The History Matters Campaign is a project of the Knowledge Matters Campaign. Season 2 of the History Matters Podcast begins with a fascinating conversation between a cognitive scientist and middle-school teacher about the powerful connection between social studies, literacy, and learning.
Today’s guest is Dr. Cynthia Nebel, the Director of Learning Services and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at St. Louis University School of Medicine. She’s also an active collaborator with The Learning Scientists, which is dedicated to bridging research and practice to improve educational and organizational outcomes. The episode is hosted by Kyair Butts, an award-winning Baltimore middle-school teacher, former Goyen Fellow, curriculum coach, and contributor to Knowledge Matters.
Cindy explains that background knowledge is one of the strongest predictors of reading comprehension. She highlights classic studies on baseball and chess, showing that readers with relevant knowledge process information more efficiently because they can organize and connect new ideas rather than treating them as isolated facts.
She argues that reading comprehension is not simply a matter of decoding or general reading ability; it also depends on having the context necessary to make sense of what is being read. History, geography, civics, and other content-rich subjects provide the knowledge and vocabulary students need to understand increasingly complex texts. Kyair reflects on how familiarity with historical events enriches experiences with books, films, and cultural references, illustrating how background knowledge deepens engagement.
The discussion also explores the reciprocal relationship between literacy and content learning. Reading strengthens students’ understanding of academic subjects, while subject-area instruction makes reading more meaningful and accessible. This connection is often overlooked because literacy researchers and social studies educators tend to work in separate fields, despite their shared goals.
Educators have an ethical responsibility to intentionally build students’ background knowledge. By providing all students with rich content and historical context, schools enable them to think critically, participate fully in civic life, and engage confidently with complex texts and ideas.
This podcast is produced by Knowledge Matters on behalf of the History Matters Campaign. Follow Knowledge Matters on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter/X. Search #historymatters to join the conversation.
Production by Tressa Versteeg. Original music and sound engineering by Aidan Shea.
Resources:
Chase, W. G., & Simon, H. A. (1973). Perception in chess. Cognitive psychology, 4(1), 55-81.
Episode Transcript
Cindy Nebel
In order toーyeah, think critically, engage with texts, to do the good deep thinking that we want students to be able to do, it’s our responsibility, even maybe ethical responsibility from an equity lens, to provide the information that we want them to think critically about.
Kristen McQuillan
Hi! I’m Dr. Kristen McQuillan, Executive Director of Knowledge Matters. I’m thrilled to welcome you to the second season of the History Matters Podcast.
We’ve teed up another round of exciting conversations at the intersection of English Language Arts and History instruction, including why cognitive scientists and elementary teachers say social studies is the magic key that unlocks and accelerates literacy and learning.
This season explores rich questions and brings listeners inside students’ brains and the classroom. What kinds of history instruction build content knowledge and civic awareness? Why is social studies content such a power player when it comes to literacy? How can schools make time for these critical learning opportunities?
Plus, we’ve got great hosts: Kyair Butts, an award-winning, middle-school teacher from Baltimore, Barbara Davidson, who led the Knowledge Matters Campaign for a decade and spearheaded our History Matters work, and Ebony McKiver, a former teacher and state leader in social studies who is one of the go-to experts in the country.
We’ll be releasing new episodes every week, and continuing the conversation on social media and at knowledgematters.org. Enjoy!
Kyair Butts
Hey everybody. I’m Kyair Butts, one of the hosts for the History Matters Podcast. I’m a Baltimore City School teacher, a former teacher of the year, and a contributor to Knowledge Matters.
In this episode, I talked with Dr. Cynthia Nebel. Cindy is the Director of Learning Services and an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at St. Louis University School of Medicine. She’s also an active collaborator with The Learning Scientists and is dedicated to bridging research and practice to improve educational and organizational outcomes.
As you’ll hear in our conversation, Cindy takes a deep dive into how social studies content knowledge not only increases students’ ability to engage with complex text but also builds students’ self-efficacy. Please enjoy.
Kyair Butts
So, one of the questions that our listeners might be incredibly interested in is: in what ways can social studies content knowledge actually make kids better readers and writers? How does history or social studies uniquely contribute to students’ ability to comprehend complex texts?
Cindy Nebel
Yeah, it’s a really, really important question. It’s sort of ironic. When I was a kid, history, social studies, my least favorite subject, like absolutely least favorite subject. But the reason for that, the reason was because I didn’t know much about it, right? Without the background knowledge, without the content knowledge, all of this stuff just felt like isolated facts that I was trying to memorize as opposed to having some sort of relevance for my daily life, without having more context for why it was interesting. It it was just these isolated things that I didn’t get.
