Purpose: Complex features of science texts present idiosyncratic challenges for middle grade readers, especially in a post-Common Core educational world where students' learning is dependent on understanding informational text. The primary aim of this study was to explore how middle school readers process science texts and whether such…

When the author asked her eighth-grade students to list some reading strategies, they were well prepared to answer her. But when she asked them how they knew they did not understand what they were reading--in other words, how they knew they need to use these reading strategies--they were unable to produce an explanation. She launched an action…

Two dimensions of students' beliefs about meaning construction in reading processes, transmission and transaction beliefs, were studied. According to transmission beliefs, the reader's task is to understand the author's intended meaning, while transaction beliefs assign to the reader the role of active meaning constructor. Students' beliefs were…

Students say that teachers can "suck" for several reasons. Teachers suck when they are repetitive, boring, assume the worst about their students or refuse to listen to students' explanations for their apparent misbehavior, have too many rules, assign a task that seems impossible, talk too much, or when they separate students from a friend or a…