The idea of forcing children to learn a specific set of facts and subjects is controversial. He goes against new trends of “culturally relevant pedagogy,” Or “culturally reactive teachingIn which criticism argues that students’ identities should reflect in what they learn. Others say that learning the facts is unimportant in the Google era where we can instantly seek anything and that the accent should be on educational skills. Content skeptics also emphasize that there has never been a study to show that the increase in knowledge of the world stimulates reading scores.
It would be almost impossible for an individual teacher to create the type of study program filled with content that this pro-known branch of education researchers has in mind. The lessons must be coordinated between the notes, from kindergarten. It is not only a random collection of encyclopedia or interesting units, for example, the Greek myths or the planets of our solar system. Science and social studies subjects should be sequenced so that ideas are based on each other and combined with a vocabulary that will be useful in the future.
The big question is whether the theory that more knowledge improves understanding of reading applies to real schools where children read below the school level. Does a study program full of content translates into a higher reading realization of years later?
Test
The researchers have tested lessons filled with content in schools to see how they stimulate understanding of reading. A 2023 Study From the basic knowledge program, which was not evaluated by peers, has received a lot of buzz. Students who attended nine schools that adopted the program were stronger readers. But it was Impossible to say if the basic knowledge program itself made the difference Or if the increase in reading scores could be attributed to the fact that the nine schools were highly appreciated charter schools and did something that made a difference. Perhaps they had hired great teachers and had trained them, for example. In addition, the students of these charter schools largely came from families in the middle and upper middle class. What we really want to know is if the construction of knowledge at school helps the poorest children, who are less likely to be exposed to the world through travel, live performance and other experiences that money can buy.
Another program of heavy content studies developed by the education teacher of Harvard James Kim produced a Modest Boost with reading scores in a randomized controlled trialAccording to a newspaper Posted in 2024. Reading teaching was intact, but students received special science and social studies lessons which were intended to stimulate the knowledge and vocabulary of young children. Unfortunately, the pandemic blow in the middle of the experience and many lessons had to be abandoned.
However, for the 1,000 students who had received some of the special lessons in the first and second year, their reading and mathematics scores on the North Carolina State tests were higher not only in the third year, but also in fourth Year, more than a year after the experience of strengthening knowledge ended. Most students were black and Hispanic. Forty percent came from poor families.
The latest study
The basic knowledge program has been put to the test in Another study By a team of eight researchers in two unidentified cities in Mid-Atlantic and South, where the majority of children were black and low-income families. More than 20 schools had been randomly assigned to give children’s gardens some lessons in the basic knowledge program. The schools continued with their usual sound education, but “read aloud”, when a teacher generally reads a book of images to students, had been replaced by units on plants, agriculture and Amerindians, by example. More than 500 children from kindergarten looked at images on a large screen, while a teacher discussed subjects and taught a new vocabulary. Additional activities have strengthened lessons.
According to a Document published in the February 2025 issue From the Journal of Education Psychology, the 565 children who received the basic knowledge lessons made better tests of the subjects and words that were taught, compared to 626 children who had learned reading as usual and n ‘ were not exposed to these subjects. But they did not do better in general language tests, vocabulary development or listening understanding. Reading itself has not been evaluated. Unfortunately, the pandemic also interfered in the middle of this experience and interrupted the analysis of students through the first and second notes.
The main researcher Sonia Cabell, an associate professor at Florida State University, said that she is considering more long -term success data of these students, who are now in college. But she said that she did not see a clear “signal” that students who had this basic knowledge instruction for a few months in kindergarten do better.
Hope sparkle
Cabell saw Glimmers of Hope. Students in the school group’s schools, who did not receive the basic knowledge teaching, also learned the plants. But the basic knowledge that the students had much more to say when the researchers asked them: “Tell me everything you know about the plants.” The results of a knowledge test in general sciences came just shy of statistical significance, which would have shown that the basic students of students were able to transfer the specific knowledge they had learned in the lessons to a more understanding wide of science.
“There are elements that are promising and encouraging,” said Cabell, who says that it is complicated to study the combination of conventional reading teaching, such as phonetics and vocabulary, with knowledge on the content. “We must better understand what the active ingredient is. Is it knowledge?
All the latest basic knowledge studies prove that students are more likely to do a test of something that has been taught. Some observers have interpreted in a wandering way that as proof that a wealthy study program advantageous.
“If your excellent new study program reads articles on penguins for children and your old stupid programs program their beds on the bites on the bites, one of them will look more effective when the children are Assessed with a penguin test, “said Tim Shanahan, an expert in literacy and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois in Chicago who was not involved in this research.
Enlargement of success gaps
And with distress, the students who arrived in kindergarten with stronger linguistic skills absorbed much more of these lessons rich in content than students with low achievements. Instead of helping children catch up with children at low reception, success gaps have widened.
People with more knowledge tend to be better readers. This is not proof that the increase in knowledge improves reading. Children may have higher as learning the world and enjoying reading. And if you are dying a child with more knowledge, it is possible that his reading skills do not improve.
The long view
Shanahan speculates that if the strengthening of knowledge improves the understanding of reading, it would take many years for it to manifest itself.
“If these efforts are not allowed to have a sound reading instruction, they cannot hurt and, in the long term, they could even help,” he wrote in a Blog article 2021.
Researchers are still in the early stages of the design and test of the content that students need to increase literacy skills. We all expect answers.
