Observational Studies of Readers: What We Have Learned

• In Event: Decades of Reading Research: Challenging the Science of Reading

Abstract

Purposes
Children matter in the teaching of reading (e.g., Clay, 2005; Goodman, 1976, 2014; Goodman & Marek, 1996) and all students need resourceful teachers who draw upon multiple instructional strategies. Watching children read is key to learning how to help particular readers. Observation is a scientific tool routinely used by scientists, including biologists, astronomists, zoologists, and geographers. Scientific observation is not the same as anecdotal accounts; it involves systematic, targeted, and strategically planned observations that are subject to thoughtful and intentional analyses.

Perspective
This paper draws on 100 years of observational research dating back to the 1910’s. Waldo (1915) and Gray (1916) described informal measures designed to track the rate of oral and silent reading as well as students' abilities to decode words and comprehend increasingly difficult text (see Johns & Lunn, 1983). These informal assessments informed the informal reading inventories used extensively between 1940 and 1980, which featured graded word lists, nonsense words, reading passages, and comprehension questions (see Botel, 1966; McCracken, 1966; Silvaroli, 1969). The purpose was to observe students’ reading processes, assess reading levels, monitor their abilities to decode and comprehend text, and ultimately inform instruction. Recent observational tools - running records (Clay, 1985) and miscue analysis (Goodman, 1976, 2014; Goodman & Marek, 1996) draw on this rich history, providing teachers and researchers with tools for documenting, monitoring, and analyzing children's reading.

Methodology and Evidence Base
This paper reviews research based on observations of young readers to examine how children’s reading behaviors reveal their development as readers. We highlight findings from empirical studies that reveal the different sources of information accessed by individual children

Data Analysis
Because we are only challenging the narrow focus of the Science of Reading, we do not argue that reading does not involve phonetics. Instead, based on observational research, we maintain that reading involves multiple sources of information that readers must learn to orchestrate. Multiple of reading can be observed addressed to positively affect children’s reading trajectories.

Findings
Clay (1991) used empirical evidence gathered from systematic observation of young readers to better understand their reading behaviors (e.g., rereading, substitution, omission, insertion, self-correction). Observable actions serve as proxies for invisible cognitive processes that cannot be observed directly (e.g., perception, problem-solving, inference). Clay (2005) used the term working systems to describe the systems children assembled as they learned to orchestrate of multiple sources of information while reading. Drawing on Clay, Schwartz (2005) revealed how children’s use of various sources of information that teachers could use to target the strengths and needs of developing readers. He concluded that students make accelerated progress when teachers are adept at observing and responding to their reading efforts.

Scholarly Significance
Observational studies, the historical development of reading models and emerging neuroscience research suggest that reading involves networks of information and increasing control over working systems that enable readers to effectively engage with text. Skilled readers use phonetics but always in conjunction with other sources of information. Good teaching is contingent on educators attending to multiple aspects of reading.

Authors

• Catherine F. Compton-Lilly, University of South Carolina

• Lucy K. Spence, University of South Carolina