Michael Pressley

Cognitive Strategies Instruction: From Basic Research to Classroom Instruction

during games. They make decisions about who to put in the lineup based, in part, on their perception of which players are most likely to perform well against today’s opposing pitcher. During the game, they make pitching changes when they feel their starting pitcher is no longer effective or seems to be getting tired, attempting to replace the starter with a relief pitcher likely to retire the next few batters. Their strategies are not static, but subject to change depending on their effectiveness. Individual strategies are often embedded in a network of strategies, with the baseball manager’s strategy for getting the most out of his pitcher complemented by strategies for increasing run productivity and reducing the chances that a recovering player will be reinjured. There are many, many problems that human beings attempt, with some strategies more likely to result in success than others. Understanding effective performance requires understanding the psychology of strategies; promoting human effectiveness at a task requires understanding of the strategies that can accomplish the task and how to develop such strategies among learners. Strategies development has deservedly received much study by cognitive psychologists, with educational psychologists doing much work to detail how affective, behavioral, and cognitive strategies develop, and can be developed, to increase student performance with respect to important academic tasks. In this chapter, we begin with a definition of a “strategy” and brief discussion of constructs related to research in this area, including procedural and declarative knowledge, long and shortterm memory, metacognition, and good information processing. We then turn to important findings from the earliest research on human strategies use, as these are critical to both understanding current research and to the development of further research. What we have learned about strategies use and strategies instruction in academic areas among students in the elementary through secondary grades then becomes the focus of this chapter.

Self-Regulation through Transactional Strategies Instruction

In a qualitative, multiple case study, we explored the challenges and successes teachers encounter while participating in a professional development program aimed at improving their reading comprehension instruction so as to increase students self-regulated use of comprehension strategies. We documented five fifth grade teachers experiences as they participated in a year-long professional development program. Teachers frequently faced obstacles related to texts, classroom management, instructional decisions, their students, time, and assessment issues. However, the teachers reported positive changes in their thinking and reading comprehension instruction. We also observed growth in their students reading comprehension behaviors, with some students reaching the self-control level of self-regulated use of comprehension strategies as the year proceeded.

The state of educational intervention research as viewed through the lens of literacy intervention

The characteristics of educational intervention research are reviewed: Educational intervention research is inspired by diverse theories, targeted at a variety of simple to very complex interventions, and includes a variety of methods and measurements. Some interventions have been studied much more than others, with the more studied ones often summarized in meta-analyses and other integrative reviews. The study of some of the more complex interventions pose new ethical challenges. Although some intervention research impacts educational practice and policy, much more could and probably should.

Providence-St. Mel School: How a School That Works for African American Students Works

A portrait, using grounded theory qualitative methodologies, was constructed of a K–12 school serving urban, African American students, one producing high achievement. The primary data were observations complemented by questionnaire responses and document analyses. Consistent with conclusions in the effective schooling literature, this school has strong leadership, accountability, academic focus, and orderliness. Other aspects of schooling seemed also to support achievement, many consistent with aspects of teaching and learning emphasized in the educational psychology literature. The theory emerging from this study is that the high achievement in this school is caused by multiple factors, including decidedly psychological ones. This article is a portrait of a school, one serving urban, African American students, one with graduates who achieve at high levels. The portrait was composed by researchers steeped in educational psychology and its perspectives, working with the school’s administration to do so. One motivation for this study was to begin to fill a gap that was highlighted by Hilliard and Amankwatia (2003). Their major conclusion was that African American students can excel, with the key ingredient being good teaching. Hilliard and Amankwatia also observed, however, that little is known about the schooling that positively affects African Americans. They called for qualitative studies to document just what goes on in classrooms and schools that are very effective with students who do poorly in traditional classrooms and schools. Such work could be the basis for a theory of effective teaching and schooling that subsequently might be tested in quantitative designs. Thus, in this study, we constructed a case study—intending to produce a theory grounded in data

College Seniors' Theory of Their Academic Motivation.

College seniors participated in an ethnographic interview study about their academic motivations. It was found that grades and graduation are 2 primary distal target goals that motivate their academic efforts during the senior year. A variety of proximal factors were also reported to affect the seniors motivation. These factors can be divided into students internal and external factors. Among the internal factors are student characteristics (e.g., social class, expectations) and student beliefs (e.g., belief about control, belief about learning and mastery), whereas the external factors comprise academic-related factors (i.e., course-, examination-, and assignment-related characteristics, reward, and feedback), social factors (i.e., instructors, family members, and peers), general college environment (i.e., physical environment, academic associations, and internship/volunteer opportunities), and extracurricular activities (i.e., fraternities/sororities and sports participation). These results suggest that there is much to learn about academic motivation during the college years. In particular, there is a need for research employing methodologies other than quantitative, survey-based method that can capture the complexities of motivation during college.

A Portrait of Benchmark School: How a School Produces High Achievement in Students who Previously Failed.

This is a case study of Benchmark School, which educates 6- to 15-year-olds with a history of school failure. Grounded theory methodology was employed to generate a theory about how the school promotes achievement. Many elements potentially promoting academic achievement were identified, including ones informed by psychological theory and research (e.g., evidence-based literacy instructional practices, strategies instruction, conceptually focused content instruction, many mechanisms to motivate students) but also, selective admissions, human resources (i.e., well-trained teachers, supportive parents, skilled counselors), small class size, and a supportive physical context. The theory that emerges is that many elements must be articulated to remediate struggling elementary students, although some are more important than others.

How Does Bennett Woods Elementary School Produce Such High Reading and Writing Achievement

The authors developed a grounded theory about how a school serving relatively advantaged children produces high reading and writing achievement compared with schools serving similar populations of students. The schools faculty is reading and writing focused, and students experience many books as they receive explicit, demanding instruction (i.e., about how to read words, comprehend, write) connected to content learning. The school offers a positive, motivating environment. In sum, many elements that potentially supported achievement were identified, including explicit teaching of skills in the context of much reading, writing, and content learning, which is consistent with balanced perspectives on reading and writing development. A major hypothesis in the grounded theory is that even with relatively advantaged populations, great efforts may be required to produce high reading and writing achievement.

How to Publish in Scholarly Journals

This article is based on an invited talk entitled “Getting Published While in Grad School,” which was presented for the Graduate Student Council of the American Educational Research Association at the association’s 2005 annual meeting. The authors discuss issues to consider when one is planning and writing a scholarly manuscript, and they offer several suggestions about substance, organization, and style. They also describe the journal submission and peer review process, including what to do if a journal editor’s decision is “revise and resubmit,” “accept pending revisions,” or “reject.”

Balanced Elementary Literacy Instruction in the United States: A Personal Perspective

As I write this chapter in late 2003, I reflect that I cannot count the number of invitations I have received in the past few years to talk about balanced reading instruction, particularly in the elementary grades. Even more uncountable are the number of references I have seen in print in the past few years to “balanced instruction.” Plugging “balanced instruction,” “balanced teaching,” and “balanced literacy instruction,” into the data bases of the electronic booksellers, I come up with more than 20 titles on the topic. Balanced literacy instruction seems very much to be “in.” Perhaps I should feel good about that, since I wrote the first book on the topic (Pressley, 1998) and then, as I broadened my perspective on it, revised that book (Pressley, 2002), anticipating I will do so again (Pressley, 2006?). The fact of the matter is that I do not feel so good about all of the activities claiming to be about balanced instruction. There are many who are using the variations of the term, “balanced instruction,” in ways that are very different that I intended and in ways that do not inspire confidence in me that children’s literacy will be much advanced by their efforts.