And I think that that really is the key here, right. That if I’m watching a movie right now, right? So, even if we put reading off to the side, if I’m watching a movie and I know the historical context of the stuff that’s happening, it’s suddenly much richer, much more interesting. I can follow along better. Without that information, I can’t.
So if kiddos have the content knowledge, the relevant understanding of the historical context, maybe evenーI I love learning now as an adult person. I love learning about the stories behind the historical figures, right? Like how did that person become what they are, right? Those things are so interesting. And to know those things makes that reading so much richer.
Kyair Butts
Love the answer. And it’s fascinating because as you gave the movie example, I was thinking about Valkyrie with Tom Cruise and I’m thinking, wait, I know a little bit about this story. And objectively I wanna say that the movie had pretty middling or just above good reviews. But because I knew something about it, it was far more interesting than I had been like, why am I watching this random period piece or whatever with Tom Cruise? But I knew something and I was like, wait, this is actually kind of interesting.
Cindy Nebel
Yeah, right! I watched a documentary about George Washington and a lot of the like, the hardship that happened during that time. And then later I was watching Hamilton, of all things, but I was like, dude, I love this character so much more now because I know what a cool dude this was, right? And you don’t get that without the historical context. In fact, even in Hamilton, there’s so many little likeーthey drop little hints and innuendos to things that happened in history. And if you don’t know those things, you miss all of it.
Kyair Butts
I love that. So, when we talk about history, geography, and civics in the elementary grades, we’re talking about content knowledge. So can you talk about what the research says about the connection between content knowledge and reading comprehension?
Cindy Nebel
Yeah, absolutely. So there’s a classic study in reading comprehension world and it’s about baseball knowledge. Okay. And so in this study, they had folks that had high or low levels of baseball knowledge. And to be clear, I have very low levels of baseball knowledge. And then they had folks who had high and low reading comprehension skills. And they gave them a passage to read about baseball.
And sort of unsurprising, for me anyway, what we see is: Yeah, reading comprehension does matter a bit, of course. But the content knowledge mattered so much more when looking at actual comprehension of the text. And so this isn’t surprising for me as someone who knows nothing about baseball. When I look at that study, if I were reading a passage about baseball and somebody said a double play happened. I would be stopping and going: Okay, well, there’s two…two hits, two runs, two outs. I have no idーmaybe there’s just somebody on second base. I don’t know! Right?
So my comprehension of that sentence is going to be a lot slower, a lot more effortful. It’s gonna happen under consciousness, right. I’m not gonna actually stop and do that, but I am gonna read that a lot slower than someone who’s just knows what that is and just keeps on skating by, right?
So, when we have some background knowledge in an area, what happens is instead of processing things as tiny little chunks of information, we have some way of organizing that. And I can really nerd out on you here, Kyair, and go through a lot of the research. So let me give you one more example of this real quick, and then we’ll move on.
There’s another classic study, and this is in chess. and so they took chess masters and chess novices, and here I am a novice again. I don’tーwhy are all my examples things I know nothing about. But in this study, what they did was they gave real chess games, like the middle of a chess game to a chess expert and a chess novice.
And the chess novice, very, very typical restrictions on how much we can process at any given time. They tried to get them to memorize the board and the novice could maybe remember where five pieces were. Very common. Whereas the expert could remember 16 different pieces. And that’s impressive. That’s beyond the limits of our normal capacity. So, how could they do that?
Well, the only thing I do know about chess is they probably looked at it and went: Ah, yes, that’s the Queen’s Gambit. And so they were able to just knowing that one thing, process many pieces on the board. I can’t do that because I don’t have any organization for it, because I have no background knowledge. But the experts could. Now when they gave them just a random board that just had pieces all over the place, they looked exactly the same as novices because they weren’t able to organize it. They weren’t able to use that content knowledge.
So when it comes to content knowledge, it really helps us to process the world because it helps us to organize the world. So anytime we’re reading, it really is helping us to read a lot faster and to process a lot more and a lot more fluently because we have that knowledge that can help us to organize.
Kyair Butts
So as we’re having this conversation, I’m also thinking about the role that a science or social studies in particular, your history classes, your civics classes, the role that they play in providing equity to students as far as being able to catch reference or having some knowledge that greater society wants us to have.
So building background knowledge will help students have access to a text, but the text that they need access to or should have access to might be one of the quote unquote greats. And think about being in a conversation and you miss references because you didn’t have access to a text. Do you have any thoughts around that?
Cindy Nebel
I have so many thoughts around that! [laughs] Iーyou hit the nail on the head here. And it’s something that I talk to educators about a lot, is this idea that background knowledge is so critical for understanding and reasoning that even the examples that we give in class, if you are not building the content knowledge first so that those examples are going to land with those students, you very well might be losing half the students in the class. And it’s not based on their ability. It’s not based on their intelligence. It’s not even based on their motivation. It’s based on the fact that you didn’t build from where they were. And the easiest way to build from where the students are is to set that foundation yourself.
