard’s and colleagues’ finding from case studies of focal students that the
teaching of metalanguage also seems to support students’ general language proficiency and reading
comprehension. Gebhard and colleagues’ work joins a host of others, including Gibbons (2006);
Polias and Dare (2006); Quinn (2004), who find that the explicit teaching of SFL metalanguage
terms aids transfer of knowledge about language gained through reading to writing, and back
again, for emergent bilinguals and their classmates.

What Do Students’ Own Metalanguage Reveal about Their Perceptions of

LSL?
Our own work in this area suggests a complementary entry point to the direct teaching of linguistic
terminology. By eliciting student-generated metalanguage, we have analyzed how students’
every day, non-specialist language is re-purposed to describe the language features of school texts
(e.g., students used “longer sentences” to describe a text’s sentence with embedded clauses) (Berry,
2004; Niedzielski & Preston, 2000). Our work also departs from other studies in that we focus not
only on those learning a second language, which is the dominant approach in the existing research
(Berry, 2004; Couper, 2011; Fortune, 2005; Gánem-Gutiérrez & Roehr, 2011; Gebhard et al.,
2014; Gutiérrez, 2016; Jessner, 2005), but also on monolingual English-speaking students, includ-
ing speakers of non-mainstream as well as mainstream varieties of English. Our inquiry into middle
graders’ written and oral reflections on LSL find that, without explicit instruction in linguistic ter-
minology, students already bring apt language to discuss the features and expectations of the lan-
guage of academic texts (Galloway, Stude, & Uccelli, 2015). These elicited multi-party discussions

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provided a space for participants to use student-constructed metalanguage to build on the language
of peers while negotiating the meaning of a text’s language, and they emerged as potentially prom-
ising fertile contexts to foster language awareness. Moreover, in these conversations, out-of-school
language resources are welcome in the conversation, and students are invited to reflect on and dis-
cuss who uses which language resources, and for what purposes, at school and in society at large
(Clark & Ivanic, 1997; Fairclough, 1992, 2003). For instance, in one discussion focused on the
register-switching practices of President Barack Obama, students drew from their knowledge of
African American English and LSL to discuss the various reasons why speakers, and specifically our
44th president, would engage each set of language resources (Dobbs & Phillips Galloway, 2017).
Adolescents’ metalanguage has also been studied using discourse analysis methods to identify
learners’ underlying beliefs about LSL and their motivations for using it (Heller & Morek, 2015;
Phillips Galloway et al., 2015). This work has revealed that students often reflect on the language
of school as “good,” “proper” and “better” when contrasting the academic register mostly with
colloquial language resources used in students’ homes and communities (Bergin & Cooks, 2002;
Flores-González, 2002; Galloway et al., 2015; Perry, 2003). Noticeably absent from students’
comments was an acknowledgment of LSL as a functional set of language features. This suggests
that students are not often exposed to a discussion of why academic language resources might be
supportive—or not—for certain communicative tasks, an area that deserves pedagogical attention
and intentional design to counter value judgments associated with various language resources.
Overall, metalanguage research illuminates promising ways in which LSL instruction in the
service of text understanding can foster the understanding of academic language resources as
functional choices for particular contexts. This instruction would promote a plural vision of lan-
guage usage, where home and school language are viewed as equally useful depending on the
message, context and audience.

5. A Vision to Advance Practice-Relevant Research

In this final section, we summarize the main lessons from this review, propose an emerging
vision for an LSL pedagogical approach, and close our chapter by proposing areas for future
research.
First, we highlight four main insights that emerge form our synthesis:

1. The substantial individual variability in adolescents’ academic languages skills—both in emer-

gent bilingual and monolingual populations—and their significant contribution to reading
comprehension unequivocally shows that expanding adolescents’ language skills to support
text understanding needs to be a pedagogical priority. As reviewed in this chapter, academic
language proficiency is predictive of reading comprehension above and beyond general
vocabulary knowledge (in addition to word recognition skills). Extensive evidence demon-
strates that beyond vocabulary, several other morphological, syntactic, and discourse skills
contribute to reading comprehension. Perhaps more relevant for adolescent literacy peda-
gogy, the field has now identified high-utility skill sets within content areas (e.g., WIDA)
and across content areas (e.g., CALS) that support text comprehension and can inform pre-
service and in-service teachers’ professional training.
2. Relatedly, findings indicate that promoting vocabulary knowledge, morphological, or syntac-
tic skills in isolation does not prepare readers to put these skills into use in the practice of
understanding text. Language skills are actualized and learned in situated social practices
where multiple interconnected skills are integrated in particular ways in order to accomplish
specific purposes. Teaching skills in isolation without embedding them in authentic LSL

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practices with plenty of opportunities to “do things with LSL skills” (Austin, 1962) counteracts
what we know from extensive pragmatics-based research on language development.
3. Metalanguage emerges from these findings as a component of LSL-P that can be promoted
to increase students’ language awareness in the service of text comprehension. Teaching
technical metalanguage for text analysis, as well as eliciting students’ spontaneous metalan-
guage to elicit language-rich conversations about language and context, appear promising
and deserve further research attention.
4. Minimal, but insightful, data from students’ own voices suggest that adolescents are highly
aware of the socio-political value judgments typically associated with LSL; yet, minimally, if
at all, aware of the functionality of LSL or the potential to use it flexibly to sharpen their
own meanings and dynamically construct their own identities.

Whereas theory and research need to isolate aspects of a phenomenon to study them in depth,
educational research that seeks to improve pedagogy needs to go further to thoughtfully integrate
different pieces of research. The integration of these findings, thus, call for future research
focused on interventions that, while paying attention to academic language skills, understand that
these skills are best fostered in the authentic context of situated language and literacy practices
and pay close attention to adolescents’ identities. Recent and promising initiatives (Palincsar &
Schleppegrell, 2014; Snow et al., 2009; QTEL: Walqui & Van Lier, 2010) already implement
more comprehensive approaches which promisingly locate the teaching of language in the
authentic practices of text meaning-making. Furthermore, instructional approaches intently
designed to invite students to sharpen their own meanings through reflective and functional lan-
guage choices have the potential of achieving meaningful results (e.g., using academic language
skills and practices, such as persuasive essays, to convince authorities of a problem they care about
in their schools or communities).

An Emerging Vision for an LSL Pedagogical Approach

Informed by these findings, we propose an emerging vision for a comprehensive pedagogical approach.
By focusing on language resources as functional and flexible choices that support effective com-
munication, instruction inspired by the LSL framework departs from subtractive or prescriptive
approaches (focused on “correct language”), and from appropriateness-based approaches (which
see academic language as categorically distinct from colloquial language and, rigidly, as the appro-
priate language for academic contexts). Additive approaches have been criticized because they
typically communicate to students that their home language is adequate for home and friends,
but that there is no place for it at school. Critics rightly point out that these approaches run the
risk of replacing the prescriptive lens of subtractive approaches with a sociolinguistically descrip-
tive but rigid lens of appropriateness that continues to perpetuate the notion of linguistic hier-
archies (Flores & Rosa, 2015). Our vision entails a “two-way street approach” in which students’
academic discourse practices and skills are expanded, while also teachers’ repertoire of practices is
reframed and extended to understand how to explicitly value and leverage students’ out-of-
school language resources.
In our pedagogical vision, students’ learning goal is not mastering academic language as a set
of conventions to be followed, but achieving critical rhetorical flexibility. Rhetorical flexibility refers to
the ability to use language flexibly and effectively to navigate an increasing variety of social con-
texts (Ferguson, 1994; Ravid & Tolchinsky, 2002). Critical rhetorical flexibility entails an increas-
ing reflective attention to how language choices convey particular meanings in order to either
embrace—or depart from—conventional academic language resources. Learners are, then, not
passive absorbers or reproducers of academic practices, but agents who analyze and craft language

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reflectively to process and convey their own meanings. LSL is thus understood not as a fixed language
variety or register,5 but as a set of language resources that belong to the academic language register,
but which language users choose to deploy flexibly to achieve specific communicative or learning
purposes. Skilled multilingual or multidialectal speakers, as they “translanguage,” draw resources from
their multiple languages to communicate more effectively and to elicit or disrupt allegiances with spe-
cific communities (think about Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La frontera with its strategic mixing of
English and Spanish or Barack Obama’s multiple ways of speaking to address multiple audiences)
(Alim et al., 2016). Inviting and empowering students to not only abide by the conventions of aca-
demic discourse, but also to encourage them to creatively depart from them through reflective
choices and to use their multilingual language resources to make meaning from text, lies at the core
of preparing them to be independent learners of content and language in an interconnected world,
where not only information is constantly updated, but language also changes dynamically as the result
of increased inter-language contact, new societal communicative needs, and innovative technologies.
Figure 9.2 offers a visual display of learners’ cumulative expansion of discourse practices and language
skills across contexts, with ways of using language falling along a continuum where new academic
language repertoires are incorporated and, of course, used in synchrony with familiar language struc-
tures. Slobin’s classic developmental principle of “new forms first express old functions and new func-
tions are first expressed by old forms” (Slobin, 1973, p. 184) is insightful here, as we reflect on the
lack of rigid boundaries across contexts. Throughout development, often “old conversational forms”
acquire “new academic functions,” such as first used by young children in “I’ll go first!” and used
later in the upper grades as a discourse marker in a school essay.
Academic language skills have been described recently as “under the hood” skills, or enabling
skills to access text (Compton & Pearson, 2016). However, the broader definition of LSL goes
beyond skills to also encompass understanding how different language choices result in different

CRITICAL RHETORICAL FLEXIBILITY

language awareness

Figure 9.2 Learners’ cumulative expansion of discourse practices and languages skills across contexts

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meanings and identity choices (Heller & Morek, 2015; Schleppegrell, 2004). This entails
a learning arc that goes beyond the “under the hood” characterization and constitutes an aspect
of critical comprehension and self-expression (e.g., identifying detached stance as a way to hide
responsibility or agency). We contend that grasping LSL learning in its full complexity and invit-
ing students’ full identities into the classroom is a fundamental ingredient to first convince them
of the value of this learning enterprise.

Future directions: Widening the analytic lens to address current gaps

We end this chapter with a few suggestions to bridge research and practice in order to address
current translation and implementation gaps.

• We advocate a four-legged educational research paradigm: (1) genuine research-practitioner

partnerships, (2) multidisciplinary teams, (3) multiple sources that represent multiple voices,
and (4) methodologies that integrate qualitative and quantitative approaches.
• The field seems ready to work towards a consensus on operational definitions of LSL, its
components, and a set of instruments that enables a systematic planning of replication studies
that can gradually lead to cautious generalizations of findings to inform pedagogy.
• Moving from investigating and teaching reading and writing mostly independently to study-
ing LSL as a multimodality construct, examining how development and practice in one
modality promotes or consolidates language skills in other modalities (for instance, while
researchers and educators have internalized the idea that reading reflectively expands students’
writing skills; the reversed direction of writing skills as promoting or consolidating language
skills that can then be applied to reading is still much less investigated and infrequent in
school practices).
• Designing and investigating the impact of a suite of tools that link students’ assessment
results to pedagogical dimensions is sorely needed. For example, a linked set of assessments,
classroom observation protocols, and out-of-school surveys would be promising to monitor
and learn about oral and written LSL learning opportunities that relate to students’ advances
in oral and written language proficiencies.
• Developmental and intervention studies that integrally analyze discourse practices, language
skills, and language awareness are needed. The research undertaken thus far has focused
on assessing the contribution of academic language skills to text understanding. This is
a vital first step in designing research-informed instruction. However, we argue that the
complexity of learners’ LSL development calls for also investigating students’ growth in
their awareness of LSL as a set of socio-culturally situated, functional and flexible prac-
tices. Micro-linguistic analyses of interactions have the potential to greatly inform how,
and why, intervention components work or fail under particular circumstances (O’Con-
nor et al., 2015).
• In light of the most recent findings of LSL-P as a multifaceted developmental phenomenon, we
contend the field will benefit from also analyzing educators’ understanding of LSL and how
it translates into their situated classroom practices. The available research provides findings
that are precise enough to advance educators’ awareness of the skills and practices that are teach-
able, malleable, and urgent to promote. A complementary, and perhaps more important aspect, is
fostering educators’ understanding of LSL from a socio-cultural perspective and an assets-based
LSL pedagogy. This is essential to provide optimal conditions to motivate adolescents to embrace
LSL in order to sharpen their own meanings, deepen their understanding of themselves in the
world, and contest others’ ideas by choosing reflectively from a wide repertoire of language
choices.

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To conclude, we remind our readers that in each situated social practice and context, speakers
and writers draw from their multiple language repertoires with the triple purpose of establishing
relations, transmitting information, and also constructing social identities in interaction with
others. Understanding that welcoming students’ out-of-school languages entails also welcoming
who they are is an initial fundamental tenet for successfully inviting students to continue to
expand their language resources. Scaffolding their understanding of LSL, not as prescriptive and
rigid, but as functional and flexible—in other words, as expanding language choices to communi-
cate more precisely, reflectively, and flexibly—seems to be an often overlooked, yet key, ingredi-
ent to encourage their LSL learning by empowering their own voices.

Notes
1 BICS refers to conversational fluency or proficiency in the language used for every day conversation;
whereas CALP refers to and academic language proficiency or the language skills used, both in oral and
written modes, for learning at school.
2 Articles published between 2000 and 2016 were searched in multiple databases (e.g., Academic Search
Premier, Education Abstracts (H.W. Wilson), ERIC and Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts)
first using the keywords ‘academic language’ and ‘reading comprehension’. Then, we complemented the search
by including keywords academic language sub-constructs including ‘academic vocabulary,’ ‘syntax,’ ‘morph-
ology,’ ‘discourse’ in combination with ‘reading comprehension’. All studies focused on mid-adolescents (i.e.,
upper-elementary through middle/high school).
3 In our review, we identified fewer discipline-specific vocabulary measures as compared to cross-
disciplinary measures, partially because discipline-specific vocabulary is often implicitly assessed within con-
tent knowledge assessments instead of as an isolated construct (Bailey, Huang, Shin, Farnsworth, & Butler,
2007). Thus, many more related initiatives are to be found in the field of disciplinary literacy, yet we only
included studies that explicitly tested associations with a reading comprehension measure.
4 At the time of writing this chapter, 39 U.S. States belong to the WIDA consortium and ten belong to
ELPA21 (South Carolina belongs to both).
5 Academic language is often described as a register, i.e., a language variety that is used regularly for specific
purposes in the context of school learning (Biber & Conrad, 2009; Ferguson, 1994).

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 10
Readers’ Individual Differences in
Affect and Cognition
Emily Fox

Overview
As Ruth Strang made plain, it has long been accepted that the reader’s feelings, beliefs, and emo-
tions play a critical role in reading: “Obviously people read with their emotions, their prejudices,
their suppressed desires, their loves, and their hates as well as with their intelligence and their
background knowledge” (Strang, 1942, p. 102). In order to understand the particulars of why
people read, what they read, how they read, and what they take away from their reading, it is
necessary to take into account affect-related individual differences. Affective individual differences
have a critical interactive role in reading experiences and outcomes. From think-aloud research
in reading (e.g., Wyatt et al., 1993), there are strong indications that affect runs alongside of,
informs, feeds into, gets feedback from, and sometimes fights with cognition during reading.
Affect has a presence even in cognitively-oriented stories about reading processes, such as
Kintsch’s (1998) information-processing based construction-integration model of reading compre-
hension, which includes a role for emotional/affective response in relation to the construction of
a situation model and also in relation to monitoring and evaluation of comprehension. Readers
can differ not only in their personal affective or emotional responses, dispositions, tendencies, and
preferences, but also in the role that these play, the importance that readers give them, and the
control that readers have over this (e.g., See, Petty, & Fabrigar, 2008).
However, the research on individual differences in reading has been dominated by an
emphasis on the cognitive; not nearly as much attention has been given to the affective side of
the story, either in its own right, or in terms of interactions with cognitive processes and prod-
ucts (Afflerbach, 2016). On the curriculum and policy side, although the Common Core State
Standards related to reading (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010) include wide read-
ing, adoption of a critical stance, open-mindedness and empathetic perspective-taking, and
becoming a self-directed learner among the desired outcomes of a K-12 education, the associated
affective experiences and dispositions are not addressed in that document. Given the continued
emphasis in the current educational climate on reading outcomes such as test scores or measurable
learning of content, it appears that what is thought to matter with regard to reading is under-
standing the cognitive machinery at work; however, focusing exclusively or even primarily on
that cognitive machinery seems short-sighted. Our understanding of individual differences in
these cognitive outcomes and our ability to address them instructionally will have serious gaps if
the role of affective individual differences is not taken into account.

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As a step toward pointing out some of those possible gaps, and perhaps also toward directions
for addressing them, the question this chapter will address is: What does the research show about
the connection of affect-related individual differences in readers with readers’ individual differ-
ences in cognitive processes and outcomes from reading? This question is an opportunity to high-
light the critical role of affective individual differences on a number of levels, and to bring to the
fore the urgency of addressing these instructionally and in educational policy, as well as in the
research.

Setting Out the Territory

The types of individual differences in cognition that are involved here include differences related
to the reader’s intellectual functioning and capacities, as well as the outcomes of such functioning
and capacities (for reading, this would include comprehension, evaluation, and learning from
text). Individual readers can differ in cognitive capabilities and resources, in how these are
deployed in a given reading situation and in their control over such deployment. They can also
differ in how these capabilities and resources develop, in terms of rate of development, type of
experience supporting development, or trajectory of development.
Affect-related individual differences, for the purposes of this chapter, will be broadly construed
as differences related to the reader’s feelings (considered as both state- and trait-like), which
include emotions, beliefs, attitudes, and preferences. Individual readers can differ in the level or
intensity of affect they tend to experience, and in the type or valence of the affect evoked by
what is encountered in a given reading experience; they can also differ in their control over their
own affective or emotional response. They can differ as well in the typical affect with which
they approach both reading in general, and different types of reading experiences. They can
differ in their preferences, attitudes, interests, and beliefs. A final important type of individual
difference between readers that also needs to be considered here is that readers can differ in how
affect and cognition are related for them, and in their ability to control or regulate that connec-
tion. For the purpose of generating an overview that addresses the question of this chapter, what
counts as affect-related individual differences is framed broadly. In addition, setting out and main-
taining strict categorical boundaries for the various constructs involved is beyond the scope of
what is attempted here.

Chapter Organization
The review of literature is organized into three main parts, drawn from the RAND (RAND
Reading Study Group, 2002) framework for reading comprehension that distinguishes the reader,
the text, and the task as bound together in reading comprehension. The research on affective
individual differences and their relation to cognitive individual differences in reading will be
organized according to its focus on the reader’s self, on the content of the text, and on the activ-
ity of reading. The research included in the review is drawn from publications in peer-reviewed
journals since 2000, which is when the most recent chapter on motivation and engagement
(Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000) appeared in the Handbook of Reading Research. For each part, what
the recent research has had to say about how these affect-related individual differences in readers
are associated with cognitive individual differences will be summarized, with regard to what
types of things we know and how we know them. This will enable the identification of emer-
gent or remaining questions that deserve attention, as well as barriers that might be standing in
the way of meeting the needs for research in this area. Along with identifying gaps, the chapter
will also address possible approaches to future research regarding affect-related individual differ-
ences in readers, and why this matters.

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Review of Literature

Affect and the Reader’s Self

Three general categories of affect-related individual differences centered on the reader’s self were
investigated regarding their connection with individual differences in cognitive reading processes
or outcomes in the research. The first was self-beliefs, namely self-efficacy for reading and reading
self-concept. The second was the reader’s identified dispositional needs or preferences, primarily
need for cognition. The third was the reader’s emotionality, with regard to both sensitivity to
specific emotions and more general sensitivity toward the experiences and feelings of others, or
empathy.

Self-beliefs and Reading

Self-efficacy beliefs have a central position in expectancy-value theory, which posits that
a person’s achievement motivation related to a particular type of task will be driven by both the
person’s expectancy of success (typically measured as feelings of confidence about being able to
complete the task) and the person’s value for the task and its outcomes (Wigfield & Cambria,
2010). However, there are mixed results in the research regarding self-efficacy’s hypothesized
role as an affect-related predictor of reading achievement. The lack of coherence in the findings
appears to be related to how self-efficacy is measured, in whom it is measured, what aspect of
reading it is expected to predict, and what other contributing factors are taken into account. In
general, though, it appears that self-efficacy beliefs may be linked to concurrent reading perform-
ance chiefly insofar as they reflect the reader’s actual cognitive capabilities and prior reading
achievement. In the studies reviewed, the anticipated independent role of self-efficacy beliefs as
promoting engagement and persistence, and therefore achievement in reading, was not strongly
established.
In a number of recent studies of school-age children investigating cognitive and motivational
predictors of reading achievement, self-efficacy did not remain as an independent predictor of
reading comprehension when relevant cognitive (such as reading ability, verbal skill, strategy use)
and motivational (task value) factors were taken into account (Anmarkrud & Bråten, 2009; Cart-
wright, Marshall, & Wray, 2016; McGeown, Duncan, Griffiths, & Stothard, 2015). Similarly, in
a study of undergraduates reading science texts, self-efficacy was not an independent predictor of
generation of text-connecting inferences when controlling for reading comprehension skill (Clin-
ton, 2015). Self-efficacy predicted other aspects of reading for younger readers, such as word/
nonword reading (Cartwright et al., 2016) and reading speed (McGeown et al., 2015). However,
in a study of 6- to 8-year-old poor readers, perceived reading competence was a negative pre-
dictor of scores for single word reading and spelling, which was hypothesized to reflect inflated
self-beliefs that possibly served as a defense mechanism (Fives et al., 2014).
On the other hand, a number of studies found that self-efficacy predicted reading compre-
hension in certain circumstances. For example, in a study of different item formats (multiple
choice and constructed response) on a reading comprehension measure, self-efficacy independ-
ently predicted fifth graders’ performance on both types of items when also controlling for
other cognitive factors (Solheim, 2011). This could be due to the inclusion of a specific self-
efficacy item addressing expectancy for performance on reading comprehension tests, and to
the lack of control for prior reading achievement. Self-efficacy for reading was an independ-
ent predictor of scores on a standardized reading test for middle school students when other
predictors included the other aspects of motivation measured on the Motivation for Reading
Questionnaire (MRQ) developed by Wigfield and Guthrie (1995); however, cognitive

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controls and prior achievement were not included (Mucherah & Yoder, 2008). A cross-
sectional study with 8- and 12-year-olds found that participants’ sense of self-efficacy in read-
ing was moderately related to reading achievement for both age groups, but looked only at
simple correlations (Smith, Smith, Gilmore, & Jameson, 2012). Finally, a large-scale longitu-
dinal study found that perceived reading competence and intrinsic motivation for reading (at
fifth grade) together predicted later achievement (at eighth grade), even when controlling for
student background factors and prior reading achievement, although the effect was small
(Froiland & Oros, 2014). The independent effect of self-efficacy was not determined,
however.
The other self-belief addressed in this body of research was the very closely-related construct
of reading self-concept, which also involves perceived reading competence, but the source of the
perceptions can differ somewhat from those feeding into reading self-efficacy (Schiefele, Schaff-
ner, Möller, & Wigfield, 2012). Self-concept has been considered to have a broader scope than
self-efficacy, and to include perceived difficulty of reading and attitudes toward reading as well as
perceived reading competence (Chapman, Tunmer, & Prochnow, 2000).
Studies investigating the role of reading self-concept tended to address questions about reading
development and change over time. In studies with younger students, it appeared that reading
self-concept can be somewhat unstable during the first year of school (e.g., Aunola, Leskinen,
Onatsu-Arvilommi, & Nurmi, 2002); however, differences in reading self-concept that emerge,
even in this early period, can persist where they are associated with poor reading-related skills
such as knowledge of letter names and phonemic awareness (Chapman et al., 2000). It also
appeared that changes in reading self-concept are driven by reading achievement (Aunola et al.,
2002; Chapman et al., 2000). However, it appears that the converse relation, that reading self-
concept predicts growth in reading performance, is not well supported by the evidence from lon-
gitudinal studies. No relation of reading self-concept to growth in comprehension was seen in
a large-scale quantitative study with secondary students (Retelsdorf, Köller, & Möller, 2011), and
a smaller qualitative study with middle school students (Hall, 2016). Reading self-concept was
consistently associated with reading performance over time for first graders, in a study using
a person-oriented approach to studying students’ self-concept, intrinsic motivation, and achieve-
ment in reading and math, but its independent role as a predictor of reading performance was
not addressed (Viljaranta, Aunola, & Hirvonen, 2016).
The concurrent relation between reading self-concept and reading performance for fifth
graders was investigated by De Naeghel et al. (De Naeghel, Van Keer, Vansteenkiste, &
Rosseel, 2012), who found that reading self-concept predicted reading comprehension both
independently and as mediated by teacher-rated engagement, over and above the contribu-
tion of students’ autonomous and controlled motivations for reading. The interactive role
of intrinsic/extrinsic motivation for reading and self-concept was also investigated by Park
(2011), using data for US fourth graders from the 2006 Progress in International Reading
Literacy Study (PIRLS). Park distinguished self-referenced versus peer-referenced perceived
competence in reading, based on the wording of the items, and found that both types of
self-concept contributed to explaining reading performance, when controlling for motiv-
ation and reading habits. However, the positive relation between peer-referenced perceived
competence and reading performance was stronger for students who also had a higher level
of self-referenced perceived competence. In addition, independent reading of informational
text outside of school was positively correlated with self-referenced perceived competence,
but negatively correlated with peer-referenced perceived competence, suggesting that these
two aspects of self-concept captured different perceptions about the self as reader.

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Need for Cognition and Reading

Need for cognition (NFC) refers to an individual’s dispositional preference for engaging in cog-
nitive effort (Cacioppo, Petty, Feinstein, & Jarvis, 1996). An individual reader’s propensity to
exert cognitive effort while reading when it is required could reasonably be expected to make
a difference in the reading processes and reading outcomes for that reader, and a number of stud-
ies, primarily with university students as participants, have investigated NFC as linked with indi-
vidual differences in reading processes and outcomes. Overall, it appears that NFC is related to
the reader’s cognitive effort for certain types of processing during reading, and in that way can
also emerge as a predictor of outcomes such as reading comprehension; its role in relation to
persuasion is not yet clear, however, based on the findings from these studies.
NFC made an independent contribution to prediction of reading comprehension for under-
graduates, over and above the variance accounted for by the reader’s beliefs about reading, for
both narrative and expository texts (Dai & Wang, 2007). A strong role for NFC in comprehen-
sion was similarly seen in a study with upper secondary students, which tested a model including
both cognitive and affective individual difference variables (prior knowledge, individual interest,
NFC, epistemic beliefs) and processing variables (deep strategy use, effort, situational interest). In
this model, NFC predicted multiple text comprehension indirectly, through its contribution to
deep strategy use (Bråten, Anmarkrud, Brandmo, & Strømsø, 2014).
The possible role for NFC in very specific types of effortful comprehension-related processing
was investigated in eye-tracking studies (Kaakinen, Olkoniemi, Kinneri, & Hyönä, 2014; Olko-
niemi, Ranta, & Kaakinen, 2016), in which it was found that NFC was not associated simply
with expending cognitive effort; the type of effort seemed to matter. Interpretation of written
irony involved extra reader effort, but working memory capacity (WMC), rather than NFC or
self-perceived use of sarcasm, predicted whether readers returned to re-read the target ironic sen-
tences (Kaakinen et al., 2014). NFC also did not predict rereading in texts including written sar-
casm; on the other hand, NFC did predict rereading of metaphors in text (Olkoniemi et al.,
2016), which the authors interpreted as due to the opportunity for reasoning offered by figuring
out metaphors.
Several studies addressed the interaction of NFC and prior knowledge, with regard to readers’
learning from text, evaluation of arguments, and response to persuasive texts (Diakidoy, Christo-
doulou, Floros, Iordanou, & Kargopoulos, 2015; Kendeou & van den Broek, 2007; Murphy,
Holleran, Long, & Zeruth, 2005), with somewhat mixed findings. Diakidoy et al. (2015) found
that half of their university student participants did not correctly identify the main claim in writ-
ten arguments of better or worse quality; nonetheless, the students evaluated the texts positively
and found them to be persuasive, regardless of the actual quality of the argument. In particular,
students with higher NFC but lower topic knowledge were more likely to evaluate the text posi-
tively, regardless of the actual quality of the argument presented. In a study involving the reading
of refutational or non-refutational science text by undergraduates, neither working memory cap-
acity nor NFC made a difference in how readers read, or in their memory for the text (Kendeou
& van den Broek, 2007). However, Murphy et al. (2005) found that NFC made an independent
contribution to predicting students’ change in beliefs after reading persuasive texts on social
issues, over and above the contribution of the other motivational factors of topic interest, text
interestingness, and topic beliefs.
A final line of research related to NFC looked at individual differences in readers’ processing
and persuasion depending on the readers’ meta-bases, which refers to their interest in processing
affective versus cognitive information. In one study, the role of meta-bases was compared to the
role of structural bases, which refers to readers’ efficiency at processing affective versus cognitive
information (See et al., 2008). Meta-bases but not NFC, need for affect, or structural bases

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predicted reading time for affective versus cognitive information in persuasive texts; both meta-
bases and structural bases predicted persuasion, with the text that matched the reader’s meta-bases
and structural bases being more persuasive for that reader. The authors suggested that future
research is needed to determine the mechanisms behind these effects and the origins of people’s
meta-bases and structural bases.

Emotional Response and Reading

Two levels at which individual differences in the reader’s emotional responses could be con-
nected with differences in cognitive processing or outcomes were addressed in the research: sen-
sitivity to particular emotions in the processing of emotional information, and the more general
trait of empathy as a capacity to respond emotionally to others. Studies discussed here all used
university students as participants.
Individual differences in sensitivity to particular types of emotion-related information influ-
enced readers’ processing of such information, in studies concerning anxiety (Calvo & Castillo,
2001) and disgust (Silva, Montant, Ponz, & Ziegler, 2012). In the study by Calvo and Castillo
(2001), trait anxiety level biased the reader toward drawing predictive inferences that confirmed
the expectations associated with that anxiety level, either the expectation of harm (high trait anx-
iety) or the expectation of a neutral outcome (low trait anxiety). The authors argued that this
reflected the reader’s prioritization of emotion-congruent information and sensitization to con-
texts evoking either vigilance (high anxiety) or threat avoidance (low anxiety). Similarly,
responses to disgust-related words in a lexical decision task were predicted by sensitivity to dis-
gust-related information, but not by features of the words themselves or the reader’s level of
empathy, interpreted as general emotion sensitivity (Silva et al., 2012). Reaction times and accur-
acy for lexical decisions on disgust-related words indicated response inhibition for high-disgust-
sensitivity participants, but also facilitation for low-disgust sensitivity-participants. Looking at
emotional processing more broadly, efficiency in processing of emotion-related information pre-
dicted readers’ capabilities for processing written sarcasm, in an eye-tracking study (Olkoniemi
et al., 2016).
The relation of empathy with other reading-related skills (phonemic awareness, decoding, and
fluency) was addressed in a study of dyslexic and non-dyslexic readers (Gabay, Shamay-Tsoory,
& Goldfarb, 2016). Empathy was measured as cognitive empathy (fantasy and perspective-taking)
and emotional empathy (empathic concern and emotional distress). Total empathy and cognitive
empathy were positively correlated with scores for phonemic awareness, decoding, and fluency,
which the authors suggested could reflect an overlapping role for a particular brain region, the
temporo-parietal junction, which has been implicated in both dyslexia and deficits in empathy.
Alternatively, the types of school and social experiences associated with poor early reading skills
could contribute to poor social and communicative development, making it harder to relate to
the experiences of others.

Affect and the Reading Content

Readers’ individual differences in affect related to the content of the text were addressed in
research on the role of the reader’s feelings about the content, principally interest in the topic or
domain addressed by the text, and the reader’s beliefs or opinions about the content addressed by
the text. The role of domain and topic interest in reading is a well-established research area; the
alignment (or not) of readers’ topic beliefs or opinions with what is being said in the text is
a relatively newer area of research, generally associated with investigations of conceptual change
and multiple text comprehension.

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Interest and Text Content

Individual differences in the reader’s interest related to the content of the text can be at the
broader level of a particular area of knowledge, such as an academic domain, or at the more
focused level of a particular topic within a broader domain; in either case, this type of interest
would be considered to reflect what is termed individual or personal interest in that domain,
a stable trait-like individual characteristic (Alexander & Jetton, 1996). Topic interest can also be
considered to be a type of situational interest that reflects a less stable affective response to the
particulars of the reading situation (Ainley, Hidi, & Berndorff, 2002). In the recent research,
studies of content-related interest as an affective individual difference factor connected with cog-
nitive reading processes and outcomes have considered its direct or indirect role in reading com-
prehension, in learning new information from text, and in conceptual change, or change in topic
beliefs. Studies discussed here used readers of varying ages, elementary or high school students as
well as undergraduates. Overall, the evidence tends to support a connection of content-related
interest and reading outcomes, but this often occurs indirectly through the motivational contribu-
tion of such interest to reading engagement in some form.
The contribution of interest in the content to reading comprehension has been investigated in
a number of studies. For example, interest in the passages used in the assessment was positively
related to performance on comprehension test items from the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS)
across grade levels tested (fourth through eighth), when controlling for gender and verbal ability
(Bray & Barron, 2003–2004). The authors suggested that using relatively low-interest passages
might be the best way to assess comprehension without noise from interest effects, which were
small but reliable in their large-scale study. The indirect contribution of topic interest to compre-
hension when taking into account participants’ WMC, motivation, degree of mind wandering
during reading, and prior experience related to the topic was investigated by Unsworth and
McMillan (2013). Topic interest predicted motivation to do well on the task, which negatively
predicted mind wandering. Mind wandering, in turn, negatively predicted comprehension for
their undergraduate participants. In the two studies just discussed, however, interest was measured
after the text had been read and the comprehension assessment completed, which makes it more
difficult to interpret these results as indicating effects of interest on comprehension. For under-
graduates reading a dual-positional text on a controversial issue (Kardash & Howell, 2000), parti-
cipants’ post-reading rating of their interest in the text was related to their use of
comprehension-fostering reading strategies as evident in their think-alouds while reading, and
also to their later level of recall of the text.
Moving beyond comprehension, several studies have addressed the role of content-related
interest as supporting learning of new information from the text. When high school students
were grouped by their level of prior topic knowledge and topic interest for science texts, higher
interest only improved recall for readers with low topic knowledge, while it improved both
recall and deeper-comprehension for readers with high topic knowledge (Boscolo & Mason,
2003). The role of content-related interest was unpacked further in studies that also considered
the reader’s affective and motivational response during the reading situation, where content-
related interest was only an indirect contributor to learning from text. For example, content-
related interest was related to students’ affective response and persistence when reading, which
was then related to learning from the text for high school students reading science or pop culture
texts (Ainley et al., 2002). In studies considering the relative importance for learning from text of
choice, topic interest (measured before reading, as expectation of interest in reading the text),
and situational interest (measured after reading, as experienced interest in the text and its topic),
the most important contributor to outcome performance was situational interest, or post-task
interest in the text and its content (Flowerday, Schraw, & Stevens, 2004; Flowerday & Shell,

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2015). This contribution was only indirect, through its association with attitude and engagement
when reading (both also retrospectively reported).
A possible cognitive mechanism linking content-related interest with learning from text,
amount of inference generation, was considered in a study by Clinton and van den Broek (2012),
but this linkage was not conclusively supported by their findings. Topic interest did predict learning
from text for their undergraduate participants, and was also related to learning from text through its
association with inference generation (observed in think-alouds), when controlling for reading
comprehension ability. However, this was only true for the more coherently-written of the two
science texts used, and it was only true for higher-level comprehension questions, not recall.
Moving beyond the learning of new information from text, the role of content-related interest
in readers’ conceptual change, knowledge revision, or change in beliefs about a topic was investi-
gated in several studies as well, with mixed findings. The degree to which high school students’
beliefs about knowledge (epistemological understanding) and their topic interest contributed to
their critical interpretation of a dual-position text on transgenic food, to their development of
conceptual understanding and to change in their beliefs about the topic was investigated by
Mason and Boscolo (2004). Topic interest made an independent contribution to students’ devel-
opment of conceptual understanding, but not to their critical interpretation or belief change after
reading, which were both influenced by the students’ level of epistemological understanding.
Prior topic knowledge was included as a covariate in this study. Similarly, topic interest did not
predict belief change for undergraduates reading persuasive texts, over and above the contribution
of need for cognition and topic interestingness (Murphy et al., 2005). However, in a study with
fifth graders reading traditional instructional texts or refutational texts intended to correct miscon-
ceptions about the scientific topic of light, topic interest did predict conceptual change, as did
text type and level of epistemological understanding (Mason, Gava, & Boldrin, 2008). Reading
comprehension ability was used as a covariate here. It appears, therefore, that the consistent,
albeit indirect, association of topic interest with improvement in the reader’s comprehension and
learning from text, through increased engagement, positive affective response, and use of reading
strategies, may not carry over to conceptual change. Readers may not necessarily adjust their mis-
conceptions more readily for a more interesting topic.

Beliefs and Opinions about Text Content

A relatively new line of research has addressed how the reader’s beliefs and opinions related to
the content of texts might be implicated in how the reader (undergraduates, in all of the studies
reviewed) understands, learns from, or is persuaded by the texts. Learners’ beliefs about the topic
addressed by the text were related to their comprehension processing when reading conflicting
texts, as well as to their comprehension of what was read. For example, topic-specific beliefs
were associated with more instances of monitoring for belief-consistent information and with
more instances of evaluation for belief-inconsistent information, when reading a dual-positional
text about HIV and AIDS (Kardash & Howell, 2000). A related difference in reading outcomes
that suggests differential processing of information that conflicts with the learner’s prior beliefs
was observed in a study of undergraduates reading multiple conflicting science texts about global
warming (Maier & Richter, 2013); readers did a better job on a post-reading verification task for
inferred information (assessing the situation model level of comprehension) when it was belief-
consistent, but did better on a verification task for explicitly stated information (assessing the text-
base level of comprehension) when it was belief-inconsistent. However, differences in processing
argumentative scientific texts were not based on the reader’s prior beliefs about the topics dis-
cussed in the text (Wolfe, Tanner, & Taylor, 2013). Instead, what mattered was whether the
reader reported holding the belief based on evidence or affect. Evidence-based belief was

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associated with more balanced processing (as far as attention to belief-inconsistent information),
and with less biased summaries of a neutral text.
A related line of research has addressed reader preferences and biases in processing related to
narrative texts; in particular, readers’ preferences regarding particular characters influence their
expectations regarding plot outcomes and drive some of their predictive inferences (Rapp &
Gerrig, 2006). The reader’s preferences are presumably driven, mostly normatively, by the
author’s intentions, although individual variability regarding which characters a reader will “root”
for is also evident, and is not linked with trait empathy (Gerrig, Bagelmann, & Mumper, 2016).

Affect and the Reading Task

Several affective aspects of the reader’s approach or response related to the reading task have
been addressed in the research on affect-related differences in readers and their connection with
cognitive outcomes. One is the reader’s feelings about reading, primarily task value, attitude
toward reading, and individual interest in reading. Another is the reader’s specific motivations for
reading, which can be categorized broadly as intrinsic and extrinsic, or autonomous and con-
trolled. A third is the reader’s affective response to the reading task, which includes situational
interest and engagement. A final aspect is the reader’s typical reading choices, which includes
both frequency of reading and what is read.

Feelings about Reading

As discussed in the section above on self-efficacy beliefs, a number of studies have used an
expectancy-value framework when considering the role of readers’ affective individual differences
as contributing to their reading performance. However, in contrast to the more variable findings
regarding the expectancy component of self-efficacy or perceived competence, reading value has
been more consistently found to contribute to the prediction of reading comprehension, even
when controlling for other relevant cognitive and motivational factors (Anmarkrud & Bråten,
2009; Cartwright et al., 2016; Fives et al., 2014; Froiland & Oros, 2014; McGeown et al., 2015).
This was seen for first graders on up to high school students, in both concurrent investigations in
which predictors and outcomes were measured contemporaneously (Anmarkrud & Bråten, 2009;
Cartwright et al., 2016; Fives et al., 2014; McGeown et al., 2015), and longitudinal investigations
in which reading value measured at an earlier age was used to predict later reading comprehen-
sion performance (Froiland & Oros, 2014). There were divergent findings from several studies,
though. Reading value did not make an independent contribution to predicting fifth graders’
scores on a reading comprehension assessment (Solheim, 2011) or to 8- and 12-year-old students’
performance on a performance-based reading assessment (Smith et al., 2012). In addition, first
graders with profiles of low value but high perceived competence were nonetheless observed to
show strong reading performance, which suggested to the authors that when beliefs and values
are separate, beliefs matter more, at least in the early school years (Viljaranta et al., 2016).
In several longitudinal studies, it appeared that interest in reading or attitude toward reading
has more of an influence on growth in reading ability in upper elementary school and beyond,
and less of an impact in the earlier years of elementary school (Kirby, Ball, Geier, Parilla, &
Wade-Woolley, 2011; Kush, Watkins, & Brookhart, 2005; Martínez, Aricak, & Jewell, 2008).
Interest in reading measured in grade 1 was only weakly associated with students’ reading ability
when measured in grade 3 (Kirby et al., 2011). Further, Kush et al. (2005) found that attitude
toward reading (ratings of liking of reading) measured in the fall of grade 3 did not predict spring
grade 3 reading performance on the ITBS, but reading attitude in the third grade did predict
seventh grade ITBS reading scores, even when controlling for prior reading achievement.

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A developmental shift in the strength of the relation between reading attitude and growth in
reading ability is also supported in the findings by Martínez et al. (2008), where reading achieve-
ment at the start of the fifth grade was predicted by reading attitude at the end of the fourth
grade, even when controlling for prior reading ability.
These findings were seen to support a temporal-interactive model of reading development, in
which early reading attitudes influence reading behaviors, which then influence later reading abil-
ities. However, reading interest influenced growth in reading competence only for students in
academic track schools, in a study with German fifth and sixth graders; this relation was not evi-
dent for students in the nonacademic track (Schaffner, Philipp, & Schiefele, 2016). Interest in
reading did not predict undergraduates’ immediate performance on a reading comprehension task
(Patall, 2013), which is in line with the view that its influence, if any, is longer-term.

Motivations for Reading

Readers can differ not only in their attitudes and values related to reading, but also more
broadly in their motivations for reading, which can include attitudes and values as well as
other aspects such as those measured on the MRQ (Wigfield & Guthrie, 1995). These are
typically grouped into intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, or sometimes autonomous and con-
trolled motivations, within the context of self-determination theory (e.g., De Naeghel et al.,
2012). In general, the findings from these studies indicate that the relation of individual differ-
ences in reading motivations to variability in reading performance and reading development is
complex and conditional.
The concurrent relation of reading motivations to reading performance has been addressed in
recent large-scale studies using fifth graders (De Naeghel et al., 2012) and fourth graders (Park,
2011). In the study by De Naeghel et al. (2012), reading motivation was assessed separately for
recreational and academic reading contexts, and had somewhat different roles depending on the
context. Reading motivation for the recreational reading context was related to reading compre-
hension, with a positive relation for autonomous motivation and a negative relation for con-
trolled motivation. However, autonomous reading motivation for the academic reading context
was not related to comprehension; there was also no significant indirect relation between any
type of reading motivation and reading comprehension through reading frequency or teacher-
rated engagement. The study by Park (2011) used US data from the 2006 PIRLS, and found an
unequivocally positive role for intrinsic reading motivation; however, the contribution of extrin-
sic motivation to reading performance depended on the student’s level of intrinsic motivation.
Extrinsic motivation contributed positively to comprehension for students who also had at least
a medium level of intrinsic motivation; for students with low intrinsic motivation, extrinsic
motivation was negatively related to comprehension.
In a smaller-scale study relating scores on the MRQ to performance by middle school students
on a standardized state reading assessment (Mucherah & Yoder, 2008), only certain aspects of
intrinsic motivation predicted comprehension: reading for challenge and aesthetic enjoyment.
Reading for social reasons (which includes sharing what is read, but also compliance as a driver
of reading) was a negative predictor of comprehension scores. Finally, a study with undergradu-
ates (Clinton, 2015) found that a certain type of cognitive processing during reading, generation
of inferences related to connections within the text, was positively related to elements of both
intrinsic motivation (reading as part of one’s sense of self) and extrinsic motivation (reading to
succeed at work or school), even when controlling for reading comprehension skill. Motivation
was not independently related to generation of inferences involving the activation of background
knowledge for the science texts read in this study, when reading ability was taken into account.

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The role of reading motivation in the development of reading ability has also been investi-
gated in longitudinal research. A short-term longitudinal study considered whether reading
motivation mattered for third grade students’ changes in level of reading competence over their
summer vacation (Schaffner & Schiefele, 2016). Overall, there was not much change in students’
scores for word and sentence comprehension from before to after the summer vacation. How-
ever, intrinsic motivation contributed to reading amount, which made an independent contribu-
tion to prediction of reading comprehension scores after the summer vacation, even when taking
into account prior reading ability; extrinsic motivation was unrelated to end-of-summer reading
scores, which the authors speculated could reflect the short timeframe involved. In more
extended longitudinal research, intrinsic reading motivation predicted growth in reading compre-
hension over a school year when also taking verbal IQ and decoding skill into account, but only
for lower-ability readers, in a study with 9–11-year olds (Logan, Medford, & Hughes, 2011). For
somewhat older students (fifth to eighth graders), intrinsic reading motivation in the form of
reading for enjoyment predicted initial reading performance but not growth over the school year,
while the situation was reversed for intrinsic reading motivation in the form of reading for inter-
est, which predicted growth but not initial performance (Retelsdorf et al., 2011). Additional con-
trols included here were cognitive skills, family information, and demographic factors.
Competition as a form of extrinsic motivation was negatively related to initial reading perform-
ance, but did not influence growth.
In a more extended view of growth in comprehension, vocabulary, and decoding skills from
grades 3 to 6, reading performance in grade 3 predicted intrinsic reading motivation in grade 4,
which predicted reading amount, which predicted reading skills in grade 6 (Becker, McElvany, &
Kortenbruck, 2010). However, intrinsic motivation dropped out as a significant predictor of later
skills when prior reading achievement was included in the model. Extrinsic reading motivation in
grade 4 was negatively predicted by reading performance in grade 3, and remained a reliable
negative predictor of later reading performance even when prior achievement was taken into
account.

Feelings about the Reading Task

How the reader feels about the particular reading task at hand is thought to be another possible
important affect-related contributor to differences in reading performance; these feelings can be
measured as a form of individual or situational interest (e.g., Bråten et al., 2014), or as feelings of
task engagement (e.g., Jones, Johnson, & Campbell, 2015). It appears to matter when these feel-
ings about the reading task are assumed to exert their influence, and also when they are meas-
ured. In the study by Bråten et al. (2014), individual interest in learning from science texts
predicted both reported interest in reading the specific science texts used in the reading task (situ-
ational interest), which was captured during reading, and reading time (effort). Effort and situ-
ational interest both predicted deep-level strategy use, which predicted multiple-text
comprehension; effort also made an independent contribution to comprehension, as did prior
knowledge. A variant of this pathway was seen in the study by Jones et al. (2015), who found
that for their undergraduate participants reading a refutational text about the common cold, read-
ing time (attention allocation) directly predicted self-reported level of engagement in the reading
task (measured after task completion), which predicted conceptual change.

Reading Preferences and Habits

A final aspect of readers’ feelings about reading is the role of the reader’s preferences and habits
related to reading; this can include the reader’s choices about what to read and also about how

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often or how much to read. Research investigating the contribution of reading preferences and
habits to other types of reading outcomes consistently shows that it matters what and how often
people read. In particular, reading of fiction, reading of books, and reading of printed (rather
than online) material have important benefits. One of the genre-specific benefits of reading fic-
tion, particularly literary fiction, appears to be that it increases cognitive empathy (Djikic, Oatley,
& Moldoveanu, 2013b) and the ability to understand the mental states of other, or theory of
mind (Kidd & Castano, 2013); these studies were experimental, with adult participants, and com-
pared literary fiction to other genres. A similar experimental study (Djikic, Oatley, & Moldo-
veanu, 2013a) found that reading fiction led to a decrease in need for closure, while reading
nonfiction did not; this effect was stronger for participants who reported being regular readers of
any type of text.
More traditional individual differences research has also found positive links of the reading of
fiction with reading comprehension outcomes; for adolescents, reading of fictional books posi-
tively predicted performance on comprehension and summarization, even when taking word
reading and text reading speed into account (McGeown et al., 2015). For sixth graders, weak
comprehenders were more likely to be readers of nonfiction, while strong comprehenders were
more likely to read fiction (Spear-Swerling, Brucker, & Alfano, 2010). Independent reading of
extended print texts predicted inference-making and overall comprehension of fiction and non-
fiction texts for 11- to 15-year-olds, although these students reported spending more time with
digital than traditional texts (Duncan, McGeown, Griffiths, Stothard, & Dobai, 2016). Similarly,
extracurricular reading of traditional printed texts was related to reading comprehension and
vocabulary in a large-scale study of secondary students; in this study, time spent online was nega-
tively related to reading achievement (Pfost, Dörfler, & Artelt, 2013). Finally, a large meta-
analysis by Mol and Bus (2011) found that print exposure is related to improvements in reading
skills and comprehension for students from pre-kindergarten through graduate school; they
described the relation as a spiral in which initial levels of reading skill and success predict amount
of reading, which then contributes to the development of greater reading skill and success. They
found benefits of independent leisure reading for poor comprehenders as well; it is not only the
rich who get richer, which is somewhat encouraging.

Identifying and Bridging the Gaps

Having overviewed the recent research on affect-related individual differences in readers with
regard to the reader’s self, the content, and the task, as far as the relation of such individual dif-
ferences to variability in readers’ cognitive processes and outcomes, what gaps, if any, appear?
What are the practical/theoretical needs for research in this area, and are they being met? What
potential new approaches could be taken to make the research or implementation of its findings
fruitful, both in the current educational situation and the current conditions readers confront
both in and out of the academic setting?
Many of the relations of cognitive and affective factors studied in this body of research
appear to be interactive and bidirectional, which means that untangling paths of influence
here is challenging. Intervention research was not included in this review, and the results of
interventions could provide helpful evidence about what influences what. However, in terms
of designing those interventions based upon what the research has shown, we do not, in
many cases, have a clear story about which triggers should be the ones to try to manipulate
in order to improve students’ reading abilities and outcomes. One suggestion in this regard is
to consider linking the cognitive and affective aspects even more closely in our theoretical
models; affect and cognition appear to be commingled at the very heart of our thinking. We
separate them in our stories and models, and think we are separating them in our

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measurements, but it is beginning to look as though they are interwoven all the way down;
some of the newer lines of research related to reading are testing these borderlines, and this
seems a very promising area for further investigations. Another suggestion for taking account
of the interconnectivity among factors of interest is to support the large body of variable-
centered research with more person-centered studies, in which multiple possibly meaningful
patterns of relations among readers’ characteristics can be explored and connected to how
reading happens for those different types of readers.
With regard to the time course of what happens during reading, process-related approaches
seem key, yet these are difficult to do and report. Think-alouds (e.g., Clinton & van den Broek,
2012; Kardash & Howell, 2000) and eye-tracking (e.g., Kaakinen et al., 2014; Olkoniemi et al.,
2016; Scrimin & Mason, 2015), were used in a few studies in the reviewed research to capture
differences in reading processes, along with online questionnaires and sampling of readers’ in-the-
moment feelings and responses. These are valuable techniques that add critical information about
the possible mechanisms by which the relations seen between more static measures emerge.
Without this type of information, our stories about what happens during reading remain specula-
tive, to a greater degree than we should be comfortable with. In managing the interpretation of
the multiplex phenomenon presented by a reader’s response and performance, the use of
a complex dynamic systems approach (e.g., Kaplan, Katz, & Flum, 2012) may be worth explor-
ing. Another potential measurement issue is the general (but not total) lack of attention to nega-
tive affective responses; in recent work, Guthrie and colleagues have identified what they label as
undermining forms of motivation and engagement (e.g., Guthrie, Klauda, & Ho, 2013). It seems
very possible that readers’ individual differences in negative affective responses and characteristics
also matter, if we can figure out how to identify and measure these appropriately.
Considering the types of topics covered, focused attention on the role of the reader’s capacity
for emotional/motivational self-regulation was not directly evident in the research. It has been
suggested that emotional control is important during the acquisition of a new skill, situations
involving possible frustration, needing to cope with errors, or performance anxiety (such as test-
ing), while motivational control is more important for persistence and improvement in skill
development (Kanfer & Heggestad, 1999). Both of these seem like important areas for the read-
ing research to address, in order to understand how individual affect-related differences can be
implicated in reading outcomes; the evident strength of early reading experiences for what hap-
pens later in reading development suggests that understanding more about how readers work
through the early stages of learning to read matters a great deal.
Understanding more about students’ out-of-school reading habits and preferences seems ever
more important, given their strong connection with reading abilities and other developmental
outcomes, and the relentless pressure of new media for our children’s attention. In connection
with the explosion of unreliable yet widely available or even prominent sources of information
on the internet, there is a lot of work being done on how affect is implicated in readers’ evalu-
ations of what they read (see, for example, the discussion of the role of motivation in biased
information processing and rejection of information that conflicts with existing beliefs by Ecker,
Swire, & Lewandowsky, 2014). It might be even more critical to uncover further how strongly
readers’ preferences for particular types of information or interactions with information influence
what they end up believing to be true (see, for example, work by Hambrick, Meinz, Pink, Petti-
bone, & Oswald, 2010, about the influence of preferences for different types of information
sources, such as television, newspapers, and radio, on people’s acquisition of knowledge about
politics). There are also many different purposes for reading in the real world; the contrast
between academic tasks and leisure reading does not begin to capture what readers do. In those
many other types of reading situations, there may well be different roles for affect and affective
differences in readers; this is terra incognita at present.

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Overall, it is evident that there is considerable thoughtful, careful, complex, research going
on; perhaps not always with the strongest of tools for the job, in terms of measurement of affect
and identification of what exactly the reader is doing. Reading this body of research creates
a very powerful impression, with so many voices all arguing for the importance of consideration
of affect-related factors in reading. Nonetheless, as far as the likelihood that the role of individual
affect-related differences in reading will be acknowledged in curriculum or policy, it seems like
a long road ahead. Teachers are enormously aware of the role of affect, but it tends to be viewed
as either a serendipitous catalyst or enhancer, for those students who sit at the positive end of the
spectrum, or as a roadblock to get around, for those who are at the other end. Teachers must
also keep the bottom line of test scores in mind, and do not have much curricular flexibility or
room for differentiation related to students’ affective differences. Our educational system is not
very good at change, and there seems no reason to think that this situation will improve any
time soon.
However, one direction for possible change that would be a strong and integrative step
toward bridging the gap between the manifold findings from what the research has shown about
the importance of affective individual differences in reading and what should occur in classrooms
and be prescribed in policy, was recommended by the late Jere Brophy (2008). Brophy recom-
mended that motivational researchers turn their efforts toward how best to justify and promote
students’ appreciation and valuing of what they learn in school. He pointed out that, “Addressing
value requires attention to the learners’ beliefs and feelings about the content, as well as the pro-
cesses involved in learning and applying it” (p. 132). Brophy suggested that one practical step
toward accomplishing this integration of the affective and cognitive aspects of learning would be
to return to including appreciation of what is learned as an intended outcome of instruction, as
was the practice earlier in the 20th century (and even as late as the 1970’s; see, e.g., Bloom,
Hastings, & Madaus, 1971). If we consider what that might look like for reading, the possibilities
that such a shift in instructional emphasis could open up with regard to how learners approach
the reading that they do in and out of school are quite heartening. As Brophy explained it, for
reading, appreciation can include the reader’s sense that “reading and writing are not just basic
skills needed for utilitarian applications but gateways to interest development, identity explor-
ation, self-expression, and other enrichments to individuals’ subjective lives” (2008, p. 138). That
is something we would like all readers to be able to grasp.

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 11
Continuities between Early
Language Development and
Reading Comprehension
Kiren S. Khan and Laura M. Justice

Language development and reading comprehension are two constructs of great interest to researchers,
practitioners, and policy-makers, as both language and reading skill are critically associated with one’s
educational achievement and psychological well-being across the lifespan. Across these two dimen-
sions of development, there are parallel interests in understanding individual differences in develop-
mental trajectories, especially across languages and dialects; identifying risk factors that compromise
development; and implementing interventions that mitigate difficulties when they arise within school-
ing and other institutions. However, theoretical and empirical discussions of language development
and reading comprehension generally occur in isolation, with the former the focus of those who
study early childhood education, linguistics, and developmental psychology, and the latter the focus
of reading psychologists, and scholars in reading, elementary, and special education.
Yet, three conceptual shifts over the last decades have contributed to movement towards
a more coherent and comprehensive recognition of the continuities between language acquisition
and reading comprehension. First, theoretical perspectives on reading development have shifted
from viewing reading skills as largely a result of visual-perceptual processes to recognizing that
reading skill is largely a product of linguistic-cognitive processes. Viewing reading as linguistically
based serves to highlight developmental continuities between young children’s language acquisi-
tion and their future reading comprehension. Second, a considerable body of research involving
prospective and retrospective longitudinal designs has carefully documented the strong, statistically
reliable relations between young children’s language skills during the preschool years and their
reading comprehension in middle childhood, both within a given language and even across lan-
guages (e.g., Spanish to English; Proctor, August, Carlo, & Snow, 2006). From a prevention per-
spective, such work has also highlighted the prognostic importance of weak language skills early
in life, to reading deficits in the primary grades, particularly with respect to reading comprehen-
sion (Justice, Mashburn, & Petscher, 2013). Finally, and possibly most importantly, those who
study reading development from an intervention standpoint have begun to move away from
a nearly exclusive focus on word recognition and its correlates, such as phonological awareness,
towards investigating how to improve reading comprehension and its precursors, influenced in
part by significant federal research investments (e.g., the Institute of Education Sciences’ Reading
for Understanding Consortium). Such work has served to highlight the developmental

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importance of children’s language skills to their ability to read for meaning (e.g., Lesaux, Kieffer,
Faller, & Kelley, 2010).
This chapter seeks to bridge the gap between these two bodies of work – language acquisition
and reading comprehension – by describing what is known about these two constructs, identify-
ing several big questions relevant to these constructs, and exploring challenges to developing
a model of reading development and instruction that spans early childhood and elementary edu-
cation. At the same time, this chapter seeks to consider what a long-range view of reading devel-
opment might mean for how we conceptualize reading instruction across the preschool through
early and middle childhood continuum. Ultimately, this chapter seeks to bridge language and
reading research, as well as early and middle childhood practices that build skills in each of these
domains.
Specifically, in the next few sections, we describe what is known about how language skills
develop across the early childhood to middle childhood spectrum and speculate about the malle-
ability of language skills across this developmental period. We then discuss relevant findings and
existing gaps in our knowledge regarding the associations between lower- and higher-level lan-
guage skills and reading comprehension and emphasize the importance of identifying aspects of lan-
guage that are most influential for subsequent reading abilities. Within this discussion of lower- and
higher-level language skills, we highlight the need for understanding the correlates of academic
vocabulary, inference making, comprehension monitoring, and text-structure knowledge at even
younger ages, so as to support these skills as early as possible, as well as the need for research on
identifying aspects of language that show transfer across bilingual children’s different languages.
The second half of this chapter deals with issues associated with the implementation gap,
namely the inherent challenges associated with creating consistency in instructional and peda-
gogical practices across grade levels spanning early through middle childhood, in the service of
supporting language and reading skills. We highlight the importance of continued investment
in longitudinal work examining the effectiveness of research-based curricula that adopt a long-
range view of development and target lower- and higher-level language skills as a route to
improving reading comprehension, and we provide examples of some successful programs of
research. We also discuss the importance of professional development that supports a longer
range of view of language and reading development and provides opportunities for collabor-
ation across the early to middle childhood education systems. Indeed, we suggest that the lan-
guage-reading connection may provide a useful platform for bridging early childhood and
elementary education, and share suggestions for synergistic efforts that may support this goal.
Finally, we discuss some of the ways in which research and practice, particularly as they relate
to supporting an extended and interconnected view of language and reading development,
may be relevant to linguistically-diverse classrooms; the predominant context in which chil-
dren are growing and learning today.

I. What’s Known and How Do We Know It?

Language Development in Early Childhood

Language development is a multi-faceted phenomenon, encompassing the acquisition of a broad
set of rules related to sounds and sound patterns, semantic units, sentence structures, as well as
discourse-level processes and structures. These multiple dimensions of language have been exten-
sively discussed and analyzed within the context of a number of disciplines, including develop-
mental psychology, linguistics, speech and hearing sciences, among others; correspondingly, there
is a considerable body of work delineating developmental progressions in each of these dimen-
sions (Bavin, 2009; De Villiers & De Villiers, 1978; Khan et al., 2016; McKeown & Curtis,

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2014; Stein & Glenn, 1979), such as a recent study by the authors describing age-related progres-
sions in children’s expression of story-grammar elements within narratives from 3- to 6-years of
age (Khan et al., 2016).
A striking finding across much of this work is that the developmental sequence of acquisition
of many linguistic rules and forms is fairly robust, even among children who are acquiring mul-
tiple languages at once (Hoff et al., 2012; Pearson & Fernandez, 1994) or acquiring language in
another modality, such as sign language (Bohannon & Bonvillian, 1997). Perhaps the most well-
known progression in language development is the achievement of key phonological, lexical, and
syntactic milestones from infancy into toddlerhood, in which the emergence of babbling (gestural
babbling in the case of deaf babies and verbal babbling in the case of hearing babies) is soon
thereafter followed by a one-word stage in which children communicate by expressing single
words (mama, up, kitty); a vocabulary spurt which emerges around 18 to 24 months of age,
during which vocabulary size increases four-fold (Hoff, 2006); and production of multi-word
utterances and use of grammatical inflections begins around age 3 (Behrens, 2009; De Villiers &
De Villiers, 1978). Discourse-level skills, such as storytelling and narration of experienced events,
similarly, adhere to a general developmental schedule, wherein children are able to construct
more complete and coherent stories as age increases from 3 to 9 years (Berman, 2001; Castilla-
Earls, Peterson, Spencer, & Hammer, 2015; Trabasso, Stein, Rodkin, Munger, & Baughn, 1992;
Van Deusen-Phillips, Goldin-Meadow, & Miller, 2001).
Despite the evidence for, and extensive attention towards, describing universals in the devel-
oping child’s route from vocabulary to grammar to narrative, there is also considerable evidence
of individual differences in children’s language skills and trajectories. Specifically, there are differ-
ences in starting points, such as the emergence of the first word and use of two-word utterances
(McKean et al., 2015; Song et al., 2015), the nature of the first grammatical morphemes pro-
duced (Marchman, Martinez-Sussmann, & Dale,2004), and velocity of shape of language growth
over time (Rowe, Raudenbush, & Goldin-Meadow, 2012). Relevant to this chapter are longitu-
dinal studies that have sought to understand these and other individual differences in early lan-
guage development and to consider how these differences may relate to future achievements in
areas closely related to language skill, particularly reading (ECCRN NICHD, 2005; Justice et al.,
2013; McKean et al., 2015; Murphy, Language and Reading Research Consortium (LARRC),
& Farquharson, 2016; Storch & Whitehurst, 2002).
One recent such study conducted by Song and colleagues (2015) investigated vocabulary
development in Chinese children in relation to reading outcomes from age 4 to 11 years of age;
an interest in this work was examining the interplay between vocabulary skill and growth trajec-
tories and subsequent reading ability. The research methods identified three clearly distinguishable
groups of children with respect to initial vocabulary skill and growth rate: a high-high group,
a low-high group, and a low-low group. A finding relevant to the focus of this chapter is that
children in the low-high group, who showed initially low vocabulary skills but a relatively steep
trajectory, diverged from their low-low peers in terms of their vocabulary growth when they
began formal schooling at age 7, which also coincided with the time at which they first demon-
strated significantly higher phonological and morphological skills than their low-low counterparts.
Longitudinal work such as this is necessary for understanding how child-level and environmental-
level factors interact to influence children’s language growth in the transitional period from pre-
reader to reader, and to clarify how individual differences in language skill are associated with
subsequent variability in reading skill.
To appreciate the continuities between early language and later reading skills, it is important
to understand the trajectories of development for each of these skills. One approach to tackling
this empirical question is to examine the extent to which the various dimensions of language
skill, several of which were referenced earlier in this chapter, represent distinct components of

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language. Understanding the organization of the language system can provide information about
the extent to which the various language dimensions represent distinct underlying systems, as sug-
gested by modularist perspectives (e.g., Chomsky, 1965; Pinker, 1994), or whether language skills
are built from the same mechanisms as suggested by emergentist perspectives on language acquisi-
tion (e.g., Marchman & Bates, 1994). Increased use of complex statistical modeling applied to
large datasets representing children’s language skills longitudinally has allowed researchers to ask
fundamental questions regarding the dimensionality of language abilities across childhood, to
include considering whether language comprises multiple dimensions (e.g., vocabulary, grammar,
morphology) or whether it is a singular human capacity.
Such work is largely in its early stages, but generally finds that language ability comprises
a unitary dimension when children are at younger ages (3 to 5 years; Tomblin & Zhang, 2006),
but becomes increasingly multidimensional over time as children progress through the primary
grades (Anthony, Davis, Williams, & Anthony, 2014; Bornstein, Hahn, Putnick, & Suwalsky,
2014; LARRC, 2015a) and into adolescence (Tomblin & Zhang, 2006). Such work suggests that
during early childhood, language ability is best represented as a single, unitary construct,
a phenomenon observed for preschool-aged children who are native English speakers (LARRC,
2015a) and who are native Spanish speakers (LARRC, 2015b). Importantly, however, with time
grammar and vocabulary become independent systems, as will, eventually, discourse-level skills.
Such work is important to the consideration of the relations between early language skill and
future reading, as it suggests that children’s language ability must be viewed as an emergent system
that is affected by the increasing complexity of the forms and functions being acquired and
increased variability in children’s language-learning environments as they enter and progress
through formal schooling and advanced curricula (Tomblin & Zhang, 2006).
The unidimensional nature of language ability at younger ages has potentially interesting
implications for considering mechanisms that may influence language growth, as it suggests that
affecting one aspect of language may, in turn, influence other dimensions of language due to
shared underlying mechanisms. Indeed, emergentist perspectives on language development
acknowledge the role of domain-general cognitive skills such as perception, memory, and atten-
tion in language acquisition (Bowerman & Levinson, 2001; MacWhinney, 1999). For instance,
children’s working memory capacities may impose limits on their ability to coordinate schemes
into more complex and sophisticated patterns. Increases in working memory, in turn, allow for
better integration of language structures (such as the use of coordinating conjunctions linking dis-
crete sentences) which further support the use of higher-level reasoning strategies (such as chunk-
ing or inference-making). Similarly, advancements in one dimension of language (e.g., use of the
present progressive inflection -ing to represent action) may simultaneously lead to concurrent
developments in syntactic, lexical, and even discourse-level processes. Thus, simple linear pro-
gressions in one system make possible the learning of complex cognitive structures and acceler-
ated learning in parallel systems. This notion of an iterative feedback loop leading to the
acceleration of the overall pace of development has also been discussed in dynamic systems
theory (Smith, 1999; Thelen & Smith, 1994). When examining associations and continuities
between the development of early language and reading skills, an important question to consider,
therefore, is to what extent shared mechanisms support interactions between these constructs.
As a counterpoint, the increasingly multidimensional nature of language ability at older ages
and grades also has implications for considering mechanisms that may influence language growth
as a potential route to improving reading skills. That is, with language ability increasingly multi-
dimensional as children age, it is possible that skills become increasingly modularized, such that
mechanisms that affect vocabulary skill may have little bearing on grammatical growth or dis-
course-level skills, and vice versa. As a result, recent efforts to affect children’s language ability
within the primary and later grades typically target numerous dimensions of language skill

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simultaneously (Clarke, Snowling, Truelove, & Hulme, 2010; Duff et al., 2014; LARRC, Jiang,
& Logan, 2019), rather than focusing exclusively on a single dimension, especially vocabulary, as
was a common focus in research over the last decade.

Reading Comprehension in the Primary Grades

In this chapter, we seek to bridge the gap between two bodies of work – language acquisition
and reading comprehension – and both posit a developmental framework that extends from the
early toddler/preschool years through the elementary grades, as well as describe how this may
close the gap between early childhood education and reading instruction so as to promote con-
tinuity in reading instruction from early to middle childhood. Following our discussion of pri-
mary issues related to early childhood language acquisition, we now turn to discussing reading
comprehension as an important developmental construct and instructional priority in the primary
grades. Reading comprehension is the process by which an individual derives meaning from
a written text, which occurs through developing (and continuing to update) a mental representa-
tion of text, or mental model (McNamara & Magliano, 2009). It is broadly recognized that read-
ing comprehension draws upon, and is closely related to, one’s language abilities, representing the
skills and capabilities discussed in the prior section. It is also accepted that reading comprehension
needs to be distinguished from another important reading process, namely word recognition.
That is, comprehension of a text is distinct from, but dependent upon, the processes one employs
to recognize or decode words in a text (word recognition). There is a developmental progression
in the contribution of word recognition to reading comprehension, such that the contribution of
word recognition to reading comprehension attenuates as children become more skilled as
readers: when children are first beginning to read, during first grade, word recognition explains
a considerable amount of the variance in concurrent reading comprehension (64%), whereas by
third grade, word recognition explains quite modest amounts of variance (21%) (LARRC,
2015a). The attenuation in the contribution of word recognition to reading comprehension,
reflects the gradually increasing importance of one’s language skills to creating a mental represen-
tation of text and being able to read for meaning; by third grade, children’s language skills explain
a substantial portion of the variance in reading comprehension skill (61%).
To this end, both theory and research propose that for skilled readers, one’s ability to read for
meaning largely (but not entirely) approximates one’s ability to comprehend spoken language
(LARRC, 2015a; Perfetti, 2007). Of relevance to this chapter is considering those language skills
that are among the most critical determinants of language comprehension. Addressing this ques-
tion requires bridging the gap between scholarship focused on language acquisition during early
childhood, when children are not able (yet) to read for meaning, and scholarship focused on
reading comprehension in middle and later childhood, when language acquisition has generally
slowed and many crucial linguistic milestones have been achieved, such as acquiring the native
language’s (L1) grammatical system and phonological inventory (Sakai, 2005).
Much of the literature on language acquisition has centered on the period of early childhood,
during which linguistic competencies are rapidly developing during what is often referred to as
a sensitive period (Huttenlocher, 2009). Researchers have attempted to not only document the
precise linguistic competencies that children acquire, including those common across the world’s
languages (e.g., Caselli et al., 1995), but also the biological and environmental mechanisms that
enable them to do so (Hoff, 2013; Kuhl & Rivera-Gaxiola, 2008). Largely, this body of work
has focused on children’s acquisition of “basic” or lower-level language skills across the linguistic
domains of morphosyntax, semantics, and phonology, which were the focus of the initial content
of this chapter. For instance, such work has helped to document the general order by which
children acquire grammatical morphemes (De Villiers & De Villiers, 1973) and mechanisms

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through which young children acquire novel words (Akhtar, Jipson, & Callanan, 2001). This
work has also been highly informative for describing distinctions and similarities in the acquisition
of L1 and additional languages (Pierce, Genesee, & Paradis, 2013; Poulin-Dubois, Bialystok,
Blaye, Polonia, & Yott, 2013).
Research concerned with understanding the role of language skills in reading comprehension
often calls attention to the importance of distinguishing between lower-level and higher-level lan-
guage skills. While the former skills are those most often studied by those interested in language
acquisition, the latter are viewed as particularly important to reading for meaning and are referred
to as higher-level comprehension processes (Perfetti & Adlof, 2012, p. 6). Lower-level language
skills, as discussed in the reading-comprehension literature, are those basic, automatic processes
that are acquired during early childhood, such as one’s ability to efficiently process lexical infor-
mation or comprehend syntactic forms. These skills are used to construct the literal meaning of
a text, referred to by some as the textbase (Kintsch & Rawson, 2005). Whereas lower-level lan-
guage skills, such as vocabulary, make unique, important contributions to reading comprehension,
and are considered necessary for reading for meaning (Cain, Oakhill, Barnes, & Bryant, 2001;
Verhoeven & Van Leeuwe, 2008), they are not assumed to be sufficient for arriving at
a sophisticated, detailed model of the text.
Higher-level language skills, which are dependent upon the operation of lower-level skills, are
those linguistic skills that the reader applies to arrive at a complex, coherent, and integrated
mental model of the text (Cain, Oakhill, & Bryant, 2004). As a simple example, a student reading
a novel involving the protagonist “Arnulfo” will apply the higher-level skill of inferencing to
derive a coherent model of the actions and states of this character by integrating a number of
pronominal references (e.g., he, him, his) that transcend multiple clauses, sentences, and para-
graphs, to represent and update the actions and states of this protagonist (Cain et al., 2004). Cre-
ation of a mental model of a text – also called a situation model – draws upon a unique set of
higher-level language skills that appear particularly crucial to higher-level comprehension because
of the integrative role they play (Cain, Oakhill, & Bryant, 2004; Perfetti, 2007); these include infer-
encing, comprehension monitoring, and use of text-structure knowledge (Cain et al., 2004; Hogan,
Bridges, Justice, & Cain, 2011).
Inferencing refers to the cognitive process of “filling in the gaps,” which is essential for accur-
ate comprehension of a text, given that much in a text is unstated and thus must be inferred in
order to derive an integrated mental model of the text. Creation of a mental model of even
a very simple proposition like “James was devastated when he saw the crumbled bike” requires
a number of inferences, including that a crumbled bike can no longer be ridden and that James
liked riding his bike a great deal. Types of inferences used to aid comprehension include cohesive
references, knowledge-based references, and evaluative inferences (Bowyer-Crane & Snowling,
2005). Cohesive references are used to derive connections across a text, such as inferring that he
is referring to Addie’s cat in the sentences, Addie threw the toy at the cat. He pounced on it quickly.
Knowledge-based inferences are used when one’s background knowledge is drawn upon to fill in
unstated information; using the sample example sentences above, a reader with knowledge about
cats would likely infer that the toy thrown at the cat was a cat-toy rather than a child’s toy, and
that Addie is throwing the toy in a way to play with the cat. Finally, evaluative inferences are
used by the reader to fill in missing information about a character’s feelings, motives, and goals.
Using our same example, it would be plausible for some readers to derive a mental model in
which Addie is trying to hurt the cat by throwing things at it, based on the inference that when
one throws objects at animals, the typical intent is to hurt them. However, such an inference in
this case would not be correct and, ideally, would be corrected by the reader as he or she con-
tinues to read.

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Comprehension monitoring references the higher-level language skill by which readers moni-
tor their own comprehension of a text in an ongoing manner, and apply strategies to address any
comprehension deficits. This is considered a higher-level metalinguistic skill as it involves one
analyzing the act of comprehension as it occurs. Many good readers are aware of the comprehen-
sion-monitoring processes they apply when comprehension is compromised, such as re-reading
a word or skimming back through the preceding paragraph; these are referred to as “fix-up strat-
egies,” and are a comprehension process consistently observed in good comprehenders, and less
so in poor comprehenders (Oakhill, Hartt, & Samols, 2005).
Finally, text-structure knowledge is a higher-level language skill that references a reader’s tacit
understanding of how different texts are structured, to include recognition of relationships across
sentences, paragraphs, and larger units of a text. Being able to navigate the organizational features
of a given text is often central to one’s comprehension of a text and the ability to derive the full
meaning of a text. For instance, a cause-effect expository passage is organized in a way so that
the reader is able to derive a mental model that situates a given cause with a given effect, with
certain “clue” words used to highlight a cause and differentiate it from an effect, such as because,
then, thus, and therefore (see Williams et al., 2007). For a fifth grader to read a passage describing
the cause-effect relations between slavery and the civil war in the United States, and to compre-
hend the precise way in which the former led to the latter, he or she must draw on higher-level
language skills that help to specify the sequences among events.
Measures of each of these three higher-level language skills explain significant amounts of
unique variance in 8- to 11-year-old children’s reading comprehension, even when controlling
for lower-level language skills, working memory, and word-reading abilities (Cain et al., 2004).
To this end, studies find that although, in the early years of reading development, an individual’s
ability to read for meaning is largely constrained by skills in word recognition, once these pro-
cesses become automatized, reading comprehension is largely dependent upon one’s skills in lan-
guage comprehension (Catts, Hogan, Adlof, & Weismer, 2005), especially higher-level language
skills. An important gap in the literature, and one that greatly compromises developing a model
that captures continuity in language development and reading comprehension, is that these skills
have seldom been examined in children who are not yet able to read. Thus, our understanding
of inferencing, comprehension monitoring, and text-structure knowledge in children under the
age of 6 or 7 years is extremely limited. At the same time, we have very little understanding of
these higher-level language skills among dual language learners, to include whether these skills
are likely to transfer across languages.

II. What are the Big Questions in This Area Relative to the Current Era?
Thorough understanding of continuities between early language acquisition and future reading
comprehension is far from complete, and a number of big questions require serious scientific and
theoretical attention to advance this understanding. We highlight three of these big questions
here. First, it is unclear which precise language skills during the early childhood years are most
influential to future reading comprehension. Put differently, does reading for meaning draw on
certain linguistic abilities more so than others? The report of the National Early Literacy Panel
aggregated longitudinal studies in an effort to identify prominent predictors of reading achieve-
ment from measures collected at or prior to kindergarten (Lonigan & Shanahan, 2009). The
Panel identified 30 studies that examined predictive relations between language measures at or
prior to kindergarten, and subsequent reading comprehension (average r = .33). However, this
report was not able to precisely identify whether a specific aspect of language skill, such as
vocabulary, is especially important to future reading comprehension, or whether all language
skills are equally influential. Making progress on this question is essential, as it has direct bearing

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on how best to design early educational programs and practices directed towards improving chil-
dren’s early language skills. Should such programs focus exclusively on one aspect of language,
such as vocabulary, or multiple skills? Increasing evidence of the unidimensionality of language
skill prior to age 5 makes this question even more complicated; if young children’s language skills
are a unitary dimension of development, does it make sense to think about language dimension-
ally, as we so often do in our focus on distinct aspects of growth (e.g., grammar, vocabulary,
phonology)?
Particularly important to such considerations is that relatively little work has examined the
development of those “higher-level language skills” referenced earlier as especially important to
reading comprehension. Higher-level language skills are those that a reader draws upon to arrive
at a complex, coherent, and integrated mental model of the text, such as inferencing and com-
prehension monitoring. While it is evident that reading comprehension among skilled readers
draws upon such higher-level language skills (Cain et al., 2004), we have limited understanding
about the origins of these skills and their growth within pre-readers. For instance, comprehension
monitoring – a metacognitive skill with high cross-linguistic transfer potential – has been exam-
ined almost exclusively in relation to the comprehension of written texts among school-aged
children. No study to date has examined the role of comprehension monitoring of discourse
during the preschool and kindergarten years, and its relation to later reading comprehension
skills. However, there is some evidence from a recent study by Strasser and Del Río (2014) that
comprehension monitoring, as assessed by the detection of inconsistencies in a story constructed
to deliberately contain internally inconsistent actions and reactions, is related to narrative compre-
hension in kindergarteners. Based on this pattern of association, we may speculate that compre-
hension monitoring and inference-making strategies during the early preschool and kindergarten
years would also be predictive of later reading comprehension skills. However, longitudinal
research spanning early to middle childhood is needed to better understand the connections
between oral language, comprehension monitoring (and other executive function skills), and
reading comprehension.
Another important consideration is understanding the contribution and interplay of vocabulary
knowledge in the processes supporting reading comprehension. Although referenced as a lower-
level language skill in this chapter, vocabulary knowledge is paramount to listening and reading
comprehension (Ouellette, 2006; Torppa et al., 2007), as it plays a key role in word-to-text (Per-
fetti & Stafura, 2014) or event-to-story integration. That is, individual concepts and words must
be understood in order to derive appropriate inferences and ultimately build an accurate situation
model of a text or story. Relating back to the example provided in the previous section, in order
to draw accurate inferences regarding the meaning and significance of the statement “James was
devastated when he saw the crumbled bike,” the listener or reader must fully understand the definition
and various connotations associated with the words “devastated” and “crumbled.” A deep and
broad vocabulary can therefore assist in developing higher-order associations within and across
clauses of text. Thus, when examining the contribution of language skills to reading comprehen-
sion, an important question concerns the extent to which vocabulary knowledge supports and
interacts with higher-level language skills to promote listening and reading comprehension.
A second big question that needs to be addressed concerns how best to represent continuities
in language acquisition and reading comprehension for children who are acquiring multiple lan-
guages. Today, the majority of children in the world are multi-lingual, acquiring multiple lan-
guages simultaneously or sequentially. Although the United States has often been conceived as
a monolingual society, with English as the sole official language, an estimated 65,000,000 Ameri-
cans speak a language other than English in their homes today (Shin & Ortman, 2011). It is well
understood that skills in one language often transfer to another; for example, sensitivity to the
sound structure of language tends towards a high level of cross-linguistic transfer among bilingual

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individuals, especially for languages utilizing similar scripts, as with Spanish and English (Kuo,
Uchikoshi, Kim, & Yang, 2016). Such work often focuses on how skills and understandings in
a specific domain of language, such as Chinese vocabulary, transfer to another language, such as
English vocabulary (Pasquarella, Chen, Lam, Luo, & Ramirez, 2011).
However, despite considerable extant work in the area of cross-linguistic transfer, a major
question arises when considering continuity between language development and reading compre-
hension, namely, the extent to which there is cross-linguistic transfer in the component skills
supporting development in these competencies. Some theoretical frameworks that delineate the
nature of cross-linguistic transfer suggest that language and literacy skill development in
one’s second language (L2) is dependent on the child’s proficiency in these skills in their LI
(Cummins, 1979, 1991), and that cross-linguistic transfer occurs more readily when concepts
such as schemas are emphasized (see MacWhinney’s unified competition model, 1987). In con-
trast, limited cross-linguistic transfer, or even negative transfer, may occur on language-specific
concepts such as orthographic or syntactic patterns, which can vary considerably across languages.
Consistent with this logic, skills that show transfer across a bilingual’s two languages include
metalinguistic skills such as phonological awareness (e.g., Atwill, Blanchard, Gorin, & Burstein,
2007; Cisero & Royer, 1995; Comeau, Cormier, Grandmaison, & Lacroix, 1999; Gottardo, Yan,
Siegel, & Wade-Woolley, 2001), story grammar (e.g., Durgunoğlu, Mir, & Arino-Marti, 2002;
Petersen et al., 2016; Squires et al., 2014), knowledge regarding the functions of print (e.g., Ver-
hoeven & Aarts, 1998), and meaning-making strategies such as questioning, evaluating, and
monitoring comprehension in both languages (e.g., Jimenez, et al., 1996).
If we draw our attention specifically to the oral language skills that demonstrate cross-
linguistic transfer and have been shown to be related to reading comprehension, these include
vocabulary breadth and depth (e.g., Davison, Hammer, & Lawrence, 2011; Mancilla-Martinez &
Lesaux, 2010; Silverman et al., 2015), cognate awareness (Hipfner-Boucher, Pasquarella, Chen, &
Deacon, 2016), and listening comprehension (Lesaux, Crosson, Kieffer, & Pierce, 2010). In fact,
some researchers, such as Riches and Genesee (2006), argue that diversity of vocabulary and
a deep understanding of text play a more influential role in explaining L2 literacy than general
oral language abilities. However, it should be noted that the majority of this work has focused on
school-aged children, and less attention has been paid to examining the associations between pre-
school language and later reading abilities. There is a strong need for developmental research
examining the associations between aspects of early oral language skills in the preschool and early
elementary years and later reading comprehension so as to better understand the continuities
between early language abilities and reading. Indeed, understanding the relations between lan-
guage skills and reading comprehension among individuals speaking and reading multiple lan-
guages requires a second-order of consideration, as we must consider the interplay among oral
and written languages and script-universal and script-specific processes. Advances in this area will
be instrumental for facilitating theoretical understandings of continuities in language acquisition
and reading comprehension in bilinguals, as well as developing instructional paradigms that are
relevant to this large population of students.
A third big question of interest concerns refining and improving our understanding of the
construct of “academic language,” an interest of emerging attention that strives to understand
those language skills that are most important within the academic milieu. Promising areas of
research include identifying early correlates of academic vocabulary (e.g., Lesaux et al., 2010) and
the construct of academic language skills (Uccelli et al., 2015), given their theorized importance
in school-relevant language and reading proficiency. For instance, one way to examine academic
language skills, such as the ability to pack dense information through subordination, mark con-
ceptual relations through connectives, and use referential strategies to link themes at younger
ages, would be to assess the use of these devices in children’s storytelling. Parallels can easily be

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found in the Core Academic Language Skills (CALS) proposed by Uccelli et al. (2015); for
example, the six CALS areas, namely unpacking complex words, comprehending complex sen-
tences, connecting ideas, tracking themes, organizing argumentative texts, and awareness of aca-
demic register correspond fairly well to the following children’s narrative features: morphology,
complex syntactic structure, use of connectives, pronominal references, story grammar, and
awareness of narrative genre (personal, fictional, and expository). Furthermore, these early narra-
tive skills, particularly the inclusion of story elements, story sequence, and perspective, may show
cross-linguistic transfer (e.g. Uccelli & Paez, 2007) and help support the development of these
competencies in the L2.

III. What are the Challenges to Bridging the Gaps in the Current Era?
In the current chapter, we highlight the importance of bridging the gap between two bodies of
work – language acquisition and reading comprehension – by describing what is known about
these two constructs. One possible outcome of this gap bridging would be to promote continuity
in reading instruction from the toddler/preschool through the elementary grades. For instance,
teachers from the preschool years forward could continuously ensure that the core literacy cur-
riculum includes explicit attention to fostering children’s inferencing skill, given its important
role in skilled reading comprehension. Research finds that even very young children generate
numerous inferences when listening to texts (Tompkins, Guo, & Justice, 2013), and that these
early skills are predictive of future reading comprehension (Lepola, Lynch, Kiuru, Laakkonen, &
Niemi, 2016). However, there is little evidence that preschool curricular programs and best prac-
tices include explicit attention to inferencing; for instance, inferential skills were not referenced
in the report of the National Early Literacy Panel, which sought to identify those skills of young
children that are most associated with future reading comprehension (Lonigan & Shanahan,
2009). To this end, it is important to acknowledge the need for better alignment between early
childhood and elementary education in terms of pedagogical practices and perspectives related to
language and reading comprehension, providing a more coherent learning pathway for children,
which, theoretically, could exponentially catalyze learning. Having continuity in the expectations,
contexts, and instructional approaches utilized, as well as in the set of skills being focused on
during instruction, would help provide a consistent learning experience for children and support
a long-term trajectory of deep and coherent learning. In important ways, the Common Core
State Standards’ English Language Arts standards for Kindergarten to Grade 12 served to align
reading instructional practices for children across the primary grades, and served to highlight the
relevance of oral language skills to reading for meaning; yet, these fall short in addressing the
core need advanced in this chapter, namely the importance of bridging the gap between early
childhood education, which is provided to children prior to kindergarten, and reading education
in the primary grades.
An obvious challenge associated with achieving increased continuity between early childhood
and elementary education, particularly in the area of reading, is that it necessitates achieving
a common foundation of knowledge regarding the processes, sequences, variations, and long-
term consequences of language development and its pathway to reading comprehension. In order
to establish this common knowledge base, longitudinal research spanning early to middle child-
hood investigating the language skills most influential for reading development is needed, as we
noted previously. Currently, longitudinal research has yet to precisely identify those language
skills that are most influential to reading comprehension, and there is a lack of strong causal evi-
dence relating language skills to reading comprehension. Thus, our models of reading develop-
ment and instructional approaches that align to such models tend to begin in kindergarten, as do
the Common Core State Standards. This results in significant discontinuities between early

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childhood education and elementary education with respect to pedagogy and practices specific to
language and reading development. For instance, whereas language-focused pedagogies and prac-
tices in the elementary grades may provide extensive support towards helping children develop
metalinguistic, higher-level understandings related to vocabulary (e.g., analysis of multiple-
meaning words, exploration of shades of meaning), as these seem particularly important to read-
ing comprehension, early childhood educators may focus very little time to expanding children’s
vocabulary breadth and depth (Pelatti, Piasta, Justice, & O’Connell, 2014).
Similarly, language-focused pedagogies in later grades focus on building academic language
and explicitly teaching comprehension strategies such as summarizing, self-questioning, and com-
prehension monitoring (Dole, Duffy, Roehler, & Pearson, 1991; Solis et al., 2012). For instance,
students are taught to ask and answer predetermined questions such as who or what the para-
graph is about, what action is happening and why, and to create summary sentences or extract
the gist of individual paragraphs (e.g., Bakken, Mastropieri, & Scruggs, 1997; Jitendra, Kay
Hoppes, & Xin, 2000). Thus, by generating and answering questions related to the text, students
are effectively engaged in self-monitoring their own comprehension. An important question that
has received little empirical attention is to consider the developmentally-appropriate correlates of
these comprehension strategies in the preschool and early elementary years.
Tasked with developing a research-based supplemental curriculum to intervene on language
skills as a route to improving reading comprehension, the Language and Reading Research Con-
sortium (LARRC) addressed this issue by including integration skills such as synthesizing infor-
mation within texts, and monitoring comprehension and identifying when something does or
does not make sense, into their scope of instruction for prekindergarten and kindergarten class-
rooms (LARRC, 2016). Specifically, teachers were instructed to scaffold children’s abilities to
identify the main idea, and two or more details, of an informational text for the synthesizing
strategy. For comprehension monitoring, teachers were guided on how to encourage children to
pause at various points during a story book reading and ask themselves if something does or does
not make sense, and then to indicate their understanding using a clicking/clunking strategy (Klin-
ger & Vaughn, 1998). An example of a teacher modeling this strategy might follow reading out
loud the following sentence, “Bandit is a happy canine.” At this point, the teacher reminds the
children that if they are having trouble understanding the sentence, they should hold up their
“does not make sense” sign and ask what the word canine means. The teacher can then help
them “fix-up” what does not make sense by employing different “fix-up” strategies, such as
looking at the pictures in the book, reading some more sentences, or asking questions to try to
learn the word canine.
Thus, by explicit teaching of the strategy using clear explanations and steps, modeling
examples for how to use the strategy, and providing practice, feedback, and support to individual
children, higher-level language skills and metalinguistic skills may be taught effectively to children
as young as 4 years of age. To support this point, results from the first cohort of a large, field-
based randomized controlled trial (N= 766 students across grades) testing the impact of the Let’s
Know! curriculum supplement on children’s comprehension skills, indicate large, consistent, and
statistically significant effects on proximal measures of comprehension monitoring (Language and
Reading Research Consortium, Jiang, & Logan, 2019). Developing and testing research-based
curricula, as mentioned above, that cater to a long range view of development, and target both
lower-level and higher-level language skills as a route to improving reading comprehension, is
critical to changing how we conceptualize promoting children’s language and reading skills, both
in terms of theoretical models of development in these skill domains, as well as pedagogical prac-
tices adopted in daily teaching and learning from preschool through the primary grades.
A second and somewhat formidable challenge to bridging early childhood and elementary
education with respect to language and reading continuities concerns the underlying capacity and

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educational preparation of the respective workforces. Many children participate in early child-
hood education programs that operate outside of the educational milieu, for instance in Head
Start programs, private child-care programs, and home-based settings. Educators working in such
settings may not have extensive, formal post-secondary training in early education pedagogies and
disciplinary content, including language facilitation, and some evidence suggests that many educa-
tors working in these settings have somewhat under-developed understandings of core linguistic
principles (for discussion of this issue, see Joshi, Cunningham, & Moats, 2009). It may take con-
siderable efforts to ensure that early childhood educators have the skills they need to promote
continuity in reading instruction from the toddler/preschool through the elementary grades. For
instance, these continuities would entail ensuring that early childhood educators explicitly support
those higher-level language skills important to future reading comprehension, yet there is evi-
dence suggesting that language-focused instruction within early education settings is relatively
scarce and of potentially low quality (Pelatti et al., 2014).
At the same time, it is not necessarily clear that primary-grade teachers of reading have
a sophisticated understanding of language development themselves, to include those higher-level
skills that appear especially crucial to reading comprehension. A focused course in language
acquisition is not typically required within teacher-education programs, in the same way it is in
other fields (psychology, speech and hearing sciences), and research finds that many elementary
teachers do not have even basic understandings of language rules and forms (Moats & Foorman,
2003). Elevating all teachers’ knowledge of language development and instruction appears neces-
sary to improve continuities between early childhood language instruction and reading-
comprehension instruction. Importantly, not only do teachers need to learn effective strategies
for supporting the development of these skills, but they also need to support children’s engage-
ment and motivation towards reading by choosing appropriate learning materials and meaningful
contexts for learning. For bilingual classrooms, this necessitates being mindful of cultural and lin-
guistic diversity, and leveraging knowledge and skills acquired in the other language to support
skill development across both languages.
Finally, we must also acknowledge that the task of establishing coherence between early child-
hood and elementary reading instruction presents logistical challenges as well. Traditionally, pre-
school education and elementary education have remained largely separate, in large part due to
different funding sources and infrastructure and, to some extent, deeply entrenched differences in
practices. In many states, early education programs are licensed through Jobs and Family Services
rather than state education agencies, and federally, the nation’s largest early childhood initiative –
Head Start and Early Head Start – are operated by Health and Human Services. Although the
language-reading connection could provide a solid platform and impetus for building a bridge,
this work will necessitate close partnerships with educators, administrators in early education set-
tings and elementary schools, and policy makers. As one example, synergistic efforts will be
needed to support the necessary professional development (PD) and training opportunities for
educators, so as to set coherent and developmentally appropriate instructional strategies based on
empirical research. At the same time, state and federal learning standards could likely do a great
deal to foster, if not require, attention to continuities in the language-reading continuum from
early childhood through the primary grades by generating integrated standards rather than separ-
ate standards for early education (e.g., Ohio’s Early Learning Standards) and education in the
later grades (e.g., Common Core).

