This dissertation explores the intricate connections between African Americans, the Black Church, and educational outcomes, with a focus on implications for literacy development. Grounded in Critical Race Theory, the research seeks to unravel the structural complexities that contribute to the academic achievement gap faced by African American…

We are at a pivotal time in our country. As reading achievement declines pre-and post-COVID-19, large portions of our nation's students continue to be underserved by our education system while many teachers do not have needed support to provide evidence-based literacy instruction (NAEP, 2024). In this white paper, the Collaborative for Academic,…

Background: Learning pre-reading skills through formal education in early childhood is vital for a child's future personal and professional development. In this regard, integrating appropriate teaching methods and didactic strategies with the support of information and communication technologies (ICT) can facilitate this phase in the development…

This study aims to evaluate word callers attending the fourth grade of primary school in terms of rapid naming, verbal working memory, and attention skills, and to examine the effect of the reciprocal teaching approach on the development of word callers' reading comprehension skills. The study group consisted of 25 word callers and 21 independent…

The current research used the Proficient Academic Reader (PAR) framework to explore whether reading strategies, task awareness, and motivation predicted college students' literacy skills over and above foundational skills (e.g., decoding, vocabulary). Specifically, the current research investigated the unique contribution of the PAR constructs to…

This dissertation investigates the efficacy of LitFit, an innovative reading workshop program, in enhancing the reading skills and habits of male high school students in a rural setting. The study addresses the critical issue of lower reading proficiency among male students, a demographic that has historically received limited attention in English…

The current research study investigated the patterns of reading strategies employed by English/French bilingual adults and children in both languages. An in-depth analysis of patterns of strategy use was conducted on a subset of skilled readers and poor readers from previous data sets. Think-aloud data on short passages revealed that, overall,…

Reading and literacy skills are essential to fostering a child's development and academic success. Research has consistently highlighted the importance of early literacy proficiency as a strong indicator of later academic achievement, cognitive ability, and social-emotional well-being (Espinosa, 2002; Gottlieb et al., 2022). Unfortunately, reading…

The Minnesota K-12 Academic Standards in English Language Arts (ELA) represent the work of the ELA Standards Review Committee, who, during the 2019-2020 school year, reviewed the 2010 Minnesota K-12 Academic Standards in English Language Arts, other states' recently revised standards, current academic research, K-12 instructional best practices…

The study used Bayesian and Frequentist methods to investigate whether the roles of linguistic, quantitative, and spatial attention skills are distinct in children's acquisition of reading and math. A sample of 175 Chinese kindergarteners was tested with measures of linguistic skills (phonological awareness and phonological memory), quantitative…

We compared the reading development of 77 deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) Japanese children, aged 5-7 (40 females), with 139 of their hearing peers (74 females) in 2018. We assessed each group's phonological awareness (PA), grammar, vocabulary, and reading of hiragana (Japanese orthography children learn first). DHH children showed significant…

Many students in vocational education and training (VET) have difficulties with reading and writing. To date, there is little research on whether and how the development of VET students' writing skills may benefit from teaching approaches that integrate reading and writing. This study reports results from a semester-long intervention study…

Fluent word recognition is an essential component of skilled reading, yet most children with reading difficulty have impaired word recognition. We developed and evaluated a web app, WordDriver, delivered via teletherapy, which targets phonological recoding to support orthographic learning and efficient word recognition. Participants were five…

The research aims to determine the factors affecting PISA 2018 reading skills using the Random Forest and MARS methods and to compare their prediction abilities. This study used the information from 5713 students, 2838 (49.7%) male and 2875 (50.3%) female, in the PISA 2018 Turkey. The analysis shows the MARS method performed better than the Random…

Organisational signals and sources can be considered metatextual cues that guide the processing of the discourse. Organisational signals encourage readers to use the structure strategy, while source information reveals the epistemic and formal properties of texts. This study addressed three gaps in prior research about these topics: (1) whether…