Weighing opposing positions: Examining the effects of intratextual persuasive messages on students’ knowledge and beliefs

The proliferation of new forms of media has given way to a multitude of new text structures, particularly texts designed to alter the receiver’s perspectives. Yet, little is known about the ways in which these novel text structures alter the characteristics of the receiver including one’s knowledge and beliefs. As such, the purpose of this multi-phase investigation was to explore the persuasion process when students read a persuasive message with an intratextual structure. Intratextual persuasion refers to a text structure in which two one-sided texts are presented together as a single message. As a result of reading an intratextual persuasive message, students’ perceived knowledge increased, and their topic beliefs strengthened differentially based upon students’ position on the controversial issue. Moreover, participants judged the characteristics of the overall commentary similarly, but they rated the characteristics of the two opposing texts differentially based on their position. Implications for research and instruction pertaining to persuasive texts with complex argument structure are forwarded.     

Conceptual coherence,comprehension, and vocabulary acquisition: A knowledge effect?

Previous research has documented the role of readers’ existing topic knowledge in supporting students’ comprehension of text; yet, we know less about how to build students’ knowledge in order to support comprehension and vocabulary learning. In the current study, we test the hypothesis that knowledge can be built and leveraged simultaneously in the interest of students’ literacy development through the use of conceptually coherent text sets. Fourth grade students (N = 59) were randomly assigned to read either a set of six informational texts that cohered around a set of concepts related to the topic birds (CC texts) or a set of texts that addressed a range of topics (NCC group texts). After reading, we assessed students’: (1) knowledge of the concepts in the conceptually coherent text set, (2) knowledge of target concept-related words that appeared in their respective text sets, (3) knowledge of general academic words that appeared in both texts sets, (4) comprehension of a novel text on a related topic, and (5) interest in the topic of the conceptually coherent texts. Results revealed that students who read the conceptually coherent texts demonstrated more knowledge of the concepts in their texts, more knowledge of the target words in their texts, and had better recall of the novel text compared to students who read unrelated texts. Findings suggest that there is potential for knowledge and vocabulary to be built during English language arts through a focus on conceptual coherence in the design of reading experiences for students.     

The catcher in the lie: The role of emotions and epistemic judgments in changing students’ misconceptions and attitudes in a post-truth era

We extend previous theoretical and empirical work by examining the role that emotions and epistemic judgments play when learning from different refutation plus persuasive and expository plus persuasive texts. We examined how variations in messages designed to change misconceptions and attitudes about genetically modified foods (GMFs) might differentially impact the extent to which individuals engage in epistemic judgments; the emotions individuals experience during learning; and, how epistemic judgments and emotions might facilitate or constrain conceptual and attitudinal change. One hundred twenty-five undergraduate university students were randomly assigned to one of four text conditions: refutation plus positive persuasive text, refutation plus negative persuasive text, expository plus positive persuasive text, or expository plus negative persuasive text. Students were asked to think and emote out loud during learning to capture epistemic judgments and emotions as they occurred in real time. After the learning session, students also self-reported the emotions they experienced during learning. Results revealed that students who were given positive persuasive texts experienced more positive emotions (both intensity and frequency) during learning, whereas those who were given negative persuasive texts experienced more negative emotions (frequency) during learning. Students who were given positive persuasive texts engaged in more epistemic judgments and changed more misconceptions about GMFs compared to students in the other three text conditions. Finally, epistemic judgments were significant positive predictors of conceptual and attitudinal change, and both positive emotions and negative emotions predicted attitudinal change. Implications for theories of conceptual and attitudinal change are discussed.     

The Effects of Rhetorical and Content Subgoals on Writing and Learning

Argument writing is challenging for elementary students. Previous experimental research has focused on scaffolding rhetorical goals, leaving content goals relatively unexplored. In a randomized experiment, 73 students in grades 5, 6, and 7 wrote persuasive texts about difficult-to-classify vertebrates. Each student received one of three sets of writing prompts: a persuasive goal only (control); a persuasive goal + rhetorical-subgoal prompts; or a persuasive goal + content-subgoal prompts. Rhetorical subgoals increased text quality, variety of rhetorical moves, number of complex propositions, and classification knowledge. Content subgoals increased the number of simple propositions in text. A path analysis indicated that content-subgoal prompts and rhetorical-subgoal prompts elicited different paths to writing and learning.     

Do students’ beliefs about knowledge and knowing predict their judgement of texts’ trustworthiness?

