Prompting Rural Students' Use of Personal Knowledge and Experience to Support Comprehension of Unfamiliar Content

• In Event: Poster Session 9
  In Poster Session: Understanding Intruction, Motivation, and Learning in Literacy

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effectiveness of traditional and novel knowledge activation techniques for supporting rural students’ understanding of expository texts dealing with the unfamiliar subject of ancient civilizations. In this quasi-experimental study, rural middle-school students were assigned to one of two treatment conditions—knowledge mobilization (traditional) or relational reasoning (new)—or to a control condition. With relational reasoning ability and topic knowledge as covariates, the effects of knowledge activation techniques on rural students’ comprehension of unfamiliar content were examined by means of multiple regression analyses. Findings indicate that both traditional and new approaches to activation enhance comprehension, with the relational reasoning technique especially advantageous.

Authors

• Courtney Hattan, University of Maryland - College Park

• Patricia A. Alexander, University of Maryland - College Park