Beyond Reading the Text: Teaching Science Students Three Strategies for Mastering Complex Content

Abstract

Students today are expected to read and master information from complex text in specific academic domains, such as science. Many students are ill prepared, however, to learn and study from informational text, and most content-specific teachers, although prepared to teach the content of their respective disciplines, are often not comfortable with using explicit strategies to aid student mastery. Once again, strategy instruction is being examined, and current publications have highlighted its positive effects on student learning. This paper links the teaching of science content, using active learning strategies, to a research-based, three-pronged, effective instructional framework: the teaching of specific text features and structures; the use of content enhancements; and the teaching of cognitive strategies.