Race as a Lens for Understanding Individual Differences in Displays of Competence in Reading Comprehension

• In Event: Reconceptualizing Individual Differences in Reading

Abstract

Purpose and Perspective
Research on reading comprehension typically addresses its cognitive demands (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998; Snow, Griffin, & Burns, 2005). Data indicating persistent and historical gaps in comprehension measures have typically fallen in two directions: (1) lack of sufficient instructional infrastructure in schools serving students from non-dominant groups (Darling-Hammond, 2010); (2) deficit explanations with regard to home and family socialization and/or language deficits (Bereiter & Engelmann, 1966). This research synthesis finds that both these explanations for the historic achievement gap in reading lack sufficient ecological validity or generalizability to account fully for this gap. Research documents no biological basis to the construct of race, but rather race is a social and political construction associated with the institutional configurations that shape opportunity to learn associated with racial positioning (Mills, 1997). Thus this review examines extant research on how opportunity to learn to read influences the persistent reading gap, from a cultural-ecological frame and a human development focus on risk and resilience (Spencer, 2006)
Mode of Inquiry and Data Sources
The literature review focuses on psychological needs for efficacy and relevance, limitations in the field of reading comprehension with regard to the demands of reading in the disciplines (necessary skills for academic success beyond primary grades), limitations of current assessment tools, and attitudes in practice about linguistic repertoires of non-dominant populations as these contribute to the nature of supports available to support opportunity to learn to comprehend across grades (Lee, 2005, 2014).
Findings
The take aways from the reviews of these bodies of literature are that the persistent reading gap associated with race can be explained by the constraints in the broader ecological spaces whose task it is to teach academic literacy. The constraints have to do with limitations in in the field’s understanding of the demands of such skills (Lee & Spratley, 2009), lack of appreciation for the psycho-social demands of such rigorous learning with the understanding that complex comprehension is a form of ill-structured problem solving, and lack of sufficient scaffolding of relevant prior knowledge that diverse students bring to the demands of text comprehension.
Scholarly Significance
This research review examines current theories of how people learn (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999) to provide a lens on the multi-dimensional demands of reading comprehension; and theories of reading comprehension, including issues related to text complexity and content area reading that provide another lens for understanding what is lacking in instructional opportunities for students placed most a risk.

Author

• Carol D. Lee, Northwestern University