A study evaluated the assertion that basal reading programs limit or control teachers' instructional decision making through a process referred to as "deskilling" by surveying elementary educators regarding their use of and opinions about basal reading programs. Responses from 553 of 1,000 randomly sampled International Reading…

Discusses the generalizability of educational research and uses the area of main idea comprehension to illustrate how a line of research can be overgeneralized and lead to unfounded conclusions and pedagogical implications. (FL)

Presents one theoretical perspective on balanced literacy instruction and two iterations of it in practice: one in a second-grade classroom and another in a sixth-grade classroom. Concludes that balanced reading instruction is much more complex than merely embedding the teaching of skills and strategies within the context of literature. (SC)

Evaluates the efficacy of the "levels hypothesis" (the prediction that ideas residing at superordinate positions in a text hierarchy are most memorable) as a suitable descriptor of children's reading comprehension of expository prose. (HOD)

Investigates the effectiveness of explicit instruction in think aloud as a means to promote elementary students' comprehension monitoring abilities. Concludes that both think-aloud (TA) and a directed reading-thinking activity (DRTA) strategies are effective but that additional research is needed to determine their relative effectiveness. (SR)

A study evaluated the effectiveness of a direct instructional paradigm for teaching children to comprehend main ideas of prose passages. Subjects, 69 children in three fourth grade classes, were randomly assigned to an experimental "strategy" group receiving direct instruction in main ideas, an experimental "basal" group…

Discusses the construction and testing of The Extended Basic Sight Vocabulary word list. Concludes that it provides educators with a unique instrument for the teaching and testing of words and for the preparation of instructional materials. Includes the word list. (FL)

Presents a practical strategy for teaching reading comprehension that is based on current research and consists of five steps: (1) introduction, (2) example, (3) direct instruction, (4) teacher-directed and (5) independent practice. Provides sample lessons for each step. (FL)

Finds support for the efficacy of a direct instruction paradigm for teaching children reading comprehension skills. (FL)

Examines whether content area textbook passages could be rewritten so that middle grade students' main idea comprehension ability was enhanced. Finds that after reading rewritten text versions, some students could compose significantly more passage main ideas, and all students could compose significantly more paragraph main ideas. (MM)

Presents a modified replication of Austin and Morrison's classic 1963 study of the status of U.S. public school elementary reading instruction. Discusses how school and classroom libraries in the 1990s are more prevalent and better equipped, and how changes in programs and philosophy are common in the late 1990s, unlike in the 1960s. Appends the…

The ability to comprehend the gist and the main ideas of a passage are important textbook reading skills. Since research into children's ability to extract the central thoughts from prose has produced mixed findings, a study was undertaken to determine how skillful children are at comprehending the gist and the main ideas of a passage. To insure…

Since many studies indicate that young readers have difficulty comprehending many commonly occurring forms of anaphora, an instructional experiment was conducted in which a variety of anaphoric forms was taught, the intervention period was of sufficient duration, and external validity was enhanced so that results would be generalizable to the…

The amount of print that 42 college students apprehended in 40 millisecond tachistoscopic flash presentations was monitored for strings of random letters, unrelated words, and words in context (sentences). The results indicated that mean apprehension spans per flash were 3.7 letters for random letters, 9.3 letters (2.0 words) for unrelated words,…

Examines research on teacher effectiveness and comprehension instructional strategies and proposes six principles for the development of reading comprehension instructional methods and materials. (FL)