IV. New Approaches and Opportunities Relevant to the Current Era

We now highlight four new approaches and opportunities that hold promise for bridging the
systems of early childhood education and elementary education with respect to reading

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instruction. First, there has been a substantial increase in the public interest and investment in
improving reading comprehension, such as federal sponsorship of the Reading for Understanding
initiative. This has resulted in collaboration among leading research teams at the forefront of
studying reading development, as well as the development and testing of reading comprehension
interventions that span preschool through the early primary grades. Importantly, these research
teams have adopted a systematic approach to developing and testing curriculum supplements
which, in the case of the Let’s Know! curriculum, involved a thorough review of the extant
research findings on various techniques of instruction, incorporated school administrator and
teacher feedback in the development activities, and included pilot testing and formative evalu-
ation work (see LARRC, 2016). Future curriculum-development work focused on incorporating
instruction on both lower-level and higher-level language skills, as described earlier in this chap-
ter, may benefit from adopting a similar framework. This line of research may also benefit from
an even more extended view of development by considering language-reading connections and
instructional strategies to support the development of these skills across the preschool through
middle school continuum. Such work would help elucidate the learning pathways that lead to
the strongest reading outcomes and provide opportunities to take advantage of the especially high
plasticity of the language and cognitive systems at younger ages. Additionally, pending efficacy
work demonstrating positive longitudinal impacts of this curricula on children’s reading compre-
hension skills in later grades, as well as isolating the most effective practices for providing instruc-
tion on higher-level language skills in conjunction with lower-level language skills, the stage
would be well set for translational research that focuses on bringing these evidence-based prac-
tices to scale. Thus, continuing to examine the effectiveness of language-focused interventions as
a vehicle to improving reading outcomes, and extending the range of development to include
prekindergarten through elementary and even middle school, would improve our understanding
of the best instructional practices to support the development of these skills in a coherent and
developmentally-appropriate manner across childhood.
Second, lessons may be learned from model schools, such as the Naval Avenue Early Learning
Center in Bremerton, Washington, that provide comprehensive early childhood through third
grade education to children and have been successful in increasing continuity and coherence
across these grades. A particularly effective strategy that may be borrowed from this model is pro-
viding educators across the prekindergarten to grade 3 system with opportunities for joint profes-
sional development and learning opportunities, thus enabling dialogue and information sharing to
facilitate grade-level transitions. Outside of such innovative models, there is little opportunity for
early childhood educators and primary-grade teachers to have the opportunity to create profes-
sional learning communities. The federal government can help facilitate such synergistic efforts
by offering grants to stimulate working partnerships that bridge the early education and elemen-
tary milieus. Policymakers can also play an important role by framing teacher certification policies
that support ongoing teacher PD, specifically PD that has topical continuity and provides
ongoing opportunities for collaboration with peers across the preschool–elementary school
continuum.
Third, to ensure that children move from one grade to the next with the core set of know-
ledge and skills to be successful in the following year, efforts must be taken to align not just the
curricula and pedagogical practices across the early childhood to elementary school continuum,
but also to work on the alignment of educational standards and assessments. The development of
literacy assessment systems across the prekindergarten through primary grade continuum to better
inform instruction would be a particularly effective approach toward achieving such an align-
ment. For example, The McKnight Foundation’s Education and Learning (E&L) Program has
adopted use of a diagnostic literacy assessment system called STEP (Strategic Teaching and Evalu-
ation of Progress), which was developed by the Urban Education Institute to meet a key

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objective of developing assessment systems across prekindergarten through third grade. A useful
feature of an assessment system like the STEP is that it employs a set of leveled texts that increase
in difficulty with each skill level or “step,” which teachers use to help identify the skills that
students need in order to become proficient, independent readers. Appropriate level texts can
then be chosen to provide targeted instruction on skills that are shown to be weak (e.g., higher
order thinking skills such as inferencing). Additional benefits reported by the program for using
this assessment system include facilitating cross-grade conversations about teachers’ expectations
regarding children’s literacy skills, providing teachers with a common language to communicate
with each other and with parents about children’s literacy skills, and aligning instructional
approaches across different classrooms and grades (Golan et al., 2013).
Fourth, and particularly relevant to the current era in which dual language learners (DLLs)
constitute a significant proportion of youth entering the education system, it is increasingly neces-
sary to develop and implement effective cross-linguistic instructional strategies to support the
development of higher-level language skills and reading comprehension among this population.
Building higher-level language and listening comprehension skills in both the child’s first
and second languages in prekindergarten, prior to formal reading instruction in English, may be
a particularly effective strategy for promoting positive transfer. At the same time, given the estab-
lished developmental trends in DLLs showing language to be a continued source of reading diffi-
culty in this population (Hammer, Lawrence, & Miccio, 2008; Mancilla-Martinez & Lesaux,
2011; Páez, Tabors, & López, 2007), it is increasingly important to create optimal learning condi-
tions to build language and background knowledge in the L2 as early as possible to prevent
future reading difficulties. One approach to facilitating language acquisition in DLLs is to create
opportunities for these students to form connections between their knowledge and skills in their
two languages. Other approaches that have been shown to be effective include direct vocabulary
instruction focused on general-purpose academic words likely to be encountered across a variety
of content areas (Beck, McKeown, & Omanson, 1987) and teaching strategies for inferring word
meanings using contextual cues, cognate knowledge, morphological information, and using aids
such as glossaries and dictionaries (e.g., Carlo et al., 2004; Jimenez et al., 1996).
Research in pedagogical practices for supporting literacy-skill development in DLLs suggests
that a first step is for teachers to recognize that DLL’s native language skills may interact with, and
influence, their literacy development in English (e.g. Herrera, Perez, & Escamilla, 2010). This rec-
ognition of cross-linguistic effects on literacy development allows teachers to understand and
remediate errors and misconceptions in English without attributing these to a lack of textual under-
standing or poor literacy skills. For example, at the word level, teachers can draw attention to and
provide correct translations for false cognates like rope/ropa. Conversely, teachers could identify
cognates (words with the same origin or root) across the child’s two languages, thereby reinforcing
knowledge of the word in their native language and building connections with the L2.
Another pedagogical practice recommended for use with DLLs is that teachers help context-
ualize new content to what is already familiar and known by the child (Ajayi, 2005; Calderón,
2007; Herrera et al., 2010). For instance, drawing connections between new vocabulary and
prior experiences and background knowledge regarding the topic/word being taught helps chil-
dren construct vocabulary meanings reflecting their life experiences and prior linguistic and edu-
cational backgrounds. When teaching academic vocabulary, in particular, the connections that
teachers make with children’s background knowledge and personal experiences can provide an
important scaffold for the learning of more complex and abstract terms. Consistent with this sug-
gestion, it is encouraged that teachers provide children with opportunities to practice using new
words in multiple contexts. For instance, Hadaway, Vardell, and Young (2002) suggest integrat-
ing nonfiction literature such as poems, biographies, journals, and diaries into instruction, so as to
provide DLLs opportunities to encounter academic vocabulary in more relevant and authentic

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contexts. Creating a collaborative classroom environment can also provide opportunities for chil-
dren to practice their linguistic abilities, co-construct background and vocabulary knowledge, and
make predictions during reading and writing activities. Other effective strategies that have been
discussed as being especially beneficial for DLLs include implementing book clubs with culturally
and linguistically diverse students in which they are allowed to choose age-appropriate, personally
meaningful texts (e.g., Kong & Fitch, 2002), engaging in group dialogue around text, and mod-
eling and scaffolding reading comprehension strategies such as questioning, inference-making, and
monitoring text (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002).

V. Concluding Comments
Over the course of this chapter, we have described the parallel interests, and recent shifts, in the
conceptualization of continuities between language and reading. We argue that there is likely
great benefit to continuing to improve our understanding of how early language skills support
the development of reading skills across the primary grades so as to identify and develop instruc-
tional practices that would best support reading development across the preschool to elementary
school (and potentially middle school) continuum. In particular, we highlight the importance of
continued research examining the contribution of higher-level language skills relevant for forming
a detailed and sophisticated mental model of text. We also emphasize the importance of continu-
ity in pedagogical practices relevant to reading instruction across early childhood education and
elementary education to ensure a coherent learning pathway for children, while also highlighting
salient challenges and opportunities. Despite the breadth of topics covered in this chapter, it is
important to highlight our central goal, which is to argue the necessity of recognizing the strong,
central relations between language acquisition during early childhood and reading comprehension
during the primary grades, which ought to lead to enhanced continuity in instructional targets
and practices utilized in early childhood education and reading instruction in the primary grades.

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 12
What Do We Know Today about the
Complexity Of Vocabulary Gaps and
What Do We Not Know?
Jeannette Mancilla-Martinez and Janna B. McClain

Organizer
I. Why Vocabulary Matters
II. Conceptualizing What We Mean by Vocabulary Knowledge
III. Language Environments, the Acquisition Process, and Disparities in Opportunity
IV. Promising Approaches to Building Vocabulary
V. Future Directions
VI. Conclusion

I. Why Vocabulary Matters

Before attending to gaps between what science reveals about vocabulary and its development and
what effectively unfolds in practice, we begin with an overview of the importance of vocabulary
for reading particularly and learning more generally. From models of reading to reading research,
the importance of language comprehension is widely acknowledged—which encompasses
vocabulary knowledge—for successful text comprehension (Baumann & Kame’enui, 2004;
Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Just & Carpenter, 1987; Kintsch, 1998; National Reading Panel, 2000;
Perfetti, 1999). More importantly, language comprehension helps explain more of the variance in
reading comprehension outcomes once students exit the elementary school years (e.g., Catts,
Hogan, & Adlof, 2005; Mancilla-Martinez & Lesaux, 2017; Vellutino, Tunmer, Jaccard, & Chen,
2007). Variation in reading achievement appears to undergo a developmental shift: while word-
based skills influence reading outcomes early on, once word-based skills are automatic, language-
based skills exert greater influence (Chall, 1983; Scarborough, 2001). This developmental shift
has significant instructional implications regarding the emphasis of language-based skills over
word-based skills. Because the demands of text increase over time, the early focus on language
must be sustained throughout the school years (Stevens et al., 2015).
Unlike alphabetic word reading skills that can effectively reach a ceiling due to the
finite number of letters in alphabets and the finite number of sounds those letters can make
(Paris, 2005), language learning is essentially infinite, and the rate of language acquisition
does vary across development. Language growth is generally faster during the (early)

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childhood years, with a slower rate of growth once students enter early adolescence and
beyond (Mancilla-Martinez & Lesaux, 2011; Verhaegen & Poncelet, 2013). As an essential
component of language comprehension, vocabulary has garnered increased attention over
the years, but has proven to be challenging to define, to measure, and to support. With
the acknowledgement that language comprehension is broader than knowing the meanings
of words, this chapter focuses on what we currently know about vocabulary. Additionally,
we raise questions concerning its development across the toddlerhood through adolescent
years, given that other aspects of language comprehension hinge on vocabulary knowledge,
at least to some extent.

Vocabulary as a Proxy for (Background) Knowledge

It would be a gross oversimplification to describe vocabulary as the mere acquisition of word
meanings as isolated units. Instead, as individual word meanings are acquired, students begin to
construct new conceptual understandings and build their background (or prior) knowledge (Gla-
sersfeld, 1984; Harris, Golinkoff, & Hirsh-Pasek, 2011; Resnick, 1983). For instance, a student
who is familiar with life on a farm has developed some conceptual understanding of what a farm
is and, with that, has likely amassed a store of vocabulary specific to farm life (e.g., barn, wind-
mill). For farm-related vocabulary that remains unknown (e.g., irrigation, trough), students with
farm life background knowledge would likely have an easier time learning unknown farm life
words as they can map on the new information to their existing background knowledge about
farms. On the other hand, although students can and do learn unknown vocabulary without or
with very limited background knowledge, the task of learning and retaining that new vocabulary
would arguably be greater.
Because vocabulary learning is a process that involves the development of conceptual under-
standings that serve to build or extend background knowledge, vocabulary knowledge can be
considered a general proxy for background or domain-specific knowledge. It is thus not surpris-
ing that students who have a large vocabulary knowledge on a given topic have an easier time, a)
learning new words associated with that topic, b) comprehending the text they read about that
topic, c) productively using those words, and d) developing and refining conceptual understand-
ings (Langer, 1984; Lipson, 1982; Stanovich, 1986; Stevens, 1980). Indeed, the influence of back-
ground knowledge on reading comprehension outcomes is well-documented, for both native
English speakers and ELLs (from hereof, used in reference to students whose native language is
not English, independent of whether they are formally identified as limited English proficient or
not for school purposes) (Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Hudson, 2007; Jiménez, García, & Pearson,
1996; Kintsch, 1988; Shapiro, 2004; Stanovich, 1986).
The importance of building background knowledge during the early childhood years has long
been underscored (Neuman, 2003). The lack of opportunity for many children to develop this
knowledge base contributes to later vocabulary and achievement gaps on account of limited con-
cept and schema development, necessitating instruction on conceptual knowledge development
alongside skill development. This point is especially pertinent to historically underserved popula-
tions, such as students from low-income homes and ELLs, given that they tend to be exposed to
skills-based instruction (i.e., sounding out words) more so than to content (i.e., understanding
concepts) (Lesaux, 2012). Of note, a heavy focus on skills-based competencies likely contributes
to widening vocabulary gaps (Vellutino et al., 1996). Similarly, in understanding individual differ-
ences in reading comprehension, it is essential to differentiate constrained skills (i.e., alphabetic
knowledge), which can effectively reach a ceiling of mastery, from unconstrained skills (i.e.,
vocabulary), which can never be fully mastered (Paris, 2005). On account of being easier to
assess, Paris cautions against over-testing—and we would add over-instructing—the constrained

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skills, such as word reading, at the exclusion of the unconstrained skills such as vocabulary.
Indeed, one of the difficulties of understanding vocabulary development is that there are numer-
ous ways to conceptualize the construct, thereby complicating how we measure it and support its
development. In the next section, we address how vocabulary is conceptualized in the literature.

II. Conceptualizing What We Mean by Vocabulary Knowledge

Defining Vocabulary
Vocabulary is defined and measured in myriad ways. In the simplest terms, vocabulary knowledge
refers to knowledge of words. However, the conceptualization of vocabulary across academic dis-
ciplines and theoretical frameworks has proved more complex. The field of psycholinguistics,
concerned primarily with the cognitive processing of language, defines vocabulary as mental rep-
resentations of concepts (Menn, 2017). While psycholinguists have traditionally held vocabulary
as synonymous with lexicon (words) and distinct from grammar (the syntactic system for organiz-
ing those words), cognitive psychological research holds a unified view of language that does not
distinguish lexicon from grammar (Bates & Goodman, 1997). Cognitive theories of literacy have
developed in a similar vein; Perfetti’s (2007) Lexical Quality Hypothesis posits that high-quality
mental representations of concepts attend to the grammatical form (syntactic and morphological),
as well as to the semantic, phonological, and orthographic forms of the words.
In comparison with psycholinguistic definitions of vocabulary, sociolinguists attend to the
intersection of societal norms and language use (Wardhaugh & Fuller, 2015). Thus, the field of
sociolinguistics is more concerned about how word use is reflective of cultural norms, power
structures, and identities. Sociocultural theories of literacy also emphasize the contextualization of
vocabulary, arguing that “words are always integrally and inextricably integrated with ways of
talking, thinking, believing, knowing, acting, interacting, valuing, and feeling associated with spe-
cific socially situated identities” (Gee, 2003, p. 31).
Adopting this perspective of language and literacy, some scholars critique research that quanti-
fies the vocabulary of students from low-income backgrounds, arguing that ethnocentric bias
inhibits researchers from considering language differences of marginalized communities “on its
own terms” rather than “in reference to the language of dominant groups” (Dudley-Marling &
Lucas, 2009, p. 336). This line of critique counters deficit orientations of the home language
contexts among children living in poverty by drawing upon early sociolinguistic and ethno-
graphic literacy research that describes rich story-telling practices of marginalized groups (Heath,
1983; Michaels, 1981; Miller, Cho, & Bracey, 2005). More recent research advocates for not
only understanding, but also leveraging linguistic difference for school success (e.g. Dyson, 1993;
Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Michaels, 2005). However, while there is empirical evidence
that “bridging home-school differences in interaction patterns or styles can enhance students’
engagement, motivation, and participation in classroom instruction,” the evidence that “bridging
home-school differences improves literacy achievement or development” remains limited (August
& Shanahan, 2006, p. 15).

Measuring Vocabulary
The wide spectrum of perspectives on defining vocabulary (Pearson, Hiebert, & Kamil, 2007)
results in a similarly diverse set of measures for assessing this construct (Henriksen, 1999; Nation,
1990; Richards, 1976), from standardized to researcher-developed assessments. Even though the
call for improved measures of vocabulary is hardly new, classroom-friendly measures that view
vocabulary as a conceptually-rich construct remain scarce (Stahl & Bravo, 2010). Over seven

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decades ago, Cronbach (1943) pushed for the need to move beyond a dichotomous notion of
vocabulary knowledge (i.e., the word is known vs. the word is unknown) to a more nuanced
perspective, wherein conceptual development is at the core (i.e., to not only understand a word
receptively, but also use it productively). This framing of vocabulary echoes a sociolinguistic per-
spective of vocabulary learning, underscoring the need to attend to the situated realities of
vocabulary knowledge, explicitly noting that “correct” meanings require attention to both the
context in which the words are used and the changing meanings of words (Beck, McKeown, &
Omanson, 1987; Bravo & Cervetti, 2008; Dale, 1965).
Further elaborating on the challenges of assessing vocabulary knowledge, Schmitt’s (2014)
recent synthesis aligns with and builds on the work of Pearson and colleagues (2007). Measures
of vocabulary breadth (or size) and depth (or quality) continually emerge as the most common
targets. Although vocabulary breadth is arguably more straightforward to conceptualize and to
measure compared to depth, it still presents challenges. For instance, is breadth of vocabulary in
reference to the receptive or expressive domain? In either case, the bulk of breadth vocabulary
assessments tap into form-meaning connections (also known as the process of mapping; see Carey,
1978; Clark, 1993). Yet, while the form-meaning connection is the first and central phase in
vocabulary learning, vocabulary acquisition also relies on two slower, essential processes: pack-
aging (discovery of things that can be packaged under the same label) and network building (dis-
covery of links between words) (Henriksen, 1999). Hence, vocabulary depth measures, which
have gained popularity over time, can be interpreted as an attempt to move towards a more
nuanced understanding about word knowledge.
The more relevant characteristic to underscore in vocabulary measurement may be that
measures of breadth include numerous items to reflect general vocabulary knowledge, while
measures of depth focus on a limited number of items to allow for a more nuanced, in-depth
examination. Furthermore, learner characteristics (e.g., lexicon size, dialectical differences)
should be attended to in attempting to understand a student’s vocabulary base, as even stand-
ardized vocabulary assessments with established psychometric properties are not sensitive to
nuances in students’ lexical knowledge, thereby undermining their instructional potential
(Stahl & Bravo, 2010).
When it comes to vocabulary measurement among ELLs, the picture is considerably more
complicated. Grosjean’s (1982, 1989, 2013) seminal work has long cautioned researchers against
the monolingual view on bilingualism (i.e., expecting that a bilingual is two monolinguals in one
person, thus with roughly “equal” proficiency in both languages). Unlike their monolingual
peers, ELLs’ language environments are fundamentally different; they receive input in two lan-
guages, likely differing in quantity and quality. It is well-established that vocabulary knowledge
among bilingual children is distributed across two languages, which severely limits the extent to
which single-language vocabulary measures (typically English-only in the U.S. context) can
accurately capture performance and development of overall vocabulary knowledge for this popula-
tion of learners (e.g., Bedore, Peña, García, & Cortez, 2005; Mancilla-Martinez & Vagh, 2013;
Pearson, Fernández, & Oller, 1995). In spite of this scientific understanding, bilinguals’ perform-
ance is, thus, commonly measured on monolingual standards, likely due to the lack of measures
that account for both languages in the field. Furthermore, common standardized English vocabu-
lary assessments rarely attend to whether linguistically diverse speakers are included in the norm-
ing samples (Luk & Christodoulou, 2016). Given that studies have focused on quantifying
vocabulary knowledge to predict and remedy trajectories that may lead to negative consequences
for learners who fall outside the norm (Hoff, 2013), ensuring the validity of the measures for the
population of students they are administered to is imperative.
In summary, while vocabulary measures have existed for a very long time with no shortage of
assessments that tap into the receptive and productive domains, there continues to be a paucity of

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vocabulary assessments that can be utilized to effectively guide instruction and monitor growth,
especially for ELLs. The next section summarizes extant research on vocabulary acquisition and
the malleable factors that shape language learning.

III. Language Environments, the Acquisition Process, and Disparities

in Opportunity
Genetic influences cannot be discounted in understanding vocabulary development and individual
differences in that development (see De Zeeuw, de Geus, & Boomsma, 2015; Kovas et al., 2005;
Olson et al., 2007). However, this chapter attends to malleable environmental factors that relate to
differences in vocabulary knowledge and development, namely the language environment at
home and school. Note that neither instructional nor intervention work is discussed in this sec-
tion. The focus here is on describing what we know about children’s home and school language
environments, and the extent to which parent and teacher language practices relate to children’s
vocabulary achievement and growth. But first, a brief overview of language quantity and quality
is provided, given that they emerge as central to discussions of vocabulary learning.

Language Quantity and Quality

To learn language, children need to be exposed to language. It is therefore of no surprise that
the role of input, both the quantity and quality, has received considerable attention from the lan-
guage and reading research community. Quantity of language input refers to the amount of words
that children are exposed to, with higher quantities (or amounts of language input) generally
associated with higher language attainment by children (Hurtado, Marchman, & Fernald, 2008;
Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk, Seltzer, & Lyons, 1991). On the other hand, quality of language
input refers to the types of words children are exposed to, with more diverse and sophisticated
types of words also generally associated with higher language attainment by children (Rowe,
2012). Thus, both the quantity and quality of language input help shape children’s language
learning (Hoff, 2006). Yet, children from diverse income backgrounds matched on quantity of
language input demonstrate differential patterns of language use and growth based on the quality
of the language they are exposed to (Cartmill et al., 2013; Rowe, 2012). This suggests that it is
especially important to attend to the quality of language input rather than simply to the quantity.
The sections that follow describe what we know about children’s home and school language
environments, with a focus on language quality.

Home Language Environment

The home is the first place in which children learn language. So what does quality language
input look like in the home? While there is substantial evidence that children learn vocabulary
from overheard speech between adults in their environment, “it remains that episodes of directed
speech (or joint attention) make significant contributions to early word learning, even in commu-
nities in which overheard speech predominates” (Sperry, Sperry, & Miller, 2018, p. 3). In add-
ition to the value of children’s exposure to the diversity and quantity of words at home (e.g.,
Pan, Rowe, Singer, & Snow, 2005), developmental research consistently points to the value of
engagement in interactive and responsive conversations between caretakers and children centered
on topics of interest to the child (Cartmill et al., 2013; Dieterich, Assel, Swank, Smith, &
Landry, 2006; Harris et al., 2011; Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015; Pan et al., 2005; Weizman & Snow,
2001).

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Studies that explore the relation between the home language environment and vocabulary
development have commonly focused on the following areas: 1) types of parental input (e.g.,
Rowe, Leech, & Cabrera, 2016), 2) shared book reading (e.g., Hindman, Skibbe, & Foster,
2014), and 3) decontextualized talk, such as storytelling (e.g., Beals, 2001; Heath, 1983). In rela-
tion to parental input, parent use of wh- questions—often referred to as open-ended questions
(versus closed-ended)—generally require more elaborate, linguistically complex responses from
children, thus helping to build vocabulary (Rowe et al., 2016; Salo, Rowe, Leech, & Cabrera,
2016; Whitehurst et al., 1988). Additionally, increased rates of parents’ other evocative tech-
niques, such as asking questions about object functions or attributes and using elaborations or
explanations, have been found to positively relate to children’s vocabulary knowledge (Jordan,
Snow, & Porche, 2000; Whitehurst et al., 1988). Regarding shared book reading (e.g., dialogic
reading), the importance of children’s active interaction (i.e., labeling and pointing during readings
versus passively listening to book readings) with novel words during reading is underscored, as it
helps enhance vocabulary development (Mol, Bus, de Jong, & Smeets, 2008; Sénéchal, Thomas,
& Monker, 1995). Similarly, engaging in more types of meaning-related talk with children (e.g.,
labeling or describing pictures in the book, predicting the story) positively predicts vocabulary
skills among children (Hindman et al., 2014).
Finally, while meaning-related talk about a book can be described as contextualized discourse
(i.e., regarding objects and situations present in the immediate context; Curenton, Craig, & Fla-
nigan, 2008), home language interactions involving decontextualized language—such as narrating
or explaining something that is not immediately visible—have also been linked with improved
vocabulary outcomes for young children (Rowe, 2012; Snow, Tabors, & Dickinson, 2001). In
dialogic reading research, findings show that the more parents connected the story to children’s
own experiences and lives, the stronger children’s vocabulary skills appeared (Hindman et al.,
2014). Moreover, storytelling is a practice particularly worth noting, as rich storytelling practices
not only rely on decontextualized language (Rowe, 2013) but also have been documented
among socio-economically, culturally, and linguistically diverse populations (Heath, 1983; Miller
et al., 2005). In fact, parents’ storytelling to children was found to contain more decontextualized
language than book reading (Curenton et al., 2008). Of note, maternal storytelling practices in
predominantly Spanish-speaking homes have been shown to correlate positively with preschool
dual language learners’ conceptual vocabulary outcomes, signaling a potential cultural strength
that could be leveraged for school success with this population of learners (Wishard Guerra,
2018).
Similar findings about the relationships between the quality and quantity of vocabulary
emerge for children from linguistically diverse homes (Hurtado et al., 2008; Konishi, Kanero,
Freeman, Golinkoff, & Hirsh-Pasek, 2014). However, it is important to note that the language
input ELLs receive in each language, both in quantity and quality, varies widely (Bialystok, 2001;
Grosjean, 1982, 1989, 2008; Romaine, 1999). Thus, vocabulary knowledge among ELLs is dis-
tributed across two (or more) languages, and is typically used in different social contexts. Thus, it
is important to consider the context (e.g., home or school) in which children might encounter
words, as it can play a role in priming bilinguals toward a more monolingual or bilingual lan-
guage mode (Bialystok, Luk, Peets, & Yang, 2010; Grosjean, 1982, 1989, 2008). Further,
Duursma and colleagues (2007) found that use of English at home was not required for English
vocabulary development among elementary-age children from Spanish-speaking homes in the
U.S. In contrast, both home language and instructional support was required for students to
remain proficient in Spanish.

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School Language Environment

Compared to research on the home language environment, work on the school language envir-
onment and its relationship to students’ vocabulary development is not only less researched but
also less conclusive. This is not surprising, given that teachers have fewer opportunities for one-
on-one conversational engagement with individual students by the very nature of the schooling
context (Bond & Wasik, 2009). Further, similar to the literature on home context, the bulk of
the work to date is anchored on the early childhood years. These limitations notwithstanding, we
do have some insight into the features of the school language environment that appear to be
associated with student vocabulary achievement and/or growth.
In the preschool context, the quality of teacher-child interactions relates to children’s language
skills, specifically underscoring the importance of interactive stimulation (Mashburn et al., 2008).
In a similar vein, Aukrust (2007) examined the relationship between teacher talk exposure in
a Norwegian preschool and native Turkish speaking children’s second language (Norwegian)
vocabulary acquisition. Aukrust reports that the amount, diversity, and complexity of teacher talk
in preschool predicted subsequent second language vocabulary skills in first grade. In another
study that examined the growth of preschoolers’ receptive lexical skills over a year in relation to
teacher speech among ELLs and their monolingual English-speaking peers, different aspects of
verbal input related to language growth of ELLs compared to monolingual English speakers
(Bowers & Vasilyeva, 2011). For ELLs, vocabulary growth was positively related to the total
number of words (i.e., quantity) produced by the teacher. For monolingual English speakers,
vocabulary growth was positively related to the number of word types (i.e., quality) produced by
the teacher. Also highlighting the role of quality of language in preschool settings, Gámez (2015)
focused on teachers’ and students’ speech during English Language Development instruction,
reporting that structural complexity and lexical diversity of teachers’ speech positively related to
Spanish-speaking ELLs’ language gains, as did the lexical diversity of students’ speech. Gámez
underscores the importance of exposure to high-quality classroom-based English, together with
opportunities for language interactions among teachers and students, for promoting ELLs’ English
development. Most recently, Justice, Jiang, and Strasser (2018) examined the contribution of lin-
guistic environment features in Head Start classrooms, finding that only teachers’ communica-
tion-facilitation behaviors (i.e., encouraging and facilitating children’s conversational
participation) predicted children’s vocabulary growth from preschool to kindergarten. Finally,
a longitudinal study followed 26 Turkish immigrant children in Norway from preschool to fifth
grade (age 10) (Rydland, Grøver, & Lawrence, 2014). Findings showed that teacher-led and peer
talk predicted children’s Norwegian vocabulary skills at age five, with differences maintained up
to age ten, underscoring the importance of preschool talk exposure for vocabulary development.
Turning to the formal school years, work focused on the school language environment and its
relationship to students’ vocabulary development is scant, in both U.S. and international contexts.
In one of the few studies focused on elementary-age students, Cadima, Leal, and Burchinal
(2010) examined associations between the quality of teacher-student interactions and first grade
academic and adaptive behavior outcomes of Portuguese students. The findings showed that the
quality of teacher-student interactions was positively associated with students’ first grade vocabu-
lary. In the U.S. context, only two studies could be identified that targeted teacher language use
and student vocabulary outcomes. In the first study, Silverman et al. (2014) explored the relation-
ship between teachers’ instruction and students’ vocabulary and comprehension in grades 3–5.
They found that only teachers’ instruction on definitions, word relations, and morphosyntax
positively related to changes in students’ vocabulary. In the second study, Gámez and Lesaux
(2012) investigated the link between teachers’ language use and early-adolescent students’
vocabulary. Like the work in the home context, quality—more than quantity—of language

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appeared to be the stronger ingredient related to students’ end-of-year vocabulary scores. In con-
trast, recent work evaluating the relationships between Chilean teachers’ explicit vocabulary
instruction and kindergarteners’ vocabulary development did not find that the quantity or quality
of teachers’ language supported students’ language growth (Bowne, Yoshikawa, & Snow, 2016).
The authors point out that the nature of student-teacher interactions in the Chilean context may
account for this divergent finding, given that teachers tended to have large groups of students in
their classrooms.
In summary, most of the research on the relationship between the home or school language
environment and students’ vocabulary proficiency finds that both quantity and quality matter.
Thus, for successful vocabulary acquisition and development, children must be provided with
ample language learning opportunities; however, not all children have access to such opportun-
ities. We also know that, in general, children with better reading skills early on tend to develop
better reading skills over time (Stanovich, 1986), which likewise applies to vocabulary. In short,
for students to develop their language skills, there must be ample and sustained language learning
opportunities. In fact, it is estimated that students need between 12–15 exposures to new words
to learn them (Templeton, Bear, Invernizzi, & Johnston, 2010); the importance of ensuring these
learning opportunities cannot be overestimated. Nearly 30 years ago, Clay (1987) underscored
the need to account for children’s educational history when evaluating the etiology of reading
disability, specifically asserting that quality of instruction must be at the forefront. The next sec-
tion synthesizes research on instruction and intervention approaches to support and build stu-
dents’ vocabulary.

IV. Promising Approaches to Building Vocabulary

Mirroring our synthesis of research on malleable factors that shape vocabulary development from
the previous section, we begin this section with home-focused interventions and then turn to
school-focused interventions.

Home-Focused Approaches
A common element for promoting children’s vocabulary development at home centers on inter-
actions, particularly their quality (Dickinson & Tabors, 2002; Mol et al., 2008; O’Brien et al.,
2014). Findings from two meta-analyses focused on family literacy interventions, one centered on
a specific approach (i.e., dialogic reading) and the other much broader in scope (i.e., family liter-
acy programs), hold promise for supporting children’s vocabulary development.
Mol and colleagues (2008) conducted a meta-analysis of 16 experimental studies to examine
whether variations in dialogic reading—in which the child becomes the storyteller (Whitehurst
et al., 1988)—were specifically associated with vocabulary development. While the authors found
dialogic reading promising, they noted that participant characteristics must be considered. The
effects of dialogic reading appeared stronger for younger compared to older children and were
more pronounced for children’s expressive compared to receptive vocabulary. Neither of these
findings is surprising, given that dialogic reading was designed for pre-literate children and effects
have consistently been found on expressive vocabulary measures. Furthermore, the effects did not
appear as promising for families from lower income homes nor for families of children with
greater risk for compromised academic achievement. These findings are somewhat surprising, as
others have found positive effects of dialogic reading for families from lower income homes
(Lonigan & Whitehurst, 1998; Whitehurst et al., 1994) and, although much less researched, for
children with disabilities (Towson, Gallagher, & Bingham, 2016). Mol and colleagues conclude

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that dialogic reading could promote young children’s vocabulary development and assert that the
quality of book reading matters.
Another meta-analysis examined the effects of 30 family literacy programs (FLPs) on children’s
literacy development, distinguishing their effects on code- and comprehension-related skills
(including vocabulary) (Van Steensel, McElvany, Kurvers, & Herppich, S., 2011). Similar to Mol
et al.’s meta-analysis (2008), it found a significant, though small, mean effect of the FLPs. How-
ever, effects on code- and comprehension-related measures were similar. The authors hypothesize
that this may be attributed to the ways in which parents interact with their children. For instance,
even if the program orients parents to focus on encouraging more child talk during reading, par-
ents may default to simply reading the book to their child. Like Mol and colleagues, albeit with
more reservation, the authors conclude that FLPs may have potential. But they underscore the
need for further research into how programs are effectively carried out by parents and children,
noting that implementation or treatment fidelity information is rarely provided.
Two quasi-experimental studies also identified the aspects of FLPs that may be most effective
for closing vocabulary gaps. O’Brien and colleagues (2014) found that young ELLs from low-
income, immigrant families who participated in an FLP had significantly higher vocabulary gains
than their demographically-matched peers. Of note, children with the lowest vocabulary know-
ledge evidenced the greatest gains. The authors underscore that the FLP model utilized in the
study emphasized authentic literacy practices and focused on ecologically-valid home literacy
practices, such as direct parent-child interactions. The second study found that the participants in
the Raising A Reader (RAR) program—an evidence-based, 12-week program that is designed
to encourage parents to read to their children—experienced significant gains in students’ recep-
tive vocabulary (Chao, Mattocks, Birden, & Manarino-Leggett, 2015). RAR increased the
number of questions parents asked about books, and the authors assert that their findings support
the importance of quality of interaction.
Finally, Dickinson and Tabors (2002) provide a summary of findings from a longitudinal study
that examined how parents (and teachers) support language development in children from low-
income families, from preschool through high school (here, the focus is on the home context,
although classroom data was also collected). The authors audiotaped home conversations, inter-
viewed parents regarding their experiences with children, and administered several language and
literacy measures from kindergarten through high school to identify the types of preschool inter-
actions that related to later literacy development. They identified three dimensions of experiences
that positively related to children’s later literacy success: 1) exposure to varied vocabulary, 2)
extended discourse, and 3) stimulating environments. Dickinson and Tabors stress the importance
of ensuring that early oral language supports are provided for children given their long-term
effects on literacy development.

School-Focused Approaches
This section focuses on efforts centered on improving the quality and quantity of language use in
the classroom—from early childhood throughout the formal school years—to build students’
vocabulary knowledge. Two promising approaches include improving classroom discussion and
focusing vocabulary instruction on building conceptual understanding.

Targeting Talk
As with work in the home context, engaging children in meaningful conversations in classrooms
is an effective way of supporting vocabulary learning (Jalongo & Sobolak, 2011; Sinatra,
Zygouris-Coe, & Dasinger, 2012). Studies of preschool literacy time suggest that oral language

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 What Do We Know Today about Vocabulary Gaps?

and discussion take up a substantial portion of literacy instruction, second to book reading
(Pelatti, Piasta, Justice, & O’Connell, 2014). Yet, research on oral language in early school set-
tings generally focus less on classroom discussion per se and more on teacher-student talk in the
context of shared book reading (e.g. Hindman, Wasik, & Erhart, 2012; Pollard-Durodola, Gon-
zalez, & Simmons, 2014; Wasik & Hindman, 2014) and dialogic book reading (Lonigan &
Whitehurst, 1998; Whitehurst et al., 1994). We also know it is important for preschool teachers
to follow students’ conversational topics, such that students become conversational partners, not
passive listeners (Schwanenflugel et al., 2005; Sinatra et al., 2012).
At the elementary, middle and high school level, researchers recognize that disrupting the per-
vasive teacher-driven discourse that positions students as passive recipients of knowledge requires
considerable effort (Cazden, 2001; Reznitskaya & Wilkinson, 2015). Many researchers and practi-
tioners have developed tools to help teachers improve the quality of classroom conversations,
including explicit training on discursive talk moves (McElhone, 2015; Michaels & O’Connor,
2013), providing resources, such as lists of questions that can be used with any text (Beck,
McKeown, Sandora, Kucan, & Worthy, 1996; McKeown & Beck, 2004), or utilizing curriculum
that incorporates texts on topics that are conducive to academic conversations (Lawrence,
Crosson, Paré-Blagoev, & Snow, 2015). Furthermore, organizational factors (e.g., positioning of
desks, use of physical objects to moderate conversation) may also aid in scaffolding effective class-
room conversation (Chiaravalloti, Frey, & Fink, 2010). Various pedagogical efforts to facilitate
classroom discussions indeed contribute to student talk, as there appears to be a significant correl-
ation between pre-service teachers’ planned use of dialogic tools and increased student talk in
high school English classrooms (Caughlan, Juzwik, Kelly, Fine, & Borsheim-Black, 2013). Add-
itionally, teachers’ commitment to consistently scaffolding classroom discussion over time has led
to student uptake of discourse moves, thereby improving discussion quality (Jadallah et al., 2011).

Building Conceptual Understanding

As noted in the Conceptualizing What We Mean by Vocabulary Knowledge section, network building
refers to the discovery of links between words (also referred to as semantic networks) (Henriksen,
1999). It seems useful to focus on the concept of network building when discussing how to sup-
port children’s vocabulary development—particularly in the school context—because vocabulary
learning involves more than a form-meaning connection. When children learn words, they begin
to formulate an understanding of concepts associated with those words (Neuman & Dwyer,
2009; Stahl & Murray, 1994; Stahl & Nagy, 2006). Neuman and colleagues (2011) found that
teaching academic vocabulary in the context of semantically related categories (e.g., healthy
foods, wild animals) produced strong linguistic and conceptual learning. Similarly, although
Bowne and colleagues (2016) did not find that the quantity nor quality of Chilean teachers’ lan-
guage supported language growth, it did find that only the amount of conceptual information
about words made available during teacher discussions significantly predicted students’ end-of-
kindergarten vocabulary. This is an intriguing finding that supports the notion that a concerted
focus on conceptual development has the potential to advance not only students’ word know-
ledge, but also ultimately their world knowledge.
An example of an approach that targets language during content instruction and has the
potential to advance students’ vocabulary and conceptual knowledge is the Word Generation
program (http://wordgen.serpmedia.org). While this vocabulary program was originally designed
to support middle graders’ (grades 6–8) vocabulary development, there is now also an upper-
elementary curriculum targeting students in grades 4–5. The program is centered on embedding
all-purpose academic words in the context of high-interest passages about a controversial topic.
Aside from the importance of selecting cross-content words, a unique feature of this program is

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that implementation is a whole-school effort (Lawrence, White, & Snow, 2010), while vocabu-
lary programs are typically implemented by individual classroom teachers. By virtue of having
content-area teachers working with English language arts teachers, it is possible to build students’
conceptual understanding of words, helping them identify relationships and nuanced meanings of
words in authentic contexts applicable to their daily learning experiences. Indeed, the repeated
exposures to target words—in varied contexts—and the opportunities to use the words orally and
in writing represent the key features of the Word Generation program. In this way, Word Gen-
eration attends to students’ conceptual development anchored on words, rather than on isolated
word instruction.
The Academic Language Instruction for All Students (ALIAS) program represents another
exemplary vocabulary intervention designed for middle school students from linguistically and
socioeconomically diverse homes (Lesaux, Kieffer, Faller, & Kelley, 2010). Among other compo-
nents, ALIAS utilizes collaborative learning activities to leverage the benefits of peer interaction
on language development (see August & Hakuta, 1997; Ellis, 1994; McLaughlin, 1987). Weekly
logs and interviews centered on teachers’ perceptions of program implementation revealed that
teachers found the use of appropriate and appealing texts very beneficial in promoting classroom
talk and supporting students’ vocabulary learning.
Taken together, quality interactions support children’s vocabulary development, at home
and in school. But there are gaps in the research on promising approaches that remain unad-
dressed. For instance, the precise nature of the interactions that unfold in homes remain an
open question (Van Steensel et al., 2011), as does the role of discussion beyond book-reading
in early childhood contexts. Further, the extent to which school-focused vocabulary
approaches can influence other academic outcomes (e.g., reading comprehension)—beyond
vocabulary development—remains inconclusive (Wright & Cervetti, 2017). The final section
outlines additional areas that are ripe for further research to help move the vocabulary
research field forward.

V. Future Directions
Building on what we currently know, several lines of vocabulary research could benefit from
more in-depth studies, including how to improve instructional language environments, how
technology can be leveraged to build vocabulary, how assessments can be revised to account for
all of the linguistic resources multilingual children bring to school, and how teacher vocabulary
knowledge shapes student vocabulary outcomes.

Improving Instructional Language Environments

We know that vocabulary is acquired via meaningful incidental encounters with words and expli-
cit, purposeful, planned, and sustained support for monolingual English speakers and ELLs
(Graves, 2006; Graves, August, & Mancilla-Martinez, 2013). However, research on how to effect-
ively improve instructional practices for both incidental and direct vocabulary instruction remains
limited.
Despite knowing that quality language interactions are important, classroom talk tends to be
used to check student comprehension rather than help develop students’ thinking (Fisher, Frey,
& Rothenberg, 2008), and recitation remains the dominant form of teacher-led group talk
(Cazden, 2001; Michaels & O’Connor, 2013). Furthermore, ELLs and students from low-income
homes tend to be provided with few opportunities to engage in classroom talk (Ho, 2005; Lin-
gard, Hayes, & Mills, 2003). The lack of quality classroom language interactions is not surprising,
given that facilitating high-quality student discussion is a demanding pedagogical task. A major

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challenge to engaging students in conversations is that teachers are often not prepared to do so,
especially in optimal ways (Ghousseini, 2015); in fact, doing so often relies on extensive planning
(Caughlan et al., 2013; DeFrance & Fahrenbruck, 2015). In light of findings that show the posi-
tive influence of classroom talk on literacy outcomes and content-area learning from early child-
hood to high school years (for a review, see Lawrence & Snow, 2010), more research focusing
on how teachers can support genuine language interactions during class discussions to help build
students’ conceptual understanding is essential.
In addition to the paucity of quality language interactions that support incidental vocabulary
acquisition, a long line of research has documented the lack of high-quality explicit vocabulary
instruction in classrooms that serve both monolingual English speakers and ELLs, from early
childhood to high school (Beck & McKeown, 2007; Durkin, 1979; Dutro & Moran, 2003; Ger-
sten & Baker, 2000; Scarcella, 1996; Scott & Nagy, 1997). Indeed, there appears to be a wide
gap between what research recommends as best practice and what has been observed in actual
classrooms, both in the quantity and quality of vocabulary instruction (Scott, Jamieson-Noel, &
Asselin, 2003; Watts, 1995; Wright & Neuman, 2014). In addition, teachers have reported
limited school- or district-level support for systematic vocabulary instruction (Berne & Blacho-
wicz, 2008). Although there is generally acknowledgement of the importance of building
vocabulary, more research is needed on developmentally-effective teaching strategies (Neuman &
Dwyer, 2009).

The Role of Technology

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are established as powerful instructional
tools and can be expected to continue to play an increasingly central role in and out of school
(Dalton & Grisham, 2011; National Institute for Literacy, 2008; Rideout, Lauricella, & Wartella,
2011). In fact, ICTs may provide particular benefits for students with special needs (Muligan,
2003; Sadao & Robinson, 2010) and ELLs (Lacina, 2004; Uchikoshi, 2006; Wong & Neuman,
2016). But more research on the relationship between the use of technology and student vocabu-
lary development is necessary, including work that attends to issues of equity and access
(NAEYC & Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media, 2012). Furthermore,
research that elucidates which technological tools are most effective for vocabulary learning, and
also how those tools can be implemented most effectively (Zhao, 2003) is needed. In other
words, it is important to consider not only how much time (quantity) children spend with tech-
nology but also how (quality) they spend that time (Christakis & Garrison, 2009; Tandon, Zhou,
Lozano, & Christakis, 2011) in order to gain more insight into the active ingredients that may
promote vocabulary development. For example, research on using eBooks to promote early
childhood vocabulary acquisition suggests that while multi-media features are beneficial, inter-
active elements may be distracting (Takacs, Swart, & Bus, 2015), and that language development
is enhanced when adults mediate children’s experiences during eBook reading (Reich, Yau, &
Warschauer, 2016).

Assessment Considerations
Considering the large and growing population of students from linguistically diverse homes in
U.S. classrooms, it is imperative that research carefully attends to the types of vocabulary assess-
ments utilized to help us understand and best support students’ vocabulary knowledge. As noted
earlier (see Conceptualizing What We Mean by Vocabulary Knowledge section), common standardized
English vocabulary assessments rarely attend to whether linguistically diverse speakers are included
in the norming samples (Luk & Christodoulou, 2016). This point cannot be underestimated and

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has important implications. We cannot continue to assess students only in English and overlook
the fact that they have knowledge, however limited or extensive, of their native language(s).
Work focused on psycholinguistic aspects of bilingualism similarly points to the existence of
a combined lexico-semantic storage that is similar to monolinguals’ linguistic storage (Dijkstra &
Van Heuven, 2002; Kroll & Sunderman, 2003). In spite of theoretical consensus about the
importance of conceptual vocabulary, the dominance of English as the language of assessment
remains pervasive; in practice, standardized conceptual vocabulary measures in which students can
answer in either language are only now beginning to emerge and to be investigated for their
utility (Mancilla-Martinez, Greenfader, & Ochoa, 2018).
Given the lack of appropriate measures for linguistically diverse learners, numerous studies and
reports to date document Spanish-English bilingual children’s low English and low Spanish vocabu-
lary knowledge (e.g., Gross, Buac, & Kaushanskaya, 2014; Hammer, Lawrence, & Miccio, 2008;
Mancilla-Martinez & Lesaux, 2011; Mancilla-Martinez & Vagh, 2013). For children from other
language backgrounds, such as Kurdish or Arabic, we know even less about their vocabulary know-
ledge in their native language(s), leaving researchers and practitioners with only partial knowledge
of what students know and thus limiting the instructional support they can provide. This is prob-
lematic for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is risking a deficit orientation in the instruc-
tion provided to linguistically diverse students. Teacher expectations matter; it may be that the
quality of instruction may differ for students deemed to have sufficient English skills compared to
those labeled as limited English proficient (Umansky, 2016). It is thus possible that measures that
allow linguistically diverse students to demonstrate their conceptual knowledge base can potentially
help inform instructional efforts and differentiate language difference from language disorder.
There is much work left to do in this area, but given that standardized conceptual vocabulary assess-
ments are now available, it seems like a worthy line of further investigation.

Teacher Vocabulary Knowledge

Finally, and much less explored, more work is need to understand the extent to which teacher
knowledge of vocabulary is associated with students’ vocabulary development. Minimal attention
has been paid to the potential role that teachers’ own understanding of vocabulary may have in
being prepared to provide students with appropriate vocabulary support. With some exceptions
(Carlisle, Correnti, Phelps, & Zeng, 2009), a growing body of research finds that teacher content
knowledge influences teacher practice and positively contributes to student learning in that con-
tent-area (Hill, Rowan, & Ball, 2005; Lane et al., 2009; McCutchen et al., 2002; Sadler, Sonnert,
Coyle, Cook-Smith, & Miller, 2013). Yet, no studies to date have directly examined whether
teacher knowledge of vocabulary may relate to student vocabulary learning. Recent work by
Duguay, Kenyon, Haynes, August, and Yanosky (2016) contributes to this issue via their design
of a tool to measure teachers’ knowledge of vocabulary development and instruction. The
Teachers’ Knowledge of Vocabulary Survey (TKVS) is designed for teachers of both monolingual
English speakers and ELLs. While the TKVS’s validity has yet to be established, pilot study results
are encouraging, indicating that the measure appears to have content and construct validity. An
important next step will be to examine the relationship between teacher knowledge of vocabu-
lary development and instruction as assessed by the TKVS—and other measures that may emerge
—and teacher practice, as well as student achievement.

VI. Conclusion
The increasing economic, racial, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity in our U.S. child population
highlights the importance of re-examining what we mean by vocabulary knowledge, and in turn, to

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revisit how best to measure it and help it unfold. Despite a lack of consensus in how vocabulary is
precisely defined, we know that vocabulary learning is not about isolated acquisition of word defin-
itions. Instead, when students amass a store of word knowledge, they are effectively building concep-
tual understandings and need interactions with others to build their vocabulary base. At the same
time, we are still piecing together the elements of effective interactions, including the documentation
of interactions in authentic contexts and how the nature of the interactions are, or can be, adapted
across development for optimal learning. As evidenced by current vocabulary instructional efforts, we
are moving in a direction of anchoring vocabulary learning on content instruction and, by extension,
on opportunities for students to more explicitly make conceptual links. Furthermore, there is limited,
but growing understanding of how technology could be used effectively to improve vocabulary
learning. In addition, growing efforts to create more equitable and comprehensive assessments of stu-
dents’ vocabulary could shift researchers and practitioners away from deficit orientations of culturally
and linguistically diverse learners and provide powerful guidance for instruction. These seem like
promising directions to move toward for all our learners, and especially for historically underserved
populations that have subsequently evidenced low vocabulary knowledge and low academic achieve-
ment across the school years and content areas.

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 13
The Role of Knowledge in
Understanding and Learning from
Text
Gina N. Cervetti and Tanya S. Wright

There is a wealth of theoretical and empirical evidence regarding the significant role of prior
knowledge in reading comprehension. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the substantial
body of research on knowledge in light of current models of comprehension. As such, we begin
by describing theoretical accounts of the role of knowledge in reading comprehension. We then
review the empirical evidence describing the role of knowledge in comprehension and the rela-
tionships among knowledge, reading skill, and language development in support of reading com-
prehension. In doing so, we both substantiate the critical role of knowledge in reading and also
identify promising areas for future research and practice.
There is little question that the basic skills of decoding and interpreting words are essential for
accessing and successfully comprehending text. This well-documented understanding has led to
a strong emphasis on basic (word-level) skills in early reading instruction and to the design of
skills-focused interventions for older students who struggle to make sense of grade-appropriate
texts. This focus on basic skills has often overshadowed attention to other supports for compre-
hension and other possible explanations for comprehension difficulties—the skills and knowledge
that are involved in comprehension itself, which assist students not just in reading and recalling
text, but in learning from text. The focus on basic skills has sometimes caused educators and policy-
makers to overlook research demonstrating that basic skills, comprehension strategies, and know-
ledge develop simultaneously, rather than sequentially—and that instruction that supports the
latter is essential even before students have mastered basic skills (e.g., Rapp, van den Broek,
McMaster, Kendeou, & Espin, 2007). Moreover, the focus on word-level skills has diverted
attention away from decades of research that have informed our understanding about how readers
comprehend text and, in particular, the role of knowledge in comprehension.

Knowledge as a Predictor and Product of Reading

Theoretical Accounts of Knowledge and Reading Comprehension

Bartlett (1932) is often credited with laying the groundwork for later research on knowledge and
comprehension in a series of studies examining the effect of knowledge on the processing of new
information. Bartlett described “schemata” as organizations of past experiences that reside in

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memory and bias interpretation of new stimuli, such as stories. In the 1960’s, Ausubel (1963,
1968) raised the status of prior knowledge as a factor in learning. In his widely-read 1968 educa-
tional psychology textbook, Ausubel represented learning as a cumulative process in which learn-
ers integrate new knowledge with existing knowledge, claiming that “the most important single
factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows” (p. 18).
Ausubel’s portrayal of the role of prior knowledge in learning powerfully influenced the cog-
nitive models of reading comprehension that emerged in the subsequent decades. In particular,
the leading model of the 1980’s, schema theory, foregrounded prior knowledge as an explanation
for comprehension. Schema theoretic models suggest that individuals have knowledge about
things and events that provide a conceptual framework for understanding the world and a basis
for comprehending text, filling in gaps in texts, and assimilating new information (Anderson &
Pearson, 1984; Marr & Gormley, 1982). Several classic studies demonstrated that readers interpret
new situations in text in light of their existing knowledge, experiences, and perspectives (e.g.,
Anderson, Spiro, & Anderson, 1978; Goetz, Schallert, Reynolds, & Radin, 1983). For example,
Anderson, Reynolds, Schallert, and Goetz (1977) studied the effect of knowledge on interpret-
ation of ambiguous passages. Participants enrolled in a weightlifting class or an educational psych-
ology class for music education students read two ambiguous passages—each with two possible
interpretations (prison/wrestling and cards/music). The participants retold the passages and com-
pleted multiple choice items for each passage, each of which had two possible correct answers,
one for each of the interpretations. The weight-lifting students gave more correct wrestling-
consistent answers than the music students on the prison/wrestling passage. The music education
students gave more correct music-consistent answers than the weightlifting students on the cards/
music passage. In addition, the inclusion of theme-revealing disambiguations in the retellings
were significantly related to the subjects’ background. That is, for example, more weightlifting
students included statements that revealed a wrestling interpretation in the prison/wrestling pas-
sage. The authors interpret the findings as evidence that people’s interpretation of messages is
influenced by high-level schemata.
Contemporary cognitive models of reading describe the essential role of knowledge in text
comprehension (Graesser, Singer, & Trabasso, 1994; Kintsch, 1998; van den Broek, Risden,
Fletcher, & Thurlow, 1996). These models represent the relationship between knowledge and
comprehension as one in which existing knowledge is continually activated and integrated with
textual information in the interest of establishing a coherent mental representation of the text. The
models also emphasize the malleability of knowledge, representing knowledge as a kind of network
of associations that shifts continually during reading. Recent work describes in detail how memory
of information encountered in a text (episodic memory) and existing knowledge (semantic
memory) are activated and re-activated during reading, resulting in different kinds of inferences, as
well as factors that influence these processes (e.g., Cook & Guéraud, 2005; Wolfe & Goldman,
2005). The most prominent contemporary model of comprehension, the Construction-Integration
Model (Kintsch, 1988, 1998), portrays comprehension as having at least three levels. At the first
level, readers identify the surface structure of the text, or the words and phrases that make up the text.
The second level is the textbase, in which the reader uses information from the text and from their
knowledge base to encode the semantic and rhetorical structures of the text, forming a set of basic
propositions about the ideas and events in the text. The third level is the situation model, in which
readers elaborate ideas and events described in a text by integrating them with prior knowledge,
creating a fully fleshed out mental representation of the text (Kintsch, 1988, 1998). The Construc-
tion-Integration Model relies on the understanding that readers are in pursuit of a situation model,
because it involves a rich and coherent understanding of the text.
Reading comprehension and knowledge have a reciprocal relationship in which knowledge
supports comprehension and comprehension builds new knowledge through the development of

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situation models. The establishment of a situation model is important because it produces deeper
understandings of a text, and because it is associated with learning from text, rather than simply
recalling a text (Kintsch, 1986). That is, as readers integrate textual information with existing
knowledge, their knowledge is being augmented and refined. These modifications of knowledge
stored in long-term memory are learning and become the prior knowledge that the reader brings
to subsequent reading (within the same texts and to new texts). While more basic encoding of
propositions about the ideas and events in the text (i.e., a textbase) is often sufficient in order to
produce retellings or summaries, it is a relatively shallow form of comprehension and is less likely
to produce real learning than the development of a situation model.
The development of a situation model matters both because it supports students in building
new knowledge, creating positive momentum toward comprehending future texts, and also
because it enhances the experience of reading and interacting around texts. For example, readers
who bring more knowledge to the text are better able to form connections among the ideas in
the text, to make causal explanations (e.g., why things happen), and to infer global messages and
deeper meanings (Graesser et al., 1994). In addition, in theory, establishing a situation model is
associated with greater persistence; that is, readers may be less likely to abandon texts if they are
able to establish a coherent understanding of the text (Graesser et al., 1994).

Empirical Accounts of Topic, Domain, and General World Knowledge on

Comprehension
Over the last 40 years, a substantial body of empirical studies has examined the role of knowledge in
comprehension. Consistent with theoretical accounts of comprehension, empirical studies provide
strong evidence that having more knowledge related to a text better supports comprehension than
having less knowledge. Across studies, researchers have operationalized knowledge in a number of
different ways, varying in particular the proximity of readers’ knowledge to the text being compre-
hended. These variations can be loosely clustered into studies of topic knowledge, domain know-
ledge, and general world knowledge (see Table13.1 for a description of knowledge types).

Topic and Domain Knowledge

Dozens of studies have documented the impact of readers’ topic knowledge and domain know-
ledge on reading comprehension across a wide range of age/grade-levels, e.g., second graders in
Pearson et al., 1979; third graders in Taft & Leslie, 1985; middle school students in Reutzel &
Morgan, 1990; Davis, Huang, & Yi, 2017; university students in Alexander, Kulikowich, and
Schulze (1994), Chiesi, Spilich, and Voss (1979), and Gasparinatou and Grigoriadou (2013), and
text genres (e.g., narrative in Pearson et al.; fictional narrative in Walker, 1987; more and less
technical expository texts in Alexander et al.). Topic knowledge is often defined as knowledge
that is closely related to the topic of the text (e.g., knowledge about spiders when reading a text
about a spider), whereas domain knowledge is generally operationalized as knowledge that is
related to the broader discipline or context in which the text’s topic belongs (e.g., knowledge of
biology when reading about spiders).
While topic knowledge often influences readers’ ability to recall information from texts
and to answer text explicit comprehension questions (e.g., Marr & Gormley, 1982; Pearson
et al., 1979), the most consistent impact of topic knowledge is on readers’ abilities to respond
to questions that require bridging inferences (connecting information within texts, also called
text implicit or gist questions) and connections to prior knowledge (often called script implicit
or scriptally implicit questions). In one study demonstrating these effects, Taft and Leslie
(1985) investigated the effects of third graders’ prior knowledge of food chains on their

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Table 13.1 Knowledge Types in Research on Knowledge and Reading Comprehension
Definition Operationalization Examples of Studies

Topic knowledge: Knowledge Topic knowledge has been Adams et al. (1995); Droop and
that is closely related to the topic assessed in a variety of ways across Verhoeven (1998); Hammadou
of a text. studies—e.g., using multiple (1991); Kobayashi (2009); Levine
choice items (e.g., Rydland, Auk- and Hause (1985); Marr and
rust, & Fulland, 2012), sorting Gormley (1982); McNamara,
tasks (e.g., McNamara, Kintsch, Kintsch, Songer, and Kintsch
Songer, & Kintsch, 1996), fill-in- (1996; Experiment 1); Miller and
the-blank questions (McNamara Keenan (2009)2; Ozuru et al.
et al.), open-ended questions (e.g., (2009); Pearson et al. (1979);
Ozuru et al., 2009), and free- Recht and Leslie (1988); Reutzel
association tasks (e.g., Reutzel & and Morgan (1990); Rydland et al.
Morgan, 1990). In some studies, (2012); Stevens (1980); Tarchi
questions are drawn directly from (2010); Usó-Juan (2006); Wolfe
the text used in the comprehen- and Woodwyk (2010).
sion assessment (e.g., Levine &
Hause, 1985; Marr & Gormley,
1982). In other studies, questions
focus on knowledge that is judged
by the researchers to be closely
related to concepts or facts in the
text (e.g., Pearson, Hansen, &
Gordon, 1979). In a few cases, the
knowledge assessed is close to the
topic, but not the specific content,
of the texts. For example, Hamma-
dou (1991) used a multiple choice
assessment that measured partici-
pants’ knowledge of aspects of the
topic that differed from those men-
tioned in the comprehension text.
The questions demanded more in-
depth knowledge of the topics
than was addressed in the text.
Sometimes topic knowledge is
referred to as specific knowledge
(e.g., Adams, Bell, & Perfetti,
1995).
Domain knowledge: Knowledge Measures of domain knowledge Britton, Stimson, Stennett, and
that is related to a disciplinary include open-ended (e.g., Gaspari- Gülgöz (1998); Gasparinatou and
area, such as history or biology, or natou & Grigoriadou, 2013), mul- Grigoriadou (2013); Haenggi and
broad topic, such as baseball, but tiple choice (e.g., Britton, Stimson, Perfetti (1992); McNamara et al.
not necessarily related to the con- Stennett, & Gülgöz, 1998; Tarchi (1996; Experiment 2); O’Reilly and
tent of a particular text being used (2010), fill-in-the-blank (McNa- McNamara (2007); Stahl et al.
to assess comprehension in the mara et al., 1996), free association (1992); Tarchi (2010).
study. (e.g., Stahl, Hare, Sinatra, & Greg-
ory, 1992), and familiarity checklist
(e.g., Stahl et al.) items. Across
studies, the relationship of domain
knowledge to the content of com-
prehension passages varies. For
example, O’Reilly and McNamara

(Continued )
Table 13.1 (Cont.)
Definition Operationalization Examples of Studies

(2007) created a composite vari-

able for domain knowledge using
multiple choice questions about
biology and open-ended questions
about cells and used this variable
to predict comprehension on
a passage about cell mitosis. Stahl
et al. (1992) used a free association
task that was more topically related
to the comprehension passage (a
particular event in baseball history)
and a vocabulary checklist of base-
ball terminology as measures of
domain knowledge of baseball.
Britton et al. (1998) administered
prior knowledge items that were
related to the same historical
period as the comprehension text,
but varied in their closeness to the
event discussed in the text (a par-
ticular event in the Vietnam War).
World knowledge: General aca- In studies of knowledge and com- Best et al. (2008); Kozminsky and
demic knowledge in areas such as prehension, world knowledge has Kosminsky (2001); McNamara,
science and the humanities; not been assessed using standardized Ozuru, and Floyd (2011).
intended to relate to the compre- knowledge assessments (e.g., the
hension passage. WJ III ACH Academic Knowledge
test, Schrank et al., 2001, in Best,
Floyd, & McNamara, 2008), or
open-ended items based on lists of
general knowledge and cultural lit-
eracy (Kozminsky & Kozminsky,
2001). World knowledge is some-
times referred to as general know-
ledge (e.g., Kozminsky &
Kosminsky).
Cultural knowledge: Studies of cultural knowledge and Bell and Clark (1998); Kintsch and
Knowledge that is based in the comprehension have considered Greene (1978); Kelley et al.
socio-cultural experiences of the alignment between readers’ Afri- (2015); Lipson (1983); Markham
reader. Readers’ knowledge may can American and Latino socio- and Latham (1987); McCullough
or may not be congruent with the cultural knowledge (e.g., Bell & (2013); Mosborg (2002); Pritchard
themes and imagery in the text Clark, 1998; Kelley, Siwatu, Tost, & (1990); Pulido (2004).
being read. Martinez, 2015) or religious know-
ledge (e.g., Lipson, 1983; Mark-
ham & Latham, 1987), and themes
in the text. Cultural knowledge is
not measured in these studies, but
is assumed based on student char-
acteristics (i.e., student identifies as
Latino; student identifies as Jewish)
or community characteristics (stu-
dent attends a conservative Chris-
tian school; e.g., Mosborg, 2002).
Gina N. Cervetti and Tanya S. Wright

comprehension of texts on that topic. The researchers did not find an effect of background
knowledge on the number of propositions recalled in a retelling, but the high knowledge
group had significantly higher scores on three types of comprehension questions—textually
explicit, textually implicit, and scriptally implicit. The difference was greatest with scriptally
implicit questions, which rely most on the knowledge readers bring to the text. Marr and
Gormley (1982) examined fourth graders’ comprehension of passages on more and less familiar
topics. For some topics, the familiar passage produced higher scores for recall of textual infor-
mation, but for some it was the unfamiliar passage. Students gave a greater number of scriptal
responses (correct information not explicitly stated in the passage) for familiar passages. What
is most interesting is that, when students read pairs of passages within a broad topic domain—
one more familiar and one less familiar—prior knowledge about the more familiar topic prior
to reading predicted post-reading scriptal comprehension of the less familiar passage. This sug-
gests that readers can reason from familiar to unfamiliar texts by analogy when the familiar
knowledge has been activated.
Studies of domain knowledge have also shown an effect of knowledge on comprehension,
although the impacts are more variable (Britton, Stimson, Stennett, & Gülgöz, 1998; Haenggi &
Perfetti, 1992). For example, Stahl et al. (1992) evaluated the relative contributions of vocabulary
knowledge and baseball knowledge to high school students’ recall of a text on the retirement of
Mets pitcher Tom Seaver’s jersey number. They found that, while students with low prior
knowledge were able to recall as many facts as those with high prior knowledge, the high know-
ledge participants were more likely to include gist statements in their recalls. The gist statements
involved the articulation of themes from the text. Vocabulary knowledge predicted total idea
units recalled better than prior knowledge, but did not predict the inclusion of gist statements in
the recall. Unlike Stahl et al., Haenggi and Perfetti (1992) found that prior domain knowledge
about problem-solving and decision-making made a significant contribution to adult reader’s abil-
ity to answer text explicit questions about texts on human decision-making, but it did not
impact readers’ responses to questions requiring bridging inferences (text implicit questions that
rely on connecting information within a passage). Domain knowledge did positively impact the
ability of readers to correctly answer script implicit questions (those that require background
knowledge) after reading an expository text. Although the results are somewhat varied across
these studies—perhaps due in part to the different ways of defining domain knowledge in relation
to the texts—both show an advantage for entering the reading situation with relevant
knowledge.
The role of topic and domain knowledge on more complex forms of comprehension, such as
understanding intertextual relations is less studied, but preliminary evidence suggests similarly
positive impacts. For instance, Kobayashi (2009) examined the impact of topic knowledge on
college students’ recall of intratextual arguments from two texts on a controversial issue and their
comprehension of intertextual relationships among the arguments presented by the two authors.
Topic knowledge influenced comprehension of intertextual relations—points of agreement or
disagreement or a writer’s opinion about an issue—with recall of intratextual arguments as
a mediator.

General World Knowledge

General world knowledge, typically defined as breadth of knowledge of school type topics (arts,
humanities, sciences, etc.), has also shown positive effects on comprehension, particularly com-
prehension of expository text. For instance, Best et al. (2008) examined third grade students’
comprehension of narrative and expository texts, using general world knowledge as a predictor.
Students completed free recall, cued recall, and multiple-choice comprehension measures after

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 Knowledge, Understanding and Learning

reading, all of which were focused on recall of textbase and bridging inferences. The textbase
questions were based on explicit text content (e.g., What did Salvador use to make his fort?);
while the bridging inference questions were operationalized in this study as questions that
required readers to connect textual information with existing world knowledge (e.g., Why was
Salvador’s Mama worried about Salvador?). The general world knowledge score did not have an
impact on any of the comprehension measures for the narrative text when decoding ability was
also entered into the regression model. For the expository text, world knowledge was a stronger
predictor than decoding, accounting for substantial variance in the comprehension scores across
three measures. In a later study, world knowledge was found to impact fourth graders’ compre-
hension of both narrative and science texts using both recall and multiple choice comprehension
measures (McNamara et al., 2011).

Inconsistencies in Knowledge-Comprehension Relationships

Some of the inconsistencies in the relationships between particular types of knowledge and particular
types of comprehension are certainly due to variation, both in defining the type of knowledge in
relation to a text and in operationalizing particular types of comprehension, but they also expose the
complex network of factors that influence any particular act of comprehension. For example, the
inconsistent impact of knowledge on narrative text may simply be because comprehension of narra-
tives often relies less on the kinds of specialized, academic knowledge that is typically assessed in
these studies—knowledge is often measured as knowledge of academic topics and disciplines—and
because most children have knowledge about the structure, characters, events, and settings of stories
(McNamara et al., 2011). In addition, expository texts may induce readers to use their prior know-
ledge more than narrative (Wolfe & Woodwyk, 2010). Wolfe and Woodwyk (2010) examined the
processing of narrative and expository text among high- and low- knowledge readers. College-age
participants read a narrative or expository text related to the circulatory system, stopping after each
sentence to think aloud. After reading, they were asked to retell the text. There were 43 sentences
in each text, ten of which were common across the texts. For both the common sentences and the
sentences that were unique to each passage, participants who read the expository text made signifi-
cantly more prior knowledge elaborations in their think alouds than those who read the narrative
text. In addition, participants who read the expository texts recalled more content from the
common sentences and more often shifted the order of the text in retelling it. The researchers sug-
gest that this is evidence that readers of the expository text were doing more to integrate the text
with prior knowledge. The knowledge scores were correlated with participants’ retelling scores for
the expository but not the narrative text. In addition to genre, the particular domain may also influ-
ence the relationship between knowledge and comprehension. Tarchi (2010) examined the impact
of different kinds of prior knowledge on seventh graders’ comprehension of text in two domains:
science and history. In science, prior knowledge of facts (knowledge of the topic of the text) did not
impact comprehension of the text, but domain knowledge in science and prior knowledge of mean-
ings (key vocabulary words) explained significant variance in comprehension of the science passage;
prior knowledge of meanings explained the most variance. For the history passage, all three know-
ledge variables explained significant variance in comprehension, and prior knowledge of facts
explained the most variance. Tarchi explains these differences in terms of differences in how the
subjects are learned.
Inconsistencies in the impact of knowledge on retelling may be due to the limitations of recall
as an assessment of comprehension; it reveals little about the degree of integration of textual
information with existing knowledge. Topic and domain knowledge may improve memory for
text (recalling text or answering text explicit questions) by making it possible for an individual to
store new information with related information in memory (Kostons & van der Werf, 2015).

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When new information is integrated with existing information, memory for ideas in the text is
likely improved. However, recall is not always evidence of integration with existing knowledge.
Relatively simple and cohesive texts can probably be recalled, particularly in the short-term,
without substantial integration with existing knowledge. Integration may depend on the reading
situation and may rely on other kinds of reading comprehension skills. Hence, some studies show
an impact of topic and domain knowledge on memory for text and others do not.
From the perspective of contemporary theories of comprehension, making inferences within
text (text implicit or bridging inferences that require connecting information within a text) places
greater demands on prior knowledge compared with recall. Knowledge may allow readers to
both selectively focus on the most important ideas in a text and form stronger connections
among individual elements. This helps readers connect a series of discrete pieces of information
into meaningful chunks and chains, such as sequences, cause-effect relationships, and plots. Bridg-
ing inferences, as well as the script implicit inferences that require integration of text with prior
knowledge, are important because they are stronger evidence of developing a situation model
and, thus, learning from text (Kintsch, 1986).
It is not entirely clear why general world knowledge, operationalized as knowledge of academic
subjects, would impact comprehension of narrative and expository texts. It may simply be that pos-
sessing high levels of world knowledge increases the likelihood that a reader will have relevant topic
or domain knowledge when encountering a new text. Kozminsky and Kozminsky (2001) suggest
that a rich base of experiences and ideas gives readers easier access to a wide variety of reading
materials, enhancing comprehension because they will more often bring relevant knowledge to texts
they read. The impact of general knowledge on comprehension may also be evidence of analogous
learning, or the idea that knowing information provides leverage for understanding related topics.
Marr and Gormley’s (1982) study (described above) found evidence of this: when students read top-
ically related texts (sports) that were more and less familiar (e.g., about baseball and curling) in close
time proximity, their understanding of the less familiar topic was enhanced.

Knowledge and Reading Ability

A number of studies have examined the relative contributions of knowledge and reading
ability, seeking to determine which makes the strongest contribution to comprehension of
a particular text and whether having knowledge may compensate for weaknesses in reading
ability (comprehension or decoding) or vice versa. When general reading comprehension
ability and topic knowledge are used to predict comprehension of a text, both typically
make contributions to comprehension. However, knowledge has been shown to be a more
powerful predictor among elementary school students (e.g., Taylor, 1979), middle school
students (e.g., Recht & Leslie, 1988), high school students (e.g., Cromley & Azevedo, 2007;
Stevens, 1980), and adults (e.g., Ozuru et al., 2009). 1,2 For example, Recht and Leslie
(1988) studied the impact of baseball knowledge and comprehension ability on middle
school students’ comprehension of a baseball story. Students with high prior knowledge
about baseball performed better than those with low baseball knowledge on a range of com-
prehension tasks, including retelling, summarizing, re-enacting a story using figures, and
identifying sentences that represent the most important from a set. Notably, high knowledge
participants’ retellings, summarizations, and re-enactments were not only judged to be better
quantitatively (i.e., number of correct propositions recalled or moved re-enacted), than
lower knowledge readers, they were also judged qualitatively better in terms of the degree
to which the propositions and moves recalled were important to the story. Moreover, read-
ing ability did not compensate for low knowledge, but high knowledge did compensate for
low reading ability. That is, students with high reading ability but low knowledge of baseball

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performed no better on the recall and summarization tasks than students with low reading
ability and low knowledge of baseball. Moreover, there was no benefit for high reading abil-
ity over high knowledge. That is, students with high reading ability and high knowledge did
not perform better than students with low reading ability and high knowledge. Thus, know-
ledge was a powerful determinant of comprehension, compensating even for low compre-
hension ability. O’Reilly and McNamara (2007) examined the relative impact of knowledge
and comprehension skill on college students’ comprehension of high and low coherence sci-
ence texts. Among readers with low levels of science knowledge, those with stronger com-
prehension skill had better comprehension, suggesting that comprehension skill provided
some compensation for low knowledge.
Other studies have also found that prior knowledge seems to provide some compensation for
readers classified as less skilled. Adams et al. (1995) studied the contributions of domain know-
ledge and general reading skill, as measured by a standardized reading assessment to comprehen-
sion. Boys in grades 4, 6, and 7 identified as high or low in football knowledge and high or low
in word reading skill read domain general (fire) and domain specific (quarterback) stories and
completed a comprehension assessment that included retelling and questions that probed for
theme, setting, and recollection of a specific episode. The researchers found that both domain
knowledge and reading skill contribute to reading comprehension. Readers with high skill/low
knowledge and low knowledge/high skill readers had similar comprehension of the football pas-
sage, suggesting the possibility of a “trading relationship” between knowledge and skills (p. 320).
However, the best comprehension scores were obtained by the high knowledge/high skill
readers, which provided evidence of a complementary relationship between knowledge and read-
ing skill.
Miller and Keenan (2009) found that prior knowledge can help compensate for the “centrality
deficit,” the fact that poor decoders show a bigger deficit than good decoders in recalling central
information than peripheral information. Fourth and fifth grade students were identified as
having no prior knowledge or some prior knowledge about Amelia Earhart before reading
a passage about Earhart and producing a free recall of the text. Miller and Keenan found that the
difference in recall of central ideas between good and poor decoders (identified using
a composite of two word reading assessments) was smaller when students possessed prior
knowledge.
Although knowledge often has a stronger impact on comprehension of a topic or domain
relevant text than general comprehension skill, as measured by a standardized assessment, it is
likely that knowledge and skill make complementary contributions to comprehension. Evidence
of this comes from Cromley and Azevedo (2007), who found that vocabulary knowledge and
topic knowledge were the strongest predictors of high school students’ reading comprehension
among a set of five predictors (background knowledge, inference, strategies, vocabulary, and
word reading). However, part of the contribution of background knowledge to comprehension
was mediated by students’ inferencing ability and use of reading strategies, such as summarizing
and predicting. Tarchi (2010) similarly found that inferencing ability mediated some of the rela-
tionship between prior knowledge and comprehension. Ahmed et al. (2016) examined sources of
variance in middle and high school students and, like Cromley and Azevedo, found that vocabu-
lary knowledge and topic knowledge explained the most variance in comprehension of a set of
reading-related variables. However, Ahmed et al. found that students who had more knowledge
were better able to make the inferences that contribute to text comprehension.
Recent research is helping to explain the contributions of knowledge and reading skill to
comprehension. For example, knowledge helps readers fill in gaps in a text (Ozuru et al., 2009),
use the context of a text to form connections across ideas (Chiesi et al., 1979; Rapp et al., 2007),
form the kinds of rich associations with textual information that make texts more memorable

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(Long, Prat, Johns, Morris, & Jonathan, 2008), and more readily construct main ideas because
they can anticipate the meaning of a text and generate accurate hypotheses about the content and
structure of the text (Afflerbach, 1990). Although prior knowledge of the topic of a text, the
domain within which that topic resides, and knowledge of the world have generally positive
impacts on comprehension, activation of this knowledge from memory and integration of know-
ledge with information in a text are complex and unreliable processes. Reading skill likely sup-
ports readers’ ability to use knowledge in the interest of comprehension.
As Cook and O’Brien (2014) explain, activation and integration are viewed in contemporary
theories of comprehension as “continuous and overlapping” processes. Information in the text
continually activates knowledge from memory, but this process is fairly indiscriminate; that is,
information from the text activates existing knowledge based on general overlap, rather than rele-
vance to the text being read. Kintsch (1986) describes the randomness of the activation process as
having advantages for flexibility and context sensitivity in the comprehension process. However,
readers do not always automatically activate relevant knowledge from long-term memory (Ken-
deou & O’Brien, 2015; Kostons & van der Werf, 2015), and they are not always skilled at inte-
grating knowledge with text in ways that support comprehension and learning (Kozminsky &
Kozminsky, 2001), even when they have the knowledge needed to make knowledge-based infer-
ences (Barnes, Ahmed, Barth, & Francis, 2015).
Reading comprehension skill, in general, and inferencing skill, in particular, may support the
reader’s ability to form the kinds of meaningful connections that lead to coherence (Oakhill &
Yuill, 1996; Rapp et al., 2007). Because younger readers and less skilled comprehenders are less
able to generate relevant inferences, they are sometimes unable to draw on knowledge to fill in
gaps and establish coherence. For example, Brandão and Oakhill (2005) studied how and to what
extent children leverage prior knowledge and information from text when answering questions
after reading narrative text. The researchers asked 7- and 8-year olds to read narrative stories,
answer literal and inferential questions, and justify their answers. The results showed that students
most often relied on the text in answering questions, even questions that were designed to
require integration between prior knowledge and textual information (gap-filling or script impli-
cit inferences).
Less skilled comprehenders generate fewer bridging inferences and fewer intertextual infer-
ences than more skilled comprehenders, even when they are equally able to recall information
from text (e.g., Cain, Oakhill, Barnes, & Bryant, 2001; Long, Oppy, & Seely, 1997). In a study
of 7- and 8-year old children, Cain et al. found that even when less skilled comprehenders were
taught the knowledge needed to generate inferences, they did not make the inferences as often as
more skilled readers. In addition, the sources of difficulty in generating inferences in response to
open-ended questions were different for less skilled and more skilled comprehenders. Less skilled
comprehenders had difficulty in the initial stage of the inference generation process: recalling the
information from the text that was necessary to generate the inference. When more skilled com-
prehenders had difficulty generating inferences, the breakdown tended to occur later in the pro-
cess, at the stage of integrating the text information with background knowledge.
Overall, this research suggests that knowledge and reading ability make complementary contri-
butions to reading comprehension. Knowledge can provide some compensation for low reading
ability, and high levels of reading skill can support comprehension for readers with less know-
ledge of the topic of a text, but neither alone is ideal. That is, having knowledge does not ensure
readers will use it unless they are skilled and active comprehenders, and having reading skill may
not be sufficient to develop rich understandings of text when knowledge is less available. The
strongest comprehenders are those who are equipped with knowledge and skilled enough to
leverage it.

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Knowledge and Text Cohesion and Quality

Several studies have expanded our understanding of the role of knowledge in comprehension
through the inclusion of text factors, such as explicitness of causal relationships in text (e.g.,
Reutzel & Morgan, 1990) and text coherence/cohesion (e.g. Gasparinatou & Grigoriadou, 2013;
McKeown, Beck, Sinatra, & Loxterman, 1992; O’Reilly & McNamara, 2007). These studies
have generally found a positive impact of knowledge on comprehension across text types (Gas-
parinatou & Grigoriadou, 2013; Reutzel & Morgan, 1990). For example Reutzel and Morgan
(1990) found that fifth and sixth graders with moderate to high levels of prior knowledge per-
formed better than students with low prior knowledge on a range of explicit and inferential com-
prehension tasks after reading social studies passages adapted to have high or low levels of
transparency in representing causal relationships (explicitly identifying causal relationships using
the word “because” or not).
Other studies have found a benefit to high knowledge readers’ comprehension from reading
less cohesive texts. This has been called the “reverse cohesion effect.” For example, McNamara
et al. (1996) found that high knowledge junior high school readers had better comprehension of
low cohesion texts compared with high cohesion texts. In particular, the high knowledge readers
performed better on bridging inference and problem solving tasks. The opposite was true for low
knowledge readers. The researchers suggest that lower cohesion texts encourage high knowledge
readers to use their knowledge to do more inferential processing. Gasparinatou and Grigoriadou
(2013) similarly found that high knowledge university-level readers performed better on bridging
inference questions and elaborative inference questions (those requiring linking text information
and information from background knowledge) when reading a low cohesion text compared with
a high cohesion text. The opposite was true for low-knowledge readers. Less cohesive texts may
increase high knowledge readers’ need to spontaneously generate inferences, resulting in better
comprehension (Best, Rowe, Ozuru, & McNamara, 2005). In contrast, O’Reilly and McNamara
(2007) found that readers with high comprehension skill and high knowledge performed better
on text-based questions when reading a high cohesion text compared with a low cohesion text.
The authors suggest that high skill readers consistently use their knowledge in comprehending,
but those with less skill are induced to use their knowledge by less cohesive texts. Relatedly,
Ozuru et al. (2009) found that, when college-age readers have high knowledge, lower reading
skill, and are reading a highly cohesive text, they tend to read shallowly, as evidenced by lower
performance on text-based questions (compared with reading of low cohesion texts).

Knowledge and Comprehension among L2 Readers

Consistent with research involving mainly first language speakers of English (L1), studies
of second language learners of English and other languages (L2) have largely shown a positive
impact of topic and domain knowledge on comprehension across age levels and text types (e.g.,
Chen & Donin, 1997; Hammadou, 1991; Levine & Hause, 1985; Usó-Juan, 2006). Usó-Juan
(2006) found that English language proficiency is a more powerful predictor of comprehension
than knowledge among college students reading informational booklets about tourism/marketing,
engineering, and psychology, and that higher L2 language proficiency provided some compensa-
tion for low knowledge. Burgoyne, Whiteley, and Hutchinson (2013) examined the impact of an
instructed knowledge base (facts about the topic of the comprehension passage taught prior to
reading) on the reading comprehension of third grade students learning English as an additional
language (EAL), and monolingual students matched on word reading accuracy. The students
were taught background knowledge that they would need to combine with textual information

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in order to answer inferential comprehension questions (about a fictional community, the Gan
people). Although the monolingual students had higher scores on a standardized comprehension
assessment and text explicit comprehension questions, the EAL students performed as well as
their monolingual peers on the inferential questions. This suggests that EAL students benefited
from having been taught general knowledge and were as likely as their monolingual peers to use
this knowledge to facilitate comprehension.
The L2 knowledge research differs from L1 research in its focus on the relationship
between language development (in L1 and L2) and knowledge in comprehension, asking
whether language proficiency impacts the ability of L2 readers to leverage their knowledge
during reading. For example, Droop and Verhoeven (1998) examined the role of background
knowledge in first- and second-language reading comprehension of Dutch, Turkish, and
Moroccan children in the Netherlands. Droop and Verhoeven found that culturally-relevant
topic knowledge impacted third grade L2 learners’ comprehension of linguistically simple
texts, but not more linguistically complex texts. The researchers suggest that the children
were unable to benefit from their background knowledge when the texts were too linguistic-
ally challenging. Similarly, Levine and Hause (1985) examined the impact of topic knowledge
on text explicit and script implicit comprehension among high school students learning Span-
ish as an additional language. The researchers found that students at two levels of L2 language
proficiency received similar benefits of background knowledge on text explicit questions.
However, students with higher levels of language proficiency benefited more on the script
implicit questions.
Recent studies have sought to directly investigate how the impact of background knowledge
on comprehension is mediated by L2 language proficiency. Rydland et al. (2012) examined the
contributions of word decoding, first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) vocabulary and
prior topic knowledge to L2 reading comprehension. Norwegian fifth grade students who were
first language speakers of Turkish and Urdu read multiple texts on global warming and answered
text-based or inferential questions. Prior knowledge of global warming explained the most vari-
ance on the comprehension questions, explaining significant variance in comprehension. The
researchers also found a significant interaction between L2 vocabulary depth and prior know-
ledge, suggesting that students with less depth of vocabulary knowledge may have been less able
to leverage their prior knowledge for comprehension.
The idea that readers need to reach a certain level of proficiency—or threshold—in a second
language in order to leverage their reading skills and knowledge effectively has been tested in
several studies. In some studies, a second, upper threshold has also been hypothesized based on
the idea that the most proficient L2 readers will need to rely less on background knowledge than
those with more moderate proficiency (Carrell, 1983). Researchers have found inconsistent
empirical evidence for the thresholds, though these studies have largely relied on familiarity rat-
ings or experiential indicators of knowledge rather than direct assessments of knowledge (Clap-
ham, 2000; Krekeler, 2006; Ridgway, 1997). Clapham found evidence for an upper and lower
threshold. Ridgway found a lower threshold but not an upper one among Turkish college stu-
dents who were learning English and reading academic texts in English. Krekeler found an asso-
ciation between language proficiency and the impact of knowledge on comprehension among
adult learners of German as an additional language, but was unable to identify a threshold.

Activating Knowledge
As discussed above, readers with less developed comprehension skill may have difficulty integrat-
ing background knowledge with information in a text in order to make necessary inferences to
support comprehension, even when they have relevant prior knowledge (e.g., Cain et al., 2001).

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As such, researchers have posited that it may be necessary to support students in activating their
prior knowledge. The idea has been that we should help students bring relevant prior know-
ledge into the foreground so it can be leveraged during reading. Activating relevant knowledge
is a common component of instructional strategies or intervention studies that target compre-
hension (e.g., Brown, Pressley, Van Meter, & Schuder, 1996; Ogle, 1986; Paris, Cross, &
Lipson, 1984). Activating prior knowledge can take various forms in different studies and inter-
ventions, which may include asking students what they know about the topic of the text (e.g.,
Alvermann, Smith, & Readence, 1985), discussing prior experiences related to the text (e.g.,
Hansen, 1981), giving students a problem to think through or perspective to take prior to read-
ing (e.g., Alvermann & Hague, 1989; Schmidt, De Volder, De Grave, Moust, & Patel, 1989),
concept mapping (e.g., Amadieu et al., 2015), or asking students to activate their prior know-
ledge in order to predict what might happen in a text prior to reading (e.g., Ogle, 1986;
Peeck, Van den Bosch, & Kreupeling, 1982). While some studies have shown a benefit for
knowledge activation, others call into question the idea that activating prior knowledge is
always beneficial for readers.
Activating prior knowledge may be beneficial to comprehension when students have relevant
and accurate knowledge (e.g., Bransford & Johnson, 1972; Hansen, 1981; Schmidt et al., 1989;
Spires & Donley, 1998). For example, Hansen (1981) found that second grade students in two
knowledge activation conditions out-performed a no treatment group on comprehension ques-
tions, but not on free recall, after reading a story. In one treatment condition, students were told
that activating prior knowledge is important, asked to discuss a prior experience that related to
the story, and then made predictions about the story before reading. In the second condition,
students practiced answering questions during the story that required inferences that made use of
prior knowledge. Spires and Donley (1998) found that when high school students were taught
a knowledge activation strategy, they showed stronger performance on application comprehen-
sion questions (open-ended questions addressing issues not directly discussed in the text and
requiring the application of background knowledge) than peers who learned a main idea strategy
or were in a non-instruction treatment, although there were no differences on literal comprehen-
sion questions. This aligns with the idea that background knowledge may be particularly useful
in supporting inferential comprehension.
Studies show inconsistent results on whether activating students’ prior knowledge supports
comprehension when students’ knowledge is not aligned with the information in the text. For
example, Peeck et al. (1982) found that when fifth graders activated knowledge prior to reading
a passage, they were more successful than students who did not activate relevant knowledge at
learning information from the text that was inconsistent with their prior knowledge. In contrast,
other studies (e.g., Alvermann et al., 1985; Van Loon, de Bruin, van Gog, T, & van Merriën-
boer, 2013) suggest that activating inaccurate prior knowledge may negatively impact text com-
prehension. For example, Alvermann et al. (1985) found that when sixth grade students activated
relevant background knowledge prior to reading text that contained ideas that were incompatible
with their existing knowledge, their prior knowledge interfered with comprehension by overrid-
ing the information in the text. In a later study, Alvermann and Hague (1989) found that alerting
students to the fact that a text may not align with their prior knowledge was more effective than
simply activating prior knowledge for supporting developmental studies of college students’ read-
ing comprehension.
Recent studies have moved beyond simply activating prior knowledge before reading to sup-
port students in using their knowledge to make inferences (e.g., Barth & Elleman, 2017; Elbro &
Buch-Iversen, 2013). For example, Elbro and Buch-Iversen (2013) studied sixth grade students
who received an eight-lesson instructional program in which they were taught to consider what
they might learn from the text and what they might learn from their prior knowledge in order

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to make gap-filling inferences. Students practiced using graphic organizers which included boxes
for “information from the reader” and “information from the text,” leading to a box containing
the gap-filling inference. Therefore, rather than being told to activate knowledge or learning that
they should activate knowledge, students in this study learned how to activate their prior knowledge
in order to make inferences that support comprehension. Results indicated significant benefits to
inferencing and reading comprehension compared to a business-as-usual control. The reading
comprehension measure involved students in reading short fiction and nonfiction passages and
responding to literal and inferential questions.
Overall, activating relevant prior knowledge can support students’ text comprehension. Yet,
instructional factors (method for activating knowledge), learner factors (e.g., high/low know-
ledge), and text factors (texts that affirm knowledge/contradict knowledge) may lead to differen-
tial effectiveness of knowledge activation attempts for promoting comprehension. Moreover, as
teachers may not be able to analyze all of these factors for each text that is encountered, it may
be more useful to focus on explicitly teaching students how to use their existing background
knowledge to support comprehension (e.g., Elbro & Buch-Iversen, 203) or on building know-
ledge for all students, rather than only on activating knowledge which is differentially distributed
based on students’ past experiences.

Summary
A substantial body of research suggests that domain and topic knowledge support compre-
hension across age groups and across text types, and likely provide the most support for
the bridging inferences and script implicit inferences that are most closely related to the
development of a situation model and learning from text. World knowledge also provides
a benefit to comprehension, though it is less clear how world knowledge supports
comprehension.
Knowledge seems to have a greater impact on text comprehension than do general reading
comprehension or decoding skill, and knowledge may help to compensate for lower levels of
comprehension and decoding skill. High comprehension skill may also provide some compensa-
tion for lower knowledge; however, the degree to which readers utilize their knowledge to good
effect in reading is variable. Given this variability in leveraging knowledge for comprehension,
researchers have focused on supporting students to activate their knowledge before or during
reading, yet the impact of knowledge activation on reading comprehension has been variable
across studies. Reading skill seems to help readers leverage knowledge effectively. Based on this
research, it is reasonable to suggest that intentionally building students’ knowledge through and
around reading and supporting their ability to use that knowledge might be particularly useful in
setting the conditions for comprehension of particular texts and for fueling comprehension of
future texts.

Future Directions: Building and Leveraging Knowledge for Literacy

Development
In the following section, we address key questions relating to the role of knowledge in current
literacy research. We address new approaches to considering knowledge that might be generative
as well as challenges and gaps in the research in these areas. We focus on three key areas of
research that might provide generative opportunities for innovative new research. These include
opportunities to build knowledge in support of comprehension, to leverage cultural knowledge,
and to support other aspect of literacy development.

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Opportunities to Build Knowledge to Support Text Comprehension

Building Knowledge
In light of the large and longstanding body of research demonstrating a significant, positive
impact of knowledge on reading comprehension, the most important question for the current era
may be how to approach ELA instruction as an opportunity for knowledge building. There has
been a strong emphasis in the research-and-practice literature in reading education on activating
prior knowledge for reading, but less emphasis on finding ways to build knowledge in support of
reading comprehension. With some notable exceptions (e.g., Guthrie et al., 2004; Romance &
Vitale, 1992), little attention has been paid to building knowledge that students might later acti-
vate either before reading or through readers’ interactions with text. As a number of prominent
literacy researchers have pointed out (e.g., Neuman & Celano, 2006; Palincsar & Duke, 2004),
we have often focused on using texts primarily as sites for strategy and skill development, even
when reading content-rich texts (Norris et al., 2008).
One challenge for approaches that focus on building knowledge is the history of English language
arts policy and practice, which has often involved an artificial divide between learning-to-read and
reading-to-learn. The idea that there is a necessary developmental sequence in which readers must
first gain mastery over word reading before reading for meaning stems in part from a misapplication
of Chall’s (1983) description of the developmental stages through which readers progress on the way
to mature reading (Invernizzi & Hayes, 2012). The learning-to-read versus reading-to-
learn paradigm has been fueled by policies, such as the No Child Left Behind Act (2001) and its
associated Reading First policy, which emphasized the skills of early reading in grades K-3. Closing
this divide and recognizing the reciprocal nature of learning-to-read and reading-to-learn is necessary
if we are to capitalize on research demonstrating the significance of knowledge for reading.
Several approaches for concurrently building students’ knowledge and literacy point to poten-
tially generative future directions. What is common to all of these approaches is that they con-
ceptualize the building of knowledge as the development of rich conceptual understandings,
rather than the acquisition of litanies of facts. This approach is better supported by contemporary
theories of comprehension, which suggest that better elaborated and more connected sets of ideas
provide advantages to readers as they work to establish and maintain coherence (Kintsch, 1988).
Possessing many interconnected ideas about a topic or domain allows greater flexibility in form-
ing connections with textual information.

Integrated Literacy and Content Area Instruction

Programs that situate attention to literacy development in content-rich or disciplinary instruction
have shown promise for advancing students’ content knowledge, reading and writing (e.g., grades
k-4 in Connor et al., 2017; grades 1–2 in Vitale & Romance, 2010; grade 4 in Cervetti, Barber,
Dorph, Pearson, & Goldschmidt, 2012; grade 5 in Guthrie et al., 2009; grades 2–5 in Romance
& Vitale, 2001; grades 6–8 in Fang & Wei, 2010; grades 8–10 in Greenleaf et al., 2011; for both
English Learners and non-English Learners in; Vaughn et al., 2017; for students with reading dif-
ficulties in Swanson et al., 2017). In each of these studies, integrated approaches have had larger
impacts on students’ content area learning and at least some dimensions of students’ literacy
development compared with approaches that offered separate content and literacy instruction. In
one of these studies, Guthrie et al. compared the impacts of a 12-week intervention using
a Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) approach to traditional instruction. In the
CORI condition, fifth grade students participated in hands-on science activities and associated
reading and writing activities about ecology and life science. CORI includes attention to

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comprehension strategy instruction and in-depth content-area study, a promising combination

based on the research reviewed earlier in this chapter. The CORI program is also guided by
a set of motivational practices, including choice and collaboration and, in this intervention, pro-
vided additional support for students who were designated as low-achieving based on
a standardized reading comprehension assessment. Compared with students who received trad-
itional, separate science and language arts instruction, both low- and high-achieving CORI stu-
dents made greater growth in their reading comprehension, word recognition, and science
knowledge.