We examined whether epistemic beliefs predict students’ evaluation of documents. Undergraduates read two texts on climate change. Participants judged the trustworthiness of each text and then indicated the criteria for their rating. We found that readers who believe strongly in relying on personal interpretations rather than on authorities trusted both documents less and used the document’s content or their own opinion as criteria for judging trustworthiness. We also found that readers who believe that knowledge claims should be critically evaluated through logic and rules rated the science text as more trustworthy and used the criteria of their own opinion, author and content more than readers who believe in relying on their own experiences. These effects hold true while controlling for readers’ prior knowledge and text comprehensibility.     

Text-belief consistency effect in adolescents´ comprehension of multiple documents from the Web (El efecto de consistencia en la comprensión lectora de los adolescentes de documentos múltiples provenientes de Internet)

ABSTRACT

Readers often comprehend belief-consistent information from multiple texts better compared with belief-inconsistent information (text-belief consistency effect). The aim of the present study was to investigate whether adolescents’ comprehension of multiple texts is similarly impacted by their beliefs. Moreover, readers’ prior knowledge and an alternating (compared with a blocked) mode of presenting multiple texts were expected to attenuate the text-belief consistency effect. High school students read two belief-consistent and two belief-inconsistent texts on one of two scientific issues in different modes of presentation (blocked vs. alternating). A recognition task was used to assess situation model strength for each text, and prior beliefs and prior knowledge were measured before the main experiment. As expected, in the blocked mode of presentation high school students had a stronger situation model for belief-consistent texts. In the alternating mode of presentation, participants had similar situation model strengths for the different texts. Moreover, high-knowledge participants experienced a text-belief consistency effect, whereas low-knowledge participants had weaker and similar situation models for the texts.     

Students’ genre expectations and the effects of text cohesion on reading comprehension

This study raises the question what makes school texts comprehensible by analyzing whether students’ genre expectations about literary or expository texts moderate the impact of different forms of text cohesion on reading comprehension, even when the texts are similar regarding their genre. 754 students (Grade 9) from comprehensive schools read one of four text versions with similar content, but different degrees of local and global text cohesion. The four more or less cohesive texts were introduced as literary texts (part of a story) or as expository texts (newspaper article), although the different genres were only purported and the texts contained both literary and expository passages. Reading comprehension was assessed with multiple-choice-items, semi-open, and open-ended questions. Results demonstrate that global cohesion was profitable for reading comprehension with expository expectations, but not with literary ones. Local text cohesion and both forms of cohesion in combination did not interact with students’ genre expectations and had no main effect on comprehension. When students reading skills and prior knowledge were considered, the interaction was still apparent. Moreover, students with lower levels of reading skills tended to profit especially from texts with global cohesion, whereas the readers with higher reading skills achieved equal means in reading comprehension irrespective of the degree of global text cohesion. The findings are discussed with respect to theoretical aspects of text–reader-interactions, cognitive and emotional components of genre expectations, and the composition and instruction of comprehensible school texts.     

Reading biographical texts: a gateway to historical disciplinary reading

We examined the response of high school students in Israel to biographical texts. Students were exposed to three sub-genres of biographical texts (a literary-biographical text, an autobiographical text and a scientific-biographical text). These texts all differ from the conceptual schema of ordinary school texts. The data were collected from 64 participants from three classes in two different public schools in Israel. The ability of students to apply historical disciplinary reading skills was evaluated for each text, with an emphasis on ‘sourcing’ and ‘corroboration’. The basic premise was that the texts the students are exposed to influence not only their level of knowledge but also their disciplinary concepts and skills.

We contend that it might be that biographical texts, and especially autobiographical and literary-biographical texts, evoked historical reading in students, and strengthened their disciplinary reading abilities.     

Are sophisticated students always better? The role of topic-specific personal epistemology in the understanding of multiple expository texts

In a sample of 135 Norwegian education undergraduates, we examined the effects of topic-specific epistemic beliefs concerning the simplicity and source of knowledge on deep-level understanding of multiple expository texts about the same topic—climate change. The results showed that students holding sophisticated simplicity beliefs, viewing knowledge about climate change as complex, gained better multiple-text understanding than did students holding naïve simplicity beliefs, viewing knowledge about climate change as simple. However, students holding sophisticated source beliefs, viewing knowledge about climate change as personal construction, performed poorer than did students holding naïve source beliefs, viewing knowledge about climate change as transmitted from experts. Moreover, students believing knowledge to be complex and, simultaneously, relying on expert authors were at a particular advantage with respect to multiple-text understanding. Thus, in this complex reading-task context, source beliefs usually located at the sophisticated ends of epistemic belief continuums turned out to be maladaptive, presumably because they distracted from the building of a high-quality representation of author and text meaning.     

