Connective Knowledge and Reading Comprehension in Upper Elementary Students: A Growth Analysis

ABSTRACT Connectives—a relatively small, closed set of expressions used to link ideas logically, for example, “therefore,” “in contrast”—represent a potentially high‐leverage area of focus for literacy interventions due to their prevalence and utility across content‐area texts. To inform instruction, however, we first need more research to understand students' development of connective knowledge and test its potential contribution to reading comprehension. In the present study, we used latent growth analysis to examine developmental relations between receptive connective knowledge and reading comprehension in English learners (ELs) and English proficient (EP) students from grade 4 to grade 6 ( N = 4100). Three primary findings emerged from our analysis. First, students with greater initial connective knowledge at the start of fourth grade displayed, on average, greater growth in reading comprehension between grades 4 and 6. Second, more rapid growth in connective knowledge across this same timespan predicted, on average, greater growth in reading comprehension. Third, our study finds that the relation between connective knowledge growth and reading comprehension growth was not significantly different for ELs as compared to EP students. To our knowledge, this is the first study to analyze the relation between connective knowledge and reading comprehension in upper elementary students over time and how this relation varies by student language background. These results motivate future intervention‐based research to identify possible causal pathways underlying this developmental relation and directs practitioners to consider connective knowledge as a particular instructional area with potential benefits on reading comprehension outcomes for both English learning and English proficient students.