Untethering science interest from reading fluency: pilot results from a Microsoft HoloLens science reading intervention

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Authors

Denise Bressler¹ , Leonard Annetta¹ , Shane Tutwiler²

1. East Carolina University
2. University of Rhode Island

Conference / event

National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) 2023, April 2023 (Chicago, IL, United States)

Poster summary

Reading ability is an important predictor of science achievement. Therefore, science achievement is often difficult for struggling readers. Fortunately, interest has a strong connection to science achievement, but struggling readers report low science interest. What if we sparked their interest with a mixed reality science reading intervention? In our study, students with lower initial science interest (primarily the struggling readers) reported an increase in science interest after reading scientific text with mixed reality. Essentially, after struggling readers had their science interest triggered, there was a markedly weaker relationship between reading ability and science interest—that preexisting relationship became untethered.

Keywords

Science interest, Reading fluency, Mixed reality

Research areas

Education

References

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9. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), various years, 2009–2019 Science Assessments. Retrieved from https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/science/supporting_files/2019_infographic_science.pdf
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Funding

1. National Science Foundation (No. 1940809)

Supplemental files

No data provided

Additional information

Competing interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and / or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2023 Bressler et al. This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.