Disciplinary Literacy
The disciplinary literacy movement has introduced new ways of conceptualizing the relationship
between knowledge and literacy (Greenleaf, current volume). In particular, this work has
advanced our understanding of how reading is necessarily shaped by the nature of text and the
disciplinary practices in which reading is situated. In addition, this literature has explored how
literacy in disciplines is shaped by disciplinary forms of reasoning, inquiry, and argumentation
(e.g., Rainey, 2017; Shanahan, Shanahan, & Misischia, 2011). With its focus on high level rea-
soning with text and on using multiple texts and experiences to engage in disciplinary inquiry
and produce disciplinary arguments, disciplinary literacy has the potential to produce new kinds
of intervention that engage students with sophisticated reasoning within and across texts while
building specialized content knowledge.

Refutation Texts
Researchers have examined whether texts can be structured in ways that support knowledge
building and conceptual change, particularly in the area of science (see Kendeou & O’Brien,
2015; Sinatra et al., 2011). For example, refutation texts (i.e., texts that directly address and
refute students’ misconceptions) have been studied as a way to build knowledge that may contra-
dict what students already know (e.g., Alvermann & Hague, 1989; Diakidoy, Kendeou, & Ioan-
nides, 2003, 1989; Mason, Gava, & Boldrin, 2008; Maria & MacGinitie, 1987; Mikkilä-
Erdmann, 2001). For example, Alvermann and Hague (1989) found higher comprehension when
college students enrolled in developmental studies read refutation texts as compared to more trad-
itional science texts. Similarly, Diakidoy et al. (2003) found that sixth grade students learned
more science concepts when a refutation science text was included in their science instruction
compared to a more typical expository text or no additional science texts. There have been stud-
ies that demonstrate that refutation texts are not always effective. For example, Kendeou and van
den Broek (2007) found that college students with misconceptions remembered less information
from a science text than readers without misconceptions, whether they read a refutation text or
a more traditional science text. These inconsistent findings may be explained by additional recent
research. For example, Diakidoy, Mouskounti, and Ioannides (2011) found that, when compared
to expository texts, refutation texts support global bridging and elaborative inferences but not
text recall. This mirrors the research on prior knowledge and reading comprehension in suggest-
ing a stronger impact on the generation of inferences than recall. Mason et al. (2008) found that
students’ interest in the topic and beliefs about scientific knowledge may impact the ways in
which students respond to refutation texts.
In their Knowledge Revision Components (KRec) framework, Kendeou and O’Brien (2015)
present a theoretical description of the process by which existing knowledge is revised during
reading. The framework suggests that revision can only take place if the incorrect existing know-
ledge is activated with the new knowledge being encountered in text and if the new knowledge

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is integrated with existing knowledge, such that the representation of information in long-term
memory is revised to take into account the new information. With the addition of more new
information, the correct information comes to dominate and increasingly draw activations to it,
rather than the previously existing incorrect information. Over time, interference from the old,
incorrect information decreases.

Opportunities to Leverage Cultural Knowledge to Support Text

Comprehension
A critical question for current research is how we might think about leveraging students’ cultural
knowledge in the interest of their literacy development. Studies have demonstrated that cultural
knowledge is one type of knowledge that supports students’ text comprehension (e.g., Bell &
Clark, 1998; Kelley et al., 2015; Kintsch & Greene, 1978; McCullough, 2013; Pritchard, 1990;
Pulido, 2004). For example, Bell and Clark studied 109 first through fourth grade African Ameri-
can students who listened to texts with black characters and themes consistent with sociocultural
experiences of African Americans, or texts with white characters and traditional Euro-American
themes. Students showed better recall and comprehension of texts with black characters and Afri-
can American themes. Kelley et al. (2015) studied seventh grade students who self-identified as
Hispanic or multi-racial with Hispanic origins, as they read a culturally familiar text (a Latino
themed short story by Sandra Cisneros) and a culturally unfamiliar passage (a Native American
themed passage). Students performed better on recall and comprehension questions when reading
the culturally familiar text. In addition, students had higher self-efficacy when reading the cultur-
ally familiar text compared to the unfamiliar text.
Similarly, studies have demonstrated that readers’ religious knowledge impacts their compre-
hension of text (e.g., Lipson, 1983; Markham & Latham, 1987). For example, Lipson studied
fourth through sixth grade Catholic and Jewish students who each read a culturally neutral text
and then a text with specific knowledge related to one of the two religious groups (either
a passage on Bar Mitzvahs or First Communion). Lipson found that participants recalled more
explicit and implicit information and included fewer errors in their recalls when reading
a culturally familiar passage. Moreover, students’ own cultural knowledge seemed to limit their
retelling of texts about the unfamiliar religion. Mosborg (2002) studied how high school students
used their knowledge of history as they read newspaper articles on school prayer and Starbucks’
treatment of Guatemalan coffee workers. Mosborg examined ten students’ think alouds and inter-
view responses. While students used the same textbook, they attended two different schools. One
of the schools had an explicitly Christian mission and drew students from mainly socially conser-
vative families, while the other school drew students from more socially liberal families and did
not have a religious orientation. Mosborg found that while the two groups of students used some
of the same approaches to leveraging history for the explication of ideas in the text, they ultim-
ately interpreted the texts differently.
Therefore, there is promising research demonstrating that cultural knowledge impacts text
comprehension, yet there is little evidence that this type of knowledge has been used purpose-
fully in classroom instruction with the goal of supporting students’ reading comprehension.
While there is a growing body of literature focused on incorporating students’ socio-cultural
funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992) to promote culturally sustaining
(Paris, 2012) and culturally relevant (Ladson-Billings, 2014) literacy instruction, there remains
substantial work to be done in bridging these lines of literature with the research on cultural
knowledge and reading comprehension in order to build instructional programs that leverage
these ideas.

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Opportunities to Leverage Knowledge to Support Word Learning and Strategy

Development
The research on knowledge and reading has focused primarily on the role of existing background
knowledge in text comprehension, but recent research has started to explore the potential of
knowledge to support other aspects of literacy development. This work is premised in part on
the idea that possessing relevant knowledge contributes to the efficient allocation of attention, so
attentional resources can be devoted to other aspects of literacy development. In addition, in
helping students develop a coherent mental model of the text, knowledge provides a basis for
engaging in sophisticated problem-solving with text, including inferring the meanings of
unknown words and learning to apply cognitive strategies.
Several studies have demonstrated that strong background knowledge of a text supports higher
rates of incidental vocabulary learning while reading (e.g., Pulido, 2003, 2004, 2007). For
example, Pulido (2004) found that adult participants who read culturally familiar versions of
everyday scenarios gained more knowledge of unknown (nonsense) words than did participants
who read culturally unfamiliar narratives. Pulido (2007) examined the effect of topic familiarity
and passage sight vocabulary on lexical inferencing and retention in a second language. Partici-
pants were adult second language learners of Spanish. Participants read narrative passages designed
to be more and less familiar. Participants were asked to translate nonsense words embedded in
the passages as they read and to indicate the level of difficulty in inferring the meaning of each
word. Topic familiarity was a significant predictor of correct lexical inferencing, and higher
scores on a retention task, though not on a production measure (translation). Cervetti, Wright, &
Hwang (2016) found that when fourth grade students built knowledge by reading a set of con-
ceptually related informational texts, they learned more vocabulary incidentally than peers who
read an unrelated set of texts. Kaefer, Neuman, and Pinkham (2015) also found evidence with
preschool children that knowledge facilitates vocabulary learning from text.
Diakidoy (1998) examined the relationship between comprehension of a particular text and
word learning among sixth graders who read expository social studies passages. Diakidoy found
that students who had higher comprehension of the text acquired more knowledge of low-
frequency, target vocabulary word meanings from context than did students with poor compre-
hension of the text, independent of the students’ breadth of prior word knowledge. However,
Diakidoy did not control for other student factors, such as comprehension skill. Barnes, Ginther,
and Cochran (1989) did account for comprehension skill in their examination of eighth graders’
word learning from context when taught or not taught relevant information about the passage in
advance. The researchers found that word learning from context did not differ between good
and poor comprehenders when the readers’ comprehension was fueled by teaching information
relevant to the content of the passage in advance. Together, these studies suggest that knowledge
and comprehension might be a particularly powerful combination in support of students’ inciden-
tal vocabulary acquisition.
There is also preliminary evidence that knowledge provides a basis for students to become
more skilled comprehenders. Gaultney (1995) asked whether prior knowledge can facilitate the
acquisition of a reading comprehension strategy. Boys who were poor readers and who were
baseball experts were trained in the comprehension strategy of asking why questions using either
baseball stories or non-baseball stories. Compared with boys who were trained using non-baseball
stories, boys who were trained on the strategy using baseball stories demonstrated better acquisi-
tion of the strategy, and they asked more why questions in both proximal and distal post-tests.
Gaultney suggests that the use of materials for which participants had a great deal of expert
knowledge facilitated comprehension, allowing more capacity to be devoted to strategy acquisi-
tion. Together, these findings suggest that there may be a “knowledge effect” (Cervetti, Wright,

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& Hwang, 2016), whereby knowledge frees up attentional resources to enable students to focus
on other aspects of reading (e.g., new words, new strategies). This is an important idea for further
research to explore.

Conclusions
As we suggested at the outset of this review, theory and empirical research substantiate the sig-
nificant role of knowledge in reading, casting doubt on approaches to literacy development that
position skill-building as a prerequisite for engaging with texts as sources for acquiring knowledge
about the world. Reading to learn is a support for learning to read and should be a focus of
literacy instruction from the earliest years of schooling. This research also casts doubt on
approaches to reading comprehension assessment that do not account for the knowledge students
bring to the text.
The substantial research on knowledge and comprehension has largely impacted practice
through instructional routines that activate students’ knowledge prior to reading. Activating
knowledge has shown promise for supporting comprehension, but knowledge activation advan-
tages students who come to school with the type of knowledge that appears in school texts.
Moving forward, we hope to see a shift toward knowledge building in literacy research and prac-
tice, as well as additional research exploring the potential of knowledge building to support other
aspects of students’ literacy development, such as the acquisition of word knowledge and strategic
skill that has shown promise in existing research. As we further explore the potential of know-
ledge building, we should consider broader conceptions of knowledge, including the ways that
conceptual knowledge, disciplinary knowledge, world knowledge, and cultural knowledge might
be built and leveraged to support students’ engagement with text.
While the research described in this chapter indicates that knowledge and inferencing skill are
critical for reading comprehension (e.g., Cain et al., 2001), future research should also further exam-
ine the ways that they might interact to support text comprehension. In particular, research should
continue to consider ways that students can be taught how to integrate their knowledge with the
content of the text in order to make inferences that support comprehension (Elbro & Buch-Iversen,
2013). The interface of knowledge and skill development is a particularly generative area for future
scholarship as we seek to support students in understanding and learning from text.

Notes
1 Ozuru et al. (2009), Recht and Leslie (1988), Taylor (1979), and Stevens (1980) used standardized com-
prehension measures as an indicator of reading ability. Cromley and Azevedo (2007) used a word reading
composite score to study the relative contribution of reading ability and knowledge, as well as several
other variables, to comprehension.
2 Use the term “topic domain knowledge” (p. 104) to refer to knowledge of the topic of the comprehen-
sion text.

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 14
Defining Deep Reading
Comprehension for Diverse Readers
Laura K. Allen and Danielle S. McNamara

Across both research and classroom contexts, the term literacy is often taken to hold vastly differ-
ent meanings depending on the specific population being discussed (e.g., adolescent and adult
readers, younger developing readers, second language (L2) learners, and adult literacy learners).
For instance, second language reading is often treated as entirely separable from first language reading,
drawing on different bodies of research and different foundational assumptions, which in turn
lead to large differences in the types of interventions that are developed and implemented. How-
ever, reading comprehension processes share a number of similarities across these, and other,
groups. In particular, prior knowledge, strategies, and language knowledge, all play important
roles in the text comprehension process. Whereas the processes necessary to understand text and
discourse are largely the same, what differs is what the reader brings to the table in terms of skills
and knowledge.
The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the notion of deep text comprehension across
a broad range of diverse readers. Most theories of comprehension assume that deeper comprehen-
sion is associated with a more coherent mental representation, which is comprised of multiple
levels of understanding. One translation of the concept of levels of understanding into practice
emphasizes a linear sequence of skill development, focusing on word decoding first, and then
focusing on higher order strategies only after word and sentence decoding are fully developed.
Another interpretation, focusing more on the reader’s construction of a coherent mental repre-
sentation, is that readers should be encouraged to use metacognitive reading strategies even at
early stages of learning to read. In this chapter, we argue in favor of the latter interpretation.

Deep Comprehension
Reading is the process of interpreting and extracting meaningful information from written text.
This complex process requires a number of cognitive abilities and language skills, including the
ability to recognize and understand written words, as well as the ability to comprehend language
at a deep level (McNamara & Magliano, 2009; Vellutino, 2003). A number of factors relate to an
individual’s ability to successfully comprehend a given text, such as morphological awareness
(Carlisle & Stone, 2003), vocabulary knowledge (Allen, Snow, Crossley, Jackson, & McNamara,
2014), working memory (Berninger et al., 2006; Swanson & Ashbaker, 2000; Swanson & Siegel,
2001), and prior knowledge (Graesser, Gernsbacher, & Goldman, 2003; Kintsch, 1998). To

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understand the concepts within a given text, individuals must first be able to decode the written
words. This requires individuals to use their knowledge of letter sounds to pronounce printed
words. Beyond the processing of the words, the reader must understand the sentences in a text,
as well as the relationships among the sentences.
A number of discourse models have been proposed to account for the cognitive processes that
allow a reader to collect information from a text and develop a comprehensive understanding of
that text at various levels (Gernsbacher, 1997; Graesser, Singer, & Trabasso, 1994; Kintsch, 1998;
Myers & O’Brien, 1998; Zwaan, Langston, & Graesser, 1995). While these models diverge in
more specific components, as well as their claims about the specific cognitive processes involved
in reading, the majority of contemporary comprehension models highlight the constructive and
active nature of the reading comprehension process and the importance of integrating informa-
tion from a variety of sources (Graesser et al., 1994; Kintsch, 1998; McNamara & Magliano,
2009; Snow, 2002).
Indeed, a primary goal of reading is to understand the meaning of a text, such that this know-
ledge can be used later – requiring a reader to deeply comprehend a text.

But What Is Deep Comprehension?

This notion (at least partially) originates from theories on Levels of Processing proposed by Craik
and Lockhart (1972), which was intended to describe memory recall based on the depth at
which verbal stimuli were processed. Specifically, they proposed that people engage in three pro-
gressively deeper levels of processing: structural, phonemic, and semantic encoding. Structural
encoding emphasizes the physical structure of the stimulus, and is thus considered to comprise
relatively shallow processing. For example, if words are flashed on a screen, structural encoding
might retain how they were printed (capital, lowercase, bold, italics) or the length of the words
(e.g., the number of letters). By contrast phonemic encoding emphasizes what words sound like,
such as the ee sound in beet and steal. Finally, semantic encoding emphasizes the meaning of the
words, such as answering yes or no to the statement: A beet is a red vegetable.
Craik and Lockhart (1972) demonstrated that participants are more likely to remember words
if they have been processed semantically. Their findings were replicated and the notion of levels
of processing was refined in subsequent studies (e.g., Craik & Tulving, 1975; Morris, Bransford,
& Franks, 1977; Nyberg, 2002; Tulving, 1979). The crux of the theory is that deeper levels of
processing result in longer-lasting memory codes, particularly when the same processes are
required when retrieving the information.
Within text comprehension literature, memory for information in a text (i.e., conceptual
knowledge) is similarly assumed to be associated with the depth at which it is processed. The
theoretical foundation for this assumption stems, in part, from the Construction-Integration
model of comprehension (Kintsch, 1998) and its predecessor (Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978; van
Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). According to the Construction-Integration model, readers construct mul-
tiple levels of understanding, including the surface structure, textbase, and situation model. The
first level (the surface structure) contains the explicit words and sentence structures that are pre-
sent in the text. If a mental representation is dominated by a surface structure, only a superficial
understanding of the text can be represented. The words and syntax in this surface structure are
integrated to build a mental model of the text propositions, comprising the second level of repre-
sentation. This textbase represents the general ideas and concepts contained within the text itself.
These generalizations of the textual concepts yield a series of propositions, which are only
loosely, and perhaps inaccurately connected. This is because it is impossible to include all of the
information and relations explicitly within a text. The activation and use of background know-
ledge is necessary to fill in the gaps and to add structure and stability to this network of concepts.

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This third level of representation is referred to as the situation model, a higher-level represen-
tation of text that is related to its semantic meaning, rather than the specific words that were
used. This model contains not only the information from the text itself, but also links between
these concepts and a reader’s prior knowledge. Thus, to establish a coherent representation of the
text, individuals must integrate aspects of their knowledge, such as linguistic, world, and discourse
knowledge, with information explicitly provided in the text.
Notably, the representation that is constructed after this construction-integration process is not
necessarily composed of equal parts text-based and knowledge-derived information. Rather, it is
entirely possible that the textbase or situation model dominate the ultimate mental representation.
A primary assumption of the CI model is that deep comprehension requires readers to process
texts at multiple levels. A reader’s mental representation of a text is more coherent to the extent
that inferences are generated to create links between concepts explicitly conveyed in the text
(i.e., the textbase) and connections to prior knowledge (i.e., the situation model).
Just as it was established in the levels of processing literature for word recall, different levels of
text processing have been shown to be associated with different levels and types of text memory
and understanding of concepts. For example, van den Broek, Lorch, Linderholm, and Gustafson
(2001) demonstrated that asking students to read for entertainment led them to generate more edi-
torial comments and elaborative associations within their think alouds, whereas asking students to
read to study led to an increase in bridging and predictive inference statements. In turn, better text
recall was associated with a greater amount of inferencing. McNamara and colleagues (McNa-
mara, 2004, 2006) have similarly found that students’ generation of bridging inferences while
explaining texts was associated with better performance on bridging inference comprehension
questions.
In sum, reading comprehension involves processing the words and sentences in the text, acti-
vating related concepts, and generating a situation model, where background knowledge and
experiences are integrated into the text for a specific purpose (Kintsch, 1998). Indeed, the object-
ive of text comprehension is to make sense of it for a specific purpose. If the purpose of reading
is to remember the sounds of the words, the words, or individual sentences, that objective may
be met, but that is not deep comprehension. By contrast consider situations where a reader may
be working toward the objective of learning from a text. To the extent that the reader attempts
to make connections between ideas in the text, and to what the reader already knows, the reader
is working toward a more coherent (deep) understanding of the text (McNamara, 1997). In
essence the reader is working toward a coherent mental representation of the text. The reader is
seeking to achieve deep comprehension.

What Factors Influence the Success of Deep Comprehension?

The potential success of a reader’s drive to deeply understand a text depends on a number of
factors. Deep text comprehension is achieved by calling upon prior knowledge and making stra-
tegic connections between ideas in the text and knowledge. If the reader lacks sufficient know-
ledge of the words, or sufficient prior knowledge to understand the relations between the
concepts in the text, then it is unlikely that the reader will construct a deep understanding of the
text. Hence, first and foremost, deep comprehension depends on what the reader brings to the
table in terms of prior knowledge of the world and the domain (Afflerbach, 1986; Shapiro,
2004).
The features of the text can accentuate the effects of readers’ knowledge and skills (Graesser,
McNamara, & Kulikowich, 2011; McNamara, Graesser, McCarthy, & Cai, 2014). There are
three main sources of text difficulty: word familiarity, syntax, and cohesion. Texts comprised pri-
marily of words that are commonly used in day-to-day language are easier to understand

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compared to those that include more words that are uncommon or technical. Texts are also
more challenging when they include more complex syntax, as opposed to short, simple
sentences.
Cohesion is another important factor to consider (McNamara et al., 2014). Cohesion is the
extent to which relationships between concepts and ideas are explicit in the text (Gernsbacher,
1990). Connectives (e.g., however, consequently, but, so, first, nonetheless) help to inform the
reader on the nature of the relations between ideas. Overlap between words and concepts is
another source of cohesion. When words, concepts, and ideas are repeated, and carried forward
throughout a text, it is easier for the reader to make connections in the text. No text can spell
out all of the information and connections, and thus knowledge is necessary for a reader to gen-
erate a coherent mental representation. Texts with many conceptual gaps are particularly challen-
ging for low knowledge readers. Students with higher prior knowledge can readily compensate
for gaps in text cohesion by generating inferences that help them comprehend the text (McNa-
mara, 2004). Students with low domain knowledge, on the other hand, are often unable to make
these inferences automatically.

Text Comprehension for Diverse Learners

Thus far, we have described the comprehension process and the processes involved in construct-
ing a coherent mental representation (Gernsbacher, 1997; Graesser et al., 1994; Kintsch, 1998).
This account, however, is primarily based on research conducted with college students who par-
ticipate in laboratory experiments. Of course, some studies have extended to high school or
middle school students, but these are rare in comparison to studies that have relied on conveni-
ence samples.
Various factors, including differences in the target populations as well as different fields of
study (e.g., developmental psychology, cognitive science, education), have resulted in separate
camps of literatures evolving over time. These camps are largely divided as a function of the
target population, such as adolescent and adult readers, young developing readers, second lan-
guage readers, and adult literacy learners. As a consequence, literacy is often viewed as a different
cognitive process for members of these different groups. This is true on the part of researchers as
well as educators. Researchers approach the investigation of reading comprehension differently as
a function of the target population, and educators approach instruction and remediation differ-
ently as a function of the type of student. Indeed, learning to read can be quite different for
individuals who comprise these four groups. Knowledge of language, vocabulary, domain know-
ledge, and metacognitive knowledge all play important roles and vary widely across these
populations.
For each group of learners, this process of achieving deep comprehension can appear different
because learners have different strengths and weaknesses in core aspects of comprehension. To
illustrate this point, consider two learners, Sam and Leah, who are asked to read a text on “Cell
Division” (see Figure 14.1). Sam is a high school student who possesses basic language knowledge
(e.g., orthographic, syntactic knowledge); he speaks English and can decode words and most (but
not all) syntactic constructions. His general vocabulary (i.e., world knowledge) is moderate, and
he also has a low knowledge of Cell Division and academic topics in general; therefore, he has
low domain knowledge. In addition, he is less knowledgeable of the metacognitive strategies
needed to comprehend complex texts. When he has sufficient knowledge, he is able to make
automatic inferences to connect ideas in the text. However, when he has less knowledge about
the topic (like challenging science texts), he is unable to generate inferences because he does not
know strategies to generate inferences that are not automatic. Further, he does not know about
the other strategies that can help him understand these challenging texts, such as summarizing,

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Knowledge Profiles for Sam and Leah

Knowledge Percentile Score

100
80

60
40
20

0
Sam Leah
Learners

Language Vocabulary Domain Metacognitive

Figure 14.1 Cell Division text

asking and answering questions, and explaining text aloud while reading. We can compare Sam
to Leah, an L2 reader who possesses strong comprehension skills in her native language (i.e., high
metacognitive knowledge), and a high level of domain and academic knowledge. However,
because she is a recent learner of English, Leah has poor language skills and a low level of English
vocabulary knowledge.
In this example, both students receive similarly low scores on an assessment of their under-
standing of the Cell Division text; however, their different knowledge profiles suggest that they
may have engaged in vastly different text comprehension processes. Accordingly, they may bene-
fit from different feedback instruction from their teachers. Because Sam had moderate language
knowledge, he did not struggle to decode the individual words or sentences in the text; however,
his low prior knowledge of cell division, and science more broadly, led him to struggle to con-
nect the text to prior knowledge. Additionally, his low metacognitive knowledge impaired his
ability to generate these inferences when he encountered gaps in understanding. For example,
when he did not understand the text, he continued reading, rather than working to understand
the text by asking questions or generating an explanation using common sense or logic. Leah, on
the other hand, struggled to understand the individual words and sentences in the text. However,
she was able to achieve some comprehension success by generating connections between the
words in the text (the ones she could understand) and her prior domain knowledge.
Importantly, despite the fact that Leah and Sam encountered different struggles while reading,
they relied on a similar set of knowledge and skills during the text comprehension process. Spe-
cifically, both Sam and Leah activated their prior knowledge of the language and the domain
integrated this knowledge with information from the text.
Sam and Leah provide two examples of individuals who come to reading tasks with widely vary-
ing sets of knowledge and skills. However, we can extend this example by considering the varying
profiles that might be held by members of four primary groups of readers: adolescent and adult
readers, younger developing readers, L2 learners, and adult literacy learners (see Figure 14.2).

Adolescent and Adult Readers

Adolescent and adult readers (ages 13 and above) are the target of the majority of prior
research on deep text comprehension. This population can vary widely in terms of their

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Laura K. Allen and Danielle S. McNamara

Knowledge Profiles for Four Example Learners

Knowledge Percentile Score
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Adolescent and Adult Younger Developing L2 Learners Adult Literacy
Readers Readers Learners

Types of Learners

Language Vocabulary Domain Metacognitive

Figure 14.2 Four primary groups of readers

knowledge of language, vocabulary, domain knowledge, and metacognitive knowledge.

Generally, however, they have been reading or learning to read for at least seven years, and
can decode most words and process most sentence constructions. Hence, the variation in
predicting comprehension for the general population lies less in lower-level factors, but in
factors related to the readers’ ability to generate inferences. While there is some evidence
that working memory capacity is correlated with individuals’ ability to understand text
when the targets are standardized reading tests, there is little evidence that these working
memory differences actually drive deep comprehension (McNamara, 2004; McNamara &
O’Reilly, 2009). Instead, a substantial body of research on discourse comprehension points
to the importance of higher-level cognitive processes, such as generating inferences, con-
necting information in the text (bridging), and using knowledge to make sense of the text
(reasoning, elaboration). Further, this research also highlights the importance of knowledge
across multiple dimensions, such as vocabulary (general world knowledge), domain know-
ledge, and knowledge of strategies to overcome knowledge deficits (metacognitive
knowledge).

Younger Developing Readers

Young developing readers are learning how to decode words, process increasingly complex syn-
tactic constructions, and generate inferences that make connections within the text and using
prior knowledge. However, the bulk of the literature on developing readers has focused on
decoding and vocabulary knowledge. There are only a few researchers who have investigated the
importance of prior domain knowledge or metacognitive knowledge related to deliberate infer-
ence making. Importantly, however, reading research focused on this population has indicated
that the importance of component skills for reading comprehension (e.g., decoding, listening
comprehension) varies as a function of the type of assessment that is administered to students
(Cutting & Scarborough, 2006; Keenan, Betjemann, & Olson, 2008). For instance, longer, pas-
sage-level assessments draw more on higher-level cognitive processes such as inferencing, whereas

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 Defining Deep Reading Comprehension

sentence-level assessments rely more heavily on lower-level, decoding skills (Keenan et al., 2008).
In this sense, deliberate inferences are considered “higher level” cognitive processes.
Inferencing skills have been found to contribute to the reading comprehension skills of chil-
dren across multiple grade levels, even after controlling for lower-level reading processes (Cain &
Oakhill, 2007; Cain, Oakhill, & Bryant, 2004; Oakhill & Cain, 2012). For example, in
a longitudinal investigation of 7- to 11-year-olds, Oakhill and Cain (2012) reported that infer-
ence and integration, comprehension monitoring, and knowledge of text structures contributed
unique variance to later reading comprehension, independent of word reading, verbal IQ, and
vocabulary knowledge. These findings suggest that higher-level, inference-based processes may
influence later reading comprehension development as lower-level, word reading skills become
more automatized.

Second Language Learners

A principal distinction between second (L2) and first language (L1) learners is the development
stage at which reading comprehension (of the targeted language) is first required (Bernhardt,
1991). Native English speakers, for instance, begin instruction to read English texts after they
have achieved some level of verbal fluency. According to Grabe and Stoller (2002), (L1) children
are familiar with a large majority of grammatical sentence constructions and can recognize
approximately 7,000 words before they begin to read. Thus, when these children first encounter
written texts, they already have a great deal of English language knowledge readily available. On
the other hand, L2 readers must develop L2 language skills, while simultaneously learning to read
in that language. This can lead to a number of comprehension difficulties. For instance, because
L2 readers do not have strong lexical knowledge, they may develop weaker associations among
words and concepts and develop less coherent text representations.
As illustrated in Figure 14.2, an L2 learner may have a high knowledge of the text content, but
may not know the meaning of all of the words or their syntactic derivations (e.g., past vs. condi-
tional tense). Of course, the potential difficulties depend a great deal on the overlap between the
languages (e.g., English vs. Spanish; English vs. Chinese). And of course, domain knowledge and
metacognitive knowledge are likely to vary to the same degree as they do for L1 readers.
Researchers have identified several common difficulties encountered by L2 readers (Bernhardt,
1991, 2000; Grabe & Stoller, 2002; Oded & Walters, 2001; Walter, 2007). One problem is that
these students typically rely much too heavily on bottom-up, rather than top-down processes
when reading. Thus, they expend too much of their controlled effort on word decoding, sen-
tence parsing, and the identification of other localized text features. Accordingly, these readers
typically experience difficulties accessing the global strategies that they may use in their first lan-
guage, such as making connections between distal ideas in the text and to prior knowledge
(Walter, 2007). Rather, L2 readers spend a significant amount of their time decoding and trans-
lating the literal meaning of words and sentences, and also have problems ignoring irrelevant
information from the text (Oded & Walters, 2001). The latter potentially stems from their inabil-
ity to actively use their domain knowledge while reading, and thus generating a sparse mental
representation of the text (McNamara, 2007; McNamara & McDaniel, 2004). In contrast, skilled
L1 readers typically read for the purpose of constructing meaning; thus, they can extract the main
purposes of the text more easily (Nassaji, 2002).

Adult Literacy Learners

There are approximately 30 million adults in the United States who cannot read. This means that
they are unable to comprehend texts at an 8th grade reading level, and generally can read only

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simple text in terms of vocabulary and syntax. According to the National Assessment of Adult
Literacy (NAAL; http://nces.ed.gov/naal), 14% of those surveyed scored below a basic level,
demonstrating an inability to perform simple, everyday literacy activities. Moreover, estimates of
illiteracy are far greater for students who do not graduate from high school (55%), English lan-
guage learners (44%), Hispanic adults (39%), and black adults (20%). Many of the adults enrolled
in adult education courses are adults who are learning English as a second language. Hence, adult
literacy learners represent a broad spectrum of abilities in terms of the various types of knowledge
displayed in Figure 14.2.
Of the four populations that we consider here, the least amount of research and the fewest
empirically-based literacy interventions have been geared toward adult learners (Lesgold &
Welch-Ross, 2012). The research studies, the few that have been conducted, have been correl-
ational studies that have focused on the contributions of lower-level skills such as morphological
awareness, phonological awareness, and word decoding to performance on reading comprehen-
sion tests. This is because the predominant assumption has been that adult literacy learners lack in
lower-level skills. Indeed, this research has generally confirmed the importance of lower-level
language skills (e.g., Tighe & Binder, 2015; Tighe & Schatschneider, 2016) as well as vocabulary
knowledge (Mellard, Fall, & Woods, 2010); in terms of explaining variance in reading compre-
hension test performance.
There have not been any research studies (to our knowledge) that have examined adult liter-
acy learners’ inferencing skills or deep comprehension. Studies are needed that administer
a broader array of measures to adult literacy learners, including domain knowledge and metacog-
nitive knowledge. We would hypothesize in such a study that inferencing skills would contribute
positively to performance on reading comprehension assessments, particularly on assessments that
tap into deep comprehension as opposed to those that focus on shallow comprehension, such as
those that solely require understanding single sentences.
Studies are also needed that examine the benefits of providing instruction in using higher-
level strategies such as generating inferences. It has generally been assumed that adult literacy
learners require instruction that focuses on lower-level skills, mirroring the correlational
research that has been conducted thus far. A cascading relation among skills is traditionally
assumed, wherein each higher-level skill depends on a lower-level skill. For example, making
inferences depends on the ability to parse sentences, reading a sentence depends on the ability
to read the words, and reading the words depends on the ability to read the letters (Snow,
2002). Accordingly, inference instruction would have little to no benefit because there would
be a stop-gap at the lower levels of processing. This assumption has had a strong influence on
adult literacy research. Whereas, theoretical accounts of adolescent and adult comprehension
has long recognized top-down processes in text comprehension, the adult literacy literature
has not. Hence, we recommend that further research is needed that explores the impact of
higher-level processes, and the impact of providing instruction that enhances students’ propen-
sity to generate inferences, potentially compensating for struggles at the level of the words
and syntax.

Implications for Education

The majority of contemporary theories of text comprehension assume that an individual’s under-
standing of a text arises from cognitive and metacognitive processes at multiple levels, as well as
interactions across these levels. Further, they rely on the assumption that deep comprehension
depends on the construction of a coherent mental representation of the text. These assumptions
have important implications for the ways in which reading is taught in the classroom – particu-
larly with respect to diverse readers.

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One consideration is a need for teacher education to place a greater priority and more time
providing instruction on comprehension. Current and future instructors should be provided with
a basic understanding of how comprehension processes emerge so that they can more easily adapt
to their students’ differential needs. Without this understanding, advancing the needs of diverse
learners appears virtually impossible.
In turn, a greater focus of education needs to be on strategies to comprehend and learn rather
than on feeding content to students. Students need to be provided with instruction and practice
on strategies for achieving deep comprehension. In particular, students need to be taught how and
when to use different strategies, depending on the context of various reading tasks (e.g., their
native language, the text difficulty, etc.).
These educational implications point to two primary recommendations for educators tasked
with training diverse groups of learners to read complex texts. The first is to teach students strat-
egies that allow them to leverage the knowledge available to them across various reading contexts.
By providing students with this training, they will be better equipped to successfully comprehend
a variety of texts despite the variability in their knowledge across multiple dimensions.
The second is to provide students with texts that have been adapted to them based on their par-
ticular strengths and weaknesses. This focus on text properties can help students to better under-
stand the information they are reading, and can help to scaffold them toward more complex
texts.

Reading Comprehension Strategies

Because reading comprehension is a cognitively demanding task that relies on multiple sources of
knowledge, students must learn to compensate for their deficiencies across multiple reading con-
texts. One proposed method for alleviating these difficulties is through instruction and practice
on reading strategies. Prior research has revealed that a primary difference between skilled and
unskilled students is their efficient use of strategies during the comprehension process (Bransford,
Vye, & Stein, 1984; Paris & Myers, 1981; Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2001). Skilled readers generate
more inferences while reading and establish connections at a more global level (Millis, Magliano,
& Todaro, 2006). Accordingly, a number of studies have investigated differences in strategy use
based on native language (Block, 1986; Pritchard, 1990), as well as L2 language proficiency
(Anderson, 1991; Carrell, 1989; Hosenfeld, 1977; for a review, see Brantmeier, 2002). Results of
these studies reveal that students of low and high L2 proficiency levels utilize profoundly different
strategies during the comprehension process.
A number of the reading strategies observed in these studies have been classified as either
effective or ineffective for comprehension across multiple contexts. One primary distinction
that has been made is in students’ use of top-down (global) and bottom-up (local) strategies
(Abbott, 2006; Barnett, 1988; Block, 1986, 1992; Carrell, 1989; Young & Oxford, 1997).
Top-down reading strategies are those processes that lead readers to focus on the main idea of
the text, often through an integration of background and discourse knowledge. The use of
bottom-up strategies, on the other hand, leads readers to understand text at the local level,
often through word decoding or sentence parsing. For example, Block (1992) investigated the
comprehension-monitoring strategies of L1 and L2 readers of different L1 reading abilities. In
the study, students were asked to think aloud while reading English texts; students’ strategies
were then coded according to strategy type. Results revealed that high proficiency L2 readers
primarily utilized global reading strategies, such as accessing prior knowledge or using context-
ual cues to overcome vocabulary deficits. Low proficiency L2 readers, on the other hand,
failed to utilize these top-down strategies and, accordingly, did not overcome their reading
difficulties as successfully.

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These studies, along with many others, have led researchers to develop a number of conclu-
sions about the efficient use of reading strategies. First, high proficiency readers simply utilize
more strategies overall than students at low proficiency levels (Anderson, 1991; Phakiti, 2003).
Second, high and low proficiency readers utilize widely different forms of strategies. In particular,
high proficiency readers utilize global strategies that focus on the overall purpose or meaning of
the text, whereas low proficiency readers typically use local strategies when reading texts (Block,
1986; Carrell, 1989; Koda, 2005). In addition, these struggling L2 readers tend to use strategies
incorrectly or inappropriately, and often indirectly weaken their text comprehension (Cohen,
1994).
Importantly, these comprehension differences can be manipulated through differences in the
instructions provided to students before reading texts. For example, self-explanation is an instruc-
tional strategy that encourages the generation of inferences during reading, and has been shown
to improve students’ deep understanding of complex concepts (Pressley, McDaniel, Turnure,
Wood, & Ahmad, 1987). When students produce high-quality self-explanations, they make infer-
ences that link text content together and tie text ideas to their prior knowledge (McNamara,
2004). Thus, self-explanation instructions can prompt individuals to behave as skilled readers,
whereas more general instructions do not necessarily promote the generation of these connections
(Allen, Jacovina, & McNamara, 2016; Allen, McNamara, & McCrudden, 2015). Broadly, self-
explanation has proven to be a beneficial strategy across a number of tasks, as it leads students to
achieve greater success at problem solving (Bielaczyc, Pirolli, & Brown, 1995) and developing
a stronger understanding of the concepts covered in texts (Chi, de Leeuw, Chiu, & LaVancher,
1994; Magliano et al., 2005; McNamara, 2004).
One problem is that many students do not effectively self-explain, and so they need instruc-
tion in how to produce effective self-explanations (McNamara, 2004). Self-explanation strategy
training (SERT) combines self-explanation with comprehension strategies, including comprehen-
sion monitoring, paraphrasing, bridging, predicting, and elaborating. Instruction and practice in
using the strategies, along with self-explanation, is synergistic because self-explanation externalizes
the strategies and the strategies improve the quality of the students’ explanations. SERT has
proven to successfully improve comprehension at the middle school (O’Reilly, Best, & McNa-
mara, 2004), high school (Jackson & McNamara, 2011; Jackson, Varner, Boonthum-Denecke, &
McNamara, 2013; Jacovina, Jackson, Snow, & McNamara, 2016), and college (Magliano et al.,
2005; McNamara, 2004) levels.
Because less-skilled readers tend to lack sufficient knowledge about strategy use, a number of
researchers have recommended the addition of explicit strategy instruction to literacy curriculums.
Research has demonstrated that such strategy instruction interventions can lead to significant
improvements in students’ comprehension. Taylor, Stevens, and Asher (2006) conducted a meta-
analysis of 23 studies on L2 reading strategy interventions. They found that a number of strategies
have led to successful L2 comprehension, such as semantic mapping, activating prior knowledge,
and comprehension monitoring. The overall results of this review indicated that strategy instruc-
tion was, indeed, beneficial for L2 comprehension. They noted, however, that because these
studies involve student groups with different ages, cultures, and native languages, it remains
a question on how to identify the most appropriate strategies for specific students.

Text Readability
In addition to reading strategy instruction, the ability to comprehension texts deeply also relies
on students’ engagement in deliberate and persistent reading practice. Specifically, students need
to be provided with opportunities to read numerous texts across a variety of different domains
(Duke & Pearson, 2002). One method for maximizing the effectiveness of this practice is to

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assign students to read texts that specifically target their own sets of strengths and weaknesses.
The difficulty of texts varies across a number of dimensions (Graesser et al., 2011; McNamara,
Graesser, & Louwerse, 2012); therefore, students should read texts that have been appropriately
matched to their specific knowledge and skills. Aligning text properties to students’ abilities and
needs allows them to capitalize on their strengths, while also fostering growth in specific compre-
hension skills. In this way, students will gradually come to recognize what makes texts rich and
complex and how best to absorb what these texts provide. This outcome can only be achieved if
teachers have the knowledge and tools available to appropriately adapt texts to their students’
needs.
Consider the example students, Sam and Leah, from earlier in the chapter who received
similarly low scores on their comprehension assessment. As a native English speaker, Sam has
stronger language and vocabulary knowledge than Leah; however, he struggles to integrate
information from across the text and has little knowledge of the text domain. Leah, on the
other hand, has high metacognitive and domain knowledge and is therefore more skilled at
generating inferences and integrating information from the text. Although Sam and Leah are
classified as having similar reading levels, they are likely to be affected by different dimensions
of text difficulty. For example, the sophistication of the words and the cohesion of the text
will likely have differential effects on these students’ comprehension of the text due to their
varying knowledge profiles.
Given the importance of text properties on students’ comprehension processes, it is important
that educators have a means through which they can assign individual texts to students based on
their strengths and weaknesses. Historically, these texts have been assigned based on grade level
assessments, such as Flesch Kincaid. These assessments calculate basic indices related to the words
and sentences in texts to estimate its appropriate grade level (Kincaid, Fisburne, Rogers, & Chis-
som, 1975). One weakness of these approaches, however, stems from their unidimensional
nature. Text difficulty can be assessed at multiple levels, including challenges from the words and
syntax, but also challenges that stem from the genre of the text and the cohesion of the text. For
instance, increased cohesion tends to be positively associated with easier reading, and narrative
texts tend to be easier to comprehend than expository texts. This assessment affords educators the
ability to investigate these specific components that contribute to a text’s difficulty. Importantly,
the features that make texts more or less difficult vary from one text to the next. This can help
to identify the more difficult elements of a particular text and determine whether specific texts
are appropriate for different students. Once these components have been identified, educators can
work with students to help them recognize and overcome the obstacles that the texts might pre-
sent (Jackson, Allen, & McNamara, 2016).
For example, previous research has shown that readers with low prior knowledge on a topic
benefit from a more coherent text (i.e., high percentile scores), while students with a high prior
knowledge can benefit from texts with less cohesion, which require generating inferences while
reading (McNamara, Kintsch, Songer, & Kintsch, 1996). Thus the information can be used to
align appropriate texts with the skills and knowledge of particular students to improve their over-
all comprehension and retention. For instance, narrative text is easier to read, comprehend, and
recall than informational text (Graesser & McNamara, 2011; Haberlandt & Graesser, 1985). If
a passage is low in narrativity, students’ prior domain knowledge should be considered. If the
students have little domain knowledge, teachers may consider texts that help to compensate for
these challenges, such as texts that are higher in narrativity, or have fewer sources of challenges
on the other dimensions. Nonetheless, it is important that students are transitioned to more diffi-
cult (e.g., less narrative) texts over time (Best, Floyd, & McNamara, 2008; Sanacore & Palumbo,
2009). The reader must learn to understand increasingly complex and unfamiliar ideas. If the
teacher wishes to move the students toward learning to use their prior knowledge and generating

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inferences to understand challenging text, the teacher may consider where the text falls on the
spectrum of narrativity.
Similarly, more skilled readers are better able to process more complex sentences (e.g., Just &
Carpenter, 1992), and, consequently, older readers are typically assigned texts with higher grade
levels and more complex syntax. Highly narrative texts with challenging syntax may be optimal
for tackling the pedagogical goal of learning to parse sentences. By contrast, if a syntactically chal-
lenging text is also low in narrativity, then the teacher may wish to consider whether the stu-
dents’ reading skill and prior knowledge are sufficient to tackle that text.

Conclusion
Despite suggested links between comprehension theories and educational practice, there are
a number of translation gaps that inhibit their implementation. As a consequence, educational
practice often emphasizes a linear sequence of skill development, focusing on word decoding
first, and then focusing on higher order strategies, only after word and sentence decoding are
fully developed (McNamara, Jacovina, & Allen, 2015). These stage-like models of reading peda-
gogy can be detrimental for students because they can result in a failure to provide instruction to
students on the higher-level skills that they need in order to improve comprehension at deep
levels and for complex text. The approaches that are motivated by stage-like models may be par-
ticularly ineffective for diverse groups of learners who have large variations in the profiles of
knowledge and skills that interact in complex ways. It does not make sense, for example, to neg-
lect to provide instruction to adolescent L2 students about inferencing strategies simply because
they have a more limited vocabulary than their L1 peers. In fact, training and practice with these
inferencing strategies may have a positive impact on L2 students’ vocabulary growth and compre-
hension success more broadly.
Obviously, we must still account for the lower-level knowledge and skills that are sources of
struggle for diverse sets of readers. We cannot ignore the fact that lower-level decoding processes
may not be automatized for L2 readers (Yoshida, 2012), or that developing readers are less likely
to have high domain knowledge. To more clearly understand the struggles of diverse readers, it
is critical that researchers continue to examine the influences of these different sources of know-
ledge across readers.
It is a mistake, however, to develop or follow separate theories and different sets of assumptions
for each population of readers. We believe that significant advances, both theoretically and practic-
ally, will follow from approaching reading and comprehension from a unified comprehension
model. By accounting for diversity among readers under a similar set of theoretical assumptions,
researchers will be poised to provide educational recommendations that lead to success for a broader
range of readers. Further, teachers will have a more robust understanding of comprehension that
allows them to flexibly adapt their instruction and feedback based on the needs of their students.

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 Part V
How Do Expanding
Conceptions of Teacher, Reader,
and Text Interaction Change
the Game for Reading
Researchers, Teachers, Leaders,
and Policy Makers?
 15
The Joint Development of Literacy
and Self-Regulation in Early
Childhood
Implications for Research and Practice

Emily C. Hanno, Stephanie M. Jones, and Dana C. McCoy

Successful reading relies on more than just literacy-specific skills. Skilled readers employ mul-
tiple competencies from outside of the domain, including elements of self-regulation, like main-
taining attention and monitoring for errors. Much research has therefore sought to isolate the
contribution of self-regulation to young children’s reading development (Bohlmann & Downer,
2016; Eisenberg, Valiente, & Eggum, 2010; Kieffer, Vukovic, & Berry, 2013; McClelland
et al., 2007) and to determine whether targeting self-regulation can, in turn, support reading
(Rabiner, Murray, Skinner, & Malone, 2010; Raver et al., 2011). Whereas many studies
assume a unidirectional relation from self-regulation to literacy, some recent work suggests that
the relation between the two domains may be bidirectional, asserting that literacy is also foun-
dational for self-regulation (Bohlmann, Maier, & Palacios, 2015; Cadima et al., 2018). The
nature and direction of the association between literacy and self-regulation has implications for
the types of practices and interventions that are likely to support competencies in both areas.
This chapter summarizes current knowledge on the connection between literacy and self-
regulation. We use that evidence to arrive at a conceptual model of the bidirectional relations
between literacy and self-regulation occurring in, and influenced by, children’s surrounding
contexts.
Given its salience for the development of foundational literacy and self-regulation skills,
we focus primarily on the early childhood period, from approximately ages three to eight
years (Snow, 1983; Weintraub et al., 2013). As such, within the literacy domain, we concen-
trate on early literacy competencies that encompass both “conventional literacy skills,” pri-
marily the ability to read and write, and those considered precursors to conventional skills,
such as language and phonological awareness (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). These
early competencies are thought to set the groundwork for both skill-based (e.g., decoding)
and meaning-making (e.g., comprehension) aspects of conventional literacy (Lesaux, 2012;
Snow, 1991).
We begin the chapter by defining self-regulation as encompassing a broad set of skills,
including executive function and effortful control, that are often studied in relation to early
literacy. We then present our conceptual model of the relations between self-regulation and

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early literacy. In particular, we argue that literacy and self-regulation development is inter-
dependent and occurs within the same set of contexts. In this section, we present the theor-
etical and empirical evidence for the model’s organizing principles. In the next section, we
provide additional support for our conceptual model from experimental studies of interven-
tions targeting the shared contexts of literacy and self-regulation development. We conclude
the chapter by discussing the implications of current knowledge for classroom-based practices
and outline directions for future research in the area. We suggest that integrated approaches,
those targeting both literacy and self-regulation skills concurrently, are an effective method to
promote their joint development.

What Is Self-regulation?
Numerous studies linking early reading skills to non-literacy competencies focus on self-
regulation (e.g., Bohlmann & Downer, 2016; Connor et al., 2010; Eisenberg et al., 2010;
Howse, Calkins, Anastopoulos, Keane, & Shelton, 2003; Konold & Pianta, 2005; Skibbe, Mon-
troy, Bowles, & Morrison, 2018). These studies adopt varying definitions of self-regulation, using
the term to connote a diverse set of skills. Some studies focus on cognitive aspects of self-
regulation, such as executive functions. Executive functions are cognitive processes that support
goal-directed behavior and include inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility
(Best & Miller, 2010; Diamond, 2013; Nigg, 2000). Other studies focus on the behavioral and
emotional aspects of self-regulation, often characterized as effortful control. Effortful control is
defined as behavioral regulation in the context of emotional arousal, marked by the ability to
forgo a dominant thought, emotion, or response (i.e., an impulse) in favor of the subdominant
(i.e., an intentional response; Lengua, 2009; Rothbart, Ellis, Rueda, & Posner, 2003). Although
attentional and inhibitory processes are central to both executive function and effortful control,
executive function is grounded primarily in the cognitive domain of social-emotional learning,
whereas effortful control is grounded primarily in the emotional domain (Jones, Bailey, Barnes,
& Partee, 2016).
Despite the relative precision of the terms executive function and effortful control, as com-
pared to self-regulation, there exists little consensus about the specific constructs these terms
represent or the appropriate measures to use in their operationalization. A comprehensive
review of the self-regulation literature showed that researchers used over 50 distinct construct
terms to represent and operationalize executive functions alone (Jones et al., 2016). It therefore
comes as no surprise that the literature connecting executive function and effortful control to
literacy also uses a variety of terms, defines these terms in varying ways, and uses different
measures to represent the same stated construct. For instance, both Best and colleagues (2011)
and Blair and Razza (2007) study the link between executive function and literacy develop-
ment. Whereas the former adopts a definition of executive function that includes planning and
goal-setting, the latter focuses on executive function’s inhibitory control and cognitive flexibil-
ity components. A lack of consensus on self-regulatory concepts and measurement approaches
poses a challenge for the creation of an integrated theory of literacy and self-regulation devel-
opment, as findings based on a particular definition of self-regulation are not necessarily gener-
alizable to a broader set of regulatory skills. Moreover, this confusion makes it difficult for
policymakers and educators to identify and target specific regulatory skills that might be most
important for reading development. To mitigate this terminological complexity, in the next
section we review the current evidence on the relation between literacy and self-regulation,
taking care to be explicit on the components of self-regulation (e.g., executive function or
effortful control) used in any particular study.

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What Do We Know about the Relation between Early Literacy and

Self-regulation?
A vast body of research connecting literacy and self-regulation skills suggests the presence of
cross-domain relations. Yet the conceptual complexity and related measurement challenges
described above complicate our understanding of how and why literacy and self-regulation are
linked. An understanding of the directionality and mechanisms of the relation between these
domains is central to identifying adult practices that can promote children’s development in both
areas. Such an understanding also broadens the array of actionable explanations for observed vari-
ation in children’s literacy competencies. That is, reading difficulties may not only be a function
of deficits in literacy-specific skills, but also of non-literacy skills like self-regulation. To synthe-
size contemporary thought and evidence on the topic, we present organizing principles that
underlie a conceptual model of the relation between early literacy and self-regulation.
Figure 15.1 depicts our conceptual model, and the three organizing principles, of the joint devel-
opment of literacy and self-regulation in the early childhood period. First, the diagram shows that the
development of literacy and self-regulation occur concurrently within individual children. Individual
children, in turn, develop within multiple contexts, making the conditions for literacy development
the same as those for self-regulation development. Second, the overlapping and interwoven develop-
mental paths of literacy and self-regulation underscore the bidirectional dependencies between the
two domains. Third, the shaded areas between the literacy and self-regulation pathways represent
processes of reorganization and integration that are likely necessary as individuals develop increasingly
complex literacy and self-regulation competencies over time. Children must learn to coordinate
emerging skills in one area with prevailing skills in the other. Existing theoretical and empirical work
offers support for each of these principles, which we summarize below.

Integrated environmental supports

for literacy and self-regulation
development
gulation
Self-Re
Literacy

Skill complexity
Multifaceted domain-
specific skills

Figure 15.1 Conceptual model of the joint development of literacy and self-regulation
Note: This conceptual model represents our three organizing principles. First, the box around the skill pathways represents the shared
environmental contexts of literacy and self-regulation development. Second, the intertwined pathways represent the hypothesized bidir-
ectional relations between skills in the two domains. Third, the shaded areas between the pathways represent the hypothesized reorga-
nizational processes that occur with the development of novel skills in either domain.

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Emily C. Hanno et al.

Principle 1. The Development of Literacy and Self-regulation Occur

Concurrently within the Same Contexts
Children’s self-regulation and early literacy skills both mature rapidly between the ages of three
and five (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008; Weintraub et al., 2013). During this period, chil-
dren acquire regulatory competencies that enable them to retain information, inhibit natural
impulses, and flexibly follow rules (Best & Miller, 2010; Center on the Developing Child, 2011).
At the same time, children’s oral language and other pre-reading skills blossom (Dickinson &
Tabors, 2001).
Because literacy and self-regulation skills develop simultaneously within individual chil-
dren, the conditions of self-regulation development are naturally the conditions of literacy
development. Work focused on self-regulation (e.g., Blair, 2010; Lengua, 2002) and literacy
(e.g., Baker, Scher, & Mackler, 1997; Hart & Risley, 1992) independently identifies features
of children’s contexts as central to developmental progress in these domains. Dynamic and
bioecological theories explain the role of context in propelling development (Bronfenbrenner
& Morris, 2006; Fischer & Bidell, 2006; Sameroff, 2010). These theories are rooted in the
notion that children live, and therefore develop, in a number of environments, including,
most proximally, the home and school contexts. Children interact with these contexts and
the individuals within them, which serves to encourage or inhibit development (Sameroff,
2010). These proximal relationships (e.g., with family, teachers, or peers) shape the quality of
children’s experiences, determine opportunities for learning, and expose children to new
knowledge (Jones, Brown, & Aber, 2008).
A number of observational studies have found that features of children’s background and
socio-demographic context are related to developmental patterns in literacy and self-regulation. It
is well documented that children arrive to kindergarten with varying levels of academic readiness,
including in literacy, and that differences in readiness are associated with socioeconomic status
and other family risk factors (Reardon & Portilla, 2016). A handful of studies has sought to deter-
mine whether differences in children’s self-regulation skills explain socioeconomic-related gaps in
early literacy competencies (Dilworth-Bart, 2012; Fitzpatrick, McKinnon, Blair, & Willoughby,
2014; Nesbitt, Baker-Ward, & Willoughby, 2013; Sektnan, McClelland, Acock, & Morrison, 2010).
While unable to isolate causal relations between literacy and self-regulation, these studies suggest that
differences in self-regulation account, at least in part, for socioeconomic variation in the acquisition
of academic skills.
The studies noted above on socioeconomic status account for only one dimension of chil-
dren’s contexts and experiences. Of course, the conditions for development among children from
low-income or at-risk families are heterogeneous. As such, another body of research focused
mainly on school contexts has operationalized children’s experiences in terms of the quality of
their learning environments to understand how particular, and potentially malleable, features of
these settings might influence development. The early childhood education field refers to the
quality of children’s learning environments, including their interpersonal relationships, as “process
quality” (Phillipsen, Burchinal, Howes, & Cryer, 1997). However, most correlational studies
linking commonly-used process quality measures to children’s literacy and self-regulation have
yielded either non-significant or small associations (e.g., Mashburn et al., 2008; Weiland, Ulves-
tad, Sachs, & Yoshikawa, 2013). These findings paired with the existence of socioeconomic-
related differences in literacy and self-regulation skills underscore the importance of ongoing
research into the mechanisms through which both home and school contexts influence children’s
development.

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Principle 2. There Exist Bidirectional Dependencies between Literacy and

Self-regulation
Literacy and self-regulation develop together within children, meaning growth in one domain
cannot occur in isolation from growth in the other. This stands in contrast to the
common approach of discussing literacy or self-regulation as independent, developing in paral-
lel, or even in the absence of the other, as if each domain were capable of unfettered and
insulated developmental spurts. As child advocate Marian Wright Edelman frequently notes,
“Children do not come in pieces” (Children’s Defense Fund, 2016). Growth and develop-
ment of literacy and self-regulation are therefore not only concurrent but also likely inter-
twined. Below we summarize research documenting the links between literacy and self-
regulation, paying particular attention to the regulatory constructs of executive function and
effortful control.

Self-Regulation → Literacy

Executive Function → Literacy

The subcomponents of executive function (i.e., inhibitory control, working memory, and
cognitive flexibility) are each thought to contribute to children’s successful engagement in
literacy-related tasks. Children who inhibit competing impulses while practicing foundational
literacy skills may approach tasks with greater concentration for a longer period of time
(McClelland & Cameron, 2012). Moreover, the ability to subvert dominant cognitive
impulses, or appropriately deal with mental distractions, helps children filter, focus on, and
retain relevant information from literacy tasks (Blair, Ursache, Greenberg, Vernon-Feagans, &
Family Life Project Investigators, 2015; Morrison, Ponitz, & McClelland, 2010). Cognitive
inhibitory control may, therefore, be most salient for the development of code-based literacy
skills (e.g., phonological awareness and letter knowledge) that are often developed through
tasks that require curtailing dominant responses in favor of a less natural but correct response
(Blair & Razza, 2007; Foy & Mann, 2013; McClelland & Cameron, 2011). For example, an
early literacy exercise might involve an adult stating a familiar word and then asking the
child to replace the word’s first sound with an alternative sound to generate a different or
nonsensical word (e.g., replacing /c/ in “cat” with /l/). This task requires the child to inhibit
the impulse to repeat back the same word or, in the nonsensical word case, the inclination
to produce a meaningful word.
Working memory, another component of executive function, supports students in retain-
ing the requisite knowledge for completing literacy tasks. Working memory involves the
mental retention, employment, and manipulation of knowledge to inform thoughts and
behaviors (Diamond, 2013; Jones et al., 2016). This executive functions sub-component is
likely fundamental to the acquisition and retention of rote knowledge (e.g., letter sounds and
print concepts) required of early literacy skills (Gathercole, Alloway, Willis, & Adams, 2006).
It is also likely that working memory underlies complex literacy skills like comprehension by
allowing students to make connections within texts (e.g., extract meaning from strings of
words or build a mental representation of the story) and outside of texts (e.g., connect the
text to other texts or lived realities; Goff, Pratt, & Ong, 2005; Just & Carpenter, 1980). In
line with this hypothesis, several studies show that learning-disabled readers tend to have
weaker working memories than their peers without learning delays (Swanson, 1999; Swanson,
Zheng, & Jerman, 2009). Earlier theoretical work on working memory also underscores its

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relevance for simple (e.g., coding) and complex (e.g., comprehension) literacy skills through
its facilitation of the storage, processing, and integration of verbal and visuo-spatial data (Bad-
deley, 1986; Baddeley & Hitch, 1974; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1993).
While less studied than either inhibitory control or working memory in relation to liter-
acy, the third component of executive function – cognitive flexibility – additionally supports
literacy development by allowing children to flexibly apply complex phonological rules, syn-
tactic structures, and vocabulary (Cartwright, 2012; Colé, Duncan, & Blaye, 2014). For
example, English-speaking children must be able to flexibly pronounce the same letter using
a different sound (e.g., a hard and soft c), or a different letter using the same sound (e.g.,
s and c; Blair & Raver, 2015). Children must also distinguish between homonyms and
homographs. A cognitively flexible child instantaneously applies the correct interpretation of
a letter or word, or conversely understands that multiple words can be used to represent the
same thing. Moreover, cognitive flexibility can facilitate the coordination of reading’s mul-
tiple demands, such as engaging in decoding and meaning-making simultaneously (Cartwright,
2009, 2012).
Numerous cross-sectional and longitudinal studies have explored whether executive func-
tions relate to contemporaneous and future literacy skills. Preschoolers’ core executive func-
tions have been linked to print, letter, and orthographic knowledge, as well as to
phonological awareness and vocabulary (Blair & Razza, 2007; Fitzpatrick & Pagani, 2012;
Fuhs, Farran, & Nesbitt, 2015; Fuhs, Nesbitt, Farran, & Dong, 2014; Kegel & Bus, 2014;
Purpura, Schmitt, & Ganley, 2017; Shaul & Schwartz, 2014). Among elementary-aged chil-
dren, executive functions have been linked to more complex literacy skills, including reading
comprehension (Best et al., 2011; Gathercole, Pickering, Knight, & Stegmann, 2004; Goff
et al., 2005; Kieffer et al., 2013; Sesma, Mahone, Levine, Eason, & Cutting, 2009; Swanson
& Howell, 2001). A recent meta-analysis of nearly 30 studies linking executive function and
reading comprehension found a moderate positive association between the two areas (Foll-
mer, 2018).
Researchers have also examined the hypothesized mechanisms that account for the associations
between executive function and early literacy. For example, some studies show that task engage-
ment and attention partially explain the association between self-regulation and growth in early
literacy outcomes (Bohlmann & Downer, 2016; Nesbitt, Farran, & Fuhs, 2015). Children with
higher self-regulation tend to participate more in classroom activities – meaning they are more
engaged, which in turn predicts literacy growth.

Effortful Control → Literacy

Executive functions are likely foundational to but insufficient for academic success given the
emotional and social stimuli present in children’s learning environments. As such, effortful
control, which involves the regulation of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, also supports
children to manage the demands of learning environments (Kochanska, Murray, & Harlan,
2000; Lengua, 2009). Whereas cognitive inhibition (an executive function) supports children’s
concentration on pertinent aspects of a task, behavioral and emotional inhibition (an effortful
control sub-component) likely enables children to eschew external distractions and behavioral
impulses (Eisenberg et al., 2010; Rothbart & Jones, 1998). Moreover, behavioral and emo-
tional inhibition may underlie students’ persistence and motivation in the face of complex
negative emotional arousal (e.g., frustration) that naturally occurs during challenging tasks,
like learning to read (Blair, 2002; Pekrun, Elliot, & Maier, 2009; Ursache, Blair, & Raver,

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2012). Such inhibitory skills can also facilitate students’ sustained engagement in monotonous
or routine tasks with delayed rewards (e.g., practicing sight words).
Relatedly, children with strong emotional and behavioral regulation are likely to build
deeper relationships with peers and teachers, which affect their learning opportunities (Eisen-
berg et al., 2010; Hamre & Pianta, 2001; Pianta & Stuhlman, 2004). Children with high
effortful control tend to operate in more socially desirable ways, leading to greater social
acceptance and more positive relationships (Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie, & Reiser, 2000; Eisen-
berg et al., 2010). Positive relationships with other children encourage active engagement in
peer-driven learning experiences (e.g., learning centers) and promote children’s sense of
belonging in school (Ladd, Herald, & Kochel, 2006). Positive relationships allow children to
access content they would otherwise be unable to experience on their own (Pianta & Stuhl-
man, 2004; Torgesen, 2002; Vygotsky, 1978). Teacher-child relationships may also serve as
a protective factor for children likely to have academic or behavioral difficulties (Sabol &
Pianta, 2012). Furthermore, positive school-based relationships can promote literacy growth
indirectly through their influence on students’ perceptions of and connectedness to schooling
(Hamre & Pianta, 2005; Ladd & Burgess, 2001).
Evidence from correlational studies shows that effortful control is related to a variety of liter-
acy skills. Among preschoolers, effortful control has been linked to print knowledge, phono-
logical awareness, and vocabulary (Allan & Lonigan, 2011). Among older children (i.e.,
elementary and middle school aged), effortful control is associated with decoding, fluency, and
comprehension (Deater-Deckard, Mullineaux, Petrill, & Thompson, 2009; Mägi, Kikas, &
Soodla, 2018). Some studies have explored potential mechanisms that account for the link
between effortful control and literacy, like social functioning (Liew, McTigue, Barrois, &
Hughes, 2008; Montroy, Bowles, Skibbe, & Foster, 2014; Trentacosta & Izard, 2007; Valiente
et al., 2011). For example, the Montroy and Valiente studies showed that children’s social skills,
which likely underlie children’s interpersonal and relational abilities, mediated the association
between behavioral self-control and literacy growth.

Complex Executive Function and Effortful Control → Literacy

Complex executive function and effortful control skills (i.e., those requiring the integration
and coordination of component skills) are likely more relevant to reading development than
are the individual component skills reviewed above (Best et al., 2011; Blair & Dennis, 2010;
Ursache et al., 2012). Complex executive function skills include planning, problem solving,
and goal setting, whereas complex effortful control skills include delay of gratification, will-
power, and resilience (Jones et al., 2016). Some complex skills integrate cognitive (executive
function) and emotional (effortful control) skills concurrently (Blair & Dennis, 2010). For
instance, error monitoring, which involves identifying and addressing errors, requires individ-
uals to suppress dominant responses (i.e., inhibition), employ working knowledge to address
mistakes, and sustain attention in the face of difficulties or frustrations (Zhou, Chen, & Main,
2012).
Complex executive function and effortful control likely underlie advanced reading skills,
such as comprehension monitoring, which, unto itself, requires complex literacy skill integra-
tion (Miyake et al., 2000; Sesma et al., 2009). Comprehension monitoring involves the con-
struction of complete mental representations of the text, which necessitates engaging working
memory of prior parts of the text and of relevant outside content. It also requires inhibitory
abilities so that readers are aware of gaps in their comprehension (Nagy, 2007).

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Literacy → Self-Regulation
Although much research has focused on self-regulation as foundational to literacy, there is also
reason to believe that certain literacy skills may promote children’s self-regulation, particularly in
early childhood. Specifically, language, which we consider a core element of early literacy
(Snow, 1983, 1991), is thought to be a mental tool for self-regulation (Astington & Baird, 2005;
Salmon, O’Kearney, Reese, & Fortune, 2016; Vygotsky, 1962; Zelazo et al., 2003). Language,
primarily in the form of self-talk, allows children to reflect on, manage, and plan thoughts, emo-
tions, and behaviors. Self-talk, or talking to oneself out loud or internally throughout daily activ-
ities, develops between the ages of three and five (Winsler, De León, Wallace, Carlton, &
Willson-Quayle, 2003). Several empirical studies lend support for the notion that the emergence
of linguistic strategies like self-talk facilitates growth in self-regulation (Fuhs & Day, 2011; Peter-
sen, Bates, & Staples, 2015; Winsler, Diaz, Atencio, McCarthy, & Chabay, 2000). For example,
Winsler and colleagues (2000) explored longitudinal patterns in self-talk and self-regulation
among preschool-aged children, finding that improvements in self-talk were associated with task
performance and executive functioning.
Even before preschool, early literacy skills likely support children’s understanding of exter-
nal regulatory-related interactions and imperatives from adults. Very young children rely on
regulation by others, including soothing by adults in emotionally elevated moments and
receiving guidance on socially acceptable behaviors. Through these regulation-related experi-
ences with others, children learn appropriate emotional and behavioral responses (Sameroff,
2010; Sameroff & Fiese, 2000). Often, these regulation-related interactions are verbally inten-
sive (e.g., involving explicit oral directives) and, in these instances, linguistic skills are neces-
sary for children to understand what is expected of them. Linguistic deficits could therefore
delay children’s self-regulation development and undermine their capacity to respond to ver-
bally intensive regulation tasks (Botting, Psarou, Caplin, & Nevin, 2013). Supporting this
idea, Vallotton and Ayoub (2011) found that toddlers with higher vocabulary levels had
stronger self-regulation growth.
Little research has considered the contributions of more advanced literacy skills, like
decoding and reading comprehension, to self-regulation. However, it may be that learning to
read also supports self-regulation. Connor and colleagues (2016) expanded on work showing
that reading encourages ongoing language development between the ages of six and eight
(Verhoeven, van Leeuwe, & Vermeer, 2011), hypothesizing that reading-induced changes in
language, metacognition, and brain structure would, in turn, support self-regulation. Follow-
ing children from first to second grade, the authors found a reciprocal relation between read-
ing and self-regulation, suggesting that advanced literacy skills are not only supported by, but
also support, self-regulation.

Toward a Bidirectional Theory

Evidence for the contribution of self-regulation to literacy and of literacy to self-regulation sup-
ports a bidirectional perspective. Importantly, the largely correlational studies on the two domains
reviewed here do not provide definitive causal proof of the directionality of the relation between
the two domains. Principally, it is impossible to determine whether omitted variables that affect
both literacy and self-regulation explain the observed association between the two areas. For
example, features of children’s contexts may affect literacy and self-regulation independently and
thus shared ecological features may explain the correlation between the domains. However, find-
ings from the studies summarized here suggest the improbability of a purely context-driven or
unidirectional relation from one area to the other.

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Additionally, for students with low self-regulatory and literacy skills, there likely exists
a mutually reinforcing downward cycle, or developmental cascade, between the two domains
(Blair, 2002; Masten & Cicchetti, 2010). As students with low self-regulation struggle to read for
the reasons outlined above, their lack of literacy competencies can exacerbate challenges with
self-regulation (Blair & Diamond, 2008). These students receive explicit and implicit negative
feedback via peers and teachers, which inculcates a negative perception of the self as learner and
reader (Skinner, Zimmer-Gembeck, & Connell, 1998). Continued negative performance on liter-
acy tasks could also inhibit children’s belief in the rewards of cognitive and emotional investment
in such tasks (Bandura, 1977).
Some longitudinal studies provide empirical support for bidirectionality between literacy and
self-regulation (Bohlmann et al., 2015; Connor et al., 2016; Slot & von Suchodoletz, 2018). For
example, Bohlmann and colleagues (2015) found that children’s self-regulation and vocabulary
skills were predictive of each other across three time points among preschoolers. Such studies
validate the adoption of an integrated perspective in understanding individual differences in liter-
acy and self-regulation development. That is, the potential existence of bidirectional dependencies
between literacy and self-regulation development suggest that literacy-focused efforts alone may
be insufficient to support all struggling readers, and vice versa. A child identified as a struggling
reader may benefit from self-regulatory supports, whereas a child labeled as having behavioral
issues could profit from literacy supports.

Principle 3. The Development of Novel Skills in either Area Results in

a Process of Reorganization and Integration
Children’s literacy and self-regulation skills progress from simple to complex over time. In
the literacy domain, children learn to employ multiple foundational skills simultaneously,
including code-based skills and meaning-based skills, to attack challenging texts. Similarly, in
the self-regulation domain, children learn to integrate the component skills of executive func-
tion and effortful control to demonstrate more intricate regulatory skills like planning, goal-
setting, and error monitoring (Jones et al., 2016). We contend that the development of more
complex skills in either domain likely results in reorganizational processes during which indi-
viduals accommodate, combine, and ultimately apply complex domain-specific competencies
in coordination with skills in the other domain. For example, when children develop the
skill to engage in independent error monitoring, a complex self-regulatory process, the way
they approach texts changes. Whereas previously, in the absence of these skills, children
likely sped through challenging passages or ignored decoding and comprehension errors, chil-
dren now can identify and address errors. Similarly, when children develop the literacy skill
of incorporating background knowledge to make textual inferences, their working memory
must adapt to accommodate inputs from both the text and their memory. Arguably, integra-
tion of newfound skills with existing skills will not be automatic, but rather will involve
a gradual process of integration.
Dynamic skills theory provides theoretical backing for the existence of such reorganizational
processes. It posits that over time, children develop increasingly complex skills in a range of
domains, and that skills within and across domains influence each other, forming a complex web
of interrelated competencies (Fischer & Bidell, 2006). As novel skills develop, individuals’
dynamic cognitive organizational systems flexibly shift to incorporate new competencies (Bidell
& Fischer, 2000). It is through a process of reorganization that individuals develop the ability to
integrate new skills with existing skills. At present, little empirical evidence supports the existence
of reorganizational processes, particularly among literacy and self-regulation skills, signifying an
important area for future study.

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What Do School-based Interventions Tell Us about the Relation

between Literacy and Self-regulation?
Experimental studies of school-based interventions focused on literacy and self-regulation
offer rigorous evidence in support of the first two organizing principles of our conceptual
model. First, studies of interventions targeting the quality of children’s environments show
that the two domains develop within, and are influenced by, the same contextual features.
Second, studies showing the efficacy of interventions that provide children opportunities to
integrate literacy and self-regulation skills lend support for the interdependence of the
domains. Intervention studies also suggest specific environmental conditions and school-based
practices (via the components of the interventions) that are likely important to cross-domain
development.
Despite the rapid increase in the number of experimental intervention studies in both the liter-
acy and self-regulation fields, relatively few explore potential cross-domain impacts or integrate the
two domains. We discuss six such intervention studies that simultaneously captured self-regulation,
literacy, and their contexts. Table 15.1 summarizes these studies, including their design, sample,
and measures.
The Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP) had positive effects on children’s literacy and
self-regulation by supporting Head Start teachers to establish regulated and well-managed class-
room environments (Raver et al., 2008, 2011). Teachers in the treatment group also received
ongoing consultation from a mental health consultant to support their own well-being (e.g.,
managing stress). Such teacher-focused interventions were hypothesized to improve classroom
environments to ultimately promote children’s self-regulation. Indeed, students of treatment
teachers had higher self-regulation and literacy skills as compared to those in other Head Start
classrooms. Improvements in self-regulation only partially accounted for the treatment’s impact
on literacy skills, suggesting that improvements in environmental quality also led to direct or
unmeasured, indirect impacts on literacy. CSRP’s findings underscore that classroom conditions
(e.g., approaches to classroom management) that positively affect self-regulation might also be
those that support literacy.
Two additional classroom-based interventions targeting adult competencies lend support
for the importance of children’s environments in concurrently shaping children’s literacy and
self-regulation. The first, Head Start REDI, was designed to enrich instruction in preschool
classrooms to promote early literacy and social-emotional skills, including self-regulation
(Bierman et al., 2008a, 2008b). The intervention encouraged pedagogical approaches such as
positive behavioral supports, explicit emotion coaching, and interactive readings on social-
emotional themes. Teachers received curricular supports (e.g., the Preschool PATHS curricu-
lum), plans for implementing student-driven learning centers, and on-going training in exe-
cuting and integrating the program components. The program had positive effects on
children’s vocabulary and emergent literacy skills, as well as on task engagement. These
effects were larger for children who began the intervention with low self-regulation skills
(Bierman, Nix, Greenberg, Blair, & Domitrovich, 2008). Providing such children with expli-
cit regulation-focused lessons and scaffolds may have had a compounding impact through dir-
ectly improving children’s self-regulation while increasing their engagement in literacy
activities.
Similar to Head Start REDI, 4Rs (Reading, Writing, Respect and Resolution) integrated
social-emotional and literacy learning in classroom settings (Jones et al., 2011, 2010). Participating
K-5 teachers received on-going supports to implement a sequence of literacy-based lessons
focused on social-emotional skills and conflict resolution. After a second year of implementation,
the evaluation of 4Rs program indicated positive impacts on a host of child social-emotional

288
Table 15.1 Overview of experimental studies on literacy and self-regulation development
Number
of experi-
Intervention Summary of mental Assign- Sample Age during Self-Regulation Early Literacy
name intervention groups ment level size intervention Location Sample description Measures Measures

Chicago School Randomized 1 School 6021 Preschoolers Chicago -Children in 35 -Preschool Self- -Peabody Picture
Readiness Pro- control trial of classrooms in 18 Regulation Assess- Vocabulary Test
ject (Raver et al., intervention Head Start centers ment (PSRA; Smith- (Dunn & Dunn,
2008, 2011) with Head Start -Racially and ethnic- Donald et al., 1997)
teachers aimed ally diverse (67% 2007) -Letter naming task
to support man- African American; -Balance Beam
agement and 26% Hispanic) (Murray &
teacher -Low SES (Head Kochanska et al.,
wellbeing Start eligible) 2000)
-Pencil Tap
(Diamond & Taylor,
1996)
-Toy Wrap, Toy
Wait, Snack Delay,
and Tongue Task
(Murray &
Kochanska et al.,
2000)
-Disruptive Behavior
-Diagnostic Obser-
vation Schedule
(Wakschlag et al.,
2005)

(Continued )
Table 15.1 (Cont.)
Number
of experi-
Intervention Summary of mental Assign- Sample Age during Self-Regulation Early Literacy
name intervention groups ment level size intervention Location Sample description Measures Measures

Computerized Randomized 2 Child 77 First graders South- -Children in five -Conners’ Teacher -Woodcock Johnson
Attention Train- controlled trial eastern public schools Rating Scale-Revised III – Letter Word
ing (Rabiner of 1) Computer- United -Children reported (CTRS-R:L) DSM-IV Identification, Word
et al., 2010) ized Attention States as have attentional Inattentive, Hyper- Attack, Reading Flu-
Training (CAT) difficulties active-Impulsive, ency, and Passage
and 2) Com- -Racially and ethnic- Oppositional, Social Comprehension
puter Assisted ally diverse (58% Problems, and Anx- (Woodcock,
Instruction (CAI) African American; ious/Shy subscales McGrew, & Mather,
24% Hispanic; 11% (Conners et al., 2001)
White) 1997) -Dynamic Indicators
-67% Free or of Basic Early Liter-
Reduced Price acy Skills (DIBELS
Lunch (FRPL) 2019; Good &
eligible Kaminski, 2002)
-Teacher-rated Aca-
demic Performance
Rating Scale (ARPS;
DuPaul, Rapport, &
Perriello, 1991)
Computer-Based Randomized 2 Child 101 Kindergar- Nether- -Children in three -Flanker Fish -Rhyming task
Early Literacy controlled trial teners lands schools -Hearts and Flowers -Syllabic awareness
Training (van de of 1) software -Middle to middle (Diamond, 2013) task
Sande, Segers, & targeting early -high income SES -Auditory blending
Verhoeven, literacy with -Phonemic segmen-
2016) embedded EF tation task
supports and 2) -Grapheme know-
an EL-focused ledge task (Verhoe-
software ven, 1995;
Verhoeven & Van
Kuyk, 1991)
Head Start REDI Randomized 1 Class- 356 Preschoolers Pennsyl- -Children in 44 -Backward Word -Expressive One-
(Bierman et al., control trial of rooms vania Head Start class- Span (Davis & Pratt, Word Picture
2008a; Bierman Head Start REDI rooms 1995) Vocabulary Test
et al., 2008b) intervention in -Racially and ethnic- -Peg Tapping Task (Brownell, 2000)
Head Start class- ally diverse (25% (Diamond & Taylor, -Test of Language
rooms aimed at African American; 1996) Development -
enriching social- 17% Hispanic; 42% -DCCS (Frye, Grammatical Under-
emotional and White) Zelazo, & Palfai, standing and Sen-
literacy skills - Low SES (Head 1995) tence Imitation
Start eligible) -Walk-a-line Slowly subtest (Newcomer
Task (Kochanska, & Hammill, 1997)
Murray, Jacques, -Test of Preschool
Koenig, & Vandege- Literacy (TOPEL)-
est, 1996) Blending, Elision,
-Task Orientation and Print Know-
(Smith-Donald, ledge subtests
Raver, Hayes, & (Lonigan, Wagner,
Richardson, 2007) Torgesen, &
-Social Competence Rashotte, 2007)
Scale (Conduct
Problems Preven-
tion Research
Group, 1995)
-Teacher Observa-
tion of Child Adap-
tation – Revised
(Werthamer-
Larsson, Kellam, &
Wheeler, 1991)

(Continued )
Table 15.1 (Cont.)
Number
of experi-
Intervention Summary of mental Assign- Sample Age during Self-Regulation Early Literacy
name intervention groups ment level size intervention Location Sample description Measures Measures

Individualized Randomized 1 School 445 First graders Mid-sized - Children in 46 -Head-Toes-Knees- -Woodcock Johnson
Literacy Instruc- control trial of city in classrooms in ten Shoulders Task III -Letter Word
tion (Connor individualized lit- Florida schools (Ponitz et al., 2009) Identification, Pas-
et al., 2010) eracy instruction -Racially and ethnic- -Social Skills Rating sage Comprehen-
software (A2i) to ally diverse (47% System (SSRS; Gres- sion, and Picture
support teachers African American; ham & Elliott, 1990) Vocabulary (Wood-
in implementing 35% White) cock et al., 2001)
individualized -Over half of stu-
instructional dents in study
approaches schools eligible for
FRPL
4Rs (Jones, Randomized 1 School 1,1842 Elementary New York -Children working -Home Interview -Early Childhood
Brown, & Aber, control trial of school aged City with 146 teachers Questionnaire – Longitudinal Study-
2011; Jones, 4Rs intervention across 18 public Hostile attribution Kindergarten
Brown, with elementary schools bias and Aggressive Cohort, 3rd Grade
Hoglund, & schools aimed at -Racially and ethnic- interpersonal nego- Assessment
Aber, 2010) integrating ally diverse (41.3% tiation strategies -New York State
social-emotional African American; (Dahlberg, Toal, & standardized read-
learning and lit- 45.8% Hispanic; Behrens, 1998) ing assessment
eracy instruction 4.3% White)
 -Predominantly low -Normative Beliefs
SES About Aggression
scale (Huesmann &
Guerra, 1997)
- What I Think
Instrument –
Aggressive Fantasies
and Prosocial Sub-
scale (Rosenfeld,
Huesmann, Eron, &
Torney-Purta, 1982)
-ADHD Symptom-
atology Scale
(Milich, Loney, &
Landau, 1982)
-Diagnostic Inter-
view Schedule for
Children (Lucas
et al., 2001)
-Behavioral Assess-
ment System for
Children (Reynolds
& Kamphaus, 1998)
-Social Competence
Scale (CPPRG,
1999)

1 Information on sample size and composition for Chicago School Readiness Project comes from Raver et al. (2008).
2 Information on sample size and composition of 4Rs study come from the second-year impact analyses presented in Jones et al. (2011).
Emily C. Hanno et al.

competencies, including attention and social competence (Jones et al., 2010). Moreover, the pro-
gram had positive effects on reading for those students identified by teachers as having the most
challenging behaviors at baseline. Like Head Start REDI, the effects of 4Rs suggests that inte-
grated approaches may have compounding effects by having direct and indirect impacts on skills
in the two domains. Additional research on 4Rs suggests the intervention also had effects on
classroom process quality, which might partially explain positive impacts on child outcomes
(Brown, Jones, LaRusso, & Aber, 2010).
4Rs, Head Start REDI, and CSRP each suggest that helping educators create nurturing class-
room environments, marked by positive teacher-child relationships and rigorous content instruc-
tion, supports children’s literacy and self-regulation (Jones et al., 2008). Head Start REDI and
4Rs also highlight the potential value of integrating literacy and self-regulation instruction to pro-
mote growth in both domains. However, these studies do not provide evidence on the domains’
bidirectionality, as it is unclear whether these forms of integrated instruction improved skill
development above and beyond domain-specific approaches or whether development in one
domain led to development in the other.
It is thought that evidence on the latter may come from intervention studies focused pri-
marily on one domain. Interventions targeting primarily either literacy or self-regulation skills
illustrate whether intervention-related gains in the targeted domain also cause growth in the
non-targeted domain (Jacob & Parkinson, 2015). Nonetheless, these studies are limited in
two principal ways. First, even interventions that target only one domain are likely to influ-
ence the other. For example, self-regulation-focused interventions are likely to expose chil-
dren to verbal and written language, which could result in improvements in their literacy
skills. At the same time, literacy-focused interventions provide children with opportunities to
practice self-regulation through structured tasks. Second, interventions targeting one domain
could indirectly influence the non-targeted domain by altering features of the learning
environment.
A recent study of an individualized literacy instruction intervention illustrates the second case.
The literacy-focused intervention positively affected children’s self-regulation, particularly among
those with low baseline regulatory levels (Connor et al., 2010). In this study, treatment teachers
received the Assessment to Instruction (A2i) software to help tailor instruction to students’ liter-
acy skills. Individualized instruction allows students to access the types and intensity of instruction
most likely to promote their development (Connor, Morrison, Fishman, Schatschneider, &
Underwood, 2007; Connor, Morrison, & Slominski, 2006). Consistent with this hypothesis, sev-
eral prior studies found individualized instruction to positively affect literacy development
(Connor et al., 2009; Connor, Morrison, & Katch, 2004; Connor, Morrison, & Petrella, 2004).
The designers of this intervention also hypothesized that individualized instruction might also
improve children’s self-regulation by improving classroom structures and increasing students’ task
engagement. It is therefore impossible to disentangle whether the observed effects on self-
regulation were the result of improvements in literacy and/or due to changes in the classroom
environment. Regardless, these results suggest that practices that support literacy also support self-
regulation.
Experimental studies that directly compare the effects of domain-focused and domain-
integrated interventions provide the most compelling evidence on the domains’ interdepend-
ence. For example, a study with two interventions targeting literacy, one of which is primar-
ily literacy-focused and the other of which also integrates self-regulation supports and
learning, can help us understand whether literacy benefits from the integration of self-
regulation. One such study of a computer-based literacy program tested the added contribu-
tion of embedding executive function-related activities in the program (van de Sande et al.,

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2016). The study included two intervention groups: one that used software to practice early
literacy skills (EL) and another that used a similar software program to practice early literacy
skills with executive function-related tasks (EL+EF). Students in the EL+EF group were
asked to stop, think, and verbally explain their thoughts on literacy tasks before selecting
a response, activating inhibitory control. Whereas children in both groups experienced larger
early literacy gains than those in the control group, the literacy gains of the EL+EF group
were greater than those of the EL group. Children in the EL+EF group completed more
computer activities, were less reliant on the software’s “help” function, and performed less
irrelevant mouse clicks. These findings suggest the integration of regulatory-related activities
into literacy-based activities can improve literacy development by increasing children’s atten-
tion and focus on literacy-related tasks.
Another multi-armed study of computer-based attention training similarly suggests that
integrated approaches may be superior to domain-specific strategies. The Project CLASS
(Children Learning Academic Success Skills) intervention isolated the relative impact of Com-
puterized Attention Training (CAT) and Computerized Assisted Instruction (CAI) on first
graders’ attention and literacy skills (Rabiner et al., 2010). CAT involved the completion of
computerized training exercises aimed at auditory and visual attention. Like CAT, CAI tasks
were designed to improve children’s attention, but did so in the context of literacy and
mathematics tasks. Children identified by their teachers as having attentional challenges were
randomized to receive one of the two attention-focused interventions or to be added to
a waitlist. Both interventions led to a decline in teacher-reported attention issues. However,
only the CAI – the integrated intervention – resulted in academic improvements. This study
highlights the potential for academic-based attention interventions (e.g., CAI) to affect both
attention and academics and shows the limitations of attention-only interventions for aca-
demic outcomes.
In sum, these classroom-based experimental studies emphasize the importance of children’s
contexts in simultaneously shaping literacy and self-regulation. They also provide support for the
notion that literacy and self-regulation are interdependent, and relatedly underscore the promise
of integrated approaches for improving skills in both domains. Nevertheless, additional research is
needed to untangle these processes using robust experimental methods.

Implications for Classroom-based Practice

The research summarized above offers several potential directions for improving children’s liter-
acy and self-regulation, particularly within early childhood classroom settings. First, supporting
teachers’ well-being may be a mechanism for promoting children’s literacy and self-regulation.
Positive classroom environments marked by supportive relationships can help to build children’s
emotional health and afford children greater opportunities to learn academic skills like reading
(Bohlmann & Downer, 2016; Valiente et al., 2011). In particular, adult-child interactions that
ensue from strong relationships are thought to spur children’s literacy development through lan-
guage exposure and to promote self-regulation by improving task engagement and knowledge
of acceptable emotional and behavioral responses (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006; Downer,
Sabol, & Hamre, 2010; Hamre, 2014; Sabol & Pianta, 2012). However, poor psychological
functioning can prohibit adult caregivers from developing positive relationships with children
(Friedman-Krauss, Raver, Neuspiel, & Kinsel, 2014; Hamre & Pianta, 2004; Li Grining et al.,
2010; Sandilos, Goble, Rimm-Kaufman, & Pianta, 2018). A failure to adequately cope with
stress can ignite a “burnout cascade” in which ineffective interactions with students result in
more student misbehaviors (i.e., a less regulated classroom), which in turn increase teacher stress

295
Emily C. Hanno et al.

(Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). Investing in adult well-being, such as in the CSRP intervention,
can ensure children have strong relationships with teachers, which in turn support children’s lit-
eracy and self-regulation development (Jones, Bouffard, & Weissbourd, 2013; Raver et al.,
2008, 2011).
Second, in addition to well-being, focusing on building adults’ knowledge of and ability to
implement effective integrated instructional practices can also support the joint development of
literacy and self-regulation. Teaching is a complex task that involves multiple, and at times com-
peting, demands (Phillips, 2016). Providing educators with explicit guidance, via ongoing profes-
sional supports like coaching and trainings, can help educators negotiate competing demands to
implement high impact pedagogical practices like those of the Head Start REDI and 4Rs inter-
ventions (Egert, Fukkink, & Eckhardt, 2018; Fukkink & Lont, 2007; Hamre, Downer, Jamil, &
Pianta, 2012; Kraft, Blazar, & Hogan, 2016). Professional supports are thought to be most effect-
ive when they target specific pedagogical practices, such as integrated literacy and self-regulation
approaches, over a sustained period of time using strategies that encourage adult behavioral
change (Hamre, Partee, & Mulcahy, 2017; Weiland, McCormick, Mattera, Maier, & Morris,
2018). Both Head Start REDI (Bierman et al., 2008, 2008) and 4Rs (Jones et al., 2011, 2010)
centered on providing adults with knowledge of instructional practices that concurrently support
literacy and self-regulation along with ongoing professional supports to improve children’s class-
room-based learning opportunities.
Third, this body of research begins to shed light on the pedagogical practices that are
most impactful for literacy and self-regulation. In addition to teacher-child interactions, inte-
grated instructional practices that simultaneously target literacy and self-regulation develop-
ment may have amplifying effects for development in both domains (Jones et al., 2011).
Examples of integrated practices include the inclusion of rich texts in direct instruction on
self-regulatory skills (as in Head Start REDI; Bierman et al., 2008, 2008) or regulatory-
related scaffolds in literacy exercises (as in the computer-based early literacy training; van de
Sande et al., 2016). If literacy and self-regulation are reciprocally and directly related as we
assert, then targeting both domains simultaneously may capitalize on correlated strengths or
interrupt correlated deficits. Indeed, some research suggests that such integrated practices may
work best for children with low baseline skills in literacy and/or self-regulation (e.g., Bier-
man et al., 2008; Connor et al., 2010). In these cases, integrated practices may disrupt nega-
tive, mutually reinforcing cycles experienced by children with low literacy and/or self-
regulation skills.

Directions for Future Research

Despite the current body of research linking self-regulation to literacy, there is a great deal that
we do not yet know. For example, more research is needed to understand the mechanisms
underlying the association between literacy and self-regulation. Whereas some work has explored
the mediating role of other skills like task engagement and social competence (e.g., Bohlmann &
Downer, 2016; Valiente et al., 2011), less work has considered the developmental processes through
which these domains interact. In particular, there is little empirical evidence about how the
development of novel skills in one domain may affect existing skills in another domain or, as
suggested here and by dynamic skills theory (Fischer & Bidell, 2006), may drive processes of cog-
nitive reorganization. Understanding these processes could highlight future targets for interven-
tion in and out of the classroom.
Additional research is also needed to build our knowledge of why integrated instructional
approaches may be more effective than domain-specific methods. Multi-armed experimental
studies, like the two-computer based interventions discussed (Rabiner et al., 2010; van de

296
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Sande et al., 2016), provide the opportunity to examine the relative contributions of inte-
grated cross-domain practices versus domain-specific approaches. Within such studies,
researchers should examine intervention effects on children’s outcomes and on contextual
quality to understand the ecological conditions that promote literacy and self-regulation
development. For example, the 4Rs intervention had a positive impact on the instructional
aspects of classroom quality, which may have accounted for its impact on child outcomes
across domains (Brown et al., 2010).

Methodological Considerations for Future Research

In addition to addressing long-standing conceptual questions, future research on literacy and
self-regulation can address a set of important methodological gaps. First, as suggested above,
existing research on literacy and self-regulation has largely relied on observational studies,
which substantially limits causal inference. More experimental studies are needed to clarify
whether domain-specific interventions contribute to skills in the non-targeted domain (Jacob
& Parkinson, 2015). For example, a literacy-focused intervention that also improves self-
regulation might suggest that literacy development contributes to self-regulation. Nevertheless,
as noted above, there are limits to this approach as any intervention intended to focus on
literacy or self-regulation will incorporate elements that could directly influence the non-
targeted domain. In the literacy-focused example, we would expect the intervention to
include opportunities for students to explicitly practice self-regulation (e.g., practicing inhib-
ition while participating in group activities). Thus, experimental research is unlikely to isolate
an unbiased causal estimate of the direct relations between literacy and self-regulation but
may suggest directionality and illuminate practices that effectively promote the domains’ joint
development.
A second challenge relates to the measurement of literacy and self-regulation. The research
reviewed here employs numerous measures of literacy and self-regulation, each of which cap-
tures distinct sub-skills. The use of multiple measures within and across studies complicates
our understanding of the specific dimensions of literacy and self-regulation development that
are related. It also limits our ability to understand the domains’ relations across developmental
periods (e.g., Are differences across age groups due to age-related differences or the use of
distinct measures for different ages?; Ahmed, Tang, Waters, & Davis-Kean, 2018). Moreover,
studies that employ multiple measures of both domains tend to focus on statistically significant
results, which may constitute only a fraction of the pairs of literacy and self-regulation skills
tested.
These measurement-related challenges emphasize the importance of intentionality in choos-
ing and analyzing measures. In selecting measures for a particular study, researchers should
adopt an interdisciplinary perspective to more fully capture development in both domains,
rather than disproportionally assessing outcomes in one domain or the other. For example,
many studies conducted from a self-regulation perspective often focus only on vocabulary out-
comes in the literacy domain. Measure selection should also be informed by the study or
intervention’s theory of change (i.e., choosing measures that capture only relevant constructs).
Relatedly, in analysis, researchers should only test associations outlined in the theory of
change and should adjust for multiple hypothesis testing to account for the increased probabil-
ity of false-positive findings in the presence of multiple tests. To reduce the number of associ-
ations tested, researchers may also adopt data reduction approaches that combine measures,
including latent variable methods.
A third challenge relates to the external validity, or generalizability, of work linking literacy
and self-regulation. The majority of studies in this area are conducted with small samples in select

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Emily C. Hanno et al.

populations (as illustrated in Table 1). It is therefore unknown whether such interventions may
have different effects for particular subpopulations of children and within different contexts
(Hanno & Surrain, 2019). In addition to limiting our understanding of how the two domains
relate to each other in understudied populations, the use of small, non-representative samples
minimizes our understanding of the feasibility of conducting such integrated interventions at
a larger scale (e.g., at the district-level). In light of these challenges, there is the need for more
systematic reviews that not only provide meta-analytic effect sizes of the relation between literacy
and self-regulation, but also summarize measures and populations to illuminate understudied
populations and constructs within the two domains.

