In the 21st century, the term "critical" has attached itself to numerous aspects of literacy research. However, what critical means remains commonly anchored to Freire and a primary critical reading practice--suspicious critique. Expanding critical literacy research (CLR), this article advances "reading orientations" as a…

Reading teachers and teacher educators are the latest to blame in public discourse for reading failure in the United States. In March 2019, Pearson Education released the draft of the Science of Teaching Reading Examination Framework for Texas, and the state's teachers and teacher educators were called on to revise courses and programs in…

Informational reading instruction plays an important role in early literacy but has traditionally received less emphasis than literary text in elementary classrooms. This mixed-methods study illuminates trends from observed reading instruction of 77 first-year elementary teachers, drawing on data from 761 lesson segments scored with the Protocol…

The authors discuss the tension between the science of reading and adaptive teaching. The discussion focuses on the ways in which the science of reading emphasizes the teaching of reading as decontextualized and compartmentalized aspects of literacy acquisition that are distant from culturally sustaining and relevant pedagogies and restrict…

Equipping elementary (i.e., grades K-5) teachers with adequate content and pedagogical knowledge to promote effective reading instruction based on the science of reading is a crucial piece of the reading education puzzle. We reviewed 20 empirical studies to examine the impact of teacher preparation and training programs on elementary teachers'…

Research has indicated that reading aloud to young students can enhance their foundational reading skills and their reading motivation, but such research has been lacking in African contexts. In this study, we assessed the efficacy of story read-aloud lessons in improving students' foundational reading skills in Nigeria. The experiment took place…

This article examines how a literacy teacher and her students engaged students' Christian religious literacies in a secular classroom and the outcomes of those transactions. Case study methods; scholarship offering historical, cultural, and social perspectives on Christian religious literacies; and the New London Group's theory of a pedagogy of…

The authors conducted a cluster-randomized trial to examine the effectiveness of structured teacher adaptations to the implementation of an evidence-based summer literacy program that provided students with (a) books matched to their reading level and interests and (b) teacher scaffolding for summer reading in the form of end-of-year comprehension…

This study modeled the interrelationships of reading instruction, motivation, engagement, and achievement in two contexts, employing data from 1,159 seventh graders. In the traditional reading/language arts (R/LA) context, all students participated in traditional R/LA instruction. In the intervention R/LA context, 854 students from the full sample…

The authors provide a review and critique of 82 empirical investigations conducted in the United States on teacher preparation for reading instruction. These studies were chosen from a pool of 298 based on the authors' coding of research quality indicators. Applying an inductive paradigmatic analysis of the 82 studies, this review suggests that in…

Summarizes research in teacher preparation. Argues that a great deal is known about the training of teachers but much less about the teaching of teachers. Reviews research in areas of training and teaching of teachers and points toward promising practices in the area of teaching teachers. Concludes with recommendations for a research agenda in…

Suggests that the emphasis on basic reading research in the decade of the 1970s has devalued the importance of reading instruction research and has ignored the needs of the reading educator. (AEA)

Presents results of 2 studies on mentoring teacher educators in literacy education. Models alternative ways of representing and evaluating research data. Articulates how these alternative forms of representing data capture the aesthetics of mentoring graduate students in literacy teacher education. Describes the quantitative survey study,…

Discusses a series of six studies that investigated the performance of 66 reading and learning disabilities specialists and classroom teachers who diagnosed simulated reading or learning disability cases and suggested remediation plans. Results indicate that both commonality and individual agreement among participants was very low. (AEA)

Examines an instructional research study (by S. W. Pflaum and E. T. Pascarella) according to several criteria for designing educational research and questions whether the information provided by context-stripping research paradigms can be of genuine use in helping teachers understand and create effective conditions for reading to learn. (MKM)