Extends a conversation begun in response to issues the authors identified in their own work as writers of qualitative research and in the works of others. Discusses theory, methodology, representation and legitimation, and writing and write-up of qualitative research. (RS)

Describes some recent studies which establish that meaningful learning can be promoted by a certain type of questioning activity, called elaborative interrogation, that leads students to activate prior knowledge and tie it to the new information. (SR)

Finds that a deficiency in phonological coding and an overreliance upon orthographic coding, often observed in dyslexic children, can also be seen in relatively poor readers and spellers within a normal adult population. (RS)

Studies skilled readers' perceptions of the relative importance of elements of informative text on a subject matter with which the readers were unfamiliar. Finds little agreement among subjects regarding which material was important to remember for a test. (HB)

Compares the performance of poor readers with that of matched good readers and younger average readers. Found that all poor readers performed poorly in all three linguistic areas concurrently, and these difficulties persisted; poor readers demonstrated a difference between their phonological processing skills and their semantic/syntactic skills;…

Describes teacher inquiry in the University of Georgia's National Reading Research Center's School Research Consortium (SRC). Discusses reasons to formalize the teaching and reflecting process by conducting research, how SRC members are becoming researchers, and what impact SRC research is having. (SR)

Extends an earlier study by using different materials, ratings for familiarity, and more stringent experimental controls. Finds concreteness effects in two experiments using undergraduate students. Suggests that familiarity and concreteness contribute separately to recall. Supports a dual coding theory. Discusses implications for text design. (RS)

Explores teacher beliefs and creates teacher profiles that would influence reflective teaching. Notes that teacher profiles served as a means of self-evaluation by assessing instruction and investigating attitudes and belief formation. Suggests that clarifying beliefs may force teachers to reexamine what they do and why they do it. (RS)

Investigates book report policies and how they affect the volume of and attitude toward student reading. Recommends that educators establish a clear, reasonable book report policy; involve parents, teachers, and students in the design and implementation of a schoolwide or districtwide policy; keep developmental needs of early adolescents in mind;…

Finds no evidence to counter the assumption that reading begins with a logographic stage; teaching method had a significant impact on children's reading strategies; and several children taught using the whole word technique appeared to exhibit letter-by-letter reading. Suggests that letter-by-letter dyslexia might be an extreme form of a strategy…

Follows a representative sample of poor readers through secondary school. Finds that, as a group, poor readers fell further behind a normal-reading comparison group during their early teens. Finds also that poor readers were more likely to leave school early and had much depressed educational qualifications. (RS)

Investigates whether Arabic orthography differs from an alphabetic orthography regarding context effects among poor and skilled readers. Finds that skilled as well as poor readers significantly improved their reading accuracy when they read voweled and unvoweled words in context and that skilled readers significantly improved their reading voweled…

Examines gendered aspects of literacy in two bilingual primary classrooms in a working-class Latino community. Centers on values that are associated with literacy in each room and the gendering of those values through specific classroom practices, with attention to gendered aspects of literacy tasks, texts that were written and read, and the talk…

Investigates effects of silent reading embedded in small-group lessons typical of much classroom reading instruction. Finds both positive and negative effects--students were more attentive during silent reading and were more responsive to story content than during oral reading, but the slower pace of silent reading offset these benefits. (RS)

Investigates the relationship between different levels of phonological awareness and literacy acquisition in Portuguese. Finds that phonemic awareness plays an important role in alphabetic literacy acquisition. Notes that both sensitivity to phonemic similarity and phonemic segmentation skills significantly predicted reading and spelling ability,…