Summary and Conclusions

In this chapter, we reviewed the literature on the link between literacy and self-regulation with
a particular focus on how this body of research might inform school-based practices that support
the two domains’ joint development in early childhood. Specifically, research suggests that liter-
acy and self-regulation development are intertwined and bidirectionally interdependent. Whereas
self-regulation underlies children’s ability to engage in literacy-related learning opportunities,
early literacy (particularly language) also underlies children’s ability to engage in self-regulatory
processes. The existence of mutual dependencies – as well as research emphasizing the import-
ance of context in shaping both domains – in turn suggests that integrated classroom-based prac-
tices that provide learning opportunities for both literacy and self-regulation growth are likely to
drive the greatest impacts for skills in both domains, particularly for students struggling in either
domain. High-quality randomized experiments of integrated instructional approaches, such as
4Rs and Head Start REDI, provide initial support for this hypothesis. Despite the wealth of
research in this area, more work should investigate how integrated practices influence the full
range of literacy and self-regulation skills and whether or not such pedagogical approaches are
scalable.

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 16
Literacy Instruction and Individual
Differences in Students’ Cognitive
Development
Jin Kyoung Hwang and Carol McDonald Connor

In this chapter, we will discuss individual differences in children’s cognitive development, the
multiple sources of influence that help create and sustain these differences, and how literacy
instruction can be individualized to meet each student’s developmental needs, and take into
account their unique constellations of skills and aptitudes. For the purpose of this chapter, we
conceptualize cognitive development as encompassing a wide array of proficiencies that children
develop and learn throughout childhood and beyond. These include language, text-specific pro-
cesses, self-regulation and executive functioning, and metacognition. We discuss each below and
how they work synergistically to support the development of proficient literacy skills.

Language
Language development is a foundational aspect of cognitive development. As social beings, we
pay special attention to the language we hear around us and continue to learn from birth to
adulthood. Learning a language does not happen all at once. There are dimensions of language
development that researchers have identified, including phonological awareness, vocabulary,
semantics, morphosyntactic, and pragmatics. More recent research suggests that, at least for typic-
ally developing children, these dimensions can be represented by two constructs; a lexical/
vocabulary construct (i.e., vocabulary, semantics) and a grammatical or higher order construct
(i.e., morphosyntactic, pragmatics) (Language and Reading Research Consortium, 2015; Lonigan
& Milburn, 2017).
Phonological development, the ability to distinguish, recognize, and manipulate the sounds of
specific languages, is one of the beginning stages of language development that is highly relevant
to literacy development. Babies, as early as a few weeks old, start to recognize familiar and
unfamiliar sounds in their surroundings. For instance, they tend to pay greater attention to famil-
iar sounds such as their mother’s voice than unfamiliar sounds, such as a stranger’s voice. Phono-
logical skills continue to develop through early elementary years. By then, most children have
sophisticated skills to distinguish slight differences in speech sounds. Children who are not able to
distinguish between these sounds are at serious risk for both language and literacy disabilities as
children begin to learn sound-symbol correspondence (Connor & McCardle, 2015).

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Semantic development refers to children’s ability to relate vocabulary words to referred

subjects and their meaning. Children at around 12 months start saying high-frequency words
that they hear often from their caregivers such as mommy and hi. Children typically acquire
nouns with concrete meanings before they understand verbs and nouns with abstract mean-
ings. There is almost no limit on the number of vocabulary words we can learn in our life-
span. Children vary greatly in the size of their vocabulary, and this happens early in life,
before they receive any formal schooling. In their second year, when children generally
know about 50–60 vocabulary words, they start combining words together. Children learn
that they can convey meanings in these multi-word combinations and start being aware of
the morphological and syntactic rules (i.e., morphosyntax), or grammatical rules about how
words and sentences should be formed, of a language. Certain rules are acquired before
others (Brown, 1973). For instance, children learn to use regular plurals before they know
how to use possessives and auxiliary verbs in their utterances. Children who have delayed
vocabulary development or smaller vocabularies have serious difficulty comprehending what
they read (Duff et al., 2008). Vocabulary also influences the amounts and types of literacy
instruction that are effective for individual children (Connor, Morrison, Fishman, Schatsch-
neider, & Underwood, 2007). Language development does not end here. Children’s know-
ledge of using language appropriately in different contexts – communicative competence or
pragmatics – is also a part of a developmental process. Once children have some mastery of
language skills, they learn to distinguish the difference between speaking to a peer and speak-
ing to a stranger and understand when to use a polite language.

Text-Specific Processes
Text-specific processes are skills children only need to learn in societies where reading and writ-
ing are required. Reading and writing are not skills that we are naturally born to learn (i.e., our
brain is not naturally primed to read and write text). Literacy development is experience dependent –
it only develops when children are explicitly taught text specific processes (Adams, 1990). Read-
ing and writing are human inventions. Thus, the relation between letter and sound (grapheme-
sound correspondence) is arbitrary in any given language, and children need explicit instruction
in order to learn to read and write fluently. In contrast, language is experience expectant (i.e., our
brain is primed to develop these skills if we experience appropriate linguistic input and inter-
action during the critical period) and develops even in the face of serious barriers, such as
deafness.
There are salient developmental phases in learning to read and write (Chall, 1996; Fitzger-
ald & Shanahan, 2000), although children vary in how they proceed through the phases, and
the phases may be overlapping and simultaneous. In the emergent literacy phase, while chil-
dren are still rapidly developing early language, they also learn about letters and how these
letters correspond to sounds in spoken language. In reading, preschoolers pretend to read or
read environmental print (Lonigan, Farver, Phillips, & Clancy-Menchetti, 2011; Teale &
Sulzby, 1986). They scribble, draw letter-like symbols to represent syllables, or write invented
spelling in their writing. Children then begin to develop their decoding and encoding skills.
They learn that there is a specific relation between letters and sounds. Understanding this
arbitrary set of rules in letter-sound correspondence is critical in learning how to read and
write and is supported by children’s growing phonological awareness skills. Most children
master decoding texts, and their process of decoding becomes fluent and automatic – hope-
fully by the time they are about eight years old. Those children who are not reading fluently
by the end of second grade are much less likely to attain proficient literacy skills (Connor
et al., 2013; Spira, Bracken, & Fischel, 2005). Comprehension and focus on making-meaning

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through texts was thought to develop during middle childhood; at about nine years of age
(Fitzgerald & Shanahan, 2000). However, new research shows that focus on attaching mean-
ing to the text children can decode can be taught much earlier (Connor et al., 2014a); and
that language and literacy development are intertwined (Scarborough, 2001). Throughout
early literacy development, as early as kindergarten, ideally, reading and writing increasingly
become a medium for learning new concepts in content areas (Connor et al., 2017). As chil-
dren’s metacognitive skills develop, they learn to understand multiple viewpoints in texts and
synthesize different arguments coherently. Again, research shows that these skills can be
taught during early and middle childhood and into adolescence. By the time students reach
high school and university, it is too late to begin instruction on these crucial skills because
students need to have a good command of these skills already in order to succeed academic-
ally at this age. Thus, the stage theory of literacy development is a useful template for think-
ing about crucial aspects of proficient literacy development. However, the stages overlap
much more than was previously conceived and new models, such as the Lattice Model
(Connor et al., 2016), suggest that the stages are likely developing, reciprocally and simultan-
eously. We discuss the Lattice Model in more detail later in this chapter. Language and liter-
acy development discussed thus far are considered to be typical, normative development.
However, there could be variations in children’s development in these domains based on
amount and type of input and instruction they receive at home, in-, and out-of-school envir-
onments. We explain potential factors that may cause individual differences in children’s
development later in this chapter.

Self-Regulation and Executive Functioning

Self-regulation is the ability to monitor, control, and evaluate one’s behavior, goals, emotions,
attention, and thoughts (McClelland & Cameron, 2012). Children develop self-regulatory
skills as they get older, and these skills continue to develop through adulthood. Some
researchers, in specific disciplines, refer to self-regulatory skills as “non-cognitive skills.”
However, self-regulation is indeed a part of cognitive development as it requires the coordin-
ation of inhibitory skills, working memory, and cognitive flexibility, which are critical com-
ponents of executive functioning (Connor et al., 2016). Self-regulation is a broad construct
that overlaps with other psychological constructs and has been studied under several different
names such as social-cognitive skills, grit, mindset, consciousness, will power, motivation, and
engagement – although there are nuances for each term (Lin, Coburn, & Eisenberg, 2016).
Self-regulation has been found to be highly predictive of children’s literacy skill development,
school readiness, and academic achievement (Allan, Hume, Allan, Farrington, & Lonigan,
2014) – likely because it sets the stage for more sophisticated approaches to learning from
instruction and practice. For instance, children who have strong self-regulation skills are able
to control their behavior (e.g., sit still) and attention (e.g., listen to the teacher) to benefit
more from formal literacy instruction than those who cannot and get distracted easily
(Connor et al., 2010). Additionally, there may be a reciprocal association between self-
regulation and learning to read such that learning to read supports the development of execu-
tive functioning and self-regulation (Connor et al., 2016).

Metacognition
Metacognition, or the ability to think about one’s thinking, may provide an important foun-
dation for learning to connect language to literacy (Efklides & Misailidi, 2010). Metacogni-
tion skills specific to language – or metalinguistic skills – play an important role as children

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learn to speak a new language. Metalinguistic skills can be simply defined as knowledge
about the language system. Children with strong metalinguistic skills have a good understand-
ing that language is an arbitrary system that can be broken into small parts (phonemes, syl-
lables, morphemes, and so forth) and can be manipulated in many ways. Metalinguistic skills
play an important role as children learn oral and written language. For instance, children
who have good phonological awareness skills understand that our language system is com-
prised of small units of sounds that can be blended, broken apart, and manipulated in differ-
ent ways, which is a critical skill they need to encode and decode text. Metacognitive skills
also contribute to stronger reading comprehension. For example, monitoring and repairing
understanding (i.e., comprehension monitoring) and the ability to understand what is known
and unknown (i.e., meta-knowledge), are aspects of cognition that facilitate reading for
understanding (Connor, 2016; Efklides & Misailidi, 2010).

Multiple Sources of Influence on Cognitive Development

Researchers have identified multiple sources of influence on children’s cognitive development
during early and middle childhood. Increasing evidence shows that differences in children’s cog-
nitive development, especially in language development, emerge early on (Fernald, Marchman, &
Weisleder, 2013; Hart & Risley, 1995; Hoff, 2013). During early childhood, one of the most
prominent factors that influences children’s cognitive development is the socioeconomic status
(SES) of the family the child is raised in – such that differences in SES are strongly correlated
with differences in children’s cognitive development (Buckingham, Beaman, & Wheldall, 2014;
Fernald et al., 2013; Hoff, 2013; Strang & Piasta, 2016). Compared to children from middle- and
high-SES homes, children from low-SES homes tend to have weaker language skills such as
small vocabulary size (Fernald et al., 2013; Nelson, Welsh, Trup, & Greenberg, 2011) and use of
less complex syntactic structures (Huttenlocher, Waterfall, Vasilyeva, Vevea, & Hedges, 2010;
Nelson et al., 2011). Specifically, Fernald and colleagues (2013) found a significant gap in
vocabulary knowledge and language processing skills as early as 18 months between infants raised
in low- and high-SES homes.
One of the well-documented factors that mediate the effect of SES on children’s cognitive
development is their home learning environment (Hamilton, Hayiou-Thomas, Hulme, &
Snowling, 2016; Mistry, Benner, Biesanz, Clark, & Howes, 2010; Rodriguez & Tamis-
LeMonda, 2011; Son & Morrison, 2010; Ziol-Guest & McKenna, 2014). Home learning
environment includes different variables such as parental behaviors toward children, amount
of learning activities at home, and learning materials accessible at home. Home learning
environment is dynamic and may change over time to meet children’s cognitive needs (Son
& Morrison, 2010). Research studies show that family’s SES is associated with its home
learning environment (Chazan-Cohen et al., 2009) – families with lower income would find
it more difficult to purchase materials that stimulate learning at home than families with
higher income, and parents who need to work extra hours to keep their household would
not be able to invest as much time interacting with their children. Children raised in families
with lower levels of home learning environment have been found to show delays in their
language development and self-regulation skills (Chazan-Cohen et al., 2009; Mistry et al.,
2010). Another crucial part of the home learning environment is language exposure and lan-
guage use in the home. Specifically, parental speech and verbal communication between par-
ents and children have a strong impact on children’s language development (Newman,
Rowe, & Bernstein Ratner, 2016; Rowe, 2012). It has been well documented that quantity
and quality of verbal communication in the home varies by the family’s SES (Hoff, 2003;
Huttenlocher et al., 2010; Weisleder & Fernald, 2013). Research studies underscore that the

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quality of verbal interaction is more critical and has more predictive power than quantity of
word use (Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015; Rowe, Leech, & Cabrera, 2016). For instance, asking
children wh-questions that elicit children’s responses and engaging children in high-quality
communicative interactions are more likely to build children’s vocabulary and language skills,
than repeating simple words or sentences multiple times.
Schooling is a principal source of influence on early child cognitive development, second only
to the home environment (Morrison, Griffith, & Alberts, 1997; Skibbe, Connor, Morrison, &
Jewkes, 2011). Accumulating research on early child care and schooling show that the amount
and quality of time spent in preschools is associated with children’s cognitive development
(Auger, Farkas, Burchinal, Duncan, & Vandell, 2014; Burchinal, Vandergrift, Pianta, & Mash-
burn, 2010; Dickinson & Porche, 2011; Keys et al., 2013; Li, Farkas, Duncan, Burchinal, & Van-
dell, 2013; Skibbe et al., 2011; Skibbe, Grimm, Bowles, & Morrison, 2012). Children who
experience high-quality early schooling are more likely to show stronger cognitive skills that lead
to school readiness than those who receive low-quality early childhood care. Researchers found
that there are variations in literacy instruction that happen in school during children’s early child-
hood (Pelatti, Piasta, Justice, & O’Connell, 2014; Wright & Neuman, 2014), and the amount
and quality of such instruction is often associated with the schools and centers’ socioeconomic
background (Wright & Neuman, 2014).
Similar to the home learning environment where parental behaviors and parent-child
interactions play an important role in children’s cognitive development, how much positive
(or negative) influence schooling has on children’s development depends on what happens in
the actual classrooms and how teachers support the learning environment. Specifically,
teachers’ language practices and instruction and quality of teacher-child interactions are found
to be important predictors for children’s language and cognitive development (Bowers &
Vasilyeva, 2011; Bowne, Yoshikawa, & Snow, 2016; Burchinal et al., 2008; Dickinson,
2011). For instance, Burchinal et al. (2008) found that responsive, supportive, and stimulating
teacher-child interaction and quality of instruction at pre-kindergarten predicted children’s
language skills at the end of their kindergarten year. Such foundational aspects of the class-
room learning environment are necessary but not sufficient – what, as well as how children
are taught is important to consider (Connor et al., 2014), as we discuss in the next section.
These factors – SES, home learning environment, language use at home, and the amount and
quality of schooling – continue to exert influence on children’s cognitive development through
middle childhood and beyond. Not only do they have short-term effects (Gámez & Lesaux,
2015) – e.g., teachers’ language use in middle schools affects middle school students’ reading and
vocabulary outcomes – they also have long-term effects on children’s cognitive development in
adolescence (Dickinson & Porche, 2011; Sammons et al., 2015; Sorhagen, 2013; Vandell, Belsky,
Burchinal, Steinberg, & Vandergrift, 2010) – e.g., the quantity and quality of early child care has
effects on adolescent students’ reading skills. Thus, children who are provided with learning
environments both at home and schools/child care centers that are specifically designed to meet
their learning needs are more likely to be successful academically and in life.

Literacy Instruction
Literacy instruction has received much attention in the research literature as a critical factor
that may positively influence children’s cognitive development at any given time point.
Research on literacy instruction is often investigated in several ways – observational studies,
correlational/longitudinal studies, and randomized controlled trials of literacy-related interven-
tions. Observation is one way to examine how learning takes place in an educational setting

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and which teacher practices are effective for children’s cognitive development (Cohen,
Manion, & Morrison, 2011). The topics that are covered in literacy-related observation studies
are diverse. There have been studies on examining teachers’ instructional practices in the class-
room (Barnes, Dickinson, & Grifenhagen, 2016; Connor et al., 2009; Jacoby & Lesaux, 2014;
Lawrence, Crosson, Paré-Blagoev, & Snow, 2015; Pelatti et al., 2014; Wright & Neuman,
2014), teachers’ use of vocabulary and academic language and its impact on students’ language
skills (Dickinson & Porche, 2011; Gámez & Lesaux, 2012, 2015; Gonzalez et al., 2014),
child-teacher interaction in a literacy-related activities (Justice, McGinty, Zucker, Cabell, &
Piasta, 2013; Tompkins, Zucker, Justice, & Binici, 2013), and so forth. Some studies are more
qualitative (e.g., observing classroom instruction, coding teachers’ and students’ language use)
whereas others are quantitative that use measurable outcomes such as children’s vocabulary
and/or reading comprehension test scores. Longitudinal studies follow children over time and
help us understand typical and atypical development.
Randomized controlled trials (RCT) are the most rigorous and effective way to test theor-
ies by examining whether specific and multi-component instructional practices effectively
enhance student-level literacy outcomes (Murnane & Willett, 2011). RCT is a golden rule in
educational research if the objective is to evaluate the program/intervention effectiveness,
and the underlying theories, with minimal selection bias. A successful RCT is one in which
participants are randomly assigned to either a treatment or control condition. In other words,
no third variable is associated with the treatment condition and the assignment is only due
to chance. There would be no statistically significant difference between two groups (e.g.,
participants’ ability levels, demographics, SES) when a random assignment is done success-
fully. However, in educational research, true random assignment is difficult to carry out in
school settings. Hence, random assignment is conducted at the classroom or school level, and
this may result in unequal treatment and control condition. There have been many RCT
studies that aim to demonstrate improved children’s literacy-related skills, including phono-
logical awareness and decoding (Connor et al., 2013; Lonigan et al., 2011), vocabulary know-
ledge (Kim, Capotosto, Hartry, & Fitzgerald, 2011; Neuman, Newman, & Dwyer, 2011),
and reading comprehension (Connor et al., 2013; Kim et al., 2011). The findings from
these RCT studies show that when instruction is well designed using research-based prin-
ciples, and well implemented with fidelity, taking into account individual child differences,
children do benefit from these educational resources and show gains in their literacy-related
outcomes.
Children bring to the learning opportunities different constellations of skills and abilities,
which moderate the effects of instruction they receive in any educational setting (Connor &
Morrison, 2016; Duncan & Vandell, 2012). Such child X instruction interactions, originally
known as aptitude X treatment interaction (Cronbach, 1957), and also known as skill
X instruction interactions (Burns, Codding, Boice, & Lukito, 2010), have been found in
multiple literacy research studies (Connor et al., 2013, 2011; Lawrence, Capotosto, Branum-
Martin, White, & Snow, 2012; Lesaux, Kieffer, Kelley, & Harris, 2014; Miller, Farkas, Van-
dell, & Duncan, 2014). For instance, in a meta-analysis of vocabulary intervention on young
children (preschool-kindergarten), Marulis and Neuman (2010) found that children at-risk
for language and literacy disorders from middle- and upper-income homes were more likely
to demonstrate stronger gains from vocabulary intervention than those from low-income
homes.
In a specific test of whether individualizing literacy instruction based on children’s skills
is more effective than business-as-usual, non-personalized instruction, individualizing instruc-
tion was more effective with effect sizes ranging from .2 to .4 in seven RCT studies (Al
Otaiba et al., 2011; Connor et al., 2013, 2011, 2007, 2011). Moreover, the effects of

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individualizing student instruction based on assessment accumulated from first through third
grade. The overall effect size accumulated over the three years to an effect size of .7
(Connor et al., 2013). In these studies, teachers used Assessment-to-instruction (A2i) technol-
ogy, which provided algorithm-computed recommended amounts of code and meaning
focused instruction (min/day) for each child based on the constellation of skills (Connor
et al., 2013). Thus, literacy instruction that is personalized, differentiated, or individualized to
take into account children’s individual differences in cognitive strategies (i.e., a plan to
achieve one’s goal in a certain task) and skills (e.g., ability, proficiency) (Afflerbach, Pearson,
& Paris, 2008), is generally more effective than the one-size-fits-all instruction observed in
many classrooms today.

Big Questions: Bridging Gaps

How Do We Make Instruction Adaptive and Responsive to Students’

Individual Cognitive Differences?
If assessment-informed personalized instruction is more effective than one-size-fits-all instruction,
why is personalized instruction not ubiquitous throughout schools? Here we suggest three key
reasons: first, because learning to read and reading for understanding is complex, calling on mul-
tiple cognitive, social, and linguistic processes, it is not always clear what children’s learning
needs actually are, why they are or are not struggling, and how to adapt instruction to meet
those needs (Connor et al., 2014a). Thus, we present a new model of literacy that may be useful
in informing more effective instruction. Second, personalizing instruction is more difficult than
following the scope and sequence of a core literacy curriculum. Teachers report that using assess-
ment to guide practice is difficult (Roehrig, Duggar, Moats, Glover, & Mincey, 2008) and they
frequently receive inadequate training in how to administer and interpret assessments results in
a meaningful way. Plus, using best practice teaching methods for accomplishing individualized
instruction are described as extremely difficult (Farkas & Duffett, 2008) and rarely maintained
(Pianta, Belsky, Houts, & Morrison, 2007) in general classroom settings. Thus, in this section we
present a number of new technologies designed to facilitate personalized instruction. Finally,
there are barriers to bringing evidence-based practices into the classroom that are created by
researchers, vendors, and educators. Promising solutions include researcher-school partnerships
(Coburn, Penuel, & Geil, 2013) and implementation science (Fixsen, Blase, Metz, & Dyke,
2013), although more research toward understanding and alleviating the implementation gap is
needed.

Developing More Useful Models of Literacy to Inform Instruction

As we have discussed, there are multiple sources of influence on how children will respond to
various types of literacy instruction. These include home learning environment, which directly
influences children’s linguistic and literacy development; and family SES and access to commu-
nity resources, including good preschool and schools (NICHD-ECCRN, 2004), which directly
influences self-regulation, general world knowledge, language, and literacy development. Most of
the differentiated instruction we observe today (e.g., multi-tiered systems of support) rely solely
on reading assessments (Kratochwill, Volpiansky, Clements, & Ball, 2007; Petscher, Kim, &
Foorman, 2011). The Individualizing Student Instruction (ISI) instructional regime, which uses
the A2i technology, relies on measures of semantic knowledge (i.e., vocabulary), of letter-sound
knowledge, word reading, encoding, sentence construction, and of reading comprehension

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(Connor et al., 2013). We argue here that metacognition and self-regulation are important child
characteristics that might be considered in addition to language and literacy skills.
There are a number of useful models of literacy that are helpful in understanding how to per-
sonalize the instruction we provide to children as they learn to read and write. But there is
a paradox – language, cognition, and reading comprehension are highly related; children with
weaker skills in one area tend to have weaker skills in the others; yet instruction that targets spe-
cific language or cognitive skills does not necessarily lead to stronger performance on other lan-
guage and cognitive components, nor on reading comprehension (Connor et al., 2011, 2014b;
Connor, Phillips, Kim, Al Otaiba, & Lonigan, 2015). Metacognitive interventions, such as com-
prehension monitoring, have met with more success (Kim & Phillips, 2014) and have a stronger
effect on the target – for example, detecting implausibilities in text – than on reading compre-
hension itself (Connor et al., 2015).
These conflicting results appear to call for a new way of thinking about the links between
language, cognition, and literacy. In addition to the Stage Theory of Reading (Chall, 1996;
Fitzgerald & Shanahan, 2000), one of the most influential theories of reading is the Simple
View of Reading and other component models of reading, which holds that proficient read-
ing comprehension is the product of fluent decoding and strong language comprehension
(Hoover & Gough, 1990). To this simple model has been added cognitive skills, such as
working memory, attention, executive functioning, and metacognition; cognitive-motor skills
such as rapid automatic naming; social-cognitive skills including motivation, self-regulation,
and engagement; and other influences, including family and parenting; genetics; and instruc-
tion (Connor et al., 2014; Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Kintsch, 1998; Perfetti & Stafura, 2014;
Rapp & van den Broek, 2005; Taylor, Roehrig, Hensler, Connor, & Schatschneider, 2010).
The suggested causal direction in every case is that the more basic processes, such as language
(e.g., phonological, morphological, and semantic knowledge), and cognitive (e.g., attention
and working memory) processes, along with other environmental, genetic, and social-
emotional sources of influence work together to support the development of proficient liter-
acy skills.
This one-way directional view of proficient literacy is pervasive throughout the literature
and informs the thinking behind virtually every literacy intervention (NICHD National
Reading Panel, 2000). But might learning to read with understanding also influence the
more basic underlying skills? Previously, Connor and colleagues have suggested that a more
complex view might be useful in resolving the language-cognition-literacy paradox
and informing more effective instructional programs (Connor et al., 2014b). They have con-
ceptualized reading comprehension as a “complex activity that requires the reader … to
call on the coordination of cognitive, regulatory, linguistic, and text-specific processes,
including decoding of text, which are developing over time and that have reciprocal and
interacting bootstrapping effects on one another” (p. 2). This conceptual framework was
referred to as the Lattice Model, because these interacting effects resemble a lattice when
they are drawn (see Figure 16.1). What they were trying to depict in this figure is the
dynamic and complex nature of the associations among linguistic, cognitive, text-specific pro-
cess (e.g., decoding, text structure, writing), instruction, and reading comprehension. Note
that home, school, and community sources of influence are held to be ongoing, as is the
child’s maturation or development. Thus, any part of the system can, potentially, influence
any other part of the system.
To be supported, the Lattice Model would require evidence of reciprocal effects – for
example, not only would language and cognitive skills have to predict reading comprehen-
sion; in turn, reading comprehension would have to predict language and cognitive skills.
This requires, at a minimum, longitudinal studies. To make causal directional claims,

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Figure 16.1 A lattice model of the development of reading comprehension

instructional experiments would be needed (Shadish, Cook, & Campbell, 2002). There is
consistent and accumulating correlational and longitudinal evidence that children’s language
ability contributes to proficient reading comprehension (Anderson & Freebody, 1981; Cain,
Oakhill, & Bryant, 2004; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Kintsch, 1988; Moreno et al., 2011).
There is also longitudinal evidence of reciprocal effects, with reading predicting language. In
many studies, reciprocal effects appear to emerge around second or third grade, which is
between the ages of seven and eight years (Storch & Whitehurst, 2002; Verhoeven, van
Leeuwe, & Vermeer, 2011), just as metacognitive skills are coming online. In the Lattice
Model, reciprocal effects might emerge earlier in the context of instruction and there have
been arguments for this.
There are, however, very few studies that examine whether reading comprehension pre-
dicts developing cognitive skills such as self-regulation and metacognition (Swanson &
O’Connor, 2009). One of the first studies to demonstrate that reading comprehension and
executive functioning are reciprocally related was a longitudinal study (Connor et al., 2016).
In this study, surprisingly, semantic knowledge and executive functioning were not associated.
Importantly, there were reciprocal effects for literacy and semantic knowledge, as well as
reciprocal effects for literacy and self-regulation, specifically attention, working memory, and
task inhibition.
In general, US schools have been successful in teaching children how to decode text flu-
ently but have been less successful in teaching comprehension and academic language skills
(Gamse, Jacob, Horst, Boulay, & Unlu, 2008). At least part of the reason is that substantially
less time is spent in more meaning-focused and content area instruction. And it is these types

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of instruction that tend to support developing academic language and comprehension skills
(Connor & Morrison, 2012; Connor et al., 2011, 2009). Early support for language and aca-
demic knowledge, along with executive functioning and self-regulation development is war-
ranted – but in the context of, and integrated with, efforts to improve reading
comprehension.
Following the Lattice Model further, improving reading comprehension instruction might
promote the development of metalinguistic and metacognitive skills. In turn, improving these
metaskills should support reading comprehension. But how do we teach, for example, metacog-
nitive skills in a way that is integrated with reading comprehension instruction in order to take
advantage of reciprocal and bootstrapping effects? Discussion about text that includes challenging
children to think and reason, is one possible way (Carlisle, Dwyer, & Learned, 2014; Connor,
Ingebrand, & Sparapani, 2015; Graham & Herbert, 2011). Connor and colleagues have found
that teachers’ discourse moves predict students’ participation in learning opportunities and it is
student participation that predicts reading comprehension gains in second through third grade
(Connor et al., in press). Think aloud strategies may facilitate metacognition, specifically compre-
hension monitoring and meta-knowledge, and comprehension development (Baumann, Seifert-
Kessell, & Jones, 1992).
What does this mean for personalizing instruction? This new research suggests that considering
children’s self-regulation and metacognitive skills may help to elucidate more optimal learning
opportunities. For example, children with weaker metacognitive skills may make greater gains
toward proficient literacy if they receive literacy instruction that is designed to foster comprehen-
sion monitoring. Such explicit instruction might not be necessary for children with stronger
metacognitive skills. There is preliminary evidence that such explicit focus on comprehension
monitoring might support stronger reading comprehension (Connor et al., 2014a, 2015; Kim &
Phillips, 2014).

Use of Technology in Personalizing Student Instruction

How do we support teachers’ effort to using assessment to personalize student instruction? With
the current advances and innovations in technology, we are now able to use diverse approaches
in assessing students’ skills and performance, supporting teachers to better prepare their lessons
according to their students’ ability levels and needs, and developing curriculum programs and sys-
tems to supplement teacher instruction.
An example of how technology can facilitate useful and more meaningful assessment is
Global Integrated Scenario-Based Assessment (GISA). GISA is a scenario-based reading assess-
ment intended for elementary and middle school students that has been developed by the
Reading for Understanding Network (O’Reilly & Sabatini, 2013). Whereas most of the trad-
itional pencil-and-paper reading assessments aim to measure students’ ability to comprehend
text in a decontextualized and unidirectional way (i.e., students read a short passage and
choose the best answer among multiple choices), GISA intends to assess students’ reading
abilities in a more dynamic way using an online, scenario-based test format (for a sample
GISA item, visit www.ets.org/research/topics/reading_for_understanding/assessments/gisa_sam
ples/).
Below is a brief description of a sample GISA item. Each GISA begins by providing
a short introduction of the purpose and the context of the task. Then, students are asked to
read a longer text with a general overview on the given topic and write a short summary. In
asking students to provide a short summary, GISA provides guidelines of what should be
included in the summary so that students do not find this task too difficult, yet learn to
extract main ideas from the text they have just read. A model summary is also provided to

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them. To help students comprehend long and complicated texts, GISA asks students to fill
out graphic organizers with some cells already being filled out to provide scaffolding. To
mock-up real life situations where students interact with one another and have an opportun-
ity to gather and synthesize information, GISA provides multiple mediums, such as message
boards and online forums, to simulate peer interaction. In this assessment, we are not only
able to see what students are able and not able to do when appropriate resources (e.g., back-
ground information, cognitive strategies) are provided to them, but also what students are
able to learn about 21st century literacy skills as they complete each task. GISA is distinct
from other traditional types of reading comprehension assessments in that it attempts to
incorporate the dynamic and complex relationships that are associated in reading comprehen-
sion (c.f., Lattice Model). Hence, GISA may seem to assess constructs in addition to students’
reading skills to some people. However, such perspectives would depend on one’s view on
theoretical foundations of reading.
Technology can also support teachers so they can better tailor their instruction to meet
their students’ needs. One example is Assessment-to-instruction (A2i) technology. A2i is
a technology that is specifically designed and developed to support teachers’ efforts in indi-
vidualizing instruction based on students’ needs. A2i uses dynamic forecasting intervention
(DFI) algorithms. DFI algorithms use individual students’ test scores on word reading,
vocabulary, and reading comprehension, and calculate the amount and type of literacy
instruction (i.e., teacher-centered, student-centered, code-focused, meaning-focused) students
need in order to achieve the target outcome by the end of the school year. The assessments
that are used are adaptive and embedded in the A2i program. Based on the recommendation,
teachers can track their students’ performance, form small homogeneous skill groups, and
plan their lessons to optimize student learning in school more easily. A2i also provides lesson
plans and activities that are aligned with the Common Core State Standards (Common Core
State Standards Initiative, 2010) and can be shared publicly to make it easier for teachers to
implement individualized instruction on a daily basis. The use of A2i has been found to be
effective in enhancing students’ reading outcomes in K-3 classrooms (Al Otaiba et al., 2011;
Connor et al., 2013, 2011, 2007, 2011). In addition, the effect was greater when teachers
adhered closely to the recommendations that were estimated by the DFI algorithm (Connor
et al., 2009).
There are intelligent tutoring systems and instructional programs that have technological
components and are found to be effective in enhancing students’ literacy outcomes. Here, we
overview four programs – Read 180, Intelligent Tutoring Structure Strategy (ITSS), Inter-
active Strategy Trainer for Active Reading and Thinking (iSTART), and Word Knowledge
e-Book (WKe-Book). Different features and formats have been incorporated in these pro-
grams, however, the end goal of them is the same – to improve students’ ability to read for
understanding.
Read 180 is a curricular program that is designed for struggling readers in grade 4 and up.
Students can use the application along with the booklet component of the program. The
application includes videos that promote interests and engagement about the topic across con-
tent areas and build background knowledge, texts for close reading, activities to foster aca-
demic vocabulary knowledge, and writing instruction. There are also teacher booklets that
teachers can use and teachers can incorporate whole-group, small-group, and independent
reading time during their instruction based on their students’ level of understanding. Recent
efficacy studies of Read 180 suggest that this technology-assisted intervention may have posi-
tive effects on students’ reading outcomes (Kim et al., 2011; Kim, Samson, Fitzgerald, &
Hartry, 2010).

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ITSS is a web-based program that was designed to enhance upper elementary and middle-
school students’ text comprehension by explicitly teaching them how to identify the text
structure in expository texts (Meyer et al., 2010). In ITSS, students learn about how to
attend to cues that inform us about the organization of the text. Students are also asked to
write a summary of, or recall, what they read according to the structure they have learned.
Automated feedback is generated when students’ responses are entered to the program. The
findings from recent studies of ITSS indicate that this intervention can help students better
understand the structure of the text, which would lead to better text comprehension (Meyer,
Wijekumar, & Lin, 2011; Meyer et al., 2010; Wijekumar, Meyer, & Lei, 2012). In their
large-scale randomized controlled trial with fourth grade students from rural and suburban
schools, Wijekumar et al. (2012) found that students in the treatment condition scored higher
on the standardized reading comprehension test and also on researcher-developed reading
comprehension measures at post-test (effect sizes ranged from .11 to .28). Previous studies
also showed positive effects of the ITSS with older students (Meyer et al., 2011, 2010), and
effect sizes were larger (effect sizes around .5). The authors noted that fourth grade students
lacked the typing skills that were required to fully participate in this intervention, and had to
modify the ITSS program. This finding suggests that young students may improve their read-
ing comprehension by using the ITSS program, but sufficient typing skills are crucial in order
to fully benefit from this technology-assisted intervention.
iSTART is an interactive tutoring system that focuses on strategy instruction so that ado-
lescent and college-level students learn how to make appropriate inferences when they read
(McNamara, O’Reilly, Rowe, Boonthum, & Levinstein, 2007). Using different characters
(i.e., instructor, students) in a simulated setting, iSTART teaches students self-explanation
and five main reading strategies – comprehension monitoring, paraphrasing, prediction, elab-
oration, and bridging – and helps students to practice using those strategies while reading
texts. iSTART provides adaptive feedback based on students’ responses. Previous RCT on
iSTART has shown that students in the iSTART condition comprehended texts more than
those in the control condition (McNamara, O’Reilly, Best, & Ozuru, 2006). More recently,
iSTART-ME was developed in order to maintain students’ interest and engagement over
time by incorporate game-based principles (Jackson, Dempsey, & McNamara, 2010; Jackson
& McNamara, 2013). Students can earn points, obtain rewards, and play mini-games to prac-
tice the learned strategies in iSTART-ME. In their study of comparing the impact of
iSTART and iSTART-ME on high school students, Jackson and McNamara (2013) found
that the effects of these programs on the reading comprehension were equivalent, however,
the students in the iSTART-ME condition showed higher levels of motivation than those in
the iSTART condition.
Connor and colleagues have developed an interactive e-book for third to fifth graders,
designed to build word knowledge and comprehension monitoring (Connor et al., 2015,
2019). The Word Knowledge e-Book (WKe-book), which is read on an iPad, uses unfamil-
iar vocabulary, embedded comprehension questions, and a choose-your-own-adventure
format. In this choose-your-own-adventure e-book, the child needs to pay attention to the
path they are choosing or there are consequences – choosing a particular vocabulary word
(e.g., surreptitious vs. boisterous) changes the plot of the story and they are required to re-
read the pages when they answer comprehension questions incorrectly. Results reveal that
students’ word knowledge, comprehension monitoring, and reading comprehension improve
after reading the WKe-Book (Connor et al., 2015). The user logs allow teachers to monitor
children’s reading, their progression through the book, how long they spend on a page, and
whether they answer the comprehension questions correctly. In this way, the WKe-Book

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also operates as a stealth assessment (Schute, 2011), providing teachers insights into children’s
thinking processes.

The Implementation Gap: How do We Overcome Barriers To Bringing

Evidence-Based Practices into the Classroom That Are Created By
Researchers, Vendors, and Educators?
Although only a brief discussion, this chapter demonstrates the complexity of considering
individual child differences as they impact the effect of particular types of literacy instruction
on children’s outcomes. Of course, if the problems were not complex, we would have
solved the challenge of student underachievement long ago. Silver bullets are appealing but
rarely provide lasting solutions. Perhaps the only way to ensure that all children are provided
optimal learning opportunities is to continue to conduct meaningful research that has both
research and practical implications (i.e., address the relevance gap), and then find ways to
bring these practices to classrooms. Here we discuss two promising initiatives that may help
to overcome barriers to bringing effective instructional practices into the classroom. These
are research-practice partnerships (Coburn et al., 2013; Fishman, Penuel, Allen, Cheng, &
Sabelli, 2013) and implementation science (Coburn et al., 2013; Fixsen, Blase, Metz, & Van
Dyke, 2011).

Research-Practice Partnerships
Research-practice partnerships are long-term collaborations among researchers, frequently at uni-
versities, and school districts. These partnerships are designed to last a long time – not just the
length of a study initiated by a research – to focus on problems that are relevant to the school
and designed to improve student outcomes. They take an approach with which all partners bene-
fit, and contribute not only to, for example, improving instructional practices and student out-
comes, but also to developing new theories and ideas.
Coburn and colleagues (2013) describe three kinds of partnerships: research alliances,
design research, and networked improvement communities. They define a research alliance as
a “long-term partnership between a district and an independent research organization focused
on investigating questions of policy and practice that are central to the district” (p. 4).
Design research is described as a “form of educational research that is similar to engineering
research … the aim is to build and study solutions at the same time in real world contexts”
(p. 8). Building on design-based research (e.g., Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer, & Schauble,
2003), design-based implementation research (DBIR) was developed in an effort to better
understand the problem of why so many educational interventions are relatively fragile (Fish-
man, Marx, Blumenfeld, Krajcik, & Soloway, 2004). There are four key principles behind
DBIR. First, there must be a common commitment to solving problems of practice that are
important to educators and educational leaders; that is, development from the perspective of
those who will ultimately be responsible for implementing interventions. Second, DBIR
engages in iterative, collaborative design of solutions, targeting multiple levels of the system:
design that is informed by ongoing and systematic inquiry into implementation and out-
comes. Third, there is a common commitment to building theory and knowledge within the
research community. And fourth, there is a focus on developing sustainable change within
systems. In conducting DBIR, the procedures involve iterating between design and testing in
order to continually refine the instructional practices. Networked improvement communities
(NICs) are a third type of research-practice partnership where districts band together to solve
problems. As Coburn and colleagues (2013) note, “A core feature of NICs is that they are

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formed as networks that are not tied to a single district or community … a NIC forms to
address a problem that is common to many different communities.” (p. 10).

Implementation Science
Implementation Science is an approach designed to bring sustained implementation of evidence-
based practices into schools and districts. Fixsen and colleagues (2013) define implementation
practices as “purposeful and … described in sufficient detail” (p. 5), with two sets of outcomes:
one to assess the effectiveness of the intervention when implemented; and another to assess the
process of implementation (Fixsen, Naoom, Blase, Friedman, & Wallace, 2005). Implementation
science experts (Fixsen et al., 2013; National Implementation Research Network (NIRN), 2013)
define four stages of implementation: Exploration, where the evidence-based practices are identi-
fied; Installation, acquiring or repurposing the resources needed to do the work ahead (nirn
.fpg.unc.edu); Initial Implementation, schools make school-wide systematic changes and begin to
implement the evidence-based practices; and Full Implementation, when at least 50% of the
teachers and educational leaders are implementing the evidence-based practices with fidelity.
Implementation science relies on teams that include practitioners, educational leaders, and
researchers that work together across the system, understanding that unless the system is changed,
effective practice cannot be sustained. Implementation Science relies on strong research–practice
partnerships.

Summary and Implications

In this chapter, we discussed children’s cognitive development and potential factors that may
cause individual differences in children’s cognitive growth. We also reviewed how literacy
instruction has been studied and how children’s individual differences can be taken into
account when we plan and implement literacy instruction. In so doing, we discussed how we
can bridge gaps between the research and practice. We implicitly and explicitly referred to
different gaps: the implementation gap, translational research gap, relevance gap, and bridging
gap.
Implementation gap refers to the gap between what the research community knows about liter-
acy instruction and how such knowledge is used in school settings to inform practice in
a meaningful way; and translational research gap refers to the gap between the research conducted
in controlled settings and using findings from such research to inform practice in actual, uncon-
trolled settings. Relevance gap is the gap between the questions that drive research conducted in
controlled settings and everyday conditions in school settings that may serve students from diverse
backgrounds. One way that we recommended to close these different gaps in literacy research is
through strong research-practice partnerships. By including school and district personnel in
designing and implementing research-based interventions, not only can researchers effectively
communicate their knowledge to practitioners on reading research, they can also think about the
adjustments that are needed for evidence-based practices to work in real-life settings. Another
way to close these gaps would be to incorporate implementation science. Implementing research-
based programs gradually in stages would give sufficient time for practitioners to understand and
adjust to the evidence-based practices that are to be implemented and to bring about systemic
change. Bridging gap refers to the lack of communication across disciplines relevant for literacy
research. We discussed how different disciplines (e.g., education, cognitive science, developmen-
tal psychology, computer science, etc.) can collaborate to achieve one goal: understand children’s
constellation of skills and deliberately consider these individual differences when designing effect-
ive literacy instruction.

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Thanks to accumulating research, we are better understanding children’s literacy development

and what we can do to support their learning. Continuing to conduct high-quality research and
expanding our knowledge in cognitive development, language, and literacy is important. By clos-
ing gaps, we apply our knowledge and expertise in real-life settings across different contexts to
appropriately serve all children, particularly those who are most vulnerable.

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 17
Social and Cultural Differences in
Reading Development
Instructional Processes, Learning Gains,
and Challenges

Allison Skerrett

Schools have long restricted learning opportunities for minoritized student groups in varied per-
nicious ways. One practice is framing students’ racial, cultural, linguistic, immigrant, and trans-
national identities and competencies as deficits and barriers to learning (Lee, 2006; Moll &
Gonzalez, 1994; Orellana & Gutiérrez, 2006; Skerrett, 2015; Valencia, 1997). Another is the
refusal to prioritize curricula that reflect students’ diverse sociocultural community experiences
and capacity for knowledge production (Ladson-Billings, 1998/2009; Lee, 1997, 2007; Moll &
Gonzalez, 1994). Furthermore, classroom-level instructional practices and district policies often
adopt only superficial acknowledgement of the diverse ways students’, families’, and communities’
histories and linguistic and cultural practices inform learning, such that Eurocentric middle class
discourse patterns are privileged in daily interactions (Heath, 1983; Lee, 2006, 2007; Reese,
Arauz, & Bazan, 2012).
Since the mid-1980s, scholars have amassed ground-breaking theoretical frameworks and
empirical evidence to support social and cultural factors as significant contributors to reading
development (Cole, 1996; Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Heath, 1983; Lee, 1997, 2007;
Moll & Gonzalez, 1994; Moll, 2014; New London Group [NLG], 1996; Scribner & Cole,
1978; Street, 1984). Recent research has applied and extended these assets-oriented sociocultural
theories to investigate instructional approaches to reading, and documented the learning gains
associated with them (e.g., Ivey & Johnston, 2013; Lee, 1997, 2007; Martínez-Roldán, 2003;
Moll, 2014; Skerrett, 2012; Tatum, 2014). Yet literacy instruction policy mandates linked to
Eurocentric values continuously constrain large-scale recognition and implementation of socio-
cultural approaches to reading instruction. Perhaps the most compelling example of the exclu-
sion of youths’ sociocultural ways of learning is that schools continue to perseverate on high-
stakes standardized tests that are biased toward Eurocentric, middle class, English language skills
and cultural knowledge (Au, 2009; Darling-Hammond, 2007). Schools’ responses to students
vulnerable to failing these tests—overwhelmingly represented by minoritized groups—have
been to structure test-driven instructional spaces, content, and approaches for these students that
further limit students’ access to their sociocultural resources and thus their opportunities to learn
(Gutiérrez, 2009; Nichols, Berliner, & Noddings, 2007).

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Far from accepting things as “just the way schools are” (Tyack & Tobin, 1994, p. 454),
this chapter offers some proposals that hold potential to advance knowledge and practice
related to reading instruction that accounts for social and cultural differences within the
current educational milieu. The chapter explores the following questions:

• How does an understanding of social and cultural differences provide opportunities and chal-
lenges for supporting students’ reading development?
• What is the research on reading instruction that is responsive to social and cultural
differences?

The chapter reviews selected foundational and contemporary scholarship that adopts
a sociocultural perspective on literacy learning and learners (e.g., Cole, 1996; Gonzalez et al.,
2005; Heath, 1983; Lee, 1997, 2007; Moll & Gonzalez, 1994; Moll, 2014; NLG, 1996;
Scribner & Cole, 1978; Street, 1984; Tatum, 1999) and describes how this theoretical per-
spective has foregrounded the significance of the social and cultural dimensions of reading
development. The chapter then reviews selected instructive research emerging from the early
2000’s to the present that describes research on varied socioculturally-informed instructional
approaches literacy researchers and teachers have employed to promote students’ reading
development, and the learning gains and challenges associated with each of these approaches.
Given that a large number of these studies are conducted in literacy classrooms by
researchers, often in collaboration with literacy teachers, much of this research is published in
literacy teacher research journals and more general education journals. This pattern reflects
the historical and ongoing dominance of individualistic cognitive-based perspectives on liter-
acy learning (Street, 1984) and attendant privileging of quasi-experimental studies in reading
research and publications. This phenomenon was recently discussed by P. David Pearson and
his colleagues (Frankel, Becker, Rowe, &, Pearson, 2016), who documented the slow, and
still growing, accommodation of the field of reading research of socioculturally-based theories
of reading development.
After reviewing the research that draws upon sociocultural theories of reading development,
the chapter identifies the major questions that persist in this area. It explores these
questions through the framework of the four gaps—implementation, translational, relevance,
and bridging—that organize the chapters in this volume and illuminates some pathways as well
as challenges for bridging these gaps.

Sociocultural Perspectives on Literacy Learning and Reading

Development
Literacy scholars, often working with marginalized communities, have led the ground-breaking socio-
cultural turn in literacy (Cole, 1996; Heath, 1983; Moll & Gonzalez, 1994; Scribner & Cole, 1978;
Street, 1984). These foundational investigations have contributed understandings about the varied ways
in which literacy takes form and is learned, used, and adapted within and among families, communities,
and broader sociocultural contexts, such as educational institutions. This theoretical turn toward literacy
as practice has critiqued the idea of a singular autonomous perspective on literacy (Street, 1984) that is
print- and text-centric and that conceptualizes literacy as an individually acquired discrete set of cogni-
tive skills that can be universally taught and applied across all learners and contexts. Literacy scholars
have complicated this autonomous conceptualization of literacy learning by adding an ideological per-
spective. The ideological perspective privileges the social, linguistic, and cultural identities and features
of particular learners and communities; their literacy goals, values, resources, and practices; and the

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technologies for making meaning available to them (Cole, 1996; Heath, 1983; Lee, 2006; Moll & Gon-
zalez, 1994; Scribner & Cole, 1978; Street, 1984; Tatum, 1999).
Foundational scholars have further investigated the design, processes, and outcomes of
reading instruction that attends to the sociocultural dimensions of literacy learners and learn-
ing. For example, Cole (1996) reported on a study in which he and his colleagues, Courtney
Cazden and Hugh Mehan, conducted an experiment based on Vygotsky’s (1978) concept of
the zone of proximal development (ZPD) with young children and adults. In this experi-
ment, the task of reading was spread across participants, for instance, with distinct, shared,
and/or partial cognitive and social roles for children and adults, depending upon cognitive
and sociocultural factors such as participants’ reading skill or confidence levels to take on spe-
cific roles at particular times. Cole (1996) and his colleagues found that the children were
able to participate in the full act of reading and understanding texts in this shared mediated
learning space.
Moll and his colleagues (Gonzalez et al., 2005; Moll & Gonzalez, 1994) introduced the con-
cept of funds of knowledge, which framed Latina/o students’ homes and communities as contexts
rich with varied forms of knowledge, practices, and competencies that could support students’
learning in school. Moll and his colleagues positioned teachers as researchers of their students’
homes and communities who would learn about these resources, theorize how these could be
used to facilitate teaching and learning the academic curriculum, and design and enact literacy
learning experiences that reflected this funds of knowledge approach. More recently, Moll (2014)
returned to the influential work of Lev Vygotsky (1978), on which much of sociocultural theor-
ies of literacy learning rely, to emphasize understandings of Vygotsky’s (1978) concepts of cultural
mediation of thinking and development in relation to bilingual and bicultural youths’ reading
development.
Moll (2014) re-analyzed a formative experiment he and his colleagues designed in which stu-
dents labeled as ELLs were provided instruction in separate English and Spanish classes. The ori-
ginal study’s focus was on how teachers’ constructions of students’ English language identities as
either high, middle, or low, led to teachers’ provision of instruction and learning tasks that
yielded varied opportunities and constraints on students’ ZPDs for generating high levels of cog-
nitive thinking, including in reading and writing. Drawing upon Vygotsky’s (1978) theory, Moll
(2014) hypothesized that:

[T]he students’ Spanish reading level would be a useful indicator of the top of their zone of
proximal reading development [suggesting] that the way English reading was taught should
reflect what the children could do in Spanish…with students’ English reading represent[ing]
their actual developmental level.
(p. 64)

Working alongside the English and Spanish teachers in these classrooms, Moll and his colleagues
facilitated a redesign of curriculum and instruction that created greater opportunities for students
to mediate their thinking and learning through the bilingual resources they possessed for becom-
ing competent readers in English.
Likewise, Carol Lee (1997), (2006), (2007) developed a cultural modeling framework through
working as both a scholar and teacher of African American students. Lee and her students first engaged
the everyday cultural texts of students’ lives to facilitate students’ notice of their already existing skills of
reading and interpreting texts. Students, equipped with this knowledge, and supported by their use of
African American language in discussing texts, became increasingly sophisticated at conducting high
quality analyses with challenging literary texts, including those texts that schools have historically
valued. Other scholars, concerned with the language and literacy development of culturally and

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linguistically diverse youths, expound that language practices are continuously changing, for example,
in response to shifting cultural demographics in local communities and digital interactions in multilin-
gual global contexts (NLG, 1996; Paris, 2009). In a related vein, another group of scholars have pointed
out the new social, functional, and political demands that individuals and families encounter as a result
of immigrant and transnational lifestyles that help generate a wealth of linguistic, intercultural, and
sociopolitical world knowledge (Enciso, Volz, Price-Dennis, & Durriyah, 2010; Guan, Nash, & Orel-
lana, 2016; Sanchez & Orellana, 2006; Skerrett, 2015). Taken together, these scholars propose that
these multilingual, multicultural, and transnational resources can be useful for reading instruction and
development.
Theoretical conversations pertaining to how instructional approaches based in sociocultural
theories may become more prominent in literacy education are actively ongoing. Central to
these discussions are the possibilities for acknowledging and bridging the strengths that the
ideological and autonomous perspectives offer for students’ literacy development. Street
(2012) proposed a concept of society reschooling in which schools accept their responsibility
to enhance learners’ literate capacities to participate effectively in the various social contexts
of their lives, and that also acknowledges that students have much to learn from formal edu-
cational institutions. In this sense, although Street (2012) does not explicitly name this lin-
eage, his ideas are quintessentially sociocultural/Vygotskian. Street’s (2012) framework also
aligns with Freire’s (1990) concepts of reading word and world relationships. For Street
(2012) is hopeful that if literacy education could “embrace both the everyday aspect of learn-
ing and that to be found in more formal educational institutions… the two fields… instead
of being polar opposites, might embrace and build on the strengths of each other” (pp.
225–226).

Research on Socioculturally-Informed Instructional Approaches to

Reading, Learning Gains, and Challenges
This body of research presents a variety of approaches to reading instruction that attend to
social and cultural differences among students, and documents the learning gains and chal-
lenges associated with varied approaches. In this chapter, these approaches to reading
instruction, although not always mutually exclusive, have been organized into the following
categories:

• A focus on students’ reading identities

• Choice/Independence in student reading
• Shared texts that invite students’ sociocultural identities and experiences
• Reading instruction across home, school, and community contexts
• Blending sociocultural and cognitive factors in reading instruction.

The categories are consequently organized to illustrate the emphasis on the individual learner in
sociocultural theories of reading instruction and development, and then portray the importance
of situating the reader and his/her reading instruction and development within and across mul-
tiple social contexts with others including reading classrooms, the home, and community spaces.
The category of blending sociocultural and cognitive dimensions in reading instruction is treated
last for two reasons. First, this approach is currently the least employed in socioculturally-
informed research on reading instruction. Second, though least utilized, the approach of attending
to both the sociocultural and cognitive dimensions of reading in instruction raises important
questions about the future (opportunities and challenges) of sociocultural approaches to reading

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instruction. As such, this category provides a fitting transition into the chapter’s concluding dis-
cussion that is structured around the four gaps that serve as the organizing frame for this volume.

Students’ Reading Identities

One line of research that takes a sociocultural approach to reading instruction, focuses on the
relationship between students’ reading identities and their reading development. Studies in
this area demonstrate why students’ social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds, and their
communities’ sociopolitical histories and contemporary experiences, should be accounted for
in the reading instruction they receive, and how doing so can promote students’ investments
and gains in reading. For example, Tatum (1999, 2014) has long studied African American
males’ identities in relation to reading. Tatum’s (1999, 2014) work emphasizes the socio-
historically significant role of reading in African American communities, homes, and peer
groups for religious, sociopolitical, social, and culturally meaningful purposes. Tatum (1999,
2014) critiques reading instruction practices that deny African American males’ access to iden-
tities as readers—such as deficit thinking about their interests in, and capabilities to have high
quality experiences with print texts and refusal to provide African American males with
socially and culturally meaningful texts.
Studies on reading identity conducted with students who come from minoritized groups
also reveal the multiplicity of reading identities that students can hold, including those they
claim for themselves and those that are ascribed to them, for example “struggling readers,”
by teachers and schools (Enriquez, 2014; Kim & Viesca, 2016; Skerrett, 2012). Such studies
illustrate the detrimental effects on students’ reading development by labeling students as
struggling readers. For example, Kim and Viesca (2016) illustrated how three reading inter-
vention teachers’ different positioning of their emergent bilingual learners (for example as
individuals, a monolithic group, or as learners), resulted in differentiated reading instruction
practices of motivating and engaging their students that ranged from more dynamic to tightly
controlled. At the same time, research on students’ reading identities often demonstrate the
agency of students (and teachers) in contesting labels of struggling readers and crafting,
through their engagements with reading across school and other social contexts, stronger
reading identities and skills. Enriquez (2014) described how two middle school students, an
African American girl and a boy of Middle Eastern descent, who were labeled as struggling
readers, experienced this identity through feelings of loss and exclusion during reading in the
classroom. Yet these students also worked toward creating more positive reading identities for
themselves through performances of reading with print texts.
Thus, researchers advocate for an approach to reading instruction that involves teachers
and students inquiring into the construct of reading identity and how it impacts reading
instruction and reading achievement (Kim & Viesca, 2016; Skerrett, 2012; Tatum, 2014).
This approach has the benefit of promoting students’ and teachers’ metacognitive awareness
of how social, cultural, linguistic, and sociopolitical factors shape the reading identities and
attendant learning opportunities that students are given, or withheld, by social actors such as
schools and teachers. Researching with students into their reading identities promotes student
agency in recognizing and rejecting deficit perspectives about themselves and claiming more
productive reading identities. However, the effectiveness of this instructional approach is also
dependent upon whether and how other positioning agents such as schools, teachers, and
peers take on more generative perspectives on students as readers and the provision of high
quality reading instruction.
As one example, I presented a case of a Latina student’s reading history and identity across
her early years of schooling into the ninth grade, as well as in her life outside school

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(Skerrett, 2012). Angelica described how the standardized-test driven reading instruction she
experienced beginning in grade three, resulted in her disenchantment with reading and her
school’s positioning of her as a struggling reader. Angelica herself took on this identity of
a struggling reader despite the rich family literacies (such as writing and performing plays and
reading with siblings) that she participated in at home. Studying Angelica in her ninth grade
reading classroom with a teacher who took a sociocultural perspective on reading, I observed
the gradual transformation of Angelica’s taking on, for herself, the identity of reader. Part of
the reading teacher’s pedagogy involved critical exploration with students into the construct
of reading identity and facilitation of how their identities as readers were not simply static or
school-assigned labels. “Students considered how their emotional states, social and instruc-
tional interactions with their peers and teacher, the features of their texts, and their applica-
tions of cognitive and metacognitive skills positioned them, from moment to moment… as
a particular kind of reader” (Skerrett, 2012, p. 71).
The final project for this reading class, was for students to reflect on how their identities as
readers had changed over the course of the year. Angelica, working with a peer, developed
a power point, with the last two slides demonstrating how she and other students had (re)claimed
identities as readers in school and also outside school.

On one power point slide, the two girls inserted an image of a chicken breaking out of its
shell to depict the birth of their academic identities as readers and writers in Molly’s class.
Under the image they inserted the caption, “This Reminds Us About When We First Got
Here And We Hatched In This Class.” On the subsequent slide they wrote in large font,
“We Don’t Think Reading And Writing Is BORING 263A!!!!”
(Skerrett, 2012, p. 72)

Choice and Independent Reading

As the section above suggested, different texts provide a range of opportunities and constraints
for students developing their reading identities and skills. Another popular sociocultural approach
to reading instruction is teachers making available to students, or inviting them to bring to
school, a range of texts that reflect their social and cultural identities and interests. This instruc-
tional approach, often called independent or choice reading (Bomer, 2011), is especially beneficial
for students who have historically disengaged from reading because it lacks relevance to their
social and cultural identities and lived experiences. Reading instruction that centers students’
reading independence and textual choice is credited with increasing student motivation and read-
ing engagement (Bomer, 2011; Ivey & Johnston, 2013), building positive school and classroom
reading cultures (Francois, 2013), growing students’ reading competencies (Bomer, 2011), and
strengthening students’ identities as readers (Bomer, 2011; Francois, 2013). Francois (2013) con-
ducted an ethnographic study of an urban school under pressure to raise the standardized test
reading scores of its primarily Latina/o and Black student population. Her research discovered
that daily independent reading promoted students’ reading skills and generated a community
where reading became a shared and valued literacy activity among administration, teachers, and
students.
Ivey and Johnston’s (2013) study is particularly instructive about the outcomes of choice
in independent reading. Ivey and Johnston’s (2013) study on adolescents’ engaged reading
occurred across four middle school language arts classrooms with 71 adolescents. Student eth-
nicities comprised 72% Caucasian, 16% African American, and 11% Hispanic, with 47% of
the student body qualifying for free or reduced priced lunch. In the researchers’ words, four
English teachers “abandoned whole-class assigned classic texts in favor of student-selected,

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self-paced reading within a collection of materials dealing with issues and concepts of high
interest to students” (p. 258). Rather than the comprehension quizzes and other assignments
and projects typically attached to adolescents’ reading in school, the simple homework assign-
ment each night was encouragement to students to read their books at home. Teachers’
instructional interactions focused on engagement by pursuing lines of inquiry important to
students that were related to their texts. Ivey and Johnston (2013) found strong relationships
among student choice in reading an array of young adult fiction; social structures for peer
reading and discussing texts together; and development of students’ academic and social iden-
tities, agency, and intellectual growth.
A choice reading instructional approach requires teachers to equip and support students
with the tools they need to be agentive in their reading lives and reading development. For
example teachers do not merely teach reading strategies; they also facilitate learners’ increasing
capabilities to recognize when and how to apply appropriate strategies to make sense of their
independent reading (Bomer, 2011; Skerrett, 2012). A student choice approach further
requires teachers with strong knowledge of children’s and young adult literature. Lewis
(1999) raised important cautions about choice in independent reading. In the middle school
classrooms she observed, students brought in texts and other materials that adults considered
inappropriate for engaging in school. Therefore, Lewis (1999) critiqued the assumption in
choice reading that students are truly free to pursue the identities and interests that matter to
them in school. Lewis (1999) added another important instructional role for the teacher who
employs choice reading—that of a mediator who helps students understand and navigate the
tensions between the invitation to choose and constraints on that freedom within the larger
sociopolitical context of schooling.

Shared Texts that Invite Students’ Sociocultural Identities and Experiences

In this instructional approach, teachers select texts for whole-class or small group reading that
will encourage students to draw upon their racial, cultural, linguistic, social class, and other iden-
tities and experiences, to promote engagement and reading comprehension. In relation to race,
Blue (2012) studied reading comprehension through oral reading and literary interpretation activ-
ities in a diverse classroom. Based in her findings, Blue (2012) proposed that literature that pro-
vided cultural cues for African American students and that valued their personal literary
interpretations, allowed students to display their metacognitive competencies, reading achieve-
ment, and development.
Rogers and Mosley (2006) conducted research in a racially diverse second grade classroom
where teachers used whole-class texts that evoked issues of race and racism to guide their young
students, including White children, to deploy and further develop their racial literacies (under-
standings of how race shapes individual and group experiences and societal power relations) to
make deeper meanings of texts. Thomas (2013, 2015) researching in racially mixed classrooms,
and Borsheim-Black in a primarily White context (2015), also found that shared reading of texts
with racial themes challenged students and teachers to apply a racial literacy lens to their reading
and push their interpretative capacities as readers.
Linguistic resources as tools for building reading comprehension have also been studied in
the shared texts reading instruction practice (Martínez-Roldán, 2003; Martínez-Roldán &
Sayer, 2006). Martínez-Roldán (2003) studied the reading development of a Mexican-born
girl across her year in a second grade bilingual classroom. She found that the learning con-
text, which employed bilingual literature, as well as encouraged students’ uses of bilingual
oral narratives to discuss these texts in small groups, were key to the student’s reading devel-
opment. Martínez-Roldán and Sayer (2006) later explored how bilingual third grade students

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used language during story retellings. The researchers concluded that students demonstrated
greater comprehension of the stories when they used Spanglish (Spanish-English code-
switching) to mediate their retellings than they did when retelling stories using only English.
Finally, in relation to social class, Thein, Guise, and Sloan (2012) observed the salience of
social class identity on the literary interpretations of four white, socioeconomically diverse
secondary school students who read Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina in a six-week literature
circle. Findings from this set of studies provide evidence that using shared texts that facilitate
students’ access to their sociocultural identities, knowledge, and experiences for reading
instruction promotes students’ reading competencies.
Reading research, in line with using shared texts, also demonstrates the learning outcome
of critical literacy, which includes students’ abilities to read the word and the world, develop
critical sociopolitical knowledge, and take action to redress injustices in their worlds (Freire,
1990). Such an outcome is highly significant for historically and contemporarily minoritized
student populations. In the context of growing numbers of refugees into Australia, Boas
(2012) organized literature circles in which she and her eighth grade students engaged with
a variety of texts—newspaper articles, web resources, and an anchor novel—to explore the
issue of human rights for this population. Although Boas (2012) did not indicate her students’
racial or cultural backgrounds, transcripts of students’ initial talk at the beginning of the unit
suggest they were Australian-born, likely primarily White, and viewed refugees as othered.
Boas (2012) found that this study enabled her to teach reading, writing, and thinking skills,
including critical literacy. For example, as she and her students read and discussed letters to
the editors of newspapers and articles that contained opposing perspectives on the topic of
refugees, some of Boas’ (2012) students moved toward advocacy and social-justice oriented
positions for this marginalized group.
Enciso’s (2011) participants included racially and culturally diverse sixth grade students rep-
resenting a range of immigrant backgrounds (e.g., Somalia and the Dominican Republic), as
well as African American and White Appalachian students. In this project, Enciso (2011)
worked in collaboration with literacy teachers across two classrooms, as these students read
various texts that invoked issues of immigration with the goal of spurring students’ critical
thinking and storytelling about their own experiences of and perspectives on immigration.
One significant textual production from this work was the co-authorship of a text by immi-
grant and US-born students addressing the injustices inherent in xenophobia. Also taking on
dual roles, Souto-Manning (2010) worked as a first grade teacher and researcher in her own
literacy classroom, responding to her students’ observations of different “pull out” learning
opportunities offered to students at her elementary school that fell along the lines of social
class, race, and language backgrounds. Souto-Manning (2010) created a curriculum where stu-
dents read and discussed multiple texts that encouraged their critical thinking and discussion
of these issues. Furthermore, she and her students took on roles of change agents at their
schools, successfully advocating for all students to receive high quality instruction within their
home classroom community.
A challenge to reading texts that invites students’ sociocultural identities and experiences as
meaning-making tools, is teachers’ abilities to effectively engage students with varied forms of
marginalization and privilege in students’ and teachers’ own lives and in society. Skerrett (2011),
in a study of English teachers’ practices of teaching racial literacy, found that teachers’ own iden-
tities and lived experiences with diversity and inequality, professional preparation for teaching lit-
eracy in culturally responsive and antiracist ways, and opportunities for ongoing professional
learning, impacted their preparedness and willingness to select such texts and effectively navigate
the issues they raised with students. As one example of preparing literacy teachers to undertake
such instruction, Martínez-Roldán and Heineke (2011) engaged a diverse group of educators in

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a graduate teacher education course, who were either “insiders” or “outsiders” to Latina/o or
other communities that had experienced oppression and disenfranchisement in a literature discus-
sion about Alvarez’ “Before We Were free.” Martínez-Roldán and Heineke (2011) concluded
that using such literature in teacher education provides opportunities for mediating teacher learn-
ing about how to use such literature with their own K-12 students in productive ways. K-12
teachers report the continuing difficulties of undertaking literature study that invoke issues of
racism and other forms of oppression in multicultural classrooms as well as in primarily White
settings, where ideologies of Whiteness and White privilege are typically left undisturbed (Bor-
sheim-Black, 2015; Thomas, 2013, 2015).

Reading Instruction across Home, School, and Community Contexts

Moving beyond classroom communities, researchers are studying how students’ reading devel-
opment can be accelerated by creating bridges among their schools, homes, and communities,
and the resources for learning available within and across these contexts (Lima, Da Silva, &
Freire De Carvalho, 2014; Reese et al., 2012; Singh, Sylvia, & Ridzi, 2015). This instruc-
tional approach builds upon the tradition of studying literacy development as it occurs across
multiple social contexts, including attending to the resources available for literacy develop-
ment across those settings (Gonzalez et al., 2005; Heath, 1983; Moll & Gonzalez, 1994).
Lima et al. (2014) studied the unfolding of an experience called “Reading in areas out of
school: A proposal for the expansion of reading practices in public squares,” in Teresina, the
densely populated capital of the Brazilian state of Piauí. The goal of this project was to
expand the contexts for reading beyond school for children aged seven and ten, to encourage
their curiosity, motivation, and enjoyment pertaining to reading. Lima et al. (2014) found
grave differences between students’ displayed reading practices in schools and those in com-
munity social contexts, leading them to argue for the importance of creating multiple spaces
for children to read as a means to promote reading development.
Singh et al. (2015) presented a case of their active intervention into supporting the literacy
lives of Burmese refugee families through a book distribution program coupled with a ten-
month intergenerational family literacy program. Singh et al. (2015) employed the well-
known Storycircles approach in which parents and caregivers were invited to participate
weekly in a community-based literacy program with their children. The primary goals of this
work were to influence children’s literate lives at home in order to prepare them to partici-
pate successfully in schooling practices in their new homeland, and equip parents with the
cultural knowledge and tools to engage with teachers and the larger institution of schooling.
Singh et al. (2015) observed that the Burmese families’ home literacy practices privileged oral
traditions, and critiqued schools, from a funds of knowledge perspective (Gonzalez et al.,
2005), for not capitalizing on these home literacies to teach students the academic practices
schools value.
Singh et al. (2015) used an approach that valued the families’ existing literacies and helped
them make connections between these and the literacies of school. For example, adults were
instructed through a reading method of story circles and encouraged to check out picture books
from the library and engage in talk about texts with their children using all of their language
repertoires. Singh et al. (2015) found that families’ home language and literacy practices expanded
to include use of print-based texts and parents’ intentional practices of creating shared reading
experiences with their children at home. Singh et al. (2015) pointed to the constraints and chal-
lenges of doing this work, citing the need for teachers’ willingness to become knowledgeable
about the cultural, linguistic, sociocultural, and other identities and circumstances of their diverse
students and their families. They also pointed out the importance of teachers’ capacities to

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appreciate and link, rather than devalue and disconnect, these families’ socioculturally-informed
ways with literacies from academic learning. Singh et al.’s (2015) work also indicates that the
current sociopolitical contexts of schools contribute little support to such efforts curtailing the
broad implementation of such a generative approach to reading instruction and development. At
the same time, Singh et al.’s (2015) study illustrates the possibilities for researchers’ strategic
involvement with existing community organizations and engaged educational stakeholders for
creating opportunities to expand contexts for reading instruction and development.
Studies in this category emphasize the need for all literacy partners to hold appreciative
(Bomer, 2011), rather than deficit (Valencia, 1997), perspectives on minoritized groups to reap
learning gains from this approach to reading across contexts. Reese et al. (2012), in two different
urban contexts in Mexico (one working class, the other middle class), examined the relationships
among the literacy practices of first-grade children and parents at home and the ways in which
these practices were influenced and perceived by teachers and administrators. Reese et al. (2012)
discovered disturbing connections related to teachers’ deficit perspectives on the literacy practices
of working class families and their provision of rote literacy instruction for these students. In con-
trast, the teachers offered more substantial literacy instruction to students who came from middle
class backgrounds and whose families’ literacy practices reflected the traditional literacy practices
of schools.

Blending Sociocultural and Cognitive Factors in Reading Instruction

Socioculturally-based approaches to reading instruction acknowledge the cognitive processes
involved in meaning-making (which, as noted above, schools traditionally and contemporarily
emphasize), while stressing that the teaching and learning of reading is greatly strengthened by
attending to its social and cultural dimensions (e.g., Cole, 1996; Moll, 2014). A few studies pro-
vide methodological models of research as well as examples of instructional practices that illumin-
ate how the sociocultural and cognitive aspects of reading jointly influence students’ reading
development (Hall, 2016; Lesaux, Harris, & Sloane, 2012; Levine, 2014).
Given her earlier findings on the importance of students’ reading identity to their efforts with
reading and reading development Hall (2012, 2016) designed a one-year formative experiment
study using mixed methods, in which she worked with a teacher in one eighth grade language
arts classroom. The purpose of this work was to provide a form of reading instruction that was
responsive to students’ reading identities (oriented toward helping them become the readers they
wanted to be), while providing them with the skills they needed to become successful readers.
The focal class was selected because, of all the teacher’s classes, it served the highest percentage of
students deemed as underperforming in reading. The class population consisted of five African
Americans, one Hispanic, and 15 White students. One student identified English as his/
her second language, but was considered proficient and not in need of English language learning
supports. The teacher took the lead instructional role with Hall serving as a participant observer.
The instructional design included: 1) making identity explicit, 2), developing and refining reading
identities, and 3), connecting reading instruction and assignments to students’ goals as readers
(Hall, 2016, p. 60). Data sources included classroom observations, teacher interviews, standardized
reading assessments, and student questionnaires and written reflections across the year.
Just as with her 2012 findings, Hall’s 2016 analysis found that most students identified as par-
ticular kinds of readers (very good, average, or poor) regardless of their reading assessment scores.
Yet Hall (2016) also noticed the stronghold that the concept of reading level had on some stu-
dents’ definitions of their reader identities and their enacted reading practices (e.g. choosing lev-
eled books). Students also had particular goals for themselves as readers, for example becoming
faster readers, gaining more complex vocabulary, and for one student, increasing comprehension.

337
Allison Skerrett

Hall (2016) detailed how the teacher navigated students’ (often narrow) goals for reading devel-
opment with reading instruction that assisted students’ acquisition of more robust reading compe-
tencies. With students regularly reflecting on their reading identities and learning processes across
the year, students began claiming more positive reading identities, articulating more substantive
goals as readers, and grew in their reading skills and practices. Most students, reported Hall
(2016), came to recognize and exercise their own agency and role in accomplishing their reading
goals and contested the idea that their reading level on standardized tests was the definitive
marker of their reading identity or ability.
Levine’s (2014) work is also grounded in the assumption that students possess varying levels of
knowledge and expertise in literary analysis that differentially impact the quality of their literary
interpretations and overall textual experiences. Levine (2014) thus hypothesized that more novice
readers can benefit from explicit strategy instruction in conducting literary analysis. In line with
the work of Carol Lee (2007), Levine (2014) described an affect-based interpretive heuristic
through which students draw upon their everyday social interpretive practices to identify and jus-
tify their selections of textual portions of literature that are especially rich for literary analyses.
This four-week long quasi-experimental study involved using this intervention in one twelfth
grade urban high school class and comparing student outcomes to a comparative class that also
engaged with a unit of literary analysis, but did not use that heuristic. Levine (2014) found that
the experimental group was able to apply their everyday affect-laden experiences and interpret-
ations in their reading to go beyond basic summaries of texts and posit a range of figurative inter-
pretations and thematic inferences. Pre- and post-study interpretive writing tasks and think-aloud
protocols from both groups revealed that the students who were taught the heuristic, increased
their skills in interpretive analysis in contrast to the comparison group.
Lesaux et al.’s (2012) two-year study, situated within 21 linguistically diverse, urban middle
school classrooms, provided strong evidence for the importance of attending to students’ aca-
demic, social, and cultural identities and competencies, in using targeted cognitive interventions
to support students’ reading development. Lesaux et al’s (2012) approach focused on building lan-
guage and reading skills through an academic vocabulary intervention called Academic Language
Instruction for All Students (ALIAS) that lasted approximately 18 weeks. A sociocultural perspec-
tive was reflected in this research, in that the authors intentionally sought out the perspectives of
students on how the intervention had influenced their academic motivation. Furthermore, the
researchers’ design included an instructional environment that facilitated learning through struc-
tured social and collaborative interactions, such as role play and dialogue; and the use of texts
that reflected students’ social and cultural interests and lived experiences.
In relation to the academic intervention, Lesaux et al. (2012) found positive effects of the
treatment, for example, growth in students’ “academic vocabulary knowledge, morphological
skills, and reading comprehension of expository texts, including academic words” (p. 235), with
students who began at the lowest levels of vocabulary experiencing the most growth in their
vocabulary knowledge and writing. However, the intervention’s impact on students’ text com-
prehension based in “researcher-developed measures of academic vocabulary knowledge, mor-
phological skills, and reading comprehension of expository texts, including academic word
reading tasks… were largest and significant for students who began the intervention with slightly
below average and average vocabulary levels” (Lesaux et al., 2012, p. 235). Importantly, across
20 focus groups, many students made positive associations between the development of their aca-
demic skills and their academic motivation, confidence, and senses of both personal and academic
identity. For instance, one student reported “The words, they’re becoming more natural to us,
and you learn how to put them in sentences more. So you feel smart and stuff, … like, you
know a lot of stuff’” (Lesaux et al., 2012, p. 236). Lesaux et al. (2012) proposed to teachers that
adolescents’ desire for academically rigorous work should be paired with appropriate instructional

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supports. These instructional supports should attend to sociocultural dimensions, such as collab-
orative learning, as well as opportunities for students to inquire into and recognize growth in
their academic skills and identities both within, and outside, classrooms.
A challenge in studies that address both sociocultural and cognitive dimensions of reading is
that one aspect may likely be foregrounded or back-staged, depending on the research questions
and study design including the processes, amount, and kinds of data collected; and analysis pro-
cedures. Furthermore, tensions can arise if the ultimate goal or priority of the teachers/researchers
is the effectiveness of the strategy intervention. This leaning can diminish attention to social and
cultural differences, contributing to their treatment as secondary factors in research designs and
student outcomes. Handsfield and Jimenez (2009), based in their ethnographic study of
a multiracial, multilingual third grade literacy classroom, raised important cautions about the use
of cognitive strategy instruction (CSI) with culturally and linguistically diverse learners. The
authors conceptualized CSI as a site of “struggle for the monopoly of legitimate discourse”
(Bourdieu, 1983, p. 317, in Handsfield & Jimenez, 2009, p. 160). This assertion was based in the
researchers’ findings that CSI was often implemented in ways that narrowed conceptions of liter-
acy to an autonomous perspective that did not adequately account for how thinking and under-
standing might be shaped by students’ sociocultural ways of making-meaning in their homes and
communities.
Handsfield and Jimenez (2009) further raised concerns about the role of CSI in standardiz-
ing students’ language and cognition processes to align with Euro-Western patterns that, his-
torically and contemporarily, are most valued by schools. Data from this study also raised
questions related to the extent to which students’ uses of cognitive strategies may have
been as much about performances of literacy required by their teacher rather than actual
understanding and integration of these ways of thinking while reading. Handsfield and Jime-
nez (2009) admit the important benefits of CSI for students who struggle with reading.
However, they call for an expanded conception of CSI in which strategies are modeled and
practiced within socially meaningful conversations and context. They further propose that
teachers invite students to consider how they make meaning of texts in their literacy engage-
ments outside school which can facilitate students’ awareness and uses of a wider array of
socially and culturally informed ways of making-meaning that can build student agency and
reading competencies while enriching the stock of learning resources available within the
classroom.

Gaps, Challenges, and Opportunities to Bridging the Gaps in

Research on Reading Instruction that Accounts for Social and Cultural
Difference
The studies reviewed demonstrate a strong knowledge base related to teaching and learning read-
ing from a sociocultural perspective. However, the gaps that are used to frame this volume—
implementation, relevance, bridging, and translational—also manifest in this reading research
domain.

The Implementation and Translational Gaps

A number of the studies reviewed involved in-depth research with small numbers of partici-
pants in time periods ranging from a few weeks to one year. Additionally, researchers played
varied roles such as observer, participant-observer, and teacher/co-teacher (Hall, 2016; Sker-
rett, 2012; Souto-Manning, 2010; Thein et al., 2012). Thus a major challenge pertains to
how teachers implement and sustain socioculturally-based reading instruction beyond the life

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of a study and how these practices can spread beyond individual classrooms and schools to
promote the reading development of greater numbers of students. One way forward in
broadening implementation of socioculturally-informed approaches to reading instruction is
through more robust research designs that span several years and that are implemented within
and across multiple classrooms and schools (e.g. Lesaux et al., 2012). It would also be import-
ant that such research designs create opportunities for teacher participation as co-researchers
and co-learners that will improve the possibility of sustained implementation by teachers after
a study concludes. Researchers could include in their research designs collaborative profes-
sional learning/inquiry spaces for teachers and researchers around the instructional approach
being implemented and these learning communities could extend beyond a study’s endpoint
with teachers’ leading their own learning and growth.
Support from school administration in redressing the implementation gap, especially in
spaces under severe accountability pressures, cannot be overstated (Au, 2009; Nichols et al.,
2007). The already plentiful body of research providing evidence of students’ reading devel-
opment emerging from instruction that attends to social and cultural differences can be used
to educate and entice school and district literacy leaders to legitimize these instructional prac-
tices in their literacy policies and instructional guidelines. Beyond researchers and teachers,
powerful levers for broad implementation of socioculturally-informed approaches to reading
instruction include stakeholders invested in students’ reading development who hold social
and political capital. These groups include students themselves, families, religious and com-
munity leaders, and other social justice oriented partners—e.g., local non-profit educational
organizations.
Yet it is important to recognize the deep socialization of literacy policy makers and leaders
into privileging and implementing cognitive-based approaches to reading instruction (that often
derive from post-positivist research methodologies) with minoritized students who are challenged
by high-stakes standardized reading assessments. In relation to the translational gap, then, consider
that few classroom-based studies pertaining to sociocultural approaches to reading instruction
employed quasi-experimental, quantitative, or mixed methodologies (Hall, 2016; Lesaux et al.,
2012; Levine, 2014). Studies that include these methodologies and prioritize sociocultural per-
spectives on reading development are important to the field in that they challenge researchers to
operationalize the constructs of social and cultural differences among students. Such studies
require innovating research designs that allow for understanding how social and cultural differ-
ences are addressed by varied socioculturally-informed approaches to reading instruction and the
affects on students’ reading development. This kind of research, and its instructional recom-
mendations, can provide a viable alternative to literacy policy makers who hold a traditional
understanding of empirical research.
To grow this body of work in reading research, it seems important to bring together
teams of scholars with expertise in diverse methodologies; who can recognize and work
within the strengths as well as limitations of different theoretical perspectives and research
methodologies; and who understand and value multiple approaches to reading instruction and
development. Within the larger sociopolitical context of education, particular definitions of
empirical research, including in reading research, drives the distribution of federal funding
(National Institute of Health and Human Services, 2013; US Department of Education,
2015), although some funding language can be interpreted as more open to reading research
that includes attention to social and cultural differences (Institute of Education Sciences,
2016). As such, researchers who take a sociocultural perspective on reading instruction and
development stand to benefit from improved flexibility and abilities to speak to multiple dis-
course communities about the significance of this approach and its already robust evidence
base.

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 Social and Cultural Differences

The Relevance and Bridging Gaps

There is wide recognition of sociocultural theory as a relevance-based framework for teaching
and learning. This assertion holds for socioculturally-based approaches to reading education for all
students, and especially those from culturally and linguistically minoritized groups. Culturally and
linguistically diverse students will continue having difficulties developing and demonstrating their
reading competencies, including on standardized curricula and assessments that fail to account for
sociocultural differences (Au, 2009; Darling-Hammond, 2007). The primary challenge to the
relevance gap remains the legitimation of the framework and attendant practices in literacy policy
that directs mainstream reading education practices.
Moving beyond any given local or national literacy policy context is one way of understand-
ing and responding to the bridging gap. There is a global movement toward revisioning national
curriculum policies to improve students’ reading and writing skills according to the traditional
autonomous perspective, but also in acknowledgment of sociocultural theories and broader liter-
acy competencies. Educational goals for teachers and students include learning how to learn col-
laboratively as well as independently; valuing and drawing upon the cultures, languages, and
community resources of diverse learners to support instruction and learning; equipping students
to engage with work and social life outside school, including its technological demands; and
engaged citizenship, including a sense of global responsibility (Education Scotland, 2016; Finnish
National Board of Education, 2016; Government of Sint Maarten, D.E.R.P.I., 2008). Yet the
challenge to the success of such progressive curricula is professional guidance and support for
teachers in how to design and implement a curriculum that addresses these varied competencies
and how to assess student learning in domains that are unfamiliar in the schooling arena (Lam,
2011; OECD, 2015; Seunarinesingh, 2015; Skerrett, 2016).
In redressing the bridging gap, literacy researchers can consider making inroads into national
educational contexts where policy conditions are supportive of advancing research and practice
relative to sociocultural approaches to literacy education. Sub-fields within educational research
that can inform literacy scholars moving into newer territory include the fields of educational
policy and educational leadership/school change. These fields address systems level change,
including in the areas of curriculum, instruction, and building learning cultures among teachers
and schools (e.g., Hargreaves & Shirley, 2014). The knowledge base within these fields would be
vital for literacy researchers’ abilities to integrate pragmatic epistemologies and related research
designs into their work. Literacy researchers would be further equipped to more fully engage
with the sociopolitical factors and agents that shape the nature of reading instruction determined
for schools. This challenge can be understood as a shift away from a narrow perspective of field
(reading education) into a perspective of reading education as one of many components of the
broader arena of educational research, policy, and practice.

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 18
Learning Academic Language,
Comprehending Text
Dianna Townsend, Ana Taboada Barber, and Hannah Carter

Introduction
When did educators start attending to academic language, and why? Depending on the definition
or set of attributes assigned to academic language as a construct, it can be argued that academic
language has been a prominent focus of instruction since the beginning of compulsory, state-
funded education in the U.S. in the 19th century. Alternatively, academic language instruction
can be framed as a more recent practice to support the diverse student population in America’s
schools. While previous versions of the Handbook of Reading Research have explored issues related
to academic language, the current volume is the first with chapters dedicated to academic lan-
guage, both as a research construct and as an instructional target. Additionally, like many founda-
tional constructs in the field of literacy, academic language has been studied from a number of
perspectives, each of which pushes the construct in different, and sometimes opposing, directions.
To the extent that academic language is, simply, the language of school environments, K-12
schools in the U.S. have always attended to the academic language development of students.
While academic language may be part of a hidden curriculum that some students have more
access to than others, K-12 schools have always required students to use the language of school
environments to access information and display their knowledge. Students have consistently
encountered academic texts, including literary and informational texts—both of which use and
require understanding of academic language. However, as efforts to support all learners have
gained momentum in recent decades, academic language instruction has been pulled into many
research, practice, and policy arenas. In some ways, academic language instruction has been trea-
ted as an ideological football, serving multiple and sometimes disparate purposes. For example,
academic language instruction is often viewed as a tool to address academic inequities and school
language disparities across students’ language backgrounds (Zwiers, 2014). At the same time, aca-
demic language instruction is also viewed as a symptom of an oppressive schooling system that
rewards the powerful, those students who begin school with a clear advantage because their
home and community language environments are aligned with the language expectations of K-12
schooling (Flores & Rosa, 2015).
Further problematizing the scholarship around academic language instruction are the many
terms that are used with, and as proxies for, academic language. Academic language instruction
research has been conducted with all of the following phrases as labels for an overlapping set of
language and literacy components: academic language, academic vocabulary, academic English,

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academic literacy, content area language/literacy, and disciplinary language/literacy. Baumann

and Graves (2010) have parsed many of these terms, exploring their related and unique compo-
nents based on traditions of use in different fields and frameworks. Given the variations in how
academic language is conceptualized, academic language instruction research ranges from a focus
on individual academic vocabulary words to the discourse patterns and academic habits that sup-
port students’ participation and success in school. This broader set of language and literacy skills
is most often recognized as academic literacy. Within extant research, instructional targets gener-
ally fall into these two expansive, overlapping categories: academic vocabulary and academic literacy.
In other words, the instructional research leans heavily towards either developing students’ aca-
demic vocabulary knowledge with a focus on building rich knowledge of academic words, or
developing a broader set of literacy skills for academic settings with several foci, including higher
order comprehension skills within and across texts in the disciplines. Figure 18.1 illustrates these
categories, using a nested model to demonstrate that, while the research does fall into these cat-
egories with some consistency, they are not mutually exclusive.
The rationale for focusing on academic language instruction spans a broad set of issues includ-
ing preparing new teachers, addressing standards, meeting the needs of diverse students, and
pushing research forward. EdTPA, a measurement of teacher candidates’ readiness to teach that is
growing in popularity across the U.S., prioritizes demonstrating skill helping students “develop
and use academic language” (Lim, Stallings, & Kim, 2015, p. 3). Similarly, the Common Core
State Standards (CCSS; National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of
Chief State School Officers, 2010) emphasize both informational texts and attention to academic
language proficiency. Along with the CCSS, the linguistic, cultural, and socioeconomic diversity
in schools calls for attention to academic language instruction, as academic language can be used
as “a vehicle for communicating and learning within sociocultural contexts” (WIDA, 2014, p. 4).

Developing Academic Literacy:

developing capacities with vocabulary,
reading, writing, discussion, scholarly
habits, and discourse norms in
academic settings

Developing Academic Vocabulary:

developing knowledge of general and
discipline-specific academic vocabulary,
connectives, and morphology

Figure 18.1 Instructional targets for academic language instruction in the extant research

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Finally, research on academic language instruction is approaching a critical mass of findings and
related theories, particularly in the last decade; it is time to take stock of what we know in order
to support teachers and move the research forward.

Organization of Chapter
Our chapter begins by defining the two constructs of interest, academic language and reading
comprehension. Next, we provide an explanation of the two instructional targets for academic
language instruction, academic vocabulary and academic literacy, and we review the research on
both targets within elementary and secondary settings. Gaps in and critiques of the literature are
also addressed. Finally, we share implications of the research on instruction and recommendations
for a path forward to maximize all students’ language experiences in K-12 schools.

Defining Academic Language from a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)

Perspective
Academic language, as explained with a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) framework, is
a register of language comprised of a set of linguistic features that are used to communicate ideas
in academic settings. According to SFL, varieties or registers of language and the contexts in
which they are used, realize (i.e. make real) each other (Eggins, 2004). In other words, language is
not used in a vacuum. Rather, specific contexts (e.g. cultural, social, academic) influence, reify,
and reinforce the use of particular language structures. At the same time, those particular language
structures create meaning within, and reinforce, the context. Academic language researchers
(Achugar & Schleppegrell, 2005; Eggins, 2004; Fang, Schleppegrell, & Cox, 2006; Schleppegrell,
2004b; Snow & Uccelli, 2009) often apply these tenets of SFL to the language of schooling.
They explore how academic contexts inform academic language, and vice versa, and they unpack
the language of schooling to identify specific linguistic features that are used to create meaning in
academic settings. In short, SFL allows for an articulation of what makes academic language aca-
demic. There are cross-cutting features that are used across academic disciplines, and features that
are unique to, or used in unique ways in, each academic discipline (Fang, 2012; Schleppegrell,
2004b; Snow & Uccelli, 2009; Uccelli, Phillips Galloway, Barr, Meneses, & Dobbs, 2015).

Reading Comprehension, Academic Vocabulary, and Academic Literacy

A major outcome of interest for academic language instruction is reading comprehension, which
the RAND Reading Study Group (Snow, 2002) defines as “the process of simultaneously
extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language”
(p. xiii). Comprehension is conceptualized as an active process, unique to each reader, text, activ-
ity, and sociocultural context. Academic vocabulary, one of the instructional targets in academic
language research, is a direct correlate of students’ reading comprehension (August, Artzi, & Barr,
2016; Ford-Connors & Paratore, 2015; Lesaux, Kieffer, Faller, & Kelley, 2010; Stahl & Fairbanks,
1986; Townsend, Filippini, Collins, & Biancarosa, 2012). Academic literacy, the other instruc-
tional target in academic language instruction research, also informs text comprehension. The lin-
guistic features of academic texts (Bailey, 2007; Barnes, 2015; Fang, 2012; LaRusso et al., 2016;
Schleppegrell, 2004b; Uccelli et al., 2015), the discourse norms and sociocultural contexts of the
disciplines (Fang, 2006, 2012; Fang & Schleppegrell, 2008b; Goldman et al., 2016; Lee & Sprat-
ley, 2010; Moje, 2015; Neal, 2015; Schleppegrell, 2004a, 2007; Schleppegrell & de Oliveira,
2006; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2012), and students’ linguistic resources each relate to
comprehension.

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Academic Vocabulary as an Instructional Target

Academic vocabulary includes words used primarily in academic settings that are often charac-
terized by abstraction, technicality, and/or morphological complexity. The most common
types of academic vocabulary are general academic words and discipline-specific academic
words (Baumann & Graves, 2010; Gardner & Davies, 2014; Hiebert & Lubliner, 2008). Gen-
eral academic words are primarily used in academic settings and across all disciplines (e.g.,
function, procedure, system). Discipline-specific academic words are used primarily in academic
settings, but are typically unique to one discipline only (e.g., rhombus, isotope, habeas corpus).
However, this dichotomy is imperfect, with many words blurring boundaries. For example,
a polysemous word (a word that has multiple meanings) like function is used in general ways
across disciplines but also in mathematics with a technical, discipline-specific meaning. To
address some of the gray area in function and usage, Baumann and Graves (2010) broadened
the dichotomy to include five categories of academic words: “(1) domain-specific academic
vocabulary, (2) general academic vocabulary, (3) literary vocabulary, (4) metalanguage, and (5)
symbols” (p. 9).
Knowledge of academic words includes both semantic knowledge as well as knowledge of
how words operate in relation to other, semantically-related words in connected text (Gardner &
Davies, 2014; Nagy & Townsend, 2012). Also included in academic vocabulary knowledge is
knowledge of morphology (Kieffer & Box, 2013) and connectives (Crosson & Lesaux, 2013),
given the prominence of both morphologically complex words and cohesive devices in academic
language (Snow & Uccelli, 2009). Finally, two other dimensions of word knowledge that impact
academic vocabulary knowledge are polysemy (Logan & Kieffer, 2017) and cognates (Carlo
et al., 2004).
Early investigations into academic vocabulary included a focus on identifying high utility aca-
demic vocabulary words that emerged in the literature (Coxhead, 2000; Xue & Nation, 1984).
Most recently, Gardner and Davies (2014) offered a new Academic Vocabulary List. Much of the
related earlier research included efforts to support ESL students in university settings, but these
resources were quickly adopted as potential supports for K-12 students. Following is a review of
the instructional research that, generally, targets academic vocabulary knowledge in elementary
and secondary settings.

Developing Academic Vocabulary Knowledge in Elementary Settings

Studies focusing on the academic word level in elementary settings (K-5th grades) have empha-
sized morphological awareness, explicit teaching of word meanings, and, to a lesser extent, impli-
cit word learning, or learning words in the context of reading or discussion activities.
Morphological awareness refers to the ability to consider and manipulate the smallest units of
meaning in language including word roots and affixes (e.g., Apel & Lawrence, 2011; Carlisle,
2000; Wolter et al., 2009). Morphology instruction research does not always state an aim of
improving academic language. The high frequency of morphologically complex words in aca-
demic language, however, closely relates this line of research to the literature on academic lan-
guage. Empirical studies and systematic reviews (Bowers et al., 2010; Goodwin & Ahn, 2013)
provide evidence that morphological awareness interventions lead to moderate improvements in
morphological awareness skills, including morphological problem-solving and awareness via gen-
eration of morphologically-related words, across a range of students’ ages and abilities in the
elementary grades (Apel et al., 2013, 2014; Carlisle & Stone, 2005; Goodwin, 2016). However,
effects of morphological awareness instruction on reading comprehension in the elementary
grades are somewhat small, but promising (e.g., Goodwin et al., 2013).

