This exploratory study investigated the effects of modifying eighth grade students' purposes for reading through a prompt designed to increase engagement with the text. The current study was conducted using a randomized between-subjects design, with a relevance prompt as the between-subjects factor and reader proficiency as a covariate. A sample…

We examined social studies teachers' use of text and supports for reading text during their instruction as well as how their practices related to students' content acquisition. A total of 37 social studies teachers and their students (n = 572) participated and recorded their instruction during 3 instructional units. We documented the amount of…

The authors' purpose was to examine adolescents' reading motivation in relation to standardized assessments of reading comprehension and fluency. After a reading pretest, 60 ninth-grade students (M age = 14.9 years) were randomly assigned to two groups. Compared to those in the control condition, those administered brief oral feedback intended to…

The current study models reader, item, and word contributions to the lexical representations of 39 morphologically complex words for 172 middle school students using a crossed random-effects item response model with multiple outcomes. We report 3 findings. First, results suggest that lexical representations can be characterized by separate but…

Few empirical investigations have evaluated learning disabilities (LD) identification methods based on a pattern of cognitive strengths and weaknesses (PSW). This study investigated the reliability of LD classification decisions of the concordance/discordance method (C/DM) across different psychoeducational assessment batteries. C/DM criteria were…

The present study used a randomized control trial to examine the effects of a widely-used multi-component Tier 2 type intervention, Passport to Literacy, on the reading ability of 221 fourth graders who initially scored at or below the 30th percentile in reading comprehension. Intervention was provided by research staff to groups of 4-7 students…