Learner profile stability and change over time: the impact of the explicit strategy instruction program “learning light”

Abstract

This study examined the stability and change in secondary school students’ learner profiles after receiving an explicit strategy instruction (ESI) to foster their text-learning strategy use. A randomized quasi-experimental repeated measures design was set up with one experimental condition – receiving an eight-lesson-teacher delivered instructional treatment – and one control condition. Four learner profiles (i.e., integrated strategy users, information organizers, mental learners, and limited strategy users) were corroborated at three measurement occasions in a sample of 444 students. Cluster movement analysis identified positive changes in students’ learner profiles over time. Both short- and long-term results were promising.

Keywords:

• Explicit strategy instruction
• learner profiles
• secondary education
• text-learning strategies

Note

Notes

1 The Dutch AVI-index is used to indicate texts’ reading fluency level and the CLIB-index indicates the reading comprehension and conceptual difficulty level. All texts were indexed with an AVI + and CLIB + level, which means that they were appropriate for seventh graders. In addition, different measures from Wizenoze (Janknegt & Huibers, 2019) indicated that the syntactical complexity was fairly similar across texts and confirmed that texts were appropriate for seventh graders.