Elsevier

Computers & Education

Volume 157, November 2020, 103962
Computers & Education

Advancing third graders’ reading comprehension through collaborative Knowledge Building: A comparative study in Taiwan

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2020.103962Get rights and content

Highlights

  • New pedagogies are needed to advance students' reading comprehension skills.

  • Knowledge Building uses a principle-based, idea-centered approach to teach reading.

  • The Knowledge Building class outperformed the direct instruction class on the PIRLS.

  • Collaborative activities in Knowledge Forum correlated with improved PIRLS scores.

  • Sustained creative work with ideas enhances students' reading comprehension skills.

Abstract

In the digital age, reading literacy, and particularly, higher-level reading comprehension involved in making sense of information from multiple sources online is an important educational challenge. This study explores designs for teaching reading to third graders in Taiwan. Over the course of a semester, the experimental group engaged in an innovative technology-supported approach called Knowledge Building (KB), while the comparison group engaged in the traditional approach of direct instruction. Statistical analyses reveal that students in the KB class outperformed their counterparts on the PIRLS reading assessment at the end of the semester. Additional quantitative and qualitative analyses indicate that the use of Knowledge Forum technology in the KB class supported the development of higher-level reading comprehension skills through sustaining creative, collaborative work with ideas. Implications for teaching new literacies and digital competencies in computer-supported collaborative learning environments are discussed.

Introduction

One of the core functions of reading literacy is to support the development of one's knowledge and understanding of the world around them. Reading comprehension – the ability to read, process, and reflect on written text – helps students develop reading skills, mastery of language, critical thinking skills, and core knowledge for progressively more challenging academic work (Kohzadi, Azizmohammadi, & Samadi, 2014). Having excellent reading comprehension skills also increases students' enjoyment and effectiveness of reading (Whitten, Labby, & Sullivan, 2016). More importantly, reading comprehension enables students to express their thoughts, ideas, and feelings, which, in the long run, helps them become active citizens in today's democratic societies (OECD, 2010).

Given its importance as the central task of formal schooling, countries around the world regularly participate in an international comparative assessment for measuring reading comprehension called the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) as a way to evaluate students’ reading competitiveness. Many East Asian countries have been doing fairly well, including Taiwan, which ranked eighth in the 2016 PIRLS test (Mullis, Martin, Foy, & Hooper, 2017). However, as we enter the fourth industrial revolution, rapid growth of Internet technologies and artificial intelligence in all sectors of society bring new challenges and opportunities for reading and working with information (Mullis et al., 2017). For example, Internet bots are now able to perform low-level reading comprehension of written texts as well as generate false information online. Policymakers assert that “Educators will be required to support students to develop new digital competencies and literacies, and promote a greater awareness of issues in the digital environment” (UNESCO, 2020, p. 138).

To remain competitive, education systems need to engage in continuous reform to raise the standards for literacy instruction. The Taiwanese government has been encouraging teachers to experiment with new pedagogies for advancing students' reading comprehension (Taiwan Ministry of Education, 2020). This paper investigates the use of an innovative pedagogy called Knowledge Building (KB) in reading education in Taiwan. Knowledge Building is distinguished from other forms of inquiry-based learning by its focus on not only generating ideas, but on continually improving them through progressive discourse (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006). It is often regarded as a form of deep constructivism as it is guided by a set of principles rather than procedures – the Knowledge Building principles enable collective inquiry into an expanding range of topics, through interactive questioning, theory development, idea refinement, and rise above explanations (Scardamalia, 2002). In the following sections, we first review a traditional method for teaching reading in Taiwan called direct instruction. Next, we discuss how an idea-centered, principle-based pedagogy such as KB can contribute to reforming reading education in Taiwan. Then we describe the comparative design used in this study to examine the effects of direct instruction and KB pedagogy on young students' PIRLS reading scores. Finally, we present and discuss the findings regarding how KB pedagogy helps enhance young children's reading comprehension and collaborative meaning-making skills.

Section snippets

Direction instruction for teaching reading

In East Asian countries, a widely adopted approach to developing young children's reading comprehension is teacher-centered, direct instruction (Lau, 2017). As a generic teaching model, direct instruction is a set of instructional practices that target the development of cognitive skills via explicitly sequenced learning procedures, activities, and structures, including individual tasks, small group tasks, and face-to-face instruction (Carnine, Silbert, Kameenui, & Tarver, 2016; Hollingsworth &

Participants, contexts, and class activities

The participants were two third grade classes from an elementary school located in a low socioeconomic neighborhood in Taipei, Taiwan. Students were randomly assigned to the experimental class which engaged in Knowledge Building (n = 24) or the comparison class which engaged in direct instruction (n = 27). The teacher in the experimental class had five years of teaching experience, two of which focused on innovating practices with KB pedagogy and KF technology. The teacher in the comparison

Students’ reading comprehension scores before and after the intervention

To address RQ1 regarding students’ reading comprehension, first, an overall one-way ANCOVA analysis on the total PIRLS score was performed to see if there were any differences between the two classes. The hypothesis of homogeneity of regression slopes was first tested and no violation of this hypothesis was found (F = 2.84, p > .05). Then, as Table 2 shows, the ANCOVA test found that the increased total score from the pre-test (M = 16.29, SD = 6.50) to the post-test (M = 25.79, SD = 6.67) in

Conclusion and implications

This study explores traditional and innovative designs for teaching reading to young students in a Chinese literacy class over the course of a semester. First, we assessed an experimental and comparison class' reading comprehension and found that students experienced more benefits in the innovative context, which involved Knowledge Building pedagogy and Knowledge Forum technology, rather than the traditional context, which involved direct instruction and worksheets. More specifically,

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Huang-Yao Hong: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing - original draft, Supervision, Resources, Funding acquisition. Leanne Ma: Conceptualization, Writing - review & editing. Pei-Yi Lin: Methodology, Formal analysis. Karen Yuan-Hsuan Lee: Validation, Funding acquisition.

Acknowledgements

This work was, in part, supported by Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST106-2511-S-004-008-MY2; MOST107-2511-H-004-004-MY3; MOST108-2511-H-007-006-MY3).

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