Schools
Geneva Researcher Among NIU Team Studying Reading in the Information Age
There are still the three "R's" in education, but the first and primary one, reading, is different now than it was even a decade ago. Joe Magliano of Geneva is among the NIU researchers exploring how the Information Age has affected how students read.
Joe Magliano of Geneva is among a team of researchers at Northern Illinois University looking at a seismic shift in the way students read. Or, more precisely, how they understand what they're reading.
With a new grant award of $2.4 million from the U.S. Department of Education, Magliano, NIU Psychology Professor Anne Britt and NIU Department of Psychology colleague Brad Pillow are now working to better understand how students filter the information glut.
In this new age of information, it's no longer enough to comprehend a single text, NIU researchers say. Students also must learn to consider the source—and that requires another layer of critical-thinking skills.
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"It involves reflecting on a whole set of factors associated with text, including who wrote it and why, and how the material is relevant to the reader's goals," says Magliano, whose area of research expertise focuses on how people understand what they read and watch.
"The web has been a real game changer," Magliano says. "The general consensus is that reading comprehension is more important than ever, but the critical skill sets now required for full comprehension typically have not been taught in school."
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The research collaboration is one of six multi-institutional teams working on a major Reading for Understanding Research Initiative funded by the Institute for Educational Sciences (IES) in the U.S. Department of Education. Overall, the IES Network represents a $100 million investment aimed at improving reading skills.
"Students are bombarded by a variety of online information that is unfiltered by traditional sources such as librarians and publishers," Britt says. "More than ever, they have to evaluate the quality of the information on their own."
The NIU researchers are members of a multi-institution team that in total received $19 million from the U.S. Department of Education for a five-year project led by Susan R. Goldman of the University of Illinois at Chicago. In addition to basic research on how students process information, the team will develop and test classroom- and web-based interventions to improve "reading for understanding" at the middle-school and high-school levels.
"It's not enough to comprehend a single text," Britt says. "Students must also be able to identify the reliability and veracity of information."
For more information on the national Reading for Understanding Research Initiative visit http://ies.ed.gov/ncer/projects/program.asp?ProgID=62.
