In their 1985 report, "Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the Commission on Reading," Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, and Wilkinson defined reading and proposed five principles that guide its successful enactment: (1) reading is a constructive process, (2) reading must be fluent, (3) reading must be strategic, (4) reading requires…

Continues discussion of Ronald Carter's Rauding Theory. (AA)

Views both reading and writing as acts of composing and presents planning, drafting, aligning, revising, and monitoring as components of the composing model of reading. (JL)

Presents open-ended and semistructured interviews to assess reading comprehension. Highlights the potential value of interviews in aligning assessment practices with instruction and learning theory. (MG)

Provides an assessment of the linguistic variables which affect the way in which children comprehend verbal data when they read. (RB)

Reports on a study stemming from schema theory that assessed the role that background knowledge plays in determining young children's ability to process relationships that are explicitly and fully specified in a text, in comparison to those that are only partially specified by the same text. (Author/HOD)

A reader's background knowledge (schemata) and purpose for reading have an overriding influence upon the reader's development of meaning. Reading comprehension also involves activating, focusing, maintaining, and refining ideas toward developing interpretations that are plausible, cohesive, and complete. Recent examinations of instructional…

This paper discusses reading instruction in the 20th century. The paper begins with a tour of the historical pathways that have led people, at the century's end, to the "rocky and highly contested terrain educators currently occupy in reading pedagogy." After the author/educator unfolds his version of a map of that terrain in the paper,…

In the bottom-up model of the reading process, the reader's first task is to decode the symbols into sound representations. By contrast, the top-down model assumes that the reader begins by guessing about the meaning of some unit of print. Each model suggests different instructional practices. (Author/SJL)

Readers as well as writers compose meaning. Using the same characteristics essential to effective writing--planning, drafting, aligning, revising, and monitoring--readers react creatively with the text. In response to the author's intention and their own knowledge base, they decide what they want to get from their reading. Constantly renegotiating…

Research discoveries over the past 15 years concerning reading comprehension have had a significant impact on reading instruction, particularly schema theory. This theory, based on prior learning, which states that the reader uses the text to construct a meaning within his or her own mind, affects what teachers can do to help students improve…

Argues that the tests used to measure reading achievement do not reflect recent advances in the understanding of the reading process, and that effective instruction best can be fostered by resolving the discrepancy between what is known and what is measured. (FL)

Through reflections upon the ideas and events that have shaped current views about reading comprehension and its teaching, this paper characterizes patterns of development in three related domains: theory and research about basic processes in reading comprehension, research about reading comprehension instruction, and practices in teaching reading…