Project Activities
The researchers will first transfer paper materials to the online Actively Learn® platform, field test, and revise existing paper-and-pencil lessons They will also develop, field test, and revise an additional set of lessons focused on inference generation in a knowledge-building sequence of expository texts. Finally, they will pilot the fully developed LINK intervention using a randomized experimental design.
Structured Abstract
Setting
This research will take place in two urban, public school districts in Virginia.
Sample
The researchers will recruit 360 students in grades 6 and 7 and their 36 English teachers to participate in this project. Forty students and four teachers will participate during each of the 2 field-testing years. There will be 280 students and 28 teachers participating during the pilot study year.
During LINK instruction, students read engaging, culturally relevant narrative and expository digital texts and respond to text-connecting and gap-filling inference prompts embedded in texts on the Actively Learn® online platform. Students will connect pronouns with referents, infer word meanings based on context clues, and integrate knowledge with information in text to generate causal, gap filling inferences. The Actively Learn® platform leverages technology-enabled language and knowledge-building comprehension supports to scaffold learning. The intervention will also build student knowledge by carefully sequencing narrative and expository texts on overlapping topics. It will engage students in small-group, face-to-face discussions about inferences during reading and support teachers in providing explicit instruction via frequent task-level feedback.
Research design and methods
The first phase of the project focuses on transferring the existing LINK lessons to the online platform, adapting existing lesson protocols and scripts, developing a LINK professional development (PD) module to accompany the Actively Learn® PD, selecting and sequencing additional expository texts, developing prompts and protocols for this content, and revising lessons in response to consultant feedback. During phase 2, the researchers will field test the complete intervention using a single-group, pretest-posttest design. After field-testing, the researchers will make data-based revisions informed by teacher focus group feedback, teacher logs, implementation fidelity observations, and student accuracy, quality, and length of oral and written responding on the Actively Learn® platform. In the last phase of the project, the researchers will randomly assign teacher participants and the participating students in teachers' randomly selected classrooms to LINK instruction or business-as-usual (BAU) instruction to evaluate the degree to which LINK instruction demonstrates evidence of usability, feasibility, and promise in improving students' inference generation, reading motivation, word reading fluency, and reading comprehension. The researchers will ask exploratory questions about potential moderators and mediators of intervention effects.
Control condition
In the randomized pilot study, students in the comparison condition will receive the BAU English language arts instruction delivered at their school.
Key measures
In addition to the instruments that will be used to assess intervention feasibility and usability (e.g., teacher focus group feedback, teacher logs, implementation fidelity observations), researchers will administer (a) LINK curriculum-based measures of student knowledge and accuracy, quality, and length of inference generation; (b) the Connect-IT Inferential Reading Comprehension Assessment; (c) the explicit and implicit comprehension questions and the pre-reading concept questions on the Qualitative Reading Inventory-6; (d) the Motivations for Reading Questionnaire; and (e) the Test of Word Reading Efficiency-2. During the randomized pilot study, the researchers will also administer the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests-Reading Comprehension subtest.
Data analytic strategy
When analyzing qualitative data from focus groups, teacher logs, and implementation fidelity forms, the researchers will use qualitative methods to discover themes regarding intervention strengths or weaknesses and barriers to implementation. For all quantitative data, they will calculate descriptive statistics. The researchers will use multilevel modeling to examine the effects of LINK instruction relative to BAU instruction on student outcomes in the pilot study.
Cost analysis strategy
The researchers will calculate the costs of providing the LINK intervention using the Ingredients Approach. They will also plan to conduct a cost-effectiveness analysis.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Project contributors
Products and publications
Products: This project will result in a fully developed online intervention that uses prompts embedded in a knowledge-building sequence of culturally responsive texts to support the generation of text-connecting. Products also include peer-reviewed publications and presentations as well as additional dissemination products that reach education stakeholders, such as practitioners and policymakers.
ERIC Citations: Find available citations in ERIC for this award here.
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Supplemental information
Co-Principal Investigators: Vaughn, Sharon; Solari, Emily; Johnson, Wintre; Roberts, Greg
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