Examining the influences of epistemic beliefs and knowledge representations on cognitive processing and conceptual change when learning physics

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of epistemic beliefs and knowledge representations in cognitive and metacognitive processing when learning about physics concepts through text. Specifically, we manipulated the representation of physics concepts in texts about Newtonian mechanics and explored how these texts interacted with individuals’ epistemic beliefs to facilitate or constrain learning. Results revealed that when individuals’ epistemic beliefs were consistent with the knowledge representations in their assigned texts, they performed better on various measures of learning (use of processing strategies, text recall, and changes in misconceptions) than when their epistemic beliefs were inconsistent with the knowledge representations. These results have implications for how researchers conceptualize epistemic beliefs and support contemporary views regarding the context sensitivity of individuals’ epistemic beliefs.     

Becoming Teachers for Social Justice: Raising Critical Consciousness

This article shares processes and practices which foster students’ critical consciousness. Critical consciousness, the core of social justice teaching, is a heightened awareness of the world and the power structures that shape it. Teachers can become forces for equity and change by: challenging students to reflect critically on their beliefs and the sources of these beliefs; using text to guide students to look outwards and discover the perspectives and challenges of others; selecting texts purposefully to heighten student awareness of issues of power and equity; teaching students to read texts critically, listening carefully for the points of view of others often ignored or silenced; creating space for dialogue beyond text; and finally, making the world their classroom, blurring the boundary between schools and communities as students research the world and take steps toward change in ways that recognize and re-value our common humanity. Becoming teachers for social justice entails moving students through intentional processes and practices to foster critical consciousness in the hope of effecting change.     

Competing priorities: Singaporean teachers’ perspectives on critical literacy

This paper explores a group of Singaporean English language teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about critical literacy as well as their perspectives on how best to teach literacy and critical literacy in Singapore schools. A face-to-face survey was conducted among 58 English language teachers by using open-ended questions. The survey covered various topics related to literacy instruction including text decoding, meaning construction, and critical analysis of texts. The participating teachers believed strongly that reading and writing are transactional and interactional practices. However, they were less certain in their beliefs about teaching critical literacy including the critical, analytical and evaluative aspects of text reading. Some teachers saw a conflict between using time on teaching critical literacy and preparing students to pass their exams. As critical literacy is not a requirement at exams, they found it difficult to justify using time teaching it. The results suggest that the teachers’ belief systems are strongly influenced by the broad macro-structure of the educational system in Singapore and their own educational experiences.     

Prompted Journal Writing Supports Preservice History Teachers in Drawing on Multiple Knowledge Domains for Designing Learning Tasks

Becoming a history teacher requires the integration of pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and content knowledge. Because the integration of knowledge from different disciplines is a complex task, we investigated prompted learning journals as a method to support teacher students’ knowledge integration. Fifty-two preservice history teachers participated in the experimental study. They read a text about a historical event, a text about teaching history, and a text about cognitive learning processes. Then they wrote a learning journal entry about the three texts. To support the journal writing, the participants in the experimental condition received four integration prompts, whereas the participants in the control condition received no prompts. In the prompted condition, the students engaged more often in integration strategies at the cost of rehearsal and organization strategies. Rehearsal and integration strategies predicted students’ recall of knowledge and their ability to evaluate learning tasks. Integration strategies as elicited in the journals predicted preservice teachers’ performance when designing a learning task for history education. In solving this task, the prompted preservice teachers used the information from the three texts in a more balanced way than the unprompted students who strongly focused on content knowledge. The study illustrates the potentials of learning journals as a method to support knowledge integration in history teacher education.     

Epistemic beliefs and prior knowledge as predictors of the construction of different types of arguments on socioscientific issues

This study investigates whether university students’ epistemic beliefs and prior knowledge about controversial socioscientific issues (SSIs) can predict the different types of arguments that students construct. Two hundred forty-three university students were asked to construct different types of supportive arguments—social, ethical, economic, scientific, ecological—as well as counterarguments and rebuttals after they had read a scenario on a SSI. Participants’ epistemic beliefs and prior knowledge were assessed separately. Results showed that students’ epistemic beliefs and prior knowledge predicted the quantity, quality, and diversity of the different types of arguments the students constructed. In particular, students who held sophisticated epistemic beliefs about the structure of knowledge and exhibited relatively more robust prior knowledge scores, produced arguments of greater quantity, better quality, and higher diversity than students with less sophisticated epistemic beliefs and low prior knowledge scores. Educational implications are discussed.     

