The Science of Reading: Background Knowledge - What EdLeaders Need to Know
In the second blog post and podcast episode in this series, I found myself back in the midst of shots being fired as I spent time unpacking Fluency with the differing opinions among thought-leaders as to how to build a reader's ability to read with speed, accuracy, and proper expression.
After the spirited debates of the last two blog posts and podcast episodes, I am happy to spend time today on a strand that evokes consensus among literacy experts on both sides of the reading wars. Today I am pulling out the strand of background knowledge.
Professors Susan B. Neuman, Tanya Kaefer, and Ashley Pinkham wrote, “There is a virtual consensus that background knowledge is essential for reading comprehension. Put simply, the more you know about a topic, the easier it is to read a text, understand it, and retain the information. Previous studies have shown that background knowledge plays an enormous role in reading comprehension. They cited studies by Shapiro, Hirsch, and a study by Alexander, Kulikowich, & Schulze.
Before diving into today’s topic, please let me highlight the foundation for this series.
The Science of Reading is undergirded by theories of how students learn to read and comprehend text. At the very basic level is the Simple View of Reading Theory which states that there are two elements that combine to result in Reading Comprehension. The Simple View of Reading formula states:
Decoding x Language Comprehension = Reading Comprehension
From this grew Scarborough's Reading Rope as conceived by Dr. Hollis S. Scarborough. Dr. Scarborough believed that the elements of Word Recognition and the elements of Language Comprehension all weave together into the rope of Reading Comprehension. Just like a true rope, the more strands present and the stronger each strand is, the stronger the rope is. It is surmised that if a student is weaker in one strand, the strength of the other strands can still help the student comprehend what she is reading.
The strands of Word Recognition include Decoding, Phonological Awareness, and Sight Word Recognition.
The strands of Language Comprehension include background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge.
In this new series on what EdLeaders need to know about the Science of Reading, my goal is to peel apart the individual strands of reading comprehension and build our shared understanding of learning to read.
Previously, we worked through fluency, from the Word Recognition strand. Today, we are focused on background knowledge, a crucial strand of Language Comprehension.
As the writers at BrainTrust define it, “Background knowledge is everything a child already knows about a topic prior to engaging in the lesson or activity. So for reading, background knowledge refers to all of the information and understanding that students already have that will help them gain deep meaning from whatever text they are reading.”
Earlier, I referenced the work of Professors Susan B. Neuman, Tanya Kaefer, and Ashley Pinkham. These researchers worked together in a three-phase research study to understand the contribution of background knowledge to children's comprehension.
Essentially, they used two groups of four years olds, based on the child’s SES or socioeconomic status. One group was from families identified as low-SES, and the other group was from families identified as middle-SES. Using age-appropriate questions about birds, they were able to determine that “low-SES children had significantly more limited background knowledge than their middle-class peers.”
Armed with this information, they moved along to the second phase of their study. They created an illustrated storybook about four different types of birds. As you might expect, the low-SES children, with their limited background knowledge, demonstrated significantly poorer comprehension of the text and had “greater difficulty comprehending the story" than their middle-SES peers.
In the third phase of the study, Drs. Neuman, Kaefer, and Pinkham eliminated the impact of background knowledge by creating a storybook with a made-up context and characters that would be new and novel to both groups. This time, the researchers found no differences between the group’s word learning, comprehension, or ability to make inferences. Taken together, the researchers found that “these results suggest that differences in low-SES children's comprehension skills may be attributed, in part, to limitations in their preexisting knowledge base.”
For a moment, let’s step away and simply process this research. Children with less background knowledge were not able to comprehend the text at the same levels as students with more background knowledge. This seems intuitive, but it is an important, and often overlooked factor. This dovetails with the work of Annie Ward and Stephanie Harvey on the importance of reading volume. Annie and Stephanie recently joined me for two regular episodes on the EdLeader podcast to talk about how students need to read outside of school and how much reading a mere 20 minutes a day impacts the achievement of students.
