Reviews literature on critical media literacy, producing a framework for exploring its implications for educators teaching literacy skills in "New Times." The article examines work on critical theory, popular culture, and mass media in various fields, arguing that the present discourse of schooling is unable to support the incorporation of…

Second grade students'"think-alouds" were analyzed to investigate whether children used different reading stategies to comprehend targeted story grammar categories in two basal reader narratives. Results indicate that the proportion of elaborative and nonelaborative strategies used by children differed as a function of category type. (Author/JMK)

Results of an experimental metacognitive training study of 64 10th graders suggest that graphic organizers, using precise graphical/ pictorial cues, improves reading comprehension of self-perceived, test-confirmed, low-achieving readers by inducing "look-back" or rereading of specific passages to locate test question answers. An appendix contains…

Results of a study involving 55 developmental studies college students indicate that regardless of reading competency levels, prior knowledge activation plus advance warning of possible inconsistencies in the text apparently facilitate students' comprehension of counterintuitive science text better than activation alone. (IAH)

A study was done to investigate the use of graphic organizers to compensate for text that was poorly organized. Results support assimilation encoding theory and suggest that organizers aid recall when readers must reorganize information but are of little value when reorganization is unnecessary. (Author/JN)

This study examined whether students could learn counterintuitive science concepts by reading and discussing ideas. Ninth graders read texts, answered questions, then completed control activities or engaged in scaffolded discussions. Students who read expository text and students who participated in scaffolded discussion performed better than…

Results are reported from a study which showed that activating competent readers' naive conceptions about a complex science concept is not as effective in dispelling inaccurate information as activating their naive conceptions and then explicitly directing them to read and attend to ideas that might differ from their own. (IAH)