Reading Instruction That Increases Thinking Abilities.

Abstract

■ Middle school students must learn to use reading and writing to make successful choices in their lives. As recommended by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (Applebee, Langer, & Mullis, 1988), middle school reading programs should begin to: (a) emphasize critical thinking, (b) build students' elaboration skills, (c) advance readers' abilities to interpret, and (d) afford opportunities to form opinions with reasoned support. While interest in incorporating such objectives in language lessons has increased, relatively few studies have examined the effects of this instruction (Collins & Mangieri, in press; Resnick, 1989). The purpose of the study described here was to analyze the effects of reading and writing lessons designed to increase adolescent thinking ability. Following a review of taxonomies and descriptions of reasoning competencies (Baron & Sternberg, 1987; Beyer, 1987; Collins, 1989, 1990, in press a; deBono, 1970; Marzano, Jones, & Brandt, 1988) lessons were constructed to target eight dimensions or domains of thinking ability, as depicted in the Figure. The study was conducted in four schools in a large metropolitan city in the southwestern United States, as described in more detail in Collins (1990). While 208 middle school students began the study, 168 had complete data by study's end. Subjects who had incomplete data did not differ significantly in pretest ability (as demonstrated by total test scores on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills) from the final sample of students tested [x = 79.7 (8.6); 71 .4 (9.4), p = .39]. Prior to the study, subjects had an average grade point of 2.36, with 4 being the highest on a 4-point scale. Of the 168 subjects, 82 were sixth graders (40 girls, 42 boys) and 86 were seventh graders (45 girls, 41 boys). They were randomly assigned to experimental and control classes.

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