-DEVELOPMENT AND DETERMINATION OF POTENTIAL EFFICACY-

This project is an intervention study that develops and tests the potential efficacy of an instructional approach to help community college developmental education students prepare for the reading and writing demands of courses in science and other areas. The project is funded wholly by the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education in the amount of $1,168,758 over the three-year period beginning June 1, 2006. Three community colleges are participating in the study: Bronx Community College of the City University of New York, Los Angeles Pierce College, and Norwalk Community College.  

The instructional approach is called the Content Comprehension Strategy Intervention (CCSI), a self-directed curricular supplement designed for the study, which provides guided practice in reading comprehension and writing skills using text from science textbooks. It is anticipated that practice with this type of text should be applicable to future science courses as well as other courses requiring the ability to comprehend factual, dense text. Apart from testing the potential value of CCSI overall, the study compares student performance using science material to student performance using a variety of expository texts on different topics, drawn from traditional developmental education textbooks. CCSI focuses on written summarization, vocabulary development, and question-generation, and also provides practice with tasks found in reading and writing tests that students may have to pass to exit remediation. The research methodology includes randomized assignment with a control group and a no-treatment comparison group, as well as qualitative interviews. Reports based on this research will become available in 2008.

For further information contact the Principal Investigator, Dr. Dolores Perin.