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Explicit teaching of word meanings for discipline-specific (mostly science) and general aca-
demic words in the elementary grades, has taken place as part of interventions that, in their
majority, included emergent bilinguals1 and monolingual English speakers. August and colleagues
(2016) compared two approaches to vocabulary instruction with 3rd and 4th grade Spanish-
speaking emergent bilinguals. The first approach, embedded vocabulary instruction, consisted of
providing clear definitions for target words as part of interactive shared reading of science text
passages. In the second approach, extended vocabulary instruction, teachers provided explicit,
rich, and multimodal instruction. Findings indicated that although extended instruction was more
effective in terms of gains in target vocabulary, embedded instruction also helped emergent bilin-
guals acquire general and science-specific academic vocabulary. The two interventions in the
August et al. (2016) study are similar to the two intervention groups designed by Taboada and
Rutherford (2011) a few years earlier. With a smaller sample size of 4th grade ELs, this earlier
study emphasized comparing explicit and implicit general and science-specific vocabulary. Find-
ings indicated that explicit vocabulary instruction increased students’ academic vocabulary even
three weeks after the intervention was over; whereas the implicit condition, with emphasis on
other components of reading comprehension, increased students’ reading comprehension more
than the explicit vocabulary instruction alone.
In addition to these two studies on older elementary students, three studies targeted science
vocabulary in early elementary settings. Spycher (2009) explored the impact of intentional science
vocabulary instruction with implicit science vocabulary instruction for kindergarteners. Students
in the intentional/explicit instruction condition learned more science words and were better at
expressing their conceptual knowledge in science.
With students in kindergarten through grade two, Silverman and Hines (2009) provided the
same science texts and vocabulary instruction to their treatment and control groups over 12
weeks, but the treatment groups also received multimedia support for the vocabulary. While all
students made gains, emergent bilinguals in the treatment group effectively closed the science
vocabulary gap between their monolingual English speaking peers, providing evidence for the
importance of multimedia support for elementary emergent bilinguals’ academic language devel-
opment. In another science-focused intervention, Parsons and Bryant (2016) developed an eight-
week intervention for kindergartners that targeted science-specific vocabulary in the context of
read alouds, peer conversations during authentic activities, and hands-on science activities. Using
a formative experiment, the researchers found that students increased their use of the target
words after each cycle of instruction (two weeks) and also showed improved depth of knowledge
after the eight-week intervention.
Interventions focused on general academic vocabulary, often referred to as Tier 2 words
(Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002), have also shown vocabulary gains in elementary schools. In
a study with kindergarteners and 1st graders, Beck and McKeown (2007) showed the importance
of more exposures and opportunities to practice with academic words. All students received simi-
lar instruction, but some words were targeted for twice as many instructional exposures. When
students had more opportunities to practice with words, they made greater gains with that word
knowledge. Finally, Carlo et al. (2004) found that both emergent bilinguals and monolingual
English speaking 5th graders made gains on multiple measures of word knowledge, and compre-
hension of text with target words embedded, when they were the beneficiaries of rich vocabulary
instruction.

Developing Academic Vocabulary Knowledge in Secondary Settings

Studies focusing on academic vocabulary in secondary settings (6th–12th grades) include two
recent large-scale interventions, as well as individual smaller-scope studies. ALIAS (Lesaux et al.,

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2010; Lesaux, Kieffer, Kelley, & Harris, 2014) and Word Generation (Lawrence, Crosson, Pare-
Blagoev, & Snow, 2015; Lawrence, Rolland, Branum-Martin, & Snow, 2014; Mokhtari &
Velten, 2015; Snow, Lawrence, & White, 2009) have been studied in the initial implementation
stage and in the scale-up stage. In the first iteration of ALIAS (N = 476), an 18-week interven-
tion was facilitated by classroom teachers in 13 classrooms across seven middle schools; eight
matched classrooms served as controls. The intervention was rooted in high-interest informational
texts, and students participated in reading, writing, discussion, morphology study, direct instruc-
tion of vocabulary, and independent word learning strategies (i.e. using context clues). The inter-
vention resulted in significant impacts on the researcher-designed measures of target word
knowledge, morphology, and target-words-in-context (a contextualized vocabulary assessment
with a comprehension component). There were marginally significant gains on depth of word
knowledge and on a standardized measure of reading comprehension. Monolingual English
speaking students and emergent bilinguals made similar gains. Noting that a writing outcome
would be valuable, researchers added this to the next iteration of ALIAS (Lesaux et al., 2014),
which was a scaled-up (N = 2,082), randomized field trial of the intervention. For this iteration,
the same instructional components were used. Significant differences between the treatment and
control groups were found on vocabulary, morphology, writing, and reading comprehension, for
the passages that included the taught words, but not on the standardized comprehension measure.
Word Generation is an intervention organized around “engaging and discussable dilemmas”
that are implemented across content area classes (Lawrence et al., 2015, p. 750). Instruction in
each content area includes the target words, the controversial topic, and content-specific tasks
and problems. An average week in Word Generation includes a high interest text on
a controversial topic with explicit practice, in each academic content area, with academic target
words from the text (Lawrence, Capotosto, Branum-Martin, White, & Snow, 2012). Reading,
writing, and discussion are utilized throughout the week with scaffolds and guidance from all
content area teachers. An initial examination of the effectiveness of Word Generation (Snow
et al., 2009) revealed a treatment effect on the target vocabulary measures, and gains made in
vocabulary predicted performance on state-level achievement tests. Additionally, emergent bilin-
guals benefitted more than monolingual English speaking students from the intervention.
Lawrence et al. (2012) also found that emergent bilinguals who were more proficient in Eng-
lish made gains in target academic words and maintained them a year later. However, those
emergent bilinguals who were less proficient in English did neither. In the most recent, and lar-
gest, research iteration of Word Generation (Lawrence et al., 2015), the intervention was facili-
tated in 28 schools across two districts, with a total of 932 treatment students (control n = 622).
Dramatic treatment effects on the quality of classroom discussions, small effects on target vocabu-
lary, and no effects on general breadth of vocabulary knowledge were found. Finally, in a smaller
and independent application of Word Generation, Mokhtari and Velten (2015) modified the
approach for an after-school tutoring session to support students reading two or more years
below grade level. Students (n = 36) made gains in target word vocabulary and a standardized
reading comprehension measure, and appeared to close the gap with the control group (n = 36;
peers were matched demographically but were not struggling readers).
Beyond ALIAS and Word Generation, a number of studies on smaller interventions have
been published on academic vocabulary instruction. In their intervention Robust Academic
Vocabulary Encounters (RAVE; Crosson & McKeown, 2016), McKeown and her colleagues cre-
ated 11 seven-day cycles of direct instruction of academic words. Authentic texts from a variety
of domains were used, and students were provided with multiple exposures of words in multiple
contexts. Treatment students (n = 64 seventh graders) outperformed control students (n = 44) on
experimenter-designed measures of word knowledge, lexical decision speed, and comprehension
of passages including target words. For students who experienced two years of the intervention,

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RAVE also showed promising impacts on a standardized measure of comprehension. One com-
ponent of the RAVE was a voluntary activity called “In the Media” (McKeown, Crosson, Artz,
Sandora, & Beck, 2013), in which students were encouraged to find the target words outside of
school and share where, and how, they saw those words being used. Many students participated
in the activity, and those who found ten or more RAVE words outside of school had higher
overall gain scores in the experimenter-designed measures. In another intervention guided by the
same principles of rich vocabulary instruction, Language Workshop, Townsend and Collins
(2009) developed and facilitated a five-week afterschool program for middle school emergent
bilinguals. As with other academic vocabulary interventions, the target words were general aca-
demic words, and instructional activities were designed to initiate from high-interest texts and to
include reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Participants (N = 37) made significant gains on
the measure aligned with the target words.
In a year-long professional learning (PL) project, Townsend (2014) facilitated a study with
middle school teachers (n = 8) from all academic content areas. The initiative, Developing Con-
tent Area Academic Language (DCAAL), focused on supporting students’ academic vocabulary
development and used multiple data sources to measure the impact of PL on middle school stu-
dents’ (n = 304) academic vocabulary gains. Analyses indicated that teachers shifted their practice
to include more scaffolds for academic vocabulary in their respective content areas. Additionally,
all students made statistically significant gains on measures of academic vocabulary, and there
were “dosage” effects. In other words, those students who had classes with more than one par-
ticipating teacher from DCAAL made greater gains than those students who only had one class
with a participating DCAAL teacher. There were no significant differences between monolingual
English speakers and emergent bilinguals.
In a correlational study by Gamez and Lesaux (2015) designed to record the use of sophisti-
cated vocabulary in classrooms, speech transcripts from 24 middle school classrooms were ana-
lyzed. Findings of note include that an average of 8% of class time was spent on direct
vocabulary instruction, and about 80% of the words targeted during that time were taught by
requiring students to define words or make sentences. However, despite this traditional vocabu-
lary instruction, a teacher’s use of sophisticated vocabulary still explained significant variance in
students’ reading comprehension; this finding held even when controlling for the percentage of
time dedicated to vocabulary instruction.

Academic Literacy as an Instructional Target

The term academic literacy is often used as an omnibus label for the many language and literacy
skills and habits students need to successfully participate in academic settings (Baker et al., 2014;
Short & Fitzsimmins, 2007). Instructional approaches and interventions targeting academic liter-
acy typically include academic vocabulary, as well as reading, writing, discussion, and other liter-
acy dimensions within the academic content areas. These comprehensive approaches to academic
literacy are often undergirded by Cummins’ work on Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills
(BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP; Cummins, 1979). This ground-
breaking work, while not free from critique (e.g. Aukerman, 2007), established academic literacy
as a target for explicit instruction for bilingual students. Early efforts in this explicit instruction
went well beyond word meanings and linguistic features of the register of academic language,
encompassing a broad range of written and oral language skills and habits. For example, Chamot
and O’Malley (1994) developed an instructional model, the Cognitive Academic Language
Learning Approach (CALLA), which supported bilingual students with the academic literacy
demands of schools. Around the same time frame, beginning in 1996, the Sheltered Instruction
Observation Protocol (SIOP; Short, Fidelman, & Louguit, 2012) was developed and is still

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widely used to support teachers in scaffolding bilingual students with the academic literacy
demands of school. Instructional approaches for developing academic literacy, including disciplin-
ary literacy (Goldman et al., 2016), often incorporate elements of vocabulary. However, these
instructional approaches also include both general (e.g., identifying main ideas) and discipline-
specific (e.g., thinking like a historian) academic skills and habits (Baker et al., 2014; Chamot &
O’Malley, 1994; Greenleaf, Brown, Goldmand, & Ko, 2013; Short, Echevarria, & Richards-
Tutor, 2011).

Developing Academic Literacy in Elementary Settings

Empirical studies that target the broader category of academic literacy are less common in elem-
entary settings than in secondary settings. However, due to the focus of the CCSS on informa-
tional texts starting in the early grades, there is an emerging literature that fits this category.
Butler and Hakuta (2009) explored the nature of the relationship between oral English language
proficiency and reading performance with two categories of linguistic features: meaning-related
(content and key concepts) and formal (grammatical) aspects of 4th graders’ academic language in
science. After participation in two science lessons, the researchers found that monolingual English
speaking students had better command of formal syntax, but monolingual English speaking stu-
dents and emergent bilinguals had a similar command of new information learned from science
texts. With respect to struggling versus typical readers, typical readers were more adept at
expressing new information and academic vocabulary learned from text. The combination of
both factors (limited oral English and struggles with reading) lead to a complex scenario that
a great deal of intervention research is designed to address.
In a different approach to science instruction, Brown and colleagues (2010) examined what
they called disaggregate instruction, which consists of separating science instruction into conceptual
and discursive components. The researchers developed an intervention aimed at improving writ-
ing and oral explanations using scientific language in 5th graders of varied language backgrounds.
The intervention explicitly provided experience with scientific phenomena using everyday lan-
guage, and then supported students’ development of science language after their initial experience
with the phenomena. Students in the comparison group participated in instruction including the
same concepts in both everyday and scientific language simultaneously. Findings indicated that
both groups of students scored highest on questions designed to measure their conceptual under-
standing of photosynthesis in everyday language. However, the intervention group showed
greater learning gains across all measures, including the science language measure, compared to
the control group.

Developing Academic Literacy in Secondary Settings

Empirical research on the broader target of academic literacy in the secondary setting includes
descriptive studies, intervention studies, and discipline-specific intervention studies. Peercy (2011)
conducted a descriptive study on the practices of two junior high English as a Second Language
(ESL) teachers, exploring their practices around essential approaches for helping emergent bilin-
guals develop academic literacy. Peercy found that the two teachers did attend to many recom-
mended approaches for supporting the academic literacy development of emergent bilinguals,
including attending to mainstream content in their classrooms, teaching students academic lan-
guage, providing support in students’ first language, teaching students explicit reading strategies,
and using culturally responsive teaching methods. In another descriptive study, Zwiers (2007)
found that middle school teachers supported students with “questioning, gestures, connecting to
background knowledge with examples and analogies, and personifying” (p. 93). Both Peercy and

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Zwiers concluded with a strong call for richer teacher education in these practices and
a sociocultural and integrated approach to supporting emergent bilinguals’ academic literacy.
Short et al. (2011) reported on three studies with the Sheltered Instruction Observation Proto-
col (SIOP), a professional learning and instructional approach designed to help emergent bilin-
guals build academic language and literacy skills in content area classrooms. The three studies
reported in 2011 all looked at impacts on academic literacy, which were measured by standard-
ized achievement tests in writing, oral language, reading, and the content areas. The first two
studies (N = 318 and N = 580, respectively) demonstrated student gains on measures of academic
achievement, and sustained PL resulted in higher fidelity of implementation on the part of
teachers. The third study (N = 1021), involved a nine-week intervention; no significant differ-
ences between treatment and control students were found.
With respect to discipline-specific interventions, Vaughn et al. (2009) developed a set of
instructional routines for middle school emergent bilinguals in social studies that included explicit
vocabulary and concept instruction, strategic use of videos and purposeful discussion to build
concept knowledge, and use of writing with graphic organizers. Participants made significant
gains in experimenter-designed vocabulary and comprehension measures that aligned with the
social studies content. Zwiers (2007) also explored the integration of academic language and
social studies with an action research study exploring students’ responses to instruction in six
dimensions of historical thinking. With intentional scaffolding and modeling, students made pro-
gress in academic language and historical thinking.
In QuEST, another middle school intervention related to science, August, Branum-Martin,
Cardenas-Hagan, and Francis (2009) developed four- and five-week units on Living Systems and
the Environment. A number of scaffolds were integrated to support emergent bilinguals (n =
562; monolingual English speakers, n = 328), including visuals, graphic organizers, experiments
and demonstrations, modeling, ongoing discussion, textbook support, explicit vocabulary instruc-
tion (both general and discipline-specific), glossaries with Spanish translations, and guided reading.
All treatment students made gains on curriculum-based measures of vocabulary and science
knowledge, but not on the standardized measures of vocabulary or comprehension. One possible
explanation was the small sample of teachers (n = 10) and inconsistent fidelity with the interven-
tion. In a second iteration of QuEST, August and her colleagues (2014) facilitated a larger PL
component and modified their measures to include an academic language measure specific to sci-
ence. Emergent bilinguals in the intervention made gains in academic language, but monolingual
English speakers, on average, made greater gains.
In another science intervention, Reading Apprenticeship (Greenleaf et al., 2011), ten days of
content-focused PL on a range of reading and inquiry activities, including textual features that
shape literacy practices in the academic disciplines was completed. A group-randomized experi-
mental study included a multitude of teacher- and student-level data sources, and results revealed
that treatment teachers (N = 56), when compared to control teachers (N = 49), were more
knowledgeable about how to integrate science reading and science content, create classrooms
with collaborative inquiry and meaning-making through disciplinary texts, engage students in
text inquiry, and promote comprehension strategies. Students who received instruction from the
treatment teachers saw growth in ELA, reading comprehension, and biology state tests.
Finally, Levine and Horton (2015) conducted a month-long intervention in a 12th grade Eng-
lish class with primarily struggling readers. The purpose of the study was to determine if oppor-
tunities to learn from experts’ models of reading would enhance students’ reading. Using literary
short stories, students were exposed to think-alouds from five expert English teachers. The
expert think-alouds were guided by the experts’ “identification of patterns, tensions, generally
striking language, and lines in privileged positions” (p. 146). Students, on average, made gains in
all of these areas. These last two secondary studies with academic literacy targets (Greenleaf et al.,

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2011; Levine & Horton, 2015), are part of the growing body of literature in disciplinary literacy.
Goldman et al. (2016) list “discourse and language structures” as one of five core constructs of
disciplinary literacy. A full review of disciplinary literacy research is beyond the scope of this
chapter, but we acknowledge the potential for garnering new insights on academic language
instruction via explorations into disciplinary literacy.

What Have We Learned from Academic Language Instruction Research in

K-12 Settings?
When organized by the two instructional targets, academic vocabulary and academic literacy, the
research on academic language instruction suggests trends about instruction, students, and
teachers. One clear trend is the effectiveness of rich and robust vocabulary instruction (Beck,
McKeown, & Kucan, 2013; Graves et al., 2014), which includes multiple opportunities to prac-
tice and personalize word meanings in multiple contexts, along with independent word-learning
strategies. With respect to academic vocabulary instruction in elementary settings, this rich and
explicit instruction in academic vocabulary does lead to significant gains in students’ academic
word knowledge (August et al., 2016; Spycher, 2009; Taboada & Rutherford, 2011). While
explicit instruction has a clear impact on academic word knowledge, the research suggests that
more implicit instruction, or vocabulary instruction that is embedded within the study of text,
serves a slightly different purpose. Embedded or implicit instruction has a less pronounced (but
still significant) impact on word knowledge but may target comprehension performance more
effectively (August et al., 2016; Taboada & Rutherford, 2011). Two additional trends are the
value of multimodal and multimedia resources to enhance academic word learning (August et al.,
2016; Silverman & Hines, 2009) and the importance of more increased frequency of exposure to
word meanings across contexts (Beck & McKeown, 2007).
In secondary settings, there is evidence that rich academic vocabulary instruction does yield
significant gains in word knowledge (Lawrence et al., 2012; Lesaux et al., 2014; McKeown et al.,
2013; Townsend, 2014; Townsend & Collins, 2009) and, potentially, comprehension (Lesaux
et al., 2010; Mokhtari & Velten, 2015). Furthermore, engaging secondary teachers across content
areas in working toward common academic vocabulary targets appears to impact student word
knowledge and academic discussions (Lawrence et al., 2014; Townsend, 2014).
The trends in the instructional research that targets academic literacy are less conclusive.
Overall, the academic literacy research is aligned with Baker et al.’s (2014) four recom-
mendations for supporting academic content and literacy development. There is clear evi-
dence for using rich vocabulary instruction, multiple discussion and writing opportunities,
explicit instruction with academic writing, and small group interventions for struggling
readers (Baker et al., 2014). However, these recommendations are in the service of academic
literacy more broadly. Specific impacts on global, standardized reading comprehension are
much less robust.
Only two interventions, ALIAS (Lesaux et al., 2010) and Reading Apprenticeship (Greenleaf
et al., 2011), showed gains in standardized measures of reading comprehension. Several other
studies showed relationships, and possible causality, with standardized achievement measures that
suggest comprehension gains (Short et al., 2011; Snow et al., 2009). Taboada and Rutherford
(2011), Beck and McKeown (2007), and Vaughn et al. (2009) each showed gains on experi-
menter-designed passage comprehension measures that included the intervention target words.
Other intervention studies did not measure comprehension, or showed no relationships with
comprehension, but did yield gains in academic vocabulary (Townsend & Collins, 2009), aca-
demic discussions (Lawrence et al., 2015), and analysis skills (for reading specific disciplines;
Levine & Horton, 2015).

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Several past and recent multi-component reading comprehension interventions for elementary
EL struggling readers (e.g., Proctor, Dalton & Grisham, 2007) point to the conclusion that
improvements in reading comprehension are difficult to produce unless many components of
comprehension are targeted as part of the intervention (e.g., Proctor et al., 2007; Vaughn et al.,
2009; Taboada & Rutherford, 2011). When comprehension gains are achieved, gains are typically
on passages including the target words, and very rarely on global comprehension measures. There
are two potential explanations for the weak link, and both may be in play to varying degrees
depending on the study. First, as suggested by Lesaux et al. (2014), it is entirely possible that
standardized reading comprehension measures are too distal to pick up on gains made via robust
vocabulary instruction. Reading comprehension measures may require such a large overall lexi-
con that they are not sensitive to even significant gains in academic vocabulary knowledge.
Another possible explanation is that improved word knowledge, while a necessary ingredient, is
not sufficient for improved global comprehension performance. Intervention research that aims to
improve comprehension may need to expand to capture sentence and paragraph level structures,
and other comprehension processes (e.g., local and global inferences), in order for students to
apply their newfound word knowledge to larger sections of texts.
The instructional research that targeted academic literacy typically emphasized authentic texts,
opportunities to read and write, use of graphic organizers, multimedia, and well-structured dis-
cussions. But, outcomes on comprehension differed; it is unclear which combination of strategies,
or which intervention design, may have led to gains or lack thereof. Furthermore, interventions
designed to support students’ overall academic and disciplinary literacy often have broad goals
that represent multiple constructs. There are simply not enough studies on any specific literacy
objectives to draw confident conclusions across studies. For example, QuEST was designed to
support students’ science word knowledge and science comprehension, whereas Greenleaf et al.
(2011) were specifically working toward scientific reasoning and discourse norms. Both studies
yielded positive results, but their learning goals, while both related to science literacy, were
somewhat disparate from each other. These trends suggest a need for clarity in future interven-
tion research with respect to the purpose of each new or replicated intervention, with careful
links to the research with common purposes that came earlier.
In addition to conducting more research that explores common purposes and compares differ-
ent approaches in academic language instruction to meet those purposes, there are two gaps in
the literature that require attention. The first is an implementation gap between what research
suggests and what pre- and in-service teachers have opportunities to learn. The second gap is
a bridging gap between the body of work on academic language instruction and the critiques of
academic language from a raciolinguistics perspective.

Bridging the Implementation Gap: From Research to Practice

A troubling implementation gap in academic language research exists between what the field
of literacy knows about academic language development and instruction, and what we see
enacted in classrooms. Halliday (1999) provides strong guidance for teachers regarding the
role language plays in learning by describing the three forms of language in schooling: (1) in
learning language (first and/or second language development); (2) in learning through language
(subject matter); (3) and in learning about language (metalanguage). Considering language in
this threefold way has important implications for pre- and in-service teachers; teachers must
have opportunities to develop their own knowledge about language, both language acquisi-
tion and language specific to the disciplines. There are multiple professional learning (PL)
models that have affected change in teachers’ practice, as well as several models that have
impacted student learning. At the pre-service level, one emerging component of teacher

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certification is edTPA, which spotlights teacher candidates’ understanding and implementation

of four components of academic language including: vocabulary, language function, discourse,
and syntax (Lim et al., 2015). Additionally, a number of practitioner publications draw on
concepts and principles related to SFL to provide practical resources for educators (Buehl,
2011; Fang & Schleppegrell, 2008a; Zwiers, 2014). Established models that have broadened
and improved teachers’ practices with language development in general are also in place
(Baker, Lewis, Uysal, Purzer, Lang, & Baker, 2011; Bowers, Fitz, Quirk, & Jung, 2010; Cor-
renti, 2007; Gebhard, Willett, Jimenez, & Piedra, 2010; Gersten et al., 2010; Heinrichs &
Leseman, 2014; Kindle, 2013; Masters et al., 2010). Additionally, several PL initiatives have
shown impacts on both teachers’ practice and students’ learning, specifically related to aca-
demic language (Achugar, Schleppegrell, & Oteiza, 2007; Greenleaf et al., 2011; Short et al.,
2011; Short, Cloud, Morris, & Motta, 2012, p. 407; Townsend, 2014). Specifically, de Oli-
veira (2012) suggests that teachers have knowledge in identifying discipline-specific academic
language and designing scaffolding activities to help students build competencies with that
language.
One additional approach to bridge this research to practice gap is to investigate the impact
of PL that addresses academic sentences and paragraphs. As evidenced by the research
reviewed in this chapter, studies that have investigated the impact of academic language
instruction have generally focused narrowly on academic vocabulary or broadly on academic
literacy. Few studies have included specific instruction on the kinds of linguistic features that
characterize academic sentences and paragraphs (see Uccelli et al., 2015, and Uccelli, Phillips
Galloway, & Qin in this volume, for an overview of selected features). There are likely
reasons for this. First, the relationship between vocabulary and comprehension is well-
established, making vocabulary an important instructional target for any learning objective.
Second, identifying and teaching the grammatical structures that communicate meaning in aca-
demic language poses a unique challenge; to unpack sentences and paragraphs requires some
degree of comfort with syntax and pragmatics. However, just as vocabulary researchers have
identified effective ways of building abstract and technical vocabulary knowledge through
work with authentic reading, writing, speaking, and listening, the same approach could poten-
tially be used with features like connectives, anaphoric references, embedded clauses, nominal-
izations and noun phrases, and tracking ideas through text. These linguistic features are
hallmarks of academic language (Uccelli et al., 2015), and they directly relate to comprehen-
sion (LaRusso et al., 2016). There is a need for interventions that support students with aca-
demic sentences and academic paragraphs, in addition to the current targets in the
instructional research literature, academic vocabulary and academic literacy. Interventions that
support dissection and comprehension of sentences and paragraphs, from authentic texts that
are worth reading in their own right, are a logical next line of inquiry and may have potential
to capture those elusive comprehension gains. Though the field is not without models for this
work (Achugar, Schleppegrell, & Oteiza, 2007; Schleppegrell & de Oliveira, 2006), there is
little related to reading comprehension. However, many researchers in the area of writing
have explored how explicit instruction in the functions of language can support students’ pro-
duction of academic language (Coxhead & Byrd, 2007; Gebhard, Harman, & Seger, 2007;
Schleppegrell & Go, 2007; Spycher, 2007). Certainly, PL of this kind would require
a commitment, especially when considering the history of vocabulary instruction. Despite the
evidence for robust, interactive, and authentic vocabulary instruction since the early 1980s
(Beck, Perfetti, & McKeown, 1982), passive and outdated approaches to vocabulary hold sway
(Gamez & Lesaux, 2015; Scott, Jamieson-Noel, & Asselin, 2003). Supporting teachers through
pre- and in-service PL on bringing both embedded and explicit sentence/paragraph compre-
hension supports into their classrooms will require a commitment of time and resources.

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Bridging the Gap between Academic Language and Raciolinguistics

The second gap that needs attention is the scarce communication between, and among, comple-
mentary fields relevant for academic language research. With respect to critiques of academic lan-
guage as an instructional goal for students, we include a consideration of raciolinguistics (Avineri
et al., 2015; Flores & Rosa, 2015). Flores and Rosa (2015) argue that K-12 schooling in the
U.S. operates within a raciolinguistic ideology. To elaborate, by identifying academic language as
the “appropriate” register for school, all students who have not been socialized into academic
language contexts fall into a “deficient” category. Raciolinguistics, as applied to public schools,
positions some students as “haves” and some as “have nots”; identifying academic language as
necessary for success reifies these structures. Even as emergent bilingual learners build academic
language proficiency, they are still judged within systems of power that privilege white, middle
class students. Flores and Rosa refer to the phenomenon of “white gaze” (Morrison, 1998, cited
in Paris & Alim, 2014, p. 86), a perspective that “privileges dominant white perspectives on the
linguistic and cultural practices of racialized communities” (Flores & Rosa, p. 151). The problem,
as viewed with a raciolinguist lens, is that the system of schooling in the U.S. is pervasively
tainted with racist ideologies that are intrinsically intertwined with language practices. Even in
the midst of much research demonstrating the cognitive advantages of bilingualism (Brito & Barr,
2012; Pelham & Abrams, 2014), raciolingusitic scholars aptly highlight the many studies that cite
the academic needs and deficits of non-native English speakers (Flores & Rosa, 2015). There are
similar discourse patterns for low-SES students (Avineri et al., 2015). The central tension, and
question, is that linguistic readiness for academic work is often and inextricably tied to some
groups of students and families and not others, creating inequity from the start.
Those scholars working within the tradition of SFL and academic vocabulary research could
be perceived as “at odds” with those working from a critical stance and exploring the raciolin-
guistic framework that serves to reify inequities. And this conflict exists despite the purported
neutrality of scholarship in the SFL tradition. An important theme in SFL scholarship is that dif-
ferent registers of language are not positioned as superior or inferior to each other. In the SFL
tradition, registers are not privileged or ranked as more or less complex or decontextualized. All
language is complex and all language is contextualized. Scholars operating within an SFL frame-
work strive to maintain a neutrality to these discussions of academic language (Bailey, 2007).
Based on the research reviewed for this chapter, academic vocabulary and language researchers
are working from this perspective. In no research reviewed for this chapter did any researcher
advocate for a replacement approach in which home, community, and social registers of language
were not recognized as important and vitally related to students’ identities.
Academic language, then, can be positioned as either a component of systemic inequity (via
raciolinguistics) or as a more neutral set of linguistic resources (via SFL). We seek to mediate
these seemingly irreconcilable differences. Our first recommendation is that academic language
researchers working from an SLF perspective, or within the tradition of vocabulary research, con-
sider working within two frames. First, academic language instruction research should operate
from an open platform, an open instructional space, that encourages multiple ways of using, and
analyzing, language and linguistic choices. In this open platform, academic language instruction
can then provide all students opportunities to enhance their existing linguistic repertoires to sup-
port communication in academic settings.
Simultaneously, however, academic language research can, and arguably should, make space
for students and teachers to identify, challenge, and dismantle the systemic inequities identified
by raciolinguistics scholars. Scholars within this framework typically ask what might be accom-
plished if “the goal of teaching and learning with youth of color was not ultimately to see how
closely students could perform on White middle-class norms but to explore, honor, extend, and

357
Dianna Townsend et al.

problematize their heritage and community practices” (Paris & Alim, 2014, p. 86). By way of
moving forward, academic language instruction researchers may want to address the notion of
“lack” or “absence” that so often characterizes work in academic language with multilingual stu-
dents. Research on emergent bilinguals often casts a broad net and identifies emergent bilinguals
as any student who speaks another language, or a combination of English and another language,
outside of school. While this broad net has been a good faith effort to support all multilingual
students and not just newcomers to the U.S., it may also have led to lower expectations of
a large group of students that is very diverse with respect to their academic language strengths.
Indeed, there are important and divergent patterns related to emergent bilingual students in the
academic language instruction research. Several studies yielded larger gains for emergent bilinguals
who were more proficient in English than for their peers who were less proficient in English
(August et al., 2014; Lawrence et al., 2012; Townsend & Collins, 2009). These studies, among
others (Butler & Hakuta, 2015), dismantle the misconception that emergent bilinguals are
a monolithic group. Reflection on the ways that academic language research has inadvertently
promoted, or unintentionally fueled, a deficit model could enhance conversations among
researchers and establish more open and equitable norms for moving forward. In the spirit of
leaning in to reflective and critical work, we see two opportunities for bridging this gap. First,
we recommend opening pathways of communication with raciolinguistics scholars, and scholars
working from other Critical Theory frameworks. Reading, writing, and designing interventions
together can allow for language instruction and analysis in inclusive spaces. Second, as recom-
mended by Flores (2016), teachers need support in hosting classrooms that engage in language
exploration; such classrooms would support students in analyzing language choices made by
authors and themselves, and the relationships between those choices and the contexts and audi-
ences for which they are used.

A Final, Integrated Model for Moving Forward

To bridge these gaps in the research related to teacher knowledge about language and the sys-
temic inequities that are entangled with academic language, we recommend an approach forward.
This approach is illustrated by a new figure (see Figure 18.2), which adds two new instructional
targets, Academic Sentences/Paragraphs and Critical Spaces, to our original figure.
Again, these instructional targets for academic language research are not mutually exclusive,
but the lack of intervention studies on academic sentences and paragraphs suggests a renewed
focus on the specific linguistic features that make academic language academic. Research on
morphology (Goodwin, Lipsky, & Ahn, 2012; Kieffer & Box, 2013; Kieffer & Lesaux, 2010),
connectives (Crosson & Lesaux, 2013), and sentence, paragraph, and register levels of academic
language (LaRusso et al., 2016; Uccelli et al., 2015) can be used to build language goals. Add-
itionally, the new waves of research on disciplinary literacy can be used to help situate academic
sentence/paragraph interventions within authentic disciplinary contexts.
With these recommendations for future directions, we offer two notes of caution. First, there
is the possibility that attention to specific linguistic features will lead interventions away from dis-
ciplinary content in favor of specific language outcomes. Just as vocabulary instruction should be
in the service of comprehension and production (rather than vocabulary for the sake of vocabu-
lary), any focus on specific linguistic features should be situated in meaningful contexts. Second,
efforts to invest in the kinds of interventions that can affect change in reading comprehension
and achievement require policy and administrator support. Studies on ALIAS, Word Generation,
SIOP, and QuEST all described the systemic challenges with garnering enough time for students’
instruction and teachers’ PL. The large-scale PL initiatives that have been successful have required
serious commitments of time and resources.

358
 Learning Academic Language, Comprehending Text

Creating Critical Spaces for

Equity & Inclusion:
cultivating classrooms that
encourage and explore the
functions of multiple
registers of language

Developing Academic Literacy:

developing capacities with
vocabulary, reading, writing,
discussion, scholarly habits, and
discourse norms in academic
settings

Developing Academic
Sentence/Paragraph Comprehension:
developing strategies for
comprehending for academic
sentences and paragraphs to help
students: unpack density of meaning,
connect ideas/participants/themes
across a text, organize a text, and
identify a writer's viewpoint/tone

Developing Academic
Vocabulary:
developing knowledge of
general and discipline-
specific academic vocabulary,
connectives, and
morphology

Figure 18.2 Recommended instructional targets for academic language instruction in future research

To conclude, we draw attention to the top level of the new figure, that of Critical Spaces. By
nesting all three instructional targets for academic language research within this level, we are call-
ing for more attention to the sociolinguistic contexts of academic language (see Uccelli, Phillips
Galloway, & Qin, this volume, for a similar argument for developing critical rhetorical flexibil-
ity). The scholarship operating within a raciolinguistics frame, as well as research that has
explored the intersection of reading comprehension and race (see, for example, Lee, 2015), pro-
vide for a much richer conversation of language and literacy goals than is typically included in
academic language pedagogy. We do see ways forward with research that involves all stakeholders
and seeks to understand the academic language and learning experiences of students, families, and

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teachers. We think there are important opportunities, and a compelling rationale, to collaborate
across different frameworks from SFL, raciolinguistics, literacy, and other fields and theories. We
live in a world in which academic language is necessary for academic and career success, and,
simultaneously, in a world that includes systemic inequities. This tension can be generative; we
believe that by listening and making space for multiple ways of knowing and using language, we
can effect change both inside and to the educational system.

Note
1 Many labels have been ascribed to students who speak more than one language at varying levels of profi-
ciency. For ease of reading this chapter, we consistently use the term “emergent bilingual” to refer to
students that are learning English and who also speak one or more other languages they speak. Some
emergent bilinguals may have spoken English for years, but not as their dominant language. Others may
be newcomers to the U.S. and in the early stages of learning English. In the current review of the litera-
ture, emergent bilingual learners are typically classified in their school districts as English Language
Learners.

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 19
High Quality Language
Environments Promote Reading
Development in Young Children
and Older Learners
Perla B. Gámez

Given the global demographic shifts and accelerating advancements in technology, the occupa-
tions held by the current workforce will inevitably undergo fundamental transformations, which
will lead to changes in the demands of work-related skills (World Economic Forum [WEF],
2014). Of the skills that will be in high demand across a variety of fields, critical thinking has
been highlighted as a top skill that will determine academic and life success. Yet, today’s youth
are not being adequately equipped with the critical thinking skills requisite for success in the
workforce, as is evident by the low reading rates worldwide (Gurria, 2016). In the U.S., about
37% of 12th graders score at or above proficient levels in reading comprehension, in line with
the numbers in 8th and 4th grade (National Center for Education Statistics, 2015). These statistics
imply that a majority of students in U.S. classrooms cannot engage in high-level comprehension,
that is, “critical, reflective thinking about text” (Murphy, Wilkinson, Soter, & Hennessey, &
Alexandar, 2009).
We now know that engaging students in deep and meaningful language interactions, particu-
larly around text, promotes critical thinking and reading comprehension (Murphy, Firetto, Wei,
Li, & Croninger, 2016; Murphy et al., 2009). In fact, the widely adopted standards-based prac-
tices aimed at increasing reading rates call for immersing students in language-rich classroom
environments, ones that provide frequent opportunities for exposure to and use of high quality
language (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices [NGA Center] & Council of
Chief State School Officers [CCSSO], 2010). These recommendations are partly based on the
well-documented link between language and reading skills (NICHD Early Child Care Research
Network, 2005; Storch & Whitehurst, 2002). Despite the critical importance of language to read-
ing, not all students have access to language-rich classroom environments. Thus, without
a transformation of the classroom language environments in which students are learning to read,
there will be a large skills mismatch between the demands of future jobs and what the entering
workforce will be able to supply (National Research Council, 2013; WEF, 2014).
Indeed, the findings from existing research on the classroom language environment suggest
that this foundational process of the classroom setting serves as a promising lever for improving
language and reading outcomes. The goals of this chapter are twofold: to provide an overview of

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the research findings from separate, but related, sets of literature that reveal the features of the
high-quality classroom language environment that promote children’s language and reading
development as well as discuss the implications of these findings on educational practice and
research. Specifically, this chapter includes an overview of the empirical literature on language
input (i.e. children’s exposure to language), which makes the case that teacher and peer language
input influence children’s language and reading skills. This chapter also includes an overview of
the empirical literature on the language-facilitating techniques that teachers can use to promote
students’ high-quality language use. The first section of this chapter theoretically motivates the
connection between children’s exposure to high quality language and their language and reading
development. The chapter concludes by identifying critical gaps in our knowledge about the
impact of the classroom language environment and suggests future directions for comprehensively
exploring how the classroom language environment functions to promote language and reading
development.

Connection between High Quality Language and Reading

Development

Theoretical Underpinnings
There are numerous theories of reading comprehension that describe the key skills and multi-
faceted processes involved in comprehending text (McNamara & Magliano, 2009; RAND Read-
ing Study, 2002). Central variables include the text, which contains high quality language (e.g.
sophisticated vocabulary, complex syntactic structures) and the reader, who comes equipped with
a host of cognitive and linguistic skills (e.g. knowledge of sophisticated and complex language
structures) (Snow, Corno, & Jackson, 1996). A long line of research has established that, of the
many reader variables involved, young children’s decoding (i.e. word recognition and fluency)
and oral language skills (i.e. vocabulary) are crucial to reading comprehension (Gough &
Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Joshi & Aaron, 2000; Kirby & Savage, 2008; Language
and Reading Research Consortium, 2015; Tunmer & Hoover, 1992; Vellutino, Tumner, Jaccard
& Chen, 2007). With age, word recognition skills become more automatic as the vocabulary and
syntax demands of the required reading materials increase. Longitudinal studies of reading devel-
opment underscore the importance of linguistics skills in predicting later reading comprehension
(Catts, Herrera, Nielson, & Bridges, 2015; Kendeou, Van den Broek, White, & Lynch, 2009;
Ouellette & Beers, 2010; Storch & Whitehurst, 2002). In other words, reading for understanding
requires students’ knowledge of the language of text (Freebody & Anderson, 1983; Nagy, Ander-
son, & Herman, 1987), in particular, sophisticated vocabulary and complex syntax (Schleppegrell,
2004; Snow & Uccelli, 2009).
The critical role of high-quality linguistic representations in supporting successful reading
comprehension has theoretical support. As explained by the Lexical Quality Hypothesis (Perfetti,
2007; Perfetti & Hart, 2002), good reading comprehension depends on the quality of the reader’s
lexical representations. Quality refers to the extent to which lexical representations include not
only orthographical and phonological, but also morphological, syntactic and semantic components
of a word. Quality also refers to how integrated these word components are with one another. If
lexical representations are high quality, that is, well-specified and redundant (i.e. include all com-
ponents), then the activation of one component (e.g. syntactic) leads to the activation of the
other components (e.g. semantic). The (in)efficiency in retrieving words will lead to (un)success-
ful comprehension of texts.
The more comprehensive Reading Systems Framework (RSF; Perfetti & Stafura, 2014) empha-
sizes a broader set of knowledge sources during reading, with a particular focus on word

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knowledge, and the cognitive and reading processes that act on these knowledge sources. Within
the RSF, the reader’s linguistic, orthographic, and general knowledge sources (i.e. about the
world, text forms, etc.) are used by a multitude of reading processes (i.e. decoding, word identifi-
cation, meaning retrieval, sentence parsing, inferencing, and comprehension monitoring) within
a cognitive system with limited processing resources. Critically, the mental lexicon, where lexical
representations (including semantic and syntactic) are stored, is a central connection point
between the word identification system and the comprehension system in the RSF. That is, the
interaction between the word identification system and the comprehension system is mediated by
lexical knowledge.
An implication of these claims is that a critical foundation to successful reading comprehension
is access to high-quality language experiences. In other words, successful reading comprehension
depends on children’s access to language environments that create high-quality language experi-
ences, ones in which words and their multiple components (e.g. semantics, syntax) are encoun-
tered frequently. In the classroom setting, opportunities for children to encounter words arise
through their exposure to and use of written (i.e. texts) and oral language (i.e. oral discussions).

The Features of High Quality Language

In particular, academic language permeates the entire school curriculum and therefore, opportun-
ities that ensure children’s exposure to and use of academic language is central to their academic
success. Academic language is typically referred to as the language of schooling; a set of registers
(oral, written) used at school to engage with disciplinary content (Bailey, Butler, Stevens, &
Lord, 2007; Barnes, Grifenhagen, & Dickinson, 2016; Cummins, 1979; Nagy & Townsend,
2012; Schleppegrell, 2009; Snow & Uccelli, 2009; Valdes, 2004). Unlike more informal language,
which is typically conveyed through contextual cues and face-to-face conversation, academic lan-
guage is often decontextualized (i.e. removed from the here and now) and thus, relies more
heavily on the use of linguistic over contextual cues in the environment (Snow, 1983). Of the
many linguistic expectations of academic language, its use requires knowledge of specific vocabu-
lary and syntactic structures (Snow & Uccelli, 2009). More expansive definitions of academic lan-
guage are offered elsewhere, for example, that cover what students understand about the
morphology and discourse function of academic language (Uccelli, Galloway, Barr, Meneses, &
Dobbs, 2015).

Descriptions of High Quality Language Features

Two widely cited features of academic language include sophisticated vocabulary and complex
syntax. Sophisticated vocabulary refers to low-frequency words that fall outside of the most com-
monly heard words in everyday interactions (Weizman & Snow, 2001), but which are character-
istic of text (Dickinson, Hofer, Barnes, & Grifenhagen, 2014). Syntax refers to the set of rules for
combining words into sentences in any given language. A principal feature of academic language
is its syntactic complexity, which is typically characterized as the use of various syntactic struc-
tures and different patterns of embedded structures (Barnes et al., 2016; Huttenlocher, Vasilyeva,
Cymerman, & Levine, 2002; Scarcella, 2003; Schleppegrell, 2001; Snow & Uccelli, 2009). For
example, in academic language, sentences contain multiple clauses (i.e. a verb phrase and other
accompanying elements) that are either embedded in or conjoined with one another. Snow and
Uccelli (2009), like Halliday (1994), argue that a distinctive feature of academic language is
embeddedness, where one element of a sentence is a structural part of another element, as
opposed to being dependent on (but not part of) another clause. Structures like embedded clauses

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allow for the expression of a density of information, and thus, complex sentences are typically
(but not necessarily) longer than simple sentences.
In fact, syntactic complexity is thought of as linguistic tool that allows for the expression of
complex ideas within one sentence (Huttenlocher et al., 2002). Halliday (1994) explains that chil-
dren are simultaneously engaged in learning language and learning through language (i.e. form
and meaning). The progression from mastering simple to complex syntax is viewed as a process
of “learning how to mean.” In other words, with new forms of language come new forms of
knowledge because in learning to use varied grammatical forms, children can construct meanings
for a range of purposes. Learning the complex syntactic forms that are typical of the academic
register thus allows children to express and think about more complex ideas than they would
with simple sentences.

High Quality Language Measures

Various measures are available for estimating children’s use of and exposure to sophisticated
vocabulary and complex syntax across different ages. Existing word lists are useful in identify-
ing sophisticated or rare words from high-frequency words (e.g. words commonly known to
4th graders: Chall & Dale, 1995; Academic Word List (AWL): Coxhead, 2000; General Ser-
vice List: West, 1953). These lists can be used to filter out high-frequency words in order to
calculate the diversity of sophisticated words, commonly referred to as the number of differ-
ent sophisticated words (i.e. types), in a sample of speech or text; this is versus the total
number of words or words (i.e. tokens). A smaller set of different sophisticated word types
reflects low diversity; a higher set of different sophisticated word types reflects greater
diversity.
Common methods for estimating the syntactic complexity of speech and text include calculat-
ing the mean length of utterance (MLU) and proportion of complex utterances. An utterance
refers to an uninterrupted stream of speech that is typically bounded by pauses, intonation, and
conversational turns (MacWhinney, 2007). MLU quantifies utterance length in either words
(MLUw) or morphemes (MLUm), which are the smallest units of meaning in an utterance (e.g.
“books” consists of one word, but two morphemes: the word form book and the plural marker
“s”). These two measures of utterance length are highly correlated with each other (Parker &
Brorson, 2005), at least at early stages of language development. According to the rules set forth
by Brown (1973), the total number of morphemes (or words) is divided by the total number of
utterances in a sample of at least 100 intelligible utterances (Miller & Chapman, 1981). These
calculations can be done by hand or with free and publicly-available computer software (e.g.
Computerized Language ANalysis; CLAN; MacWhinney, 2007). MLU is considered a broad
indicator of syntactic complexity as larger values indicate longer utterances and thus, greater syn-
tactic complexity.
Some scholars suggest that MLU provides a less accurate assessment of syntactic complexity
at later stages of language development, in comparison to earlier stages (Scarborough, 1990;
Scarborough, Rescorla, Tager-Flusberg, Fowler, & Sudhalter, 1991; Vasilyeva, Waterfall, &
Huttenlocher, 2008). Huttenlocher and colleagues (Huttenlocher et al., 2002; Vasilyeva et al.,
2008) thus offer an alternative measure of syntactic complexity that can be used across ages,
specifically, the proportion of complex utterances in speech or text. This figure is calculated
over the total number of utterances in the speech or text sample. In order to derive this
measure of syntactic complexity, each utterance is classified as either multi-clause (i.e. contain-
ing more than one clause) or not (i.e. zero-clauses or one-clause). Multi-clause utterances are
generally considered complex. The type of complex utterance can be further categorized
based on the structural relations between the clauses, for example, embeddedness. In the

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following section we review the bodies of literature on language input that use these principle
measures of high quality language, specifically sophisticated vocabulary and complex syntax,
and provide evidence for the connection between language interactions and language
development.

Connection between Language Development and Language Exposure

The social-cultural framework emphasizes the importance of both the learner and the environ-
ment in shaping language development (Bruner, 1983; Vygotsky, 1978). Language is considered
a by-product of social interaction as well as the primary social tool for communication. In strong
opposition to the proposal that language acquisition is innate (Chomsky, 1981), interactionists
(Snow, 1994; Tomasello, 2000) emphasize the joint contribution of children’s innate language
learning capacities and their exposure to and use of language in the language learning process.
According to the interactionist approach, the optimal language learning environment is one in
which children are provided with scaffolded language interactions, in which more knowledgeable
people (e.g. caregivers, teachers, and more advanced peers) expose children to language that is
slightly above the child’s current level of linguistic skill. Specifically, language-rich environments
lead to exposure to the increasingly sophisticated and complex language that children are
expected to master with age.
The Emergentist Coalition Model (Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, & Hollich, 2000) of language learning
further explains the connection between language input and language development. The ECM
posits that the language learner relies on a “coalition” of information sources, which shift in
importance across development. At the earliest stages of language development, children rely
heavily on the perceptual features of words that “stand out” and grab their attention (e.g. Smith,
2000). Over time, children shift their reliance onto social (e.g. eye gaze, gestures; Tomasello,
2000) and linguistic cues, such as the vocabulary and syntax of language input. As they mature,
the linguistic cues provided by input become the prominent sources of information that inform
learning (Hoff & Naigles, 2002). For example, word learners use their knowledge of syntactic
structures and/or known words in the input to figure out the meaning of unknown words
(Gleitman, 1990; Landau & Gleitman, 1985).

The Home Language Environment: Caregiver Language Input

A long line of descriptive and longitudinal research on young children’s language development
shows evidence of a relation between children’s language skills and the language input provided
by caregivers at home (Hart & Risley, 1995; Hoff, 2003; Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk, Seltzer, &
Lyons, 1991; Pan, Rowe, Snow & Singer, 2005; Weizman & Snow, 2001). While the amount
of caregiver language input is thought to be important at the earliest stages of language learning
(Huttenlocher et al., 1991), indicators of the quality of input appear to be more potent predictors
of language skills as children age (Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015; Pan et al., 2005). In particular, care-
givers’ sophisticated word types is predictive of their children’s vocabulary skills, above and
beyond their amount of input (Weizman & Snow, 2001). The idea is that exposure to a diverse
set of sophisticated words provides children with multiple exemplars of words and how they are
used to convey different meanings across contexts.
Another indicator of the quality of language input is the syntactic complexity of caregivers’
speech. Caregivers’ longer MLUs—in words and morphemes—are typically associated with chil-
dren’s syntactic as well as vocabulary development (Bornstein, Haynes, & Painter, 1998; Hoff, E.,
2003; Hoff & Naigles, 2002; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1998). The proportion of caregivers’ complex utter-
ances also predicts young children’s syntactic development (Bornstein et al., 1998; Hoff &

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Naigles, 2002; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1998). Of note, a longitudinal study of caregiver–child interactions

showed a relation between caregivers’ use of syntactic structures when the children were 14
months, and the corresponding syntactic structures in the children’s speech at 46 months (Hut-
tenlocher, Waterfall, Vasilyeva, Vevea, & Hedges, 2010). In that study, the child’s earlier syntax
did not significantly predict later caregiver syntax. Of note, this unidirectional association points
to a causal role of caregivers’ use of a particular syntactic structure on children’s subsequent learn-
ing of those syntactic structures.
These findings of a positive relation between young children’s language skills and their care-
givers’ language use lend credence to the argument that children’s foundational reading skills,
including vocabulary and syntax, are shaped by their early language experiences. In particular,
young children with access to high quality language environments, in which they hear more
diverse and complex language, will develop more advanced vocabulary and syntactic skills. Thus,
a promising way to improve children’s language skills and reading development is to improve
their early access to high-quality language experiences.

The Classroom Language Environment: Teacher Language Input

The language-rich classroom environment is an additional source of exposure to the sophisticated
vocabulary and complex syntax that school-age children are expected to comprehend, particularly
in text (Snow & Uccelli, 2009). Exposure to high-quality, language-rich classrooms may be par-
ticularly important for children with limited opportunities for English language exposure at
home, for example, if the primary home language does not match the language of instruction
(e.g. dual language learners [DLLs], English language learners, second language learners). In fact,
DLLs1 with limited English proficiency are generally characterized, as a group, as “at risk” for
English-related reading difficulties (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2015), in
part due to their insufficient command of English. Indeed, research highlights the importance of
well-developed language skills in preventing reading difficulties in young DLLs akin to the rela-
tion observed for English-only (EO) children (August & Shanahan, 2006; Hammer et al., 2014;
Lonigan, Farver, Nakamoto, & Eppe, 2013).
Decades of research show that teachers consume the majority of the total classroom talk time
(Cazden, 2001; Chaudron, 1988; Mehan, 1979; Mercer, 1995), thus implicating teachers’ lan-
guage use as a significant input source across the school years. At the same time, classroom obser-
vation studies reveal wide variation in terms of the quality of teacher language input (e.g.,
Dickinson et al., 2014; Gámez & Lesaux, 2015), which appears to be stable over the school year
(Gámez & Lesaux, 2015). This variability across classrooms in terms of teacher language input
indicates substantial disparities in children’s access to high-quality classroom language environ-
ments. These classroom-based language disparities are significant in light of research findings that
suggest a long-lasting influence of early high-quality classroom language experiences on children’s
development (Burchinal et al., 2008; Dickinson & Porche, 2011; NICHD Early Child Care
Research Network, 2000; Mashburn et al., 2008; Peisner-Feinberg et al., 2001; Pianta, La Paro,
Payne, Cox, & Bradley, 2002).

Teacher Input and Young Children’s Language Development

In particular, exposure to teachers’ syntactic complexity is associated with young EO and DLL
children’s vocabulary and syntactic skills (Bowers & Vasilyeva, 2011; Gámez & Levine, 2013;
Huttenlocher et al., 2002). In a seminal study of teacher input in preschool classrooms, Huttenlo-
cher and colleagues (Huttenlocher et al., 2002) found a positive relation between teachers’ syn-
tactic complexity and their EO students’ growth on a syntactic comprehension task, from fall to

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spring of the preschool year. In that study, children’s syntactic comprehension was measured
using a researcher-developed assessment with items that increased in length and complexity.
During the middle of the school year, teachers’ language was audio-recorded in order to calculate
their number of multi-clause utterances and derive the proportion of complex utterances. The
results revealed more syntactic growth in the preschoolers who were exposed to teachers with
a higher proportion of complex utterances, in comparison to preschoolers with teachers with
a lower proportion of complex utterances. Gámez and Levine (2013) also relied on naturalistic
observation techniques to measure teachers’ language use, including syntactic complexity, in kin-
dergarten classrooms designed expressly for DLLs; the language of instruction was the DLLs’
native language (Transitional Bilingual Education program; TBE). The DLLs’ native Spanish
skills were assessed in the fall and spring, using standardized vocabulary and sentence-level assess-
ments. The study results revealed that the TBE teachers’ proportion of complex utterances was
positively associated with their DLL students’ Spanish language skill gains, including in the
domains of vocabulary and syntax.
In another study of teacher language input in English-speaking preschools, Bowers and Vasilyeva
(2011) audio-recorded teachers’ language use with their EO and limited-English proficient DLL stu-
dents. The study findings showed that teachers’ syntactic complexity, as measured by MLUw, was
negatively related to their DLL students’ gains on a standardized measure of vocabulary, from the fall
to the spring of the academic year. There was no significant relation between teachers’ MLUw and
EO children’s skill gains. The negative association with MLUw in that study contends with the results
from the only other study—to date—that assesses the relation between teachers’ MLUw in English
and young DLLs’ English skills (Gámez, 2015). Specifically, Gámez (2015) found a positive associ-
ation between limited-English proficient DLLs’ gains in English vocabulary and sentence-level skills
and their teachers’ vocabulary diversity. Teachers’ vocabulary diversity in English was measured
during the English Language Development (ELD) blocks, which are portions of the school day that
are designated for English language instruction in an otherwise Spanish-speaking classroom.
It is worth noting that, on average, the TBE teachers in Gámez’s (2015) study used lower
MLUw’s (~4 words) than did the teachers in Bowers and Vasilyeva’s (2011) study (~5 words).
This pattern of results suggests that teachers tailored their speech to match their students’ lan-
guage skills, a hypothesis that is supported by developmental theories that outline the adults’ role
in scaffolding children’s learning experiences (Bruner, 1983; Vygotsky, 1978). It is also worth
noting that in line with the methodology used in this line of research, the measures of teacher
input in these two studies were gleaned from portions of the school day when whole-group
instruction was taking place. Thus, the differences in teachers’ syntactic complexity between
these studies reflect the differences in the skill level of the respective classrooms, as a whole, and
not individual students’ language skills. In this case, the non-TBE teachers may have tailored
their speech toward their EO students, who are English proficient, whereas the TBE teachers
tailored their speech toward their limited-English proficient students.
The results from a recent study of teachers’ MLUw in Head Start classrooms, where teachers used,
on average, almost nine words per utterance (Barnes, Dickinson, & Grifenhagen, 2017), provide fur-
ther support for the idea that the optimal language environment is one in which language input is
slightly beyond, but not too far from, a child’s current level of independent performance (i.e. Zone
of Proximal Development; Vygotsky, 1978). That study involved children who performed below the
national mean on a standardized receptive vocabulary measure. The results showed that children in
classrooms where teachers used, on average, longer utterances evidenced lower vocabulary outcomes
than did children with teachers who used shorter utterances. The authors explained this negative rela-
tion of teachers’ increased MLUw to their students’ decreased vocabulary gains as an artifact of the
processing demands that are required by longer sentences. That is, overly long utterances may be too
challenging for children with still-developing language skills.

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The hypothesis that teachers’ high quality language serves to extend children’s language skills
is also supported by research findings of a relation between preschool teachers’ sophisticated
vocabulary and their EO and DLL students’ vocabulary development (Barnes et al., 2017;
Bowers & Vasilyeva, 2011; Dickinson & Porche, 2011; Dickinson & Smith, 1994). Specifically,
Bowers and Vasilyeva’s (2011) study findings revealed a positive association between preschool
teachers’ vocabulary diversity and their EO students’ vocabulary skill gains from fall to spring.
Whereas there were null effects of the diversity of their teachers’ vocabulary diversity for DLLs,
their English vocabulary skill gains were positively related to teachers’ amount of input (i.e. word
tokens). In contrast, Gámez and Levine (2013) found that DLLs’ Spanish skill gains were posi-
tively associated with their teachers’ vocabulary diversity. The differential influence of vocabulary
diversity on DLLs’ native and second (English) language skills suggests that input might function
differently for children at different stages of development, akin to the findings from home-based
language input studies. That is, the quantity of teachers’ language may matter more at the early
stages of language development, whereas later stages of language development are better sup-
ported by exposure to high quality language, which includes sophisticated and complex language
features.

Teacher Input and Older Learners’ Language Development

Indeed, a smaller, but growing research-base shows a link between the high-quality language
input provided by teachers and older learners’ language and reading skills. In a series of studies
conducted in middle schools serving high numbers of DLLs (up to 93% DLL), Gámez and
Lesaux (2012; 2015) found a positive relation between ELA teachers’ language use and their 6th
grade EO and DLL students’ vocabulary and reading outcomes. These studies were conducted in
classrooms where instruction was provided exclusively in English and teachers’ use of high quality
language, for example, vocabulary diversity, was gleaned from video-recorded observations of
English Language Arts (ELA) classes. The findings revealed a link between teachers’ sophisticated
vocabulary and students’—DLLs and EOs alike—English outcomes on standardized measures of
reading and researcher-developed measures of vocabulary. Yet, there was no significant relation
between these outcome measures and the total amount of teacher language input.
Another noteworthy finding from these classroom-based input studies is that the influence of
teachers’ complex syntax differed for DLLs as a function of their English language proficiency
(Gámez & Lesaux, 2012). Specifically, while teachers’ vocabulary diversity was positively associ-
ated with DLLs’ English vocabulary skills, regardless of students’ language proficiency, teachers’
syntactic complexity (as measured by the proportion of complex utterances) was positively associ-
ated with English vocabulary outcomes for DLLs, specifically those who had attained “advanced”
levels of English proficiency (as measured on a state-level test of language proficiency). Important
to note is that there were null effects of teachers’ syntactic complexity for DLLs with less-than-
advanced levels of language proficiency; it was not the case that the relation was negative. These
results suggest that teachers may extend older learners’ language skills by exposure to sophisticated
vocabulary and complex syntax, and that learners may filter out—without negative consequences
—input that is not finely-tuned to the learners’ language skill (i.e. may be too complex);
a similar process that has been proposed for young children (Hoff, 2006).

Summary of Research on Teacher Input

The findings from studies on teacher input indicate that teachers can promote the development
of sophisticated vocabulary and complex syntax by providing ample opportunities for exposure to
high quality language that includes sophisticated and complex language features. In particular, this

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line of research suggests that in order to effectively support and extend children’s language skills,
teachers should aim to fine tune their speech to meet the language needs of their students, not
only in early childhood, but also in early adolescence. Given the connection between reading
and language, gaining exposure to high quality language environments is a critical step toward
improving school-age children’s language and reading difficulties.

The Classroom Language Environment: Peers’ Language Use

Within the context of language interactions, the expert-learner imbalance of knowledge that is
thought to propel learning forward can also take the form of a relationship between the student,
as the learner, and more advanced peers, as the experts. Classroom observation studies that docu-
ment teacher–student interactions demonstrate that children are most likely to be involved in
whole-group configuration led by teachers, in comparison to any other configurations (Pianta
et al., 2005). When not involved in whole-group classroom configurations, children are in small
groups of peers where an adult is rarely present (Powell, Burchinal, File, & Kontos, 2008). Thus,
like teacher-student interactions, student-peer interactions can serve as sites for linguistic explor-
ation. Peer interactions can provide opportunities for language modeling, where learners are
exposed to a variety of linguistic forms, including diverse vocabulary and complex syntax. Peer
interactions can also provide opportunities for children to practice stretching their current linguis-
tic repertoire.
While less research has examined the influence of peer talk, over teacher talk, a few studies—
albeit mostly in preschool classrooms—point to the positive influence of peer language input on
children’s language skills (Grøver, Lawrence, & Rydland, 2016; Rydland, Grøver, & Lawrence,
2014). For example, in a study of DLL-peer interactions in preschool classrooms, Palermo and
Mikulski (2014) found that peers’ amount of English use in the fall was related to DLLs’ per-
formance on a standardized measure of English vocabulary in the spring. Specifically, using
a time-sampling method, the researchers measured target children’s English exposure as the
number of times their peers used English during play sessions in preschool classrooms. Also, in
the aforementioned study of the classroom language environment in TBE kindergarten class-
rooms, Gámez (2015) found a positive association between DLLs’ gains in English (i.e. vocabu-
lary and sentence-level skills) and the vocabulary diversity of classroom peers. Thus, the quantity
and quality of peers’ language use may be important for promoting young DLLs’ language
development.
It is worth noting that the findings from these studies that include a fine-grained linguistic
analysis of children’s classroom-based language interactions are in line with large-scale studies that
document the relation of children’s language skills to their preschool language environments, for
example, as measured by the level of their peers’ language ability (Justice, Petscher, Schatschnei-
der, & Mashburn, 2011; Mashburn, Justice, Downer, & Pianta, 2009). In one study, Mashburn
and colleagues (2009) assessed EO preschoolers’ expressive and receptive language (i.e. vocabulary
and sentence-level skills) from fall to spring in preschool and found that the average level of
peers’ language skill in the class predicted the spring scores of the children in that classroom. Just-
ice and colleagues (2011) further showed that while there was not a significant peer effect for
students with already-high levels of language skills, it was particularly strong for children with
low language skills at the start of the school year.
These findings of a positive influence of peer input in preschool classrooms indicate that peers
serve as potentially critical sources of information for learning language, including development
of precursor literacy skills such as vocabulary. Notably, these findings indicate that increasing the
frequency of children’s interactions with their peers (input quantity), who provide high quality
input (input quality), is particularly influential for children with low language skills. Thus,

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a promising avenue for improving children’s language and reading skills is a targeted effort to
create classroom activities that allow for peer interactions, particularly ones in which children can
hear and practice using high quality language.

Practice Recommendations: Implementing Language-Facilitating

Techniques
One widely recommended activity for promoting language development is shared book reading,
in part because it affords children opportunities to not only hear vocabulary embedded in various
grammatical structures, but also practice producing language. In shared book reading contexts,
adults read books aloud to children and actively engage them with text (National Research
Council, 1998; What Works Clearinghouse, 2013). Several meta-analyses of shared book reading
in early childhood classrooms show a robust relation between children’s participation in shared
book reading and their vocabulary development (e.g. Mol, Bus, De Jong, & Smeets, 2008).
Accumulating research also reports significant, but smaller, effects than for vocabulary, including
narrative production, which encompasses skill in a variety of other language domains, including
syntax (Gamez, Gonzalez, & Urbin, 2017; Sénéchal, Pagan, Lever, & Ouellette, 2008; Zevenber-
gen, Whitehurst, & Zevenbergen, 2003).
Particularly for struggling readers, teacher read alouds that consist of sophisticated vocabulary
and complex language can serve as a scaffold that bridges the gap between children’s current lin-
guistic abilities and what reading tasks require. During reading, teachers’ behaviors that facilitate
language use, for example, highlighting or discussing the language of the text as well as expand-
ing on students’ own language use, have been shown to support language learning (review in
Pentimonti et al., 2012). In particular, expanding on or recasting children’s short or incomplete
utterances into complete and/or more complex and grammatically correct sentences may help
young children practice and then acquire more complex syntactic structures (Barnes et al., 2017).
In general, shared reading experiences play an important role in promoting children’s oral lan-
guage when children are actively involved in discussions (e.g., Wasik & Bond, 2001; Wasik,
Bond, & Hindman, 2006; Whitehurst et al., 1994). In fact, interactive styles of shared book read-
ing produce larger effects on oral language skills than do non-interactive styles (Gerde & Powell,
2009; Zucker, Cabell, Justice, Pentimonti, & Kaderavek, 2013). For example, young children in
preschool and kindergarten classrooms with teachers who engage in more extra-textual talk (i.e.,
talk around text) make greater gains in vocabulary, in comparison with children in classrooms
with teachers who rely less on extra-textual talk, and this is the case not only for EOs, but DLLs
as well (Gamez et al., 2017).
For the older learner, the opportunity to engage in text-based classroom discussions, particu-
larly if they are small-group, has also been shown to be a critical factor in text comprehension
(Murphy et al., 2009; Wolf, Crosson, & Resnick, 2006). Middle and high-school students’ read-
ing skills are positively related to the amount of time spent in classroom discussion (Applebee,
Langer, Nystrand, & Gamoran, 2003; Gamoran & Nystrand, 1991). However, recent meta-
analyses reveal that not all discussion approaches generate the type of talk that is associated with
high-level comprehension and critical thinking (Murphy et al., 2009).
Instead, this line of research identifies several language-facilitating techniques that teachers of
older learners can use to promote classroom discussion, and thus, text comprehension (Nystrand,
Wu, Gamoran, Zeiser, & Long, 2003; Soter et al., 2008). For example, when teachers ask open-
ended questions, they allow for extended responses from the student. Students’ extended
responses allows them to practice producing different language forms, including sophisticated
vocabulary and complex syntax. A distinction is made between “authentic” and unauthentic
questions, the latter which typically are represented by “test” questions, which require only brief

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responses with pre-specified answers from the student. Authentic questions do not seek pre-
specified answers and instead, require extended responses from students. Another category of
questions is labeled “uptake” questions because they incorporate a previous response into
a question (Boyd & Rubin, 2006).
In their analysis of discussion approaches that lead to high-level text comprehension, across
a range of grade and age levels, Soter et al. (2008) found that authentic questions tended to lead
to more opportunities for students’ to engage in elaborated explanations and thus, “high-level
thinking” (Nystrand, Gamoran, Kachur, & Prendergast, 1997). The authors took Webb’s (Webb,
Farivar, & Mastergeorge, 2002) stance that elaborated explanations fosters students’ “cognitive
restructuring” because it encourages them to reorganize the material presented to the class in
order to ensure that it will be comprehensible (Soter et al., 2008). In addition, elaborated explan-
ations force students to recognize the gaps in their understanding.
Taken together, the findings from the literature base on language-facilitating techniques—that
can be used with young children as well as older learners—suggest that teachers must share the
floor with their students by gradually releasing their control and allowing students to take on
more responsibility for the discussion. That is, a high-quality language environment is one in
which the teacher exposes students to sufficiently sophisticated and complex language, while also
incorporating language-facilitating techniques that invite students to produce such speech and
engage in high-level thinking. Thus, increasing students’ opportunities to engage in classroom
discussions is one way to augment and elevate the classroom language environment, which can
function as a support for language and reading development.

Future Directions that Address the Gaps in Our Knowledge-Base

The research findings on the importance of high-quality classroom language environments for
promoting language and reading skills—in young children and older learners—reinforce the need
to study the foundational processes of the classroom setting, in addition to specific instructional
practices. The research studies reviewed here suggest that a critical lever for improving children’s
language and literacy skills is access to high-quality language environments, ones that allows for
exposure to and use of the sophisticated and complex language features that children are expected
to comprehend in text, in particular, through fine-tuned teacher and peer language input as well
as teachers’ language-facilitating techniques. Questions remain, however, regarding when, for
whom, and how the classroom language environment functions to promote language and reading
development. Identifying these critical gaps in our knowledge base will help improve learning for
all students and will provide the basis for future research directions.
For example, much of the existing classroom language research employs correlational designs,
where language input and children’s language use have not been systematically manipulated (i.e.
in which classroom language interactions unfold naturally), and thus, these findings cannot be
interpreted as causal. While the associations between the classroom language environment and
children’s language and reading outcomes are consistent findings in the literature, it is possible
that unmeasured variables account for some results. Research studies employing experimental
designs are thus needed in order to rule out competing explanations.
One candidate experimental technique for examining the relation of input to children’s lan-
guage skills comes from the psycholinguistics literature. Specifically, the structural priming tech-
nique—in which children are asked to describe pictures after exposure to one of two alternating
syntactic forms (e.g., actives, passives)—allows researchers to systematically manipulate children’s
language input in a controlled environment (Bock, 1986; review in Pickering & Ferreira, 2008).
Making the case for providing finely-tuned complex syntactic input, the results of these studies
show that the modeling of developmentally-advanced syntactic forms, including passives, in

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comparison to actives, leads to an increase in the comprehension and production of passives, not
only for preschool- and kindergarten-age monolingual speakers (Huttenlocher, Vasilyeva, &
Shimpi, 2004), but DLLs as well (Gámez & Shimpi, 2016; Gámez & Vasilyeva, 2015). Other
manipulations to consider in experimental research are to systematically vary children’s language
exposure in terms of the number and diversity of vocabulary and syntactic forms that are pre-
sented to children of different ages.
On this note, much of the existing classroom language literature has focused on the domain
of vocabulary, at the expense of other language domains, both in terms of language input and
children’s language skills. In fact, while there has been an increase in the number of curriculum
intervention studies that are focused on vocabulary learning in the early grades (Beck &
McKeown, 2007; Biemiller & Boote, 2006), there has been less of an emphasis on syntax inter-
ventions in classrooms. Yet, there is evidence to suggest that syntax can be improved through
classroom interventions (Vasilyeva, Huttenlocher, & Waterfall, 2006). For example, in one syntax
intervention study, preschool children heard stories that contained a high proportion of passive
sentences; a control group heard the same stories with a high proportion of active sentences. At
post-test, the children who heard more passive sentences outperformed the children who heard
more active sentences on the production and comprehension of passives. Given the low fre-
quency of passives in children’s speech, children’s improved passive production and comprehen-
sion, after exposure to passives, shows that children’s syntax is sensitive to changes in the
language environment. Future research should explore the effectiveness of classroom interventions
that vary the structural complexity and sophistication of language interactions, paying attention to
vocabulary and syntax that is common in academic texts and discourse.
Also, the classroom-based language input studies that include fine-grained linguistic analyses—
in order to identify specific features of the classroom language environment that promote devel-
opment—typically include observations of language interactions at one time-point. Otherwise,
large-scale studies that include more than one time-point typically rely on broader indicators of
language input (e.g., the existence and frequency of teacher–student interactions), which are
gleaned from coding schemes that are applied to in-class or videotaped language interactions (e.g.
Castro, 2005; Pianta, Karen, Paro, & Hamre, 2008; Sprachman, Caspe, & Atkins-Burnett, 2009;
Smith, Dickinson, Sangeorge, & Anastasopoulos, 2002). Of note, limiting the number of partici-
pant observations in classroom-based language research limits the laborious transcription and
coding efforts required of fine-grained analyses. Yet, in order to begin to answer questions related
to the consistencies and changes in teachers’ and students’ language use over time, studies that
include multiple classroom observations are needed. Recent advances in technology (such as
audio and video) have already made the collection of data more cost-effective and feasible than
in years past. Further advances in computing technology (such as artificial intelligence) may facili-
tate fine-grained analysis given its potential to dramatically increase transcribing and coding prod-
uctivity. Thus, a worthwhile direction for future research is to examine whether and how
language use changes over time by increasing the number of observation time-points and sample
sizes that are typically used in these lines of research.
The existing classroom language literature base also does not fully elucidate why high-quality
classroom language promotes children’s language and reading development, in part because the
two sets of literature on language input and language-facilitating techniques tackle different vari-
ables of interest. For example, it is possible that teacher’s use of language-facilitating techniques,
including asking authentic questions, is also more syntactically complex and includes more sophis-
ticated vocabulary than other linguistic forms. In order to tackle the question of whether particu-
lar utterance types (e.g. open-ended questions) evoke complex and sophisticated language use,
a logical next step is to comprehensively explore the multiple features of the classroom language
environment and co-vary the different candidate linguistic forms. To do so will not only require

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large study sample sizes, but also that researchers harness the diversity in theoretical assumptions,
methodology, and discipline-specific conventions that are represented by their respective fields.
Moreover, the theoretical models reviewed here make it clear that the characteristics of the
learner and the group interact with text to impact development. Yet, many of the studies of the
classroom language environment have emphasized the importance of language interactions, particu-
larly within whole-group settings, with a primary focus on the teachers’ language use. While the
sophistication and complexity of vocabulary and syntax may differ by instructional contexts (e.g.,
book reading vs. centers) or topics (e.g., science vs. ELA), only recently have researchers attempted
to explore the different settings that evoke different types of talk (Dickinson et al., 2014). Emerging
work has also begun to explore the interdependencies of teachers’ and students’ use of complex lan-
guage (Justice, McGinty, Zucker, Cabell, & Piasta, 2013) and reveals a complex, bi-directional rela-
tion between teachers’ and students’ language use. Additional research is needed to explore the
different instructional contexts, topics, and classroom configurations (e.g. small-group vs. whole-
group; teacher-led vs. student/peer-led) that promote high-quality language use.
Given the linguistic and cultural diversity in today’s classrooms (Krogstad & Lopez, 2014;
Suitts, 2015), another timely direction for future research is to extend these lines of research and
comprehensively explore the classroom language environments of different learners. In particular,
more research is needed to better understand how classroom language functions to promote read-
ing development for children with different language profiles, including English-only and DLLs,
and in classrooms with students of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. The available
research suggests that the average quality of DLLs’ language learning environments is less than
good (Jacoby & Lesaux, 2014), especially in programs serving the lowest-income families
(NICHD, 2000; Peisner-Feinberg et al., 2001; Scarr, Eisenberg, & Deater-Deckard, 1994).
Given their fast growth rate, further investigations into how the classroom language environment
promotes language and reading development, particularly in classrooms that serve high numbers
of DLLs, represents an investment in the U.S.’ future.

Conclusions
In the meantime, the bodies of literature reviewed in this chapter suggest that efforts to improve
language and reading skills should include augmenting and elevating the language of the class-
room. In order to become skillful in the language of text, children must experience language-
rich environments that include the diverse set of words and variety of syntactic structures that are
common in text. The responsibility to create high-quality, language-rich classrooms will fall
mostly on teachers, who will need to to lead deep and meaningful classroom conversations with
their students. Therefore, teachers will require professional development opportunities to learn
about what makes for, and how to create, high-quality language environments with different
learner profiles. Of note, previous efforts to change teachers’ language practices have proven to
be challenging (Dickinson, 2011; Wasik et al., 2006). Changing, and later supporting, the
changes in teachers’ language practices likely involves changes in educational policy and teacher
preparation, not only practice, which will require extensive resources, including investments in
time and funding. Of note, many of the studies reviewed here rely on naturalistic observation
techniques, which means that many teachers are already well-versed in the language practices that
make for a high-quality classroom language environment. Thus, transforming classrooms into
high-quality language environments, ones that provide frequent opportunities for exposure to
and use of the high quality language that promotes reading, is a feasible way to prepare our
nation’s students for successful academic and life outcomes.

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Perla B. Gámez

Note
1 Given the lack of consensus in the field about terminology, the term Dual Language Learner (DLL) is
used here to refer to children negotiating two language systems; who learn two languages, including Eng-
lish from birth or sequentially, or who are in the process of learning English as second language.

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 20
Expanding Teaching and Learning
with Disciplinary Texts
The Case of Reading and Science
Cynthia Greenleaf and Kathleen Hinchman

Since the publication of the last Handbook of Reading Research, there have been many new studies
of teaching and learning with disciplinary texts. At the same time, controversies about the roles
of subject-area teachers in fostering specialized literacies with increasingly diverse student popula-
tions have also been renewed, with lecturing, memorizing, and recitation persisting as primary
instructional approaches. This chapter reviews this research, taking a social practices view of how
texts are used in secondary school classrooms; their characteristics; potential benefits for students’
engagement, reading repertoire, and disciplinary learning; and how teachers can help students to
reap these benefits. It focuses on science text use because this has not been addressed in earlier
Handbooks. The review addresses three questions: What is the research base with disciplinary texts
in general and in science-focused subject-area classrooms? What are the gaps in this research?
What research is needed to address these gaps and expand teaching and learning with disciplinary
texts?

Methods of Review
We began our review by rereading related chapters in previous editions of this handbook to
identify potential search terms. These included Alvermann and Moore’s (1991) chapter in
Volume II on “Secondary School Reading,” Wade and Moje’s (2000) “The Role of Text on
Classroom Learning,” Alexander and Jetton’s (2000) “Learning from Text: A Multidimensional
and Developmental Perspective” from Volume III, and Moje, Stockdill, Kim, and Kim’s (2011),
“The Role of Text in Disciplinary Learning” in Volume IV. We searched ProQuest, EBSCO,
Google Scholar, Academia.edu, and Researchgate.net with an extensive set of search terms that
included literacy in the disciplines, disciplinary texts, reading in disciplines, academic literacies,
content-area reading and literacy, classroom use of text, and domain-specific text use. Additional
search terms included reading, literacy, and text use in science and subspecialties such as biology,
chemistry, and physics; reading in science; and literacy and science. Though we limited our
examples here to science, we also searched on literacy and history, literary studies, engineering,
mathematics, and mathematics communication for added insight into current practice and emer-
ging possibilities toward disciplinary text classroom use. We also looked at germane work in

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elementary and post-secondary settings, even though this review is confined to secondary school
settings.

A Social Practices View of Teaching and Learning with Disciplinary

Texts
When K-12 textbooks were developed to address standardized literary, language, mathematics,
and science content more than a century ago (Elliott & Woodward, 1990), decades of practical
scholarship followed to help students read and study them successfully (Moore, Readence, &
Rickelman, 1983). This was followed by a theoretical shift that refocused research on how to
develop students’ independent metacognitive reading comprehension strategies (Paris, Lipson, &
Wixson, 1983) and construction of mental models of texts (Van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). Little of
this work was widely replicated, a circumstance that Alvermann and Moore (1991) blamed on
lack of attention to social contexts and constraints, a lack of attention that has been addressed by
more recent studies of how language and literacy is situated in social contexts.
Early work exploring language’s social nature included Bernstein’s (1971) and Labov’s (1972)
analyses of how individuals used language differently, depending on context. This was followed
by Cazden’s (1979) and Mehan’s (1979) descriptions of teacher-student classroom interactions.
Subsequent researchers, like Scribner and Cole (1981), Heath (1983), Street (1984), and Barton,
Hamilton, and Ivanič (2000), described how people situated language, literacies, and texts in
social practices. Later studies described how youth engaged in literacy practices using varied per-
sonal resources, funds of knowledge, and strategies (Alvermann, 2001; Hull & Schultz, 2002;
Moje, Ciechanowski, Kramer, Ellis, Carrillo, & Collazo, 2004), including knowledge of class-
room procedural display (Bloome, Puro, & Theodorou, 1989). Grossman and Stodolsky (1995)
explored how teachers’ knowledge of their subjects and pedagogy was situated in schools, and
O’Brien, Stewart, and Moje (1995) described institutional and social constraints on curriculum,
pedagogy, and secondary school culture, yielding calls for explorations of how to give students
access to disciplinary cultures, especially in post-secondary (Bartholomae, 1986; Bazerman, 1985;
Lea, 1999) and secondary (Geisler, 1994; Guzzetti, Snyder, Glass, & Gamas, 1993; Moje, 2007)
education settings.
Recently, O’Brien and Ortmann (2017) reviewed the history of work that ensued as investi-
gators from varied philosophical traditions and from inside and outside the disciplines they studied
attempted to describe discipline-embedded forms of literacy for academic literacy teaching. For
example, from linguistic traditions, researchers such as Fang and Schleppegrell (2010) described
language elements characteristic of specific disciplinary texts. Literacy researchers such as Shana-
han, Shanahan, and Misiscia (2011), studied disciplinary experts’ mathematics, chemistry, and his-
tory reading to identify expert strategies to teach in subject area classrooms. Studies by
disciplinary insiders noted how disciplinary experts read literature (Lee, 1993; Rabinowitz, 1998;
Rosenblatt, 1978), history (Lee, 2005; Monte-Sano, 2011; Wineburg, 1991; Young & Leinhardt,
1998), mathematics (Schoenfeld, 1992; Shepherd & van de Sande, 2014; Weber & Mejia-Ramos,
2011), and science (Osborne, 2002; Lemke, 1990), using particular habits of mind that allowed
disciplinary knowledge to be constructed (Chick, Haynie, & Gurung, 2012; Coll, Taylor, & Lay,
2009; Wineburg, 1999).
Observations of how people used media also provided new insight into what could be
counted as texts (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; New London Group, 1996). Texts are now under-
stood to draw on multiple semiotic modalities, including oral, print, graphic, and video forms, as
well as observed discussions and other enactments (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001). Youth have
been observed communicating via tagging, ’zine writing, and purposefully selecting apparel to
communicate ideas (e.g., Finders, 1997; Moje, 2000; Schultz, 2002). The digital age augmented

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further what counted as disciplinary texts to include models, illustrations, diagrams, simulations,
and explanations in a variety of media and multimodal forms (Beach & Castek, 2015; Giroux &
Moje, 2017; Kress, 2013; Manderino, 2012), along with evolving conventions of argumentation
using these sources (Goldman et al., 2016; Newell, Beach, Smith, Van Der Heide, Kuhn, &
Andriessen, 2011).

How Teaching and Learning from Disciplinary Texts are Situated in

Classroom Practice
Despite these recent understandings of literacy and of texts, literacy tasks and texts remain in
limited use in secondary schools. The most frequently used texts in subject areas are textbooks,
which continue to occupy center stage as they did a century ago. They “are simultaneously sur-
rogate curricula, cultural artifacts, and commercial products” that delimit learning (Venezky,
2001, p. 256). Textbook assignments remain pervasive in English language arts, math, history,
and science (ACT Inc., 2013a; Applebee, Langer, Nystrand, & Gamoran, 2003; Bain, 2006;
Banilower et al., 2013; Polikoff et al., in press; Reisman, 2012).
Instructional practices continue to constrain students’ opportunities for reading – whether
textbooks or other sources. A recent observational study found that tenth grade students spent
a majority of class time listening to lectures or watching films (Fisher, 2009). An average of 3.4
minutes per class were spent reading textbooks or class-assigned novels in English language arts,
with most students reporting that they read only for homework. Discussions were led by teachers
and focused on content knowledge, with few student contributions. Valencia (2014) more
recently found Advanced Placement teachers using lectures, videos, Internet sources, and short
handouts to avoid relying on students’ extended reading of textbooks or other sources, which
was cast as homework and was not central to learning. Recent surveys by ACT confirmed that
secondary teachers prioritize content mastery over development of disciplinary literacy and rea-
soning (2013a; ACT Inc., 2009, 2013b), using lecture as the predominant mode of instruction
and socializing students to skim for information rather than reading texts more thoroughly (ACT
Inc., 2006; Ness, 2008).
Recent literacy standards pressed for developing students’ ability to read complex texts across
content areas to prepare them for college and careers. However, a RAND study of Common
Core Aligned Standards (CCAS) implementation (Opfer, Kaufman, & Thompson, 2016) found
that secondary ELA teachers were less likely than elementary teachers to use district instructional
materials, including textbooks, and more likely to select other instructional materials. The study
also indicated that teachers navigated demands of new standards with little support or time.
Teachers in high poverty or linguistically diverse schools (98% and 82%, respectively) often
assigned reading from relatively easy texts simplified for readability according to what they under-
stood of students’ reading abilities. These teachers used easy-to-read sources from LearnZillion,
Newsela, EngageNY, RAZ-Kids, Reading A-Z, Read 180, or Accelerated Reader, as well as
data aggregation tools, like Google, Teacherspayteachers, and Pinterest, suggesting they had
limited other resources. Hiebert (2017) is among those who have critiqued such practices as con-
straining students’ opportunities to learn to engage with deep learning from complex disciplinary
texts.
Two recent observational studies also suggested that secondary students had little opportunity
in school to puzzle through ideas or discuss reading–practices that contribute to literacy learning
and independence. Vaughn and colleagues (2013) observed social studies and English language
arts teachers who had participated in reading–related professional development and found they
invited students to read 10.4% of the time, with sources limited mostly to textbooks and antholo-
gized excerpts. Teacher-led comprehension strategy instruction was observed 20%–25% of the

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time, however, text-based discussion took less than 20% of the time. Litman and colleagues
(2017) observed lessons in which subject-area teachers allocated three times as much class time to
working with texts as to lectures, with tasks that had a disciplinary, knowledge-building focus
about half the time, and argumentation and cross-textual analysis more than half the time. Des-
pite more frequent use of texts, contribution of this use to learning was limited, with teachers
using leading questions and a selective uptake of students’ contributions to subtly draw students
to required information or their own interpretations. Limited text use may be especially problem-
atic given the way science teaching and learning is now being conceptualized in the science edu-
cation literature.

A Social Practices View of Science, Literacy, and Texts

Across its multiple domains and sub-disciplines, science is fundamentally focused on explaining
the natural and designed worlds (Rutherford & Ahlgren, 1990). Science knowledge develops as
scientists accrue evidence for potential explanations of phenomena, usually communicating these
in communities of similarly engaged scientists (Berland & Reiser, 2009; Cavagnetto, 2010; Latour
& Woolgar, 1986; Ryu & Sandoval, 2012), using knowledge claims to argue that their explana-
tory models account for data (Bricker & Bell, 2008; Osborne, 2010; van den Broek, 2010;
Windschitl, Thompson, & Braaten, 2008). However, science is also a theory building endeavor.
Scientific explanation connects data to interpretations by drawing on existing science principles
and theories (Braaten & Windschitl, 2011; Chin & Osborne, 2010). Scientific knowledge accu-
mulates through generating and revising models and explanations from evidence. This means sci-
ence knowledge is tentative, based on the best accounts from investigation and theorizing to
date. Scientific habits of mind assume these epistemological stances with orientations toward
skepticism and critical evaluation (Osborne, 2010).
Reading in multiple modalities is also central to science. Scientists engaged in inquiry pro-
cesses use multiple semiotic forms (e.g., graphs, data charts, and exposition) to represent ideas and
build models and explanations of phenomena (Cromley, Snyder-Hogan, & Luciw-Dubas, 2010;
Lemke, 1990, 1998; Waldrip, Prain, & Carolan, 2010). Primary data recorded from scientists’
investigations, secondary data derived from others’ work, and texts that include explanations,
graphs, data tables, and scientific models, are all valued epistemic tools for generating scientific
knowledge. As data recording becomes increasingly technologically sophisticated, the artifacts of
scientific work to be read and interpreted become, likewise, more complex. Skillful science read-
ing thus includes the ability to make sense of scientific terminology; interpret arrays of data; com-
prehend scientific texts that convey information through verbal exposition, graphs, tables, visual
models, and diagrams; interpret models and illustrations; and evaluate scientific explanations
(Lemke, 1990; Osborne, 2002). Given these knowledge-building practices, and especially the role
that reading multimodal texts plays, we reviewed learning opportunities students are currently
offered so as to engage in these practices.
Science education researchers have long called for science teaching that engages students in
science inquiry to learn about the nature of science, including thinking and discourse practices
central to the discipline (Bybee, 2013; Duschl, Schweingruber, & Shouse, 2007; Ford & Wargo,
2012; Rutherford & Ahlgren, 1990; Von Aufschnaiter, Erduran, Osborne, & Simon, 2008). The
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) were derived from a conception of science as both
a body of knowledge and a model and theory building enterprise that continually extends,
refines, and revises knowledge through evidence-based argumentation (NGSS Lead States, 2013).
These standards specify that students learn science by engaging in the practices of science: asking
questions; developing and using models; planning and carrying out investigations; analyzing and
interpreting data; using mathematics and computational thinking; constructing explanations;

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engaging in argument from evidence; and obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information.
A National Research Council panel convened a conference on connections between the
Common Core State Standards for literacy in science and the NGSS in 2013 (Council, 2014).
While the consensus report acknowledged the relevance of literacy to obtaining, evaluating, and
communicating information alone, language and literacy practices are arguably central to all
NGSS practice standards, which can be viewed as constituting a set of design principles to inform
disciplinary literacy instruction. The report advocates that teachers help students unpack the spe-
cialized forms of science texts they need to be able to read and produce but offers little detail
about how teachers might support students in learning how to read these texts, nor the nature of
the texts students should read. Similarly, promoting inquiry experiences for science teachers was
seen as a route to building necessary knowledge and pedagogical repertoire to support NGSS and
CCSS, but again, little detail about how to do so was offered.

How Teaching and Learning from Science Texts are Situated in

Classroom Practice
Science educators charged that traditional textbooks presented science as a body of knowledge with-
out attention to the ways such knowledge developed and changed over time (Chiappetta & Fillman,
2007). Moreover, little attention was paid in science textbooks to the practices of systematic investi-
gation and explanation, or to the role of argumentation in advancing explanations of the natural and
designed worlds (Myers, 1992). While encyclopedic in nature, textbooks omitted well-established sci-
ence theories when they ran counter to beliefs embraced by state legislatures. As in other subject
areas, textbooks often served as de facto curriculum, determining topics science teachers taught, in
what order, and with what materials. Given the investment necessary to their development, science
textbooks were slow to change in the face of advancing science, sometimes including erroneous
information (Penney, Norris, Phillips, & Clark, 2003). These critiques resulted in science educators’
wholesale rejection of reading in science under a banner of doing rather than reading about science.
Literacy researchers have also critiqued science textbooks for being too complex, advocating
that they be redesigned with properties more considerate to readers. For example, van den Broek
(2010) argued that science texts be designed to optimize their purported purpose, the learning of
science content, recommending minimizing challenges students encounter when reading by pla-
cing visual illustrations and other examples close to relevant verbal explanations to foster coher-
ence-building, for instance. Similarly, Moje and colleagues (Moje et al., 2004) developed science
readings to accompany investigations, designing considerate texts for ease of comprehension in
a project linking literacy and science explanation. Others argued that such alterations could make
learning information from science texts easier but also fail to prepare students for actual science
communication practices (Kerlin, McDonald, & Kelly, 2010). Authentic science texts are multi-
modal and conceptually dense, laden with science-specific meanings for common vocabulary,
technical language, and syntactic complexity. Education researchers operating from a linguistic
perspective advocate preparing students for making-meaning with such features, eventually inde-
pendently; however, examples of such practices are just now beginning to emerge (Fang &
Schleppegrell, 2010; O’Hallaron, Palincsar, & Schleppegrell, 2015; Snow, 2010).

How Reading Can Support Science Learning

Refutational Texts and Reform-oriented Curriculum

Textbook and curriculum redesign advocated by science researchers has foregrounded different
concerns. Osborne (2010) advocated that texts present what is wrong and why it is wrong, as

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well as what is right, in order to foster robust conceptual change. Such refutational texts embody
aspects of science explanation and argumentation by bringing common misconceptions into view
while showing why they are incorrect (Broughton, Sinatra, & Reynolds, 2010; Sinatra &
Broughton, 2011). Two decades of research indicate that reading refutational text is more likely
to result in readers’ conceptual change (Tippett, 2010). Reform curriculum developers have also
sought to make visible the nature of science investigation and knowledge building, designing
textual components with these elements in mind. For example, Krajcik and Sutherland (2009)
designed curriculum texts around science practices, foregrounding the role of questions in driving
investigations and making explicit connections across multiple sources of information, including
students’ investigation data and everyday experiences.

Targeted Instructional Approaches to Integrating Literacy and Science

Integrating literacy and science has shown benefits for elementary, middle, and high school stu-
dents and for English language learners. The In-Depth Expanded Applications of Science
(IDEAS) project replaced time devoted to ELA, with two hours of science exploration, reading,
and writing, finding treatment effects in both reading and science across multiple studies in
grades 2 through 5 (Romance & Vitale, 1992, 2001; Vitale & Romance, 2011). Similarly,
a large-scale study of a science writing program for low SES elementary students, many of whom
were English learners, showed impacts at grades 4 and 6 (Amaral, Garrison, & Klentschy, 2002).
Multiple evaluation studies of the Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading curriculum for elementary
students have demonstrated gains in reading comprehension, writing, and science knowledge for
diverse learners, including English learners (Bravo & Cervetti, 2014; Cervetti, Barber, Dorph,
Pearson, & Goldschmidt, 2012; Girod & Twyman, 2009; Wang & Herman, 2005). The Science
Writing Heuristic approach to writing to make sense of inquiry-based science has shown consist-
ently positive benefits from primary school to university (Gunel, Hand, & Prain, 2007; Hand,
Yore, Jagger, & Prain, 2010).
Integrating science inquiry practices with English reading, writing, and argumentation in
South Africa, where science teaching and learning take place in a second language for both
teachers and students, has shown robust benefits for elementary and middle school students’
achievement in both English literacy skills and science (Villanueva & Webb, 2008; Webb, 2009;
Webb & Treagust, 2006; Webb, Williams, & Meiring, 2008). In post-secondary science educa-
tion, attention to literacy aspects of science have similarly paid off (Fredlund, Airey, & Linder,
2015; Hill, Sharma, & Johnston, 2015). These many endeavors illustrate that students of all ages,
English language proficiencies, SES levels, and prior literacy accomplishment can learn to read
and write science texts as they learn science content, engage in science investigations, and learn
how science is done. These studies demonstrate that rather than building a set of skills and profi-
ciencies before engaging in disciplinary literacy practices (Fang, 2014; Shanahan & Shanahan,
2008), students benefit from opportunities to carry out approximations of real science know-
ledge-building practices throughout their tenure in school, simultaneously building the specialized
literacy capacities these practices entail.
Widening recognition of reading, writing, discourse, and reasoning practices in the practice of
science and the work of scientists has been influential in reshaping the role of literacy in science
education reform (Cervetti et al., 2012; Duschl & Osborne, 2002; McNeill, 2009; McNeill &
Krajcik, 2011; Norris & Phillips, 2003; Yore, 2004). Not coincidentally, science education
researchers have identified problems in the implementation and learning outcomes resulting from
hands-on science inquiry alone (Chinn & Malhotra, 2002; Jimenez-Aleixandre, Rodriguez, &
Duschl, 2000). Science education research and curricular design have increasingly focused on
integrating science inquiry and literacy to engage students in disciplinary practices of investigation

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and explanation (Braaten & Windschitl, 2011; Webb, 2010; Yore, Bisanz, & Hand, 2003). Inves-
tigation and explanation shape purposes for literacy in these efforts. The use of multiple represen-
tations has been especially central to this embrace of literacy in science (Gunel, Hand, &
Gunduz, 2006; Hand & Choi, 2010; Putra & Tang, 2016; Tang & Moje, 2010). Research has
focused on engaging students in developing multimodal texts and in transforming texts from one
modality to another as they attempt to understand and explain their hands-on investigations, and
the concept of representing to learn has become prominent in science curricula (Prain & Hand,
2016; Tytler, Prain, Hubber, & Waldrip, 2013). Yet we know comparatively little about the
forms of texts or reading instruction offered to students to support their understandings of the
phenomena they investigate.

