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This article reflects a metaview of the work of the three research projects funded through the Institute for Education Sciences under the Reading for Understanding competition that addressed middle‐grade through high school readers (grades 4–12). All three projects shared the assumption that instruction is necessary for successful reading to learn just as it is for learning to read. Through multiple studies conducted independently, the three projects arrived at common themes and features of productive instruction for reading for understanding with adolescent readers. These common themes are elaborated with instructional examples and include the following: (a) Students purposefully engage with multiple forms of texts and actively process them, (b) instructional routines incorporate social support for reading through a variety of participation structures, and (c) instruction supports new content learning by leveraging prior knowledge and emphasizing key constructs and vocabulary.

As the popularity of project‐based learning grows, so does the importance of understanding how this instructional approach can support students’ learning and development. The authors describe a project‐based approach to literacy and social studies instruction that research has shown to be effective. Key characteristics of the approach and illustrations of how those characteristics are enacted in a project‐based learning geography unit are identified. In the unit, students develop informational reading and persuasive writing skills and learn key social studies content and skills by engaging in the development of brochures about their local community for an authentic audience. The authors also describe how educators can navigate common challenges that can arise when transitioning to a project‐based approach.

Disciplinary literacy is gaining momentum as an approach to adolescent literacy. Believing that a key aspect of disciplinary literacy is knowledge construction, the authors introduce a model for relating disciplinary literacy with project‐based inquiry. Rather than merely exploring topics during inquiry, students use practices of a discipline to understand claims and evidences and to create new knowledge. The aim is that students will engage in authentic, intellectually challenging work so their products will have value within and outside of school. The model proposes to help teachers create an instructional path for deeper learning within the disciplines.

In this commentary, the author examines some contributions of the New London Group's theory of a pedagogy of multiliteracies, as well as recent critiques of how this framework has been applied in literacy research and instructional practice. She draws on her research with transnational youths—young people who claim multiple national affiliations and maintain significant ties to two or more countries—to facilitate this analysis. The author's goal is to offer some possibilities for redesigning uses of a pedagogy of multiliteracies to better illuminate dimensions of literate activity, such as pleasure, that are sometimes obscured in classroom life. Redesigned instruction would prioritize building authentic and caring human relationships across difference and affinity, stretching out time for enjoyment of learning processes and activities, and pursuing literacy objectives that students and teachers agree on as valuable.

Training is both a teaching and a learning experience, and just about everyone has had that experience. Training involves acquiring knowledge and skills. This newly acquired training information is meant to be applicable to specific activities, tasks, and jobs. In modern times, where jobs are increasingly more complex, training workers to perform successfully is of more importance than ever. The range of contexts in which training is required includes industrial, corporate, military, artistic, and sporting, at all levels from assembly line to executive function. The required training can take place in a variety of ways and settings, including the classroom, the laboratory, the studio, the playing field, and the work environment itself. The general goal of this book is to describe the current state of research on training using cognitive psychology to build a complete empirical and theoretical picture of the training process. The book focuses on training cognition, as opposed to physical or fitness training. It attempts to show how to optimize training efficiency, durability, and generalizability. The book includes a review of relevant cognitive psychological literature, a summary of recent laboratory experiments, a presentation of original theoretical ideas, and a discussion of possible applications to real-world training settings.

Despite efforts to promote literacy in the early years, millions of people in the United States and countless more abroad are functionally illiterate. The importance of improving adult literacy proficiency is unquestionable; however, the pedagogical approaches to support this monumental undertaking have been scarcely researched. Moreover, the nature of what constitutes literacy today is ever changing. This article introduces a practical approach for teachers/tutors to support adult literacy improvement through using specific strategies such as Read Two Impress.

The impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic on schools was massive and unprecedented. Many schools were forced to close, and teachers were forced to deliver their instruction online with a very short notice. To assist K-12 teachers to teach remotely, a simple instructional design model, CAFE (Content, Activities, Facilitation, & Evaluation), was created. This article describes the context in which CAFE was created and the three stages of improvement it went through from a simple instructional design table to the instructional design model. It also shares a reflection on the creation and characteristics of CAFE and finally, it ends with the introduction of the CAFE model.

This study investigates the impact of three different instructional models, direct instructional model (DIM), experiential learning model (ELM), and their combinations (DIM-ELM) on enhancing critical thinking, metacognition, and conceptual understanding in an introductory physics course. The study included 84 first-year pre-engineering students aged 18-24 years who were enrolled in the introductory physics course at two public science and technology universities in Ethiopia. A quasi-experimental design was used with three intact classes randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups: ELM, DIM, and DIM-ELM. The instruments used to measure the outcomes were the critical thinking test in electricity and magnetism, electricity and magnetism conceptual assessment, and metacognitive awareness and regulation scale in electricity and magnetism. The study used one-way analysis of covariance to examine the impact of instructional models on students’ conceptual understanding and critical thinking on the topic of electricity and magnetism, while a one-way analysis of variance was used to analyze the effects of instructional models on metacognition. Results showed that ELM was more effective than DIM and DIM-ELM in enhancing post-test conceptual understanding scores. ELM was also more effective than DIM-ELM method in improving post-test critical thinking scores, with the DIM-ELM showing better results than DIM. However, there were no significant differences in the effects of instructional approaches on metacognition. These findings suggest that ELM may be more effective than DIM and DIM-ELM in improving students’ conceptual understanding and critical thinking in physics.

We investigated the roles of classroom supports for multiple motivations and engagement in students' informational text comprehension, motivation, and engagement. A composite of classroom contextual variables consisting of instructional support for choice, importance, collaboration, and competence, accompanied by cognitive scaffolding for informational text comprehension, was provided in four-week instructional units for 615 grade 7 students. These classroom motivational-engagement supports were implemented within integrated literacy/history instruction in the Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) framework. CORI increased informational text comprehension compared with traditional instruction (TI) in a switching replications experimental design. Students' perceptions of the motivational-engagement supports were associated with increases in students' intrinsic motivation, value, perceived competence, and increased positive engagement (dedication) more markedly in CORI than in TI, according to multiple regression analyses. Results extended the evidence for the effectiveness of CORI to literacy/history subject matter and informational text comprehension among middle school students. The experimental effects in classroom contexts confirmed effects from task-specific, situated experimental studies in the literature.

This study investigates the effectiveness of multimodal teaching methods in college English writing courses, contrasting these innovative approaches with traditional teaching methods. By integrating multimodal knowledge mapping into an English teaching platform, we aimed to enrich students’ learning experiences and enhance their writing skills. A comparative analysis involving two classes—one employing the traditional teaching method and the other utilizing the multimodal approach—revealed significant improvements in the multimodal group. Students in the experimental class demonstrated heightened interest, improved attitudes and cognition towards English writing, and their average writing scores increased by 2.68 points, from 12.66 to 15.34. In contrast, the control group showed no significant score changes. Our findings underscore the multimodal teaching method’s capacity to effectively elevate students’ English writing abilities, marking a successful adaptation to modern educational demands.