Professional development and incorporating informational text for reading improvement

Success in academics, the workplace, and society depends on one's ability to read and comprehend informational text. The current project involved providing to teachers of upper-elementary students a researcher-created professional development manual targeting reading comprehension of informational text. A constructivist perspective featured building knowledge construction within curriculum disciplines. The guiding question for this research was whether Goal Oriented Reading (GOR), the researcher created professional development manual, enhances the teaching application of reading informational text. GOR provides lesson plans for effective teaching of informational reading and the importance of teaching reading skills using informational text. Ten teachers reviewed GOR and completed a five-point Likert scale survey providing feedback from a practitioner's point of view. A quantitative one-group pretest posttest design utilized the t-test analyses with a 95% confidence level. There was a significant difference in the number of times teachers taught informational reading after having read GOR, and the mean number of weekly lessons dedicated to teaching informational reading increased significantly from 2.3 to 3.2. It has been demonstrated that GOR is an effective professional development manual to enhance reading skills in content areas. Elementary students whose teachers are equipped to teach skills in reading informational text have the potential of growing into more literate citizens. Possible implications for social change of modifying existing reading instructional strategies include increased learning in reading comprehension, which is paramount to personal fulfillment, and academic or career success.