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The effect of a distributed metacognitive strategy intervention on reading comprehension

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Abstract

Reading interventions that focus on metacognitive strategy instruction for elementary students reveal positive effects but also require extensive teacher training and significant oversight by the research team. In the current study, a more ‘hands off’ scalable approach to strategy instruction was tested, where initial teacher training and materials were provided to Grade 3-5 teachers to integrate into their classrooms over a full academic year. Students in the treatment condition (N = 195) were contrasted with students in a typical classroom practice comparison group (N = 212). Structural equation modeling revealed that students in the intervention showed greater gains in strategic awareness and on a standardized test of reading comprehension and vocabulary than their peers in the comparison group. Interestingly, the benefits of the intervention were consistent across grade levels, and prior reading performance and reading self-efficacy.

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Funding

This work was supported by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction [grant number 2003-1468].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Research Methodology, Institute of Psychology, The Czech Academy of Sciences, Hybernska 8, 110 00, Prague, Czech Republic

    Marek Urban

  2. Institute for Research in Social Communication, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dubravska cesta 9, 841 04, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Kamila Urban

  3. Teacher Education and Learning Sciences Department, College of Education, North Carolina State University, 208 Poe Hall, 2310 Stinson Drive, Campus Box 7801, Raleigh, NC, 27695, USA

    John L. Nietfeld

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  1. Marek Urban
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Contributions

Marek Urban: Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review & Editing, Visualization; Kamila Urban: Methodology, Writing – Original Draft, Visualization; John L. Nietfeld: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Resources, Writing – Review & Editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Kamila Urban.

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Appendices

Appendix A

Sample reading passage

figure a

Appendix B

Example of assessment

figure b

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Urban, M., Urban, K. & Nietfeld, J.L. The effect of a distributed metacognitive strategy intervention on reading comprehension. Metacognition Learning 18, 405–424 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11409-023-09334-1

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