The Information Text Gap: The Mismatch between Non-Narrative Text Types in Basal Readers and 2009 NAEP Recommended Guidelines

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare the text genres represented in two recent California-adopted basal readers (grades 1 through 6) with the guidelines for informational text types in the 2009 NAEP framework. Phase 1 of data collection involved the use of two measures to determine the presence of each text genre: number of pages and number of selections. The researchers assigned pages and selections to one of four categories: narrative, poetry, play, or nonfiction. The second phase of data collection involved classification of nonfiction selections according to one of four categories: literary nonfiction, or one of three types of informational text: expository, argumentation and persuasive, or procedural and documents. The researchers computed percentages of pages and selections devoted to each genre and each type of nonfiction across grade levels and series. Results overall indicated that 40% of pages/selections in both series were devoted to nonfiction text, and that 50% of nonfiction text selections were expository and 33% were literary nonfiction. The findings indicate that these basal readers expose students to more nonfiction text than in the past, but that the exposure to informational text is still less than recommended by the 2009 NAEP and limited mainly to exposition.