Havi ng done some reading in the literature over the past 12 years, I would like to report: neuroscience research hasn't proven very much yet about reading instruction. (Brain research on reading processes and development is more promising, though findings even there are far from definitive.) But brain research has proven fascinating to many educators nonetheless, and increasingly it has been making appearances, often trivial but occasionally profound, in the literature related to literacy instruction and development. We might expect to see continuing interest in the future.

In this review, we lay the groundwork for an interdisciplinary conversation between literacy education research and relevant neuro-science research. We review recent neuroscience research on correlates of proposed cognitive subprocesses in text decoding and reading comprehension and analyze some of the methodological and conceptual challenges of bridging neuroscience and literacy education research. We note that much more research on decoding processes in typically developing children is needed before pro-found implications for instruction can be expected. We also note that the diverse neural activity demonstrated in research on text comprehension contradicts our traditional categorical distinctions about the role of syntax, semantics, and discourse in meaning-making with language. We observe some of the debates within the neuroscience community regarding research design and statistical analysis and note two of the possibly competing theoretical frames for making sense of the brain and behavior. We conclude that con-tributions from neuroscience offer the possibility of interdisciplinary integration of brain, social, cognitive, and cultural perspectives in ways beneficial for reading education.

Cognitive constructivism is an umbrella term for a host of related epistemological and psychological theories about the nature of knowledge and how it is formed through a knower's mental (hence cognitive) processes. As the metaphor of construction implies, cognitive constructivist theories assume that knowledge is a thing made by the mind rather than received from a source. Knowledge, in this view, is not transmitted all of a piece with meaning intact or contained, nor accrued piecemeal and then reconstituted. Rather, knowledge is said to be constructed, or actively structured, by a knower's mental processes even as particular purposes and contextual constraints guide the result. The anthropomorphic image of a builder or bricoleur (tinkerer) creating a knowledge structure, edifi ce, or machine is occasionally employed to illustrate this metaphor of mental process, and may be helpful if not taken too literally.

Early childhood care providers are inadequately prepared to make sense of findings from the neurosciences, and are too easily misled by glib assertions from marketers about the brain and what neuroscience reveals about learning. To counter this confusion, teachers need more than simplified details about brain structure and mental process. They require a better understanding of foundational, if non-intuitive, constructs in current developmental science, including developmental biology and psychology, to better understand how brains change over time. To facilitate the introduction of this, an easily grasped metaphor might be employed that could encompass both neural and developmental processes and relate them coherently to what educators already know about learning and effective teaching. However, successful implementation of this operative metaphor in educators' professional preparation and development will be arduous.

In this review of literacy education research in North America over the past century, the authors examined the historical succession of theoretical frameworks on students’ active participation in their own literacy learning, and in particular the metatheoretical assumptions that justify those frameworks. The authors used motivation and engagement as focal topics by which to trace this history because of their conceptual proximity to active literacy participation. They mapped the uses of motivation and engagement in the major literacy journals and handbooks over the past century, constructed a grounded typology of theoretical assumptions about literate agency and its development to code those uses, and reviewed similar histories of theoretical frameworks in educational, psychological, philosophical, and literary scholarship to draft a narrative history of the emergence of engaged literacies.

This article was originally published in International Encyclopedia of Education, published by Elsevier, and the attached copy is provided by Elsevier for the author's benefit and for the benefit of the author's institution, for non-commercial research and educational use including without limitation use in instruction at your institution, sending it to specific colleagues who you know, and providing a copy to your institution's administrator.

The number of online courses being taught is increasing each year. Many instructional technology tools are available to help support this type of environment. Historically, research has focused on the specific technologies available to support different learning experiences; however limited research exists that identifies if using these tools in the online environment transfers to and changes or enhances the traditional face-to-face learning environment. This paper outlines the process of the construction of a reliable and valid survey to measure how teaching in an online course environment for the first time later impacts the traditional face-toface classroom environment taught by the same instructor.