Decades of Reading Research: Challenging the Science of Reading

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium explores historical, neurological, and observational research that reveals multiple sources of information used by developing and skilled readers. We present four research-based papers which discuss: 1.) the manufactured myth of a reading crisis, 2.) the evolution of empirically based models that have increasingly recognized the multi-dimensional nature of reading, 3.) emerging neurological research documents reading as involving networked brain regions, 4.) decades of observational research that describes different children attending to different aspects of text and language. We note confluence across these bodies of scholarship, which present reading as multidimensional and complex. A fifth paper describes strategies that can be used to help parents, community members, colleagues, and politicians recognize the varied ways in which children become readers.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Research in Reading and Literacy

Chair

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

Papers

• Historical Models of Reading and Honoring Complexity - Catherine F. Compton-Lilly, University of South Carolina

• The Distributed Neural Systems of Reading - Lucy K. Spence, University of South Carolina

• Observational Studies of Readers: What We Have Learned - Catherine F. Compton-Lilly, University of South Carolina; Lucy K. Spence, University of South Carolina

• Challenging Narrow Models of Reading: Working With Parents, Colleagues, and Policy Makers - Kathryn L. Champeau, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

Discussant

• George G. Hruby, University of Kentucky