When students enter middle school, they are confronted with the necessity of learning from complex content-area textbooks. Many students find these texts boring, and they may lack the higher-order reading comprehension skills they need to tackle complex text. Yet the ability to read informational text is essential to success in middle school and…

Growing scientific literature provides a perspective of literacy that is at variance with traditional points of view, which see literacy as a unitary, dichotomous, psychological capability that is learned with the appropriate educational opportunity. However, an individual is not easily categorized as literate or illiterate. While the goal is to…

Urges that a complete science education curriculum should teach the communication skills of reading, listening, writing, and speaking, as well as the practice of literacy in scientific areas. (AEA)

Explores the function of reading in several societies. (MKM)

Proposes redefining the problem of illiteracy in terms of a "social-interaction perspective" that would emphasize the need "to acculturate students to the practices of reading in their communities" and the broad range of reading competencies required by today's society. (JBM)

After reviewing the literature on functional literacy, proposes that new measures be developed and classified according to the practical information to be obtained and the decisions to be made from them. (AA)

Suggests that true literacy is "a reaching out for understanding about the significance of human experience." (MKM)

Argues that a literate environment can be fostered by teachers requesting children to read the daily newspaper and encouraging them to badger their parents for subscriptions. (FL)

Discusses the problems facing educators and children in developing nations, who must often use instructional materials prepared in English, depicting a lifestyle that is alien to them, and presented to them in books which are unavailable outside of the classroom. (FL)

Defines literacy as an equilibrium between the achievement of the person and the demands of the context in which the person is situated. Suggests that understanding this equilibrium is the first step in developing realistic educational programs. (AEA)

Shares the author's vision of literacy engagement. Offers a portrait of an engaged fifth-grade literacy learner and then discusses what engagement in literacy is, why it is important, how classroom contexts foster literacy engagement, and how teachers can build engaging classroom contexts. (SR)

Points out that current alarmist rhetoric about widespread reading failure is not based on facts. (HOD)

Proposes a model for how document literacy and prose literacy are related to young adults' occupational status and their societal participation. Finds that the relatively low occupational status of Blacks appears to be attributable to their relatively low literacy achievement and literacy activity. (MG)

This paper describes the National Reading Research Center (NRRC), a federally funded center that intends to carry out research to discover what promotes readers' engagement in literacy activities, foster their critical thinking and strategic learning, and prepare them to meet the challenges of a technological age. The paper describes the mission…

In our theoretical framework, reading engagement entails multiple perspectives on reading that consist of motivational dispositions, cognitive strategies, conceptual understanding, and social discourse. Possessing these attributes, engaged readers are typically higher achievers than less engaged readers, who show fewer of these qualities or less…