Audiobooks can help students learn new words—especially when paired with one-on-one instruction
Sadie Harley
scientific editor
Robert Egan
associate editor
Millions of students nationwide use text-supplemented audiobooks, learning tools that are thought to help those who struggle with reading keep up in the classroom. A new study by scientists at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research finds t...
The study introduces a critical framework for evaluating educational technology: tools must be deployed with an understanding of differential impact, moving beyond generalized efficacy. The primary pattern observed is that the benefit of an educational intervention is not monolithic; it is mediated by pre-existing conditions, specifically reading ability and socioeconomic status. The finding that audiobooks alone did not benefit all students, and that the most significant gains were tied to expl...
