From the Editors

Abstract

Dear Colleagues, In this issue of Reading Research Quarterly (RRQ), we are thrilled to offer a number of rigorous studies that include writing in addition to reading. Although this is a literacy journal, more often than not, RRQ scholars have traditionally focused on issues related specifically to reading not writing. As our readers know, however, both areas of literacy are critically important for students’ long-term success in and outside of school. We begin this issue with a meta-analysis conducted by Graham and his colleagues. These scholars recognize that because reading and writing draw on common sources of knowledge, they may be used together more powerfully to enhance learning goals. Consequently, the meta-analysis tests this important thesis. The authors examined intervention studies that integrated reading and writing instruction to support students’ performance. Furthermore, they examined these studies across age and grade spans, adding an important additional dimension to their analysis. Graham et al.'s conclusions also led them to say that programs which engage students in both reading and writing can strengthen both of these skills simultaneously. Gross, Winegard, and Plotkowski examined a little known area in literacy research. Specifically, they describe a fascinating study exploring the impact of marking stress explicitly in written text and how it might contribute to fostering rhythm in a reader's inner voice. The authors conducted two experiments to determine whether stylistic alterations to print that marked stress pulses fostered the rendering of rhythm (study 1) and stress (study 2) during silent reading. In both experiments, Gross and her colleagues found that prior exposure to poetry was related to prosodic awareness. In their ongoing work, they intend to evaluate the potential contribution of marking stress explicitly in written English to aid struggling readers and late speakers of English. In the third article in this issue, VanDerHeide examines the potential of classroom talk as writing instruction and how it might relate to writing moves in literary arguments. She used a genre theory and sociocultural discourse lens to explore how a teacher in an Advanced Placement Literature course approached the teaching of argumentative writing. Conducting an in-depth analysis of teacher moves, VanDerHeide examined a number of student essays to delve deeply into how these moves might affect writing. Specifically, her analysis focused on how classroom talk may support students in developing literary arguments and how these students reacted to these moves in speaking and writing. Such a fine-grained analysis has important implications not only for classroom-based instruction in writing literary arguments but also for teacher education and professional development. It also may lead to delineating some high-leverage strategies for teaching this important genre in the future. Increasingly, students are encouraged to use multiple texts and documents in comprehending text. Bråten, McCrudden, Lund, Brante, and Strømsø conducted an intriguing analysis of the effects of author expertise and content relevance on students’ selection, processing, and use of multiple documents. In this study, secondary students were randomly assigned to conditions that varied in terms of the familiarity of the topic and author expertise. The researchers found that content relevance had strong effects on students’ selection, processing, and use of documents. These effects were totally independent of whether the topic was more or less familiar. Interestingly, the students valued author expertise to a greater extent when the topic was less familiar. Furthermore, brief instructions to focus on author expertise was especially effective for less familiar topics. Both theoretical issues and implications for instructional interventions make this research especially timely for literacy researchers. Finally, we end this issue with a commentary inspired by a previous article published in RRQ. In the commentary, Reynolds and Daniel argue for interrogating the important issue of scaffolding. Traditionally, the notion of scaffolding has taken on a rather all-inclusive definition, one that is hard to clearly identify or even replicate in other settings. In contrast, the authors suggest a greater focus on contingency in scaffolding interactions and note that a greater specificity of the term scaffolding might enhance our understanding of contingency scaffolding. In their analysis, Reynolds and Daniel describe a number of implications that might lead to a more robust analysis of the various active ingredients that may constitute scaffolding. Furthermore, they lay out a number of interesting next steps in a research agenda that may be highly informative to applied scholars. Thus, this issue of RRQ addresses many important and interesting topics in writing and reading not previously tackled in our literacy world. Once again, it also confirms that we as literacy scholars are becoming totally global in our research and in our research community. Susan B. Neuman Linda B. Gambrell