Research+on+Reading+Comprehension


 * Research on Reading Comprehension **

Comprehension, in its most simple definition, simply means “understanding”. When we discuss the content of a book with students or, more often than not, when we “quiz” students on the gist of the test, we are engaging in an attempt to assess the students’ comprehension or understanding of the text. While comprehension has always been a part of reading, it was not until the twentieth century that comprehension was used as a form of assessment of reading. Prior to the twentieth century, reading proficiency was largely determined by oral reading abilities. Comprehension became the tested skill in reading on account of the scientific movement by cognitive psychologists and the ever changing demographic patterns of the United States. This shift occurred as psychologists developed standardized metrics to assess reading ability in a more efficient way. Using oral reading as a baseline for reading proficiency required an individual assessment of each child. However, an assessment of comprehension could be done using a multiple choice exam administered en masse. In turn, while strategy instruction and oral proficiency remained dominant for many years, instruction in reading comprehension played a more prominent role in classrooms (Pearson, 2009).



Instruction in comprehension greatly expanded in the 1980s as seminal studies in comprehension were published and gained traction in the practitioner community. Major studies repeatedly demonstrated that strategy instruction led to increased comprehension, and these strategies were being transferred to new texts to aid in comprehension (Pearson, 2009).

The push for instruction in comprehension led to two different movements in the 1980s and 1990s that are still up for debate today: Literature-based reading and whole language instruction. Although basal readers have been around since the nineteenth century, the production of children’s literature and the supplemental use of this literature in classrooms became one of the primary components of many reading programs. This occurred alongside the publication of //Becoming a Nation of Readers// in 1985by Richard Anderson, which stressed the practice of “just reading” in the elementary classroom. Nancie Atwell’s 1987 publication, //In the Middle//, added to the argument for literature-based instruction by advocating the reader’s workshop as a viable method of teaching reading and reading comprehension. By the 1990s, the push for book clubs and literature circles placed literature at the forefront of classroom instruction.

The whole language movement found a strong advocate in Michael Pressley (2000). Pressley (2000) states that, although skill instruction in word recognition can assist a child in comprehension, it is the act of reading itself, along with teacher modeling of comprehension strategy instruction, that can provide the greater benefit to early readers. In his own research, he has found that many teachers do not focus on comprehension until the later elementary grades. However, he states that comprehension instruction during the primary years do have a lasting effect on a child. It leads to the development of higher order thinking, as well as an expansion of world/background knowledge early on, that greatly benefits a child in later grades. It also allows for an increase in the likelihood of students encountering a range of diverse texts, which allows a child more practice in reading and the opportunity to engage in task transfer.