The professional development (PD) of early childhood educators (ECEs) is key to childcare quality. The Professional Learning Community (PLC) model has been well-researched in K-12 settings and is found to have advantages over traditional models of PD; thus, it holds promise for educators in other settings such as early childhood education centers.…

Early reading intervention is crucial to ensure all students develop strong foundational literacy skills for academic and lifelong success. This Spotlight will help readers investigate the benefits of tutoring on early reading skills; identify how to build students' reading stamina; gain insights into knowledge-building curricula; review the…

This phenomenological study reports findings related to preservice teachers' experiences mentoring early elementary readers. Preservice teachers in this study were enrolled in a literacy methods course designed to develop their understanding of early literacy, including knowledge of the written code and culturally sustaining and historically…

The research project carried out in one primary school in Scotland was guided by an intention to discover and provide up-to-date data on what literacy teachers knew about critical literacy and whether this knowledge was promoted, achieved, and enacted in praxis. By specifically focusing on reading and teachers' approaches to texts, this study…

This paper shares results from a critical content analysis of Newbery-winning titles from 1922-2019 for representations of race/ethnicity, gender, and disability. Each title was coded for the inclusion and representation of race/ethnicity, gender, and disability at both the book and main character levels. Lenses of critical race, gender schema,…

Recognizing a need to promote critical reading among students at our STEM university, the authors implemented an active reading strategy called double-entry notes across four general education writing and humanities courses. We hypothesized that the tool would help engage students in the critical reading strategies they tended to lack. The tool…

Clustered observational studies (COSs) are a critical analytic tool for educational effectiveness research. We present a design framework for the development and critique of COSs. The framework is built on the counterfactual model for causal inference and promotes the concept of designing COSs that emulate the targeted randomized trial that would…

Research on readers theatre has indicated that it can improve elementary students' reading achievement and can be motivating, engaging and enjoyable, even for reluctant or struggling readers. Because of the potential for improvement and the engagement factor, the purpose of this study was to examine the effects of readers theatre on young male…

The authors examined teachers' (N = 19) use of different question types during small-group comprehension instruction for 6-11-year-olds (N = 115). The authors tagged the corpus of 40 hours of guided reading sessions to enable computer-based searches for syntactic forms of questions. Teachers frequently asked high-challenge "wh-" word…

Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have more difficulty in achieving proficiency in reading comprehension than their neurotypical peers. As students with ASD are increasingly educated in inclusive settings, general education teachers must have knowledge of the characteristics of autism that may impede comprehension of text to understand…

The purpose of this study was to test the directionality of influence between reading comprehension (RC) and print exposure (PE), thereby estimating genetic and environmental effects of this relation. The sample consisted of 910 twins in fourth through ninth grades (M[subscript age] = 12.33 years, SD = 1.41) from the Florida Twin Project on…

Science has greatly enhanced what we know about reading and writing. Drawing on this knowledge, researchers have proffered recommendations for how to teach these two literacy skills. Although such recommendations are aimed at closing the gap between research and practice, they often fail to take into account the reciprocal relation that exists…

The science of reading emphasizes explicit skills-based reading instruction to support students' reading acquisition. Yet, despite ample evidence of support, some students do not respond to such instruction adequately. To characterize why some students are not responsive to evidence-based reading instruction and to inform the development of novel…

This meta-analysis systematically identified reading intervention research for students with reading difficulties and problem behaviors in grades K-12 to determine the (a) impact of these reading interventions on reading outcomes and (b) extent to which reading outcomes varied based on student characteristics (e.g., grade, disability),…

Schools in England are expected to 'close the gap' for a range of vulnerable pupils who are achieving below the levels seen amongst their same-aged peers. They are also highly accountable for additional funding that is provided to support this goal. The project reported here involved collating and analysing a range of data in order to evaluate the…