Teaching reading strategies in history lessons:A micro-level analysis of professional development training and its practical challenges

Reading comprehension is an important skill in secondary education, yet many history teachers find it difficult to provide adequate reading strategy instruction. In this study, we designed a digital learning environment to support teachers’ instruction of reading strategies based on student data. We provided history teachers in the experimental conditions with a visualisation of student performance data. Additionally, these teachers received professional development (PD) training and a guiding manual on how to translate these data into structured, explicit reading strategy instruction. Teachers in the control condition were only provided with basic data. We investigated teachers’ personal experiences through micro-level analysis of qualitative interview data. Our results show that teachers in the experimental condition improved the variation of their strategy instruction and used modelling behaviour more often after the PD training. However, we also identified multiple contextual implementation barriers that provided us with important suggestions for future practice-oriented educational research

Relationships between adolescent students’ reading skills, historical content knowledge and historical reasoning ability

The ability to apply various reading skills is an important prerequisite to comprehend expository texts commonly found in history textbooks, but it is unclear which specific skills contribute to students’ historical content knowledge and historical reasoning abilities. This study used a digital learning environment (DLE) to measure and support lower secondary students’ subject-specific reading skills, and explored the relationships with students’ historical content knowledge and historical reasoning ability. Results showed that subject-specific reading skills, such as explaining historical events, correlated significantly with both historical content knowledge and historical reasoning ability, but not all skills were significant predictors. These findings indicate that to promote the advanced practice of historical reasoning, history teachers should pay attention to students’ reading comprehension skills

Relationships between adolescent students’ reading skills, historical content knowledge and historical reasoning ability

The ability to apply various reading skills is an important prerequisite to comprehend expository texts commonly found in history textbooks, but it is unclear which specific skills contribute to students’ historical content knowledge and historical reasoning abilities. This study used a digital learning environment (DLE) to measure and support lower secondary students’ subject-specific reading skills, and explored the relationships with students’ historical content knowledge and historical reasoning ability. Results showed that subject-specific reading skills, such as explaining historical events, correlated significantly with both historical content knowledge and historical reasoning ability, but not all skills were significant predictors. These findings indicate that to promote the advanced practice of historical reasoning, history teachers should pay attention to students’ reading comprehension skills

Scaffolding expository history text reading:Effects on adolescents' comprehension, self-regulation, and motivation

Reading comprehension is an important predictor for academic success, yet many adolescents in secondary education face difficulties when reading their textbooks. In this quasi-experimental study, we developed a digital learning environment to scaffold students' expository text reading in seventh-grade history classrooms. Students in the experimental condition could use hints comprised of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategy instruction, whereas students in the control condition received no additional support. A comparison of posttest comprehension between conditions showed no significant differences. However, students in the experimental condition who accessed hints during history text reading performed significantly better on the posttest than students who did not use hints at all. We found no differences between conditions regarding students' self-regulated learning or motivation, but students' awareness of problem-solving reading strategies significantly increased in the experimental condition. Finally, a comparison of students with different reading levels showed that below-average readers benefitted most from digital reading practice

Pharmacokinetically-guided dosing to improve the efficacy of brigatinib in non-small cell lung cancer patients

Brigatinib was recently approved for the treatment of anaplastic lymphoma kinase-positive non-small cell lung cancer and is dosed according to a one-dose-fits-all paradigm. We aimed to identify a pharmacokinetically-guided precision dosing strategy to improve treatment response with brigatinib through simulations using a previously published pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic model. Dosing strategies explored were the approved 180 mg QD; the highest tolerable dose tested in clinical trials: 240 mg QD; and two precision dosing strategies targeting the median trough concentrations following 180 mg QD, and 240 mg QD. We investigated the impact of alternative dosing regimens on progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS) and the probability of developing a grade ≥2 rash or grade ≥2 amylase increase. Median PFS and OS increased by 1.6 and 7.8 months, respectively between the currently approved dosing strategy and precision dosing to the median trough concentration of the 240 mg dosing strategy, with only a minor increase in the probability of developing toxicity