Language & Literacy

This has been a great year for education research. I thought it could be fun to review some of what has come across my own limited radar over the course of 2023.

The method I used to create this wrap-up was to go back through my Twitter timeline starting in January, and pull all research related tweets into a doc. I then began sorting those by theme and ended up with several high-level buckets, with further sub-themes within and across those buckets. Note that I didn’t also go through my Mastodon nor Bluesky feeds, as this was time-consuming enough!

The rough big ticket research items I ended up with were:

• Multilinguals and multilingualism
• Reading
• Morphology
• The influence of physical or cultural environment
• The content of teaching and learning
• The precedence of academic skills over soft skills
• Brain research and Artificial Neural Networks

Multilinguals and multilingualism

Unsurprisingly, this was the largest bucket of research I came across since this is the area of my professional focus.

The first study I want to uplift regarding multilingual learners is a critically important one, because right now we are experiencing a large influx of immigration to the U.S. to schools that may not be accustomed to serving this population. Some parents worry that their own kids will experience diminished learning if they have immigrant children in their classrooms.

Such worry can be put to empirical rest with this Florida-based study, which found “the presence of immigrant students has a positive effect on the academic achievement of U.S.-born students, especially for students from disadvantaged backgrounds… & does not negatively affect the performance of affluent U.S.-born students. . . . Moving from the 10th to the 90th percentile in the distribution of cumulative exposure increases the score in mathematics & reading by 2.8% & 1.7% of a standard deviation, respectively. The effect is double in size for disadvantaged students”” (OG tweet HT Ethan Mollick, Link to study)

The next theme was related to assessment and multilingual learners. Converging evidence is quite clear that assessing students in both their home languages and in English are important for fully understanding their unique profiles.

• Really nice study demonstrating the need to assess vocabulary comprehensively across English and Spanish for MLs, not as two monolingual constructs. (OG tweet, link to study. I also wrote a blog post about this one, Why assessing bilingual children in two languages is just a start)
• “Efforts to screen emergent bilinguals for reading difficulties should evaluate foundational reading skills in both the home language and English.” (OG tweet, Link to study)
• “There is need for further consideration of score and test functioning across the full continuum of bilinguals with dynamic proficiencies in each of their languages.” In other words, the varying proficiencies of a bilingual in different languages needs to be considered based on whether data is available in one or both languages (OG tweet, Link to study)
• Caution on using the category of ‘animals’ in assessment of bilinguals (though it should be noted this was a small adult sample) (OG tweet, Link to study)
• “Based on our findings, the features of the narratives’ macrostructure seem to be more susceptible to cultural differences than features of microstructure across cultural groups.” (OG Tweet, Link to study]))

The next theme related to multilinguals further highlights the heterogeneity of profiles within a group that we most often conceive monolithically as “English language learners”:

• This first one is big, because it runs counter to what is very often the norm in classrooms. Grouping students merely by ELL status or ELP is not necessarily what will be most effective in meeting and targeting their literacy needs. “The heterogeneity in early literacy profiles suggests that grouping EL and designing literacy instruction solely based on their EL status and English language proficiency is inappropriate. . . .Results highlight the heterogeneity of early literacy skills within the English learner and non-English learner populations and demonstrate the importance of designing instruction that addresses the severity of a student’s skill deficit.” (OG tweet HT Marnie Ginsburg, Link to study)
• Similarly, another powerful study, this one on middle school MLs, runs counter both to prior research on code-based needs for MLs, and to the type of instruction they may receive. “ . . . educators may want to err on the side of providing code-based instruction and use students’ response to this instruction to determine whether additional word reading instruction is necessary.” I will dig into this one more in depth in an upcoming Research Highlight (OG tweet, Link to study)
• The importance of an “individual differences” approach to multilingual learner studies. “ID approaches permit using within-child, within group study designs..., & thus constitute an alternative to the monolingual-bilingual between-group comparisons that are so common in this field & that so often find bilinguals to be lacking with respect to their monolingual peers” (OG tweet, Link to study)
• Brain research that suggests the influence of different writing systems on brain development is most noteworthy at the earliest stages of reading, and that networks of reading across languages then begin to converge in later stages. (OG tweet HT James Booth, Link to study)
• Further brain research that finds “stronger connectivity between the right and left hemispheres in Arabic speakers, and stronger connectivity in the left hemisphere language area in German speakers.” (OG tweet, Link to article)
• And yet more brain research that looked more specifically at phonological and morphological skills in English and Chinese and how those skills varied by task and language. “MA skills are generally considered to have greater language specificity than PA skills. Bilingual literacy training in a skill that is maximally similar across languages, such as PA, may therefore yield greater automaticity for this skill, as reflected in the lower activation in bilinguals relative to monolinguals.” (OG tweet, Link to study)
• Proficiency in a language also impacts how much context around a word a reader is able to leverage: “A key finding of our work is what we call a ‘lexicon–context tradeoff’: the less proficient the L2 reader, the less their eye movements reflect the fit between a word and the context it appears in, and the more their eye movements reflect the word’s lexical properties” (OG tweet HT Yevgeni Berzak, Link to study)
• Also, while ELP is a goal for accountability, a reminder that simply “testing out” of ELL status does not mean that students may not continue to need academic or social-emotional supports. “our study ... suggests that reclassification, while a positive academic outcome, can also lead to EL-classified students feeling less connected to their teachers” (OG tweet, Link to study)

