Article #9 Technology-Enhanced Reading Performance:Defining a Research Agenda

Edyburn, D.L. (2007, January/February/March). Technology-Enhanced Reading Performance: Defining a Research Agenda. Reading Research Quarterly, 42(1), 146–152. doi: 10.1598/RRQ.42.1.7


In each of the scenarios presented, it is important to consider the event that stimulates an intervention and associated support services. Such issues are clear in the first example. However, in the second scenario, there is no single event that triggers action. Therefore, how long do we continue to provide reading instruction when a child is clearly not benefiting from it? This point is not meant to suggest that we give up teaching a child to read. Rather, at what point do we intervene with compensatory strategies, including assistive technology, to enable students to bypass, for example, the decoding aspects of reading that they have not been able to master in order to engage in the higher order processes of extracting meaning from text?

A fundamental problem for many struggling readers, their parents, and their teachers is that there are few benchmarks to guide decision making about using assistive technology when the nature of a disability is cognitive rather than physical. Given that the basic processes associated with reading and comprehending are cognitive, the field has been caught unprepared to address issues of how technology compensates for cognitive impairments (Edyburn, 2000, 2003a). Several factors may explain the lack of attention devoted to assistive technology and reading and the minimal knowledge base that has accumulated to date.

Instructional methods often cause an achievement gap for underperforming students;Black students, students with disabilities, students living in poverty, and students whose first language is not English. There is a definite line between grade-level achievement and performance. The weakness of assistive technology is that there still needs to be more research on the underdeveloped range of technological text-to-speech tools. A strength is that federal policies are starting to realize that through using technology as an intervention for struggling readers is a way to differentiate instruction.

The findings were that academic performance that is achieved without outside help is more esteemed than performance that is contingent on tools or resources. there is a bias against using technology for struggling readers that is called, "naked independence". The conception is students using outside sources aren't performing as well. They argue that these students may become dependant on the machines and will not be able to test well on state tests. Although the use if technology does challenge the theory of working without technology the students are able to perform well and decrease the learning gap.