Address the development of a literature review that summarizes what educators know about the role of the reading specialist and the various roles that reading specialists assume. Examines journals in the field of reading research and instruction, government documents, technical reports, and ERIC documents that related to the role of the reading…

In this article, we review the findings of Rona Flippo's (1998) "Expert Study" within the comparative context of recently published reading research reports such as the National Reading Panel report (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000) and Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Snow, Burns, &…

The best evidence on effective instruction that we can garner is fragile, often stripped of any external validity. Almost every curriculum scheme works in some sites, and none has ever worked well everywhere. That has been the finding time after time when state and federal educational initiatives have been evaluated. There is a useful role for…

The Anna Plan is a unique delivery model for enhancing schoolwide literacy instruction in the primary grades. Based on the principles of Reading Recovery and Four Blocks literacy instruction, it provides supplementary reading instruction through the distinctive use of teaching staff. Over six years, it has resulted in sweeping changes in the way…

This article's fundamental argument is that the reading instruction and reading research have been shaped by political forces desiring to privilege particular approaches to instruction or particular combinations of methodological and epistemological perspectives on research. The swings in both dominant pedagogies and dominant research paradigms…

Dudley-Marling discusses the nature of research in the teaching of reading and the possible connections between such research to teaching and to policy. He questions what he calls the "leitmotif" of federal education policy, specifically, the call for "scientifically based research" to determine reading teaching practices, arguing how such…

A large body of research (Clay 1991; National Reading Panel 2000; Pressley 2000; Courtney & Abodeeb 2001) on young readers reveals that most children do not know how to check their understanding as they read, nor do educators give them the strategies to do so. Comprehension is the process of constructing meaning while interacting with text.…

Early language competence in preschool relates both directly and indirectly to elementary school reading in both 1st and 3rd grades. Further, comprehensive language skills are more strongly related to early reading than are vocabulary scores alone. In response to a challenge by S. A. Bracken (2005), the current article reaffirms the National…

Reading researchers seek to discover exactly what kinds of information-processing activities go on in our minds when we read; to discover what the structure and organization is of the cognitive system skilled readers have acquired from learning to read. Little is known about how the most elaborate aspects of this system work, but much has been…

If a principal's goal is to improve the overall quality of reading instruction in his school, this guide can help him identify the most critical changes that must be made. It describes the types of instruction and leadership activities necessary to help all children become proficient readers in elementary school. It does not contain all the…

This study examined the influence of critical reading orientation on use of external strategies such as note-taking and underlining while reading an expository text. In two experiments, undergraduate students were asked either to review an article on a linguistic policy (critical reading) or to summarise it (less-critical reading). Experiment 1…

This article assesses the state of the literature on word-attack skills and phonological awareness (PA) in individuals with mental retardation, in light of progress towards the development of effective teaching procedures. The literature contains promising findings. Studies have shown PA to be correlated with word-attack skills in individuals with…

Individual differences in reading and cognitive processing among a sample of generally poor readers were studied in order to answer two major questions: Do they have a specific cognitive style that favors global-simultaneous strategies and a weak sequential strategy? If they do not have a distinct cognitive style or strategy, but are merely poor…

The story-telling multimedia, Living Book, is one of the most common edutainment genres, in which children hear and play with interactive and animated stories, in a highly-engaging multimedia environment. Living Books are designed so that every word of the story is projected as text on the computer monitor simultaneously with its narration. This…

This comparative case study investigated the teaching practices of secondary English language arts teachers who are reading endorsed versus secondary English language arts teachers who are not reading endorsed. Florida Department of Education mandated that all reading teachers, and strongly encouraged all English language arts teachers be reading…