National Urban Literacy expert Kathryn Starke writes that “Background knowledge is acquired by the number of experiences someone has in life or the amount of knowledge they have retained from reading or listening. Reading a variety of genres of books, listening to multiple media sources, and engaging in conversations on multiple topics only increase someone’s background knowledge.”
Readers need to know something about the subject they are reading about. Lacking any background knowledge on the topic, they will struggle to fully understand what the text is about. “Background knowledge helps students of all ages and reading levels fully understand text.” (K. Starke)
Consider the number of words in the English language that have very different meanings based on the context in which they are used. Thinking of our youngest readers, if I asked them the meaning of the word “bark,” the answer would be either the outer layer of a tree or the sound a dog makes depending on the context. If a reader has background knowledge about a tree, they are not tripped up or confused by the concept of “bark” on trees. If they do not have any background knowledge about trees, they could be confused wondering why a tree is making sounds like a dog.
Similarly, the word “squash” means a vegetable, the act of smashing something flat, or a game played with racquets and a rubber ball. Background knowledge enables readers to choose between multiple meanings of words. Readers make inferences from the text based on their background knowledge. A reader with poor background knowledge struggles through a text in a way that others with more background knowledge would not.
Once a reader has decoded the print into words, reading comprehension requires inferences that are built on background knowledge and not necessarily explicitly stated in the text. As Kathryn Starke has stated, “When readers have a wealth of previous life experiences or have gained information about a specific topic or content area, their reading comprehension level is automatically increased. When a student already has the background knowledge to support a full understanding of the presented text, their level of comprehension expands. These students are able to easily analyze and interpret, explain their perspective, infer and summarize the text simply because they feel more confident in the subject matter.”
As we think about our academic subject areas, we expect students to continually build upon and build up their background knowledge. As demonstrated earlier in the research study I shared, we know that reading comprehension is tied to background knowledge. That being the case, we should make every effort to aid and grow background knowledge in our instructional activities. The background knowledge of a setting, a historical event, an invention, or a famous individual can greatly affect a child’s understanding of any given text. A student will not fully understand what they are reading if they do not have background knowledge on the subject to draw upon.
Again, from the good folks at Braintrust, “Background knowledge is crucial in order for students to fully develop their reading skills. When students use prior knowledge, their brains are able to create new connections between what they already knew and the new information they are learning. The more background knowledge a student has about a topic, the more deeply they’ll be able to engage with it.”
Implementing background knowledge should be a creative, engaging part of an instructional activity. In her article titled, “The Importance of Background Knowledge in Understanding Text,” Kathryn Starke provides powerful examples of how to build children's background knowledge.
Classrooms can take virtual field trips and track settings on a map or globe to understand how the setting impacts the understanding of the text. A story that takes place in China is significantly different from a story that takes place in Ireland. Books take readers to many locations; the background of the location is a key story element to understand. Bringing the book to life also increases background knowledge. If the book takes place in a garden, consider creating a school garden. If the book is about sea life, consider taking a real field trip to the nearest aquarium.
(As an aside, the North Carolina Aquarium here in my home county, Carteret County, is incredible!)
If a book is about a famous musician, listen to the music. If the book is about the weather, invite a meteorologist to come speak to the class. If the book is about Peruvian food, consider making the food or eating at a Peruvian restaurant. Experiences increase reading comprehension; teachers have the opportunity to provide experiences that will result in increased comprehension for students and additional background knowledge for the future.
A 2021 issue of the journal “Reading Psychology" shared a research article titled “The Role of Background Knowledge in Reading Comprehension: A Critical Review.” It was written by four literacy researchers in Australia. Drs. Reid Smith and Pamela Snow are with LaTrobe University in Bendigo, Australia. Dr. Tanya Serry is with LaTrobe University in Melbourne, Australia, and Dr. Lorraine Hammond is with Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia.
