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1. Thank you @Smithre5, @PamelaSnow2, @tserry2504, and @DrLSHammond for a well-written and informative review article on the role of background knowledge in reading comprehension.
2. With current calls for a knowledge-rich curriculum and reduced (or no) explicit teaching of comprehension strategies, it was useful to read the findings of many experimental and quasi-experimental studies into background knowledge and comprehension over the past 40 years.
3. So, how useful is background knowledge for comprehension? The authors explained that strong knowledge enables less skilled readers to compensate when recalling key ideas from texts. However, strong knowledge does not help less skilled readers to make inferences while reading.
4. They stated: Findings from this review suggest children would benefit from exposure to background knowledge in a specific, explicit and sequenced way: a so-called "knowledge-rich" curriculum in addition to the teaching of comprehension strategies such as summarizing (p. 233)
5. It's useful to have evidence-informed clarity on the topic. Clearly, upping the explicit teaching of knowledge will help students comprehend texts (on the same topics), but 'only' focusing on knowledge may not automatically result in strong comprehension by all learners.
6. I guess this means it's a balancing act for teachers and curriculum writers between the right amount of explicit knowledge instruction and the right amount of research-supported comprehension strategies. The current emphasis is clearly (only?) on strategies and needs to change
7. Open access means everyone can read the paper and draw their own conclusions: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02702711.2021.1888348 I look forward to reading and learning more from this impressive team of scholars 