Another small but important theme, which can be found in many more studies, is that learning multiple languages, including sign language, does not hinder learning. This needs to be clearly stated because the misconception that learning multiple languages confuses kids is still prevalent out there.

• Sign language does not hinder spoken lang acquisition (OG tweet, Link to study)
• “Our results show that routine exposure to multiple accents, regardless of accent type, does not negatively impact vocabulary development. Our findings suggest that children are well-equipped to handle language variation in their input.” (OG tweet, Link to study)

There was some research that pointed to how we can leverage cross-linguistic opportunities for learning:

• “Results show increased accuracy of targets and generalisation of sounds across languages when treatment was administered only in the L1” (OG tweet, Link to study)
  *The results suggest that choosing complex targets consisting of shared sounds helps promote the generalization of skills within and across languages.” (OG tweet, Link to study)
• A potentially useful table for when analyzing student writing samples: “Common crosslinguistic spelling errors made by dual language learners in grades 1 to 3 in English and Spanish compositions” (OG tweet, Link to table)
• ”...teaching children analytical skills in decoding words in an alphabetic writing system might likewise benefit their word decoding in a logographic script.” (OG tweet, Link to study)

Furthermore, there was research that provides a basis for understanding how language develops, including how signed languages can inform how we understand language at large:

• Gesture links language and cognition for spoken and signed languages (OG tweet, Link to study)
• “Signers provide a unique window onto the interplay between language and cognition because visual processes can be compared across signers and nonsigners.” I found this article, “Ten Things You Should Know About Sign Languages,” enlightening. (OG tweet, Link to article)
• This is another important study that runs contrary to norms: A review of language production in 1001 children from 6 continents showed “Children who heard more talk from adults produced more speech. In contrast to previous conclusions...., socioeconomic status was not significantly associated with children’s productions over the first 4 years, & neither were gender or multilingualism” (OG tweet, Link to study)
• If you have paid any attention to cognitive science, you should be aware of the findings on the importance of spaced retrieval (e.g. flashcards). But when it comes to learning a new language, how much spacing supports learning most effectively? “These findings suggest that the benefits of long spacing outweigh its costs.” (OG tweet, Link to study)
• A review finds that language is the key to emotion regulation, across SES. (OG tweet, Link to study)

Research on reading

Now let’s turn to some reading specific research.

• “The findings indicated a significant effect of reading mode on the learning of collocations. Significantly more collocations were learned in reading-while-listening plus textual input enhancement and reading with textual input enhancement modes than in reading-while-listening mode.” (OG tweet, Link to study)
• “Results indicate support for written stimuli as the most effective modality for novel word meaning deduction. Our findings suggest that the presence of orthographic information facilitates novel word learning even for early, less proficient readers”. (OG tweet HT Margaret McKeown, Link to study)
• I’ve written before questioning the statement that “our brains are not born to read.” Here is some new research explore the visual word form area (which is what becomes tuned to words in print) and which finds “the functional connectivity patterns of the reading circuitry as an intrinsic stable property of the brain.” (OG tweet, Link to study)
• I’ve also written about the importance of exposure to and use of decontextualized language with children through storytelling, shared reading, and conversations before. Here is yet more research on this type of language. (OG tweet HT Daniela Oneill, Link to study)
• In this study, the researchers examined retelling and it’s relation to reading comprehension. They found that retelling is related but only one component. They also suggest that “Although retell is widely assessed as a proxy for comprehension in the context of measuring reading comprehension, retell is rarely systematically taught in primary grades, and this is an important missed opportunity, given the role of oral retell and production in writing” (OG tweet, Link to study)
• Dr. Reid Lyon published 10 maxims of reading research, with accompanying research to back each of the maxims up. Share this with anyone who claims there is no “science of reading” – like Stephen Krashen, for example (Link to maxims)
• Classroom teacher knowledge of the structure of the English language predicts student learning outcomes for foundational literacy skills in grades K and 1. (OG tweet HT Tim Odegard, Link to study)
• In this study comparing use of Acadience, STAR, and F&P BAS in combination, “Results suggested that oral reading fluency score (Acadience) yielded the best cost–accuracy ratio, but the combination of Star and oral reading fluency identified important instructional groups.” (OG tweet HT Adrea Truckmiller, Link to study)
• “Holding back struggling readers in elementary school can yield benefits that extend in surprising directions, a recently released study suggests” (OG tweet, Link to article)
• An article from Dr. Vaughn and Fletcher on how to increase the number of deliberate practice opportunities for students struggling with reading (OG tweet HT Tiffany Peltier, Link to article)
• A California effort to train teachers in the science of reading after a lawsuit demonstrated impact. (OG tweet HT Jill Barshay, Link to article)
• Important context from the on-the-ground work in California to improve literacy from the Right to Read Project

