Reimagining Post-Pandemic Reading Recovery in ESL Higher Education: Predictors and Pedagogical Pathways

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically altered all aspects of higher education, changing access methods, altering the way students processed, and engaged with academic texts. Post-pandemic research has focused on the learning gap created in math and school-level literacy. The long-term effects of reading comprehension for tertiary English as a second language (ESL) education have received little focus. This gap is detrimental in long-term effects, as reading comprehension is essential for success in higher education and for the generation of knowledge that will drive critical thought and learning. Many students arrived on campuses with the effects of the pandemic evident in their lack of endurance, motivation, and confidence. This paper offers a critical synthesis of post-pandemic reading recovery scholarship across a variety of disciplines, including applied linguistics, literacy studies, educational psychology, digital pedagogy, and higher education studies. This review presents reading recovery as a complex, multidimensional system. The paper argues that reading recovery cannot be simply restated as increased exposure to reading combined with remedial language training, and that there needs to be combined structural and pedagogical shifts to accomplish reading recovery.In response, the authors provide a strategic reading recovery framework (SRRF) that encompasses the use of blended reading ecologies, digitally participatory reading, collaborative reading communities, blended reading ecologies, and artificial intelligence. Based on the review and the presented framework, it is clear that reading recovery should not be understood as a return to inequitable pandemic reading recovery measures. Instead, it advocates for a novel approach to integrated pedagogy, sustaining futures of digital pedagogy, and prioritizing educational equity. The authors outlined a reading recovery framework for ESL higher education, which provides a set of research and policy recommendations for flexible and resilient reading recovery approaches.