Targeted Instructional Approaches with a Focus on Reading and Science

Two models for designing science reading experiences to embody the practices of science have
been developed, with studies attesting to their promise. The first is the approach known as
Adapted Primary Literature (APL), which draws on scientist’s writing for professional journals
(Norris, Stelnicki, & de Vries, 2012; Phillips & Norris, 2009; Yarden et al., 2009). This approach
exploits the canonical structure of science journal reports, which typically include an abstract
briefly describing the research questions, methodology, findings, and interpretations. This is fol-
lowed by a description of the study methodology and its findings, including data that are often
represented in multimodal textual forms. Finally, the discussion section makes an evidence-based
argument that interprets the findings in the light of existing science principles and theory and
refutes alternative explanations for these data. In the APL approach, students spend multiple class
periods reading and discussing the abstract, findings, and discussion sections of such articles, and
in the process grapple with multiple modes of communication and textual structures. They con-
struct their own interpretations and evidence-based arguments based on the findings and compare
these arguments to those of published authors.
One study of this approach described the discourse moves of an all-female chemistry class
over the course of the eight-day lesson, showing how their work reflected disciplinary practices
of multimodal representation, coordination across multiple sources, evidence-based argumenta-
tion, and reference to scientific principles and theory (Falk & Yarden, 2009). APL researchers
also described work to build teachers’ understanding and independent use of APL and resulting
teacher-made adaptations of science literature (Koomen, Weaver, Blair, & Oberhauser, 2016). Of
note, the principles used to modify scientific journal articles were not completely transparent
from the studies reported. The authors described reducing barriers to comprehension for second-
ary students, but not precisely how, and importantly, warned against reducing complexity over-
much. Indeed, Yarden et al. (2009) suggested that the more complex elements of the text
provoked more scientific reasoning and discourse among the chemistry students. This resonated
with Kerlin et al. (2010), who found that use of more authentic, complex forms of texts pro-
moted deeper science learning.
A second approach was based on Palincsar and Magnussen’s (2001) work, in which they
designed texts for elementary students to accompany hands-on investigation experiences with
science phenomena. Whereas Palincsar and Magnussen authored “scientists’” notebooks to
demonstrate the inquiry and multimodal practices of science and to support students’ concep-
tual understanding of science phenomena, “text-based investigations” engaged students in
reading authentic science texts of varied genres and modalities – data tables, maps, diagrams,
informational texts (exposition), case studies, and science research reports, often in excerpted
form – to explain phenomena (Greenleaf, Brown, Goldman, & Ko, 2013; Greenleaf, Hale,
Charney-Sirott, & Schoenbach, 2007). For example, in the Reading Apprenticeship Academic

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Literacy (RAAL) course, students investigated factors contributing to the epidemic of obesity
and diabetes among youth. Instruction focused on how to make sense of demographic data
tables, BMI charts, science reports, monographs from the CDC, textbook descriptions of
digestive processes, models of insulin regulation, and arguments about dietary recommenda-
tions. Students synthesized these sources to write an evidence-based explanation of factors
contributing to epidemic levels of obesity and diabetes among youth and to make
a recommendation for reducing the risk of diabetes or obesity to an audience of their choos-
ing. In a study of the RAAL course, 9th grade students reading two to five years below grade
level made statistically significant progress in reading comprehension and science (Corrin,
Somers, Kemple, Nelson, & Sepanik, 2008; Somers et al., 2010).
Building on the text-based investigation strategy from RAAL, the Project READI science design
team added a focus on reading to model a phenomenon of study (Greenleaf et al., 2013). Organized
around developing evidence-based arguments from multiple sources, these investigations provided
students with intentionally varied forms of texts and multiple opportunities to develop and critique
their own and their peers’ causal explanations for phenomena such as the emergence of antibiotic
resistant strains of bacteria or the contamination of water sources in agricultural and industrial areas
impacting city water supplies. Culminating tasks focused on constructing and critiquing visual and
verbal explanatory models for the phenomena. Underlying this work was a conceptual model of the
epistemological stances and forms of knowledge scientists bring to their reading of texts and learning
goals focused on simultaneously developing students’ science knowledge, science literacy proficien-
cies, and science investigation practices (Goldman et al., 2016).
Importantly, science teachers in Project READI were engaged in ongoing professional learning
inquiries that involved articulating their own sense making as they enacted text-based investigations
and experienced metacognitive discourse routines they could implement in their own classrooms.
Case studies of their implementation showed a dramatic shift in teachers’ practices supporting students
to build knowledge from the multiple text sources and work to develop explanations, as well as in
students’ science reading and modeling practices (Greenleaf, Brown & Sexton, 2013). An efficacy
study tested the inquiry-based professional learning model and investigation materials in a semester-
long sequence that progressively built students’ science reading dispositions and processes, understand-
ing of the role of models in science, and engagement in text-based investigations. The 9th grade biol-
ogy students in the text-based investigation condition outperformed controls in classrooms covering
the same topics on two measures of multi-source science comprehension that required reading, syn-
thesizing, explanatory model building, and argumentation (Goldman, Greenleaf, et al., 2019).

Implications

Gaps in What We Know about Teaching and Learning with Disciplinary Texts

Developmental Concerns
Based on expert/novice studies, Shanahan and Shanahan (2008) proposed a progression of discip-
linary literacy skills that posits that specialized literacy practices rely on a foundation of basic liter-
acy skills. Accordingly, Shanahan and Shanahan (2012) described skills and strategies, such as
academic vocabulary skills, that might be taught in early grade levels to pave the way for later
disciplinary literacy. However, Fagella-Lucy, Graner, Deshler, and Drew (2012) point out that
generalized literacy skills continue to develop as texts and tasks grow in complexity. Fagella-Lucy
and colleagues argue that a focus on disciplinary literacy without attention to supporting more
general literacy development could leave many students without either set of skills, making

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disciplinary literacy available only to the highest achieving students who extrapolate the more
complex generalized literacy skills on their own.
From a social practices view of literacy, texts and literacy practices do not become specialized
in middle and high school. Instead, every text is a form of communication with attendant genre
and discourse properties for specialized social purposes, requiring specialized strategies and atten-
tion to language (Scribner & Cole, 1981; Street, 1984). From a very young age, in virtually all
communities and cultures, children are invited to participate in reading, writing, and discourse
for a variety of purposes, such as invitations to birthday parties, lists that serve as reminders for
grocery shopping, and stories and study in religious traditions (Dyson, 1997; Heath, 1983). They
use literacy in increasingly specialized ways to support their own social interests, as anyone who
knows a Minecraft or Anime devotee will attest. These language and literacy experiences consti-
tute resources to recruit for further development and learning (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005;
Lee, 1995).
Athanases and de Oliveira (2014) explained that underprepared secondary school students are
especially vulnerable to hierarchical skill approaches to disciplinary literacy development. They
argue that Latino/a students need instructional scaffolding that taps cultural and linguistic
resources, supports co-construction of knowledge, is contingent upon learners’ contributions, and
transfers responsibility for learning to students. Moll and Gonzalez (1997), Abedi and Gándara
(2006), and de Schonewise and Klingner (2012) similarly advocate drawing on students’ existing
proficiencies in comprehensible ways and using scaffolds that connect to students’ prior know-
ledge, life experiences, and interests so that disciplinary literacy and learning can occur. Similarly,
Brozo and colleagues (2013) argue that learning to adapt reading strategies in multiple subject
areas is likely needed for the development of discipline-specific literacies.
Developing knowledge and independent learning dispositions is similarly uncharted terrain.
O’Brien and Ortmann (2017) and Greenleaf and colleagues (Greenleaf, Schoenbach, Cziko, &
Mueller, 2001; Schoenbach & Greenleaf, 2009), called for the development of generalizable strat-
egies and dispositions – academic literacies – that can be deployed across disciplines but that may
be best learned in domain-specific settings. Alexander’s (2003) Model of Domain Learning pos-
ited that learners attain knowledge and expertise through fragmented, limited, decontextualized
bits of insight in the initial stages of learning, and then use strategies across domains to find per-
sonal connections and motivation to work toward domain-specific competence and, eventually,
proficiency. Moje (2007) argued for socially-just disciplinary literacy teaching to help youth
bridge everyday knowledge and practice to subject-area learning, navigate discourse communities,
and help to reshape curriculum. These perspectives advocated, not for reducing expectations for
struggling learners, but rather for increasing the challenge and support through instruction that is
motivating and responsive to student needs and interests, favoring inquiry-oriented approaches
(Araújo & Maeso, 2012; Bazzul & Sykes, 2011; Brozo, 2017; Leubner, Alber, & Schupfer, 1988;
Mills & Bradley, 1993). To deny access to some students of the chance to contemplate complex
ideas if they do not yet know how to read particular sentence structures or words may mean
denying them access to authentic reasons to read and thereby improve reading.

Implementation Issues
Cervetti (2014) suggested that creating impactful learning experiences for students requires tasks
that are authentic approximations of disciplines and that give students access to learning in the
disciplines, as well as to concepts and dispositions of work in the disciplines. These approxima-
tions should draw on texts that reflect the unique purposes of the discipline. Engaging in such
approximations of text-based learning will require both teachers and students to take on unfamil-
iar roles (Hall & Comperatore, 2014; Litman & Greenleaf, 2008; Porter, McMaken, Hwang, &

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Yang, 2011). For teachers to engage students in disciplinary literacy instruction that supports
these approximations, they must themselves have experienced discipline-shaped inquiry practices
using text. Such instructional practice will require knowledge of the epistemologies and practices
of disciplines, including the contribution literacy makes.
Unfortunately, professional development for teachers is often characterized by transmission
pedagogy, with a focus on presenting bodies of knowledge, techniques, and prescriptions for
teaching rather than on building teachers’ understandings (Anderson & Herr, 2011; Lefstein,
2008). Such a focus may produce short-term change; however, impact on instruction is rare
(McLaughlin & Marsh, 1978). One meta-analysis found that, in contrast to traditional professional
development that offered prescriptions or bodies of knowledge, models that engaged teachers in
inquiry improved instruction and increased student achievement (Kennedy, 2016). Another study
demonstrated that capacity for teaching complex subject-area literacies endured long past initial
inquiry-based professional learning (Greenleaf, Litman, & Marple, 2018). These studies demon-
strate that lasting instructional change requires not only re-understanding but re-enacting core
teaching practices.
Even when teachers have the knowledge of epistemologies and practices of their disciplines
needed to support students’ learning with texts, finding texts can also be challenging. Textbooks
can be useful for building students’ background knowledge, especially when they include embed-
ded primary sources and visual and graphic models. Trade books, websites, and other news and
research sources can also be useful for students building knowledge and reading capacity; how-
ever, locating texts to support students’ disciplinary learning and advance needed literacies,
including print literacies, is challenging (Heller & Greenleaf, 2007). As the RAND study (Opfer
et al., 2016) showed, teachers spend a lot of time on this even though we have little idea of the
efficacy of their practices. The question remains, what knowledge do teachers need to make their
selections, and how can this be facilitated? Observations of text dis-use in subject-area classrooms
raise questions about the proportion of time teachers should allocate to reading instruction within
disciplines. Existing research is silent on such matters.
Much as O’Brien et al. (1995) found over 20 years ago, teachers may also be confronted with
required pacing guides, end-of-course content examinations, and course evaluations that hold
them accountable for limited kinds of student performance. Being underprepared to facilitate the
reading of students who do not appear to possess needed skills and strategies, or to defend their
innovative text-based practices in light of students, parents, and administrators who expect differ-
ent kinds of instruction may also cause teachers to abandon practices learned in teacher education
or professional development. They need, instead, professional development and sustained support
for intentional and authentic use of disciplinary texts to support students’ learning.
One promising strategy for building this needed capacity has involved collaborations of
teachers, literacy and disciplinary education researchers, and disciplinary practitioners in designing
pedagogical practices to approximate disciplinary knowledge-building practices. In this approach,
teachers are invited to build their capacities via collaboration (Wells, 1999) and to study their
own literacies and disciplinary knowledge building (Graves, 1990; Greenleaf & Schoenbach,
2004; Litman & Greenleaf, 2018; Schoenbach, Greenleaf, & Murphy, 2016). For example,
Chandler-Olcott and colleagues (Chandler-Olcott, Doerr, Hinchman, & Masingila, 2015; Doerr
& Temple, 2016) worked with secondary school mathematics teachers to identify ways teachers
could support students’ abilities to address literacy demands of mathematics curriculum materials.
Wilson-Lopez worked with engineers and teachers to address literacy and engineering practices
for elementary and middle school students (Wilson-Lopez, Gregory, & Larsen, 2016; Wilson-
Lopez & Minichiello, 2017). Dobbs, Ippolito, and Charner-Laird (2016) described how literacy
scholars worked with high school social studies teachers to delineate intermediate and disciplinary
literacy work to engage students in history reading. Bain and Moje (Bain, 2012; Bain & Moje,

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Cynthia Greenleaf and Kathleen Hinchman

2012) developed an approach to preservice teacher education that used clinical rounds with
a focus on discipline-specific literacy, a collaboration among disciplinary, literacy education
experts and school-based partners. Draper and several disciplinary colleagues (Draper, 2012;
Draper & Wimmer, 2015; Siebert & Draper, 2008; Siebert et al., 2016), collaborated to design
preservice and inservice disciplinary literacy teacher education. Providing students with learning
experiences that make the social practices and knowledge-building processes of disciplinary liter-
acy work transparent are promising, but also require collaborations to draw on ways disciplines
enact their own enterprises (Lehrer, 2009). O’Brien and Ortmann (2017) point out that such col-
laborations entail power differentials that need to be carefully mitigated.

Needed Studies of Teaching and Learning with Disciplinary Texts

Longstanding secondary school instructional practices virtually guarantee that students have little
opportunity to grapple with complex texts when collaboration with peers and support from
teachers might build the dispositions and skills of sustained sense-making. Most teachers and stu-
dents appear to be profoundly inexperienced at doing the kind of teaching and learning with
texts, respectively, that disciplinary knowledge building literacies entail. We need research that
takes seriously the degree and level of challenge it will take to move the promise of disciplinary
literacy instruction into practice.
Urgently needed is research on literacy instruction in subject areas that simultaneously develops
requisite skills, strategies, and dispositions for discipline-specific reading and reasoning; builds know-
ledge about subjects of study; and meaningfully engages with the lives and languages students bring to
the classroom. Discipline-specific literacy instruction promises to appeal to teachers’ disciplinary com-
mitments and value for text use to support student learning, while also drawing on and building stu-
dents’ purposeful engagement with texts, literacy proficiencies, and subject-area knowledge. The
RAND study of CCAS implementation (Opfer et al., 2016) indicated differential use of curriculum,
practices, and texts for low income students and English learners, suggesting that American schools
may be continuing their long history of curricular segregation with too limited expectations for such
students. Also vital is research on developing generalizable academic literacies, with a focus on shifting
students’ epistemic stances and dispositions toward using texts for learning across disciplines (e.g.
Greenleaf & Valencia, 2017; Kiili, Mäkinen & Coiro, 2013; O’Brien & Ortmann, 2017; Schoenbach
& Greenleaf, 2009), calls for which have resonated for decades (O’Brien & Stewart, 1992).
Simultaneously teaching and supporting students’ learning of disciplinary concepts and practices,
as well as disciplinary literacies alongside generalizable academic literacies, will require significant
curricular and instructional change. As Cervetti and Pearson (2012) and Moje (2015) argue, such
instruction must aim for fidelity to the ways that language and literacy are commingled with know-
ledge development in the disciplines. The texts students use in subject areas must include a range of
authentic disciplinary texts across modalities. This means not only helping students to decipher and
make meaning with the multiple modalities of textual forms specific to disciplines, but also fostering
reasoning practices, shaped by disciplinary forms of inquiry and knowledge production. The tasks
students engage in must move toward developmentally appropriate approximations of knowledge-
building practices within disciplines. Thus, research is needed on text selection and use, curricular
design, developmentally appropriate learning progressions, and most importantly, the teacher prep-
aration and ongoing development necessary to bring the preceding to life.

Needed Studies of Teaching and Learning with Science Texts

Many exemplary science education curriculum interventions offer promising methods of teaching
and learning with science texts, including APL and the text-based investigation approaches

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described above. The digital age has brought with it many quality science texts that are available
on university- and government-sponsored public websites, where scientists publish their work, in
science journals written for scientists and students, and through high quality newspaper outlets.
Advancements in communication technologies are rapidly adding 3D models, new forms of
imagery, and complex visuals to the mix. Yet, few of these texts or interventions are reaching
classrooms within which often dated textbooks still serve as de facto curricula and the only source
of reading, reinforcing the idea that teaching science is a knowledge delivery enterprise. Litman
and colleagues (2017) found no close reading or argumentation in their science class observations,
and a recent study of over 500 K-8 teacher leaders implementing the NGSS found that only 28%
selected “reading informative/explanatory texts”, when asked how they were integrating
Common Core State Standards and science (Tyler, Britton, Iveland, Ngyuen, Hipps & Schenider,
2017). We need research on the spread of innovative science literacy integrations and the forms
of texts in use in education settings.
Science text sets on offer, on many state and district websites, often collected by well-
meaning literacy specialists, present sides of issues that involve science phenomena, such as
whether to ban soda sales or mandate vaccinations (e.g. Sadler & Donnelly, 2006; Reading and
Writing Project, undated). Weighing in on policies offers students opportunities to apply science
learning and see how it is relevant. To argue well about such matters, however, students need to
know the underlying science, and science teachers may be understandably reluctant to spend
time engaging students in arguing policy rather than investigating and explaining phenomena to
build understanding. Aligning the reading of science texts with disciplinary practices and purposes
would require using texts in the service of scientific knowledge-building practices – such as argu-
mentation to justify and support an explanation of a phenomenon, to raise alternative interpret-
ations of data, or to question the validity of a set of methods or measures – rather than to take
a side on a controversial issue. Science education research has long faced the need to develop
content knowledge in the discipline, as literature about threshold concepts and common miscon-
ceptions attests (e.g. Land, Cousin, Meyer, & Davies, 2005; Meyer & Land, 2003; Sadler, Son-
nert, Coyle, Cook-Smith, & Miller, 2013). Attempts to build understandings about how core
concepts of science might develop over time are relatively new and evolving (e.g. Berland &
McNeill, 2012; Gotwals, Songer, & Bullard, 2012). Studies contrasting purposes for spending
time using texts in these pursuits would help to delineate central organizing principles of
a disciplinary literacy approach that is well integrated into science teaching more generally.
As Cervetti (this handbook) argues, knowledge matters. To develop knowledge and construct
arguments from textual evidence, students need to read science texts of various kinds attentively
and deeply. This reading requires puzzling through the semiotic display to make sense of what it
conveys about phenomena. To this end, textbooks can serve purposeful learning if they are cur-
rent and used well. Students can use these traditional forms of exposition to gain breadth of
knowledge in the discipline so they can, in turn, ask informed questions and link their own
investigations to the work of other scientists. Students, therefore, need a repertoire of strategies,
including informed scanning for relevance, evaluation of source reliability, and purposeful text
use to build knowledge, as well as stamina, persistence, and will to deeply engage in problem
solving to make meaning across complex and extended texts. Studies attending to roles and con-
tributions to student learning for different forms of science texts are needed. Especially promising
is research into instructional approaches that draw on teaching and learning from texts to make
clear to students “how school science relates to relevant contexts and social practices beyond the
classroom” (Sørvik & Mork, 2015, p. 274).
Such work entails expanding science teachers’ knowledge and regard for disciplinary literacy,
expanding their pedagogical repertoire, and expanding forms of instructional support available to
varied learners to acquire needed knowledge, dispositions, and skills. These seismic changes in

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science curriculum and instruction will require concomitant investments in teacher capacity
development through initial teacher preparation and ongoing professional development. Emer-
ging examples of research that engages teachers in disciplinary inquiry so that they learn to
address students’ needs in instruction includes work by Reiser et al. (2017), who have developed
a web-enabled professional learning environment for science teachers to carry out investigations
of phenomena, post results for other teacher learning groups, and share student work on pertin-
ent investigations. Windschitl and colleagues engage prospective science teachers in science inves-
tigations that include textual research to build their understandings of science practices
(Windschitl et al., 2008; Windschitl, Thompson, & Braaten, 2011). Greenleaf and science col-
leagues have designed professional development to engage secondary science teachers in metacog-
nitive inquiry into their own reading and reasoning processes with disciplinary texts, with
a demonstrated impact on teachers’ text use and support for students’ text use (Fancsali et al.,
2015; Greenleaf et al., 2011). Studies of the disjuncture between preservice teachers’ understand-
ings of their disciplines and needed education practices (Bain & Moje, 2012; Conley & Kang,
2015; Windschitl et al., 2011) make it especially important to identify effective ways to support
inservice teacher learning.
Collaborative design research may also have the potential to advance the field on multiple
fronts. Teachers in such collaborations work together with researchers to co-design, implement,
and study effects of educational innovations and how to make them work within authentic,
richly complex contexts of practice (Goldman et al., 2016; Klingner, Boardman, & McMaster,
2013; Ormel, Roblin, McKenney, Voogt, & Pieters, 2012). The opportunity to take an active
part in co-designing or adapting curriculum and instruction can also deepen teachers’ understand-
ing of underlying principles (Burch & Spillane, 2005; Debarger et al., 2017; Voogt et al., 2015),
support instructional decision-making (Fullan & Langworthy, 2014), promote teachers’ sense of
ownership and agency (Cviko, McKenney, & Voogt, 2014; Henson, 2001; Voogt et al., 2015),
and foster knowledge utilization (Easton, 2014; Weiss, 1993). These factors may contribute to
a more effective implementation of innovations and student learning, as well as greater sustain-
ability (Penuel, Fishman, Cheng, & Sabelli, 2011; Penuel, Gallagher, & Moorthy, 2011; Roder-
ick, Easton, & Sebring, 2009). Design research can thus produce new knowledge and create
professional learning experiences that support teachers in ongoing design and implementation of
curricular reforms (Cviko et al., 2014; Ormel et al., 2012; Penuel et al., 2011, 2011).

Conclusions
Research that expands teaching and learning with disciplinary texts holds the promise of improv-
ing youth’s literacy, academic, and disciplinary competence. Classroom use of disciplinary texts
must aim to expand the repertoire and agency of young people as they encounter specialized
academic practices within and across disciplines. Such texts – a wide array of them – must also be
made readily available to teachers and students. Expanding teaching and learning with disciplinary
texts will depend on the mentorship of those who know best how to support them – teachers
who have studied in these disciplines. This work, thus, also requires building the knowledge,
capacity, and regard of subject-area teachers for generalized academic and discipline-specific liter-
acies to support student learning. It also requires carefully qualified expectations for subject-area
teachers’ attention to these literacies by literacy advocates.
In short, future research to expand teaching and learning from disciplinary texts needs to aim
toward expanding the literate repertoires of disciplinary teachers and their students. This means
research needs to continue to look beyond the literacy research community to attend to ways that
disciplines invoke literacy practices to build knowledge, to what it takes for students to gain expertise
with this in developmentally appropriate ways, and to professional development that invites teachers

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to experience disciplinary knowledge building so they can orchestrate such practices for their stu-
dents. Disrupting the long history of lecturing, memorizing, and recitation in secondary subject areas
also requires situating research in partnerships of literacy researchers, disciplinary researchers, and class-
room teachers. Such collaborations can design and test literacy pedagogies that build from the social
practices of youth’s lives and the work of schools, as well as ensure that youth engage in the kinds of
disciplinary knowledge-building approximations that invite them to become the next generation of
disciplinary experts.

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Literacy Instruction and Digital
Innovation
Trends and Affordances for Digital Equity
in Classrooms

Silvia Noguerón-Liu and Jayne C. Lammers

This chapter examines the adoption of digital tools in literacy instruction in K-8 classrooms. In
this review of research, we answer the question: How is the work of classroom literacy teaching medi-
ated by new forms of and practices for reading texts? by summarizing studies about the features and
affordances of digital tools, and their implications for classroom-based practices within
U.S. schools. As literacy researchers and teacher educators, our particular interest in this question
stems from our commitment to digital equity, as well as our goal to empower teachers to con-
sider their role in inclusive digital literacy instruction.
We situate this review in the context of academic standards that increasingly call on teachers
to incorporate digital literacies in the English Language Arts—e.g., Common Core State Stand-
ards (CCSS), International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) standards. With the
adoption of the CCSS in many U.S. states, comprehension in reading instruction shifted, in part,
to emphasize higher level thinking (such as evaluation, synthesis, interpretation, and application
skills), as well as online reading comprehension (e.g., skills to research online to solve problems,
locate information, and answer questions); furthermore, reading instruction now connects to the
use of digital tools for collaboration, production, and dissemination of texts to authentic audi-
ences (Leu et al., 2014). The reading anchor standards (NGACBP & CCSSO, 2010) expect stu-
dents to evaluate information in “diverse media and formats” (p. 10), while for writing, they are
expected to “use technology, including the Internet” to collaborate, produce, and publish their
writing (p. 18). Similarly, the latest ISTE standards position students as “knowledge constructors”
and “creative communicators,” who curate resources using digital tools, and express themselves
using various platforms and formats (ISTE, 2016). These standards signal the increasing role of
technology in mediating access to information and new ways to design and communicate mean-
ing. In this research review, informed by sociocultural and new literacies frameworks, we exam-
ine work that investigates the mediational role of digital tools, and make recommendations
towards an equity-oriented approach to technology integration.
Within classrooms, new tools reconfigure learning practices and shape other elements in the class-
room system, such as the rules governing classroom activity, or the expectations for division of labor
(Engeström, 1987; Jewitt, 2006; Wertsch, 1991). Literacy practices within classrooms, then, can be

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understood as activities mediated by a wide range of meaning-making tools—including multiple lan-

guages, media, texts in various platforms (e.g., print books, CD-ROMs, websites), and devices to
access content (Razfar & Yang, 2010). By framing new technologies as mediational tools, researchers
can better understand the history embedded in digital platforms and software, and the ways they are
adopted, changed, and constructed by subjects (Kaptelinin & Nardi, 2006).
In our review, we pay close attention to the affordances of digital tools (Kress, 2010) and the
literacy practices central in the studies, including the integration of tablet devices, smartphones, and
web-dependent laptops (Chromebooks) in classrooms, which at the time of this publication, are
popular adoptions in school districts (Cavanagh, May 8, 2017; Singer, May 13, 2017). However,
while the gap of Internet adoption has narrowed across racial groups, disparities remain across
income, education level, and rural/suburban/urban areas (Pew Research Center, 2018). Further-
more, Hispanic and Black adults are more likely to be smartphone-dependent than white adults—
respectively, 34%, 24%, and 14%, do not use broadband at home, but rely on smartphones for
online access (Pew Research Center, 2018). These disparities matter, as digital solutions in schools
may steer users to one-device, one-student initiatives, such as smartphones that have different affor-
dances from computers with keyboards (e.g., it may be easier to type an essay in the latter). Hence,
the research featured in this review includes some classroom-based studies conducted with nondomi-
nant student populations, informed by sociocultural perspectives that capitalize on their knowledge.
In this chapter, by “devices” we refer to the hardware used to interface with digital content
(e.g., laptop, tablet). By “platforms,” we refer to any website or other online repository that hosts
educational content (e.g., digital portfolios and social media). By “texts,” we focus on both print-
based and digital documents (e.g., interactive e-books). The term “tool” reflects our theoretical
approach to mediation through sociocultural theory, and it may encompass digital devices, plat-
forms, and texts that potentially mediate literacy instruction. We share key findings from litera-
ture reviews and empirical studies, and conclude by emphasizing the need to conduct research
alongside teachers and nondominant students and families.

Methods to Conduct This Review

To begin, we provide a summary of the theoretical frameworks that inform empirical work
exploring the relationship between literacy and technology, in- and out- of school settings. We
then connect these frameworks to previous literature reviews in past editions of this handbook
and elsewhere, in order to provide a broader look at the themes identified in those reviews,
including those related to sociocultural and new literacies’ approaches. Next, we describe, in
more depth, 11 empirical studies we found that specifically address the practices of reading and
making sense of digital tools within classroom literacy instruction. We focus solely on articles,
listed in Appendix A, drawing on sociocultural or new literacies theories, given our goal of rep-
resenting work that illustrates the experiences of culturally and linguistically diverse learners.
We used academic search engines (ProQuest, EBSCO, and university-based library engines) to
retrieve peer-reviewed articles that either reported empirical work conducted in kindergarten
through middle school or made research-informed recommendations about the mediational roles
of digital devices for literacy instruction. We then narrowed the scope to articles published in the
last 12 years (2006–2018), to explore tools that remain most relevant in classrooms today, as
older technologies may no longer be useful, or available, in classrooms (e.g., CD-ROMs). We
mostly focused on research in the United States, in order to analyze how classroom practices are
enacted within standards and assessment shaping schools in this country. However, in our outline
of themes in literature reviews, we consider some international studies.

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Theoretical Frameworks and Research on Reading and Technology

Before we discuss the review findings, we briefly define three instrumental perspectives for theor-
izing practices related to learning mediated by technology. These approaches draw from qualita-
tive and ethnographic research paradigms. We review these three perspectives, due to this
chapter’s emphasis on mediation, using key tenets in these theories as a lens to select and sum-
marize the featured studies.

Sociocultural Theory and Mediation

According to Vygotsky’s sociocultural approach to learning, both technical, tangible (e.g.,
a computer keyboard), and psychological tools (e.g., language) mediate human action and mental
functions, and these tools are shaped by cultural, historical, and institutional forces (Wertsch,
1991). For instance, Wertsch (1991) explains that the QWERTY keyboard design ensured ineffi-
ciency, slowing down typists who jammed keys constantly; hence, common letters are widely
distributed. The historical context and dominance of the QWERTY structure remains, even on
computer keyboards that do not jam keys. While mediated action refers to the individuals acting
with tools, both tools and action should be examined in relation to their history and to practices
and values in social contexts. Sociocultural theory has shaped theories of literacy development by
illuminating cultural contexts where children grow and learn how to read, as well as their rela-
tionships with peers, teachers, and literacy tools (Pérez, 2004). This perspective highlights how
readers act and interact with their contexts and peers using tools (Razfar & Yang, 2010), includ-
ing digital technologies, texts (both print-based and digital), and multiple languages.
While this review focuses on formal classroom practice, relevant work using mediation to organ-
ize literacy learning environments has been conducted in after-school contexts. One seminal on-
going project is the Fifth-Dimension model of after-school programs (Cole, 2006), made possible by
university-community collaborations, where undergraduate students engage in face-to-face inter-
actions with children using computer-based games. In this model, mediation is facilitated by com-
puters, tasks, and a learning environment featuring games and culturally relevant content. In La
Clase Mágica, the Fifth-Dimension redesign for bilingual communities (Flores, Vasquez, & Clark,
2014; Vásquez, 2003), mediational tools also include the linguistic and cultural knowledge children
bring to interactions with digital content. La Clase Mágica connects community resources, families,
and university personnel, by offering after-school activities where adults and children collaborate in
digitally-mediated learning tasks, featuring culturally-relevant content. As we analyze how digital
tools mediate learning tasks within classroom settings, we draw on this work as a reference to frame
how activities could potentially be organized within larger social contexts and institutions.

New Literacies
The new literacies approach has become an influential orientation in the field, and shapes many
of the studies highlighted in the articles in this review. Its roots rely on sociocultural perspectives
on learning, and thus, new literacies scholars view literacies as multiple, situated, social practices
informed by the historical, cultural, and political contexts in which they are enacted (e.g., Gee,
1996; New London Group, 1996; Street, 1984). As technology and the Internet began to play
increasingly important roles in everyday lives, the focus of many with this orientation turned
toward making sense of the changing nature of literacies in digital contexts. Theorization result-
ing from this “digital turn” (Mills, 2010) has offered the field some guiding principles for think-
ing of literacies as “new.”

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One influential set of such principles comes from Coiro, Knobel, Lankshear, and Leu (2008),
who argue the following:

• new technology requires new practices to access the literacy potential of these devices and
platforms,
• new literacies are crucial to civic, economic, and personal participation in a global world,
• literacies have always changed in response to the introduction of new technologies, but the
pace of change has accelerated with the Internet’s capability to disseminate new technology,
and
• new literacies are multiple, multimodal, and multifaceted, therefore, they must be studied
and enacted in ways that honor multiple perspectives. (p. 14)

Relatedly, Lankshear and Knobel (2011) differentiate between the “new technology stuff” (i.e.,
the devices and platforms) and the “new ethos stuff”, which points to the practices and ways of
thinking shaped by new literacies. Some key ethos include the ways in which literacies have
evolved to be more participatory and collaborative, rather than individual and expert-centric.

Connected Learning
Mimi Ito’s Connected Learning model (Ito et al., 2013) stems from a series of large-scale, ethno-
graphic studies of youth practices in digital media production (Ito et al., 2010), and rests on
a foundation of sociocultural learning theory that recognizes learning as “embedded within social rela-
tionships and cultural contexts” (Ito et al., 2013, p. 43). As such, Connected Learning highlights the
connected nature of learning across young people’s three key “spheres of learning”—interests, peer
culture, and academics—with an eye toward equity and the relevance of learning to youth lives.
Though not technology-dependent, Connected Learning accounts for the myriad learning
opportunities in an information age by recognizing that technology connects young people to
networked spaces where they can engage in meaningful, interest-driven, production-centered
learning. Connected Learning sets forth an agenda for equitable, social, and participatory learning
(Ito et al., 2013). While our review centers on practices within classroom spaces, we pay atten-
tion to the potential for texts, practices, and dispositions in the articles we review that lend sup-
port to Connected Learning. Furthermore, we also notice how recent updates of technology and
learning standards and models (e.g., ISTE, 2016 Standards for Students) move towards the con-
ceptualization of tools as resources to facilitate students’ engagement with networked communi-
ties and interest-driven inquiry.
Overall, these three approaches to learning emphasize the relevance of social contexts, by rec-
ognizing how digital tools expand social practices, including literacy practices, beyond classroom
boundaries. They account for the multiple communities in which youth participate and use vari-
ous tools to compose, access texts, and engage with multiple information sources. Empirical stud-
ies with youth informed by these approaches have reported their practices in after-school and
outside-of-school programs designed with these learning principles in mind. In the following sec-
tion, we examine how past literature reviews represent these theories and learning principles,
before delving into specific studies illustrating how these theories inform classroom instruction
and the design of digital tools.

Historical Overview of the Field through Literature Reviews

Here, we highlight the main themes identified in previous literature reviews, primarily published
in handbooks such as the present volume (including its previous editions), and in peer-reviewed

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journals (see Table 21.1). These reviews explored the intersection between technology and liter-
acy instruction in K-12 settings, and some offered international perspectives (e.g., Burnett, 2010;
Takacs, Swart, & Bus, 2015). We categorized their main themes, identifying those emphasizing
classroom literacy practices mediated by technology, the features of digital tools, as well as other
themes—e.g., social, motivational, or critical aspects of technology adoption in literacy instruc-
tion. We focused on practices and tools as key categories to guide our analysis of the research
paradigm, theoretical frames, and types of technologies central to previous research, even when
such studies were not informed by sociocultural, new literacies, or Connected Learning
approaches.
Research on the relationships between technology and literacy in the 1990s primarily drew
from cognitive and psychological perspectives for studying how computers were used in read-
ing and writing instruction (Reinking & Bridwell-Bowles, 1991) and the effect of other digi-
tal tools on instruction, with particular attention to at-risk populations (Kamil, Intrator, &
Kim, 2000). In the early 2000s, researchers began to consider the historical, social, and policy
contexts for technology and literacy instruction, calling for theoretical perspectives that
acknowledge the transformative and transactional aspects of digital tools, as well as literacy’s
deictic nature (Labbo & Reinking, 2003; Leu, 2000). Leu (2000) defined deictic as “continu-
ously changing as new technologies appear and as new envisionments for their use are
crafted” (p. 746). While Leu included several studies reporting the effectiveness of specific
applications on reading skills, he noted that studies tended to focus on the tools themselves,
rather than on their use in classroom settings. Furthermore, the outcomes measured were
mostly print-based instead of capturing new outcomes related to a “global information envir-
onment” (p. 758).
The shift toward sociocultural and new literacies approaches became more pronounced in lit-
erature reviews from the past decade. Warschauer and Ware (2008) pointed to research informed
by a “change” framework, bringing to light the deictic and transformative nature of technology
outlined by Leu in 2000. Studies reviewed described literacy and contexts more broadly from
a sociocultural lens including out-of-school settings, and online communication and videogame
playing (Burnett, 2010; Razfar & Yang, 2010). Overall, in these reviews, the scope of methods
and theories expanded to include social contexts where digital tools were used, and the ways
they facilitated and transformed literacy practices.
Lastly, the particular features of digital texts and tools—such as multimodal, interactive, and
hypertextual components—are central in reviews about the effect of digital texts on literacy
development and instruction. Reviews that make comparisons between traditional print texts
and technology-mediated reading, not only argued that the portability, touchscreen functions,
and availability of apps on tablets positively impacts readers’ comprehension and engagement
(Miller & Warschauer, 2014), but also uncovered concerns that some interactive features may
be distracting, especially to children labeled as “at-risk” (Takacs et al., 2015). Relatedly, Col-
well and Hutchison (2015) focused on specific digital tools (including tablet devices), but
instead of comparing them with print-based equivalents, they examined the affordances (Kress,
2010) of nine tools for literacy instruction, guiding teachers about how to adopt these tools in
their practice.
Overall, this summary shows the effects of changing research paradigms and conceptions of
literacy from cognitive/psychological perspectives (e.g., Kamil et al., 2000; Takacs et al., 2015),
sociocultural perspectives (e.g., Razfar & Yang, 2010), and new literacies (e.g., Colwell &
Hutchison, 2015), and, more recently, to critical approaches (e.g., Warschauer & Ware, 2008).
The predominant paradigm in the studies reviewed includes measures of effectiveness of particu-
lar applications—tools that have evolved over time, from CD-ROMs to tablet apps—on reading
skills such as comprehension, vocabulary knowledge, fluency, or early decoding skills. However,

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Table 21.1 Themes in past literature reviews on technology and literacy (1991–2015).
Themes related to reading
and writing instructional Themes related to features of
Authors practices/skills digital tools Other themes

Reinking and General studies of com- Comparison of electronic

Bridwell-Bowles puter effectiveness in and conventional texts from
(1991) instruction; computer- convergent and divergent
based reading curricula; perspectives.
effectiveness of specific
instructional applications.
Kamil et al. Word processing, collab- Hypermedia, hypertexts, Motivational effects of tech-
(2000) orative writing, interven- and literacy. nology environments; motiv-
tion benefits for special ating special populations at
populations, and multi- risk.
media effects on literacy
instruction
Leu (2000) Literacy and learning tasks: Interest and motivational fac-
closed and open tasks, tors, teacher and student
search and browsing tasks; engagement; cognitive learn-
specific applications and ing styles; teachers’ beliefs
their effect on comprehen- and technology integration.
sion, decoding.
Labbo and Computers supporting: Computers supporting social
Reinking (2003) writing development, interaction and collaboration;
phonological abilities, transforming and introducing
independent reading. new skills.
Warschauer and Learning framework: focus Change framework: focus on Change framework: focus on
Ware (2008) on raising learning new nature of literacy, out-of-school literacies.
outcomes. including nature of texts and Power framework: focus on
tools. issues of access and social
inequality in relation to digital
tools.
Razfar and Yang Digital mediation through Mediation through hybrid lan-
(2010) CD-ROMs, hypertexts, com- guages and literacies as med-
parison with print formats. iational tools.
Burnett (2010) Technology as a deliverer Technology as a medium for Technology as a site of inter-
of literacy (content). meaning-making. action around texts.
Miller and Pre-tablet era technology studies and e-book studies.
Warschauer Tablet era: technology studies and e-book/app studies at
(2013) home and schools.
Colwell and Guidelines for technology Review of uses and affor-
Hutchison integration in reading dances of nine digital tools.
(2015) comprehension, promot-
ing discussion, and encour-
aging collaborative
learning.
Takacs et al. Effects of technology- Effects of technological add-
(2015) enhanced stories on literacy itions for disadvantaged
development, when com- groups of students.
pared with print-like stories.
Silvia Noguerón-Liu and Jayne C. Lammers

sociocultural perspectives reposition digital tools as mediums for students to participate in differ-
ent kinds of practices, to reach new audiences, and to collaborate in the classroom in different
ways. In the following sections, we feature studies that describe how digital tools mediate and
transform classroom instruction.

Key Questions and Findings in Empirical Work

In this section, we closely examine the 11 empirical studies that represent detailed descriptions of
classroom practice and innovation, informed by concepts related to sociocultural theory, new lit-
eracies, or Connected Learning. We focus on the articles that draw on sociocultural or new liter-
acies, and which (re)define features, functions, and affordances of digital tools, including texts
presented in tablet devices. Due to our focus on technology adoption by teachers in collaboration
with researchers, several of these studies come from practitioner-oriented journals with high visi-
bility and rigorous expectations for publication (e.g., the International Literacy Association’s The
Reading Teacher). Furthermore, some of the studies also address the experiences of nondominant
students engaging with digital tools in the classroom, as teachers and researchers consider the
ways digital tools and practices can capitalize on their knowledge. When reading and reviewing
the articles, we used the following guiding question(s):

• What are the features of focal digital tools in these studies? How can these features mediate
classroom instruction?
• How is the work of classroom instruction mediated by digital tools and practices?

In the first section, articles center on the affordances of digital tools, allowing both researchers
and practitioners to identify new digital features to support students during literacy instruction,
within the rapidly changing market of apps for mobile devices. In the second, we describe studies
about classroom-based practices, where research questions explore specific instructional goals,
and then examine how digital tools played a role in achieving such goals, particularly for youth
whose access and use of technology has been underreported.

Tool-Centered Questions and Findings

The selected articles included questions focused on the features of digital tools (texts, platforms,
and apps), particularly considering: (a) the nature of the affordances of these tools, and how such
affordances mediate literacy instruction for readers at various developmental stages; and (b) how
such affordances mediate the development of new and digital literacies with a goal of equity in
mind.
As mentioned above, from sociocultural and new literacies’ perspectives, mediated action is
shaped by the affordances of the tools (Kress, 2010) and historical/cultural forces shape the use of
the tools (Wertsch, 1991). The articles we analyzed describe specific features of digital tools, as
well as some description of the classroom settings where such tools can be used, for instance, in
whole-group, small group, and independent work settings.
In this section we present research that describes a range of frameworks or criterion for select-
ing and evaluating digital tools. The ten-year range that these studies represent allows us to see
the increasing development of applications for mobile devices, as they were more frequently
adopted in classrooms. Some studies based their criteria on particular theories of learning and lit-
eracy (e.g., Baker, 2007; Israelson, 2015; Rowsell & Wohlwend, 2016), while others took
a more grounded approach and generated categories based, for example, on the coding of features
in existing apps (e.g., Javorsky & Trainin, 2014). The digital tools described include classroom

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websites (Baker, 2007), scaffolded text environments (Dalton, Proctor, Uccelli, Mo, & Snow,
2011), technology-enhanced storybooks (Takacs et al., 2015), iPad apps (Israelson, 2015; Rowsell
& Wohlwend, 2016), and digital story applications (Javorsky & Trainin, 2014).
The earliest study we reviewed explored how website features align with various literacy
instructional approaches and classroom social practices. Informed by sociocultural, transformative,
and new literacies’ approaches, Baker (2007) examined 40 elementary (K-6) classroom websites,
defined as sites maintained and published by a teacher, and titled accordingly (e.g., Ms. Elemen-
tary Classroom), or linked to the school/district site. Baker framed websites as tools facilitating
online support and instructional opportunities within and beyond classrooms. Baker identified liter-
acy instruction components or related activities and instructional approaches represented in the
sites. Her analysis accounted for various modalities or textualities (e.g., including drawings and/or
multimedia). She found every site had at least one feature supporting skills-oriented approaches
to literacy instruction, such as studying spelling words or memorizing sight words, with links to
specific literacy standards, and links to websites for practicing skills, including many commercial
sites. Almost half of the sites (43%) were used to publish students’ writing in alignment with pro-
cess-based approaches—for instance, photos with captions, or students’ emulation of a pattern in
a children’s book. About 35% of the sites included links to authors’ websites, a feature aligned
with student enjoyment and understanding of contemporary children’s literature. Lastly, 70% of
the websites had some type of information for parents, extending literacy support beyond the
classroom. Baker noted that website content did not reflect the changing nature of interactive
literacy platforms because links and newsletters are primarily non-communicative technologies.
While the websites mediated access to literacy resources beyond school boundaries (for families
with technology access), the study did not explore how these websites were used in the social
contexts of home or school.
In Dalton et al. (2011), the authors examined the effects of scaffolded digital text on
monolingual and bilingual students’ reading achievement. The study richly described the fea-
tures of the Improving Comprehension Online (ICON) reading environment used in six fifth
grade classrooms in the north-eastern U.S. The ICON prototype—developed with universal
design features for scaffolded digital reading, including multiple means of representation,
expression, and engagement—provided essential components of accessible design for learning.
The digital environment included eight multimedia texts with text-to-speech read-aloud func-
tions in both English and Spanish. Bilingual readers were supported by bilingual and English-
speaking virtual “coaches” who served as models, and could listen to Spanish narrations of the
texts, as well as translations of key vocabulary. Dalton et al. compared reading performance in
three conditions: using the program with scaffolds for reading comprehension only, vocabulary
only, or a combination of comprehension strategies and vocabulary. They found that bilingual
students’ reading performance benefitted from the vocabulary and combined strategies’ condi-
tions. The study highlighted how the ICON reading environment provided several media-
tional means for the reader to engage with content, such as support through bilingual virtual
coaching, vocabulary hyperlinks and translations, and multimodal means to represent ideas
(images, audio, highlighting).
These two studies examined digital content designed by teachers or researchers, with features
directly supporting literacy instruction (phonics, vocabulary, comprehension), and particular
approaches to learning and teaching (e.g., universal design for learning, process-writing
approaches). From a sociocultural approach to mediated action, these studies acknowledged the
social and historical practices associated with digital tools and highlighted some innovations
unique to multimodal, digital content. However, only the second study (Dalton et al., 2011)
involved designing tools with expansive visions of culturally and linguistically diverse readers,

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providing specific ideas for future software design that can allow students to capitalize on their
multiple linguistic resources.
Another trend in digital research concerning the analysis of digital tools comes from journals
aimed for literacy practitioners, where articles provided teachers with guidelines to evaluate
resources to integrate technology into literacy instruction. With the increased presence of tablets
in early literacy classrooms, and a growing market of apps developed for educational purposes
(Miller & Warschauer, 2013), some of these studies proposed heuristics to identify scaffolds and
features that support instruction.
Javorsky and Trainin (2014) explored 20 story applications for mobile devices created for
young children. Their study, informed by cognitive flexibility theory, frames how readers transfer
skills from a familiar reading environment to a changing environment—navigating texts in
a screen—and analyzed text features and book handling skills necessary to browse a digital book.
Their findings showed that unlike with print-based texts, where concepts of print behaviors can
be applied consistently across books with the same physical features, navigating digital texts pre-
sented young readers with more challenges. Digital applications have no consistency in their
icons (e.g., each app used different icons to navigate a story or open a menu), nor in their inter-
activity (some animations happened automatically, some were user-activated). Thus, Javorski and
Trainin explained that readers need to be flexible and persist when exploring story apps. Consid-
ering digital stories as mediators for literacy, this variability has implications for instruction:
teachers cannot rely on students’ familiarity with navigation icons, when such icons vary from
app to app.
Israelson (2015) and Rowsell and Wohlwend (2016) designed rubrics for teachers to evaluate
tablet apps. Israelson (2015) referred to the “value-added and affordances” (p. 341) of multimodal
texts and developed an evaluation framework informed by these concepts. The rubric provided
continua for multimodal features (distracting to engaging), intuitiveness of app navigation (con-
fusing/unclear to clear displays, examples, and steps), user interactivity (minimal to high inter-
activity), and accuracy of literacy content (e.g., spelling of words). In addition, Israelson described
various steps a teacher could take before examining value added and affordances: (a) consider
instructional objectives and grouping structure (e.g., small group, whole group), and whether
teachers seek to enhance or transform (e.g., modify, redesign) with technology; (b) situate the
app in a category (e.g., e-book, mind-mapping), and consider how it may target early literacy
skills (e.g., word recognition, vocabulary); and then (c) examine for value added and specific
affordances. This framework illuminated the potential of digital text affordances within instruc-
tional contexts, where teachers consider their goals, interactions with students, and content
demands. Hence, the framework considered more than text features mediating access to content
in app selection; it also accounted for the social context of literacy instruction within the
classroom.
Rowsell and Wohlwend (2016) built on Israelson’s (2015) model by examining apps
from an ideological perspective of literacy (Street, 1984), describing apps’ “impact on chil-
dren’s opportunities to develop skills and dispositions as producers rather than consumers”
(p. 197). They examined apps that mediate “participatory literacies,” in which children can
share, interpret, and use digital media to connect with various learning and digital cultures.
They proposed six dimensions of app evaluation: whether an app allows multiple people to
interact (multiplayer), supports content creation (productive), allows immersion through
exposure to image, sound, motion, or animation features (multimodal), allows freedom to
navigate alternative paths (open-ended), encourages affective and embodied interactions
(pleasurable), and allows sharing on social networks (connectivity). Like Israelson (2015),
they explored these dimensions in relation to classroom literacy practices (e.g., e-book read-
ing), but they also included composition practices with multiple modes (e.g., video

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animation). They called for an expansive view of literacy that situates app use within con-
texts with shared cultural frameworks and models, drawing on anthropological and sociolin-
guistic literacy approaches (e.g., Street, 1984), and they explained how readers can benefit
from various apps to engage with multimodal content, and to communicate and discuss
what they have learned. Students’ ability to participate in online communities is central in
this evaluation framework.
Overall, these articles showcase how new forms and practices for reading texts can be shaped
by the features of available digital tools. Most address the importance of new features that support
readers’ experience with digital tools (e.g., multimodal sound effects), as well as how specific
skills and content are integrated into the digital tools. They showcase how app and digital tool
integration are shaped by multiple goals, as teachers select apps based on their needs to meet cur-
riculum standards, as well as their efforts to introduce new literacy dispositions and knowledge.
For most researchers, the classroom setting is the social context for app integration, with the
teacher as a designer and gatekeeper of app and digital text content. Baker (2007) expanded the
audience of classroom websites to the household, where families can be potential consumers and
users of literacy sites, and Dalton et al. (2011) described the design of online environments for
bilingual students. Rowsell and Wohlwend (2016) stressed the importance of apps that connect
students to wider communities online, beyond classroom boundaries. However, a limitation of
studies centered on digital tools, is that design features and content that are culturally relevant for
diverse, nondominant communities are under explored; for instance, other than Dalton et al.
(2011), none of the other studies or apps consider specifically translation or multilingual features.

Classroom-Centered Practices: Questions and Findings

Within the collection of articles that focus on classroom practice more broadly, many centered
on questions about how teachers integrated technology into their literacy instruction. Often
deriving from case study approaches, this research highlights teachers’ perspectives and experi-
ences in planning and implementing technology-mediated literacy instruction. The devices
explored in these studies included tablets and desktop computers, and their corresponding liter-
acy-related applications (e.g., Hutchison, Beschorner, & Schmidt-Crawford, 2012; Price-Dennis,
2016; Rowsell, Saudelli, Scott, & Bishop, 2013) and flip cameras (Hagood, 2012). These readings
also shed light on a variety of platforms that facilitated students’ multimodal content production
(e.g., Hagood, 2012; Handsfield, Dean, & Cielocha, 2009).
Through examples of classroom implementation, this research illuminates the affordances of
technology in literacy instruction. For example, Hutchison and her colleagues (2012), describe the
case of Mrs. Dill, a fourth grade teacher, whose practices show how iPads gave students access to
digital libraries for independent reading and, using selected apps, facilitated development of reading
comprehension skills—e.g., retelling, sequencing, and identifying main ideas and details. From the
onset of her planning with the researchers, Mrs. Dill expressed a desire to enhance students’ oppor-
tunities to engage with literacy content, by including new literacy skills. She discussed the affor-
dances of an app to draw illustrations of students’ visualizations, noting how they would have more
options than crayons or paper, and she would be able to enlarge and share images with ease. With
a mind-mapping app, students could manipulate the placement of boxes on a screen and in dia-
grams. With a virtual bookshelf app, students could communicate their text choices with others
using virtual sticky notes. The researchers also discussed the apps’ features with students in focus
groups, gaining insights about their thoughts on the apps’ potential. In this collaboration, the
teacher and researchers planned their print-based literacy and new literacies’ goals prior to selecting
an app, and analyzed, and reflected on, how the selected apps mediated access to texts and offered
students new ways to interact with, analyze, and produce texts.

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Another teacher-researcher collaboration was conducted by Rowsell et al. (2013), who repre-
sents an international team of Australian, Canadian, and U.S.-based researchers, and thus high-
lights the potential of transnational collaborations. The article featured an action research project
with two Canadian teachers in elementary and middle school, who analyzed professional readings
and reflections in blog posts with the research team, focused on their students’ development of
print and digital literacies using iPads and apps. While the intent of the teachers’ inquiry
addressed how iPads were used in word study instruction (e.g., vocabulary, spelling), the teachers’
reflections described how students engaged in critical conversations about app selection for par-
ticular purposes. They also noticed students’ collaboration in face-to-face interaction using word-
building and vocabulary apps. Rowsell et. al.’s research, in particular, highlights the potential for
students to engage in local, social practices with each other, beyond the literacy-focused purposes
of the apps.
Hagood (2012) also worked with teachers, drawing on a year-long professional learning group
she facilitated with middle school content area teachers who learned about new literacies. Her
research spotlights stories from nine teachers and offers direction to teachers interested in integrat-
ing digital tools and practices into their instruction. Like Rowsell et al. (2013), teachers’ explor-
ation of digital literacies began with reading common texts about new and media literacies.
Teachers’ exploration of various tools and platforms followed, culminating with their design and
implementation of new literacies in their content-area instruction, which included reading inter-
vention, English Language Arts, and ELA Honors. Hagood (2012) shared stories of middle school
students using a range of devices and platforms to produce multimodal content, through digital
storytelling research projects, visual representations of vocabulary, and video-recorded reading flu-
ency exercises. This research illustrates how literacy instruction might successfully incorporate
both consumption and production of digital tools as students produce, respond to, and interpret
multiple texts.
While these studies describe the process of teachers adopting and examining digital tools,
others address how teachers included the voices or perspectives of nondominant students. Price-
Dennis (2016) grounded her two year qualitative study in theoretical frameworks that conceptu-
alize Black girls’ literacies as multimodal, critical, social practices. Instead of foregrounding the
tools and their affordances, Price-Dennis’ work began with a framework outlining how literacies
are tied to Black girls’ identities, how they are enacted collaboratively, and how they are shaped
by power and politics (Muhammad & Haddix, 2016). Drawing on this framework, Price-Dennis
collaborated with a fifth grade teacher to design English language arts instructional units, looking
for ways to use digital tools to explore issues of equity, race, and power. Their curriculum inte-
grated print-based and digital texts, such as children’s literature, TEDx talks, poetry, and music
videos. In analyzing these instructional units, Price-Dennis showcased how digital tools, apps, and
platforms such as YouTube, Newsela, Flipboard, or Google forms, mediated Black girls’ explor-
ation and reflection on social issues. For instance, by accessing news, digital images, and media,
students juxtaposed and curated multiple texts related to #BlackLivesMatter, and engaged in dia-
logue, responding to embedded questions in a digital lesson platform. In this research, nondomi-
nant students’ lived experiences guided inquiry, and digital tools (together with print-based
resources) helped mediate access, curation, and dialogue about culturally relevant resources. Stu-
dents were not necessarily mirroring print-based literacies. They engaged in critical literacy prac-
tices drawing on their knowledge and critical and social justice concerns, while curating and
responding to multiple platforms and types of texts. Their end-of-unit assessments reflected trans-
formative shifts, as students’ final products were digital and multimodal, including podcasts, stop-
motion animation, and memes. These products showed the sense Black girls made of what they
read, and the new and digital repertoire of practices they were building. This research reveals the

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importance of centering students’ identities at the onset of planning a digital literacy project,
instead of starting with standards or tools.
Handsfield et al. (2009) offered the example of fourth graders in a self-contained bilingual
(Spanish-English) class that included a few students also receiving special education services. The
researchers found that by using two platforms—Comic Creator and Blogger—the teacher
worked to position these students as critical consumers and producers of texts. While the overall
study centered on the exploration of multilingualism, multiliteracies, and teacher development,
this article described how the focal teacher customized the use of two web platforms to engage
her students in purposeful writers, and how they navigated together the affordances and limita-
tions of the tools. For instance, students relied on print-versions of comic strips, as the comic-
strip platform did not allow them to save their work. Valuable affordances included students’
opportunities to engage in social interaction at their own pace (via written blog posts), to look
up unfamiliar words, and to craft responses in their first or second language. Implications for
emergent bilingual students include the multiple opportunities for them to use language in
authentic ways: for social interaction, storytelling, and description of their reading practices and
preferences.
Lastly, Martin-Beltrán, Tigert, Peercy and Silverman (2017) explored the digital literacy prac-
tices of seven students (in kindergarten and fourth grade) labeled as English learners, most of
whom reported Spanish as their first language. In their design-based research study, the
researchers and teachers developed a cross-age peer learning program (reading buddies), where
students used print-based books, tablet texts, and videos to read together in pairs and/or triads.
The digital texts allowed reading buddies to listen to a voice narration, and to tap on highlighted
vocabulary for definitions, and access animations in some pages. Informed by sociocultural
theory, they framed buddies’ text-based interactions as “mediational episodes” (p. 137), where
students co-constructed meaning together, using digital and print-based text to mediate their lan-
guage and literacy learning. Their mixed methods analysis showed that buddies engaged in more
turns of talk and engaged more deeply with the text when the text was print-based; with digital
texts, buddies did quick vocabulary checks, tapping on word definitions embedded in the text.
Buddies were more likely to re-read print-based books, arguing that re-reading took too long on
a tablet, as they sometimes went back to the beginning of the book. Younger buddies (kindergar-
teners) were more likely to notice sight words or familiar text in the print-based books, than in
the digital books. The authors stressed the need for instruction where students are shown how to
develop strategies to engage with digital text. As mentioned above, the variability of navigation
tools in digital books or apps, makes it hard for readers to maximize their engagement with digi-
tal features (Javorsky & Trainin, 2014). Hence, teacher’s modeling is necessary to build disposi-
tions for flexibility and persistence in these new reading environments.
Overall, this collection of classroom-centered research showcases the potential of teacher-
researcher collaborations, as teachers’ knowledge and experience with their students served as
resources in designing instructional interventions. While not the focus of all of these studies, we
see an emphasis on equity-oriented instructional practice in many of these articles, because they
illustrate visions of digital literacy instruction that goes beyond remedial digital solutions, and
place students’ strengths at the center of planning (Handsfield et al., 2009; Martin-Beltrán, et al.,
2017; Price-Dennis, 2016). Such work encourages the exploration of how digital tools can medi-
ate literacy instruction for empowering purposes for nondominant students.

New Approaches and Opportunities

In starting this chapter, we outlined and described theoretical perspectives that center mediation
and social contexts of learning. Like Rowsell and Wohlwend (2016), and previous reviews in

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this handbook (Reinking & Bridwell-Bowles, 1991; Leu, 2000; Kamil et al., 2000), we see value
in studies that account for the transformative and deictic (Leu, 2000) nature of digital texts and
practices. While most studies cited focused on the potential of features and scaffolds in digital
devices and platforms to support reading skills, we found that teachers and students go beyond
emphasis on foundational reading skills, to explore what is “transformative” and novel about digi-
tal tools.

Selection of Digital Tools: Expanding Visions of Design, Evaluation, and

Decision-Making
Promising approaches to research and practice were found in resources aimed at helping teachers
evaluate apps and digital books. These powerful checklists, rubrics, and frameworks aid teachers
in making informed decisions about products and platforms they can adopt in whole-group,
small-group, or independent work/centers for students. These rubrics index the various factors
and considerations deemed relevant by multiple stakeholders, while demonstrating underlying
theoretical understandings of literacy, technology, and learning. In the work we reviewed,
descriptions of scaffolds and features heavily include multimodality, interactivity, and alignment
with focal literacy skills or strategies (e.g., concepts of print, visualizing). Yet few studies consider
features related to first-language support (e.g., Dalton et al., 2011), and aesthetic, pleasurable, and
participatory affordances of apps (Rowsell & Wohlwend, 2016).
In our review of tool-centered studies, some of the digital tools had been designed by teachers
(classroom websites) or a team of researchers (online environment in Dalton et al., 2011); how-
ever, in the app market, the apps reviewed were retrieved and evaluated from an app market-
place, where less information is available about the designers. McKenna (2006) pointed out the
tension between established instructional practices, mirrored in the design and content of some
school-based applications (e.g., a sight-word game), and a marketplace of more interactive,
exploration-oriented apps (e.g., a blog). This tension is also present in the decisions school dis-
tricts have to make about technology adoption, based on goals, cost, technical support, and infra-
structure requirements (Demski, 2012; Owens, 2015). Furthermore, as standardized state reading
assessments now offer adaptive computer-based testing (e.g., PARCC, Smarter Balanced), new
demands pose challenges for schools to have an adequate technological infrastructure and readi-
ness to conduct large-scale assessments (Davis, 2012). Hence, digital tools are not only mediating
access to particular subject-area content (like reading and writing), but they are also, increasingly,
part of larger school- and district-based instructional and assessment initiatives.
When large technology companies (e.g., Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft) are competitive in
grand-scale adoption of devices and platforms in schools (Cavanagh, May 8, 2017, Singer, May 13,
2017), we need local, culturally situated studies that examine teachers’ potential to customize tools
and to design culturally and linguistically sustaining literacy experiences for all students. An analysis
of vendors and large technology contracts should consider whether students, parents, and teachers
are able to access and adopt digital education platforms, and it should examine closely the evidence
of outcomes for nondominant students (Burch & Good, 2014). Further studies exploring the ways
teachers can design, curate, and implement customized online content can provide much more
insight on culturally responsive ways to integrate technology content for all students.

Classroom-Based Digital Literacy Instruction: Centering on Students’

Experiences and Teacher-Researcher Collaboration
The reviewed studies point to the promise of collaboration and co-design of technology integra-
tion efforts in ELA with classroom teachers (see Hagood, 2012; Handsfield et al., 2009). Some of

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the classroom-based studies described the ways researchers balanced their entry and decision-
making process with teachers and administrators, including their review of curriculum standards,
as they also offered more expansive views of technology in their projects. For instance, Hutchi-
son et al. (2012), and Price-Dennis (2016) report that their planning conversations with experi-
enced teachers began with a focus on the relationships between literacy and social justice goals;
once instructional units or lessons including content and strategies were designed, the teams
explored digital tools and media (iPad and web apps, search engines) that could support these
goals. All authors made some reference to inclusion of standards or curriculum guides in their
planning. Their projects illustrate the benefits of translating research to practice in collaboration
with teachers as co-researchers, including the alignment of digital projects with academic stand-
ards. Throughout this chapter, we argue that technology integration should go beyond efforts to
enhance print-based literacy outcomes. However, alignment with literacy standards is a key com-
ponent of the choices teachers make everyday; hence, we emphasize fruitful teacher-researcher
collaborations through innovative practices that are not solely standards-driven, but also grounded
on students’ knowledge, interests, and potential.
Another area of new research could foster teacher-researcher collaboration in the development
of checklists and rubrics to evaluate digital content, and to investigate the trajectories of app/digi-
tal text selection based on co-designed parameters. As the nature of apps and texts is constantly
evolving in a competitive and fast-paced app market, these resources need to be made available
in multiple venues for the greatest impact on practice. Instead of remaining locked behind the
paywalls of peer-reviewed journals, practitioners and researchers should be allowed to share and
enhance these helpful resources through online communities, professional conferences, social net-
works, and online professional development.
We do see great opportunity in the joint inquiry by researchers and teachers; however, digital
equity can only be addressed when the voices, concerns, and experiences of nondominant stu-
dents and families are invited into the conversation. In all the studies we reviewed, only Price-
Dennis’s (2016) work explicitly addressed the inclusion of critical and racially conscious
approaches to digital literacy in their theoretical framing and focal units. Furthermore, decision-
making processes at district- or school-levels may not always include the concerns of those on
the receiving end of digital access initiatives—families perceived as having limited or no technol-
ogy and internet connectivity. When studies showcase ways to leverage the knowledge of diverse
students in the design of online environments (e.g., Dalton et al., 2011) or curriculum (Price-
Dennis, 2016), implications of such work showcase how digital tools are not always a one-size-
fits-all resource for literacy instruction. Nondominant children and their families navigate mul-
tiple social contexts, languages, and literacies, engaging in syncretic, hybrid, multimodal nepantla
(or, in between, thriving at the boundary) literacies (Lizárraga & Gutiérrez, 2017, p. 39), drawing
on their full linguistic and cultural repertoires, and repositioning themselves and their communi-
ties in powerful, expert ways.
Such situated practices have been central in research on mediation in after-school programs
such as the Fifth Dimension and La Clase Mágica. For instance, Schwartz and Gutiérrez (2015)
draw on Connected Learning and situated approaches to literacy to document how Latinx chil-
dren and their mothers use cell phones to access the Internet and social media, elaborating on
how new media practices are shaped by the rules of the household, gender roles, and beliefs
about children’s media use. They connect these insights from households to the ways children
engage with media at an after-school program. Similarly, Noguerón-Liu (2017) explored the
various sociopolitical and cultural factors shaping Latinx families’ access to devices and connectiv-
ity, and their responses to a 1:1 (one-laptop, one-child) district initiative, also noticing how par-
ents’ beliefs about their roles and everyday practices did not always align with expectations of
academic digital reading at home. Theoretical approaches that put cultural practices in the

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forefront, together with critical literacy perspectives illuminating issues of power, are both crucial
to interrogate common assumptions about technology as a potential tool to support nondominant
children’s literacy learning.
Finally, this review revealed the untapped potential of out-of-school research studies and their
implications for classroom instruction. For instance, out-of-school studies with adolescents show
digital literacy and media production to be highly motivating for youth (see Curwood, Magnif-
ico, & Lammers, 2013; Lammers, Magnifico, & Curwood, 2018; Lammers & Marsh, 2015); it
also points to the potential of digital practices to give emergent bilinguals access to literate iden-
tities (Black, 2008; Lam, 2004). Despite the literature demonstrating how teachers can incorpor-
ate digital spaces and practices into literacy instruction, research about middle-school writing
instruction still shows technology use to be very teacher-centered, focused on editing and revi-
sion, and sharing only with local, not global or connected, audiences (Graham, Capizzi, Harris,
Hebert, & Morphy, 2014). Further connections between the out-of-school/after-school research
literature and the classroom-based work is necessary to inform future studies going beyond the
expectations of assessment in most literacy classrooms.

Conclusion and Connection to Entries in This Volume

Literacy instruction needs to prepare readers to widen their choices, opportunities, and access to
various types of texts—as emphasized in the CCSS anchor standards, for students to “integrate
and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats” (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.
R.7). Furthermore digital reading is shifting with the availability of digital content in libraries
(Baron, Chapter 7 this volume; Mackey, Chapter 6, this volume). Research on mediation of
digital texts should also account for factors and practices shaping the availability of digital texts
beyond the classroom, considering access in public spaces like libraries, after school programs, as
well as the growing marketplace of content tied to specific devices (e.g., Kindle, nook, Google,
and Apple smartphones). As Mackey (this volume) explains, reading choices are now shaped by
“an enormous change in technological and cultural affordances, frequently framed by commercial
motivations” (p. 122). Mediation of digital literacies in the classroom should extend beyond
learning scaffolds, and be inclusive of the critical exploration of titles, platforms, and media in an
increasingly complex landscape of texts and ideas.

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Appendix A: Studies Reviewed

Authors Mediational tool (device

and year Method of inquiry Grade level or platform used) Guiding theoretical frameworks

Tool-centered studies
Baker Analysis of classroom Elementary Websites Sociocultural perspectives,
(2007) website features. students transformative and new liter-
(k-6) acies’ stances
Dalton Mixed methods Fifth-grade Scaffolded text Universal design for learning,
et al. monolingual environment simple view and compensa-
(2011) and bilingual tory models of reading, socio-
children cultural context factors
Israelson Development of Elementary Apps Affordances and value added;
(2015) framework for app education substitution, augmentation,
selection modification and redefinition
(SAMR) model.
Javorsky Exploratory study of Young, early Digital texts, digital Cognitive flexibility theory;
and Trainin digital story readers stories references to multiple
(2014) applications modalities
Rowsell Comparison of four Elementary Apps Participatory literacies, ideo-
and Wohl- app-mediated literacy students logical model of literacy
wend practices and intro-
(2016) duction of rubric
Classroom-based studies
Hutchison Exploratory case study Fourth grade Wikis, video production, TPACK framework, new liter-
et al. blogs, apps, games, acies and affordances
(2012) e-readers, podcasts, car-
toon creators, e-mail
Price- Qualitative case study Fifth grade Web 2.0 platforms and Black girls’ literacies
Dennis apps, digital and print- framework
(2016) based media, tablets
and desktops
Handsfield Qualitative two-year Fourth grade Comic creator and Sociocultural theory, affor-
et al. research project. Blogspot dances of digital text
(2009)
Hagood Qualitative study of Grades 6-8 Photostory, Glogster, new literacies
(2012) teachers’ experiences flip cameras, e-readers
and risks
Martin- Design-based research Cross-age Digital text in tablet Sociocultural theory
Beltrán study of reading bud- peers: kin-
et al. dies program, mixed- dergarten
(2017) methods analysis and 4th
grade
Rowsell Longitudinal action 3rd & 6th iPads and apps New Literacy Studies;
et al. research of teacher grades anthropological perspectives
(2013) learning group

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 22
Restorying Critical Literacies
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas,
Jane Bean-Folkes, and James Joshua Coleman

Despite increasing restrictions on curriculum, testing imperatives, and other aspects of neoliberal
policies, today’s students are recasting stories in their own images, experiences, perspectives, and
mindsets (Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016). By the end of the 2010s, Black girls like Marley Dias
were engaging in hashtag activism like #1000BlackGirlBooks, to push for more diversity in chil-
dren’s and young adult literature (Stornaiuolo & Thomas, 2017). Eleven year old Dias created
the online campaign #1000BlackGirlBooks because she did not see herself in the books she was
reading (Flood, 2016). While also inspiring other young people, Dias drew attention to the
broader issue of representation in children’s literature. According to the Cooperative Book Cen-
ter’s statistics for 2018, only 180 titles featured African or African American characters out of
3,500 books published (Campbell, 2017; CCBC, 2018). In her public declaration that these stat-
istics must change, she displayed critical awareness of persistent disparities in the kinds of texts
that are validated by schooling.
Dias is by no means alone. When today’s young people are misrepresented or erased from
mainstream media, they are now creating and finding new venues to represent themselves and
others to create counter narratives of resistance as a matter of course (Duncan-Andrade, 2007).
Whether “bending” the race, gender, or sexual identity of characters they find (Thomas & Stor-
naiuolo, 2016), engaging in “lifestreaming” to gain voice and visibility online (Wargo, 2015), or
taking “selfies” to circulate self-representations (Brager, 2015), young people are now writing
themselves into the media that have excluded them. Queer youth and young adults are remixing
popular stories and cultures to better reflect the ways that all people live – and love – today
(Wargo, 2015). Native youth are centering silence, testimony, and nonviolent action as a way to
resist narratives that erase their cultures and presence (San Pedro, 2015). Most recently, at the
time of this writing, students from all backgrounds at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in
Florida emerged as leaders in the fight against gun violence after one of the nation’s worst mass
school shootings, using the hashtags #NeverAgain and #MarchForOurLives (Arndt & Tesar,
2018). Truly, this is an age of restorying and reclamation of narrative. However, this reclamation
of narrative has been largely read as youth activism, without explicitly connecting this action to
educational practice.
It must be noted that many of us – peoples of color, Indigenous peoples, LGBTQ folk,
women and nonbinary folk, children of undocumented workers, descendants of the enslaved –
have always had to read ourselves into canons that excluded us historically, and all too often,

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continue to exclude our perspectives. Many canonical texts historically assumed a White male
readership as their primary audience, and, in turn, people from other groups had to read
(through) those narratives to attain print literacies and acquire the codes of power (Delpit, 1995).
Not only was it necessary for people from the margins to identify and comprehend the societal
metanarratives and metadiscourses contained within the canon in order to gain access to the pro-
fessions, but often familiarity with canonical White male subjectivity was also vital for their very
survival. Whether by reading literary prose, borrowing and transforming religious metaphors, or
secretly violating edicts and laws, would-be readers and writers from nondominant groups had to
accommodate textual self-erasure while reading written prose, viewing artwork, and the like.
Thus, there arose an imperative to read and write marginalized selfhoods into textual existence.
Literacy for nondominant people began then, with intergenerational narratives of sustenance and
resilience, and continued with counter-storytelling that recognized mainstream narratives as inad-
equate and often damaging.
In this chapter, we situate our review of the literature on critical literacies within Black and
Indigenous traditions of struggle over literacy (Fisher, 2009; Reese, 2013; Rooks, 1989; Thomas
& Stornaiuolo, 2016). In doing so, we place the Black literate tradition in conversation with
Freirean critical pedagogy, invite critical Indigenous literacies to interrogate New Literacy Stud-
ies, and nod toward the existence of other traditions of criticality that can also be brought to
bear on considerations of literacy and power. From there, we turn toward examining how
today’s children, youth, and young adults are reading the word and the world critically (Freire &
Macedo, 1987), both in their embodied lifeworlds and in digital spaces (Kinloch, 2010; Lipman,
2004, 2013; Stornaiuolo & Thomas, 2017; Winn, 2010). We connect youth and teachers’ visible
action to critical reader response theory (Beach, Appleman, Fecho, & Simon, 2016; Botelho &
Rudman, 2009; Dávila, 2012; Leland, Lewison, & Harste, 2013; Lewis, 2000; Lewis, Enciso, &
Moje, 2007) and critical sociolinguistics (Gee, 1990; Hall, 2001; Luke, 2012; Luke & Freebody,
1997). Next, we locate critical literacies within the contemporary research landscape, suggesting
bridges between the gaps of educational theory and practice. Our final section ends on a somber
note as we ponder the task of narrating critical literacies itself from a critical perspective – now
and in the future.

Restorying the History of Critical Literacy: Centering the Margins

Critical literacy has been defined as “the social practice of reading, interpreting, and analyzing
texts, discourses, and society to understand how, where, and why power operates, circulates, and
reproduces itself ” (Coffey, n.d.). This definition focuses on power, because the idea of reading
from a critical lens was first ignited by people from the margins – including children and youth –
not represented within the official discourses and curricula of schooling itself (Thomas & Stor-
naiuolo, 2016). Thus, we recontextualize critical literacy within landscapes of educational struggle
within and beyond the United States that have not always been highlighted in educational
research (Anderson, 1988; Fisher, 2009). One such example comes from the Black literacy trad-
ition. Slave narratives provide glimpses into the existence of critically literate traditions that pre-
dated the Civil War (Gates, 1987). For example, Noliwe Rooks observes the agency of Black
women writers who

have begun the task of reshaping and redefining the patriarchy’s notions regarding slave
women by offering an alternative view of history – a vision which has Black women at its
center. While they have not as yet answered all of the stereotypes of Black women that we

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have come to accept, they have made a definite start… Black women have begun to write them-
selves into existence.
(Rooks, 1989, p. 62)

These acts of interpretative freedom – inscribing the self into existence when the very self-
hood of Black women and girls was recognized neither legally nor socially – predate most histor-
ies of critical literacies by over a century.
After the US Civil War, in the segregated South, the teachers of the freedmen, their children,
and their children’s children, pulled back the curtain of the United States literary canon and held
it up to scrutiny. bell hooks attested to this agency within the segregated classrooms of her
childhood:

To be changed by ideas was pure pleasure. But to learn ideas that ran counter to values and
beliefs learned at home was to place oneself at risk, to enter the danger zone… School was
the place where I could forget that self and, through ideas, reinvent myself.

She describes her teachers as linguistically and culturally similar “women on a mission”
(hooks, 1994). This mission of providing critical education for students – humanizing them, their
culture, and the world around them, in the face of state-sanctioned dehumanization – is some-
thing that Jacqueline Jordan Irvine (1999) further historicizes:

In 1903, Du Bois wrote: “In the Black world, the preacher and teacher embodied once the
ideals of this people – the strife for another and a more just world, the vague dream of right-
eousness, the mystery of knowing” (Du Bois, 1903/1973, p. 57). As Du Bois’s statement
indicates, teachers in the African American community were held in high esteem and saw
teaching as a moral act reminiscent of the “lifting as we climb” philosophy of late 19th- and
early 20th-century Black women educators like Lucy Laney, Charlotte Hawkins Brown,
Fanny Jackson Coppin, and Anna J. Cooper (Irvine & Hill, 1990). The African American
teachers in my research have a strong and apparent sense of spirituality and use phrases and
words like “special Godly anointing” and “sacred calling” to describe their work. The inter-
views with these teachers are replete with references to words like “blessings” and
“mission.”

Scholarship on the history of Black education, including the burgeoning literature on critical race
theory in education and asset-based pedagogies, is sometimes considered separately from critical
literacies. Yet this rich historical account is evidence of the emancipatory dimension of critical
literacy, which Freire saw “as one of the major vehicles by which ‘oppressed’ people are able to
participate in the sociohistorical transformation of their society” (Walmsley, 1981, p. 84, as
quoted in Freire & Macedo, 1987). Published in 1970, Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, shifted
the landscape of teaching and learning as it called for critical praxis rooted in humanization and
social transformation. Challenging a “banking model of education” (2016, p. 73), Freire’s work
focused on student agency by addressing power as it relates to epistemology – what counts as
knowledge – and to the development of critical consciousness. No longer “vessel[s] to be filled”
(p. 79), students within Freire’s framework are repositioned as active constructors of knowledge,
critical agents consciously reshaping both the world and the word.
Freire and Macedo’s notion of “reading the world and reading the word,” bridged critical
pedagogy with studies of literacy as it linked the social world with the study of text (Freire,
2016; Freire & Macedo, 1987). In a sense, this work textualized the social world, making legible
the operations of power such that readers – in Freire’s case students – might challenge, harness,

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or even “rewrite” power in more equitable ways. Drawing upon this radical repositioning of the
learner, scholars have extended Freire and Macedo’s work on critical pedagogy and critical liter-
acy to address the cultural politics of democratic citizenship (Giroux, 1992, 2016), the dialogical
methods of literacy education for liberation (Shor & Freire, 1987), and even the implications of
literacy as a critical endeavor for equity (Shor, 1999). Re-articulated in a myriad number of dir-
ections and forms, Freire’s address of critical pedagogy serves as a foundation for critical readers
as it positions students as active interpreters of power, power made legible by reading both the
world and word. And yet, Freire himself hailed from the poorest and Blackest region of Brazil –
the Northeast – and his landmark work was inspired and informed by his interactions with sugar-
cane workers, many of whom were the Afro-Brazilian descendants of slaves. It is therefore
impossible to narrate emancipatory critical traditions in education without hailing the Middle
Passage, the Atlantic slave trade, and the ways that literacy was – quite literally – emancipatory
for millions of people.
Moving to another literate tradition that has been neglected within academic consider-
ations of reading, literacy, and English education, the conceptualization of literacy among
Native/Indigenous peoples has long been critical. Debbie Reese, founder of the influential
American Indians in Children’s Literature website, notes the need for the indigenization of
critical literacies (Reese, 2013). Critical Indigenous Literacies is neither concerned with
acquiring power within the dominant culture, nor being interpellated as minoritized
“people of color.” Instead, the focus of Critical Indigenous Literacies is the preservation of
tribal sovereignty, as well as focusing on Indigenous issues, concerns, and communities
(Reese, 2013, p. 251). As with parallel traditions, this work has gone on for centuries.

Calls for change go back to the 1800s. In 1829, William Apes, a Pequot man raised by
whites, wrote that he was afraid of his own people because of “the many stories I had heard
of their cruelty toward the whites” and that if the whites “had told me how cruel they had
been to the ‘poor Indian,’ I should have apprehended as much harm from them” (Apes &
O’Connell, 1829, p. 11). Less than a hundred years later, Native parents in Chicago wrote
to the mayor, objecting to what their children were being taught in Chicago schools. In
part, they wrote “We do not know if school histories are pro-British, but we do know that
they are unjust to the life of our people – the American Indian. They call all white victories,
battles, and all Indian victories, massacres,” and the parents asked that history be taught in
a balanced way (Costo & Henry, 1927). Apes and the Chicago parents were engaged in
what we know today as critical literacy.
(Reese, 2013, p. 253)

Reese, as well as other scholars of Critical Indigenous Literacies and Critical Indigenous educa-
tion, trace Native, Indigenous, and First Nations ways of knowing and being that are inherently
social in nature (Brayboy, 2005; Reese, 2013). The writings of Apes in the 19th century, and the
advocacy of Native parents in early 20th century Chicago, predate, and anticipate, Brian Street’s
ideological model of literacy, which reshaped the field of reading research by forging a novel,
agentive framework for the study of students’ literate practices (1984). Re-conceptualized as
a social practice “embedded in social conceptions of knowledge, identity, [and] being” (2006,
p. 2), Street demonstrated that literacy cannot be excised from social context and thus could not
be characterized as universal: the singular conception of literacy must be transformed into
a theory of multiple literacies. Challenging an “autonomous model of literacy” predicated on
cognitivist principles of discrete skills, Street’s anthropological approach made visible the mono-
lithic Western ideologies undergirding literacy study – that literacy and literacy research should
be concerned with the neutral acquisition of universalized reading skills. Within Street’s model,

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literacy operates as a series of “literacy events” and “literacy practices” interwoven within social
contexts. Street’s foundational work recasts the epistemological foundations of prior literacy
research, thus providing a novel framework for considerations of power and reading (Gee, 1990;
Street, 2003). The work of Street and followers, known as the New Literacy Studies (NLS),
informed subsequent research in critical literacy for three decades.
New Literacy Studies has since been applied to broader social theory (Bartlett & Holland, 2002),
discussions of discourses and intertextuality (Maybin, 2000), and to theories of multimodality (Kress
& Street, 2005). NLS repositioned considerations of power as intimately tied to the social practice of
literacy, and thus propelled reading research focused on student and community literacies operating
inside and outside of classroom spaces. New Literacy Studies is defined by its turn to ideological and
social aspects of literacy. Shaping nearly all critical literacy projects that emerged in its wake, NLS
has brought new attention to student agency by recognizing social practices both in and outside of
school spaces, in the material or digital world. And yet the work of Reese, Brayboy and others
reminds us that the centrality of the social has been inherent to the ways that Native and Indigenous
cultures read the world around them for millennia. Long before European colonization and aca-
demic interpretation, Native peoples were living literacy as a social practice.
These are but two examples demonstrating that literacy as a means to advocate for social just-
ice, political power, sovereignty, and humanization, is not solely a 20th and 21st century aca-
demic phenomenon. The idea that literacy can be both emancipatory and social is central to
Black/African and Native/Indigenous experiences in settler-colonial North America, as well as in
other Indigenous and minoritized experiences from around the world. We believe that research
on similar resistant readings of oppressive dominant cultures, as well as concomitant critical peda-
gogies, is necessary. For the idea of reading from a critical lens was first ignited by people from
the margins – especially children, youth, and teachers – not within the official discourses and
curricula of schooling itself. Considering the agency of the people – human actors – within
schooling and society, and how human agency informs academic conceptualizations of criticality,
is vital for understanding critical literacies today.

Restorying the Word and the World: How are Today’s Students
Transforming Critical Literacies?
What does critical literacy look like in an era of profound social and technological change?
Chinua Achebe suggests that one form of resistance has always been for those who have been
dispossessed or silenced to “restory” themselves in order to establish “a balance of stories where
every people will be able to contribute to a definition of themselves, where we are not victims
of other people’s accounts” (Bacon, 2000, para. 17). Restorying has been conceptualized in the
narrative analysis tradition in qualitative research as a method for researchers to break down the
stories that participants tell them into their constituent parts – plot, characters, and themes – and
then synthesize them in new ways to make meaning of myriad experiences of the same phenom-
enon (cf. Connelly & Clandinin, 2006; Daiute & Lightfoot, 2004; Ollerenshaw & Creswell,
2002). However, restorying can also characterize the complex ways that contemporary young
people are critically narrating “the word and the world” (Enciso, 2011; Freire & Macedo, 1987),
analyzing their lived experiences, then synthesizing and recontextualizing a multiplicity of stories
in order to form new narratives. In other words, as young readers imagine themselves into stories
they reimagine the very stories themselves, reimagining time, place, identity, perspective, mode, and
metanarratives through retold stories.
This process of restorying, or reshaping narratives to better reflect a diversity of perspectives
and experiences, is an act of asserting the importance of one’s existence in a world where subal-
tern voices are often silenced by those in power (Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016). Today’s social

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issues are viewed with concern by young people, and they are increasingly engaged online and in
the real world (Kinloch, 2010; Lipman, 2004, 2013; Stornaiuolo & Thomas, 2017; Winn, 2010),
using media sites like Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr to voice their concerns, provide a critical
perspective on political and social issues, and organize to take action. Outside of schools, students’
agentive restorying practices are transforming what it means to read the word and the world
through a critical lens – lenses that they then bring into classroom spaces.
These and other digital age acts of interpretative freedom are connected to the long tradition
of transactional theory in reading (Rosenblatt, 1995), as well as to critical reader response. Critical
reader response considers the selection of and pedagogy involved in the teaching of diverse litera-
ture and media for young people, as well as reading context and readers’ identities (Beach et al.,
2016; Botelho & Rudman, 2009; Enciso, 1997, 1998; Garcia, 2013; Leland et al., 2013; Lewis,
2000; Moje & Luke, 2009; Naidoo & Dahlen, 2013; Willis, 1998). Typified in the work of
Richard Beach (cf. 1993; 2000), critical reader response scholars infuse educational research with
literary theory, creating space for critical meaning-making. Critical reader response challenges the
separation of text and reader, instead emphasizing the connections among personal experience,
reading practices, and the social world. Through his address of cultural models (1995), Beach
echoes Street’s ideological model of literacy, asserting that sociocultural experiences shape student
interpretations of literature within classroom spaces. Placing pressure on New Criticism, the pre-
dominating mode of literary interpretation taught in K-12 classrooms, Beach challenged the sep-
aration of text and reader, instead emphasizing the connections among personal experience,
reading practices, and the social world.
Important contributions to the literature on critical reader response have come from Cynthia
Lewis, Carol D. Lee, Patricia Enciso, Deborah Appleman, Maria Franquiz, Wanda Brooks,
Miriam Martinez, Jonda McNair, Marjorie Orellana, Carmen Medina, Denise Dávila, and Angie
Zapata in recent years, to name a few – women scholars, many of color, who are honoring the
ways that children from diverse families and backgrounds respond to texts through highlighting
the counterstories these students tell. These scholars place emphasis on critical reader response as
praxis, arguing for expanded curricula that increase diverse representation and thus the range of
possible interpretative responses (cf. Bean-Folkes & Lewis-Ellison, 2018; DeNicolo & Franquiz,
2006; Dutro, 2008, 2011; Leland, Harste, Ociepka, Lewison, & Vasquez, 1999; Medina, 2010;
Zapata, Sánchez & Robinson, 2016).
Another burgeoning area of critical reader response scholarship has embraced student responses
to digital texts. We take the position that many of today’s students are arriving in our classrooms
with some critical lenses already, due to the ubiquity of personal devices like smartphones and
tablets (Mascheroni & Ólafsson, 2016). Recognizing the agency afforded by out of school digital
spaces, researchers are now considering how reader response interfaces with the digital to shape
the development of critical reader lenses (Beach & Bruce, 2002; Myers & Beach, 2001). Examin-
ing what students are already doing, and how they respond to texts critically in out-of-school
spaces, especially online, will become increasingly important for scholars interested in critical lit-
eracies. Recent work by Donna Alvermann, Ernest Morrell, Antero Garcia, Nicole Mirra, Tisha
Lewis Ellison, Danielle Filipiak, and Jon Michel Wargo in critical media studies is welcome
(Alvermann, 2008; Garcia, 2013; Lewis Ellison, 2017; Mirra, Morrell, & Filipiak, 2018; Wargo,
2017), but much more research is needed in this area.
Outside of the United States, scholarship on critical literacies emerged from the critical socio-
linguistics tradition, which was influenced by the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault
and British sociologist Stuart Hall (Hall, 2001), and typified in the work of Australian language
and literacies scholars Allan Luke (2012), Peter Freebody (2017), and Barbara Comber (2015).
This work focused on the connections between discourse and power, and developing student
agency within the reading and writing classroom, which was positioned as a site of sociopolitical

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contestation. From a critical sociolinguistic perspective, students’ best demonstrated their role as
active shapers of discursive power as they became critical readers and producers of texts.
In the United States, James Paul Gee (1989, 1990) built on the work of Pierre Bourdieu to
connect critical considerations of social linguistics, literacies, and orality to issues of domination
made possible by the slippage between “learning” and “acquisition” of primary and secondary
discourses, then moved toward researching the literate practices of online affinity groups, such as
gaming communities (Gee, 2003). In South Africa, Hilary Janks drew upon the linguistic trad-
ition of Norman Fairclough’s (1989, 1995, 2003) model of critical discourse analysis to suggest
critical reading and writing as a means to challenge domination, gain access, embrace diversity,
and engage in the agentive act of (re)design (Janks, 2009). Finally, in recent years, linguists such
as H. Samy Alim, Suresh Canagarajah, Nelson Flores, and Jonathan Rosa have influenced critical
literacies, moving the needle forward toward considerations of language diversity, second lan-
guage learners, and the needs of immigrant and refugee students.

Restorying the Gaps in Critical Literacies: What We Have vs. What We

Need
Much has changed in the decade that has passed since the fourth edition of this handbook,
where Peter Freebody and Jill Freiberg usefully characterized critical literacy as powerful educator
action, defining it as “a range of attempts on the part of educators to prepare young people for
societies that conduct much of their daily business via texts” (2011, p. 432). Situating schools as
epicenters for the dissemination of power, Freebody and Freiberg delineated how knowledge –
both of and about texts – leads to the circulation of power. While we concur that schools and
other sites of learning are indeed critical for the teaching of critical literacies (pun intended), the
seismic shifts in the culture during the 2010s have called into question the educator’s role.

Definition Gap
While scholars in recent decades have extended Freire and Macedo’s work on critical pedagogy
and critical literacy to address the cultural politics of democratic citizenship (Giroux, 2016), the
dialogical methods of literacy education for liberatory education (Shor & Freire, 1987), and even
the implications of literacy as a critical endeavor for equity (Shor, 1999), more is needed as we
move into the 2020s. Indeed, given current clarion calls within schooling and society for diver-
sity, equity, and social justice, we question whether definitions of critical reading, critical literacy,
and critical English language arts education should continue to be rooted primarily within the
work of educators and educational researchers recognized within the academy of the final half of
the 20th century, with subsequent work merely viewed as add-ons specific to the cultures and
communities where research and teaching is taking place.
At this juncture, we advocate for situating academic research and scholarship on critical literacies
within a much broader context – as part of centuries-long conversations about what it means to be
literate, what it means to be critical, what it means to be human, and even what it means to mean.
Although social and technological change is certainly not, in itself, indicative of increased criticality,
this new landscape contests the idea that even the most critical educators could ever be primary
arbiters of meaning for today’s children and teens. Imperatives of testing and static measures of
reading achievement imperil our collective understanding of what children, teens, and adults need
to know. In an age where meaning itself is increasingly being determined by the whims of algo-
rithms, and interpretation being influenced by the whims of crowdsourcing, this is unfortunate. By
foregrounding voices from the margins – Black, Indigenous, and youth online – and their critical
address of literacy through counterstories, we are seeking to bridge this particular gap.

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Implementation and Translation Gaps

Although the value of critical literacy education is supported by the research literature, how it has been
taken up in practice is less well known. Our review of the literature on critical literacies revealed
a significant gap between qualitative and quantitative studies. We do not mean to suggest that laborator-
ies or controlled settings are necessarily imperative for the development of actionable critical literacy
praxis, and yet, there are ways that small-scale ethnographies and case study research documenting
effective practice can be considered across contexts to inform ways to scale up critical literacy curricula.
Critical literacy inherently challenges generalizability, since what is critical is dependent upon context.

Relevance and Bridging Gap

Reading curriculum is facing a crisis of relevance. Rather than allowing those shaped by the past
to dominate narratives on the issues facing adolescents today, young users of participatory media
sites like Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr, are using these platforms to engage in advocacy and
social activism. They are increasingly choosing their own reading that reflects their interests,
while questioning canonical reads. Teaching critical lenses for analyzing the word and the world
is one way to bridge this gap (Botelho & Rudman; Leland et al.). Also, there are many comple-
mentary fields beyond education that can inform research on critical literacies. Established fields,
such as linguistics, English literary studies, media and communications, and ethnic and area stud-
ies, as well as emerging fields, such as fan studies, social movement studies, and the digital
humanities can provide much insight as we look toward the future.

Conclusion
Critical literacies, like our world, is at a crossroads. Rather than allowing those shaped by the
past to dominate narratives on the issues facing adolescents today – including gentrification, mass
incarceration, neoliberal educational reform, and socioeconomic precarity in an age of global cap-
italism (Kinloch, 2010; Lipman, 2004, 2013; Winn, 2010) – young users of participatory media
sites are using these platforms to engage in advocacy and social activism. Within their communi-
ties, they are taking action by becoming politically involved. They are increasingly choosing their
own reading that reflects their interests, while questioning canonical reads. More importantly,
they are demanding that the texts that they read and write about have relevance to the everyday
concerns of their lives. While such demands are nothing new, the acute economic, social, and
political pressures of the contemporary moment, as well as the ways that children and teens are
engaged in the textual landscapes of the digital age brings such concerns into sharp relief.
It is difficult to predict what will happen on the next page in the long story of critical liter-
acies. While we have attempted to show the myriad ways that critical ways of reading, writing,
knowing, and being have influenced the past and present, all too often, critical literacies have
taken a backseat during our current era of neoliberal educational reform. Traditional measures of
literate success are aligned with a world that no longer exists. All of these factors of change are
intimately tied to power.
As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie noted in her influential TED talk, “The Danger of a Single Story”:

Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive
story of that person. The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dis-
possess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and to start with, “secondly.”

