39 research outputs found
Of Research reviews and practice guides: Translating rapidly growing research on adolescent literacy into updated practice recommendations.
The demand for evidence-based instructional practices has driven a large
supply of research on adolescent literacy. Documenting this supply, Baye,
Inns, Lake, and Slavin’s 2019 article in Reading Research Quarterly synthesized
far more studies, with far more rigorous methodology, than had ever
been collected before. What does this mean for practice? Inspired by this article,
I investigated how this synthesis compared with the 2008 U.S. Institute of
Education Sciences practice guide for adolescent literacy. I also include two
contemporary documents for context: Herrera, Truckenmiller, and Foorman’s
(2016) review and the U.K. Education Endowment Foundation’s 2019 practice
guide for secondary schools. I first examine how these documents define
adolescent, reading, and evidence, and propose more inclusive definitions. I
then compare their respective evidence bases, finding that the quality and
quantity of evidence have dramatically changed. Only one of the 34 studies in
the 2008 U.S. practice guide met Baye et al.’s inclusion criteria in 2019, and
the average sample size in Baye et al.’s studies was 22 times as large as those
in the 2008 U.S. practice guide. I also examine the potential implications for
a new practice guide’s instructional recommendations and comment on the
expansion of research in technology, disciplinary literacy, and writing—topics
scarcely covered in the 2008 U.S. practice guide but which have been extensively
researched since then. Finally, I call for revision of the U.S. practice
guide and the establishment of standing committees on adolescent literacy to
help educators translate the latest research findings into updated practices
Genome-wide meta-analysis of muscle weakness identifies 15 susceptibility loci in older men and women
Low muscle strength is an important heritable indicator of poor health linked to morbidity and mortality in older people. In a genome-wide association study meta-analysis of 256,523 Europeans aged 60 years and over from 22 cohorts we identify 15 loci associated with muscle weakness (European Working Group on Sarcopenia in Older People definition: n = 48,596 cases, 18.9% of total), including 12 loci not implicated in previous analyses of continuous measures of grip strength. Loci include genes reportedly involved in autoimmune disease (HLA-DQA1p = 4 × 10−17), arthritis (GDF5p = 4 × 10−13), cell cycle control and cancer protection, regulation of transcription, and others involved in the development and maintenance of the musculoskeletal system. Using Mendelian randomization we report possible overlapping causal pathways, including diabetes susceptibility, haematological parameters, and the immune system. We conclude that muscle weakness in older adults has distinct mechanisms from continuous strength, including several pathways considered to be hallmarks of ageing
Annotation and Agency: Teaching Close Reading in the Primary Grades
Close reading is a strategy that can help young students read complex texts. The authors share a process for teaching close reading that can be implemented in primary classrooms
Second language reading acquisition
Literacy is a lifelong, context-bound set of practices that can vary with time, place, and an individual's needs. One can thus speak of multiple literacies and the importance of language policies that foster cultural diversity. Research has also shown the functional literacy practices via which individuals are socialized into various institutions to vary widely. Functional literacy involves not only the ability to read and write but also the ability to cope with everyday life literacy situations. Functional literacy thus encompasses both literacy conventions and cultural knowledge, which are interrelated. Literacy conventions refer to—among other things—the types of documents that are used in societal institutions such as forms, letters, legal texts, political tracts, religious texts, novels, and poems. The reading of a particular type of document often requires specialized knowledge of that type of document format. Different types of documents, moreover, may call upon different types of cultural background knowledge as well as different values and beliefs