Taking the long view: understanding the precursors and consequences of poor reading comprehension identified in mid-childhood

基础研究和教育政策将重点放在儿童如何学习阅读文字的挑战上，这是有充分理由的：能够很好地阅读文字是阅读的关键“前端”，因为它提供了从印刷品获取语言的手段。然而，阅读的最终目标是理解所读的内容--从文本中构建意义。阅读理解是复杂的和多方面的，需要一系列的认知和语言操作。一些孩子发现这一点非常困难。大约5%-10%的孩子理解能力较差：他们在单词阅读方面对他们这个年龄的人来说阅读能力很好，但这种表面上的成功只是表面上的，因为他们很难理解他们读到的东西。在理解阅读理解不良的本质方面取得了很好的进展。我们知道，理解力差的人的困难并不是具体的，而是往往发生在更广泛的语言问题的背景下。实验表明，理解力差的人在阅读和听语言时，很难形成连贯和完整的理解。令人高兴的是，这一证据基础的质量推动了教学方法的发展，从而在课堂上带来了有教育意义的改进。然而，关键的是，现有的研究规模小，焦点狭窄。其结果是，我们目前的科学知识存在着很大的差距。这限制了我们的理论，也限制了可以得出的指导教育实践的结论。其中一个限制是大多数研究都集中在儿童期中期。人们普遍认为，理解力差的类别很可能是异质性的。然而，人们对这种异质性的性质和程度知之甚少，也不知道这些因素之间的复杂相互作用，这些因素导致一些孩子在入学时面临理解能力低下的风险。更好地理解这些问题对于科学知识至关重要，也是指导早期识别和课堂上有针对性的干预的关键。至于后来的发展，人们对中学理解力差的学生的教育结果知之甚少。他们在小学的困难是暂时的，还是与中学成绩不佳有关，也许会延伸到整个课程？就课后目的地而言，哪些功能结果与阅读理解能力差有关？在非教育、就业或培训领域的年轻人中，理解力差的人是否过多？最后，对理解力差的人的研究往往集中在语言和识字上，但语言和识字并不是在真空中运作的。鉴于语言在幸福、同伴关系和人生成功中的中心地位，可以合理地预测，理解力差的年轻人将面临一系列不那么积极的社会、情感和行为结果的风险。为了完善理论，需要更好地理解复杂的共生现象，它们也对课堂和支持儿童语言、识字和社会情感需求所需的干预类型具有重要影响。我们的目标是通过分析作为雅芳亲子纵向研究(ALSPAC)的一部分收集的数据来填补这些关键的科学知识空白。这项研究招募了14,000多名孕妇，自那以后一直跟踪她们的孩子进入成年早期。这个异常丰富的数据集将使我们能够识别出9岁时英国最大的贫困儿童样本。然后，我们将评估理解问题的前兆和相关后果，其广度、规模和时间尺度都是以往研究所无法比拟的。ALSPAC对健康和幸福的广泛关注使我们能够解决儿童在社交、学术和职业发展过程中理解困难的现实关联。

Basic research and education policy have focused on the challenge of how children learn to read words, and for good reason: being able to read words well is the critical "front end" of reading as it provides the means to access language from print. The ultimate goal of reading, however, is to understand what has been read - to construct meaning from text. Reading comprehension is complex and multi-faceted, drawing on a range of cognitive and linguistic operations. Some children find this disproportionately difficult. Approximately 5-10% of children are poor comprehenders: they read well for their age in terms of word reading, but this apparent success is superficial as they struggle to understand what they have read. Excellent progress has been made in understanding the nature of poor reading comprehension. We know that poor comprehenders' difficulties are not specific, but tend to occur in the context of language problems more generally. Experiments have revealed that poor comprehenders find it difficult to form a coherent and integrated understanding as they read and listen to language. Pleasingly, the quality of this evidence base has motivated the development of teaching approaches that have led to educationally meaningful improvements in the classroom. Critically, however, existing studies are small in scale and narrow in focus. The consequence of this is that there are significant gaps in our current scientific knowledge. This constrains our theories, and it also limits the conclusions that can be drawn to guide educational practice.One limitation is that most research has focused on mid-childhood. It is generally accepted the poor comprehender category is likely to be heterogenous. Yet little is known about the nature or extent of the heterogeneity, or the complex interplay of factors that lead some children to be at risk for poor comprehension by the time they enter school. A greater understanding of these issues is critical for scientific knowledge, and to guide early identification and targeted interventions in the classroom.Turning to later on in development, little is known about the educational outcomes of poor comprehenders in secondary school. Are their difficulties in primary school transient, or are they associated with under-achievement in secondary school, perhaps extending across the curriculum? What functional outcomes are associated with poor reading comprehension in terms of post-school destinations? Are poor comprehenders over-represented in NEETs - young people not in education, employment or training? Finally, studies of poor comprehenders have tended to focus on language and literacy, yet language and literacy do not operate in vacuum. Given the centrality of language for well-being, peer relations and life success, it is reasonable to predict that young people with poor comprehension will be at risk for a range of less positive social, emotional and behavioural outcomes. Complex co-occurrences need to be better understood in order to refine theory, and they also have important implications for the classroom and the type of intervention needed to support children's language, literacy and socio-emotional needs.We aim to fill these critical gaps in scientific knowledge by analysing data collected as part of The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). This study recruited over 14,000 pregnant women and has since followed their children into early adulthood. This extraordinarily rich dataset will allow us to identify the largest sample of UK poor comprehenders at 9 years of age. We will then assess the precursors and associated consequences of comprehension problems at a breadth, scale and time scale unparalleled by previous studies. ALSPAC's broad focus on health and wellbeing enables us to address the real-world correlates of comprehension difficulties as children develop socially, academically and professionally.