Reading texts can prompt intense emotions, and these emotions profoundly influence learning from texts. I first discuss the findings from the eight studies reported in this special issue. The studies represent pivotal advances in research on reading. Focusing on learning from science texts, they show that different emotions and different types of…

Background/purpose: Academic reading presents significant challenges for English for Specific Purposes (ESP) learners, especially when processing structurally dense expository texts in STEM disciplines. This study aims to assess the impact of text-structure-aligned goals on students' reading comprehension and written summarization, while exploring…

In bilingual elementary classrooms where English is taught as a foreign language, science lessons often prioritize spoken interaction, while reading and writing receive less emphasis. This article explores how Cognitive Discourse Functions (CDFs)--such as defining, explaining, hypothesizing, and evaluating--can support disciplinary and…

Gateway science courses are an ongoing obstacle to recruitment into STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Students come into courses that have a high cognitive load, which makes success in the course challenging. Instructional design can be used to reduce cognitive load. The findings demonstrate that leveraging pre- and…

Reading mathematics problems can frustrate students to the point of shutting down. Although Pólya's four-step plan is a well-known problem-solving framework, the author's students benefited from a more concrete and detailed approach: chunking the reading. In this article, the author describes an approach to problem solving used with eighth-grade…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of student-generated drawing and imagination on learning recall, learning transfer, and cognitive load, and also students' attitudes towards the learning strategies when learning a computer-based science text, compared to learning with provided pictures. The study used three groups: drawing…

Research Findings: This study examines the complexities of enacting an explicit content-rich curriculum in a large urban school district. Thirty-six teachers from 12 elementary schools, preK through Grade 1 were recruited to teach the "World of Words," an integrated science and literacy supplementary curriculum. Prior to the start of the…

Research indicates the benefits of collaborative learning for supporting academic literacy in content classrooms, especially for diverse and exceptional students such as students with learning disabilities or English learners (ELs) who can become disengaged in content classrooms if they struggle to access complex, content-related texts. Drawing…

Research in second language acquisition and the learning of mathematics has matured through long, albeit disconnected, histories. This study examines how theories and models of second language acquisition can be applied to the learning of mathematics and, through this, develops a novel framework defining stages in the learning of mathematics. This…

This article describes how participants in the California Teacher Inquiry Network learn the art of making their invisible thinking processes visible, helping them see more clearly that they have internal resources to help students master similar kinds of thinking processes.

The main goal of this study was to investigate how readers' visual attention distribution during reading of conflicting science information is related to their scientific reasoning behavior. A total of 25 university students voluntarily participated in the study. They were given conflicting science information about earthquake predictions to read…

Rising expectations for middle grade students to independently read and comprehend complex, discipline-specific texts have also raised expectations for the ways teachers will teach. Helping all students, despite assessed reading levels, to access grade level texts calls for instructional approaches that not only meet readers where they are, but…

In this article, we describe a model for reading engagement that emerged from interviews with high school students who participated in a yearlong supplemental intervention course. The course focused on motivation, strategies, content learning, and communication within the context of themed instruction. We sought to ascertain instructional factors,…

Academic reading proficiently is characterized by the ability to perform cognitive tasks associated with interpreting text. Researchers developed an externally validated Informal Academic Reading Proficiency Test to gauge undergraduates' academic reading proficiency. A cross-sectional study of 23 classes completed the reading test in 2014. This…

The aim of the current study was to investigate students' mind wandering while reading different types of textual narrations (macroscopic and submicroscopic) in chemistry. Another goal was to determine the relationship between mind wandering and students' reading comprehension. The participants were 65 female ninth grade students in Oman. Using a…