The researchers identified “twenty-three studies that met their criteria and focused on the links between background knowledge and reading comprehension of children in the mid to late primary years.” Review of the 23 studies “findings highlight that higher levels of background knowledge have a range of effects that are influenced by the nature of the text, the quality of the situation model required, and the presence of reader misconceptions about the text. Our findings also indicate that background knowledge impacts differentially on stronger and weaker readers. Readers with lower background knowledge appear to benefit more from text with high cohesion, while weaker readers were able to compensate somewhat for their relatively weak reading skills in the context of a high degree of background knowledge.”
This is big. The researchers found that background knowledge helps struggling readers (or I should say striving readers as recent podcast guests Stephanie Harvey and Annie Ward would call them.) Background knowledge helps striving readers overcome weaker word recognition skills. This is absolutely in line with my understanding of Scarborough’s Reading Rope theory. Weaker strands in the rope are compensated for by the stronger strands in the reading rope.
Let’s get back to the review and allow the researchers to share their findings directly with us. “Several studies included in the review demonstrated a compensatory effect for knowledge and reading ability; low-skilled readers with strong knowledge were able to compensate for generally poor comprehension skills (Adams et al., 1995; Holmes, 1983; Recht & Leslie, 1988). There appears to be a tradeoff between knowledge and general reading ability at this age; a child with a strong knowledge base can compensate to some extent for poor reading skills, and a child with strong reading skills can compensate to some extent for deficiencies in knowledge (Adams et al., 1995; Cervetti & Wright, 2020).”
They conclude that “The role of background knowledge has been a well-recognized and researched aspect of reading comprehension for the last four decades. Knowledge plays an integral role in most theories of reading, yet remains an under-addressed aspect of reading instruction for teachers…
…background knowledge partially, not completely, compensates for reading skill deficiencies. Although misconceptions may be an inhibitor in comprehension, the presence of rich schemata gives readers a greater opportunity to build a strong understanding of the texts they read.” They also emphasized the “importance of the systematic and sequential building of background knowledge for an increased ability to comprehend a range of texts in upper-primary school children.”
I do want to pause and recognize that there are different types of background knowledge and they are helpful to readers in different contexts. Previously known information about a topic comprises one type of background knowledge. This background knowledge helps a student as she is reading about a specific topic and can use what she already knows to understand what is being read and can add to what she already knows by what she is now reading. There is also conceptual background knowledge. If I, as a reader, understand the mechanics of “story” or the typical flow of a particular genre, I can make more accurate predictions about what is about to happen in what I am reading and understand what I am reading at a deeper level.
The bottom line is that when students activate their prior knowledge, their reading comprehension grows.
In the study, I shared above, Drs. Neuman, Kaefer, and Pinkham concluded that “Without greater efforts to enhance background knowledge, differences in children's knowledge base may further exacerbate the differences in children's vocabulary and comprehension. The imperative to foster children's background knowledge as a means for providing a firm foundation for learning, therefore, is greater than ever. Background knowledge is essential in a student’s ability to fully comprehend text. When we as educators understand the importance of this literacy component, we develop lessons that lead students to become stronger thinkers and life-long readers and learners.”
“Stronger thinkers and life-long readers and learners,” surely that is a goal that every educator, regardless of which side of the reading wars they line up on would agree with.
References
Building Background Knowledge by Susan Neuman, Tanya Kaefer, and Ashley Pinkham
The Importance of Understanding Background Knowledge by Kathryn Starke
The Role of Background Knowledge in Reading Comprehension: A Critical Review by Reid Smith, Pamela Snow, Tanya Serry, and Dr. Lorraine Hammond
The Role of Background Knowledge in Reading Comprehension: A Critical Review by Reid Smith, Pamela Snow, Tanya Serry, and Dr. Lorraine Hammond
Components of the Reading Rope: Background Knowledge posted at braintrust
Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice by Dr. Hollis S. Scarborough
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