Morphology

There’s a clear and growing converging set of evidence that stresses the importance of morphological awareness to reading. Just a few from this year:

• “These findings suggest...that individuals with dyslexia experience significant difficulties in MA and second, that the effect sizes are as large as those reported for phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and orthographic knowledge” (OG tweet, Link to study)
• “The findings of the present study highlight a need for explicit and systematic instruction on morphological awareness even in primary grades.” (OG tweet, Link to study)
• “while both monolingual and bilingual readers may benefit from meaning-focused morphological instruction, such as morphological analysis, this type of instruction may be particularly important for reading comprehension in bilingual readers” (OG tweet, Link to study)
• “We found that brain activations during an auditory morphology task are associated with reading outcomes 1.5 years later, even when controlling for initial reading skill.” (OG tweet, Link to study)

The influence of physical or cultural environment

Learning and development are highly influenced by the contexts that such learning and development occur in.

• “The peer-reviewed findings, published in the journal Environmental Health, show that just two hours of exposure to diesel exhaust causes a decrease in the brain’s functional connectivity” (OG tweet, Link to study)
• Physical activity, whether integrated with academics or on its own, improves reading, vocabulary, and language, according to this meta-analysis. (OG tweet, Link to study)
• “These results suggest that improvements in the nutritional content of school lunches have been largely successful in reversing the previously negative relationship between school lunches and childhood obesity” (OG tweet, Link to study)
• “These findings suggest that delaying gratification isn’t just about self-control. Cultural routines—and how sensitive we are to them—make a difference in how long we wait.” (OG tweet, Link to opinion article)
• By redrawing elementary school zones, we could reduce school segregation, and even travel times (OG tweet HT Morgan Polikoff, Link to study)
• “showing parents “growth” scores, rather than raw test scores, leads them to view racially and economically diverse schools more favorably” (OG tweet HT Jack Schneider, Link to study)
• “This study contributes to the growing body of evidence documenting how acts of community violence such as large-scale workplace raids can corrode institutional trust and severely impact the well-being of immigrants’, their children, and their communities” (OG tweet, Link to study)
• “We found that childhood unpredictability, characterized by unpredictable caregiving and unstable living environments, was associated with reduced exploratory behavior.”
  (OG tweet, Link to study)
• Furthermore, greater exposure in childhood to chronic stress, these researchers argue, can accelerate brain maturation (it gets older quicker), while greater access to novel positive experiences slows down maturation (OG tweet, Link to article)
• “we find that pupils exposed to a higher share of male quota teachers during primary school transition more smoothly to post-compulsory education and have higher educational attainment and labor force attachment at age 25” (OG tweet, Link to paper)

The content of teaching and learning

There were some very important studies this year relating to the impact of curriculum and the content or approach that is taught in the classroom.

