Designing Science Textbooks to Enhance Student Understanding

Refining Educational Psychology: The Case of the Missing Links

“…We know a great deal about the factors that influence students' recall of a few paragraphs or pages, but we can say little or nothing about the effects of large-scale, long-term engagement by students in domains such as biological taxonomies, the physics of motion, the dramas of Shakespeare, or the nature of geometric proof, engagements that last for months or years, with consequences that shape the lifelong development of the individual (Chambliss & Calfee, 1989).…”

Teaching Text Structure: Examining the Affordances of Children’s Informational Texts

“…First, children's informational texts were noted to switch from one organizational pattern to another within a single section of text incorporating several different structures (Anderson, Armbruster, & Kantor, 1980). Texts that combine multiple structures to present information require the reader to transition fluently between structures (Chambliss & Calfee, 1989). This is a difficult task for young readers, struggling readers, or readers lacking background knowledge of the topic (Dickson et al, 1998, Meyer & Rice, 1984.…”

“…Results of this content analysis reveal that the majority (77%) of the sampled children's informational texts use multiple text structures rather than a single-structure text organization. Previous research has demonstrated that such texts place greater demands on the reader in regard to extensive use of background knowledge and highly proficient reading skills (Anderson et al, 1980;Chambliss & Calfee, 1989;Meyer & Rice, 1984;Moss, 2008;Ness, 2011). Conversely, single-structure texts enable young readers, struggling readers, or readers lacking sufficient background knowledge of the topic to more readily access, recall, and understand the information presented in the text, aiding students' earlier acquisition of content knowledge (Hall et al, 2005;Kintsch & Kintsch, 2005;Marinak & Gambrell, 2009).…”

Focus on the Facts: Using Informational Texts Effectively in Early Elementary Classrooms

“…Common text structures include description, sequence, problem/solution, cause/effect, and compare/contrast (Meyer, 1985) (see Figure 2). To make things more complex, young readers may encounter more than one of these structures in a single selection of text, requiring them to transition back and forth between different structures (Chambliss & Calfee, 1989). But even with these ''inconsiderate texts'' (Armbruster & Anderson, 1984;Kantor, Anderson, & Armbruster, 1983), children appear to benefit from explicit instruction in text structure (Baumann & Bergeron, 1993;Hall et al, 2005;Williams et al, 2005).…”