The Effects of a Lesson on Preservice Teachers’ Knowledge of Inferencing and Ability to Prepare Instructional Material

The ability to make inferences is an important aspect of reading comprehension. In this sample, 18.9% of participants failed to ask any inference questions when creating instructional material. The sample also demonstrated low explicit knowledge of inferencing with a score less than 50%. The purpose of this study was to observe the effects of a lesson of literal and inferential comprehension on preservice teachers’ explicit knowledge of inferences and ability to create comprehension questions. A quasi-experimental design was implemented, with preservice teachers (n = 35) in the experimental group and Education undergrads in the comparison group (n = 18). Results showed that the lesson was not sufficient to deepen preservice teachers’ explicit knowledge of inferencing. However, the lesson may have influenced their ability to create instructional material as there was an increase in the total number, the variety and the number of inference questions generated following the lesson. These results are interpreted within the limitations of a quasi-experimental design