Kyair Butts
So another great question, right, is how does learning history, geography, civics, culture, sociology, any of that, we want to know: how do those disciplines, or discipline areas, set kids up to tackle much harder texts down the road? What are your thoughts there?
Cindy Nebel
I mean, yeah, this is related to that same sort of content knowledge piece. You know, I can read Jane Austen and love it and appreciate it in a very different way because I understand the historical context of it.
But similarly, I mean, thereーthere’s some amount of just learning some language here too that is coming from this. So if you are studying history and geography and you are therefore learning the language associated with it, then when you go to read, now when you get to a word and you’re like, I don’t know that word, it’s not as challengingーright, you do know the word because you learned it in your history or geography or science classーor whatever, right?
And so as more of that content knowledge develops, it’s also the language coming with it too. That means now you can process a more complex text without that like stopping and going: Wait, what’s a double play? I don’t know what that is. You can fluidly read past it because you already have the context, you already have the knowledge.
And so absoluteーI mean, content knowledge sets you up for being able to read that content in a much more fluid way. And so I mean, to me it’s a very, very straightforward thing that you’re gonna be able to read much more difficult texts if you understand what’s going on in that text, right?
Kyair Butts
Well, but it’s also really fascinating though, because again, as I’m hearing this, you also talk about practice, and I do think that there is something to be said, right, about the time on task, right? And exposing students to more books and more text. And again, if that idea or principle only lives in the ELA classroom it’s not value add or gonna be beneficial for kids.
So making sure that in your social studies class there’s still importance in reading the text, having the teacher, you know, stop and clarify vocabulary and getting practice with that. And those exposures are ultimately going to help students become more fluid, like you said. So Iーnow I’m thinking about almost content knowledge fluency, right? Where there are no roadblocks on the path to knowledge or learning, if you will.
Cindy Nebel
Yeah, I mean itーthat fluency piece I think is pretty critical here. And it’s not just about rote memorization, it’s about knowing these things in context because that’s where the true value comes from is that elaborative knowledge network that you have that allows you not just to see something and be able to recall the definition of it. That’s not terribly useful. We want somebody to see something and not need to stop and try to recall the definition of it. We want them to just keep going because it makes sense in context.
As you were talking just then, I was also thinking about sort of the opposite direction being so useful too. That when I was teaching a neuroscience class, I had students read a sort of pop culture neuroscience book. And by doing so they better understood the content we were talking about in class too. Right. So it wasn’t just about the content in class helping them to read the book. It was also about the book helping them with the content.
And so, I mean, I wasn’t teaching ELA at the time, but these two thingsーjust again, it feels like they marry together so nicely that they can enrich each other, right? And we explicitly talk about that in class too. That: how cool is it that we just talked about the thalamus yesterday and this came up in the book and you guys could understand why she was having the symptoms that she was, or whatever. That they could see how the information we were talking about in class really was enriching their understanding of what they were reading and vice versa.
Kyair Butts
The next question, Cindy, to ask is why do you think the connection between literacy and social studies tends to fly under the radar when people talk about reading instruction?
Cindy Nebel
I think a lot of that has to do with, again, sort of this isolation that we have. That the reading science folks are not social studies folks. And so that’s not to say that they’re doing anything wrong and the reading science is really, really critical to be paying attention to the science of reading and how that works, and how to to build skills. All of that is critical and important stuff.
But in reality, I think what happens is just that people have their expertise where they have their expertise. And social studies folks have their expertise and that’s in social studies. And science of reading people have their expertise and that’s in science of reading. And there aren’t a lot of people who have both.
And so it’s not necessarily that there’s a discord between these folks. I don’t think that that’s the case. I think if you asked anyone on either side, they would have a very similar conversation to what we’re having right now. It’s just that it’s somewhat rare for people to have the conversation because that’s not what their focus is. Even though, gosh, as we’ve been having this conversation, isn’t it just so clear that these things go together so darn well? [laughs]
Kyair Butts
Love that. So that’s gonna bring us to our sort of closing. What’s your biggest wish or one big idea about teaching, reading, and building knowledge that you just wish more elementary educators knew or understood?
Cindy Nebel
I think fundamentally what I wish most folks understood was that in order toーyeah, think critically, to engage with texts, to do the good deep thinking that we want students to be able to do, it’s our responsibility, even maybe ethical responsibility from an equity lens, to provide the information that we want them to think critically about.
Kyair Butts
To learn more about Cynthia’s work, please visit www.learningscientists.org, which is linked in our show notes.
Kristen McQuillan
This podcast is produced by Knowledge Matters. You can learn more about our work at www.knowledgematters.org.
To catch all of the History Matters Podcast, make sure you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.