{"id":6676374,"date":"2026-07-12T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/?p=6676374"},"modified":"2026-06-12T10:12:33","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T15:12:33","slug":"the-complex-relationship-between-knowledge-and-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/the-complex-relationship-between-knowledge-and-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"The Complex Relationship between Knowledge and Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Given the time constraints that all teachers face, what are the most effective strategies to help our students with reading comprehension? Should we focus on particular <em>reading strategies<\/em>: say &#8212; finding the main idea of a passage, predicting what will come next, visualizing the scene? Or do we serve students better by building overall historical, cultural, and scientific knowledge: say &#8212; the development of the silk road, an understanding of erosion, the innovations of Martha Graham?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like so many debates in education, this one prompts heated &#8212; often exasperated &#8212; debates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/full\/10.1080\/02702711.2026.2644971\">recent study<\/a> considers such questions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Faith Bandler, and Beyond<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>A group of Australian researchers worked with 8-year-olds at a relatively affluent school. Over the span of eight weeks, students learned about several topics: artifacts, fossil fuels, a famous Australian voting-rights activist named Faith Bandler, Nelson Mandela, and so forth. Typically, the sequence went like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Teachers taught a multi-class unit on one topic. At the end of the unit, students took a short-answer quiz on that topic.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Soon after, students read a passage related to the topic. Once again, students took a test. \n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Some of the questions simply tested <em>knowledge <\/em>from the reading passage. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Others required drawing <em>inferences <\/em>based on the reading passage. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Still others required drawing inferences <em>from the <strong>preceding unit <\/strong>taught by the classroom teacher<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>By following all these steps, researchers could consider important questions: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>How much did <em>prior knowledge <\/em>from the unit help students <em>understand the reading passage<\/em>? <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>And: did the individual student&#8217;s <em>skill at reading <\/em>matter?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I should also describe one important variation from this typical sequence. In most cases, the reading passage and test came <em>soon after <\/em>the classroom unit on a topic. With two topics, the teacher <em>waited four weeks <\/em>after the classroom unit for students to read the related passage and take a test on it. For this reason, researchers could answer another important question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Do the benefits of prior knowledge fade within four weeks?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Given all these steps and calculations, what did the researchers conclude?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Certainty, and Uncertainty<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Because this study measured so many different variables in so many circumstances, I&#8217;m not going to report numerical results. (You can find all the data <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/full\/10.1080\/02702711.2026.2644971\">here<\/a> if you&#8217;re curious.) Instead, I want to focus on plausible conclusions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More broadly, I want to push back on strong claims I&#8217;ve been hearing about this study. When I first came across it, the quick headlines read &#8212; in effect &#8212; that this study shows conclusively the importance of prior knowledge for reading comprehension. By implication, this study has been offered as a way to support a &#8220;knowledge-rich&#8221; curriculum. I&#8217;m not persuaded by that reading of these data; let me try to explain why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/AdobeStock_517285522-1024x683.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6676586\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/AdobeStock_517285522-1024x683.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/AdobeStock_517285522-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/AdobeStock_517285522-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/AdobeStock_517285522-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/AdobeStock_517285522-2048x1365.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Conclusion #1<\/strong>: As you recall, on two occasions students waited four weeks after the unit before they read the related passage and took the follow-up test. How did those students do on the reading test compared to their peers who read the passage right away?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sure enough, after a four week gap, the benefits of that prior knowledge had begun to fade. Students in the waiting-four-weeks group scored lower than the read-right-away group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the one hand, this finding makes great sense. I&#8217;m not surprised &#8212; and I doubt that you are &#8212; that students who have background knowledge fresh in mind will understand a reading passage better than students who haven&#8217;t thought about the topic in the last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the other hand, this conclusion cuts two ways. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Yes: it highlights the importance of prior knowledge. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>However &#8212; and this is a big &#8220;however&#8221; &#8212; it doesn&#8217;t necessarily support the broad claims of a knowledge-rich curriculum. These students didn&#8217;t benefit from having gotten relevant background knowledge <em>at some point in the past<\/em>. They benefited from getting that knowledge <em>immediately before reading<\/em>. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>In their strongest version, claims supporting a knowledge-rich curriculum emphasize that getting knowledge will benefit reading comprehension at some point in the future. This study does not support that claim &#8212; at least if that &#8220;point in the future&#8221; is a month or more after initial instruction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At a minimum, this finding suggests that a knowledge-rich curriculum should include frequent review in order to benefit future reading comprehension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">More Uncertainty<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>If I put several parts of this study together, I can also summarize one theme this way:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Conclusion #2: <\/strong>Strong readers did better at almost everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>They knew more topic content at the end of the classroom lessons than the weaker readers did.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They scored higher on the factual knowledge part of the reading tests.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>They were more successful at drawing inferences on the reading tests.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Whereas the four week delay reduced scores for weaker readers, that delay did NOT (statistically significantly) reduce scores for stronger readers. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Let&#8217;s go back to the first of those bullet points: &#8220;stronger readers knew more topic content at the end of the classroom lessons than the weaker readers did.&#8221; This result strikes me as very puzzling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I understand why weaker readers learn less from <em>reading<\/em>, but why might they have learned less from teaching? Did the strong readers already know more about these topics before the lessons began? (There was no pretest, so we don&#8217;t know.) Did the classroom lessons rely heavily on reading? Is direct instruction less beneficial to weak readers for some obscure reason? I just don&#8217;t see an obvious reason that those two cognitive capacities &#8212; &#8220;ability to read&#8221; and &#8220;ability to learn from classroom lessons&#8221; &#8212; should be related.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To make this point a different way: this study&#8217;s title is &#8220;The Importance of Knowledge for Reading Comprehension.&#8221; I think it makes that case, although in a limited way. Based on the conclusions I&#8217;ve just listed, I wonder if a better title might be: &#8220;The Importance of Skilled Reading for Academic Success.&#8221; Or an even more accurate title: &#8220;Skilled Reading is a Good Proxy for General Academic Success (but We Don&#8217;t Really Know Exactly Why).&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To be clear, I think this study shows that active prior knowledge enhances reading comprehension. (Those benefits dissipate with time, as that prior knowledge becomes less &#8220;active.&#8221;) But it also points to a bigger question: how does skilled reading connect to &#8212; or cause, or result from &#8212; other categories of academic life: motivation, vocabulary development, self-efficacy, working memory capacity, attention, and so forth?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both this blog post and the study that inspired it started by focusing on background knowledge as an important variable in reading skill. I&#8217;ve ended up more curious about the relationship between reading and academic success more broadly. I&#8217;m sure that background knowledge matters &#8212; and this study has left me equally sure that there&#8217;s much more to the story&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Smith, R. J., Snow, P. C., Serry, T. A., &amp; Hammond, L. S. (2026). The Importance of Knowledge for Reading Comprehension: A Quasi-Experimental Investigation.&nbsp;<em>Reading Psychology<\/em>, 1-27.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Given the time constraints that all teachers face, what are the most effective strategies to help our students with reading comprehension? Should we focus on particular reading strategies: say &#8212; finding the main idea of a passage, predicting what will come next, visualizing the scene? Or do we serve students better by building overall historical, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":6676586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[47],"class_list":["post-6676374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6676374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6676374"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6676374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6676589,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6676374\/revisions\/6676589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6676586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6676374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6676374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6676374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}