Meghan Liebfreund is this year’s winner of the ILA Outstanding Dissertation Award. The Literacy Research Panel asked her to provide a post about her scintillating study.

The widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards shines a spotlight on informational text comprehension. Research consistently reveals that students rely on different component skills when reading informational compared with narrative texts (Best, Floyd, & McNamara, 2008; Eason, Goldberg, Young, Geist, & Cutting, 2012; McNamara, Ozuru, & Floyd, 2011); however, these studies of informational text investigated only a few component skills and focused primarily on decoding ability and prior knowledge. As a result, in my dissertation I aimed to better understand informational text comprehension by examining additional component skills. 

This study included students in grades 3–5 and examined how decoding ability, vocabulary knowledge, prior knowledge, and intrinsic motivation are related to informational text comprehension. Each of these reading components was important for informational text comprehension, and vocabulary knowledge was the strongest predictor. I also examined these components for higher and lower comprehenders. For lower comprehenders, decoding ability and motivation had the strongest relationships with informational text comprehension. Of note, decoding ability predicted only informational text comprehension beyond the control variables of age and grade. When the other components were entered into the model, decoding ability was no longer a significant predictor. Also, because of the sample size, motivation was only marginally significant. For higher comprehenders, vocabulary knowledge was the strongest predictor of informational text comprehension.

Although this study was not designed to determine how instruction in each of these areas contributes to informational text comprehension, what might these findings mean for practitioners?

• Provide high-quality reading instruction. High-quality reading instruction that focuses on decoding, vocabulary, prior knowledge, and motivation is essential for student success with informational text. Educators should continue to support the development of these component skills that positively influence reading comprehension when working with informational text.
• Build students’ vocabulary knowledge. Vocabulary knowledge is essential for informational text comprehension and is an area that assists higher comprehenders with performing well with these texts. General instruction with informational text comprehension should focus on increasing students’ vocabulary knowledge.
• Differentiate. Readers with different skills may have different experiences when engaged with informational texts. As a result, we need to differentiate instructional materials and offer different types of supports.
• Motivate readers. Lower comprehenders in this study comprehended better when they were motivated more. Thus, we may need to be more concerned with motivating our lower comprehenders to engage successfully with informational texts, especially ones that are challenging. As teachers, we need to select texts and plan instructional activities that support active engagement and appeal to students’ interests.

Meghan Liebfreund,PhD, is an assistant professor of educational technology and literacy at Towson University in Maryland and is the winner of the 2015 International Literacy Association (ILA) Outstanding Dissertation Award.

The ILA Literacy Research Panel uses this blog to connect educators around the world with research relevant to policy and practice. Reader response is welcomed via e-mail.