Effects of Reading Instruction on Learning Outcomes in Social Studies: A Synthesis of Quantitative Research

Abstract

Quantitative research studies examining the effects of literacy instruction set in social studies classrooms (grades 6-12) on students’ academic content learning and reading comprehension are synthesized using meta-analytic techniques. An extensive search of the scholarly literature between 1983 and 2013 yielded a total of twelve intervention studies that provided literacy instruction to secondary students within social studies classes and quantitatively measured content learning outcomes, reading comprehension, or both. Findings revealed that content learning outcomes were consistently improved with instruction that included text-processing activities such as summarizing and generating questions. While many social studies teachers do not provide explicit reading supports, in part because they perceive that the time needed to do so is prohibitive, the findings of this synthesis suggest that sound reading practices hold promise as a means through which teachers can help students better access social studies content, thus improving student learning outcomes. More rigorous quantitative research is needed to further understand the causal effects of literacy practices in social studies settings. Highlights • Literacy instruction supports both reading comprehension and academic content • Literacy instruction does not negatively affect content knowledge acquisition. • Few studies investigate the effects of literacy instruction in social studies. • More research is needed to explore the effects of literacy instruction in social studies.

Using the annotating strategy to improve students' academic achievement in social studies

“…Students' understanding and comprehension in social studies increase when they make connections between prior knowledge and new knowledge being studied (McCulley and Osman, 2015). However, teaching students to connect material and knowledge they have already been taught combined with new material and content from texts is easier when they already have strong reading comprehension skills.…”

Developing Summarizing Skills in 4th Grade Students: Intervention Programme Effects

“…Studies show that the use of summarizing strategy affects reading comprehension and through reading comprehension also students' learning achievement in both very young and older students Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock 2001;McCulley & Osman, 2015;Kolić-Vehovec, Bajšanski, & Rončević Zubković, 2011). Students who understood the text well included more first level statements in their summaries compared to students who did not understand the text well.…”

Problems and solutions in achieving learning outcomes of the 4th grade social studies curriculum

“…Alanyazında, sosyal bilgiler öğretim programına ilişkin görüşlerin belirlendiği (Doğanay & Sarı, 2008;Gültekin, Gürdoğan-Bayır & Göz, 2004;Yapıcı & Demirdelen, 2007), sosyal bilgiler dersinde belirlenen bir öğrenme alanındaki kazanımların ele alındığı (Çakmak & Taşkıran, 2015), sosyal bilgiler kazanımlarının taksonomik açıdan değerlendirildiği (Demir, 2015;Gazel & Erol, 2012), birçok araştırmada da uygulanan farklı öğretim yaklaşımlarının sosyal bilgilerdeki kazanımlara etkisinin ortaya konulduğu (Gloria & Afolabi, 2013;Gültekin, 2005;McCulley & Osman, 2015), farklı yıllarda uygulamaya konulmuş sosyal bilgiler öğretim programı kazanımlarının karşılaştırıldığı (Okta, 2008) araştırmalar bulunduğu ortaya çıkmıştır. Oysa sosyal bilgiler öğretim programı kazanımlarına ilişkin yaşanan sorunların belirlenmeye çalışıldığı bir araştırmaya rastlanmamıştır.…”

“…In the literature, there are studies that determine the views on the social studies curriculum (Doğanay & Sarı, 2008;Gültekin, Gürdoğan-Bayır & Göz, 2004;Yapıcı & Demirdelen, 2007), focus on the outcomes in a learning domain within the social studies course (Çakmak & Taşkıran, 2015), evaluate the social studies outcomes taxonomically (Demir, 2015;Gazel & Erol, 2012), report the effect of different instructional approaches on the outcomes in the social studies course (Gloria & Afolabi, 2013;Gültekin, 2005;McCulley & Osman, 2015), and compare the outcomes implemented in different periods (Okta, 2008). However, no studies have been found determining the problems encountered with regard to the outcomes of the social studies curriculum.…”