Abstract
This research explores the impacts of implementing a reading intervention to improve students' reading comprehension skills by fostering critical compassion using formative and design experiments. This study involves two phases of fine-tuning a reading intervention to foster critical compassion in reading comprehension. I define critical compassion in reading comprehension as the ability to name or identify the main character's suffering by using their own lived experiences, understand the main character's suffering (empathy), and take action to help alleviate the character's suffering. Compassion is "the feeling that arises in witnessing another's suffering, and that motivates a subsequent desire to help" (Goetz & Simon Thomas, 2010, p. 351). In this study, 36 second-grade students participated. I gathered quantitative and qualitative data to examine how justice-oriented narratives influence students' comprehension and foster critical compassion while providing high-quality instruction to students with or without learning challenges. All participants were given the Gray Silent Reading Test (GSRT) pretest to establish a baseline for their reading comprehension abilities. After conducting the reading intervention, I administered a posttest to evaluate the reading comprehension of all participants. The purpose was to compare the scores of both the compassion group (students who received the intervention) and the control group (students who did not receive the intervention) to determine if there was any significant improvement in the reading comprehension of the compassion group. This was done to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of the reading intervention. The raw scores from the pre- and post-tests were analyzed using a within-subjects contrast with repeated measures. The quantitative analysis revealed statistical significance (p < .001), indicating that the reading intervention was effective with a success rate of 99.99%. Although both groups demonstrated progress in their reading comprehension, the compassion group demonstrated more significant progress in their reading comprehension. Qualitative data collected during the compassion groups' discussions and in their writing demonstrate their ability to foster critical compassion in their responses. These findings underscore the efficacy of the reading intervention in improving students' reading comprehension by fostering critical compassion. Further research is recommended to validate and enhance these findings using experimental design.