In response to the tradition of examining a new test's validity by comparing it with a well-established multiple-choice test, a study investigated whether multiple-choice tests with one right answer can measure the reading comprehension process as defined by constructivists. The study compared the information obtained from two different…

A study compared the scores of Catholic and public school students at three different grade levels on educationally pertinent characteristics such as race, ability, level of parental education, amount of homework, and high school curricular track. Subjects, approximately 2,000 Catholic school students and 30,000 public school students in grades 3,…

This practicum was designed to improve reading comprehension of intermediate grade children attending compensatory education classes in a Florida elementary school. It involved 11 students in grades 2 through 5 who were low achievers in reading and/or math. It was designed to improve reading comprehension by providing training using six specific…

A study tested the effects of hedges (which signal writers' tentative assessment of referential information) on readers' learning. Subjects, 145 ninth-grade students from three middle class junior high schools in a midwestern city who were ranked on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, participated in the experiment--74 were randomly assigned to an…

A study focused on the nature and effect of constraints on the hypotheses that learners make about the meanings of words. Two experiments were conducted at a large midwestern university: the first, involving 68 undergraduate students divided randomly into two groups, tested taxonomic and durative constraints on nouns, and time of day and cessation…

Articles in this yearbook contribute to a broad perspective of changing concepts of reading, each focusing attention on an area of major factors exercising current impact on reading and on the education of reading teachers. The articles and their authors are as follows: "Learning from Text" (T. Estes); "Untying the Gordian Knot" (W. Blanton and G.…

For a potential drop-out who had difficulty comprehending what she had read because she could not recognize a word, even though she often knew its meaning, a methodology for teaching word decoding provided an effective technique for achieving systematic early gains. Lessons for the eighth-grade girl followed this methodology: (1) decoding the…

Psychometric and ethnographic frameworks were used to explore the relationships among adults' uses for reading and their demonstrated competencies with related domains of tasks. Information regarding frequently occurring reading tasks was gathered from 42 adults in both work and leisure settings by means of questionnaires, interviews, and…

A study identified individuals' beliefs about learning and practices in reading and the degree of congruence between the two. Sixty-two undergraduate elementary and special education majors enrolled in the first of three reading methods courses completed the Reading Beliefs Inventory (RBI). In the first part of the RBI, consisting of 10 categories…

Drawing on communications, psychological, and educational studies, this paper examines television's influence on reading performance and school achievement. The first section of the paper reviews and synthesizes major studies dealing with the introduction of television in a community and with correlations between television use and school…

The relationship of the amount of classroom time devoted to reading instruction, the number of reading related activities, and teacher instruction feedback to reading achievement at the end of kindergarten was investigated for a sample of approximately 300 children in 14 kindergarten classrooms at three schools. Based on nine rounds of full-day…

Data were collected from 123 seventh and eighth grade students to examine the relationship between the quality of television viewing time and reading achievement, age, grade, sex, socioeconomic status (SES), and intelligence quotient (IQ). Highlights of the data analyses include the following: (1) The mean weekly viewing time for the subjects was…

The purpose of this study was to compare the performances of undergraduates on a knowledge test of reading (before and after student teaching) with the amount of effort committed to reading instruction by their respective supervisory teachers. The Artley-Hardin "Inventory of Teacher Knowledge of Reading" was administered to three classes of senior…

The classroom behaviors recorded during three second grade reading lessons provide suitable evidence for comparing the relative merits of using narrative observations versus videotapes as data collection techniques. The comparative analysis illustrates the detail and precision of videotape. Primarily, videotape gives a true picture of linear time,…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The seven titles deal with the following topics: (1) the teaching of reading using art as a teaching tool, (2) the effectiveness of a written cueing summary in increasing reading rate and retrieval speed in two content area subjects,…