Strategy Use in Learning From Multiple Texts: An Investigation of the Integrative Framework of Learning From Multiple Texts

Abstract

This study examined undergraduates' strategy use when learning about a complex and controversial topic (i.e., mass incarceration in the United States) based on information presented across multiple texts. Guided by the Integrated Framework of Learning from Multiple Texts, this study directed students to engage in one of three forms of strategy use while learning from multiple texts. In particular, students were asked to identify relevant and important information in texts (i.e., intratextual processing), to form relations or connections across texts (i.e., intertextual processing), or to identify easy or difficult to understand information in texts (i.e., metacognitive processing). In addition to receiving task instructions directing them to engage in these modes of processing, students were also provided with a highlighting tool to scaffold their strategy use (e.g., by allowing important and relevant information to be marked in green, in the intratextual processing condition). This highlighting tool also enabled researchers to collect log data of students' manifest strategy use. Students were found to demonstrate differential patterns of strategy use in accordance with their assigned processing conditions. Moreover, students' use of strategies directed toward multiple texts was found to predict multiple text task performance.

Effects of context and discrepancy when reading multiple documents

“…Although participants did not spend more time reading discrepant texts (e.g., Hakala & O'Brien, 1995 ; Kammerer & Gerjets, 2014 ), they more often switched texts when the contents were discrepant, which we interpret as comparison processes across texts. Readers facing discrepant documents might act more strategically by comparing information across documents (see, e.g., List & Alexander, 2020 ). This corroborates and extends prior findings that discrepancy strongly promotes readers’ attention to sources and the integration of source and content information into a documents model (Braasch et al, 2012 ; Rouet et al, 2016 ).…”

Multitext Learning: Efforts to Improve Literacy Students in Indonesia

“…Fifth, The cause of the low reading interest of Indonesian students is because the general learning model has not made students have to read. Sixth, the cause of the low interest and reading ability of students is because the reading learning system is not right (List & Alexander, 2020).…”

Metacognition in Argumentative Writing Based on Multiple Sources in Geography Education

“…Metacognition is now considered to play an essential function in learning, particularly in cognitive (learning) processes involving reading and/or writing. More specifically, argumentative writing about complex and controversial topics based on multiple sources requires challenging skills, including strategic thinking, which involves making “metacognitive judgments regarding comprehension quality and adequacy of task performance” [ 6 ] (p. 1f.…”

“…List and Alexander [ 6 ] (p. 2) highlight that “[d]espite the need for students to demonstrate sophisticated and erudite strategy use when learning from multiple texts, relatively few studies have examined the nature of such strategy use during task performance”. This also applies to empirical investigations and our understanding of the metacognitive experiences or the executive processes of control that are involved.…”

“…As a final example, we refer to List and Alexander [ 6 ], who investigated undergraduate students’ strategy use when learning about a complex and controversial topic using information from multiple sources. In this experimental study, 71 students from the United States were asked to identify information in texts that was easy or difficult to understand.…”