International comparative measures show that South Africa has extremely low standards in reading. A variety of programmes aimed at boosting reading have been developed, however, the effectiveness of these programmes is unclear. Prior reviews of effective reading instruction practices have focused almost exclusively on learners whose first language…

E-texts afford interactive features that are not feasible with paper texts. Several studies have been conducted examining interactive features of E-texts, but it is uncertain what the overall effect is or what features may be most useful. The purpose of this study is to systematically review and meta-analysis of the findings comparing reading…

This review is an update to previous reviews and research in the area of family involvement in at-home learning. This update was needed to include additional relevant research, investigate potential moderators, and better understand when caregiver-implemented literacy interventions are most effective. This review and meta-analysis included 25…

In this article, the relationship between alphabet knowledge and reading development will be explored. Key topics will include how alphabet knowledge is not only a predictor for future reading success, but also how letters and their sounds serve as a bridge from a pre-alphabetic phase into a partial alphabetic phase, and beyond. Since each phase…

Although writing instruction can positively impact reading for students across grades and levels of literacy, the extent to which these findings generalize to young students with literacy difficulties is unclear due to the dynamic nature of reading-writing relations. The purpose of this meta-analysis was to examine the effects of writing…

Gender differences are one of the most contentious issues in educational research. This study analyzes long-term changes in gender gaps in reading comprehension at the end of primary school in 63 education systems. It links test data from seven comparative studies that were conducted between 1970 and 2016 using a common achievement scale based on…

Rapid automatized naming (RAN) has been shown to be a strong correlate of reading abilities. RAN also predicts future reading across different ages, ability levels, and languages, and is often used in literacy screening. Thus, understanding the specific relations between early RAN and later reading difficulties is important, particularly for…

This systematic review investigates the effect of teacher professional development (TPD) on adolescent students' reading achievement in middle and high school. A systematic search of TPD and student reading achievement studies (1975-2020) identified 15 medium-quality articles meeting this study's inclusion criteria. A meta-analysis of 14 of these…

The effect that online extensive reading (ER) of English texts has on learners' reading comprehension and motivation to read is not well understood. The purpose of this systematic review was to examine the efficacy of online ER by examining quantitative and mixed-methods studies that examined the effect of online ER on learners' reading…

Although there have been a substantial number of research studies focused on improving the field's understanding of the development of the ability to read, very few of these studies have accounted for the potential role that extensive engagement in the act of reading might play in the development of reading proficiency. There are several views on…

Implementation fidelity is often thought of as a necessary condition to achieve internal validity and as having a relation to student outcomes. This relation is increasingly modeled; we reviewed reading intervention studies for students in pre-K-12 in which measures of implementation fidelity were included in final data analysis. A systematic…

Literacy development is a process rather than a single event and thus should be studied at multiple time points. A longitudinal design employing neuroimaging methods offers the possibility to identify neural changes associated with reading development, and to reveal early markers of dyslexia. The core of this review is a summary of findings from…

There is considerable concern that many adolescents do not attain the writing competence needed to be successful in school, their personal lives, or the workplace. Ensuring that students acquire this competence is a basic responsibility of schools. In order to meet this objective, teachers need access to effective practices for teaching writing.…

The purpose of this article is to review recent literature on summer learning loss (SLL) and consider the implications for post-pandemic learning loss. Fifteen articles, published between 2010 and 2022, were reviewed and selected according to a systematic protocol from two widely used online databases. The analysis shows that SLL has been widely…

Background: Previous meta-analyses have shown that feedback targeting text comprehension given when students perform a reading task positively influences learning from text. So far, differences in the effects of feedback were explained by design features, such as the timing and richness of feedback. In the present study, we aim to investigate…