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Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans, and not with the arrival of the
British, and you have an entirely different story. Start the story with the failure of the Afri-
can state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely
different story.
(Adichie, 2009)

In this chapter, we have attempted to tell the story of critical literacies differently, for the place
where a story begins influences the meaning that can derive from that story. Restorying critical
literacies means starting with critical traditions that predate the mid-20th century. It means docu-
menting what children and teens in today’s digitally networked world are bringing with them
before they arrive in the classroom. And it means embracing teaching practices that disrupt the
status quo, question established viewpoints, focus on sociopolitical issues, and promote social
justice.
Maisha Winn reminds us of the words of Mary Rose O’Reilly, that one potential outcome of
transformative literary pedagogy is to “teach literature so that people stop killing each other”
(quoted in Winn, 2013, p. 128). If this is the case, we are encouraged by the growing number of
critical literacy educators who embrace culturally relevant (Ladson-Billings, 1995), responsive
(Gay, 2000), and sustaining (Paris, 2012) pedagogies that frame teaching and learning as centrally
concerned with nurturing the language, literacy, and cultural practices students bring with them,
positioning them as the center of their own literate worlds. For literacy itself must be recon-
sidered at a time when young people are entering schools with the power to restory the world.

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 23
More Connected and More Divided
than Ever
Toward a Cosmopolitan Ethics of Digital
Literacies

David B. Sabey and Kevin M. Leander

In this chapter, we consider the relations of ethics, digital literacies, and education. On
a personal level, the occasion for these considerations was the contentious 2016 presidential
election in the United States. Though we have somewhat different political orientations, we
were both disturbed by the election—and as scholars of digital literacies, we realized that our
subject matter was profoundly implicated in the discourse and outcome of the election. At
the same time, we recognize that the 2016 election is not an entirely unique or isolated phe-
nomenon, but is symptomatic of ongoing global dynamics with extensive histories, economies,
and politics. These broader global dynamics have come to be, for us, the broader situation of
this chapter—its occasion. After sketching this context, we approach questions of digital liter-
acies, ethics, and education in two key ways. First, after a brief foray into ethical consider-
ations in literacy studies, we review relatively recent work that draws on theories of
cosmopolitanism (an ethical framework which will be introduced subsequently), most of
which was published since the previous edition of this volume. In this review, we outline an
emerging theory regarding ethical (digital) literacy practices. Second, we apply this framework
to a projective description of topics in digital literacies that we believe to be important, and
we raise questions for literacy research and practice.

Globalization and Digital Literacy

In sketching a backdrop for this chapter, we turn to the work of Arjun Appadurai, a leading
theorist of globalization. In his seminal work, Appadurai (1996) asserted that, in processes of glo-
balization, there is a central tension between cultural homogenization and heterogenization
which responds to five different “flows”: ethnoscapes (migration of people), mediascapes (use of
media that shapes our imagined world), technoscapes (cultural interactions due to the promotion
of technology), financescapes (flux of capital), and ideoscapes (global flow of ideologies). As he
later suggests, one response to the massive change and intensified anxiety accompanying these
flows is a sometimes violent swing to the extreme political right (Appadurai, 2006). Amid the
radical circulations of globalization, the tension between homogenization and heterogenization

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easily shifts toward homogenizing paradigms like nationalism and xenophobia. One of the strange
ironies of globalization is that, as the world becomes increasingly connected via these global
flows, it is simultaneously becoming increasingly divided.
Digital literacies are present everywhere we look in the course of these tensions and flows,
and in the politics that accompany and drive them. How might we understand these relations,
especially in so far as they might inform education? Broadly speaking, we posit two different
approaches to considering how the homogenizing and heterogenizing responses to globalization
are tied up with digital literacies. First, everyday uses of literacy—as social practices (Gee, 1989;
Barton & Hamilton, 2000; Street, 1984)—produce localizing and globalizing movements (Brandt
& Clinton, 2002). New technologies have connected us as never before across social, cultural,
and national boundaries. Many of us have experienced how social practices with everyday tech-
nologies—Instagram, commercial websites, games, e-mail, and Zoom—have become related to
other movements as well, including opportunities to make and spend money (“financescapes”),
or opportunities to move about the world more frequently, contributing to the creation of new
“ethnoscapes”. At the same time, social practices that include digital literacies have also been rou-
tinely marshalled to create and harden boundaries. Online literacy practices on Facebook and
Twitter, for instance, have been used as effective means for consolidating and organizing groups
around different ideological positions—the use of literacy toward new and often competing
“ideoscapes”. As social practices, digital literacies may open up and expand our ideologies just as
they may reassert traditional orthodoxies or give birth to radicalized movements; they connect us
globally and also create particular cultural networks and boundaries of social formation (e.g., de
Haan, Leander, and Ünlüsoy, 2014).
In addition to focusing on the work of digital literacies as social practices, a second approach
to the co-production of digital literacies and globalizing flows is to consider how digital literacies
have been used to create stories with homogenizing or heterogenizing tendencies, or new forms
of the “global imaginary”. We use this term to refer to a socially and culturally produced realm
of interpretation—the values, symbols, and narratives through which people understand them-
selves and their society. This expanded conception of literacy practice as having meaning and
value in relation to a shared imaginary was argued by Bartlett and Holland (2002). For instance,
“functional illiterates,” “good readers,” and other categories of “readers” are invoked and
deployed in schools as participants in the narratives of school literacy. These partially imagined
worlds—realms of interpretation—also connect digital literacy practices within political, social,
and cultural realms of interpretation. The “figured worlds” (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, &
Cain, 1998) reified by a single President’s tweet, an individuals’ Facebook feed, or an entire
online media outlet (e.g., Breitbart, Huffington Post), shape both simplified models of the world
and also more expansive cultural imaginaries, operating at individual and collective scales.
Appadurai (1996), who was influenced by Anderson’s (1983) notion of the “imagined com-
munity,” writes that the “imagination has become an organized field of social practices” which
acts as a powerful homogenizing and/or heterogenizing force (p. 31). Implicitly responding
to some of the extreme homogenizing movements that have emerged recently (e.g., the
“alt-right”), Appadurai (2006) underscores this idea saying, “It requires some serious effort and
attention on how to shape the imagination and this imaginary in a constructive manner, so as to
not make it a terrain only of fear, anxiety, hate, anger” (np). In this chapter, we hope to offer
this kind of “serious effort and attention” regarding digital literacy studies. In particular, we con-
sider how digital literacy education might be shaped through a broad ethical vision that is respon-
sive to present social, cultural, and political dynamics. We begin addressing these questions by
considering the relationship between ethics and literacy.

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David B. Sabey and Kevin M. Leander

Ethics and Literacy

The field’s “social turn” has taught us that literacy is always situated within particular social con-
texts and tied up in relationships between people (e.g., Gee, 1990). But what is true of literacy
in general is becoming increasingly evident in an age of social media: We read, write, remix, and
share texts in relation to other people, and we read, write, and imagine people into being
through social practices. This understanding of the social nature of literacy leads rather straightfor-
wardly to ethical considerations. Once we acknowledge that literacy mediates/constitutes self-
Other relationships, we must consider the qualities of those relationships. Indeed, ethics and liter-
acy can be viewed as largely co-constitutive. While there may be some ethical obligations that
transcend language, by and large we relate and respond to the Other semiotically and
discursively.
The profound relationship between literacy and ethics has always been a part of the field—we
need look no further than the classic notion of “ethos” as a rhetorical appeal. More recently,
critical theorists have pointed out how literacy is always entangled in questions of politics and
power. Consider how Freire and Macedo (1987) implicitly connect literacy and ethics when they
say, “Reading the world always precedes reading the word, and reading the word implies con-
tinually reading the world” (p. 35). From this perspective, to read is to trace, respond to, and
transform asymmetrical social relations. Street (1984) similarly argues that literacy is not “autono-
mous,” but “ideological”—models he uses to distinguish between a view of literacy abstracted
from sociocultural practice, and one that situates literacy in the dynamic and often troubled social
world. Social practice theory and its ideological critique of literacy (e.g., Collins & Blot, 2003;
Larson, 2001) is but one branch of literacy studies that has considered relations of identity,
power, access, and equity in literacy studies—all questions of profound ethical meaning. Thus,
we see a more direct engagement with ethics in literacy research as the development of a line of
inquiry with a rich history, but which, in a field dominated by psychological and sociological
perspectives, foregrounds philosophical resources and conversations.
But what kind of ethics might guide our digital literacies practices? To be clear, critical
theory, critical race theory, cultural studies, and poststructuralisms have by now substantial histor-
ies of raising questions of ethics and value with respect to texts, the socio-cultural imaginary,
identities, and relationships. But with our Janus-like assignment in this tense socio-political
moment, we sense the field of digital literacies as needing a more explicitly worked out prospect-
ive ethical stance—a robust vision that includes, but also moves beyond, ideological critique. We
want to consider how literacy education and scholarship can engage more directly with the
development of ethical social practices, including how to create just and humane publics in
which a pluralistic “we” can come together. One promising line of theory development and
early research that offers such a prospective vision, and that has recently emerged in the field,
draws on and expands a renewed vision of cosmopolitanism.

Cosmopolitanism and Literacy

The term “cosmopolitanism,” though contested, generally refers to one’s ethical responsibility
toward distant and different others. Because of the relative novelty of the theory in educational
research, many of the authors who draw on cosmopolitanism provide a brief history of the con-
cept, tracing it back to the iconoclastic Cynic, Diogenes, who declared himself a “citizen of the
world” (cosmopolitan) and not a single city-state. Although Diogenes’ provocative questions
about one’s obligations toward distant others and toward humanity in general, in addition to/
transcendence of more local loyalties, were by no means unique, his term stuck. The typical
genealogy of the idea skims over Diogenes’ immediate successors, the Stoics, and highlights

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Enlightenment philosophers such as Immanuel Kant (1903) and more recent thinkers who grap-
pled with these ethical questions (e.g., Derrida, 2001), as well as others in business and politics
who have invoked “cosmopolitanism” as an ideal. With such a long and predominantly Western
and masculine history, it is no wonder that some articulations of cosmopolitanism are problem-
atic. As educational theorists and researchers have sifted through this history, they have tended to
situate their versions of cosmopolitanism in contrast to Enlightenment era and contemporary neo-
liberal versions of cosmopolitanism, which they cast as elitist, essentializing, universalizing, and/or
ahistorical for the way they invoke privileged and uncritical visions of humanity and a unified
world (see Stornaiuolo and Nichols (2018) for a critical review and reframing of cosmopolitanism
in education research).
Empirical work related to cosmopolitanism in language and literacy studies has thus far been
entirely descriptive and ethnographic; it has focused on articulating an appropriate version of
cosmopolitanism for educational research and on identifying, describing, and characterizing its
various manifestations “on the ground” as young people interact with others and communicate
across difference of various scales and kinds (e.g., transnational, linguistic, cultural). As one might
expect with a relatively early body of research, much of this work has focused on developing
analytical frameworks that help to operationalize cosmopolitanism and illuminate its constituent
parts and multiple permutations. Although the scholars cited below develop a variety of such
frameworks, they are united in proposing cosmopolitanism as an ethical touchstone for commu-
nicating across differences in an increasingly globalized world, and they aspire to understand and
encourage dynamic relations in which self and Other, the known and the new, the local and the
distant are imagined, represented, and responded to with an ethic of hospitality and dialogue.
Although these are undoubtedly high standards, a common conclusion underscored across this
literature is that young people are already “cosmopolitan” in many ways—and that they can
enact and further develop their cosmopolitan dispositions and literacies when they are positioned
as competent (e.g., Campano & Ghiso, 2011; Juzwik & McKenzie, 2015; Vasudevan, 2014),
empowered to draw on the multimodal semiotic resources available to them (e.g., Canagarajah,
2012; De Costa, 2014; Hull, Stornaiuolo, & Sterponi, 2013; Stornaiuolo, 2016), and provided
with appropriate scaffolding and forms of reflection as they attempt to communicate with those
who seem different or distant in some respect (e.g., Hansen, 2014; Hawkins, 2014; Hull & Stor-
naiuolo, 2014; Hull, Stornaiuolo, & Sahni, 2010). This work asks researchers and practitioners to
begin with the assumption that young people, even (and perhaps especially) those that are trad-
itionally marginalized, already possess the seeds of “cosmopolitan genius” (Campano & Ghiso,
2011).
This asset-based orientation does not, however, preclude the possibility that young people
may require pedagogical support for their cosmopolitan genius to flourish. Indeed, as described
below, the desire to pedagogically cultivate cosmopolitanism is continually present in this
research, if not always explicitly so. While we agree with Hull and Stornaiuolo (2014) that “We
are still a distance away from knowing how to foster a cosmopolitan citizenry” (p. 40), looking
across this literature, we see a field-wide emergent theory about the contexts and conditions in
which cosmopolitanism emerges and is manifest. In our synthesis of this literature, we suggest
that much of the field’s discussion of the emergence of cosmopolitanism resonates with three
broad practices, which we label as “unsettling encounters,” “critical reflections,” and “hospitable
dialogues.” These practices will be discussed more fully below, but as an initial articulation of this
nascent theory, we might say that cosmopolitan interactions and dispositions emerge and develop
in and through these “cosmopolitanizing practices,” especially as they are brought together in
concert.

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Cultivating Cosmopolitanism
What follows is a synthetic review of the educational research literature that draws on cosmopol-
itanism, with sections corresponding to each cosmopolitanizing practice. While we will discuss
these practices in separate sections, they should not be considered as entirely distinct or related in
stepwise fashion; rather, as will become evident, they are overlapping, interrelated, recursive, and
rhizomatic. In offering this synthesis, we will refer to digital literacy, but not exclusively. The
principal focus here is on outlining an ethically-inflected framework and illustrating its constituent
parts in hopes that this will catalyze and channel efforts to further understand and cultivate the
kinds of (digital) literacy practices that are increasingly urgent in this moment of simultaneous
connection and division. Following our review, we will use this framework to explore more dir-
ectly possible directions for reimagining digital literacy studies and pedagogies.

Unsettling Encounters
Authors drawing on cosmopolitanism repeatedly identify that an important aspect of cosmopol-
itan interactions is a certain unsettledness, often described in terms of openness and willingness to
engage with, learn from, and relate differently to the new, distant, and Other. We use this word
with negative connotations intentionally because encounters with otherness can indeed be unset-
tling in this sense, but we also intend it more positively here as a contrast to sedimentation, ossi-
fication, and entrenchment. To be unsettled may be disconcerting, but it can also be enlivening.
References from across the field which we would characterize as “unsettling encounters” include
decentering the self (Ong, 2009; Rizvi, 2009); destabilizing common sense ways of thinking
(Campano & Ghiso, 2011); disrupting stereotypical, pre-determined, or otherwise simplistic per-
spectives (Choo, 2014, 2016); and reframing/denaturing the world (Cheah, 2008). Within digital
literacies, for example, Wohlwend and Medina (2017) analyze how problematic cultural imagin-
aries are often thickened and reproduced in transmedia children’s play, but also how they can be
disrupted, making normative ideals visible and available for reworking.
By unsettling understandings of self, other, and world, individuals and collectives make room
for the reconfiguration of these relationships (Hansen, 2014) and the imagination of how things
could be otherwise (Stornaiuolo, 2015; Yaman Ntelioglou, 2017). While there is broad agree-
ment that some unsettledness is a necessary feature of cosmopolitan dispositions and interactions,
these authors do not advocate for entirely open and unrooted ways of being. In one of the most
influential articulations of cosmopolitanism for literacy studies, Hansen (2010) glosses “cosmopol-
itan artfulness” as a reflective loyalty to the known and openness to the new, and clarifies, “It is
out of the question to try to be open at all times to everything new, or loyal at all times to
everything known. The former posture dissolves life, the latter petrifies it” (p. 5). Unsettling
encounters facilitate the productive expression of openness and loyalty, preventing petrification
while avoiding dissolution.
While many authors discuss unsettling encounters between people separated by vast geograph-
ical distance, Vasudevan (2014) considers the way a theater program for court-involved youth
provided scaffolded opportunities to “unsettle” and remediate participants’ narratives related to
common scenarios in the local community. One of the ways program facilitators did this was to
engage participants in improvisation activities built around their lived experiences (e.g., an alter-
cation between two young men) and then to introduce “unsettling” conditions that required par-
ticipants to question, reinterpret, and reimagine the typical trajectory of these experiences.
Vasudevan characterizes this improvisation activity as an example of cosmopolitan pedagogy that,
within an environment of belonging, put different perspectives in direct dialogue with each

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other, disrupted default ways of being and thinking, and helped participants productively navigate
the space between the new and the known.
Saito (2010) discusses a curriculum that, however different from the one discussed above, like-
wise demonstrates aspects of unsettling encounters. He suggests identifying student interests and
then “unsettling” them by tracing the threads that connect them transnationally (à la actor-
network theory). For example, he helped grade 2 students in Japan begin exploring their embed-
dedness in global networks by looking at where their clothes were manufactured. The students
were surprised to find out that the clothes they were wearing did not originate in Japan. Saito
explained to them that the objects around them, like their clothes, were a “tug of a net …
a starting point of connections to the world outside Japan. You pull that tug, you pull it and pull
it, and then, you will catch a glance of what’s happening outside Japan” (p. 342). This kind of
unsettling encounter opened opportunities for (re)considering Japan’s relationship to other coun-
tries and, more generally, the nature of the world.

Critical Reflections
As illustrated in the above examples, when individuals and collectives unsettle understandings of
self, Other, and the world, they become available for critical engagement. Note that, in this lit-
erature, the word “critical” is employed in both the generic sense (which we will refer to with
a lower-case “critical”) to indicate thoughtful reflection upon, for example, similarities and differ-
ences between what seems normal to one and what is apparently normal to others; and in the
theoretical sense (which we will refer to with an upper-case “Critical”), pointing toward expli-
citly liberationist and materialist perspectives derived from the Frankfurt School. In the first sense,
for example, David Hansen has written eloquently about how a critical reflective distance allows
for reconsideration and renegotiation of the new and the known (e.g., Hansen, 2010, 2014). In
digital literacy research, a critical stance that stays close to a focal text and to reading process
analysis, is well-represented by work on online reading comprehension (Leu et al., 2004; Coiro
& Dobler, 2007), examining tasks that include children locating information online, critically
evaluating that information, and synthesizing it. In the second sense of the Critical within digital
literacy research, scholars are just beginning to consider, for instance, how software operates pri-
marily out of sight, and that new “sub-screnic” literacies are needed to interpret the work of
software and the associated interests of software companies that shape literacy practices (Lynch,
2015). Related Critical work on the role of algorithms and big data as relevant to digital literacy
practice is also just emerging (Carrington, 2018).
Critical perspectives on digital literacies informed by cosmopolitan theory are just emerging,
although a number of literacy researchers traverse cosmopolitan thinking and notions of Freirean
praxis to theorize a Critical cosmopolitanism (Campano & Ghiso, 2011; Choo, 2014; Darvin &
Norton, 2017; Hull & Stornaiuolo, 2010; Hull et al., 2010; Lemrow, 2016; Rizvi, 2009; Stor-
naiuolo, Hull, & Hall, 2017). This Critical perspective is at least in part a corrective response to
Enlightenment era and contemporary neoliberal cosmopolitanism, training an analytical eye not
on differences per se, but on the histories and material conditions that circumscribe those differ-
ences—including the ways one may be implicated in global inequities and other problematic
power dynamics. Drawing on feminist and poststructuralist thinking to theorize Critical cosmo-
politanism, a notable example of Critical reflections that implicates digital literacies is Whitty’s
(2017) grappling with dominant and subjugated histories of the University of New Brunswick.
Whitty narrates her confrontation with the colonial narrative her university presents on its web-
site, which she recognized as whitewashed, and her subsequent exploration of decolonizing/indi-
genizing histories and pedagogies. Her underlying approach to cosmopolitanism suggests that it
may be necessary to locate what from the past has been “lost, hidden, removed, and written out”

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(p. 18) before one can truly change future understandings and relationships. This Critical (un)
learning takes place for Whitty as she encounters and enters into dialogue with alternative per-
spectives that unsettle and problematize dominant ways of thinking and being.
Aspects of C/critical reflections (along with unsettling encounters and hospitable dialogue) are
likewise evident in Yaman Ntelioglou’s (2017) description of a drama unit in an ELL class. The
teacher of the class had students in small groups collectively write and perform mini-plays about
Canadian holidays and other holidays students celebrated (e.g., religious holidays not officially
recognized by Canada). In one of these mini-plays, students portrayed a family’s preparation for
the Eid, a Muslim holiday, and represented female characters doing housework while the male
characters relaxed. In this performance, a female character confronts her brother about the house-
hold division of labor and requests that he helps. The content of this play derived from the social
realities of students’ lives, and the imaginative scripting and performing allowed them to recipro-
cally share, explore, and critique aspects of their own cultures. These dramatic productions
became opportunities not only to put aspects of students’ diverse cultures in conversation with
each other, but also to critically consider how they might be otherwise.

Hospitable Dialogues
In characterizing cosmopolitan interactions, authors rely on the sometimes metaphorical, some-
times literal image of an ongoing dialogue in which all participants can express themselves and
respond hospitably to each other, and they are optimistic about such dialogues, especially when
they are combined with C/critical reflections (Darvin & Norton, 2017; Hansen, Burdick-
shepherd, Cammarano, & Obelleiro, 2009; Hull & Stornaiuolo, 2010) and scaffolded to help
interlocutors repair inevitable communicative missteps (Hull & Stornaiuolo, 2014; Hull et al.,
2010). The first example we offer regards a dialogue as conventionally imagined—a face-to-face
discussion—while the second considers hospitality in the context of the private social network
Space2Cre8, which has been a digital proving ground for many of the ethical principles and prac-
tices we consider in this chapter.
Crampton, Lewis, and Tierney’s (2017) analysis of a classroom discussion highlights character-
istics of hospitable dialogue. The discussion concerned a photograph of a white couple posing
with a Black lawn jockey. The couple, who had adopted a Black son, purportedly bought the
problematic item in hopes of demonstrating solidarity with their son and Black culture. As the
class explored a variety of justifications and criticisms regarding the parents’ behavior, including
charges of racism, the authors report that students achieved a “proper distance” in relation to the
subjects of the picture: “the students were not so close that they couldn’t see and critique the
others in the photo for their display of an offensive statue, but they were close enough to extend
hospitality to them, conceding their humanity” (p. 185). In this account, students’ willingness to
share honest opinions and their hospitality toward each other allowed them to collectively dem-
onstrate a critically-informed hospitality toward the subjects of the photograph.
While dialogue remains the image par excellence of cosmopolitan exchange, it implies
a certain oppositional relationship between interlocutors—not necessarily a contentious one, but
one in which participants diametrically face each other. Although this kind of exchange may
often be beneficial, it is also limited insofar as it maintains a relationship of distance and oppos-
ition. Reimagining the “shape” of this exchange, some authors encourage a move away from
dialogue per se toward dialogic collaboration (Rizvi, 2009; Saito, 2010; Yaman Ntelioglou,
2017), a move that reconfigures the interlocutors’ relationship, and figuratively places them on
common ground in joint service of a shared cause. We note here that this reimagining of dia-
logue is especially fitting for digital contexts, where conventions (e.g., turn-taking), scale, and
mode of communication transcend the two-way verbal exchange of face-to-face dialogue.

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Stornaiuolo (2016) illustrates many of these ideas in her description of the hospitable dialogues
among the international group of teachers involved in Space2Cre8 and the learning opportunities
(for both teachers and students) that emerged from these conversations. She describes how these
teachers discussed the complications of allowing students to write about sensitive topics (e.g.,
sexuality) and their desire to “deepen” engagement between students. In these discussions,
teachers had to be willing to make explicit their differences of opinion, collaboratively develop
shared goals, and sustain these challenging conversations over time. As they did this, they ultim-
ately decided to allow students to write about sensitive topics, but also to provide some training
about cultural differences among participants in Space2Cre8, including different understandings
of what topics are appropriate to share publicly. They also decided to engage students in collab-
orative video exchanges in addition to single-author text messages as a means of “deepening”
their interactions. The resulting video exchanges involved collaborative work at various scales as
Space2Cre8 participants began to remix and respond to each other’s videos. While Stornaiuolo is
careful not to suggest that teacher collaboration or video exchanges alone will always yield hos-
pitable dialogues, she asserts that they can be (and were, in the cases she highlights) conducive to
cosmopolitan interactions.

Reflections on Digital Literacy Studies and Education

Taken together and sustained over time and space, unsettling encounters, C/critical reflections,
and hospitable dialogues engender (and are largely constitutive of) cosmopolitan interactions and
dispositions. This broad tripartite framework represents our field’s current theory about the
nature and emergence of cosmopolitanism and, as such, provides a useful onramp for elaborating
the implications of cosmopolitan theory for digital literacy education. We attempt, in what fol-
lows, to consider some of the implications for digital literacies through the ethical lens that
cosmopolitanism provides. As we do so, we attend to dimensions of digital literacies that are
emergent and that we feel will play an increasingly significant role, and that, hence, should be
the focus of further research and practice. For each part of the cosmopolitan framework, and in
light of our own perceptions of how digital technologies and practices are changing, we have
offered a new direction or re-orientation for the field, along with some discussion of related
practices and tools.

Unsettling Encounters by Reading Networks

The page has long held a central place in our imagination within literacy studies and pedagogical
practice. Even digital literacy technologies have often been informed by the idea of a (web)page
as being designed and organized as a certain amount of content to read in one instance. For liter-
acy, the page is perhaps the most comfortable place to settle in our imagination of what a “text”
is. On the one hand, literacy scholars for some time have been attempting to disrupt text- or
page-centered approaches to literacy, in particular through work on intertextuality and multivo-
cality (see Baron, this volume). Yet, digital literacy texts and practices offer still further opportun-
ity to unsettle the page and the common sense ways of reading and thinking it implies.
In digital media, every text is always already a “site” that is brought into relation with other
sites. Internet firewalls cut some things out and bracket some things in, money and advertising
boost sites in search rankings, and algorithms do their work behind the scenes. While the authors
we have reviewed, in line with much of the broader field, recommend practices such as pairing
thematically-related canonical and marginalized texts as a promising means of cultivating cosmo-
politanism (e.g., Choo, 2016), online digital texts demand that we attend not only to the way
different authors/texts treat a common theme, but also the ways in which money, power,

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discourses, and material goods move across networks (see Mackey, this volume). This suggests
a movement from reading “pages” to reading networks.
A networked image of the practice of reading might attend to the position of the text in rela-
tion to other connected texts, reading these connections in terms of how, together, they create
cultural, historical, ideological, racial, or other differences. Yet, differences are read (or written)
not merely as “positions” coming into contact; rather, networked lines may be imagined as creat-
ing movements or lines of flight that are neither one text nor the other. Reading networks, in
this sense, means finding ways to read the (actual and imagined) lines between texts—to see read-
ing as not merely a resting place for the collection of meanings in situ, but as travel between
them. In this sense, network readers are “wayfarers,” understanding that (digital) lives are led
“not inside places but through, around, to and from them, from and to places elsewhere”
(Ingold, 2000, p. 229). Practically speaking, this “unsettled” networked view of reading, as
a cosmopolitan practice and image, calls out literacy educators and researchers for bounding
online spaces too tightly and too quickly. Students cannot understand networks, their positions in
them, and the ways that these networks connect them to others, by becoming skilled at the
work of individual page-reading and writing.
As the individual page needs to be unsettled and networked, so must the individual actor.
The shift we are proposing to the assemblage, at the nexus of digital literacy research and cosmo-
politanism, involves assuming that the social “group,” digitally connected at various scales, should
be a principal “unit of analysis” for research and pedagogy. Due to the structuring of school
around individual work and assessment, and for other reasons, the notion of inherently collective
digital activity, or the learning digital assemblage, is a poor fit in the traditional school context.
Still, moves in this direction are not impossible nor merely theoretical. As we write, digital tools
are being developed that can be used to conceive of how individuals and groups come together
in large, discursive Conversations (Gee, 2014). One example is a new add-on to widely-shared
news articles published online by BuzzFeed, a news and entertainment company. BuzzFeed
developed this add-on feature, called Outside Your Bubble (www.buzzfeed.com/outsideyourbub
ble), in February 2017, in response to trends of civic and political polarization. The tool appears
as a module at the bottom of select news articles, where it collects and categorizes the multiple
ways people are responding to the article across social media sites. For instance, a story recent to
the writing of this chapter (“Trump Says Transgender People Cannot ‘Serve In Any Capacity’ In
The Military,” July 26, 2017) is followed by links to eight divergent responses. The first four of
these are captioned as follows:

1. Many people disagree with Trump’s decision and feel it poorly represents American values.
2. Several have pointed out that there are already transgender people in the military and say
they feel Trump is disrespecting their service.
3. Many feel Trump is affronting the entire LGBT community, and one person pointed to an
example of the community’s impact in the military.
4. One person says he is in the Army and that he feels it’s not a “good environment” for trans
people.

As we consider cosmopolitan digital literacies, what is most interesting about this and similar
tools is that a multiplicity of perspectives is curated and offered, avoiding rants or binary argu-
ments. Moreover, these perspectives are not artificially shaped argument types for learning, but
are connected to real people and lived experiences—they serve to exemplify how people, texts,
and material practices are organized and assembled. Other media network analysis tools could
also be used pedagogically, to make evident the routine structures or “conversational archetypes”
of social media topic networks (e.g., “polarized crowd,” “tight crowd,” “community cluster,”

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and “broadcast network,” Smith et al., 2014). While there are problems with these early tools,
they also offer digital literacy educators a developing means through which to show their students
that conversations and positions online are worked out in complex, rhizomatic movements with
others, rather than clear argumentative outlines contained on the page.
Finally, the critical reading of social-digital networks themselves is one way in which typified
encounters, sedimented online or offline, can be unsettled and re-interpreted for who they
include and exclude, and what their social and cultural practices are. In one project, Leander,
together with colleagues, engaged migrant and non-migrant youth in analyzing their social net-
works, online and offline (de Haan, Leander, & Ünlüsoy, 2014). Such work made evident many
of the differences in social networks between youth with different cultural practices and back-
grounds. For instance, Turkish-Dutch youth were more inclined to practice family-oriented net-
works than were either Dutch or Moroccan-Dutch youth, and both groups of migrant youth
had fewer networked connections nationally than did the non-migrant youth. Such differences,
of course, are not static, and they are also not wholly invisible to youth. Yet, there are surprises
that come to light when we make social-digital networks explicit, and thereby make them avail-
able to unsettling. Every day, most literacy students are not merely reading and writing “within”
networks—they are in fact reading and writing the networks themselves. These are critically sig-
nificant movements of their lives that can be marshaled as readable/writable networks in cosmo-
politan digital literacies.

Critical Reflections: From Multiple Resources to Multi-Agency

As mentioned previously, authors drawing on cosmopolitanism often pair this theory with more
explicitly Critical theories. Along with these Critical perspectives, other C/critical reflections in
the field have made more explicit and developed pedagogies around the diverse multiple
resources through which language and literacy are produced. In the literature cited above, authors
contribute to these reflections, emphasizing different kinds of productive multiplicity (e.g., multi-
modality, multivocality, multilingualism) in cosmopolitan interactions. These forms of multiplicity
afford what Hull et al. (2013) call “generative polysemy and indeterminacy” (p. 1234). Texts
with these kinds of multiplicity are “generative” because they allow various points of entry, pos-
sible interpretations, and potential responses, and therefore are conducive to hospitable dialogues,
C/critical reflections, and unsettling encounters.
In order to deeply engage with C/critical reflection in digital literacies, in addition to these more
familiar types of productive multiplicity, presently there is a pressing need for more direct C/critical
engagement with computer-based agents that act along with humans and guide much of human
action. Such a shift requires attending not simply to the individual qua producer/consumer of texts,
but to assemblages that bring together humans and non-humans alike (See Knox, 2016; Spector,
2015). A significant non-human participant in digital interactions, worthy of critical and ethical con-
sideration, is the algorithm. Algorithms are ubiquitous in digital interactions, although they are often
overlooked. To return to “Outside Your Bubble,” for instance, the divergent comments on a given
BuzzFeed article are gathered through the working of algorithms on BuzzFeed’s official accounts on
platforms such as Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook, and later summarized at the bottom of the ori-
ginal, selected article. Once clicked on, these topical links show the text of the actual comment and
links to it. Considering “Outside Your Bubble” in this way highlights how different media platforms
are involved in “reading” this kind of news, all of which are powered by algorithms that assesses
popularity (likes, up votes, etc.) and determine visibility.
When discussing their work behind the scenes, early research suggests that students often have
problematic understandings of algorithims (Jones, 2019). More explicitly, Jones catalogues how
undergraduates in the UK and Hong Kong attribute different roles to algorithms: as agent,

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authority, adversary, audience, and even as oracle (2019, p. 11). Our own work on social media,
and especially Facebook (e.g., Burriss & Leander, 2017), suggests youth with several years of
practice on Facebook have a variety of divergent understandings of how, when, and why its
algorithms function.
Researchers in education and media studies have taken different approaches to the study of
algorithms and the questions they pose for learning and interaction, including Critical approaches
to their presence and functioning (Finn, 2017; Noble, 2018), affect theoretical approaches
(Bucher, 2017), and pragmatic approaches concerning how algorithms are used and engaged by
humans (Jones, 2019). Across these approaches, however, is general agreement on the massive
expansion of algorithms and other types of computational agents within everyday interaction.
The anthropocentric history of digital literacy studies allows too little consideration of non-
human actants. Outside of education, post-human theorist and artist Trevor Paglen (2018) calls
to our attention that “the overwhelming majority of images are now made by machines for other
machines, with humans rarely in the loop” (p. 89). How such computer interpretation is unlike
human seeing, and how human/nonhuman interpretation function in relation to one another, is
of significant importance to the practice of literacy education, as well as to the ongoing evolution
of literacies. In Paglen’s terms, “If we want to understand the invisible world of machine-
machine visual culture, we need to unlearn how to see like humans” (Paglen, 2018, p. 17).
One of many possible practical arenas for a C/critical cosmopolitan practice in digital literacy
education is the area of advertising. In addition to moving from a text-to-network perspective,
argued above, and also from a linguistic to a multimodal perspective, which has become com-
monplace in advertising and propaganda analysis, a C/critical analysis of practice and ethics
involved in everyday advertising and marketing might take up the following topics:

• How is offline data on users collected (e.g., through credit card purchases)?
• What kinds of online data are collected through cookies when using websites?
• How has timing, perhaps more than content, become important in online advertising, so as
to reach users when they are further down what marketers call the “purchasing funnel”?
• What kind of identity “bucket” is being made about a user through targeted ads and an
ongoing online marketing profile developed through cookies?

Studying new forms of digital marketing is an important form of digital literacy pedagogy not
merely because such marketing is ubiquitous, but because these new practices unsettle our pre-
sumptions of either the mass consumer or individual reading the ad. Instead, in current practices
there are massively individualized consumers, for whom data is being mined, analyzed, and put
to use in real time, in ongoing cycles involving humans, non-humans, digital action, literacy,
material action, and ethical consequences.

Hospitable Dialogues: Listening across Online and Offline Practices

As a third dimension for the ethical transformation of pedagogy at the nexus of cosmopolitan
theory and digital literacies, we draw attention to the value of listening as an integral part of
hospitable dialogue. Though attentive listening is mentioned repeatedly in the literature that
draws on cosmopolitanism (e.g., Stornaiuolo, 2016; Vasudevan, 2014; Yaman Ntelioglou, 2017),
the predominant focus thus far has been on the productive side of dialogue. This is reflective of the
broader field, with its abundance of literacy research and practice in terms of text/utterance pro-
duction and relatively little research or pedagogical work on listening. As we explore the nature
of listening in cosmopolitan exchanges, we counter-pose the idea of close reading—and the clos-
ures of meaning that it may support—with the notion of “open listening.” By this, we intend

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listening that is ethically and dialogically committed to the possibility of being changed by an
interaction. Open listening conceives of both self and Other as unfixed, and yet related in their
becoming through interaction. Ethically speaking, open listening runs much deeper than listening
comprehension, as it does not fix a particular notion of content in advance of a listening occa-
sion. Rather, open listening is envisioned as emergent and relational. It is worth noting that
structures of dialogue can get in the way of open listening, including those designed to break
I-R-E patterns for teacher-student exchange. For instance, student-student-student exchanges,
bypassing teacher participation, can easily become topical commentary given to a common theme—
with students waiting their respective turn—rather than practices of open, dialogic listening.
What might the shape of (online) interactions be that support open listening, and how might
such interactions be scaffolded? One route into this difficult problem is through studying social
practices, on- or offline, that appear to be especially given to knowing through intentional, open
listening. While we retain the value of argumentation, persuasion, and debate for academic and
scientific purposes, shifting our genres of literacy practice to those more supportive of open lis-
tening may be generative. For example, Enciso (2017) examines how significant the imagination
is, to “borrow from and invent linguistic, artistic, and narrative forms,” in story-telling among
immigrant and non-immigrant youth (p. 34). Enciso’s use of co-narration (Ochs & Capps, 2001)
among culturally marginalized youth disrupts the notion of a separate listening moment from that
of speaking; rather, listening, problem-solving, questioning, evaluating, and enacting are inter-
twined in the ensemble of relating. Also deeply connected to the imagination, in recent research,
we have begun to study improvisational theater as a site for ethical engagement (Tanner, Leander
& Carter-Stone, in press). Skilled improvisational artists must listen intently to know what to do
next—their next move must build on the last, given by another in their group. Thus, in the flow
of real time, skilled improvisational artists must both form responses and continually be open to
omitting their responses as the situation ceaselessly evolves. Other literacy research in drama has
a more developed history for showing the ways in which pedagogical mimetic practices involve
engagement with real and imagined others that can deepen ethical sensibilities, including open
listening (e.g., Edmiston, 2013). A grounded ethics of (new) everyday relationality could be sup-
ported by further research in such contexts, as well as by school-situated experimentation with
open forms of dialogue, located at the nexus of online and offline interaction.
We have deliberately begun the discussion of pedagogical possibilities in this section in offline
practices, because while we wish to maintain a focus on digital literacies, we believe in the case
of dialogue in particular that the “online” problem of polarization must be addressed pedagogic-
ally within both online and offline spaces. As an experiment in this direction (Sabey and Leander,
in preparation), in a recent course for university freshmen, we actively recruited students from
across the political spectrum and engaged them in discussions of polarized topics (e.g., gun con-
trol). In cycles of participation and analysis, students were given the task of analyzing pieces of
their own political dialogues and online interactions, in light of a developing set of reflective
conversations and readings concerning cosmopolitan ethics. One realization from this work was
simply that open listening is a challenging practice in both online and offline contexts. As stu-
dents, teachers, social-media users, etc., we are not accustomed to being present with others and
responding to their dialogic contributions openly; we tend to be much more comfortable in
more predictable and controlled interactions. If, as we believe, open listening is an important
aspect of cosmopolitan literacy practices, there is much to learn about how it can be developed
and supported, perhaps especially online.
Yet another approach for the cultivation of hospitable dialogues online is to inquire about the
development of new digital tools that might support open listening. The potential danger of
filter-bubbles and echo-chambers in social media has received notable media and scholarly atten-
tion of late, with pundits and academics considering the role the Internet and social media may

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play in socio-political polarization (e.g., Boxell, Gentzkow, & Shapiro, 2017; Lee, Choi, Kim, &
Kim, 2014). In response to this concern, a number of app developers have begun to create tools
that attempt to disrupt filter-bubbles and allow users to “hear” other conversations. For instance,
FlipFeed, developed by researchers in the MIT Media Lab, is a Google Chrome Extension that
allows users to replace their own Twitter feed with that of another actual Twitter user. Feeds are
selected based on users’ inferred political ideology so that “a right-leaning user … may load and
navigate a left-leaning user’s feed, observing the news stories, commentary, and other content
they consume” (http://flipfeed.media.mit.edu). As a pedagogical opportunity, the idea of the
feed seems both to shift attention from text to network—to provide a critical and ethical under-
standing of how individual texts participate in relations to myriad other texts (postings, advertise-
ments, corporate media channels, etc.) in real time—and, perhaps, to encourage open listening.
We are not, of course, suggesting that FlipFeed (or any other tool) stands on its own as
a pedagogy. However, given an immersive pedagogy in forms of practice leading toward open
listening and dialogue, tools like these may have untapped potential.

Concluding Thoughts
Digital literacy practices are profoundly implicated in the tense moment in which we find our-
selves increasingly connected and divided. Recognizing this, we have explored how researchers
and educators might contribute to the cultivation of more cosmopolitan ways of being with and
relating to the Other. To this end, we reviewed the scholarly literature in literacy and language
studies that draws on cosmopolitanism to outline a field-wide emergent theory regarding prac-
tices that cultivate and constitute these ways of being and relating. We have then employed this
theory to frame our forward-looking commentary on the field of digital literacies, suggesting
ways the research and education communities might refocus their attention to more fully under-
stand the ever-evolving worlds of digital literacy and to contribute to the development of ethical
relations within and across these worlds.
A number of pedagogical implications follow from this discussion: First, if we expect a given
curriculum to cultivate cosmopolitan ways of being and relating, that curriculum will likely need
to both typify and afford these cosmopolitanizing practices. While we find these practices com-
pelling and believe they are full of pedagogical potential, we also recognize that they entail some
risk. Some unsettling encounters may, for example, be traumatic for certain learners—an espe-
cially important consideration with regard to already vulnerable populations. With this in mind,
we invite educators and researchers to explore and document forms of instructional scaffolding
that appropriately support particular students’ and teachers’ participation in cosmopolitanizing
practices.
As we have sought to apply this framework to ongoing and potential studies of digital literacy
practices, we have had cause to re-examine the notion of dialogue which underlies much of the
work on cosmopolitanism and on literacy more generally. The quintessential image of dialogue,
as mentioned above, involves a verbal exchange between diametrically opposed individuals. In
broad strokes, what we have suggested here offers a radical revision of this image, one that
involves assemblages of human and non-human actors interacting in and across networks, modes
and media. What it means to read, write, listen, dialogue, etc. in this context—let alone to do so
ethically—are by no means settled. We hope that shifting our focus from the page to the network,
from the (human) individual to the (human and non-human) assemblage, and from close(d) reading
to open listening will prove not only to be useful redirections for further research, but will ultim-
ately promote more cosmopolitan ways of being.
While we remain hopeful that such ethical relations are possible, and that ongoing teaching
and research along the lines we have proposed may facilitate their realization, we are also deeply,

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painfully aware of how far we have to go. Although we believe there are gaps in the field’s the-
oretical and empirical understanding, and gaping holes in our collective public discourse and
modes of relating across difference, this awareness most poignantly relates to our own personal
failings to live the cosmopolitan ethic we have articulated here. And so we temper our hope
with humility, acknowledging that we settle too often into unreflective and inhospitable patterns
of thought and behavior, rather than truly engaging with the reality of others. But we must do
better—to understand more fully, to listen more openly, and to respond more lovingly to fellow
citizens of the world.

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 Part VI
How Do Research Methods
Change the Game for Reading
Researchers and Policy Makers
 24
The Use of Video Data in Reading
Research
Brian Rowan, Bridget Maher, and Mark White

This paper discusses the use of video data in research on reading, as well as future directions for
research in the area. In the paper, we view video as a medium for collecting, transmitting, and
storing research data, just like photography, audio recording, live observation with field notes,
artifact collection, in-person interviewing, questionnaires, and administrative records, are media
through which data are collected, transmitted, and stored. The purpose of this paper is to point
the reader to some existing resources on the collection of video data and to discuss some trends
in the use of video data in research on teaching and learning in the area of reading. Our central
argument is that video recording technologies are evolving rapidly, providing particular affor-
dances—and challenges—for the use of video data in qualitative and quantitative research on
reading. We argue that some of these affordances might also help address the “gaps” in reading
research identified in this handbook, gaps that now exist with respect to what has been studied
in reading research, gaps in the translation of research findings from the reading research to read-
ing practice communities, and gaps in how results from reading research are implemented in
schools and classrooms. As we discuss below, new affordances in video data collection, manage-
ment, and data analysis have the potential to address these gaps by allowing for research on new
topics in the field, by allowing for different ways to communicate research results to different
communities of practice, and by providing different ways to guide practitioners as they imple-
ment findings from reading research in classrooms.

Resources Describing Video Data Collection and Use in Research

Several publications have described the growing (and varied) uses of video data in research on
teaching and learning broadly. A review by Erickson (2011) discussed the emergence and early
use of video data in qualitative and ethnographic research. Stigler and colleagues discussed the
use of “video surveys” in comparative cross-national research on teaching (Jacobs, Kawanaka, &
Stigler, 1999; Stigler, Gallimore, & Hiebert, 2000). An edited volume by Kane, Kerr, and Pianta
(2014) included several chapters on methodological issues arising in video-based studies of teach-
ing effectiveness and their bearing on the practical evaluation of teachers. Goldman and col-
leagues’ (2014) book-length monograph described the uses of video data in learning sciences
research, and an edited volume by Janík and Seidel (2009) described the use of video data in
European research on classroom teaching and learning.

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Overall, this published work points to some special affordances of video in comparison to
other modes of data collection for research on teaching and learning generally and, by inference,
for reading research. Like direct observation, video data can be used to record the rich detail of
real-time events. Of course, the features of events actually captured by video data depends on
how, and how often, video tools are deployed, but holding those important features of research
constant, video records preserve the exact timing and sequencing of observed events with less
editing and more contextual detail than photographs, audio recordings, field notes, transcriptions,
interviews, or questionnaires. Moreover, unlike most other data collection tools, video data are
used in both qualitative and quantitative research. In qualitative research, video preserves the
immediate visual and auditory phenomena inherent in events, allowing researchers to revisit basic
data as they develop and refine coding schemes and check on the internal validity of developing
hypotheses about a case. In quantitative research, especially large-sample studies of teaching prac-
tice, the preservation and re-use of video data allows analysts to more easily (and less obtrusively)
deploy multiple raters to code the same events, allowing for estimation and correction for rater
error in data analyses. Video also facilitates simultaneous use of multiple, structured coding
schemes to characterize the same teaching and learning events, helping validate score interpret-
ations arising from observation instruments. Further, in both quantitative and qualitative research,
setting participants (or others) can view video recordings of events, and participant insights can
be used (alongside observer accounts of the data) to better understand event participants’ motives,
cognition, decision-making, or knowledge use during the events under analysis. Finally, video
data can be clipped and processed in a variety of ways that allow researchers to communicate
their results visually—both to researchers and to practitioners.

Evolution of Video Technologies

Although many studies in education have used video data, we expect the number of such studies
to increase rapidly in the next decade, both as a result of the rapid advances in video recording
technology evident in the research reviews just cited and because developments in video technol-
ogy allow researchers to address research questions they could not study previously. Much of this
is due to a continuing miniaturization of video and audio recording devices, as well as continuing
decreases in the costs of purchasing good video resolution, and the improved compatibility of
video devices with other digital devices. Because of these trends, camera equipment has become
easier to transport and set up. In many research settings, a trained camera operator is no longer
required because respondents (or analysts) can easily position, turn on, and use video equipment
according to research protocols. Multiple cameras can easily be deployed in classroom research
and video subjects can wear pedants that allow cameras to follow them as they move around
(Derry, 2007). Some camera systems even remove the need to make decisions about zooming
and panning the camera during recording as they allow 360 degrees of panning and zooming
upon video playback (see DIVER project; Pea, et al., 2004). Cameras can even be mounted on
respondents’ heads to capture what they see (Blikstad-Balas & Sørvik, 2015; Blikstad-Balas, 2017;
see also Burris, 2017 for a broader discussion of “Point-of-View” camera usage). Connections to
other equipment (like tablets or laptops), along with growth in internet access and bandwidth,
make moving video records from field site to laboratory easier. Moreover, video data files are
now more easily processed and analyzed using commercially developed and widely available tools
for clipping, annotating, coding, and organizing video data (Derry, 2007). Finally, the costs of
storing large quantities of video data have decreased and should continue to do so in the future.
Such advances in video technology may allow for reading researchers to deploy cameras across
multiple contexts more efficiently and to conduct multi-site research more affordably. This, in
turn, could provide insights into how different classrooms, teachers, and schools implement

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reading curricula, research-based teaching strategies, or other approaches to supporting readers.

Researchers would also have the ability to use video as a part of understanding individual readers
within a single classroom through use of evolving video technologies. Indeed, it is only recently
possible to position multiple cameras (or even individual student cameras) so as to simultaneously
capture and then sync video records of classroom dynamics, reading approaches, and interactions.
The affordances are thus many and varied for reading researchers, as the opportunities to develop
a complex record of classroom and readers’ processes is only a recent possibility.

Video Data in Qualitative Reading Research

Previous volumes of the Handbook of Reading Research have mentioned the use of video as an
approach to data collection and analysis but have not had a chapter focused on these video
research methods. However, our review of qualitative (and mixed methods) studies in the field
of reading research over the last ten years found that video data have been used to investigate
a range of substantive topics in the field. We found studies using video data that: documented
reading and writing processes among young people using multiple and varied texts (e.g., Cho,
Woodward, & Li, 2018; Goldman, et al., 2012; Ivey & Johnston, 2013); examined instructional
and pedagogical practices in the service of reading and literacy (e.g., Aukerman & Schuldt, 2016;
Magnusson, Roe, & Blikstad-Balas, 2018); analyzed language exchanges, discourse, and other
detailed and complex interactions in classrooms (e.g., Moore & Schleppegrell, 2014); and investi-
gated the implementation of literacy interventions (e.g., Amendum, Bratsch-Hines, & Vernon-
Feagans, 2018; Levine, 2014). As in prior research, video data in the studies we reviewed were
used to document phenomena in rich detail and to attend to patterns and meaning within and
across video records. Video data were also used alongside other data sources to triangulate
findings.
Reading researchers have also used an extensive body of data analysis practices with video
data, but several fundamental issues remain unresolved. One of the most vexing issues arises from
qualitative researchers’ interest in coupling video with other data sources to arrive at a “thick
description” of events and cultures (Geertz, 1973). As video data becomes more available to
qualitative reading researchers, questions about the validity and reliability of thick descriptions
drawn from video data remain. Just how much video data is needed to arrive at “thick” descrip-
tion? Can someone not present in the community at the time of events, or not fully a member
of the community, truly understand, analyze, and interpret the sociocultural (or even temporal)
context of phenomena under study using video? What specific aspects of sociocultural and tem-
poral context, community context, or social interactions can video capture well and which does
it ignore? How might video records be treated similarly or differently from the interpretation and
analysis of field notes, photographs, and other media? How might classroom video document
(some) aspects of reading, literacy, and interaction, while at the same time failing to document
other aspects, and what choices would a researcher make in light of such limitations? Answers to
any of the questions raised here depend, of course, on a reading researcher’s specific theoretical
perspective, research topic, and methods of video data analysis. In our view, what is needed
moving forward is more explicit discussion of these issues within specific reading research com-
munities. It would also constitute growing evidence of maturity in the use of video data in the
field.

Video Data in Quantitative Research on Reading

Over the past decade, video data have also come into wide use in quantitative research on teach-
ing, especially research using structured observation instruments to examine classroom instruction.

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Brian Rowan et al.

The miniaturization of video equipment, and the easy setup and operation of such equipment by
teachers, have made live observation of teaching less necessary and led to innovative uses of
camera (and audio) equipment. The positioning of equipment is quite variable in this research,
sometimes involving use of panoramic cameras, sometimes synchronization of cameras at the
front and back of a classroom, sometimes the distribution of cameras to capture group work, and
sometimes the mounting of cameras on students to capture the texts they are interacting with as
they read or work on computers. The videos from all cameras can be synchronized, and as
a result, many concerns about what can (or cannot) be captured in video studies of classrooms
has been addressed (Derry, 2007). Still, the positioning of cameras depends in large part on the
research questions being addressed, and we expect camera-positioning strategies to change in the
coming years. What we hope evolves is some consensus about best practices in deployment of
camera and video recording equipment in research on the teaching and learning of reading.
However, best practices for video capture should be based on rigorous comparisons of alterna-
tives. Unfortunately, comparative studies of video technologies and their effects on basic research
processes such as measurement and statistical analysis is largely missing in current research. Thus,
herein lies an additional opportunity for reading researchers to make progress in the field.
Beyond data collection, a major benefit of video data collection in quantitative research on
classroom instruction is the increased ability to store video data for use in training and on-going
certification. In research, viewing videos is now a central part of classroom observer training and
calibration, with groups of observers frequently scoring common videos previously coded to
a “gold standard” by experts. In heavily managed research projects, the scoring of videos is also
sometimes monitored in real time, and coders who make large errors are pulled from scoring
until they are re-certified (Park, Chen, and Holtzman, 2014). Video data collection further
allows for easier (and less obtrusive) estimation of rater error in classroom observation studies
than live observation, because two or more raters can now score videos without those raters
being present in the same classroom on the same day.
Collection of video data can also address another methodological problem in classroom
research—the fact that both the quality of instruction and the ways observers score instructional
quality often change systematically over time (e.g., Casabianca et al., 2013). With live observation
and live scoring, there is no way to unconfound these potentially correlated trends, and this
makes it impossible to study changes over time in teaching practice using live observation (with-
out large assumptions about time trends in rater error). With video scoring, however, videos for
particular days can be distributed randomly to raters, making time of video recording and time of
scoring uncorrelated.
Despite these affordances, some fundamental questions remain about the structured scoring of
videos in reading research. For example, research suggests that video and live observations of the
same classroom teaching sessions are scored differently (Casabianca et al., 2013; Curby, Johnson,
Mashburn, & Carlis, 2016), although the correlations between live and video scores for teachers
are often quite high after adjusting for measurement error. Interestingly, items measuring features
of instruction that involve social interaction tend to show the largest differences between live and
video scoring, but this does not appear to be affected by issues related to audio or video quality
(White, 2017). Beyond these few studies, however, little research has explored why scores might
vary across live and video observations or whether such variation differs across particular observa-
tion systems. Holding constant the sampling features of live and video research design, it is pos-
sible that differences between live and video scoring are due to scoring protocols (e.g., raters can
pause and revisit videos but not live events). Alternatively, differences could vary across specific
camera systems used in a study or be sensitive to the observation instruments in use.
These last points are especially important because, with the rapid change in video technology,
each new project seems to use a new camera setup, and yet, we are unaware of any studies

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comparing the impact on scoring of different camera systems. It would not be surprising to find
that different camera systems have large impacts on observation scores or to find that differences
vary across observation instruments. These differences are due to the varied opportunities to see
the board, teacher, student-student interactions, and what students are actually reading and doing
during lessons afforded by the different tools. Thus, in reading research, where cumulative evi-
dence from many studies is often used to evaluate the effectiveness of particular reading interven-
tions and practices, it would be useful to give careful attention in reporting of study results to the
equipment, observation instruments, and scoring procedures used in particular video studies.
Such attention could help the field better understand any potential relationships between research
results and video data collection/analysis procedures and might ultimately result in more agree-
ment about best practices for video research within the field.

Other Developments in the Use of Video in Research

Other developments in the use of video in research are worth mentioning briefly, and we offer
these as a way for imagining how to address various “gaps” in the field mentioned earlier. To
begin, advances in software and technology for processing and streaming videos has made it
easier to embed short clips of classroom practice within questionnaires. This has led to the
embedding of video scenarios into surveys intended to measure teachers’ knowledge, allowing
teachers to respond to video representations of practice rather than text-based representations
(Jamil, Sabol, Hamre, & Pianta, 2015; Kersting, 2008). Video data are also being combined with
other kinds of data as well. Mobile eye-tracking technology, which overlays a teacher’s gaze onto
video data, is the most prominent example (see Beach & McConnel, 2018 for a review of this
research), but we expect other combinations to become common, such as the synchronization of
video data with screen capture technology that can provide new viewpoints on how students
work with technology-based reading interventions.
Technology is sure to develop in other interesting ways as well. One interesting path is the
automatic processing and coding of video data. Commercially available software already exists to
automatically code facial expressions and (animal) behavior from videos (e.g., www.noldus.com).
While these applications currently require the object under study to be center-frame and facing
the camera, technology is sure to develop to reduce this limitation. Further, there are attempts in
sports broadcasting to develop technology that tracks objects (i.e. a soccer ball) and players in
real-time from video data. Technology for automatic transcription of audio is also progressing
quickly and may soon develop to the point that conversational turn-taking, wait time, and the
timing of discourse events can be coded automatically. Last, the technology to create three-
dimensional representations of what is captured on video has been available since at least the
release of the X-Box 360 in 2005, which could expand the ways that video is used in research.
Application of these new technologies to reading research remains to be explored.

Archiving and Sharing Video Data

A final set of issues in the use of video data in research are related to the increased demand by
research sponsors, scholarly journals, and researchers to archive video data for re-use. The ration-
ale and practices for archiving quantitative data from video studies are well established (Johnston,
2017). Issues associated with archiving and re-using qualitative data from video studies, however,
are somewhat more controversial, even though practices for archiving qualitative data have been
in place in fields outside of education for decades (see Irwin, 2013 for discussion). The archiving
and re-use of raw video records, however, raise special concerns. At present, it is difficult to
identify any venue other than local repositories to house video data from reading research, and

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Brian Rowan et al.

the costs of storing large amounts of video data could slow the development of centralized insti-
tutional arrangements for video storage and re-use. A notable exception to this trend is the estab-
lishment of a video data enclave at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social
Research, a virtual data enclave that houses video records from the Gates Foundation’s Measures
of Effective Teaching (MET) project (www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/METLDB/). This enclave
has been the site of many re-uses of MET video data.
In addition to the complex problem of finding institutional support for video data archiving,
there is currently no agreed upon template for the meta-data to be associated with video records
(although standard templates make for a good start). Meta-data is the term for the data and infor-
mation about videos that are archived so that searching, locating, and retrieving from a large
source is efficient and possible. Meta-data may include information such as content, date, research
participant ID, school location, classroom numbers, and other aspects that describe the videos.
Both the storage and meta-data problems make discovery and re-use of relevant video data in the
field of reading research difficult.
Equally important are concerns about the privacy and confidentiality of the human subjects of
video research, concerns that are making some school districts and many potential subjects of
video research reluctant to participate in video studies. Much video research does not depend
crucially on knowing the exact identities of participants, but shielding subjects from re-
identification is obviously difficult in video work, raising questions about how much context data
to associate with video data, how to share video data with other users, and how to use video
exemplars of findings in published research (Derry, 2007). Technological solutions to some of
these problems (e.g., altering video and audio in ways that obscure subjects’ identities) are avail-
able, but the effects of such practices on data analysis and inferences from data are unknown.
Compounding these problems is the wide cross-national variation in human subjects’ protections,
which makes comparative cross-national video research more difficult. In light of these problems,
researchers planning to engage in video data collection need to think very carefully (and in
advance of data collection) about these ethical and practical concerns. Particularly important is
the crafting—well in advance—of consent forms for video research that clarify exactly how data
will be used, by whom, and for how long.
The use of archived videos and video repositories could also serve as one approach to closing
the translational gap in reading research. This gap exists when research findings in controlled,
laboratory settings are not ultimately integrated into other research settings or into practice. As
one example, My Teaching Partner, a coaching tool for classroom teachers, uses video illustrations
of particular teaching domains from the observation tool CLASS-S (Gregory et al., 2017). These
videos are shared with novice teachers as they gain skills for beneficial teacher-student inter-
actions; novices also share their own videos of attempts at these interactions as well as clips
requesting feedback and support of a challenging issue in the classroom. Although My Teaching
Partner did not particularly focus on reading research, it could model a possible direction of this
research and use of video resources in the future.
Video libraries of reading instruction—videos within controlled research settings or videos of
the translation of reading instruction to classroom environments—could serve as helpful training
and illustration tools for practice and future teaching. Labeling and tagging video collections (or
segments of videos) can provide helpful ways for teachers and instructors to search within arch-
ives for particular practices related to reading and teaching (see MET-X video repository within
the Teaching and Learning Exploratory at the University of Michigan as one example). Video is
often used in teacher education programs as assessment or reflection tools, but is typically not
used beyond a single course or beyond a single teacher’s training or portfolio. Establishing
a video repository of exemplary practice or illustrations of specific practices may prove useful in
demonstrating reading and literacy instruction, especially in ways that could establish common

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language and understandings around teaching and learning in reading. Teacher education pro-
grams could create examples of the development of teachers-in-training to show what is possible,
even if not yet at exemplary practice, particularly around the area of reading instruction.
Researchers and teachers alike could use such video resources to begin sharing practice and estab-
lishing shared language and vision about reading instruction and those beneficial practices to best
serve students.

An Example of Video Data in Research

As a way of offering one example of the use of video data collection and analysis advancements,
we describe a research project being conducted presently by the authors which uses video data
collection, storage, and analysis tools, as well as research practices described in this chapter. The
study, which we call Teaching over Time (TOT),1 is a longitudinal, mixed-method study investi-
gating the changes in teaching practice over the course of a ten-year period among a group of
approximately 100 teachers of English Language Arts in grades 4 through 8, who earlier submit-
ted video teaching records during the 2009–2011 school years as part of the well-known Measures
of Effective Teaching (MET) study (MET Project, 2009). We followed up with a subset of 100 of
these teachers during the 2017–2019 school years by collecting additional video records of teach-
ing using a sampling plan similar to the one used in the MET study. We then coded all MET
and TOT videos using the Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observation (PLATO)2 instru-
ment for rating the quality of English Language Arts instruction (Grossman, Loeb, Cohen, &
Wyckoff, 2013), as well as a team-developed scoring protocol that measured the extent to which
teachers’ lessons covered specific learning targets in the Common Core State Standards in reading
and writing. As in many other studies, we also collected additional information about text use,
approaches to reading, professional development experiences of teachers, the standards and
objectives addressed in these teaching videos, and other details using both surveys and (in
a subsample of teachers) interviews. Ultimately, we asked the question: How has teaching
changed over the time interval of this study and to what should we attribute these changes?
Our research effort offers one example of how a previous repository of videos has been resur-
rected for additional research efforts and research questions; such an opportunity would not be
possible without the use of a storage repository with clear and useful metadata to find appropriate
files. It also provides an example of the way classroom video might be deployed and collected
across multiple sites, thus raising statistical power to make claims about what is happening in
classrooms across multiple contexts. The study also shows how video camera equipment has
evolved over the past ten years. In the MET study, a camera operator was present and
a somewhat cumbersome panoramic camera was used for video recording. In TOT, by contrast,
camera equipment was sent directly to teachers for setup and use, with technological support
offered through remote communication. The TOT camera system also had multiple audio tracks
to better record both student and teacher voices, and also allowed for the camera to automatically
follow the teacher via infrared technology. Researchers on this study also conducted follow-up
interviews with individual teachers as a part of the qualitative research component, allowing us to
consider the influences, approaches, constraints, and affordances of different professional develop-
ment opportunities, school contexts, curricular and instructional materials, among other influ-
ences. The video data provided the research team several records of teaching practice from two
time periods so as to provide a longitudinal record of approaches in classroom. In combination,
we hope to use the video data, interviews, documents, and questionnaires to gain insight into the
influences on English Language Arts teaching among TOT teachers. Ten years ago, such research
would have been far more costly and difficult to conduct. It is only through increased miniatur-
ization of camera and audio technologies, a decline in costs of these new technologies, and better

461
Brian Rowan et al.

ability to obtain low cost video storage and playback capacity, that a study like Teaching over Time
became feasible. We therefore anticipate additional developments in video research by other
reading researchers and a growing use of video technologies and data in order to address existing
gaps and remaining questions in the field.

Notes
1 Teaching over Time is a part of a larger research effort entitled Under Construction: The Rise, Spread, and
Consequences of the Common Core State Standards Initiative in the U.S. Education Sector. It is a Spencer
Foundation and WT Grant Foundation endeavor across multiple universities and principal
investigators.
2 PLATO stands for the Protcol for Language Arts Teaching Observations, which is a classroom observation
protocol for English Language Arts teaching and instruction.

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 25
Examining the Process of Reading in
Media Text Environments
A Methodological Perspective
Byeong-Young Cho

This chapter focuses on methods of inquiry into processes of reading across media. The discussion
conceives of media as both forms or channels of communication, and the system and structure of
communication through which texts of varying quality, mostly online, are presented as potential
sources of information to readers. The chapter concerns reading in a broad sense, drawing on the
research literature that seeks to understand and describe reading by examining how readers access,
learn from, and reason about diverse texts in media. My goal is to review process-oriented
research methods of examining media reading and thereby offer a précis of ideas that may be
useful for specifying and integrating various inquiry methods with differing merits and limits.

Kinds of Reading that We Study in Media Text Environments

What kinds of reading do we wish to better understand? This question deserves attention from
those engaged in reading inquiry because our response to it drives our decisions about methods,
tools, techniques, and procedures. Comprehending reading in digital media often means moving
beyond single reader-text-task parameters (Britt, Goldman, & Rouet, 2013; Buckingham, 2006;
Lankshear & Knobel, 2003; Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, Castek, & Henry, 2013; New London Group,
1996). For example, the digital media environment forces readers to make choices of texts as
untested sources of information that await, attract, or hide from our attention (Kwon, Cha, &
Jung, 2017; Miller & Record, 2013; Simon, 2010). In addition, reading news reports, journal
articles, and open sources is oftentimes situated in goal-driven inquiry cycles of locating, evaluat-
ing, and using relevant information to investigate problems and questions (Metzger & Flanagin,
2013; Renear & Palmer, 2009). Further, active readers keenly interact with other readers,
responding to media texts critically, which reminds us how easily individuals may become biased
as they choose what to read in media and how to use reading to make important decisions
(Bakshy, Messing, & Adamic, 2015; Mocanu, Rossi, Zhang, Karsai, & Quattrociocchi, 2015).
The kinds of reading described above are distinct from reading in which an individual applies
processing skills to a given text in a strictly defined task environment. This means that our
assumptions about reading need to be revisited if we want to adequately explain the multifaceted
opportunities for learning from media texts that people commonly experience today (Greenhow,
Robelia, & Hughs, 2009; Leu et al., 2013). What is central to reading in media text

464
 Reading in Media Text Environments

environments is how readers identify, understand, and use the range of media texts available as
sources of knowledge and learning that may be useful for attaining their goals. A burgeoning
field of research seeks to describe the wide variety of reading and literacy tasks that include both
daily use of media texts, such as newspapers, documentary films, scientific animations, and web-
sites (Boucheix, Lowe, Putri, & Groff, 2013; Glaser, Garsoffky, & Schwan, 2012; Johnson, Aze-
vedo, & D’Mello, 2011; Kesler, Tinio, & Nolan, 2016; Mosborg, 2002), and learning with
digital media to make textual inquiries, secure reliable sources, and construct new questions
worth investigating (Cho, Woodward, Li, & Barlow, 2017; Mercier & Frederiksen, 2018;
Wopereis & van Merriënboer, 2011).
It is noteworthy that the foci of reading inquiry as described here, are not necessarily confined
to cognitive processes, but can subsume readers’ thinking about, feeling about, reacting to, and interacting
with the demands of reading in a media space. In particular, media text environments often
engage readers’ epistemologies, as readers scrutinize many unsubstantiated knowledge claims
through interactions with multiple texts (Bråten, Britt, Strømsø, & Rouet, 2011; Hofer, 2004;
Ikuenobe, 2003; Lankshear, Peters, & Knobel, 2000). In this context of epistemological uncer-
tainty, media readers are often required to grasp arguments from different texts and reason about
evidence to analyze and evaluate the knowledge claims that the authors build in the texts. There-
fore, when carrying out reading inquiry, we deal with epistemic thinking engagement (e.g., how
readers come to know and justify their understandings through evaluating varied texts as potential
sources of evidence) in addition to cognitive processes and metacognitive experiences. Examin-
ations of these aspects of reading depend on context: who reads what texts for what goals and
interests.
In brief, our examinations of reading in media text environments require special attention to
how these environments evoke, engage, and constrain readers’ thinking processes in and across
the cognitive, metacognitive, and epistemological dimensions of reading. The following section
recounts some methodological approaches and their affordances and advantages that can poten-
tially aid in advancing our knowledge with regard to how readers engage in thought processes
while responding to, and interacting with, media text environments.

Useful Methods for Examining Reading in Media Text Environments

Reading inquiry over the past century has offered compelling theories and models to advance
our knowledge of how people read (for a comprehensive review, see McNamara & Magliano,
2009). Every such advance is entwined with the development and refinement of our methodolo-
gies. For example, we are now confident that tracking a reader’s eye gaze indicates how the
reader’s attention shifts as she processes information (Just & Carpenter, 1980; Rayner, 2009). We
have also benefited from evidentiary inferences about text-processing strategies from the analysis
of readers’ think-aloud protocols (Afflerbach & Johnston, 1984; Pressley & Afflerbach, 1995).
That said, our ability to determine the optimal research methods to investigate media reading
with multiple sources and tasks will be limited if we settle for established ideas of reading that are
solely based on single-text processing (Bråten et al., 2011; Cho, Afflerbach, & Han, 2018; Gold-
man, 2010; Rouet, 2006).
This section addresses methodological needs that arise when we examine and evaluate how
people read media texts (see Table 25.1). The approaches reviewed here were identified in a
range of empirical work on diverse reading situations across media. While previous work demon-
strates the scientific merits of these different approaches (Afflerbach, 2000; Hofer, 2004; Smagor-
insky, 1998; Van Gog, Paas, van Merriënboer, & Witte, 2005; Veenman, 2005), this review
details their potential uses and benefits for examinations of reader cognition and thinking engage-
ment, and situates them in relation to prominent (con)textual features of media.

465
Table 25.1 Methods of Inquiry into Reading Across Media

What proced-
ures and tech- What aspects of reading
niques can be What kinds of data can this approach What needs to be con-
Methods used? can be collected? address? sidered for data analysis?

Verbal report- Concurrent Spontaneous think- Relatively automatized Processing complexity

ing and verbal report- aloud (e.g., “What are processing of informa- (e.g., basic and higher-
verbal proto- ing during you thinking, feeling, tion when skimming order), thinking level (e.
col analysis reading and doing as you navi- paragraphs, browsing a g., surface and deep),
gate on the Internet?”) series of images, or and strategic effective-
scanning a list of ness (e.g., success and
hyperlinks. failure) may be judged
and coded for each pro-
cessing type.

Instantiations of prior Knowledge types (e.g.,

knowledge use (e.g., topic knowledge,
what the reader knew domain knowledge,
and didn’t know about media knowledge such
particular links, sites, as information publish-
web tools, or media ing and sharing, infor-
functions while making mation system
literal-level inferences knowledge), knowledge
about what they are sources (e.g., prior
about and for). learning, previous read-
ing, personal experi-
ence, other human
resources such as
teachers), and effective-
ness in knowledge use
(e.g., (in)accurate asso-
ciation of (in)correct
knowledge with the
information being pro-
cessed) may be inferred
and coded.

Pre-planned reading Readers’ comments on

paths taken by readers chosen pages and links
to gather information can be integrated into a
and solve problems (e. map of reading paths,
g., starting Internet and this map can be
research by locating judged in terms of its
and processing easier (non)linearity and (in)
links and texts first, fol- flexibility. The map pat-
lowing a tentative plan terns may be identified
for online searching and and compared among
information reading, the individuals.
rejecting difficult texts
regardless of their
importance and value
for reading goals).

(Continued )
Table 25.1 (Cont.)

What proced-
ures and tech- What aspects of reading
niques can be What kinds of data can this approach What needs to be con-
Methods used? can be collected? address? sidered for data analysis?

Initial noticing of, and Patterns of noticing

attention to, new and may indicate readers’
eye-catching informa- preferred modes of
tion (e.g., images and information gathering
graphics, audiovisual (e.g., visual or written
resources, technical representation), habits
terms and jargon) and of reading (e.g., select-
text features (e.g., ive reading, skimming,
hyperlinks and menus, close reading), or
headings and subhead- reasons for being dis-
ings, previews and tracted or diverted (e.
overviews). g., information over-
load, disorientation
during navigation, ill-
defined focus of infor-
mation-knowledge
seeking).

Opportunities that
Reactive (rather than readers might have
critical) judgments of missed in the course of
the content relevance of accessing novel, unex-
media information and plored information
decisions about its spaces may be con-
source utility (e.g., key- sidered in the data ana-
word-text matching, lysis when reactive
text-content compari- judgments are observed
son) in the course of repeatedly.
online searching and
information location.

Motivations for naviga- Motivational shift can

tional jumping and be considered in data
switching between analysis in that media
pages in a routine cycle environments may
(e.g., browsing, click- facilitate readers’ devel-
ing, site opening, book- opment of situational
marking, checking- interest (e.g., interest
leaving). changing through the
task) beyond personal
interest (intrinsic inter-
est independent of the
task).

(Continued )
Table 25.1 (Cont.)

What proced-
ures and tech- What aspects of reading
niques can be What kinds of data can this approach What needs to be con-
Methods used? can be collected? address? sidered for data analysis?

Elicited self-explanation Degree of intentional Data analysis should

(e.g., “Why are you and goal-directed think- consider readers’ verbal
thinking, feeling, and ing, which is likely to be proficiency and willing-
doing that in that way involved in evidence- ness to talk in front of
at this moment of your based reasoning about others because elicited
website reading?”) texts and sources (e.g., verbal reporting largely
understanding web- involves self-explan-
page content, develop- ation, and articulation,
ing new thoughts, of one’s thoughts and
citing and referencing behaviors. Interpret-
to support claims, ation of these verbal
imposing and revising a data needs to be com-
point of view as part of plemented by prior
text interpretation, chal- measures of individual
lenging and updating a differences with regard
mental model of previ- to readers’ cognitive,
ous and current web motivational, and verbal
sources). abilities and tendencies.

Emerging self-reflection Accuracy of self-reflec-

that readers may bring tion should be judged
in to judge their own and coded because not
reading processes and all readers’ self-reflec-
behaviors related to tion is well-calibrated
their information with their actual read-
searching, online navi- ing performance, espe-
gation, and media inter- cially for readers who
action (e.g., refocusing, are metacognitively
progress judgment, inexperienced in rela-
judgment of success tion to media tasks and
and failure, reader environments.
engagement).

Metacognitive monitor- Monitoring may be

ing processes and self- interpreted in two ways:
regulatory planning in (a) monitoring as an
which readers engage independent category
while navigating the of strategic processing
media space and nego- (e.g., problem detec-
tiating multiple media tion, fix–it strategy use,
sources (e.g., evaluating goal specification), or
aspects of reading (b) monitoring as
against task goals and assumed to be a latent
situations of reading, competence that allows
detecting information coordination of cogni-
needs and implement- tive strategies.
ing follow-up actions to
meet the needs, evalu-
ating the challenges
and difficulties pre-
sented by specific
media contexts).

(Continued )
Table 25.1 (Cont.)

What proced-
ures and tech- What aspects of reading
niques can be What kinds of data can this approach What needs to be con-
Methods used? can be collected? address? sidered for data analysis?

Intentional manage- Because verbal reports

ment of multiple media often include unclear
texts in which readers pronouns (e.g., it, this,
shift their reading focus they, that), data analysis
and attention between should clarify as much
sources and develop as possible what sources
meaning toward evi- of information a specific
dentiary understanding verbal utterance refers
of the topics, issues, or to in order to delineate
problems investigated and trace how each
through media inquiry. source is read and used.

Retrospective Spontaneous think- Reasons for particular Post-reading recall of

verbal report- aloud (e.g., “How actions taken in the actions may rely heavily
ing after the would you describe the course of reading, espe- on readers’ interpret-
focal task of process of your reading cially at important and ation and judgment of
reading is as you navigate the culminating moments their reading and of
done Internet?”) and/or of reading retained in themselves, and be con-
elicited self-explanation the reader’s mind (e.g., textualized within their
(e.g., “How did you rejecting a certain web- entire process of read-
strive to make sense of site, spending a rela- ing. Therefore, retro-
conflicting news tively long time to read spective protocols may
reports?”) a particular article, best be used as comple-
changing search terms mentary data that
several times, seeking describe, support, and
specific media publish- verify the inferences
ing types and author- made from other, unob-
ities such as news trusive real-time process
media, personal blogs, data such as eye move-
tweets and postings by ments and logging
lay people, expert col- history.
umns, government
sites).

Important information Readers’ memories do

learned from media not necessarily repre-
reading and integrated sent what happened
into readers’ schemas during reading accur-
and experience. ately and in detail, and
oftentimes, they are
constructed (and thus
biased) through the
verbal reporting pro-
cess. Therefore, the

(Continued )
Table 25.1 (Cont.)

What proced-
ures and tech- What aspects of reading
niques can be What kinds of data can this approach What needs to be con-
Methods used? can be collected? address? sidered for data analysis?

verbal data should be

triangulated with reader
attention data, includ-
ing reading times and
logging history. Also,
the importance and
relevance of the
retained information
may be judged based
on post-hoc analysis of
the media texts
accessed by readers.
Such judgments may be
informative about read-
ing effectiveness and
reader understanding as
the result of their media
text investigation.
Cued retro- Think-aloud and self- Self-reflection in relation Richer verbal reporting
spective verbal explanation in response to focal moments (e.g., may be stimulated by
reporting or to external visual cues searching), actions (e. the cues, and the result-
stimulated (e.g., videorecorded g., clicking), choices (e. ing verbal data may
recall performance) with g., choosing a media allow for more in-depth
examiner prompts text), and decisions (e. analysis of focal acts of
g., shifting a reading reading and the under-
focus from searching to lying motivation. Close
comprehension) trig- observations of during-
gered by external cues. reading processes are
required because the
important stimuli and
cues need to be chosen
immediately after the
reading task is done.
Cued retrospective
verbal reporting is par-
ticularly useful in media
reading situations that
involve multilayered
information spaces in
which readers perform
fast and dynamic moves
along a series of nodes
and links.

(Continued )
Table 25.1 (Cont.)

What proced-
ures and tech- What aspects of reading
niques can be What kinds of data can this approach What needs to be con-
Methods used? can be collected? address? sidered for data analysis?

Self-assessment based Unconstrained talking

on the recognition, ana- aloud may facilitate
lysis, and evaluation of readers’ continual revi-
perceived missteps, sion of self-reflection
errors, and failures, (considering the factors
using cues as support- of the task, goal, and
ing evidence. context), which may
lead them to inaccurate
judgments or self-justi-
fying biases (e.g.,
under- or overesti-
mation of skills, know-
ledge, and success as
opposed to actual
performance).

Spontaneous Think-aloud situated in Microgenetic analysis of Reader factors that affect

verbalizations an authentic context of moment-to-moment moment-to-moment
during real-life task performance (e.g., processes of reading reading processes must
tasks by approaching a situated in authentic, be considered in the
learner reading digital everyday problem-solv- data analysis (e.g., how
media during class and ing tasks (e.g., in-school individuals’ history of
eliciting personal talk literacy tasks, home lit- media learning may
from the learner on his/ eracy practices). come into play in read-
her performance) ing with a variety of
media sources—onto-
genetic influence on
microgenetic moves).

Thinking or wandering, Data analysis may con-

engagement or indiffer- sider how readers’
ence, and agreement or awareness and identifi-
refusal in the course of cation of authentic
media text reading as problems are situated
contextualized with the within real-world con-
authentic task, goal, set- straints and affordances
ting, and ways of inter- (e.g., micro-, meso-,
acting with authentic and macro-contextual
problems. influences).

(Continued )
Table 25.1 (Cont.)

What proced-
ures and tech- What aspects of reading
niques can be What kinds of data can this approach What needs to be con-
Methods used? can be collected? address? sidered for data analysis?

Ways readers approach The scope and bound-

media texts as poten- aries of the chosen
tially useful sources of media texts may be
information as they analyzed in terms of
select, prioritize, or their usefulness, rele-
reject certain texts and vance, and significance
materials (e.g., given for readers’ progress
texts, self-chosen texts, toward achieving their
world knowledge, topic goals.
knowledge in use).

Task-based Recorded peer Verbal comments on Mental models built as Discourse analysis
discourse discussion and texts and media reading makes progress allows researchers to
analysis discourse toward an understand- identify readers’ use of
ing, and the use of key information, and to
meaning-making strat- analyze their sensemak-
egies of varying com- ing processes. This is
plexities and roles (e.g., because the mental
commenting, noticing, models built within indi-
summarizing, elaborat- viduals’ minds are evi-
ing, analyzing and syn- denced through
thesizing, contextualiz- intellectual exchanges
ing word meanings, and verbal interactions
questioning and chal- between the
lenging text ideas). individuals.

Processes of identifying Data analysis may con-

and determining rela- sider the course of
tionships among mental engagement in which
models built at differ- readers become more
ence stages of reading and more involved in
(e.g., mutually (dis) intertextual meaning-
agreeing, complemen- making processes. Dis-
tary or conflicting per- course analysis allows
spectives) and the tracing the origins and
involved cognitive dis- relationships of ideas (e.
sonances (e.g., confu- g., keeping records of
sion, tension, sources of information
tentativeness, resolution used to build within-
of disparate ideas and and cross-textual
perspectives repre- models).
sented in mental
models).

(Continued )
Table 25.1 (Cont.)

What proced-
ures and tech- What aspects of reading
niques can be What kinds of data can this approach What needs to be con-
Methods used? can be collected? address? sidered for data analysis?

Verbal comments refer- Contribution of media Comments including

ring to sourcing and sources to the overall certain vocabulary that
referencing learning process, and indicates epistemic pro-
the accompanying epi- cessing and justification
stemic processes (e.g., (e.g., reliable, truth,
(in)consistent judg- believe, depend,
ments in claim-making, reason, evidence, data,
evidence use through claim, fake, false,
reasoning about the wrong, know, think)
sources of information). may be analyzed. Such
words and comments
often accompany judg-
ments of media’s utility
and credibility.

Lexical transitions in Transactional commit- Data analysis may be

speech (e.g., pronoun ment to text under- informed by a prelimin-
shifts) standing at a critical ary analysis of the
level. For example, pro- chosen media texts in
noun shifts may indicate terms of how they are
shifts in readers’ stances relevant to readers’
toward history, from experience and know-
considering it as lists of ledge and hidden
fossilized facts and assumptions, motives,
events (e.g., their, it) to or biases in the texts.
considering it as person-
alized and culturally
reinterpreted narratives
(e.g., our, I) as a result
of working with diverse
written and visual
accounts of current and
historical issues found in
media.

Verbal comments on Shared metacognition Data analysis may focus

partners (and the self), that facilitates monitor- on readers’ responsive
and processes and ing, control, regulation, reactions to each
sequences of verbal and negotiation of text- other’s language and
exchanges ual decision-making their underlying
processes in relation to thoughts and perspec-
what sources to choose tives about pursuing
and how to make use of knowledge together (e.
those sources (e.g., g., if/how they invite
shared goals, division of thoughts and opinions,
labor, unique and joint if/how they accept pre-
contributions to the sented claims, if/how
progress of knowing). they offer evidence to
support objections).

(Continued )
Table 25.1 (Cont.)

What proced-
ures and tech- What aspects of reading
niques can be What kinds of data can this approach What needs to be con-
Methods used? can be collected? address? sidered for data analysis?

Ethnographic Interviews Pre-reading interviews Individual differences Data analysis may

methods (e.g., “How do you plan and tendencies that include the assessment
to read as you work readers bring to the task of reader factors such as
with media sources to of reading and the goals knowledge (e.g., prior
do this upcoming that they set up prior to knowledge and funds of
task?”) performance. knowledge regarding
topics, content, text
features, task environ-
ments), motivation (e.
g., topic interest, read-
ing attitudes, task
engagement), self-effi-
cacy (e.g., skills, know-
ledge, performance),
and task impressions (e.
g., available materials
and resources, spatio-
temporal and physical
constraints, expected
outcomes).

Post-reading interviews What readers learned Data analysis may

(e.g., “What new infor- from reading: major include distinguishing
mation did you find take-away in terms of new and old informa-
during your online content learning of new tion. The acquisition of
reading?”) information, novel new information may
insights, puzzling ideas, be traced by analyzing
unresolved issues, and the process of choosing,
remaining questions. reading, and evaluating
media sources, while
old information may be
identified in pre-reading
interviews or during-
reading verbal
protocols.

Self-reflection on task Reader judgment may

performance, including be assessed both expli-
readers’ feeling of suc- citly and implicitly.
cess or failure, self- Explicit questions may
reported learning elicit direct responses
experience and engage- from readers, but the
ment, and judgment of responses might be
task-text complexity biased. Specified follow-
and difficulty. up questions may be
necessary.

(Continued )
Table 25.1 (Cont.)

What proced-
ures and tech- What aspects of reading
niques can be What kinds of data can this approach What needs to be con-
Methods used? can be collected? address? sidered for data analysis?

Focus group interviews Typical, shared reac- Focus groups can be

(e.g., “What would you tions among the partici- done with participants
like to share about your pants in response to the who worked together
media reading reading task performed. on collaborative tasks,
experience?”) or participants who per-
formed the same task
individually.

Conflicting experiences Data analysis may

and reflections of parti- include interpretation of
cipants, and the sources focus group data along
of the conflicts. with pre-reading inter-
views and during-read-
ing observations.

Observations Fieldnotes on during- Noticeable reader utter- Close observation is

reading behaviors ances that help to iden- required: watching
tify critical moments what readers are doing
and episodes of reading and noting the texts
in the media space. they are reading. Photo-
graphing computer
screens and making
quick notes on reader
behaviors and
researcher insights can
be helpful to preserve
moments of reading to
be analyzed later.

Readers’ feelings and Data analysis may

engagement at specific include inferences from
moments of reading. embodied non-verbal
language such as facial
expressions, physical
actions, and gestures
that may not be cap-
tured by screen-record-
ing or verbal reporting
(e.g., how readers
arrange their surround-
ings when reading; how
readers position their
bodies; how readers
handle objects such as a
book, printed paper,
computer, or mouse;
what readers look for
first and last; what
makes readers stop or
continue browsing).

(Continued )
Table 25.1 (Cont.)

What proced-
ures and tech- What aspects of reading
niques can be What kinds of data can this approach What needs to be con-
Methods used? can be collected? address? sidered for data analysis?

Post-hoc analysis of Dynamic use of explicit Data analysis may assess

videorecorded reader strategic behaviors that the quality and com-
performance accompany a series of plexity of the web
cognitive strategies and sources that readers
processes (e.g., search visited, read, and used
term use, site visits, (post-hoc qualitative
web-browser use, page analysis of source rele-
transitions, mouse use, vance, credibility, and
scrolling). usefulness) and the
order in which these
web sources were
visited and used.

Automatized, Eye-tracking Fixation (and duration) Extensiveness and inten- Within-AOI reader
unobtrusive within and and saccade siveness of reader atten- attention may be ana-
collection of across areas of tion to reading within lyzed by calculating the
nonverbal interest (AOIs) an AOI, which can be amount of reading time
data predetermined either and the density of eye-
spatially (e.g., frames, mind attention (e.g.,
sections) or functionally percentage of total
(e.g., figures and tables, viewing time, mean
titles, topic sentences, duration of all fixations).
keywords, paragraphs).

Eye-movement How distinctively the The linear and nonlinear

sequence reader processes differ- order of reading and
ent AOIs according to relevant metacognitive
their relevance and and self-regulatory pro-
importance: The mean cesses (e.g., monitor-
difference in total fix- ing, fix-up strategy use)
ation and duration may be analyzed by
times between different charting the reader’s
AOIs can be examined. revisiting-reviewing-
rereading patterns
across the AOIs (e.g.,
number of times a
reader returns to each
AOI, comparison of
time spent at the first-
place fixation and sub-
sequent fixations).

Log-file Log files Readers’ management Data analysis includes

analysis of reading time and the assessment of dwell
adjustment of reading time (when one’s eye
attention when process- lands on a specific site
ing multiple texts and and page and how long
sources. one’s attention to the
text continues) as well
as total numbers of
websites loaded, unique
URLs loaded, and clicks
on links.

(Continued )
Table 25.1 (Cont.)

What proced-
ures and tech- What aspects of reading
niques can be What kinds of data can this approach What needs to be con-
Methods used? can be collected? address? sidered for data analysis?

Whether readers visit Pre-task textual analysis

websites that meet cer- is required if readers
tain quality criteria, work within a closed-
according to post-hoc ended system (e.g.,
analysis (e.g., (ir)rele- hypertext), whereas
vant or (un)reliable post-hoc analysis must
website visits). be undertaken if readers
work in an uncon-
strained, authentic
media text environment
(e.g., the Internet).

Readers’ choices and Logging history may be

solution paths or delineated into a series
diversions. of separate page visits
and then integrated
into a map that repre-
sents the sequence of
reading choices. Coher-
ence of the choices may
be judged in relation to
their relevance and
importance.

Search term use (key- How extensively readers Quantitative analysis

stroke data) engage in online may be performed on
searching (e.g., the the number of search
total number of key- term modifications, the
stroke activities and number of site visits,
search terms entered). and the amount of
reading time within
each search term use.

How readers use prior Data may be analyzed

knowledge (e.g., topic to identify the categor-
knowledge, domain ies of the typed search
knowledge, text know- terms (e.g., by topic,
ledge, Internet know- publishing type, expert-
ledge) to generate ise or authority) as well
relevant search terms as their qualities (e.g.,
(mostly in the begin- relevance, significance).
ning phase of reading).

(Continued )
Byeong-Young Cho

Table 25.1 (Cont.)

What proced-
ures and tech- What aspects of reading
niques can be What kinds of data can this approach What needs to be con-
Methods used? can be collected? address? sidered for data analysis?

How readers modify Qualitative analysis is

search terms at the required to judge the
metacognitive level by flow of thinking demon-
responding to changing strated by readers (e.g.,
situations of reading a flow of changes in
and evolving goals for search term use as com-
reading. pared to verbalized
thoughts).

Post-click inter- Cursor (mouse pointer) How readers spend Data analysis may ask
action analysis movement and scrolling their time on the land- whether consistent pat-
ing page and subse- terns in scroll bar and
quently viewed mouse use (e.g., fre-
documents (e.g., close quent shifts in direction
reading versus scanning and duration, moving
according to document down-pausing-moving
relevance). up, scrolling down from
top to bottom of the
page) are observed
across texts and among
readers, which may
show reader tendencies.

Note. Empirical studies contributing to this review include: Baron (2016); Barzilai and Zohar (2012); Biedert, Dengel,
Buscher, and Vartan (2012); Boucheix et al. (2013); Brand-Gruwel, Kammerer, van Meeuwen, and van Gog (2017); Bulger,
Mayer, and Metzger (2014); Cho (2014); Cho, Kucan, Rainey, and Han (2018); Cho, Woodward, and Li (2018); Cho et al.
(2017); Cutrell and Guan (2007); Ferguson, Bråten, and Strømsø (2012); Fitzgerald and Palincsar (2017); Gerjets, Kammerer,
and Werner (2011); Glaser et al. (2012); Goldman, Braasch, Wiley, Graesser, and Brodowinska (2012); Greene, Yu, and
Copeland (2014); Guo and Agichtein (2012); Hillesund (2010); Hollis and Was (2016); Jian (2015); Johnson et al. (2011);
Kesler et al. (2016); Kiili, Laurinen, Marttunen, and Leu (2012); Kiili, Leu, Marttunen, Hautala, and Leppänen (2018); Kruger
and Steyn (2013); Lawless, Schrader, and Mayall (2007); Lewis and Fabos (2005); Lipponen, Rahikainen, Lallimo, and Hak-
karainen (2003); Marsh (2011); Mason, Ariasi, and Boldrin (2011); Mason, Tornatora, and Pluchino (2015); McEneaney, Li,
Allen, and Guzniczak (2009); Mercier and Frederiksen (2018); Minguela, Solé, and Pieschl (2015); Mosborg (2002); Pan et
al. (2004); Paul and Morris (2011); Salmerón and García (2011); Salmerón, Naumann, García, and Fajardo (2017); Song and
Cho (2019); Sung, Wu, Chen, and Chang (2015); Trevors, Feyzi-Behnagh, Azevedo, and Bouchet (2016); and Zhang and
Duke (2008).

The review suggests verbal data analysis as a culminating approach to media-based reading
inquiry. This approach uses language data generated by readers in more or less authentic, spon-
taneous, and interactive conditions. Its specific methods include:

• concurrent thinking aloud—readers verbalize their thoughts and actions spontaneously while
engaged in a reading process, for example, using the Internet to conduct research on a con-
troversial topic (e.g., Cho, 2014);
• cued retrospective verbal reporting—after reading, readers explain their processing of digital texts
by responding to external cues they themselves generated while reading, such as

478
 Reading in Media Text Environments

videorecorded screen moves or visual displays of eye movements on a screen (e.g., Salmerón
et al., 2017);
• ethnographic interviews and think-aloud—readers talk to researchers about their interactions with
digital technologies as an authentic experience of sensemaking through reading, writing, and
communicating (e.g., Lewis & Fabos, 2005); and
• task-oriented group discourse—readers’ recorded (non)verbal exchanges during joint meaning
construction while reading in an online media context (e.g., Kiili et al., 2012).

Such verbal data analysis research notably manifests trends in data triangulation, one way or
another. For example, two or more sources of verbal data are regularly used together (e.g., meta-
cognitive web sourcing strategies inferred from think-aloud reports and epistemic interviews in
Barzilai & Zohar, 2012). In addition, verbal data can be coordinated with behavioral data (e.g.,
think-aloud reports with eye movements and Internet log files in Gerjets, Kammerer, & Werner’s
2011 study to measure sourcing strategies in web searches).
Further, unconventional and creative adaptations of these verbal data approaches have contrib-
uted to theoretical discussions about the construct of reading in media text environments. Specif-
ically, a growing body of work looks into readers’ epistemic engagement in working with
multiple sources of information in media. Scholars have demonstrated the utility of interpreting
readers’ elicited verbal reports, retrospective interviews, or task-oriented discourses to describe
readers’ epistemic (meta)cognition in action while reading digitally (Barzilai & Zohar, 2012; Cho
et al., 2018; Ferguson et al., 2012; Greene et al., 2014; Mason et al., 2011).
Verbal data are uniquely valuable for observing the operation of epistemic processes when
readers’ latent theories of knowledge and knowing may surface and work toward source judg-
ments, conflict resolution, justification for knowing, or additional evidence-seeking during media
reading. Such uses of readers’ verbal data to describe epistemic cognition as a situated construct
help address the lack of authenticity inherent in the self-report surveys typically used in learner
epistemology studies (Greene, Muis, & Pieschl, 2010; Hofer, 2004). At best, readers’ survey
responses describe perceived epistemic beliefs—but verbal data approaches can reflect how such
beliefs are enacted along with (meta)cognitive processes in an intertextual media space.
Research on media reading is increasingly informed by current technologies, including eye-
tracking (Gerjets et al., 2011; Salmerón et al., 2017; Sung et al., 2015) and automatized collection
of navigational indicators such as dwell time, logging history, cursor movements, and keystrokes
(Bulger et al., 2014; Lawless, Brown, Mills, & Mayall, 2003; McEneaney et al., 2009; Paul &
Morris, 2011). Technological advancement has also extended the affordances of our methods
with increasingly sophisticated and reliable tools. For instance, recent studies explore ubiquitous
practices of media reading on mobile devices such as smartphones (e.g., see Biedert et al., 2012;
Guo & Agichtein, 2012, for methods combining data from log files, touch screen use, cursor
movements, and gaze estimation to examine reading process patterns in smartphone reading).
Adaptive eye-tracking is among the most promising methods to detect when, where, and to
what the reader becomes attentive to while processing digital sources. Readers’ gazes can be
tracked according to predetermined areas of interest (AOIs), which are chosen to address specific
research questions and goals (Goldberg & Helfman, 2010; Holmqvist et al., 2011; Jian, 2015;
Sung et al., 2015). By selecting the sizes, shapes, and locations of text components on a page of
electronic text, AOIs can be constructed to investigate how readers attend to spatial information
(e.g., frames, sections, divisions), semantic and functional information (e.g., titles, topic sentences,
keywords, hyperlinks, menus, and tabs), or the forms of information representation (e.g., tables,
diagrams, charts, images, sounds, videos, and animations). For example, author information on a
blog post could be designated a focal AOI to observe whether, and how closely, readers examine
source reliability. The reader’s control of attention transitions can also be analyzed by calculating

479
Byeong-Young Cho

the amount of time spent gazing at AOIs and the density of eye fixations in and across them.
Along with additional unobtrusive methods such as web tracking, AOI-based eye-tracking could
improve interpretation of reader-text interactions in digital media. In addition, eye-tracking can
be paired with retrospective verbal protocols, which can offer clues for inferences about why
readers fix their attention on, and move across the, AOIs. Most desirably, advancing technology
may soon make possible methods of representing a reader’s sequential (often nonlinear) attention
shifts across AOIs, sites of interest, and even media of interest.
The brief review thus far is meant to clarify our understanding of current methods useful for
future inquiries drawing on theories and conceptions of reading across different media contexts.
Game-changing methodologies are realized when researchers commit to creativity and criticality
in designing, testing, and validating novel adaptations of these existing methodological
approaches, as detailed in Table 25.1. Such trials and errors require scientific rigor if we desire to
understand the complexities and nuances of media text reading.

