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Learning to read scientific text: Do elementary school commercial reading programs help?
Author(s) -
Norris Stephen P.,
Phillips Linda M.,
Smith Martha L.,
Guilbert Sandra M.,
Stange Donita M.,
Baker Jeff J.,
Weber Andrea C.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
science education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.209
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1098-237X
pISSN - 0036-8326
DOI - 10.1002/sce.20266
Subject(s) - reading (process) , variety (cybernetics) , mathematics education , set (abstract data type) , science education , computer science , science learning , scientific literacy , psychology , pedagogy , linguistics , artificial intelligence , philosophy , programming language
This paper describes a comprehensive set of studies designed to assess the potential for commercial reading programs to teach reading in science. Specific questions focus on the proportion of selections in the programs that contain science and the amount of science that is in those selections, on the genres in which the science is portrayed, on the areas and topics of science covered, on the accuracy of the scientific content, on the text features used to communicate the science, and on the instructional strategies and assessment techniques recommended. The findings show that commercial reading programs have changed substantially from the days when they were dominated by literary texts and contained hardly any science. Now, there is a variety of genres and scientific content in about one fifth of the selections. The content is also generally accurate. So, there is considerable potential offered by these programs for teaching children to read science. Unfortunately, the findings also show that the recommended instructional strategies and assessment techniques do little to capitalize upon this potential. In particular, the findings demonstrate that, although most of the science is cast in the expository genre, most of the recommended instruction and assessment is more appropriate to the literary genres. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 92: 765–798, 2008