Although convergent research demonstrates that well-designed graphics can facilitate readers’ understanding of text, there are select situations where graphics have been shown to have no effect on learners’ overall text comprehension. Therefore, the current meta-analytic study examined 39 experimental studies published between 1985 and 2018 measuring graphics’ effects on readers’ comprehension. We first quantified the overall effect on reading comprehension. Then, we considered interactions with learners’ characteristics, graphic types, and assessment formats. Our analysis revealed that the inclusion of graphics had a moderate overall positive effect (Hedges’s g = 0.39) on students’ reading comprehension, regardless of grade level. Regarding graphic type, we did not find a significant difference among pictures, pictorial diagrams, and flow diagrams. Only when compared to mixed graphics, pictures had a greater effect on comprehension. Additionally, compared with true and false assessments, graphics differentially benefited students’ comprehension on open-ended comprehension assessments and mixed format assessments. Implications for future research are presented.

Integration in mixed methods involves bringing together quantitative and qualitative approaches. There is a need for practical examples of how to integrate the two approaches in an explanatory sequential design at the methods level and at the interpretation and reporting level. This article reports an explanatory sequential mixed methods study of adolescents’ quantitative judgments about belief-related scientific arguments and qualitative reasons behind those judgements via interviews. This context is used to illustrate how integration can be achieved in an explanatory sequential design at the methods level, through the sampling frame and through the development of the interview protocol with a methodological joint display, and at the interpretation and reporting level through narrative and the use of a results joint display.

Middle school teachers tend to rely heavily on texts that have become increasing more visual. There is little information available about the graphical demands of general middle grades' science texts. The purpose of this study was to quantify the type and quality of the graphical representations and how they interacted with the textual material in middle school science texts. Four State of Texas–approved sixth-grade science texts were examined using a researcher-developed instrument, Graphical Analysis Protocol (GAP). Results produced reasons for concern (least analytic forms of graphics dominated, one third of all graphics were decorative in nature, most graphics were static in nature, and approximately one third were not connected to the text spatially or semantically) and reasons for optimism (approximately one third of the time more analytic forms of graphics were used, two thirds served a specific cognitive function, and over half of the graphics were connected to the text and indexically referenced). Further research is warranted on a larger sample of texts from different states, publishers, grade levels, and subjects. It is also important to establish a connection to increased student learning and/or teacher preference due to higher incidences of any of the variables or principles that make up the GAP instrument.