Toward a Methodological Advancement in the Study of Reading

across Media
An important task in our methodological innovation is to close the gaps we perceive between
what we wish to know, what data we actually have at hand, and how we interpret the data
(Messick, 1989; Pellegrino, Chudowsky, & Glaser, 2001). As implied in this review of methods
of inquiry into media reading, such inferential gaps could be filled in, at least partly, by consider-
ing the principles that shape our methodological tasks, especially the tasks of prediction, context-
ualization, and triangulation.

Prediction
Media environments present novel complexities and uncertainties, so researchers should be able
to anticipate how details of task implementation, tool administration, participant observation, and
the collection, organization, and analysis of data will interact with such environmental features
(Leander, 2008; Murthy, 2008; Williams, Rice, & Rogers, 1988). Because no methodology is
perfect, research processes can depart drastically from the original research designs and intentions,
and from the “pure” form and content we might assume when we study methodology apart
from actual use. Methodological prediction cannot correct missteps that emerge and interact in
the actual research process. However, cogent predictions of research processes, informed by rele-
vant theories and methodologies, can help researchers think proactively to anticipate what they
might need to do when issues and questions arise. Therefore, making predictions about what
might happen when employing specific methods, and about how each method and procedure
might influence data collection and interpretation, is a necessary step for researchers.
Particularly important to reading inquiry is theoretical task analysis before the research begins
(Veenman, Van Hout-Wolters, & Afflerbach, 2006). Task analysis helps examiners anticipate
how reading will begin, go, and end given the task, goal, and setting within a media environ-
ment. Through task analysis, researchers can (a) define what counts as focal data, (b) discern how
to fit separate data analyses into a cohesive theory, (c) decide how to value contextual informa-
tion as a source of alternative explanations against known conclusions, and finally, (d) determine
an optimal methodological approach. Therefore, a thorough task analysis not only helps
researchers make informed predictions for research processes but also prepares them to respond if
their data challenges their prior knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions about reading, readers, texts,
and environments.

480
 Reading in Media Text Environments

Contextualization
Detailed methodological contextualization can help researchers improve the design of their
inquiries into reading in media text environments. Contextualization can be performed in two
ways: (a) bringing methods to natural contexts of reading, and (b) accounting for the context in
which methods are used in data interpretation. First, because reading is a context-bound practice
with particular reader goals (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989), researchers need to contextualize
their methodologies when readers work with authentic texts, tasks, and situations. Taking a
sociocultural perspective (Cross, 2010; Smagorinsky, 1998), for example, verbal reporting
approaches could be reframed in order to gain access to the moment-to-moment processes
readers engage in while they conduct authentic, everyday problem-solving tasks (e.g., in-school
science projects using the Internet, digital news reading at home, reference searching at a com-
munity library). When researchers thus look into readers’ thinking or wandering, engagement or
indifference, and agreement to or refusal of what texts mean to be, they need to contextualize
what they observe in terms of the authentic reading tasks and goals.
Second, data analysis is better situated when researchers report when, where, and how specific
methods and procedures were used during the study (Afflerbach, 2000). For example, common
criticisms of verbal reporting methodologies concern their validity (e.g., how precisely do verbal
reports capture readers’ thinking processes?), reliability (e.g., how consistently does what readers
say match what they do?), generalizability (e.g., how completely do verbal reports demonstrate
consistencies across readers, texts read, and reading tasks?), and authenticity (e.g., how spontan-
eously do readers report their thinking and actions?). These are valid criticisms that point out
threats to research quality that can compromise and otherwise influence the inferences we make
from data. Researchers can address them through situated data analysis and reporting of the
results—for example, fully disclosing the contexts of verbal reporting (e.g., participants’ individual
differences, whether goals are given or self-initiated, the scope and boundary of textual choices,
task prompting and instruction, researcher-participant relationships, who else other than the focal
participants is involved in interactive media environments) and the details of the protocol analysis
(e.g., data reduction and segmentation, units of coding and their hierarchies, multilevel coding
and qualities of thinking, sequential relations of codes and the flow of thinking, non-codable
utterances and the possibility of unnoticed meanings).

Triangulation
Triangulation (Denzin, 1970; Flick, 2004) is a valuable feature of the current body of reading
research, as noted in the review of inquiry methods. It usually refers to data triangulation, through
which data of multiple types are integrated into a coherent body of evidence. Each dataset may
yield disparate kinds of information, and they may conflict with each other, depending on
whether they are experimental or natural, and qualitative or quantitative. For example, a study
could be designed to integrate meanings and insights at the intersection of theoretical task analysis
(anticipatory), verbal protocol analysis (exploratory), and measures of reading behaviors and out-
comes (confirmatory) (Magliano & Graesser, 1991). The task analysis would offer a framework
for predicting reading complexities in a media text environment, the validity of which would
later be demonstrated with the verbal report data. Detailed descriptions of the effectiveness of
acts of reading and thinking engagement would be produced through the analyses of reading
behaviors such as fixation, duration, and sequence of readers’ eye gazes, or on-screen navigational
moves in a media space (e.g., Sung et al.’s 2015 study on fifth-graders’ web-based reading pro-
cesses integrated analyses of eye movements, screen recordings, and retrospective verbal
protocols).

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Theoretical triangulation exploiting the intersection of different perspectives and approaches also
has potential. For example, different approaches to discourse analysis can be intermingled across
the phases of separate data interpretations, as demonstrated in a study of students’ peer inter-
actions about multiple digital sources (Cho et al., 2018). An analysis of discourse data from a
cognitive approach (Tenbrink, 2015) discusses how readers build mental representations at differ-
ent phases of understanding (e.g., within-text situation models, intertext models of source rela-
tions), their sensemaking processes (e.g., commenting, noticing, elaborating, critiquing,
questioning), and any cognitive dissonance they might experience at transitions (e.g., confusion,
tension, tentativeness). Another analysis of the same discourse from a social linguistic approach
(Bloome & Carter, 2014) offers a nuanced interpretation of how these readers push and pull their
ideas and perspectives while collaborating to reason about multiple and contentious digital sources
(e.g., through epistemic practices such as building claims, examining relevant evidence, and
making appropriate objections). Such dual-layered discourse analysis can demonstrate how the
same case may reflect distinctive reader interactions, and how this distinctiveness may enrich a
theory-building process (Yin, 2009).

Concluding Remarks
This chapter has provided a review of diverse methods for investigating the reading processes
involved in media text environments. It has also offered some notes suggesting approaches to
methodological prediction, contextualization, and triangulation that may be useful in future
inquiries. Throughout, the chapter has sought to remind us that theory and methodology are
symbiotic. We must continue to update our ideas of reading to augment the singular reader-text-
task paradigm, and, further, move forward to foreground the multidimensional, complex, and
even complicated nature of reading taking place across different media text environments. A para-
dox we face is that as we build more sophisticated understandings of such reading, we reveal ever
more intricate reader-text-task relationships, which the methods we design and choose for our
reading inquiry must be able to address. At the same time, thus refining our theories and frame-
works allows us to carry out more theory-sensitive, methodologically authentic research. Taking
the opportunities that thus arise, we will be better positioned to move the field forward by con-
tinuing to test, alternate, and refine our conceptions of reading when it is situated in constantly
changing media contexts.

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How Can Neuroscience Bridge
Gaps in Reading Research?
Kimberly G. Noble and Katrina R. Simon

As neuroscientists, we are often asked to explain what our methods offer, above and beyond
existing tools. Brain imaging is far costlier than teacher surveys, paper-and-pencil measures, or
computerized assessments. Is this cost justified? And, beyond the cost, what are we really learning
by employing neuroscience techniques? Is there scientific or other value to understanding the
neural underpinnings of typical reading development, reading impairment, and achievement gaps
more broadly?
In the context of these questions, there are many reasons to continue to pursue research using
neuroscience methods. Early work investigating the neural underpinnings of reading provided
critical insights into the structural and functional circuitry involved in reading development, and
how this circuitry goes awry in cases of reading impairment. However, today’s neuroscientific
insights go far beyond simply elaborating the “neural correlates” of reading development and
impairment. Here, we argue that neuroscience provides a means for researchers to get “under the
hood” to study reading development in a way that would be impossible through behavioral
measures alone. Three key aspects of the neuroscience of reading highlight the novel and genera-
tive understanding that this methodology can provide:

(1) Neuroscience may shed light on mechanistic differences that would be undetect-
able through behavioral investigations alone.
(2) Neuroscience may allow for early prediction of impairments in skills, such as
reading, that cannot be measured until children are older.
(3) Neuroscience may provide compelling evidence for policymakers, educators, and
other stakeholders, providing an impetus for effecting change.

Below, we discuss each of these in turn.

Neuroscience May Elucidate Mechanistic Differences that Behavioral

Techniques Cannot
In some cases, similar behavioral phenotypes may be the product of different underlying neural
structural or functional characteristics. For example, several lines of research have suggested that
neuroscience methods may be more sensitive to socioeconomic differences than behavioral

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methods. This is important, to the extent that these neural differences provide information that is
meaningful in interpreting behavioral skill.
For instance, in one study, we recruited a group of children who were at-risk for reading
impairment, and invited them to complete a reading task while we imaged their brains (Noble,
Wolmetz, Ochs, Farah, & McCandliss, 2006). We found that children who were struggling with
reading in the context of family socioeconomic disadvantage showed typical brain-behavior rela-
tionships. In contrast, children who were struggling despite the access to resources of more socio-
economically advantaged environments showed atypical brain-behavior relationships. This
suggested that the latter group’s difficulties were perhaps more likely to be rooted in atypical
neurobiological development, whereas the former group’s difficulties may have been rooted in
low levels of home-based reading exposure and/or high-quality school-based reading instruction.
In other work investigating the neural basis of selective attention, researchers instructed children
to pay attention to one aurally-presented story, while simultaneously ignoring another (Stevens,
Lauinger, & Neville, 2009). The authors found that, while all children performed equivalently
well on comprehension questions about the target story’s content, children’s neural responses
varied as a function of family socioeconomic background. Specifically, children from more socio-
economically disadvantaged backgrounds showed less evidence of neural suppression of the irrele-
vant story – suggesting that, in the context of disadvantage, it may be more challenging to focus
and ignore distractions. In both of these studies, neuroscience provided more information about
the ways children process information than would have been available through behavioral assess-
ments alone. Put another way, neuroscience provides insights into mechanisms, and, as discussed
below, these mechanisms may ultimately be quite powerful in predicting trajectories of achieve-
ment, particularly when they are triangulated with information gleaned from other sources or
methodologies.

Neuroscience May Allow for Early Prediction of Reading Impairments

The second line of evidence supporting the use of neuroscience derives from the fact that neuro-
science approaches to examining reading development may yield “biomarkers” – that is, bio-
logical indices that predict subsequent cognitive or behavioral development (Pavlakis, Noble,
Pavlakis, Ali, & Frank, 2014). Such biomarkers could be put into place for early screening of
reading impairments or other potential cognitive difficulties, long before it would be possible to
assess children behaviorally on these skills.
For instance, Molfese (2000) showed nearly two decades ago that brain activity recorded at
birth predicted, with over 80% accuracy, which infants would be characterized as dyslexic, poor
readers, or typically-developing readers eight years later. More recently, researchers have used
neuroscience methods (in this case, structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and diffusion
tensor imaging (DTI)) to examine variations in brain development between kindergarten and
grade 3 (Myers et al., 2014). Increases in volume of two white matter clusters uniquely predicted
reading outcomes over and above family history, socioeconomic background, and baseline cogni-
tive and pre-literacy measures. In another prospective, longitudinal study – in this case focusing
specifically on children identified with dyslexia – children’s brain activation pattern during
phonological processing predicted, with over 90% accuracy, which children would show
improved reading skills 2.5 years later (Hoeft et al., 2011). In contrast, behavioral measures,
including widely used and standardized assessments of reading and language, were at chance at
predicting children’s improvement. Other work has also shown that brain function in pre-
instruction children with a familial risk of reading impairment (i.e., at least one first-degree rela-
tive self-identified as dyslexic) predicted reading ability five years later, whereas early behavioral
measures did not (Maurer, Bucher, Brem, Benz, & Brandeis, 2009). Finally, recent work has

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shown that, among a large sample of children referred to a clinic for learning difficulties, whole-
brain structural imaging was able to classify children into one of four distinct cognitive profiles,
whereas children’s cognitive profiles were not predicted by diagnosis or referral reason (Astle,
Bathelt, CALM Team, & Holmes, 2019).
Of course, historically, reading impairment has been diagnosed after a child undergoes reading
instruction. Yet, taken together, the above studies suggest that neural structure and function may
serve as sensitive early biomarkers that have the power to predict subsequent reading trajectories,
before formal instruction begins. Indeed, brain-based classification may be more useful than
standardized reading and language measures or clinical diagnostic criteria, both in predicting out-
comes and, perhaps, in guiding interventional strategies. For example, reading remediation has
been shown to ameliorate dysfunctional neural mechanisms in children with dyslexia, and these
neural changes have been correlated with changes in behavior (Keller & Just, 2009; Romeo
et al., 2018; Temple et al., 2003). In another study of a math tutoring intervention, baseline neu-
roimaging measures predicted improvement in response to the tutoring program, whereas base-
line math scores, IQ, and working memory did not (Supekar et al., 2013).
As with any diagnostic measure used to predict outcomes or inform intervention, it is import-
ant to consider how the results of brain-based classification align with those gathered using other
methods or criteria. In sum, if neuroscience tools can be useful for predicting future reading
impairment, it may be possible to screen and implement targeted early intervention that could
alleviate the risk of reading impairment. Furthermore, paired with more traditional or standard-
ized measures of children’s reading abilities and skills, neuroscience techniques may allow for
early tracking of the efficacy of interventional approaches.

Neuroscience May Provide Compelling Evidence for Stakeholders

Finally, empirical evidence suggests that laypeople find neuroscience data highly compelling.
While environmental influences on cognitive development or school achievement, such as socio-
economic status, may seem obvious, the fact that such influences are reflected in our brains – our
physical selves – is, for many, more captivating. Why is that? On the one hand, any rational
person would expect that school achievement would reflect function of the brain and not, say,
function of the kidney. On the other hand, knowing how experience helps to shape the very
structure and function of our brains provides a window into our personal and societal develop-
ment that is rarely accessible through other kinds of metrics. Such glimpses into ourselves are
appealing to the public, and indeed, neuroscience findings relevant for education and social
policy have been covered extensively by the popular media (Hayasaki, 2016; The Economist,
2018).
One frequently cited study investigated participants’ responses when they were given two
otherwise identical explanations of psychological phenomena – one of which included neurosci-
ence information, while the other did not (Weisberg, Keil, Goodstein, Rawson, & Gray, 2008).
Non-experts judged that explanations with neuroscience information – even when that informa-
tion was logically irrelevant – were more satisfying than explanations without such information.
Some scholars have derided this phenomenon as “the seductive allure of neuroscience.” Indeed,
scientific, journalistic, and policy communities have a responsibility to mitigate or prevent misun-
derstandings or misuse of neuroscience data by ensuring the integrity and accuracy of the infor-
mation and related messaging they share. That is, in light of the numerous competing demands
for the attention of policymakers, practitioners, and educators, we argue that, when neuroscience
helps to underscore scientific findings that are relevant for education practices, public policy, or
other endeavors that are beneficial to society, then their use is justified. For example, a great deal
of research centers on best practices for screening and intervention among children with reading

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impairment. If research employing the tools of neuroscience naturally garners increased attention
to these issues, then advocates would be well served to capitalize on this attention to help spark
conversations about educational intervention and policy. Further, neuroscience studies may be
more likely to capture the attention and interest of teachers, parents, and school administrators,
making evidence-based interventions more likely to be accessible to a greater number of
students.

Conclusions
In conclusion, we posit that neuroscience research has the power to bridge important gaps
between research and practice in the field of reading development. Specifically, neuroscience
sheds light on mechanistic differences that are frequently undetectable through behavioral investi-
gations alone, and these neuroscientific insights are often predictive of subsequent growth (or fail-
ure) in reading skill. Finally, by capturing the attention of policymakers, educators, parents, and
teachers, neuroscience has the power to cast a spotlight on critical issues inherent in reading edu-
cation and remediation.

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Hayasaki, E. (2016, August). How poverty affects the brain. Newsweek. Retrieved from www.newsweek.com/
2016/09/02/how-poverty-affects-brains-493239.html
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 27
Qualitative Case Study
Methodology Driven by
Sociocultural Perspectives
Carmen M. Martínez-Roldán

My inquiry into bilingual children’s use of language(s) to make meaning of texts involves the combin-
ation of already familiar methods, in a research design driven by sociocultural theoretical tenets. In this
chapter, I describe the methods I have found most useful in examining bilingual learning and literacy
among culturally diverse students, with a focus on reading as a mediated cultural activity. While my
approach could be described as a traditional qualitative case study design that employs ethnographic
methods, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), and narrative analysis, it also draws on a sociocultural
approach influenced by Vygotsky’s concept of mediation and by Cultural-Historical Activity Theory
(CHAT). My incorporation of this theoretical framework is characterized by movement back and forth,
from analysis that foregrounds the role of cultural tools in individual learning, to analysis of learning as an
activity system. In some respects, this movement resembles Rogoff’s (2003) description of the three
levels of analysis involved in sociocultural research that focuses on learning, as changes of participation in
sociocultural practices—the individual, the interpersonal, and the cultural-institutional level—in which
the researcher may foreground any of these while keeping the other two levels in the background. More
recently, my efforts to widen the lenses of analysis has expanded my research scope to include more than
one activity system, following Engeström and Sannino’s (2011) theorization of expansive learning, while
still anchoring the findings in cases of bilingual learning and literacy of immigrant and bilingual Latino
students.
I preface this description by bringing to the forefront a key axiological assumption that has informed
my work and that is embedded in a qualitative research paradigm that embraces critical perspectives,
namely, that research has the potential to generate social change and combat inequalitites. Qualitative
and interpretive methods emerged out of researchers’ concerns for the lives and perspectives of people in
society whose voices were absent in the research being conducted (Erickson, 1986). From a critical
sociocultural stance (Lewis, Enciso, & Moje, 2007), I embrace this concern in my research through
a commitment to uncover and transform contexts for learning that stifle bilingual students’ potential, and
document those literacy engagements that support students’ learning and identities. The research
methods described here have enabled me to address three main concerns: first, the use of prescriptive
curricula that prioritize bilingual students’ oral English language proficiency while relegating reading
comprehension and more engaging literacy learning to the upper grades; second, the tendency to over-
look or dismiss the role of students’ home-based language(s) in their academic learning; and third, the
low expectations and deficit perspectives still seen in schools, in scholarly discussions, and in society’s
discourses regarding immigrants, Latino students, and children from working class communities.

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Overview of the Methodology, Key Assumptions, and Goals

This methodology is theoretically grounded; therefore, this discussion is organized around some
principles from sociocultural theories that have driven my methods and analysis over the past 20
years. In particular, I highlight some of the elements addressed when we shift the unit of analysis
from the individual to the activity system in which the individual engages in learning. Using
CHAT constructs, the description of methods refers to the subject (the actors as agents), the tools,
the community, the roles, and the rules that have organized the reading activities studied: elements
that come together around a partially shared motive or object that drives participants’ actions
(Engeström, 1987, 2001; Leontyev, 1979/1981). Changes in any of these elements play a role in
students’ learning. The theoretical principles outlined, below, also point to changes in my
research foci: as my theoretical frameworks have expanded, so too, have my research questions
and, in turn, the scope of my reseach or unit of analysis.

From the Individual Interacting with Tools to the Activity System

A key principle guiding my methodology is the role of mediation in learning, which addresses
the interplay between individual agency and society (Moll, 2014; Vygotsky, 1978, 1987;
Wertsch, 1985). My methods have focused on analyzing and documenting children’s learning as
mediated by material and psychological tools: language (Spanish/English), texts, interactions (with
peers and adults), and ideologies (ideological beliefs about languages and about gender issues)
(e.g., Martínez-Roldán, 2003, 2005a, 2005b). In my study findings, I view children’s agentic
roles in appropriating or rejecting the cultural tools available to them, as equally salient.
In attempting to understand young bilingual children’s ways of approaching and interpreting
texts, I have designed longitudinal classroom-based studies in which the learners interact with
a variety of texts, either as part of regular instruction or in spaces created by the researcher, such
as after-school programs. I have focused on children’s literature (fiction and expository texts) and
the role of bilingual students’ home language as they interpret and discuss texts—specifically, the
ways in which emergent bilingual students’ linguistic repertoire serves as a resource for meaning-
making and for supporting their academic identities (Martínez-Roldán, 2003). This interest in
addressing readers’ interpretations of texts from a transactional perspective (Goodman, 1994;
Rosenblatt, 1995), that highlights meaning-making led me to the following question at the
outset of my research journey: What is the nature of the talk in which second grade bilingual
Spanish/English students engage as they discuss children’s literature in small groups? In a study
examining this “nature of the talk,” I focused on the following subquestions: What types of
responses do students have to literature in small group discussions? What content and issues(s) are
discussed by the children? In keeping with an emic perspective, the small groups in this study
were called pláticas literarias, a name generated by the teacher and the children together, to refer
to literature circles or small group discussions. In a second study, I organized the reading events
differently, in a one-on-one reading setting, to conduct miscue analysis and research (Goodman,
Watson, & Burke, 2005). I sought to answer the following question: How is second-language
learners’ comprehension of expository texts in their second language (English) enhanced or
impeded by discussing their meanings of texts in their first language (Spanish)? While the two
settings had different purposes, reading in small groups offered many more opportunities for hori-
zontal learning, with peer mediation playing a critical role in supporting students’ meaning-
making. The one-on-one work, however, provided important insights into, and opportunities
for, targeted instruction. Over time, I have moved back and forth between the two settings, lean-
ing more toward research in small-group reading events.

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In this iteration of qualitative case methodology (Dyson & Genishi, 2005), driven by sociocul-
tural historical tenets, I have always used purposive samples. I have chosen classrooms where
I could learn about, or explore, bilingual children’s potential for meaning-making of texts–class-
rooms, where they could use their linguistic repertoires as part of the activity of learning. The
object or motive of my research activity has been bilingual children’s learning or, at times, bilin-
gual teachers’ and teacher candidates’ learning. I have always selected children from working class
communities or families, given my interest in challenging low expectations for immigrants,
Latinos, and working class children. The young, participants in my studies, have always been
considered as bringing a variety of intellectual and cultural resources to the reading process, in
particular linguistic resources. At times, the students have become the subjects of the activity
system, not in the experimental sense of the word, but in the CHAT sense of becoming agentive
actors who lead the activity. The research design has not only documented these shifts in stu-
dents’ position within the studies but also supported them.
Given my concern regarding reading curricula that narrows the kinds of texts and kinds of
discussions around texts that young bilingual children are often expected to engage with in
schools, the books I select move away from the leveled (basic skills–oriented) texts that tend to
be at the center of primary classrooms’ reading instruction. My selection of books considers
whole texts as opposed to fragments of texts, or texts in which the language has been simplified.
I select children’s literature, available in English and Spanish, with the potential to support stu-
dents as critical readers on a variety of topics; sometimes I have also used digital texts. Whenever
possible, the students’ interests are explored before the selection of texts. In one study this process
led to a selection of books that addressed issues related to family, language, race, and gender, in
which the children had shown interest (Martínez-Roldán, 2005b). In another study, the selected
books focused on animals the children wanted to learn about to explore the concept of habitats.
With regard to the dimension of roles in the classroom activity system, I strive whenever possible
to include the participants in the selection of text topics, bridging pedagogical practice and
research. The goal is to expand opportunities for the children to talk about books as well as
increase opportunities for data collection and triangulation.
These aims led me, in one classroom, to organize with the teacher, 75 small-group literature
discussions of 20–40 minutes each, all audio and video recorded; years later, in another classroom,
I organized 70 small groups that read and talked about a variety of texts focusing on habitats.
The groups were organized by students’ interests rather than by reading proficiency. With regard
to rules for language use and participation, the groups in the first study were initially organized
according to language dominance; eventually, however, the groups were linguistically heteroge-
neous, and students could use whatever language they felt more comfortable with. In other stud-
ies, the use of the minoritized language was purposefully privileged, but learners were able to
engage in translanguaging using the linguistic resources that were at their disposal to make mean-
ing of texts and participate in literacy and science learning events (Martínez-Roldán, 2015).
As I believe that we are not independent from our inquiries, I embrace being involved as
a participant in many of my studies, which has supported bridging teaching and research. The
roles of researcher and teacher are often blurred. Whenever possible, the blurring of roles also
applies to the classroom teacher, who may choose the level of participation in the study that feels
most comfortable to them. The roles of teacher and learner are also often blurred for the
researcher, as children have much to teach researchers. These role distributions do not preclude
the researcher from organizing sufficient opportunities for observation. Epistemologically, I feel
the urgency to document the knowledge and ways of knowing of Latino children, and this
entails opportunities for observing, listening to, and learning from them.
Focusing on the individual learner has enabled me to document the ways in which Spanish,
English, and code switching, have become semiotic resources that enable emergent bilinguals to

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participate in reading events to the same degree as their English-speaking peers; however, shifting
the focus to context and the classroom community has permitted me to see the role of peer inter-
action in meaning-making among small groups, in which emergent bilinguals use one language
or the other in their interpretations. In one study, the aspects of context I considered included
the linguistic composition of the groups, and the types of texts used in the discussions (Martínez-
Roldán, 2005a). Therefore, one of the research questions I pursued was: In what ways did the
linguistic composition of the small groups (whether Spanish dominant or English dominant)
shape the children’s responses? The linguistic composition of the groups indeed played an
important role in the types of responses generated by some bilingual children. Bilingual students
self-regulated their talk and discourse according to the group’s linguistic composition. Such suc-
cessful self-regulation suggests a notion of achievement that departs from that of policymakers
who choose to interpret achievement only in terms of standardized test scores. Participation in
these reading events supported children’s development of situated identities in two arenas: aca-
demic identities as skillful students who participated effectively in literature discussions and cul-
tural identities rooted in their countries of origin and the Spanish language.
In the process of opening up the unit of analysis, I found it extremely useful to incorporate
critical discourse analysis (Gee, 1990, 2011) and narrative analyses (Riessman, 2008) into my
research design, to complement the traditional thematic analysis. These analytical tools enabled
me to conduct a close language analysis while addressing the role of larger contexts in children’s
interpretations of texts. In my studies, CDA and narrative analyses contributed new knowledge
of the ways in which children negotiate with other children and also with adults when they
encounter different and sometimes contradictory discourses on language, gender, and identities
(Martínez-Roldán & Malavé, 2004, 2011).

Expansive Learning: Studying Mobilization of Knowledge across Activity

Systems
My most recent project involves methods that document generation of knowledge across activity
systems involved in student learning (e.g., teacher education classrooms, classroom settings, and
students’ homes). This type of investigation requires collaboration among researchers given the
many layers and systems involved in the analysis. In spite of its methodological complexity, this
methodology provides opportunities for the development of case studies to examing learning in
general and literacy in particular. For instance, we are currently developing case studies of teacher
candidates interacting with bilingual learners in which three activity systems are relevant to the
child’s learning (the teacher-education program, the classroom, and the funds of knowledge of
the student’s family). This type of research project can contribute to the ongoing search for
apprenticeship models that more effectively prepare our bilingual teaching candidates to analyze
and address, creatively, the needs of an increasingly diverse student population with differing lan-
guage and literacy strengths and needs.

What Counts as Innovation?

While my research approach may not be particularly novel, it has been generative. The flexible
ways in which this methodology enables the researcher to move from focusing on cultural tools
or individuals to focusing on learning within activity systems and social discourses, have allowed
me to learn about the complexities of bilingual children’s reading learning, while foregrounding
the roles of language, texts, and ideologies. Qualitative inquiry into the role of language and texts
as cultural tools in Latino children’s learning has been a strong thread in my scholarly work, with

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children’s perspectives and linguistic resources brought to the forefront, bringing new insights
into bilingual students’ reading. In this methodology, there are no linear steps to be followed that
I can list. While the research questions always drive the methods, in a design driven by sociocul-
tural theories, the theory signals the scope of settings, participants, and the unit of analysis.

Bridging Gaps
This methodology has helped me explore possibilities for bridging gaps among reading research
methodologies (qualitative research designs, narrative analysis, and critical discourse analysis); epis-
temologies (Vygotskian theories and Latina epistemologies that view learners as producers of
knowledge); instructional practices, texts, and contexts (when the research is part of pedagogical
practices in educational settings); and readers’ identities and experiences. The methodology espe-
cially addresses translational and implementation gaps.
The scant preparation for teaching students of nondominant backgrounds that many teachers
in the United States receive, makes this type of research relevant. This research design and meth-
odology, which involves not only the researcher but also teachers and teacher candidates partici-
pating in studies and working with children, has yielded examples of the sophisticated
interpretations of texts that bilingual children can produce when they are provided with texts
addressing their interests and with instructional organization offering opportunities for meaning-
making and horizontal learning. In an effort to bridge research and pedagogies, I have taken my
research results, and the body of scholarship sharing similar approaches, into my teacher education
courses, inviting teacher candidates and teachers to look for the particular reading strengths, and
not just the needs, of the emergent bilingual students they teach.
In sum, the discussion presented here shows my still-evolving understanding of theories and
methods as useful for understanding Latino children’s interpretation of texts, and bilinguals’ use
of their linguistic repertoires to make meaning of texts. The term evolving, as I use it here,
echoes the ever-changing theoretical landscape in literacy research today. A major force leading
this change, in my own scholarship, comes from the very sociocultural contexts in which the
studies take place, contexts that have increasingly required me to highlight even more critical and
anti-colonial approaches within sociocultural driven studies.

References
Dyson, A., & Genishi, C. (2005). On the case: Approaches to language and literacy research. New York, NY:
Teachers College Press & NCRLL.
Engeström, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki,
Finland: Orienta-Konsultit. Retrieved from http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/Engestrom/expanding/toc.
htm
Engeström, Y. (2001). Expansive learning at work: Toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization. Journal
of Education and Work, 14(1), 133–156.
Engeström, Y., & Sannino, A. (2011). Discursive manifestations of contradictions in organizational change
efforts. Journal of Organizational Change, 24(3), 368–387.
Erickson, F. (1986). Qualitative methods in research on teaching. In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research
on teaching (pp. 119–161). London: MacMillan.
Gee, J. P. (1990). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology and discourses. New York, NY: Routledge.
Gee, J. P. (2011). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.
Goodman, K. S. (1994). Reading, writing, and written texts: A transactional sociopsycholinguistic view. In
R. Rudell, M. R. Rudell, & H. Singer (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of reading (pp. 1093–1130).
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Leontyev, A. N. (1979/1981). The problem of activity in psychology. In J. V. Wertsch (Ed.), The concept of
activity in Soviet psychology (pp. 37–71). Armonk, NY: Sharpe.
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gual literature discussions. Research in the Teaching of English, 37(4), 491–526.
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Martínez-Roldán, C. M. (2005b). Examining bilingual children’s gender ideologies through critical discourse
analysis. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies: an International Journal, 2(3), 157–178.
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 Part VII
Minding the Gaps
Translating Reading Research as the
Game is Changing
 28
Concluding Thoughts from the
Editors

Much has changed since the initial meetings in which we conceptualized the framework and
chapter foci of the Handbook of Reading Research, Volume V, and much has remained the same.
On the change front, even since our first meetings, research is increasingly informed by the
diverse disciplines affiliated with and focused on reading—their paradigms and theories, and their
methodological approaches. In turn, the knowledge emanating from these disciplines changes our
understanding of what reading “is.” Moreover, reading is increasingly acknowledged as more
than an array of cognitive strategies and skills used to comprehend text, with attention given to
the role of reader purpose, readers’ affective and cognitive characteristics, sociocultural and polit-
ical contexts, traditional and digital media, and texts themselves in the reading process. The
dynamics associated with this evolution can be observed in competing models of reading, the
waxing and waning of large-scale standards-based initiatives, the related changes in reading
instruction as teachers pivot in relation to standards, and claims about what teachers need to learn
and do to teach reading well.
As the conditions for reading research and education continue to shift, traditions of reading
research that contribute to our understanding of how reading is situated and how readers devel-
opment continues to progress. This research refines our understanding of many of the aspects of
reading development and achievement previously discussed. What also hasn’t changed are the fil-
ters and outlets through which much reading research is processed for consumption by teachers
and school communities, parents and families, policymakers, as well as engaged and concerned
citizens. Finally, there remains the need for research that informs our understanding of reading
and acts of literacy, that situates reading in relation to diverse students and their characteristics,
and that describes effective means for teaching reading for all students. The dynamics of stasis and
change in reading research take place in the context of stagnant test scores; questioning of
teachers’ professionalism, a diminished and underprepared teaching force; the politicization of
reading research, policy and practice; and declining or inequitably distributed funding for research
and schools. It is in this environment of stasis and change, coupled with the tremendous contri-
butions featured in this handbook for the 21st century, that we offer this Conclusions chapter.

Addressing the Gaps

To close, we remind the reader that a central purpose of Handbook of Reading Research, Volume V,
is to address critical gaps that reflect the lack of consistent and positive student reading perform-
ance, in spite of burgeoning reading-focused research. These gaps include the translational research
gap, or the space between the research conducted in laboratories or other controlled settings and

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approaches, and how other researchers, professional developers, and teachers and leaders make
sense of—or translate—the findings for real-world conditions. Underlying our identification of
this gap are the questions, “To what end is reading research conducted?” and “How applicable is
the knowledge gained from research conducted in controlled settings for actual classrooms and
other learning spaces?”
A further gap is the implementation gap, or what research describes as effective practice and
what actually transpires in classrooms as findings are implemented. In other words, how does one
actually do the things that we know from research that could make a difference in an individual’s
reading development and ultimately, their life, especially when trying to make individual change
for 35 people at a time? What changes occur to the principles and practices of a research-based
program in the process of implementation? Can strong fidelity to the original goals and principles
of reading research findings be maintained over time as a program is implemented?
A third gap is the relevance gap, which describes disparities among reading research conducted
under the agenda of a funding agency, the researchers’ own interests or the research questions
that follow from the last study conducted, or research that speaks directly to address classroom
teachers’ and administrators’ needs. Related, how relevant are studies conducted in near-optimal
conditions (e.g., research including significant teacher professional development, well-resourced
curriculum development, or both) to the often less-than-optimal conditions in today’s schools
and classrooms? The answers to these questions might have strong implications for the transla-
tional and implementation gaps.
A final gap is the bridging gap, which focuses the degree of communication between and
among complementary research fields, each of which could contribute to closing other gaps.
How might diverse research traditions, with their attendant paradigms, methodologies, epistem-
ologies, and research foci coalesce to best advance knowledge and ensure greater impact?

Advancing Our Understanding of Reading: The Lens of Key Gaps

With a frame of the gaps previously described, the contents of the Handbook of Reading Research
V reflect an expansion of how we come to know reading. This research informs a changing per-
spective on what reading “is,” marking an evolution from information processing to cognition to
situated cognition, and from cognition to diverse and related aspects of historical and sociocul-
tural dimensions of human development. Contributing to this evolution has been the building in
of research from affiliated fields that expands our understanding of how reading develops and
how to best teach reading. This dynamic is evident in the chapters of this handbook. In each
iteration and across the prior volumes of the Handbook of Reading Research, we find cycles of
investigation. A cycle may begin with the determination that research of a particular aspect of
reading has reached critical mass—that mass indicated by a research and theory literature of suffi-
cient breadth and depth. The critical mass of research may be homegrown, such as that focused
on reading comprehension strategies or phonemic awareness. Alternatively, the research may be
imported initially from affiliated fields, such as motivation and learning, and sociocultural influ-
ences on cognition, and then serve as foundation for ensuing inquiry focused on reading.
The knowledge produced by these traditional and innovative approaches to reading research is
apparent in the chapters of this Handbook of Reading Research. The first set of chapters provide
varied perspectives on the nature of diverse student populations and the implications for reading
instruction and policy. The next set of chapters focuses on changes in text, from traditional to
digital to multimedia, as well as everyday communications and the challenges and affordances that
diverse texts and communications represent. Following, chapters focus on research that describes
the continually evolving understanding of readers’ strategies, skills, linguistic repertoires, know-
ledge, and stances—and then readers are described in relation to cognitive, affective, and

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 Concluding Thoughts from the Editors

cognitive development. The next set of chapters describes teacher, reader, text, and task inter-
actions that mark successful instruction and resultant student reading, especially among multilin-
gual and racially and ethnically diverse readers. Finally, reading research methodologies, bearing
strong potential for breakthrough research and evolving in parallel with the foci of research, are
described.
As demonstrated by a large body of knowledge, including this collection of chapters, we
know much about the process of reading. We know much about the purposes and values of
reading, and we know much about effective reading instruction, even in the face of game chan-
ging conditions of the contexts of teaching and learning. And yet the gaps we have outlined
remain. Are the gaps only a product of a failure to communicate across different communities of
practice (i.e., research to practice, discipline to discipline, etc.)? Or do other influences mediate
the closing of these gaps by presenting obstacles to a fair and full representation of reading
research? One such influence worth pointing out is the media, which has a role in shaping how
certain issues related to reading are framed and disseminated, or in how specific designs and
results gain favor (and assume legitimacy) as they are certified by one authority or another. Just as
acts of reading are situated in relation to reader ability, purposes, texts, tasks, and contexts, read-
ing research is situated in relation to the media, testing, economics, politics, and their complex
interrelationships.
Consider a recent Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) presentation, “What parents of dyslexic
children are teaching schools about literacy,” which appeared on the nationally syndicated PBS
News Hour (Public Broadcasting Service, 2019). In this presentation, parents and relatives of
children in Arkansas describe the struggles encountered as their children try to read. The PBS
report defines dyslexia as “a learning disability that makes it difficult to spell and read. It affects 1
in 5 individuals,” with the implication that 20% of American school children experience reading
disabilities. The piece makes the case that the problem stems from the lack of teaching guided by
the science of reading. In this case, the PBS presenters defined the “science of reading” as intensive
and systematic phonics instruction in the early years.
A lack of intensive and systematics phonics teaching may well have been a contributing factor
to the outcomes of the children featured in the piece; there is a robust line of research that links
under-developed phonological awareness to word reading difficulties. That, however, is just one
piece of the puzzle in what is a complex scenario with respect to sources of reading problems—
rarely one-dimensional and uniform in profile—and the appropriate solutions, which are also
anchored in a science of reading, as evidenced by the chapters in this handbook. It is also just
one piece of the puzzle of reading outcomes in the state of Arkansas. The state ranks 40th in the
United States in regard to quality of the state’s education system (Ziegler, 2019); 36th in per
pupil spending (Governing, 2018); 46th for average starting teacher salary (National Education
Association, 2019); and 47th in poverty rate (World Population Review, 2019). Such numbers
point to concerns regarding teachers’ working conditions, professional learning opportunities to
develop teacher knowledge of reading and its instruction, student poverty and what that means
for classroom instruction and the design of the educational system, and education funding, over-
all. Acknowledgment of these factors harks back to our Introduction chapter, in which we
argued for examination of broad educational and societal contexts and their influence both read-
ing research and practice.
Indeed, the students featured in the piece have many peers, potentially many more peers, with
similar profiles—students who themselves are struggling in reading, though may not have been
identified as dyslexic. All of those students need and depend on a science of reading instruction—a
science that simultaneously focuses on developing a multitude of strategies, skills, and competencies
(e.g., vocabulary and language development, phonological and word reading skills, knowledge of
text and text-based strategies, etc.), using relevant, accurate, and engaging stories and texts;

503
Concluding Thoughts from the Editors

characterized by strong cognitive press, knowledge-building opportunities, and attention to the

ways different cultural practices and social contexts shape meaning-making from text. The big pic-
ture in which the PBS segment sits—arguably the umbrella issue—reflects a dire need to increase
opportunities to learn in classrooms and the necessity of a multi-pronged approach to improve
teaching and learning. The research reviews, research reports, and concluding implications pro-
duced by authors of this Handbook of Reading Research contribute to a well-developed science of
reading research and help shape future directions.

Re-Centering Research
We know that the reading research conducted over the last 75 years has changed the way
teachers teach, leaders lead, and how reading researchers do research. Consider, for example, the
potential impact of this remarkable collection of chapters. From research on the demographics of
classrooms around the world, on how reading develops both cognitively and culturally, on the
texts through which information flows at top speed, to the current state of the art in reading
instruction across the developmental spectrum, we know a great deal. As we consider this work,
we can challenge ourselves to consider the mismatch among the students we teach, the teachers
who teach them, the teacher educators who teach the teachers, and the researchers who study
both teaching and learning to read. How might gaps be closed if we were to take seriously the
need to recruit a diverse pool of teachers and to teach them how not only to recognize cultural
differences, but also to celebrate and sustain them (cf. Paris, 2012)? How might reading research
translate to reading practice if it actually helped teachers do this critical work?
How might reading research matter if it had a more robust and balanced presence in schools,
and if the knowledge yielded by research informed classroom practice? What if this corpus of
knowledge about how reading skill develops in individuals and how reading is also a product of
social and cultural interactions (taken together, what we would call the “science of reading” as
described above) were translated into practice? What would it look like if researchers developed
interventions designed with attention to curriculum, instruction, and the contexts in which they
operate? How might the implementation gap shrink if intervention took into account the range
of experiences of children, the preparation (or lack thereof) of teachers? What if reading research
more fully accounted for the conditions of classroom, school, and community life, where
engaging text might be difficult to find, where children are hungry or experiencing trauma, and
where teachers are pushed to prepare children for the next high-stakes assessment?
What could it look like if we built on what we know about how children learn language—
not by being taught to memorize word meanings, but by engaging in rich, historically and cul-
turally-informed, text-based conversations scaffolded by expert teachers? What if we helped
teachers see what it looks like to engage students in disciplinary learning by focusing on learning
the language practices of academic and disciplinary domains as youth engaged in inquiry? If we
paid much more attention to such research, then our teacher education practice would change
dramatically, as well as the resources we provide teachers. Finally, what might it mean to take
research on texts seriously, from how text forms and media shape meaning-making, cognitive
processes, and social practices, to what it looks like to support reading and synthesizing meaning
across multiple forms? For each set of questions posed here, we remind readers to consider the
gaps reading researchers need to help close if reading research is to truly address the game chan-
gers of the societal moment in which this handbook was produced.
As an editorial team, we are appreciative that the author teams agreed, a priori, to go beyond
the more traditional research synthesis and critique to employ the gaps frame, and suggest school
and classroom applications that hold promise for improving reading instruction and student
achievement. By taking this approach to reviewing the research, the authors have taken

504
 Concluding Thoughts from the Editors

important steps in addressing gaps and elaborating on the game changers of our time. We look
forward to the next decade of further progress toward developing a body of useable knowledge
that drives stronger learning and teaching and produces skills and competencies for an engaged
and equipped next generation of readers.

References
Governing. (June, 2018). Education spending per student by state. Retrieved from: www.governing.com/
gov-data/education-data/state-education-spending-per-pupil-data.html
National Education Association. (2019). 2017–2018 average teacher starting salaries by state. Retrieved from:
www.nea.org/home/2017-2018-average-starting-teacher-salary.html
Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educa-
tional Researcher, 41(3), 93–97.
Public Broadcasting Service. (April, 2019). What parents of dyslexic children are teaching schools about liter-
acy. Retrieved from: www.pbs.org/newshour/show/what-parents-of-dyslexic-children-are-teaching-
schools-about-literacy
World Population Review. (2019). Poverty rate by state 2019. Retrieved from: http://worldpopulationre
view.com/states/poverty-rate-by-state/
Ziegler, B. (2019). Education rankings: Measuring how well states are educating their students. Retrieved
from: www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education

505
 Contributor Biographies

Laura K. Allen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at University of New

Hampshire. The overarching aim of her research is to better understand the cognitive processes
involved in language comprehension, writing, knowledge acquisition, and conceptual change, and to
apply that understanding to educational practice by developing and testing educational technologies.

Ana Taboada Barber serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Counseling, Higher
Education, and Special Education, at the University of Maryland. Her work centers on studying
the influence of cognitive, linguistic, and motivation variables on the literacy and language devel-
opment of students of diverse language backgrounds.

Naomi S. Baron is Professor of Linguistics Emerita at American University in Washington, DC.

The latest of her eight books is Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World (Oxford
University Press).

Jane Bean-Folkes received her M.Ed. and Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University in
Curriculum and Teaching with a concentration in Reading and Language Arts. Her research
interests involve multilingual classrooms, written academic language, African American Language,
sociocultural and sociolinguistic perspectives of education for African American students and
other non-dominant language speakers as they learn the academic language in urban settings.

Jason L. G. Braasch is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University

of Memphis. His research examines the cognitive processes that underlie learning from multiple,
diverse sources we encounter every day.

Ivar Bråten is a Professor of Educational Psychology in the Department of Education at the Uni-
versity of Oslo, Norway. His research interests include academic motivation, self-regulated learn-
ing, epistemic cognition, and multiple document literacy.

Gerald Campano is Professor and Chair of the Literacy, Culture, and International Education
Division at the Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania. Gerald’s scholarship
focuses on community-based, practitioner and participatory research, critical literacy, and educa-
tional access and justice for immigrant families.

Hannah Carter, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at Boise State University. In addition to teaching
courses in the Literacy, Language, and Culture Department, she is also a Co-Director of the
Boise State Literacy Lab and works as a Clinical Supervisor for secondary teacher candidates. Her

506
 Contributor Biographies

research interests include literacy in the disciplines, pre-service teacher learning, and teacher edu-
cation supervision.

Gina N. Cervetti is an Associate Professor of Literacy, Language, and Culture at the University
of Michigan. Her research focused on the roles of world knowledge, language, and disciplinary
inquiry in reading comprehension.

Chris K. Chang-Bacon is an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia Curry School of

Education and Human Development. His research explores bilingualism, language policy, and
critical literacies in teacher education.

Byeong-Young Cho is a Professor of Literacy in the College of Education at Hanyang Univer-

sity, Seoul, South Korea. His research focuses on understanding and supporting students’ learning
and development of sophisticated literacies in digital societies.

James Joshua Coleman is an Assistant Professor at San José State University where his research
interests include critical literacy, English education, queer studies, and affect studies.

Carol McDonald Connor is a Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Irvine and
Director of the Center for Creating Opportunity through Education. Her research focuses on
children’s language and literacy development and understanding why some children have diffi-
culty learning to read and write proficiently.

Tisha Lewis Ellison is an Associate Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Educa-
tion at the University of Georgia. Her research explores the intersections of family literacy, mul-
timodality, and digital and STEM literacy practices among African American and Latinx families
and adolescents.

Emily Fox is currently semi-retired; she does editing work for European researchers. Her research
interest when she was at the University of Maryland was higher-level reading development, with
regard to its affective, cognitive, epistemic, dispositional, and behavioral aspects.

Emily Phillips Galloway is an Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody School of

Education. Phillips Galloway’s research explores the relationships between school-relevant lan-
guage development and language expression and comprehension during middle childhood with
a particular focus on linguistically- and culturally-minoritized learners.

Perla B. Gámez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Loyola University

Chicago. Her current research examines the role of language exposure and use in the language
and literacy development of dual language learners.

Cynthia Greenleaf is a Senior Research Scientist at WestEd, where she designs, studies, and dis-
seminates models and approaches for the teaching and learning of literacies in the disciplines.
Through collaborative design-based research with middle and high school as well as college
teachers, she has developed and refined the Reading Apprenticeship Instructional Framework and
professional learning model and tools to foster reading for inquiry purposes, build students’ socio-
emotional learning dispositions, and advance their literacy, agency, knowledge, and reasoning.

507
Contributor Biographies

Mary Guay, Ph.D., is a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Georgia. She specializes
in Early Literacy development and dyslexia.

Emily C. Hanno is a Doctoral Candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her
research focuses on understanding how early childhood educators can promote children’s devel-
opment in a number of domains.

Kathleen Hinchman is Professor in the Reading and Language Arts Department in the School of
Education at Syracuse University. Her scholarship focuses on teachers’ and youth’s perspectives
toward literacy instruction, including disciplinary literacy instruction.

Jin Kyoung Hwang is an Assistant Project Scientist in the School of Education at the University
of California, Irvine. Her research centers on understanding language and literacy development of
school-aged children, including dual language learners, and examining how research-based inter-
ventions can help improve their literacy outcomes.

Stephanie M. Jones is the Gerald S. Lesser Professor of Early Childhood Development at the
Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. Her research, anchored in prevention sci-
ence, focuses on the effects of poverty and exposure to violence on children and youth’s social,
emotional, and behavioral development. Over the last ten years her work has focused on evalu-
ation research addressing the impact of preschool and elementary focused social-emotional learn-
ing interventions on behavioral and academic outcomes and classroom practices; as well as new
curriculum development, implementation, and testing.

Laura M. Justice, Ph.D., is EHE Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology at the Ohio
State University. She is Executive Director of the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research
and Policy, and is also the Editor-in-Chief of Early Childhood Research Quarterly. Justice is an
active researcher of topics related to early childhood language and literacy development, pre-
school program quality, and developmental disabilities.

Kiren S. Khan is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Rhodes College with research interests
spanning narrative and language development, effective narrative instructional strategies, and
school readiness interventions for children and families facing socio-economic disparities.

Michelle Kwok is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University and the Editorial Assist-
ant for the Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. V. Her research draws on the intersections of liter-
acy instruction, multicultural education, and teacher preparation.

Jayne C. Lammers (Ph.D. – Arizona State University) is an Associate Professor of Education and
Director of secondary English teacher preparation at the University of Rochester’s Warner
School of Education and Human Development. She is a founding Associate Director of the
Center for Learning in the Digital Age, and her research examines young people’s interest-driven
digital literacies to inform classroom instruction.

Kevin M. Leander is Professor of Language, Literacy, and Culture Education at Vanderbilt Uni-
versity in Nashville, Tennessee. His research focuses on affective, embodied engagements with
literacy, dialogic and material approaches to digital media, and poststructural theory.

508
 Contributor Biographies

Carol D. Lee is Professor Emeritus at Northwestern University in the School of Education and
Social Policy, Learning Sciences. Her research addresses reading in the disciplines in K-12 settings
informed by attention to ecological systems, human development, and cognitive processes with
particular focus on issues of cultural diversity.

Margaret Mackey is Professor Emerita in the School of Library and Information Studies at the
University of Alberta. Her most recent book is One Child Reading: My Auto-Bibliography (Univer-
sity of Alberta Press, 2016).

Bridget Maher holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in Educational Studies specializ-
ing in Literacy, Language, and Culture, and she is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the
University of Michigan. Her research interests include studying teaching and learning in the dis-
ciplines from secondary into higher education, as well as studying the development and trajectory
of teachers from novices through experienced practitioners, particularly as they implement liter-
acy instruction within and across the disciplines.

Jeannette Mancilla-Martinez is an Associate Professor of Literacy, as well as Associate Dean of

Graduate Education for Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College. Her program of research is
focused on advancing students’ language and reading comprehension outcomes.

Carmen M. Martínez-Roldán is an Associate Professor and Director of the Bilingual Bicultural

Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research agenda addresses the
literacy practices of Spanish/English speaking bilingual students, their use of Spanish as an intel-
lectual resource for learning and identity development, and bilingual teacher education using
qualitative methods, including case studies and narrative methodologies.

Janna B. McClain is a Doctoral Candidate in Teaching, Learning, and Diversity at Peabody College
of Education and Human Development, Vanderbilt University. Her research explores the systems of
belief and knowledge that teachers draw upon as they strive to enact equitable language instruction.

Dana C. McCoy is an Assistant Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE).
Her work focuses on understanding the ways that poverty-related risk factors in children’s home,
school, and neighborhood environments affect the development of their cognitive and socioemo-
tional skills in early childhood.

Danielle S. McNamara, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology in the Psychology Department at

Arizona State University. She is an international expert in the fields of cognitive and learning
sciences, reading comprehension, writing, text and learning analytics, natural language processing,
computational linguistics, and intelligent tutoring systems. She develops educational technologies
and conducts research to better understand cognitive processes involved in comprehension,
knowledge and skill acquisition, and writing.

T. Philip Nichols is an Assistant Professor in the department of Curriculum and Instruction at

Baylor University. His research examines how science and technology condition the ways we
practice, teach, and talk about literacy – and the implications for ethical and equitable education.

Kimberly G. Noble, M.D., Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Neuroscience and Education at

Teachers College, Columbia University. As a neuroscientist and board-certified pediatrician, she
studies how socioeconomic inequality relates to children’s cognitive and brain development.

509
Contributor Biographies

Dr. Noble was elected a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and was awarded
a 2017 Association for Psychological Science Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative
Early Career Contributions.

Silvia Noguerón-Liu is an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her

research interests include family literacy and digital literacies in bilingual/immigrant communities.

Grace D. Player is an Assistant Professor in the Curriculum and Instruction Department at the Uni-
versity of Connecticut, Neag School of Education. Her work explores the ways that girls and women
of color leverage literacies to enact resistance and solidarity in and beyond educational settings.

C. Patrick Proctor is Professor of Literacy and Bilingualism at the Boston College Lynch School of
Education and Human Development. He works with bilingual children and youth, and their teachers,
in varied linguistic contexts to promote equitable connections between research and practice.

Wenjuan Qin is an Assistant Professor at Fudan University, the College of Foreign Languages
and Literature. She holds an Ed.D. and Ed.M. from Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her
research focuses on investigating language skills relevant for successful reading and writing for
academic purposes; and also, on understanding how English as foreign language (EFL) learners
acquire a variety of linguistic and pragmatic resources to navigate across communicative contexts.

Brian Rowan is the Burke A. Hinsdale Collegiate Professor in Education at the University of
Michigan and a Research Professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.
A sociologist by training (Ph.D. Stanford University), he studies the organization of schooling
and its effects on teaching and learning.

David B. Sabey, a Doctoral Candidate at Vanderbilt University, brings an interest in ethics to his
study of literacy, attending to the relational qualities and possibilities inherent in any literacy
practice.

Ladislao Salmerón is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Developmental and

Educational Psychology at the University of Valencia, Spain. His research focuses on the cogni-
tive mechanisms of digital reading.

Katrina R. Simon is a Doctoral student in Developmental Psychology at Teacher’s College, Col-

umbia University. Broadly, her interests lie in how the environment influences the relationship
between brain and cognitive development.

Allison Skerrett is a Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University
of Texas, Austin. Her research interests include youth literacy practices across school and other
social contexts, transnationalism and education, and secondary English teachers’ preparation for
and development in urban schools.

Peter Smagorinsky is Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Georgia, and Distin-
guished Visiting Scholar at the University of Guadalajara. He serves as the faculty advisor to the
Journal of Language and Literacy Education, which is edited by graduate students in his depart-
ment at UGA.

510
 Contributor Biographies

Ebony Elizabeth Thomas is Associate Professor in the Literacy, Culture, and International Edu-
cational Division at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. A former
Detroit Public Schools teacher and National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Post-
doctoral Fellow, she is an expert on diversity in children’s literature, youth media, and fan
studies.

Dianna Townsend is an Associate Professor of Literacy Studies at the University of Nevada,

Reno. She conducts research in the areas of vocabulary, academic language, and adolescent
literacy.

Paola Uccelli is a Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. With a background in
linguistics, she studies socio-cultural and individual differences in monolingual and multilingual
learners’ language and literacy development throughout the school years.

Mark White is a Post-Doc at the University of Oslo and is interested in how video data is used
to study and understand instructional quality, especially biases generated from this approach.

Arlette Ingram Willis is a Professor and University Scholar at the University of Illinois, Urbana
Champaign. Her scholarship draws on critical theories to examine African American literacies,
reading policies, and reading research.

Tanya S. Wright is an Associate Professor of Language and Literacy in the Department of

Teacher Education at Michigan State University.

511
 Index

Page numbers in bold refer to content in figures; page numbers in italics refer to content in tables.

3S Model of Credibility 82, 84 reading 61–66; nature, nurture, and reading

4Rs (Reading, Writing, Respect and Resolution) 66–68; and reading instruction 330, 332, 334; see
288–294, 292–293 also sociocultural diversity
age differences 121, 127–128
academic language instruction 345–347, 346; Ahmed, Y. 245
academic literacy 346, 351–354, 355; academic Alcoff, Linda Martin 140
vocabulary 166–167, 210–211, 346, 348–351, Alexander, P.A. 89, 392
354–355; integrated model for moving forward algorithms 103
358–360, 359; and raciolinguistics 357–358; Alim, H.S. 22, 48, 142
and reading comprehension definition 347; Allen, Laura K. 261–272
research-to-practice gap 355–356; trends in Alvarez, L. 22
research 354–355 Alvermann, D.E. 249, 252, 385
Academic Language Instruction for All Students Amazon 117
(ALIAS) 226, 338, 349–350 Anderson, K. 139
academic language proficiency 155–156; Anderson, R. 44, 64, 238
conceptualization of 158–161, 160; in early App Annie 108
childhood 205–206; metalanguage research Appadurai, Arjun 436, 437
168–170; new directions of study 156–158; skills Apple 101, 117
for reading comprehension 161, 162–164, apps, mobile 414–416, 418, 448
165–168; vision for practice-relevant research Arcia, E. 19
170–174 Asher, J.W. 270
academic literacy 346, 351–354, 355 assemblage theory 140
academic vocabulary 166–167, 210–211, 346, assessments: language proficiency 155, 157, 167;
348–351, 354–355 reading comprehension 268, 271; social and
Accavitti, M. 19 cultural gaps 37, 46; and sociocultural diversity 62,
Achebe, Chinua 428 65–66; standardized literacy 20, 23; of vocabulary
Ackerman, R. 89, 122 knowledge 219–220, 227–228
ACT Inc. 386 Assessment-to-instruction (A2i) tool 317
activating prior knowledge 248–250 Association for Qualitative Research (AQR) 106
Adams, B.C. 245 Association of American Publishers (AAP) 118
Adapted Primary Literature (APL) 390 attitudes, to reading 188–189
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi 431–432 August, D. 29, 349, 353
adult literacy learners 266, 267–268 Aukrust, V.G. 222
advertising, online 446 Ausubel, D.P. 238
affective individual differences 180–181; bridging authentic questions 374–375
gaps in research 191–193; reader’s self 182–185; Azevedo, R. 245
reading content 185–188, 338; reading task
188–191 Babies (2010) 40, 48
Afflerbach, Peter P. 3–12 Bailey, A.L. 167
African-American learners 46, 57–58; black literacy Bain, R.B. 393–394
tradition 425–426; cultural knowledge 253; home Baker, E.A. 413

512
 Index

Baker, S. 354 Calvo, M.G. 185

Bang, M. 45 Campano, Gerald 137–149
Baron, Naomi S. 116–132 Capitelli, S. 22
Bartlett, F.C. 237–238 Carlo, M.S. 349
Bartlett, L. 437 Carter, Hannah 345–360
Barzilai, S. 87 Castillo, M.D. 185
Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) 351 cell phones see smartphones
Baumann, J.F. 346, 348 Cervetti, Gina N. 237–255, 392
Bazalgette, C. 139 Chang-Bacon, Chris K. 5–6, 17–30
Beach, Richard 429 Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP) 288,
Bean-Folkes, Jane 424–432 289, 294
Beck, I.L. 349 child language development see early language
behavioral inhibition 284–285 development
beliefs: about text content 187–188; epistemological child literacy 279–280; implications and future
81–82, 85, 86, 87, 479; self-efficacy beliefs 182–183 directions 295–298; relation with self-regulation
Bell, Y.R. 253 280–287, 281; school interventions and self-
Berliner, D.C. 62 regulation 288–295; text-specific processes
Best, J.R. 280 308–309; see also early language development;
Best, R.M. 242–243 individualized literacy instruction
bilingual learners: academic language instruction 358; childhood self-regulation see self-regulation, in
academic literacy 351–353; cross-linguistic transfer childhood
204–205; digital literacy instruction 417; language Chiu, Ming Ming 105
for school literacy (LSL) 157, 167; qualitative case Cho, Byeong-Young 464–482
study 492–496; vocabulary knowledge 219, 228, choices, reading 103–105, 333–334
349; see also sociocultural diversity Christian, B. 67
black feminism 142 Chyi, H.I. 121, 126, 127
black radicalism 143 Civil Rights Act (1964) 66
Blair, C. 280 Clark, T.R. 253
Block, E. 269 classroom conversation 224–225, 226–227,
blogs 90 374–375
Bloome, D. 67 Clay, M.M. 223
Blue, E.V. 334 Coburn, C.E. 319–320
Boas, E. 335 Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach
Bohlmann, N.L. 287 (CALLA) 351
book ownership 104 Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency
bottom-up (local) strategies 269–270 (CALP) 351
Bourdieu, P. 67 cognitive development, overview 307–311; see also
Bowers, E. 371, 372 cognitive individual differences; early language
Braasch, Jason L.G. 79–92 development; self-regulation, in childhood
brain function see neuroscience cognitive flexibility 284
Brandão, A.C.P. 246 cognitive individual differences 180–181; affect and
Bråten, Ivar 79–92, 87, 190 the reader’s self 182–185; affect and the reading
Brisk, M. 24 content 185–188; affect and the reading task
Brophy, Jere 193 188–191; bridging gaps in affect-related research
Brown, B.A. 352 191–193; and individualized literacy instruction
Brown, R.W. 368 312–320; see also cognitive development, overview
Bryant, C.L. 349 cognitive strategy instruction (CSI) 339
Bu Bois, W.E.B. 426 Coiro, J. 409
Buch-Iversen, I. 249–250 Cole, M. 66, 330
Buckingham, D. 139 Coleman, James J. 424–432
Bunch, G.C. 22 Collective Educational Futures Project 147–148, 148
Burchinal, M. 311 Collingridge, D.S. 28
burnout 9, 295 Collins, P. 351
Butler, Y. 352 colonialism see decolonization
BuzzFeed 444, 445 Common Core State Standards (CCSS) 8–9, 20;
academic language proficiency 346; and affective
Cain, K. 246 individual differences 180; digital literacy 406;
Callahan, R. 67 disciplinary texts 386; New Criticism 60; primary

513
Index

grades 206; reading comprehension 37, 42; science deculturalization 60

learning 388, 395; and sociocultural diversity 65 dedicated reading 110–111
community reading 336–337 deep comprehension: and digitization 111; and
competition discourses 5 diverse learners 264–268, 265, 266; implications
comprehension monitoring 203, 204, 314 for education 268–272; overview of 261–264
comprehension standards 42–43 Del Río, F. 204
computer-based early literacy training 290, 294–295 Deleuze, Gilles 140
Computerized Attention Training (CAT) 290, 295 Delpit, L.D. 62
Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) demographics: age differences 121, 127–128; and
251–252 digital reading 121; gender differences 107, 121,
conditions, overview see game changers, overview 142; and literacy 17–18; and literacy in teacher
Connected Learning model 409 education 22–25; and literacy research 25–27, 26;
Connor, C.M. 286, 307–321 student and teacher paradox 18–21; see also socio-
Construction-Integration (CI) Model 238, 262 cultural diversity
content-related interest 186–187 Department of Education (USA) 28
contextualization, methodological 481 design-based implementation research (DBIR) 319
conversation 224–225, 226–227, 374–375 Developing Content Area Academic Language
Cook, A.E. 246 (DCAAL) 351
Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) 424 Dewey, J. 60
Core Academic Language Skills (CALS) Diakidoy, I.N. 184, 252, 254
167–168, 206 Dias, Marley 424
corroboration, of texts 85 Dickinson, D.K. 224
cosmopolitanism 438–443 digital literacy: and cosmopolitanism 438–443; critical
COST Action FP1104 123, 125 reflections 445–446; and ethics 438; and
Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) 8 globalization 436–437; listening across online and
Craik, F.I.M. 262 offline practices 446–448; reading networks
Crampton, A. 442 443–445; see also digital literacy instruction;
creolization 143–144 digital reading
critical literacy 47–48, 111–112, 424–425; and digital digital literacy instruction 406–407; historical
tools 416; restorying the gaps in 430–431; overview of literature 409–412, 411; key
restorying the history of 425–428; restorying questions and findings 412–417; new approaches
the words and the world 428–430; and shared and opportunities 417–420; theory on reading and
texts 335 technology 408–409; see also digital literacy
critical reader response 429 digital reading 116–117; and critical literacy 429;
critical rhetorical flexibility 171–172 future research 130–132; growth of 117–119;
Cromley, J.G. 245 non-traditional text reading 79, 83, 87–91; and
Cronbach, L.J. 219 reading habits 100, 101–103; research to date
cross-disciplinary language 158, 163–164, 166, 120–130; social media 110–111; variables of
167–168 119–120; see also media text environments, exam-
cross-linguistic transfer 204–205 inations of; printed vs. digital texts
cultural diversity see sociocultural diversity digital tools 412–415; see also digital literacy
cultural knowledge 253 instruction
Cultural Modeling (CM) 44, 46, 330 Dillon, A. 120
Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) 492, 493 Diogenes 438
Cummins, Jim 157 disaggregate instruction 352
Cushman, E. 63 disaggregation, of test data 4–5
Cyphers for Justice 47 disciplinary literacy 252, 352, 354
Disciplinary Literacy Conceptual Framework 81–82, 84
Dalton, B. 413 disciplinary texts: future research directions 394–396;
Dancing Across Borders (DAB) 145–147 implications gaps 391–394; reading and science
Daniel, D.B. 122 learning 388–391; social practices perspective
Davies, M. 348 385–386, 387–388; use in classroom practice
De Naeghel, J. 189 386–387, 388
decoding 38, 266–267, 308 discipline-specific language 158, 163, 164, 166,
decolonization 137–138; critical inquiry and 167–168, 348, 349, 353; see also disciplinary texts
multimodality 141–143; decolonial imaginaries discourse analysis 472–473, 482, 495
and multimodality 142–143; rhizomatic identities discourse practices 168–170, 172, 173, 199, 200
and multimodal design 145–148 discrimination 64

514
 Index

Documents Model Framework (DMF) 80–81, 83 epistemology see knowledge

domain knowledge 239–242, 240–241, 245, e-reading see digital reading
247–248 Erickson, F. 455
Donley, J. 249 Eseth-Alkalai, Y. 87
Draper, R.J. 394 Espinoza, Manuel 46
Driscoll, A. 23 ethics 438
dual language learners (DLLs) 210–211, 370, 371, ethnic diversity 5–6, 18–20; see also African-
372, 373, 377 American learners; decolonization; sociocultural
Duncan-Andrade, J.M. 47 diversity
Duursma, E. 221 Evans, M.D.R. 104
dynamic forecasting intervention (DFI) Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015) 20
algorithms 317 evidence, in research 105–109
dynamic skills theory 287, 296 executive function 280, 283–284, 285, 287, 309
dynamic systems theory 200 expectancy-value theory 182
dyslexia 67, 185, 488, 489, 503 eye-tracking technology 479–480

early language development: approaches to building Facebook 103, 128, 437

vocabulary 223–226; challenges to improving Fagella-Luby, M.N. 391–392
reading comprehension 206–208; knowledge and Fairclough, N. 22
inferencing 266–267, 266; and language family literacy programs (FLPs) 224
environments 220–223, 370–372; major issues Farinosi, M. 123
198–201; new approaches and future directions Farkas, G. 67
208–211, 226–228; primary grade reading Farnsworth, M. 29
comprehension 201–203; questions regarding Felski, R. 140
reading comprehension 203–206; text-specific feminism 142
processes 308–309; see also child literacy; cognitive Ferguson, L.E. 87
development, overview fiction vs. nonfiction 191
early literacy see child literacy Fifth-Dimension model 408, 419
eBooks see digital reading Fillmore, L.W. 22
ecological systems theory 41 Fixsen, D.L. 320
Economic Policy Institute (EPI) 10 Flanagan, M. 123, 131
Economist, The 126 Flesch-Kincaid assessments 271
Edelman, Marian Wright 283 FlipFeed 448
edTPA 346, 356 Flores, N. 21, 358
Educational Testing Service 37 forums 90
effortful control 280, 284–285, 287 Fox, Emily 180–193
El Teatro Campesino 146 franchises 99, 100–101
Elbro, C. 249–250 Francois, C. 333
Ellison, Tisha Lewis 57–68 Freebody, P. 430
eMarketer 102 Freiberg, J. 430
embedded structures 367–368 Freire, P. 331, 426–427, 438
Emergentist Coalition Model (ECM) 369 Fry, R. 18
emotional inhibition 284–285
emotional responses 185 Galguera, T. 22
Enciso, Patricia 3–12, 142, 335, 447 Galloway, Emily Phillips 155–174
encoding 262 Gallup 126, 127
Engeström, Y. 492 Galton, F. 67
English language learners (ELLs): classroom game changers, overview 3–5, 4; decline in teacher
conversation 226–227; comprehension strategies workforce and preparation 10–11; effect on
269, 270; and language for school literacy (LSL) reading research 11–12; ethnic, racial, and
159; and literacy trends 26–27; metalanguage socioeconomic changes 5–6; increasing demands
teaching 169; metalinguistic skills 44; and teacher for student learning 8–9; new forms of text and
education 23; topic and domain knowledge communication practices 6–7; student and teacher
247–248, 266, 267; vocabulary knowledge 219, stress 9; testing 7–8; workforce and changes in
221, 222, 266, 349; and zone of proximal economy 6
development (ZPD) 330 Gámez, P.B. 351, 365–377
Enriquez, G. 332 Gándara, P. 23
environments see language environments Gantt, E.E. 28

515
Index

Garcia, A. 105 high quality language 365–369; future research

Gardner, D. 348 directions 375–377; and language environments
Garland, K.J. 120 369–374; language-facilitating techniques in
Gates Foundation 460 classrooms 374–375; see also academic language
Gaultney, J.F. 254 proficiency
Gebhard, M. 169 higher-level language skills 202–203, 204, 208, 209,
Gee, James Paul 430 210, 268; see also high quality language
gender differences 107, 121, 142 Hinchman, Kathleen 384–397
general world knowledge 241, 242–243, 354 Hines, S. 349
Gilliam, W.S. 19 hip hop literacies 47–48, 142
Ginsburg, A. 28 Holland, D. 437
Glissant, Édouard 143–145 home language environments 220–221, 223–224,
global economic changes 6 310–311, 369–370
Global Integrated Scenario-Based Assessment (GISA) home reading 60–66, 221, 336–337
37, 316–317 homogenization 436–437
global strategies 269–270 Horton, W. 353–354
globalization 436–437 hospitable dialogue 442–443, 445, 446–448
Goals 200: Educate America Act (1994) 20 Hull, G. 139, 439, 445
Goetz, E.T. 238 human development perspectives 39–42
Goldman, S.R. 81–82, 354 Hunchback of Notre Dame, The 116
Goldsmith, M. 122 Hutchison, A. 415, 419
Gonzalez, N. 392 Huttenlocher, J. 370–371
Google 102–103, 109, 117 Hwang, J.K. 307–321
Gormley, K. 242, 244 hypertext 89
Grabe, W. 267
Grapes of Wrath, The 45 identities, reading 332–333, 337–338
Graves, M.F. 346, 348 immigration 18
Greenleaf, Cynthia 384–397 impairments 488–489
Griffin, P. 66 implementation science 320
Grosjean, F. 219 Improving Comprehension Online (ICON) 413
Grossman, P. 38 independent reading 333–334
group work 29, 373 In-Depth Expanded Applications of Science
Guay, Mary 57–68 (IDEAS) 389
Guise, M. 335 indigenous literacy 427, 428
Guthrie, J.T. 182, 192, 251 individualized literacy instruction 311–313; initiatives
Guttiérrez, Kris 46, 419 for implementing classroom practices 319–320;
models for aiding instruction 313–316, 315; and
habits, reading 190–191, 192 self-regulation 292, 294; use of technology
Haddix, M.M. 23, 59 316–319
Haenggi, D. 242 inferencing 244, 246; activating prior knowledge
Hagen, A.M. 87 249–250; adult literacy learners 268; early
Hagood, M.C. 416 language development 202, 204, 266–267
Hague, S.A. 249, 252 information, availability of 4
Hakuta, K. 352 inhibitory control 283
Hall, L.A. 337–338 Institute of Education Sciences (IES) 25, 28, 29, 43
Halliday, M.A.K. 355, 368 instructional approaches 331–339, 389–391; see also
Handsfield, L.J. 339, 417 digital literacy instruction; individualized literacy
Hanno, Emily C. 279–298 instruction
Hansen, D. 440, 441 Intelligent Tutoring Structure Strategy (ITSS) 318
Hansen, J. 249 interest: content-related 186–187; in reading
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child 99, 100–101 188–189; in reading tasks 190
Head Start 208, 222, 371; REDI intervention 288, International Literacy Association (ILA) 22, 106
291, 294 International Society for Technology in Education
Heath, S.B. 60–62, 65 (ISTE) 406
Heineke, A.J. 335–336 Internet reading 89–91, 102–103, 104; see also digital
Herrman, J. 103 reading
heterogenization 436–437 Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social
Hiebert, E.H. 64, 386 Research (ICPSR) 460

516
 Index

interventions 288–295, 289–293, 338, 349, La Clase Mágica 408, 419

350, 376 Lammers, Jayne 406–420
Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) 186 language acquisition see early language development
Irvine, Jacqueline Jordan 426 Language and Reading Research Consortium
Israelson, M.H. 414 (LARRC) 207
iSTART 318 language environments 220–227, 365–366; future
Ito, Mimi 409 research directions 375–377; high quality language
Ivey, G. 333–334 and reading development 366–369; implementing
language-facilitating techniques 374–375; language
Jackson, G.T. 318 development and exposure 369–374
Janks, Hilary 430 language for school literacy (LSL) 156, 160;
Javorsky, K. 414 conceptualization of 158–161; in early childhood
Jewitt, C. 138–139 205–206; metalanguage research 168–170; new
Jiang, H. 222 directions of study 156–158; skills for reading
Jimenez, R.T. 339 comprehension 161, 162–164, 165–168;
Johnson, Lyndon B. 66 vision for practice-relevant research
Johnston, P. 333–334 170–174
Jones, R. 445–446 language proficiency see academic language
Jones, S.H. 190 proficiency
Jones, Stephanie M. 279–298 Language Workshop 351
Justice, Laura M. 197–211, Lankshear, C. 409
222, 373 Latino learners 141–142, 330, 419; qualitative case
study 492–496
Kaufman, G. 123, 131 Lattice Model 309, 314–315, 315
Kaveh, Y. 24 Lauterman, T. 122
Keenan, J.M. 245 Lawrence, J.F. 350
Kelley, H.M. 253 Leander, Kevin M. 436–449
Kemp, S. 102 Lee, A.M. 121, 126
Kendeou, P. 252 Lee, Carol D. 37–49, 330
Kerlin, S.C. 390 Lemrow, E.M. 143–144
Khan, Kiren S. 197–211 Lesaux, Nonie 3–12, 338–339, 351, 355
Kim, J. 332 Leslie, L. 239–242, 244
kindergarten 206, 309 Let’s Know! 207, 209
Kinloch, V. 48 Leu, D.J. 410
Kintsch, W. 42, 180, 246 levels of processing theory 262
Kirkland, D.E. 62 Levine, S. 338, 353–354, 371, 372
Kleeman, David 103 Lewis, C. 334, 442
Knobel, M. 409 Lexical Quality Hypothesis (LQH) 218, 366
knowledge: activation of 248–250; and beliefs 81–82, Lima, F.R. 336
85, 86, 87, 479; future research directions Lipson, M.Y. 253
250–255; general world knowledge 241, 242–243; listening, open 446–448
inconsistencies with reading comprehension literacy 17–18; and content area instruction 251–252;
243–244; and L2 readers’ comprehension demographic trends in reseach 25–27, 26;
247–248, 267; prior knowledge 84–85, 86, 87, demographics overview 18–21; disciplinary 252;
186, 466; and reading ability 244–246; and text methodological trends in research 27–29; models
cohesion/quality 247; theoretical accounts of of 313–316, 315; sociocultural perspectives
237–239; topic and domain knowledge 239–242, 329–331; in teacher education 21–25; see also aca-
240–241, 245, 247–248, 254; see also deep demic language proficiency; child literacy; critical
comprehension literacy; individualized literacy instruction
Knowledge Revision Components (KRec) literacy instruction see digital literacy instruction,
framework 252–253 individualized literacy instruction
Kobayashi, K. 87, 242 Literary Research Association (LRA) 25
Kochhar, R. 18–19 Litman, C. 387, 395
Kozminsky, E. 244 local strategies 269–270
Kratochwill, T.R. 28 Lockhart, R.S. 262
Kress, G. 138 López, F. 20–21
Kush, J.C. 188 Lorde, Audre 146–147
Kynard, Carmen 142 lower-level language skills 202, 209, 268

517
Index

Lucas, T. 22 Model of Domain Learning (MDL) 392

Lucassen, T. 82 Moje, Elizabeth Birr 3–12, 388, 392, 393–394
Luke, Alan 111, 138 Mol, S.E. 223–224
Lyiscott, J. 47 Molfese, D.L. 488
Moll, L.C. 330, 392
Macedo, D. 426–427, 438 monolingual learners 157, 167, 222, 349
Mackey, Margaret 99–112 Moore, D.W. 385
Magnussen, S.J. 390 Moore, J. 169
Maher, Bridget 455–462 Morell, E. 47
Majors, Y. 47 Morgan, P.L. 67
Mancilla-Martinez, Jeannette 216–229 morphosyntactic skills 162–163, 165–166
Mangen, A. 122–123, 126, 130 Mosborg, S. 253
market-based reforms 5, 7 motivation 189–190; and content interest 186; in
marketing, online 446 media text environments 467; and multiple text
Marr, M.B. 242, 244 reading 85, 86; and self-efficacy beliefs 182–183
Martín-Beltrán, M. 417 Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ)
Martínez, R.S. 189 182, 189
Martínez-Roldán, C.M. 334–336, 492–496 Muller, C. 67
Marulis, L.M. 312 multilingualism 204–205, 331
Mashburn, A.J. 373 multiliteracies 138, 139
Maupin, A.N. 19 multimodality 137–138; and critical inquiry 140–143;
Maxwell-Jolly, J. 23 and decolonial imaginaries 143–145; digital tools
May, T. 140 414–415, 416; and reading research 138–140;
McBride-Chang, Catherine 105 science texts 387, 390; youth conveying
McClain, Janna B. 216–229 rhizomatic identities 145–148
McCoy, Dana C. 279–298 multiple text reading 79–80; implications and future
McKenna, M. 418 directions 91–92; individual and contextual factors
McKeown, M.G. 349, 350 84–87; theoretical background 80–84; see also
McKnight Foundation 209 non-traditional text reading; printed vs.
McNair, J. 65 digital texts
McNamara, D.S. 247, 261–272, 263, 318 Multiple-Document Task-based Relevance
mean length of utterance (MLU) 368, 371 Assessment and Content Extraction Model
Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project (MD-TRACE) 81, 83
460, 461 multi-tasking 121–122
media text environments, examinations of 464–465; Murphy, P.K. 184
automatized non-verbal data collection 476–478; My Teaching Partner (MTP) 460
ethnographic methods 474–476; review of
examination methods 478–480; task-based narrative analysis 495
discourse analysis 472–473; toward National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) 268
methodological advancements in research National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)
480–482; verbal reporting and protocol analysis 7, 8, 64
466–472 National Center for Educational Reseach (NCER)
mental models 80, 201, 202, 262, 385, 472 25–27
Merga, M. 102 National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) 64
metacognition 309–310, 314, 316, 468, 473 National Council for Teacher Quality (NCTQ) 22
metalanguage 155, 161, 168–170 National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) 203, 206
metalinguistic skills 44, 309–310 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) 106–108
micro-blogging 90–91 National Governors Association (NGA) 8
micro-level comprehension processes 42–43, 48 National Reading Panel (NRP, 2000) 21, 24, 27
Mignolo, Walter 141 National Research Council (NRC) 388
Migrant Student Leadership Institute, UCLA 46 National Teacher and Principal Survey (2015-2016) 10
Mikulski, A.M. 373 Native American literacy 141, 427
Miller, A.C. 245 nature vs. nurture 66–68
Mind in Society 58 Naval Avenue Early Learning Center, Washington 209
mind wandering 186 need for cognition (NFC) 184–185
Minecraft 105 Nelson, M. 139
mobile apps 414–416, 418, 448 networked improvement communities (NICs)
mobile phones see smartphones 319–320

518
 Index

networks, reading 443–445 phonology 307

Neuman, S.B. 225 physiological processes 40
neuroscience 487–490 Player, Grace D. 137–149
New Criticism 59–60, 429 pleasure, reading for 104, 105
new literacies 82–83, 139, 408–409, 410, 416, 428 Poetry for the People 142
New London Group 138 Pokémon GO 99, 100–101
New York Times 126 policy landscapes 20–21, 66
Newman, D. 66 Pomerantz, A. 21
Newman, S.B. 312 positioning theory 65
news reading 121, 126, 127–128 postcolonialism see decolonization
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) 20, poverty 19, 63, 66
387–388, 395 predictions, in research 480
Nichols, T. Philip 137–149 preferences, reading 190–191, 192
No Child Left Behind Act (2001) 8, 20, 66, 251 preschool curricula 206, 288
Noble, Kimberly G. 487–490 Pressley, M. 27
Noguera, P. 61, 63 Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children 24
Noguerón-Liu, Silvia 406–420, 419 Price-Dennis, D. 142, 416, 419
nonfiction vs. fiction 191 printed vs. digital texts 88, 119–120; child readers
non-traditional text reading 79–80; in digital contexts 128–130; cognitive research 121–123; and
89–91; implications and future directions 91–92; demographics 121; future research 130–132;
summer of 2016 reading habits 99–103; theoretical perceptual research 123–126; usage research
background 80–84; see also digital reading; printed 126–128
vs. digital texts prior knowledge see knowledge
Noyes, J.M. 120 Proctor, C. Patrick 5–6, 17–30
Ntelioglou, Yaman 442 professional development (PD) 23–25, 209
Programme for International Student Assessment
Oakhill, J. 246 (PISA) 103–104
Oatley, Keith 110 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study
O’Brien, D.G. 385, 392, 393, 394 (PIRLS, 2006) 183, 189
O’Brien, E.J. 246, 252 Project CLASS 295
O’Brien, L.M. 224 Project Gutenberg 117
Ofcom 103 Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observation
online news comments 91 (PLATO) 461
Open Educational Resources (OERs) 132 psycholinguistics 218, 228, 375–376
open listening 446–448 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) 503
open-ended questions 374–375 Pulido, D. 254
O’Reilly, T. 247 PVEST framework 41, 47
Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) 103–104 Qin, Wenjuan 155–174
Ortmann, L. 385, 392, 394 qualitative case methodology 492–496
Osborne, J. 388–389 QuEST 353
Outside Your Bubble 444, 445
Race to the Top 20, 66
Paglen, Trevor 446 racial diversity 5–6, 66–68, 334, 425; see also African-
Palermo, F. 373 American learners; critical literacy; decolonization;
Palincsar, A.S. 390 sociocultural diversity
PARCC testing 37 raciolinguistics 24, 357–358
parents’ role 64–65, 221, 310–311, 369–370 racism 64, 357
Paris, D. 48, 217–218 Raising a Reader (RAR) 224
Park, Y. 183, 189 RAND Reading Study Group 181, 347,
Parsons, A.W. 349 386, 394
Pearson, P. David 329 randomized-control trials (RCTs) 28,
Pedagogy of the Oppressed 426 29, 312
Peeck, J. 249 Rasmussen, B.B. 141
Peercy, M.M. 352–353, 417 Razza, R.P. 280
peers’ language input 373–374 Read 180 program 317
Perfetti, C. 218, 242 READI project 43, 46, 391
Pew Reseach Center 106, 109, 121, 126–128 Reading Apprenticeship 353

519
Index

Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy (RAAL) school language environments 222–223,

390–391 224–227
reading attitudes 188–189 Schugar, H.R. 129
reading comprehension 37–39; academic language Schwartz, L. 419
instruction 347, 354–355; and high quality science learning: academic language learning 349,
language 366–369; Lattice Model 315; social and 352, 353; in classroom practice 388; future
cultural diversity 39–49; strategies 269–270; see research directions 394–396; reading to support
also deep comprehension science learning 388–391; refutation texts 252;
Reading First initiative 251 social practices perspective 387–388
reading for pleasure 104, 105 Science Writing Heuristic approach 389
Reading for Understanding initiative 209 Scientific Studies of Reading 25–26, 26
Reading Research Quarterly 25–26, 26 Scott, J.A. 64
Reading Systems Framework (RSF) Sealy-Ruiz, Y. 59
366–367 Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading 389
Reading Wars 68 segregation 64
Recht, D.R. 244 self-beliefs 182–183
Reese, Debbie 427 self-explanation strategy training (SERT) 270
Reese, L. 337 self-regulation, in childhood 279–280, 309;
refutation texts 252–253 implications and future directions 295–298;
Reiser, B.J. 396 relation with literacy 281–287, 281; school
religious knowledge 253 interventions and literacy 288–295, 289–293
research-practice partnerships 319–320 Selligent 109
resilience navigation 41–42 semantics 225, 307, 348
Reyes, C.R. 19 Semantics, Surface, and Source (3S) Model of
Reynolds, R.E. 238 Credibility Evaluation 82, 84
rhetorical flexibility 171 Shanahan, T. 391
rhizomatic learning 140, 144, 145–148, 445 shared texts 334–335, 374
Riehl, C. 28 Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP)
Riepl, Wolfgang 116 351–352, 353
risk navigation 41–42 Shic, F. 19
Robust Academic Vocabulary Encounters (RAVE) Shifrer, D. 67
350–351 Short, D.J. 353
robust learning environments: design for supporting short-term research 108–109
comprehension 42–43; features of 40–42; social Siegel, M. 139
contexts and diverse interaction 45–48 Silverman, R. 349, 417
Rogers, R. 25 Simon, Katrina R. 487–490
Rogoff, B. 492 Simple View of Reading (SVR) 314
Roni, S.M. 102 Singer, L.M. 89
Rooks, Noliwe 425–426 Singh, S. 336–337
Rosenblatt, L.M. 60 situated reading 109–112
Rowan, Brian 455–462 situation models 238–239, 263
Rowsell, J. 414–415, 416 Skerrett, Allison 328–341, 335
Rutherford, V. 349 Sleeter, C. 21
Rydland, V. 248 Sloan, D.L. 335
Rymes, B. 21 Slobin, D.I. 172
Smagorinsky, Peter 57–68
Sabey, David B. 436–449 Smarter Balanced 37
Saito, H. 441 smartphones 100, 101–102, 104–105, 109, 117,
Salmerón, Ladislao 79–92, 90 127, 414
San Pedro, T.J. 48, 141 Smith, M.S. 28
Sannino, A. 492 Snow, C.E. 22, 367
Sax, D. 126 social interaction 90–91, 369
scaffolded text environments 413 social media 118–119; algorithms 103, 445–446; and
Schallert, D.L. 238 globalization 437; as situated reading 110–111
schema theory 238 socially-situated discourse practices 155, 158,
Schleppegrell, Mary 161, 169 160–161, 160
Schmitt, N. 219 sociocultural diversity 57–60, 328–329; affordances of
Scholastic 129–130 human development perspectives 39–40;

520
 Index

conundrums of the paradigm shift 48–49; cultural syntax 367–368; and language environments
knowledge 241, 253; gaps in reading instruction 369–374, 376; and reading comprehension 165,
research 339–341; instructional approaches to 263–264
reading 331–339; language for school literacy systemic functional linguistics (SFL) 139, 169, 347, 357
(LSL) 159–161, 160; literacy and reading
development perspectives 329–331; and mediation tablet computers 100, 101–102, 127, 414, 415–416
408; and multi-dimensional framing of reading Taboada Barber, Ana 345–360
comprehension 43–45; nature, nurture, and Tabors, P.O. 224
reading 66–68; policy context 66; qualitative case Taft, M.L. 239–242
study 492–496; reading at home 60–66; robust Tarchi, C. 243, 245
learning environments 40–43; social contexts and task analysis 480
robust learning environments 45–48, 336–337; see task instructions 87
also African-American learners; critical literacy; tasks, reading 190
decolonization Tatum, A.W. 332
socioeconomic diversity 5–6, 66, 282, 310, Taylor, A. 270
487–488 teacher-child relationships 285, 295–296, 311
sociolinguistics 218, 219, 429–430 teachers: demographics 19–20; digital literacy
Song, S. 199 instruction 416, 419; and disciplinary texts 393,
sophisticated vocabulary 367, 368, 372, 374 395–396; and language for school literacy (LSL)
Soter, A.O. 375 173; language input 370–373; literacy in teacher
sourcing, of texts 85, 86, 87 education 21–25; professional development (PD)
South Africa 142 23–25, 209; sociocultural diversity of 335–336;
Souto-Manning, M. 335 stress and burnout 9; vocabulary knowledge of
Space2Cre8 443 228; workforce and preparation decline 10–11
Sparrow, B. 125 Teachers’ Knowledge of Vocabulary Survey
special needs 19 (TKVS) 228
Spencer, M.B. 41, 47 Teaching Over Time (TOT) 461–462
Sperling, R.A. 67 Technical Working Groups (TWGs) 27
Spires, H.A. 249 technology 408–409; for classroom observations 376;
Spycher, P. 349 and media reading 479–480; and personalizing
Srasser, K. 204 student instruction 316–319; video data 455–462;
St. Thomas Aquinas School (STA), Philadelphia 147 and vocabulary 227; see also digital literacy instruc-
Stadler, M. 87 tion; digital reading
Stahl, S.A. 242 Tenenboim, O. 128
Standage, Tom 126 testing 7–8, 65–66; see also assessments
Stebbins, R.A. 107 text considerations: cohesion 247, 264, 271; new
STEP (Strategic Teaching and Evaluation of forms 6–7; readability 270–272; structures 38, 43,
Progress) 209–210 203; text-specific processes 308–309; see also mul-
Stevens, J.R. 270 tiple text reading; non-traditional text reading;
Stoller, F.L. 267 printed vs. digital texts; text content
Stornaiuolo, A. 439, 443 text content: beliefs and opinions about 187–188;
story apps 414 interest in 186–187; refutation texts 252–253; see
story circles 336 also disciplinary texts
storytelling 205–206, 221 Thein, A.H. 335
Stotsky, S. 59 think-aloud 471, 479
Strang, Ruth 180 Thomas, Ebony E. 424–432
Strasser, K. 222 Thurman, N. 128
strategies, deep reading 269–270 Tierney, J.D. 442
Strategy Trainer for Active Reading and Thinking Tigert, J.M. 417
(iSTART) 318 top-down (global) strategies 269–270
Street, B.V. 139, 331, 427–428, 438 topic interest 186–187
stress 9, 295 topic knowledge 239–242, 240–241, 244, 245,
Strømsø, H.I. 85 247–248, 254
Student Monitor LLC 126 Townsend, Dianna 345–360
student populations 18–19 Trainin, G. 414
Sullivan, M. 107 Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE) 371, 373
Summers, K. 107 triangulation 470, 479, 481–482
symbolic reasoning 39, 43–44 Tufis, P.A. 67

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Index

Twitter 110, 437, 448 Ways with Words 60

Tynan, D. 103 We Need Diverse Books 101
Web 2.0 89–90
Uccelli, Paola 155–174, 206, 367 web forums 90
Understanding Language (Stanford) 21 websites, classroom 413
UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific Wertsch, J. 408
and Cultural Organization) 102, 104 What the Teacher Didn’t Know 145–146
University of California (UCLA) 46 What Works Clearinghouse (WWC)
University of Pennsylvania 147 27–28, 29
unsettledness 440–441, 443–445 White, Mark 455–462
WIDA 157–158, 167
Valdés, G. 22 Wigfield, A. 182
Valenica, S. 386 Wijekumar, K.K. 318
values, reading-related 188 Wilkinson, I.A.G. 64
van den Broek, P. 252, 263, 388 Willis, Arlette I. 57–68
Vasilyeva, M. 371, 372 Windschitl, M. 396
Vasudevan, L.M. 440 Wineburg, S. 38, 84, 85–86
Vaughn, S. 353, 386 Winn, M.T. 47, 142, 432
verbal data analysis 478–479 Winsler, A. 286
video data 455–457; archiving and sharing 459–461; Wohlwend, K. 414–415
qualitative and quantitative research 457–459; Wolf, M. 111
research example 461–462 Wolfe, M.B. 243
video games 105 Woodwyk, J.M. 243
Viesca, K.M. 332 Woody, W.D. 122
Villegas, A.M. 22 Word Generation program 225–226, 350
vocabulary: academic vocabulary 166–167, 210–211, Word Knowledge e-Book (WKe-Book)
346, 348–351, 354–355; conceptualizing 318–319
vocabulary knowledge 218–220; in early working memory 283–284
childhood 199, 204, 205, 210–211, 220–228; World Bank 109
importance of 216–218; language environments World of Warcraft 105
and acquisition 220–223, 226–227, 369–374; Wright, Tanya S. 237–255
sophisticated 367, 368, 372, 374; and textual
knowledge 254 Yarden, A. 390
Vygotsky, L.S. 58, 59, 330, 408, 492 Ypulse 102

Ware, P. 410 zone of proximal development (ZPD) 330

Warschauer, M. 410 Zwiers, J. 352–353

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