Changing Theories About Reading Comprehension

• In Event: Integrating Research, Practice, and Design: A 10-Year Collaborative Effort to Improve Middle-Grades Reading Comprehension

Abstract

The SERP-BPS partnership work started with a systematic effort to interview teachers and coaches, and observe in middle-grades classrooms, to define in researchable ways the problem identified by district leaders as ‘poor reading comprehension.’ Among many hypotheses offered by practitioners for the students’ problems in comprehending content area texts, one common theme was vocabulary. Thus the research team developed a vocabulary-focused intervention that incorporated engaging topics and rich classroom discussion. Observation and analysis of the debates in the classrooms implementing the program led to the hypothesis that they were providing opportunities for students to develop skills that were rarely explicitly taught but that were crucial to reading comprehension and to writing: academic language, perspective-taking, and argumentation. Hypothesizing that these skills would predict reading comprehension outcomes was novel in the context of the widely accepted view that comprehension was a product of vocabulary, word reading accuracy, fluency, and strategic approaches to text.

The formulation of this novel hypothesis exemplifies the value of embedding educational research efforts in partnerships focused on urgent problems of practice. Observations of practitioners implementing a program led to insights about how and why the program functioned – a prime example of learning from practice.

The new hypothesis about determinants of reading comprehension – that academic language, perspective-taking, and argumentation skills would predict outcomes on challenging comprehension tasks over and above vocabulary, word reading accuracy, and fluency – has been supported in recent findings. These findings offer content area teachers new approaches to helping their students navigate complex texts and the demands of standards aligned toward college- and career-ready skills.

Author

• Catherine E. Snow, Harvard University