Annotated Bibliographies

In their book, Strategies that Work, Harvey and Goudvis (2007) approached literacy as a skill of thinking. “Reading is thinking,” they declared, as they proceeded to develop and introduce strategies to enhance comprehension. Roberts and Billings (2008), in their research titled “Thinking is Literacy, and Literacy Thinking,” redefined the term “thinking” to be “the ability to successfully explain and manipulate complex systems” (p. 33). Comprehension is, simply put, the result of explaining and manipulating complex systems. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept that annotated bibliographies may, in fact, be a skill of thinking, and in the end, one of many strategies capable of strengthening comprehension skills. Through

research based evidence, this study will surmise that an annotated bibliography provides practice in reading to analyze and to evaluate—each a higher level thinking skill which, ultimately, increases reading comprehension.
The study will focus on the question: What effect does the process of writing annotated bibliographies have on reading comprehension?

The null hypothesis is that there will be no differences in reading comprehension between students who use learn to write an annotated bibliography as a learning strategy and those who do not. In their research, Roberts and Billings (2008) suggested that learners must learn to think (first) in order to comprehend (result of thinking). Roberts and Billings urged educators to “treat [thinking] as a fundamental literacy skill” (p. 33). Whether or not an annotated bibliography can be declared an effective fundamental literacy skill is ultimately the question this study aims to

answer.
Research completed by Cook and Klipfel (2015) cited Mayer and Wittrock’s definition of learning as “a change in learner’s knowledge”. The study proposed that the most important aspect of providing material to the student was to provide not only the opportunity to retain the material (via comprehension) but also to allow for the transfer of the material from one context to another (Cook & Klipfel, 2015). Harvey and Goudvis (2007) suggested an additional step to Cook and Klipfel’s presumption by noting that to change knowledge, the learner had to significantly increase prior knowledge. The assumption of this study on effect of the annotated bibliography as a learning strategy is that strategy will provide the learner an experience through the perspective of another’s vision, essentially adding to the learner’s prior knowledge, hence enabling retention and comprehension. However, the question remains: Is the strategy (of writing an annotated bibliography) well-founded enough to be effective? This study proposes that the use of an annotated bibliography as an effective learning strategy could offer the opportunity for retention (if evidenced by increased comprehension) as well as the transfer of knowledge from one context to another (if evidence suggests that students apply the steps of writing an annotated bibliography to other classes).
Consequently, to establish any cause and effect relationship between the skill of writing annotated bibliographies and an increased level of reading comprehension, quantitative, experimental data will compare two specific groups of students: the subjects, students who will receive annotated bibliography training; and the control, students who will not.

The study outcome will determine to what extent, if any, student reading comprehension increases with the regular inclusion of annotated bibliographies as an effective strategy for content comprehension. Reiterating the null hypothesis, there will be no difference in reading comprehension between the control group and the subjects; moreover, without indication of increased comprehension, there will be no change in learner’s knowledge. The merit of the annotated bibliography as an effective learning strategy to increase reading comprehension relies on the evidence produced by the

study.
McMillan and Schumacher (2010) identified six different types of variables critical to quantitative research (Table 3.1, p. 57). As suggested by definition in Table 3.1, the dependent variable, the outcome of the study, will be the percent increase or decrease in the reading Rasch UnIT (RIT) scores as calculated from MAP scores completed by both the control and subject groups. RIT values from the winter prior and the spring after the intended study will be compared to discern a change, if any, in percentage. The independent variable, the tool used to prognosticate the outcome, will be the learning strategy (specifically the annotated bibliography in the case of this study). To prevent an extraneous variable (Table 3.1, p. 57), The subject and control groups must be assessed at the same time of the day (morning or afternoon).