One-Size-Fits-All or Tailored Reading Strategies? - Karyn Higgs

Karyn Higgs

Should students read textbooks using time-honored general reading strategies that apply to all classes, or should they use specific reading strategies based on the discipline of the particular class?

According to Dr. Karyn Higgs, a CISLL Research Scientist and executive board member, the answer is the latter: how you should read class materials depends on the discipline.

For example, if you are a student in a Psychology course, it is important to pay attention to theory and how a theory is supported by evidence gathered from experiments. However, if you are taking a course in History, the nature of evidence is different because it often comprises different types of documents (e.g., newspaper articles, diaries, letters, etc.).

This is called discipline-specific reading.

“Disciplines have different goals and needs,” explained Higgs. “Science classes have different goals than classes in the humanities, for example. Students need to know what to focus on in their reading if they are to be successful.”

According to Higgs, what students often lack is called a task model. A task model is an understanding of what the reader intends to achieve within the context, how they plan to go about it, and why it is important—for example, what is important to understand while reading for a class.

Higgs works closely with NIU professors Dr. Anne Britt and Dr. Amanda Durik who, together with Dr. Jean-Francois Rouet from the University of Poitiers, authored a book on task models. She also works with graduate students Katy Rupp and Taneisha Vilma.

In a series of ongoing studies, Higgs and her colleagues have been investigating task models for reading and learning within Psychology and how they relate to comprehension and test scores. In these studies, they have students read excerpts from psychology textbooks, take an exam on the material, and ask them about the reading strategies they used while reading.

They measure both general and discipline-specific strategies.

Examples of items that tap general strategies are:

• “I explained the text to myself to deepen my understanding.”


• “I thought about how the text connected to experiences in my own life.”

Examples of items that tap discipline-specific strategies are:

• “I focused on connecting the pieces of the theory across paragraphs.”


• “I thought about how the studies connected to the theories.”

Using hierarchical regression, Higgs and her colleagues found that the use of discipline-specific strategies predicted the exam results above and beyond the use of the general strategies.

This result suggests that discipline-specific reading strategies are important. However, students often need help in developing discipline-appropriate task models that help them to develop and use these discipline-specific strategies.

Currently the team is expanding this approach to some Introductory Psychology classrooms.

“We have been developing and testing interventions that we can use in classrooms. We want to teach our students how to effectively read Psychology textbooks,” elaborated Higgs.

According to their research, most students attend closely to concepts and their definitions in what they read, but not theory and evidence. In the interventions, Higgs’ team teaches students what is important in the discipline and strategies for taking notes on the theories that are presented. They also have students draw out the proposed explanations using what is called a causal model. A causal model is an organized series of mechanisms in a theory that explain an outcome.

You may remember a model of memory from your old Psychology class that has boxes containing memory components (e.g., sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory) interconnected with arrows that depict the flow of information. If so, you are already familiar with causal models.

“Textbooks in Psychology describe many theories, but most of the time, they are conveyed only by words without an explicit causal model. Theory is often presented in pieces across paragraphs, interwoven with examples and information about classic experiments. Students need strategies to help them identify the parts of the theory and fit them together. We are exploring whether comprehension is increased by having students create causal models of the theories,” said Higgs.

Students may also need help to better understand how the evidence described in the text supports a theory. “Experiments usually only test one or two aspects of a theory. Students have difficulty trying to tie the description of experiments—the evidence—to the relevant part of the theory. They need to know which part of a theory an experiment tests,” explained Higgs.

Higgs and the larger research group is seeking to expand this line of research to other disciplines within science.

She hopes that, in the future, students in each class will know how to best read for that discipline. This skill is challenging because most reading programs only emphasize general strategies (e.g., visualizing, questioning, predicting, etc.).

“Although general reading strategies are helpful, they may not lead to deep comprehension that will allow students to evaluate and apply theories and to transfer this knowledge beyond the classroom. Students need exposure to how experts in the field read texts,” expanded Higgs.



If you are interested in learning more about this and related research, please attend Dr. Anne Britt’s Presidential Teaching Professor Seminar on Wednesday April 6 from noon to 1:00 in the University Suite, Holmes Student Center (2nd floor). The title of her talk is “Oh is THAT what you want?: Clarifying Student Expectations for our Assignments and Studying.”



About the author: Keith Millis is on CISLL’s executive board and is a Professor of Psychology at NIU.