Contributions of Academic Language, Perspective Taking, and Complex Reasoning to Deep Reading Comprehension

TLDR

Deep reading comprehension involves the skills required to meet Common Core State Literacy Standards and succeed on the more demanding PISA reading tasks. The study tests whether academic language, perspective taking, and complex reasoning predict performance on a deep reading comprehension assessment. Using the Global Integrated Scenario-based Assessment, the authors examined how these three skills explain variance in end‑of‑year GISA scores while controlling for baseline scores and demographics. Academic language, perspective taking, and complex reasoning each contributed a small but significant amount of additional variance to GISA scores, indicating these skills merit greater focus in theory and instruction.

Abstract

Deep reading comprehension refers to the process required to succeed at tasks defined by the Common Core State Literacy Standards, as well as to achieve proficiency on the more challenging reading tasks in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) framework. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that three skill domains not frequently attended to in instruction or in theories of reading comprehension—academic language, perspective taking, and complex reasoning—predict outcomes on an assessment of deep reading comprehension. The Global Integrated Scenario-based Assessment (GISA; O'Reilly, Weeks, Sabatini, Halderman, & Steinberg, Citation2014) is designed to reflect students' abilities to evaluate texts, integrate information from an array of texts, and use textual evidence to formulate a position, all features of deep reading comprehension. We tested the role of academic language, perspective taking, and complex reasoning in explaining variance in end-of-year GISA scores, controlling for beginning-of-year scores and student demographics. All three predictors explained small, but significant, amounts of additional variance. We suggest that these three skill domains deserve greater attention in theories of reading comprehension and in instruction.