Analysis of lexical quality and its relation to writing quality for 4th grade,primary school students in Chile

Few studies have addressed vocabulary quality in developing writing skill in Spanish. Even less addressed it within the Chilean educational system. The specific objective of this study was to characterize, using a comprehensive set of indicators, the quality of the vocabulary produced by Chilean 4th grade students. Based on a national writing survey, a sample of 2056 texts written by 685 students was collected (narrative, persuasive, and informative texts). Current literature defines lexical quality as a composite of diverse factors that, while distinct, are interrelated. To represent the properties of the vocabulary, a set of indicators were selected: (a) lexical diversity; (b) lexical sophistication; and (c) lexical density. Using multilevel modeling (students and schools as levels 1 and 2) to explain a global writing score we found that diversity was a significant determinant for narrative and persuasive texts, density was a significant determinant for the three genres and sophistication was a significant determinant for narrative and expository text. In addition, indicators related to gender and socioeconomic conditions were only significant determinants of narrative stories. The parts of speech most often used also varied according to the purpose of each text. In all genres, words had a short extension and were very sensitive to the input presented in the stimuli. These results imply a significant challenge to this education system: how to promote the development of vocabulary in all children in order to support language learning.     

Beliefs about knowledge and knowing and multiple‐text comprehension among upper secondary students

Using a sample of 282 Norwegian upper secondary students, we examined whether two dimensions of topic‐specific epistemic beliefs, concerning the certainty of knowledge and the justification for knowing, predicted students' understanding of seven texts representing partly conflicting views on climate change. Text comprehension was measured at three different levels. Topic knowledge and topic interest were included in the analyses as control variables. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that students' beliefs about justification for knowledge positively predicted text comprehension at all three levels. That is, students believing that knowledge claims about climate change should be based on rules of inquiry and the evaluation and integration of multiple information sources did better on the three comprehension measures.     

Reader and text factors in reading comprehension processes

The effects of epistemic beliefs and text structure on cognitive processes during comprehension of scientific texts were investigated. On‐line processes were measured using think‐aloud (Experiment 1) and reading time (Experiment 2) methodologies. Measures of off‐line comprehension, prior knowledge and epistemic beliefs were obtained. Results indicated that readers adjust their processing as a function of the interaction between epistemic beliefs and text structure. Readers with misconceptions and more sophisticated epistemic beliefs engage in conceptual change processes, but only when reading refutation texts. Results also showed that memory for text is not affected by differences in epistemic beliefs or text structure. These findings contribute to our understanding of the relations among factors associated with text comprehension and have implications for theories of conceptual change.     

Beliefs about Learning in Children's Understanding of Science Texts

This study examined elementary school children's beliefs about learning and assessed the influences of such beliefs on their understanding of science texts. Eighty-three children, 46 from Grade 4 and 37 from Grade 6, were administered a questionnaire on children's implicit notions of learning. Children were also asked to read a science text and complete several tasks that assessed their understanding of text information. Results indicated that older children were more likely to hold constructivist views of learning, and they also performed better than younger children on the text-processing tasks. As well, children's views of learning were significantly related to depth of text understanding when age effects were controlled. This study extends current research on epistemological beliefs of university and high school students. Implications of children's beliefs about learning and their roles in knowledge construction are discussed. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.     

Exploring the relations between epistemic beliefs,emotions, and learning from texts

Conflicting claims about important socio-scientific debates are proliferating in contemporary society. It is therefore important to understand the individual characteristics that predict learning from conflicting claims. We explored individuals’ beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowing (i.e., epistemic beliefs) and their emotions as potentially interrelated sets of learner characteristics that predict learning in such contexts. Undergraduate university students (N = 282) self-reported their topic-specific epistemic beliefs and were given three conflicting texts about climate change to read. Immediately after each of the three texts, participants self-reported the emotions they experienced. Following reading and self-report, participants wrote summaries of the conflicting texts. Text-mining and human coding were applied to summaries to construct two indices of learning from conflicting texts that reflected which source’s information is privileged in memory. Results from structural equation modeling revealed that epistemic beliefs were consistent in their predictions of emotions, which in turn variously predicted different learning outcomes. In particular, a belief that knowledge is justified by inquiry predicted surprise and curiosity, which at times facilitated learning. In contrast, confusion, predicted by passive reliance on external sources, related to impaired memory of conflicting content. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed for research on the relations between epistemic beliefs, emotions, and learning about controversial topics.