{"id":153,"date":"2015-03-19T09:07:46","date_gmt":"2015-03-19T09:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/edsociety\/?p=153"},"modified":"2015-03-19T13:39:32","modified_gmt":"2015-03-19T13:39:32","slug":"have-reading-textbooks-become-simpler-over-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/edsociety\/2015\/03\/19\/have-reading-textbooks-become-simpler-over-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Have Reading Textbooks Become Simpler Over Time?"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_154\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-154\" style=\"width: 200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/edsociety\/files\/2015\/03\/dickjanevampires.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-154 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/edsociety\/files\/2015\/03\/dickjanevampires-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"dickjanevampires\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-154\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Never fear: curricular complexity has actually increased since the 1970s. Image by <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/\">The Baltimore Sun<\/a><\/em>\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/weblogs.baltimoresun.com\/entertainment\/books\/blog\/2010\/08\/\">Read Street<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Are elementary school reading textbooks getting simpler?\u00a0 Many people sense that something has changed\u2014that the cognitive demands of reading textbooks are different than they used to be.\u00a0 Is this true?\u00a0 If so, what has changed?<\/p>\n<p>New research by Penn State educational psychologist Robert J. Stevens and colleagues tackles this question.\u00a0 They sampled hundreds of 3<sup>rd<\/sup> and 6<sup>th<\/sup> grade reading textbooks published between 1910 and 2000, and then sampled texts from within them.\u00a0 For each text, they analyzed its <em>level of difficulty<\/em>\u2014including the sophistication of the words, the range of vocabulary used, and the complexity of the syntax\u2014and the <em>cognitive demands<\/em> placed on the reader\u2014including the amount of text readers need to process, the complexity of processing demands, and whether they ask students about high-level ideas.<\/p>\n<p>Early in the 20<sup>th<\/sup> century, there were dramatic <em>declines<\/em> in the level of difficulty\u00a0and cognitive demands of curricula.\u00a0 Between about 1930 and 1970, and for reasons the researchers cannot explain, the cognitive demands of reading texts barely changed.\u00a0 However, after 1970, they observe a fairly consistent <em>increase<\/em> in the level of difficulty and cognitive demands of texts, especially in 3<sup>rd<\/sup> grade.\u00a0 They attribute this increase to criticisms of classroom instruction, to increased research on reading comprehension, and to changes in the types of reading material featured in texts.<\/p>\n<p>In short: \u201cContrary to the common assumption of a trend of simplification of the texts and comprehension tasks \u2026 the results indicate that curricular complexity \u2026 has notably increased since the 1970s.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read the full article here:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ed.psu.edu\/epcse\/edpsych\/people\/robert-j-stevens\">Stevens, Robert J.<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.personal.psu.edu\/xxl13\/\">Xiaofei Lu<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ed.psu.edu\/eps\/directory\/faculty-bios\/edthp\/david-baker\">David P. Baker<\/a>, Melissa N. Ray, <a href=\"http:\/\/agnesirwin.academia.edu\/SarahAnneEckert\">Sarah A. Eckert<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ed.psu.edu\/eps\/directory\/faculty-bios\/edthp\/david-gamson\">David A. Gamson<\/a>. Forthcoming. &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/aer.sagepub.com\/content\/early\/2015\/03\/16\/0002831215573531?papetoc\">Assessing the Cognitive Demands of a Century of Reading Curricula: An Analysis of Reading Text and Comprehension Tasks From 1910 to 2000.<\/a>&#8221;\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/aer.sagepub.com\/\">American Educational Research Journal<\/a><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are elementary school reading textbooks getting simpler?\u00a0 Many people sense that something has changed\u2014that the cognitive demands of reading textbooks are different than they used to be.\u00a0 Is this true?\u00a0 If so, what has changed? New research by Penn State educational psychologist Robert J. Stevens and colleagues tackles this question.\u00a0 They sampled hundreds of 3rd [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1952,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36081],"tags":[36091,1908,34,10843,144,36093],"class_list":["post-153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-250-words","tag-cognitive-difficulty","tag-curriculum","tag-education","tag-elementary-school","tag-teaching","tag-textbooks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/edsociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/edsociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/edsociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/edsociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1952"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/edsociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/edsociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":157,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/edsociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions\/157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/edsociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/edsociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/edsociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}