• This one is a doozy. It is counterintuitive and certainly bears implications for how we think about the rates of learning of students who begin in different places (OG tweet, My tweet further pondering on its implications, Jill Barshay’s tweets and article, Link to study)
• A systematic review and meta-analysis suggests co-teaching is an effective instructional approach (OG tweet HT Paul Bruno, Link to study)
• A powerful study demonstrating how important–and too rare–the academic words teachers use in the classroom can be. I highlighted this one in Research Highlight 2, and this one was–rightfully so–one of my most read blogs of this year (OG tweet HT FCRR, Link to study)
  ** In what appears to be a study based on the same data set, the researchers also found that the teachers’ use of specific, contingent forms of praise were also low (Link to study)
• I’ve written before about how the ELA curriculum Bookworms seems to me to demonstrate the highest volume of the type of reading, through consistent routines, that can accelerate knowledge, language, and literacy. 8,806 students were followed for 3 years while using Bookworms, and they made significant growth (OG tweet HT Karen Vaites, Link to study)
• Similarly, “A sustained content literacy intervention that aligns content and instruction across grades can help students transfer knowledge to novel reading comprehension tasks.” (OG tweet, Link to study)
• When implementing curriculum mandates, leaders need to tread a balance between guidance and supports – what researchers call “flexibile specificity” (OG tweet HT Morgan Polikoff, Link to study)
• Test prep is a perennial activity come Spring in grades 3 and up. Teachers sometimes teach kids to read questions before reading the passage (I did! – though I’ll hedge that I taught kids to use the approach that they felt worked best for them). But this study finds “that students should read passages before reviewing questions, instead of reading the questions-first.” (OG tweet, Link to study)
• An RCT on Core Knowledge charter schools demonstrated growth in students enrolled (OG tweet HT Dan Goldhaber, Link to study)
• Academic language develops through engagement with academic content – but teaching content and language separately for those with lower language proficiency may be important (OG tweet, Link to study)
• “we found government expenditure on primary education as a strong predictor of education mobility, confirming the argument that spending can produce stronger effects when focused on early childhood” (OG tweet, Link to study)

The precedence of academic skills over soft skills

An ongoing debate in the edusphere has been whether motivation or skills comes first – in other words, are some kids super motivated to read, so then they read more and become more skilled readers? Or do more skilled readers have more motivation because they feel more successful while reading? A converging body of evidence suggests that gaining academic skills precedes motivation and other soft skills.

• “We tested the direction of causation in 3690 twins aged 12. . . Literacy skills impacted literacy enjoyment, but not the other way around.” (OG tweet HT Daniela O'neill, Link to study)
• Children's early vocabulary scores predicted their later executive function performance at each timepoint (OG tweet HT James Booth, Link to study)
• A dataset of ~2500 effect sizes across 89 RCTs was compiled to examine the fadeout of SEL skills compared to cognitive skills. “Taken together, it does not appear that boosting social-emotional skills will be a silver bullet for preventing educational intervention fadeout.” (OG tweet HT Emma Hart, Link to study)
• “In our recent meta-analysis we found math skill and therapeutic interventions reduced math anxiety symptoms but only math skill interventions improved math achievement. Consider remediating math skill deficits as a first step to addressing math anxiety.” (OG tweet HT Robin Codding, Link to study)
• “academic behaviors are several-fold more predictive than SEL skills for all long-run outcomes, and adding SEL skills to a model with academic behaviors improves the model’s predictive power minimally” (OG tweet, Link to study)
• Greater competence = greater metacognition monitoring (OG tweet, Link to study)
• The impact of self-control and grit on academic performance is mostly explained by genes. “This suggests that interventions targeting self-control and grit alone may yield limited improvements in school performance.” Therefore, target improving academic skills through teaching academic content, rather than self-control and grit. (OG tweet, Link to study)

Brain research and Artificial Neural Networks

There was a variety of other research I bucketed basically as relating to brain research – but there was one especially related to artificial neural networks that I got really excited about that I want to re-up!

• I found this research on ANNs–which use machine learning but are unlike large language models in that they do not use transformers–very exciting. If we are able to test theories, like the critical period hypothesis and the interdependence hypothesis, using artificial neural networks (ANNs) instead of having to scan human brains, we can make swifter advancements in our understanding of how we learn. OG tweet, More on ANNs from Gašper Beguš Link to article)
• More amazing stuff from Gašper Beguš and his lab, this time on whale phonology! (OG tweet, Link to study)
• Synchrony is learning: “Our research suggests that there is some similarity in our brain activity, and this is indicative of how engaged students are and how effectively they learn.”
  (OG tweet, Link to article)
• The myth of “learning styles” casts a long shadow. This study found that this misconception can also be used to hide judgements of student’s abilities: “Parents, teachers, and children judged children described as visual learners as more intelligent than children described as hands-on learners.” (OG tweet, Link to study)

Whew!

There’s way more, but this already took me too long to compile. It was a useful exercise–at least, for me–to review some of the cool research from over this year. Sometimes we rush through to the next new thing, while missing the convergence and accumulation of studies that demonstrate emerging knowledge.

Wishing you and yours a Happy New Year, and looking forward to another year of learning on language and literacy.

#research #literacy #reading #multilingualism #assessment #brain #cognition #academics #curriculum #wrapup