ROLE: Understanding the Connection between Science Achievement and Reading Achievement

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

The researcher observes that a correlation between reading and science achievement suggests that poor student performance in science may be a result of prior poor reading ability. This study intends to learn whether high school students fail to be effective inquirers in science because of inadequacies in their reading abilities or not. Moreover, the proposal seeks to determine whether curricular and technological supportive innovations can improve inquiry-based science learning in classrooms. This is a study of the application of a number of technology tools to assist classroom management of students with low reading skills to learn more science. The researchers will use existing systems to give students a chance to easily document words and phrases they don't understand which can be easily assessed by the teacher for an entire class (double-entry log). Also, they will apply a tool to help teachers make sense of assessment results for individual students and classes so they can identify reading patterns that exist in a classroom. The classroom patters are presented to teachers in a visual format. CARAT is an integrating software that uses logs to create concept maps of text to scaffold students to learn science by reading different types of science text. Some reviewers were concerned about the choice of text. Gomez would use science magazine articles as the science text. The investigators will examine student performance in schools in which students and teacher have access to the tools and schools where they don't. They will be studying ninth and tenth grade science teachers in 24 classes. They will collect data on reading and science achievement at two points in time. And they will have data on teaches background, beliefs, and uses of the proposals. They will do qualitative and quantitative indicators of science achievement (not sure what that means) an they will develop rubrics to rate written student "artifacts". The study uses treatment and control groups and a doubly-entry log for students to note their work, they also annotate science texts. The experiment will involve 3 conditions: (1) students have inquiry science with annotated text and access to one tool; (2) students have inquiry science units with same text and a graphic organizer; and, (3) students have only inquiry science units with annotated texts. Students will be followed from 9th to 10 grade. Computer software is used to facilitate instruction, document student science learning, and monitor student progress in science topics. Sophisticated computer modeling of word meaning with Latent Semantic Technology will be used to track student understanding and writing. Then the analysis would be conducted with sophisticated statistical procedures including structural models with HLM for data collected between 2004 and 2007.