Usability of a Reading Intervention for Upper-Elementary English Learners: Building Reading Comprehension Through Knowledge, Language, and Structured Inquiry (K.L.I.)

Oct 15, 2026

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Teachers need instructional tools that sustain opportunities for reading and discussing informational texts, analyzing language within those texts, and building new content knowledge for upper-elementary English learners. This study develops a multicomponent small-group intervention, K.L.I., emphasizing knowledge, language, and structured inquiry, using design-based research with 15 teachers over two years. Teacher interviews and lesson implementation ratings reveal usability pressure points and enhancing factors, informing future development of similar interventions.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages23

Reading Time58 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Background: Reading comprehension challenges for ML-ELs

Intervention Development (K.L.I.)

Design-based research and iterative cycles

Usability Evaluation

Usability definition and measurement approach

Findings and Implications

Pressure points and enhancing factors

AERA Open January-December 2025, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 1–23 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584251323893 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2025. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) Usability of a Reading Intervention for Upper-Elementary English Learners: Building Reading Comprehension Through Knowledge, Language, and Structured Inquiry (K.L.I.) Dennis S. Davis Jackie E. Relyea North Carolina State University Courtney Samuelson Methodist University Becky Huang The Ohio State University Corrie Dobis North Carolina State University To accelerate literacy learning for upper-elementary multilingual children designated as English learners (ML-ELs), teachers need instructional tools that create sustained opportunities for reading and discussing informational texts, examining the language encountered in those texts, and building new content knowledge. To address this need, we developed a multicomponent small-group intervention to build ML-ELs’reading comprehension by emphasizing knowledge, language, and structured inquiry (K.L.I.). We describe our iterative design process and report findings related to usability, which we argue is an essential but often unreported step in examining the internal logic of new interventions. Using design-based research, we developed K.L.I. through repeated design-implement-observe-revise cycles in collaboration with 15 teachers over 2 years. We analyzed teacher interviews and ratings of lessons implemented during afterschool supplemental instruction. Findings suggest pressure points and enhancing factors affecting the usability of K.L.I. These findings can inform future efforts to design and implement similar multicomponent reading comprehension interventions. Keywords: reading, language comprehension/development, comprehension, elementary schools, descriptive analysis, improvement science, observational research, design-based research, reading comprehension It is vital for educators to foster literacy proficiency among multilingual children identified as English learners (ML-ELs 1), who now constitute 10.4% of the school-age population in the United States (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2022) . When learning to read English in school, ML-ELs typically develop word reading skills (e.g., phonological awareness, decoding) at levels similar to their native English-speaking counterparts (MancillaMartinez & Lesaux, 2011) . However, ML-ELs can experience challenges in higher-level language and reading comprehension skills in English, particularly in complex, informational texts. This challenge becomes more pronounced as they concurrently build their academic language proficiency in English and gain domain and content knowledge in upper-elementary grades (Goldenberg, 2020; Snow & Matthews, 2016) . The challenges associated with reading comprehension development may be attributed to the multifaceted nature of the construct. Reading comprehension depends on multiple language skills, including orthography, phonology, morphosyntax, and vocabulary. Children who experience difficulties with reading comprehension often have underlying difficulties with these language components (e.g., Cain, 2007; Murphy et al., 2016; Pearson et al., 2020). Moreover, reading comprehension depends on an array of cognitive skills, such as the ability to connect the information presented in the text Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages ([https://

FAQs

What is K.L.I. and what does it aim to improve for upper-elementary English learners?

K.L.I. is a multicomponent small-group intervention designed to build reading comprehension by emphasizing knowledge, language, and structured inquiry during work with informational texts.

How was K.L.I. developed in this study?

The study used design-based research, applying repeated design-implement-observe-revise cycles in collaboration with 15 teachers over two years.

What did the researchers find about K.L.I.’s usability?

Results indicate specific pressure points and enhancing factors that affect whether teachers understand, can use, and are willing to use the intervention effectively.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Pentious